He humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it. “Oh but don’t, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and can’t, you know, be left.” But she kept it up. “I wish they’d send her out to me!” “If they knew you,” he returned, “they would.” “Ah but don’t they?—after all that, as I’ve understood you you’ve told them about me?” He had paused before her again, but he continued his course “They _will_—before, as you say, I’ve done.” Then he came out with the point he had wished after all most to make. “It seems to give away now his game. This is what he has been doing—keeping me along for. He has been waiting for them.” Miss Gostrey drew in her lips. “You see a good deal in it!” “I doubt if I see as much as you. Do you pretend,” he went on, “that you don’t see—?” “Well, what?”—she pressed him as he paused. “Why that there must be a lot between them—and that it has been going on from the first; even from before I came.” She took a minute to answer. “Who are they then—if it’s so grave?” “It mayn’t be grave—it may be gay. But at any rate it’s marked. Only I don’t know,” Strether had to confess, “anything about them. Their name for instance was a thing that, after little Bilham’s information, I found it a kind of refreshment not to feel obliged to follow up.” “Oh,” she returned, “if you think you’ve got off—!” Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom. “I don’t think I’ve got off. I only think I’m breathing for about five minutes. I dare say I _shall_ have, at the best, still to get on.” A look, over it all, passed between them, and the next minute he had come back to good humour. “I don’t meanwhile take the smallest interest in their name.” “Nor in their nationality?—American, French, English, Polish?” “I don’t care the least little ‘hang,’” he smiled, “for their nationality. It would be nice if they’re Polish!” he almost immediately added. “Very nice indeed.” The transition kept up her spirits. “So you see you do care.” He did this contention a modified justice. “I think I should if they _were_ Polish. Yes,” he thought—“there might be joy in _that_.” “Let us then hope for it.” But she came after this nearer to the question. “If the girl’s of the right age of course the mother can’t be. I mean for the virtuous attachment. If the girl’s twenty—and she can’t be less—the mother must be at least forty. So it puts the mother out. _She’s_ too old for him.” Strether, arrested again, considered and demurred. “Do you think so? Do you think any one would be too old for him? _I’m_ eighty, and I’m too young. But perhaps the girl,” he continued, “_isn’t_ twenty. Perhaps she’s only ten—but such a little dear that Chad finds himself counting her in as an attraction of the acquaintance. Perhaps she’s only five. Perhaps the mother’s but five-and-twenty—a charming young widow.” Miss Gostrey entertained the suggestion. “She _is_ a widow then?”