here."

She took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they brought
her, gave her something that was the compensation of her case. "Thank
you," she simply answered. And then as he looked at her a little
harder, "Thank you very much," she repeated.

It had broken as with a slight arrest into the current of their talk,
and it held him a moment longer. "Why, two months, or whatever the
time was, ago, did you so suddenly dash off? The reason you afterwards
gave me for having kept away three weeks wasn't the real one."

She recalled. "I never supposed you believed it was. Yet," she
continued, "if you didn't guess it that was just what helped you."

He looked away from her on this; he indulged, so far as space
permitted, in one of his slow absences. "I've often thought of it, but
never to feel that I could guess it. And you see the consideration
with which I've treated you in never asking till now."

"Now then why DO you ask?"

"To show you how I miss you when you're not here, and what it does for
me."

"It doesn't seem to have done," she laughed, "all it might! However,"
she added, "if you've really never guessed the truth I'll tell it you."

"I've never guessed it," Strether declared.

"Never?"

"Never."

"Well then I dashed off, as you say, so as not to have the confusion of
being there if Marie de Vionnet should tell you anything to my
detriment."

He looked as if he considerably doubted. "You even then would have had
to face it on your return."

"Oh if I had found reason to believe it something very bad I'd have
left you altogether."

"So then," he continued, "it was only on guessing she had been on the
whole merciful that you ventured back?"

Maria kept it together. "I owe her thanks. Whatever her temptation
she didn't separate us. That's one of my reasons," she went on "for
admiring her so."

"Let it pass then," said Strether, "for one of mine as well. But what
would have been her temptation?"

"What are ever the temptations of women?"

He thought--but hadn't, naturally, to think too long. "Men?"

"She would have had you, with it, more for herself. But she saw she
could have you without it."

"Oh 'have' me!" Strether a trifle ambiguously sighed. "YOU," he
handsomely declared, "would have had me at any rate WITH it."

"Oh 'have' you!"--she echoed it as he had done. "I do have you,
however," she less ironically said, "from the moment you express a
wish."

He sto