have spoken. He would rather seem stupid any day than fatuous, and he drew back as well, with a smothered inward shudder, from the consideration of what women—of highly-developed type in particular—might think of each other. Whatever he had come out for he hadn’t come to go into that; so that he absolutely took up nothing his interlocutress had now let drop. Yet, though he had kept away from her for days, had laid wholly on herself the burden of their meeting again, she hadn’t a gleam of irritation to show him. “Well, about Jeanne now?” she smiled—it had the gaiety with which she had originally come in. He felt it on the instant to represent her motive and real errand. But he had been schooling her of a truth to say much in proportion to his little. “_Do_ you make out that she has a sentiment? I mean for Mr. Newsome.” Almost resentful, Strether could at last be prompt. “How can I make out such things?” She remained perfectly good-natured. “Ah but they’re beautiful little things, and you make out—don’t pretend—everything in the world. Haven’t you,” she asked, “been talking with her?” “Yes, but not about Chad. At least not much.” “Oh you don’t require ‘much’!” she reassuringly declared. But she immediately changed her ground. “I hope you remember your promise of the other day.” “To ‘save’ you, as you called it?” “I call it so still. You _will?_” she insisted. “You haven’t repented?” He wondered. “No—but I’ve been thinking what I meant.” She kept it up. “And not, a little, what _I_ did?” “No—that’s not necessary. It will be enough if I know what I meant myself.” “And don’t you know,” she asked, “by this time?” Again he had a pause. “I think you ought to leave it to me. But how long,” he added, “do you give me?” “It seems to me much more a question of how long you give _me_. Doesn’t our friend here himself, at any rate,” she went on, “perpetually make me present to you?” “Not,” Strether replied, “by ever speaking of you to me.” “He never does that?” “Never.” She considered, and, if the fact was disconcerting to her, effectually concealed it. The next minute indeed she had recovered. “No, he wouldn’t. But do you _need_ that?” Her emphasis was wonderful, and though his eyes had been wandering he looked at her longer now. “I see what you mean.” “Of course you see what I mean.” Her triumph was gentle, and she really had tones to make justice weep. “I’ve before me what he owes you.” “Admit then that that’s something,” she said, yet still with the same discretion in her pride. He took in this note but went straight on. “You’ve made of him what I see, but what I don’t see is how in the world you’ve done it.” “Ah that’s another question!” she smiled. “The point is of what use is your declining to know me when to know Mr. Newsome—as you do me the honour to find him—_is_ just to know me.” “I see,” he mused, still with his eyes on her. “I shouldn’t have met you to-night.”