“I want extremely to be able to show you my little daughter.” Madame de Vionnet went on; “and I should have brought her with me if I hadn’t wished first to ask your leave. I was in hopes I should perhaps find Miss Pocock, of whose being with you I’ve heard from Mr. Newsome and whose acquaintance I should so much like my child to make. If I have the pleasure of seeing her and you do permit it I shall venture to ask her to be kind to Jeanne. Mr. Strether will tell you”—she beautifully kept it up—“that my poor girl is gentle and good and rather lonely. They’ve made friends, he and she, ever so happily, and he doesn’t, I believe, think ill of her. As for Jeanne herself he has had the same success with her that I know he has had here wherever he has turned.” She seemed to ask him for permission to say these things, or seemed rather to take it, softly and happily, with the ease of intimacy, for granted, and he had quite the consciousness now that not to meet her at any point more than halfway would be odiously, basely to abandon her. Yes, he was _with_ her, and, opposed even in this covert, this semi-safe fashion to those who were not, he felt, strangely and confusedly, but excitedly, inspiringly, how much and how far. It was as if he had positively waited in suspense for something from her that would let him in deeper, so that he might show her how he could take it. And what did in fact come as she drew out a little her farewell served sufficiently the purpose. “As his success is a matter that I’m sure he’ll never mention for himself, I feel, you see, the less scruple; which it’s very good of me to say, you know, by the way,” she added as she addressed herself to him; “considering how little direct advantage I’ve gained from your triumphs with _me_. When does one ever see you? I wait at home and I languish. You’ll have rendered me the service, Mrs. Pocock, at least,” she wound up, “of giving me one of my much-too-rare glimpses of this gentleman.” “I certainly should be sorry to deprive you of anything that seems so much, as you describe it, your natural due. Mr. Strether and I are very old friends,” Sarah allowed, “but the privilege of his society isn’t a thing I shall quarrel about with any one.” “And yet, dear Sarah,” he freely broke in, “I feel, when I hear you say that, that you don’t quite do justice to the important truth of the extent to which—as you’re also mine—I’m _your_ natural due. I should like much better,” he laughed, “to see you fight for me.”