“He wants to ‘treat’ you?” Strether almost gasped at all he himself hadn’t thought of. He had a sense of admiration. “Oh he’s much more in the real tradition than I. Yes,” he mused, “it’s the sacred rage.” “The sacred rage, exactly!”—and Miss Barrace, who hadn’t before heard this term applied, recognised its bearing with a clap of her gemmed hands. “Now I do know why he’s not banal. But I do prevent him all the same—and if you saw what he sometimes selects—from buying. I save him hundreds and hundreds. I only take flowers.” “Flowers?” Strether echoed again with a rueful reflexion. How many nosegays had her present converser sent? “Innocent flowers,” she pursued, “as much as he likes. And he sends me splendours; he knows all the best places—he has found them for himself; he’s wonderful.” “He hasn’t told them to _me_,” her friend smiled, “he has a life of his own.” But Strether had swung back to the consciousness that for himself after all it never would have done. Waymarsh hadn’t Mrs. Waymarsh in the least to consider, whereas Lambert Strether had constantly, in the inmost honour of his thoughts, to consider Mrs. Newsome. He liked moreover to feel how much his friend was in the real tradition. Yet he had his conclusion. “_What_ a rage it is!” He had worked it out. “It’s an opposition.” She followed, but at a distance. “That’s what I feel. Yet to what?” “Well, he thinks, you know, that _I’ve_ a life of my own. And I haven’t!” “You haven’t?” She showed doubt, and her laugh confirmed it. “Oh, oh, oh!” “No—not for myself. I seem to have a life only for other people.” “Ah for them and _with_ them! Just now for instance with—” “Well, with whom?” he asked before she had had time to say. His tone had the effect of making her hesitate and even, as he guessed, speak with a difference. “Say with Miss Gostrey. What do you do for _her?_” It really made him wonder. “Nothing at all!” III