“Yes—than the discomfort of an attachment to a person he can never hope, short of a catastrophe, to marry. And he was quite right,” said Strether. “It would certainly have been nicer. Even when a thing’s already nice there mostly _is_ some other thing that would have been nicer—or as to which we wonder if it wouldn’t. But his question was all the same a dream. He _couldn’t_ care in that way. He _is_ tied up to Marie. The relation is too special and has gone too far. It’s the very basis, and his recent lively contribution toward establishing Jeanne in life has been his definite and final acknowledgement to Madame de Vionnet that he has ceased squirming. I doubt meanwhile,” he went on, “if Sarah has at all directly attacked him.” His companion brooded. “But won’t he wish for his own satisfaction to make his ground good to her?” “No—he’ll leave it to me, he’ll leave everything to me. I ‘sort of’ feel”—he worked it out—“that the whole thing will come upon me. Yes, I shall have every inch and every ounce of it. I shall be _used_ for it—!” And Strether lost himself in the prospect. Then he fancifully expressed the issue. “To the last drop of my blood.” Maria, however, roundly protested. “Ah you’ll please keep a drop for _me_. I shall have a use for it!”—which she didn’t however follow up. She had come back the next moment to another matter. “Mrs. Pocock, with her brother, is trusting only to her general charm?” “So it would seem.” “And the charm’s not working?” Well, Strether put it otherwise, “She’s sounding the note of home—which is the very best thing she can do.” “The best for Madame de Vionnet?” “The best for home itself. The natural one; the right one.” “Right,” Maria asked, “when it fails?” Strether had a pause. “The difficulty’s Jim. Jim’s the note of home.” She debated. “Ah surely not the note of Mrs. Newsome.” But he had it all. “The note of the home for which Mrs. Newsome wants him—the home of the business. Jim stands, with his little legs apart, at the door of _that_ tent; and Jim _is_, frankly speaking, extremely awful.” Maria stared. “And you in, you poor thing, for your evening with him?” “Oh he’s all right for _me!_” Strether laughed. “Any one’s good enough for _me_. But Sarah shouldn’t, all the same, have brought him. She doesn’t appreciate him.” His friend was amused with this statement of it. “Doesn’t know, you mean, how bad he is?” Strether shook his head with decision. “Not really.” She wondered. “Then doesn’t Mrs. Newsome?” It made him frankly do the same. “Well, no—since you ask me.” Maria rubbed it in. “Not really either?” “Not at all. She rates him rather high.” With which indeed, immediately, he took himself up. “Well, he _is_ good too, in his way. It depends on what you want him for.”