Miss Gostrey but desired to help his lucidity. She had however to be light and tactful. “Up, you mean—a—to his mother?” “Well, I’m not thinking of his mother now. I’m thinking of the plan of which I was the mouthpiece, which, as soon as we met, I put before him as persuasively as I knew how, and which was drawn up, as it were, in complete ignorance of all that, in this last long period, has been happening to him. It took no account whatever of the impression I was here on the spot immediately to begin to receive from him—impressions of which I feel sure I’m far from having had the last.” Miss Gostrey had a smile of the most genial criticism. “So your idea is—more or less—to stay out of curiosity?” “Call it what you like! I don’t care what it’s called—” “So long as you do stay? Certainly not then. I call it, all the same, immense fun,” Maria Gostrey declared; “and to see you work it out will be one of the sensations of my life. It _is_ clear you can toddle alone!” He received this tribute without elation. “I shan’t be alone when the Pococks have come.” Her eyebrows went up. “The Pococks are coming?” “That, I mean, is what will happen—and happen as quickly as possible—in consequence of Chad’s cable. They’ll simply embark. Sarah will come to speak for her mother—with an effect different from _my_ muddle.” Miss Gostrey more gravely wondered. “_She_ then will take him back?” “Very possibly—and we shall see. She must at any rate have the chance, and she may be trusted to do all she can.” “And do you _want_ that?” “Of course,” said Strether, “I want it. I want to play fair.” But she had lost for a moment the thread. “If it devolves on the Pococks why do you stay?” “Just to see that I _do_ play fair—and a little also, no doubt, that they do.” Strether was luminous as he had never been. “I came out to find myself in presence of new facts—facts that have kept striking me as less and less met by our old reasons. The matter’s perfectly simple. New reasons—reasons as new as the facts themselves—are wanted; and of this our friends at Woollett—Chad’s and mine—were at the earliest moment definitely notified. If any are producible Mrs. Pocock will produce them; she’ll bring over the whole collection. They’ll be,” he added with a pensive smile “a part of the ‘fun’ you speak of.” She was quite in the current now and floating by his side. “It’s Mamie—so far as I’ve had it from you—who’ll be their great card.” And then as his contemplative silence wasn’t a denial she significantly added: “I think I’m sorry for her.” “I think _I_ am!”—and Strether sprang up, moving about a little as her eyes followed him. “But it can’t be helped.” “You mean her coming out can’t be?” He explained after another turn what he meant. “The only way for her not to come is for me to go home—as I believe that on the spot I could prevent it. But the difficulty as to that is that if I do go home—”