or
contrition, in the wonder of whether he had made, in his own challenge
that afternoon, such another figure, that he for an instant missed the
thread. "Tell you--?"

"Why what you've got on hand."

Strether hesitated. "Why it's such a matter as that even if I
positively wanted I shouldn't be able to keep it from you."

Waymarsh gloomily gazed. "What does that mean then but that your trip
is just FOR her?"

"For Mrs. Newsome? Oh it certainly is, as I say. Very much."

"Then why do you also say it's for me?"

Strether, in impatience, violently played with his latch. "It's simple
enough. It's for both of you."

Waymarsh at last turned over with a groan. "Well, I won't marry you!"

"Neither, when it comes to that--!" But the visitor had already laughed
and escaped.

III

He had told Miss Gostrey he should probably take, for departure with
Waymarsh, some afternoon train, and it thereupon in the morning
appeared that this lady had made her own plan for an earlier one. She
had breakfasted when Strether came into the coffee-room; but, Waymarsh
not having yet emerged, he was in time to recall her to the terms of
their understanding and to pronounce her discretion overdone. She was
surely not to break away at the very moment she had created a want. He
had met her as she rose from her little table in a window, where, with
the morning papers beside her, she reminded him, as he let her know, of
Major Pendennis breakfasting at his club--a compliment of which she
professed a deep appreciation; and he detained her as pleadingly as if
he had already--and notably under pressure of the visions of the
night--learned to be unable to do without her. She must teach him at
all events, before she went, to order breakfast as breakfast was
ordered in Europe, and she must especially sustain him in the problem
of ordering for Waymarsh. The latter had laid upon his friend, by
desperate sounds through the door of his room, dreadful divined
responsibilities in respect to beefsteak and oranges--responsibilities
which Miss Gostrey took over with an alertness of action that matched
her quick intelligence. She had before this weaned the expatriated
from traditions compared with which the matutinal beefsteak was but the
creature of an hour, and it was not for her, with some of her memories,
to falter in the path though she freely enough declared, on reflexion,
that there was always in such cases a choice of opposed policies