f the last flickers of
his occasional mild mirth. "To think that was just what I came out to
prevent!"

She took it up but to reply. "You don't regard him then as safe?"

"I was just going to ask you how in that respect you regard Madame de
Vionnet."

She looked at him a little. "What woman was EVER safe? She told me,"
she added--and it was as if at the touch of the connexion--"of your
extraordinary meeting in the country. After that a quoi se fier?"

"It was, as an accident, in all the possible or impossible chapter,"
Strether conceded, "amazing enough. But still, but still--!"

"But still she didn't mind?"

"She doesn't mind anything."

"Well, then, as you don't either, we may all sink to rest!"

He appeared to agree with her, but he had his reservation. "I do mind
Chad's disappearance."

"Oh you'll get him back. But now you know," she said, "why I went to
Mentone." He had sufficiently let her see that he had by this time
gathered things together, but there was nature in her wish to make them
clearer still. "I didn't want you to put it to me."

"To put it to you--?"

"The question of what you were at last--a week ago--to see for
yourself. I didn't want to have to lie for her. I felt that to be too
much for me. A man of course is always expected to do it--to do it, I
mean, for a woman; but not a woman for another woman; unless perhaps on
the tit-for-tat principle, as an indirect way of protecting herself. I
don't need protection, so that I was free to 'funk' you--simply to
dodge your test. The responsibility was too much for me. I gained
time, and when I came back the need of a test had blown over."

Strether thought of it serenely. "Yes; when you came back little
Bilham had shown me what's expected of a gentleman. Little Bilham had
lied like one."

"And like what you believed him?"

"Well," said Strether, "it was but a technical lie--he classed the
attachment as virtuous. That was a view for which there was much to be
said--and the virtue came out for me hugely There was of course a great
deal of it. I got it full in the face, and I haven't, you see, done
with it yet."

"What I see, what I saw," Maria returned, "is that you dressed up even
the virtue. You were wonderful--you were beautiful, as I've had the
honour of telling you before; but, if you wish really to know," she
sadly confessed, "I never quite knew WHERE you were. There were
moments," she explained, "when you struck me