Strether’s eyes, as they stood together, turned again to Jeanne. “Do you mean _her?_” His friend made a sudden strange face. “After being in love with her mother? No.” “But isn’t it exactly your idea that he _isn’t_ in love with her mother?” His friend once more had a pause. “Well, he isn’t at any rate in love with Jeanne.” “I dare say not.” “How _can_ he be with any other woman?” “Oh that I admit. But being in love isn’t, you know, here”—little Bilham spoke in friendly reminder—“thought necessary, in strictness, for marriage.” “And what torment—to call a torment—can there ever possibly be with a woman like that?” As if from the interest of his own question Strether had gone on without hearing. “Is it for her to have turned a man out so wonderfully, too, only for somebody else?” He appeared to make a point of this, and little Bilham looked at him now. “When it’s for each other that people give things up they don’t miss them.” Then he threw off as with an extravagance of which he was conscious: “Let them face the future together!” Little Bilham looked at him indeed. “You mean that after all he shouldn’t go back?” “I mean that if he gives her up—!” “Yes?” “Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself.” But Strether spoke with a sound that might have passed for a laugh. Volume II Book Seventh I It wasn’t the first time Strether had sat alone in the great dim church—still less was it the first of his giving himself up, so far as conditions permitted, to its beneficent action on his nerves. He had been to Notre Dame with Waymarsh, he had been there with Miss Gostrey, he had been there with Chad Newsome, and had found the place, even in company, such a refuge from the obsession of his problem that, with renewed pressure from that source, he had not unnaturally recurred to a remedy meeting the case, for the moment, so indirectly, no doubt, but so relievingly. He was conscious enough that it was only for the moment, but good moments—if he could call them good—still had their value for a man who by this time struck himself as living almost disgracefully from hand to mouth. Having so well learnt the way, he had lately made the pilgrimage more than once by himself—had quite stolen off, taking an unnoticed chance and making no point of speaking of the adventure when restored to his friends.