tely promised to "save." This wasn't quite for
her the air of salvation; but as that chill fairly deepened what did it
become but a reminder that one might at the worst perish WITH her? And
it was simple enough--it was rudimentary: not, not to give her away.
"I find in her more merits than you would probably have patience with
my counting over. And do you know," he enquired, "the effect you
produce on me by alluding to her in such terms? It's as if you had
some motive in not recognising all she has done for your brother, and
so shut your eyes to each side of the matter, in order, whichever side
comes up, to get rid of the other. I don't, you must allow me to say,
see how you can with any pretence to candour get rid of the side
nearest you."

"Near me--THAT sort of thing?" And Sarah gave a jerk back of her head
that well might have nullified any active proximity.

It kept her friend himself at his distance, and he respected for a
moment the interval. Then with a last persuasive effort he bridged it.
"You don't, on your honour, appreciate Chad's fortunate development?"

"Fortunate?" she echoed again. And indeed she was prepared. "I call it
hideous."

Her departure had been for some minutes marked as imminent, and she was
already at the door that stood open to the court, from the threshold of
which she delivered herself of this judgement. It rang out so loud as
to produce for the time the hush of everything else. Strether quite,
as an effect of it, breathed less bravely; he could acknowledge it, but
simply enough. "Oh if you think THAT--!"

"Then all's at an end? So much the better. I do think that!" She
passed out as she spoke and took her way straight across the court,
beyond which, separated from them by the deep arch of the porte-cochere
the low victoria that had conveyed her from her own hotel was drawn up.
She made for it with decision, and the manner of her break, the sharp
shaft of her rejoinder, had an intensity by which Strether was at first
kept in arrest. She had let fly at him as from a stretched cord, and
it took him a minute to recover from the sense of being pierced. It
was not the penetration of surprise; it was that, much more, of
certainty; his case being put for him as he had as yet only put it to
himself. She was away at any rate; she had distanced him--with rather
a grand spring, an effect of pride and ease, after all; she had got
into her carriage before he could overtake her,