“Are you capable of the very great kindness of going to relieve Newsome, for a few minutes, of the rather crushing responsibility of Madame Gloriani, while I say a word, if he’ll allow me, to Mr. Strether, of whom I’ve a question to ask? Our host ought to talk a bit to those other ladies, and I’ll come back in a minute to your rescue.” She made this proposal to Miss Barrace as if her consciousness of a special duty had just flickered-up, but that lady’s recognition of Strether’s little start at it—as at a betrayal on the speaker’s part of a domesticated state—was as mute as his own comment; and after an instant, when their fellow guest had good-naturedly left them, he had been given something else to think of. “Why has Maria so suddenly gone? Do you know?” That was the question Madame de Vionnet had brought with her. “I’m afraid I’ve no reason to give you but the simple reason I’ve had from her in a note—the sudden obligation to join in the south a sick friend who has got worse.” “Ah then she has been writing you?” “Not since she went—I had only a brief explanatory word before she started. I went to see her,” Strether explained—“it was the day after I called on you—but she was already on her way, and her concierge told me that in case of my coming I was to be informed she had written to me. I found her note when I got home.” Madame de Vionnet listened with interest and with her eyes on Strether’s face; then her delicately decorated head had a small melancholy motion. “She didn’t write to _me_. I went to see her,” she added, “almost immediately after I had seen you, and as I assured her I would do when I met her at Gloriani’s. She hadn’t then told me she was to be absent, and I felt at her door as if I understood. She’s absent—with all respect to her sick friend, though I know indeed she has plenty—so that I may not see her. She doesn’t want to meet me again. Well,” she continued with a beautiful conscious mildness, “I liked and admired her beyond every one in the old time, and she knew it—perhaps that’s precisely what has made her go—and I dare say I haven’t lost her for ever.” Strether still said nothing; he had a horror, as he now thought of himself, of being in question between women—was in fact already quite enough on his way to that, and there was moreover, as it came to him, perceptibly, something behind these allusions and professions that, should he take it in, would square but ill with his present resolve to simplify. It was as if, for him, all the same, her softness and sadness were sincere. He felt that not less when she soon went on: “I’m extremely glad of her happiness.” But it also left him mute—sharp and fine though the imputation it conveyed. What it conveyed was that _he_ was Maria Gostrey’s happiness, and for the least little instant he had the impulse to challenge the thought. He could have done so however only by saying “What then do you suppose to be between us?” and he was wonderfully glad a moment later not to