Mystified by his abrupt declaration, she had glanced over at Gloriani as at the unnamed subject of his allusion, but the next moment she had understood; though indeed not before Strether had noticed her momentary mistake and wondered what might possibly be behind that too. He already knew that the sculptor admired Madame de Vionnet; but did this admiration also represent an attachment of which the innocence was discussable? He was moving verily in a strange air and on ground not of the firmest. He looked hard for an instant at Miss Barrace, but she had already gone on. “All right with Mr. Newsome? Why of course she is!”—and she got gaily back to the question of her own good friend. “I dare say you’re surprised that I’m not worn out with all I see—it being so much!—of Sitting Bull. But I’m not, you know—I don’t mind him; I bear up, and we get on beautifully. I’m very strange; I’m like that; and often I can’t explain. There are people who are supposed interesting or remarkable or whatever, and who bore me to death; and then there are others as to whom nobody can understand what anybody sees in them—in whom I see no end of things.” Then after she had smoked a moment, “He’s touching, you know,” she said. “‘Know’?” Strether echoed—“don’t I, indeed? We must move you almost to tears.” “Oh but I don’t mean _you!_” she laughed. “You ought to then, for the worst sign of all—as I must have it for you—is that you can’t help me. That’s when a woman pities.” “Ah but I do help you!” she cheerfully insisted. Again he looked at her hard, and then after a pause: “No you don’t!” Her tortoise-shell, on its long chain, rattled down. “I help you with Sitting Bull. That’s a good deal.” “Oh that, yes.” But Strether hesitated. “Do you mean he talks of me?” “So that I have to defend you? No, never.’ “I see,” Strether mused. “It’s too deep.” “That’s his only fault,” she returned—“that everything, with him, is too deep. He has depths of silence—which he breaks only at the longest intervals by a remark. And when the remark comes it’s always something he has seen or felt for himself—never a bit banal. _That_ would be what one might have feared and what would kill me. But never.” She smoked again as she thus, with amused complacency, appreciated her acquisition. “And never about you. We keep clear of you. We’re wonderful. But I’ll tell you what he does do,” she continued: “he tries to make me presents.” “Presents?” poor Strether echoed, conscious with a pang that _he_ hadn’t yet tried that in any quarter. “Why you see,” she explained, “he’s as fine as ever in the victoria; so that when I leave him, as I often do almost for hours—he likes it so—at the doors of shops, the sight of him there helps me, when I come out, to know my carriage away off in the rank. But sometimes, for a change, he goes with me into the shops, and then I’ve all I can do to prevent his buying me things.”