“Well then,” his friend replied, “there you are; I give you my impression for what it’s worth. Mrs. Pocock has _seen_, and that’s to-night how she sits there. If you were to have a glimpse of her face you’d understand me. She has made up her mind—to the sound of expensive music.” Strether took it freely in. “Ah then I shall have news of her.” “I don’t want to frighten you, but I think that likely. However,” little Bilham continued, “if I’m of the least use to you to hold on by—!” “You’re not of the least!”—and Strether laid an appreciative hand on him to say it. “No one’s of the least.” With which, to mark how gaily he could take it, he patted his companion’s knee. “I must meet my fate alone, and I _shall_—oh you’ll see! And yet,” he pursued the next moment, “you _can_ help me too. You once said to me”—he followed this further—“that you held Chad should marry. I didn’t see then so well as I know now that you meant he should marry Miss Pocock. Do you still consider that he should? Because if you do”—he kept it up—“I want you immediately to change your mind. You can help me that way.” “Help you by thinking he should _not_ marry?” “Not marry at all events Mamie.” “And who then?” “Ah,” Strether returned, “that I’m not obliged to say. But Madame de Vionnet—I suggest—when he can.’ “Oh!” said little Bilham with some sharpness. “Oh precisely! But he needn’t marry at all—I’m at any rate not obliged to provide for it. Whereas in your case I rather feel that I _am_.” Little Bilham was amused. “Obliged to provide for my marrying?” “Yes—after all I’ve done to you!” The young man weighed it. “Have you done as much as that?” “Well,” said Strether, thus challenged, “of course I must remember what you’ve also done to _me_. We may perhaps call it square. But all the same,” he went on, “I wish awfully you’d marry Mamie Pocock yourself.” Little Bilham laughed out. “Why it was only the other night, in this very place, that you were proposing to me a different union altogether.” “Mademoiselle de Vionnet?” Well, Strether easily confessed it. “That, I admit, was a vain image. _This_ is practical politics. I want to do something good for both of you—I wish you each so well; and you can see in a moment the trouble it will save me to polish you off by the same stroke. She likes you, you know. You console her. And she’s splendid.” Little Bilham stared as a delicate appetite stares at an overheaped plate. “What do I console her for?” It just made his friend impatient. “Oh come, you know!” “And what proves for you that she likes me?” “Why the fact that I found her three days ago stopping at home alone all the golden afternoon on the mere chance that you’d come to her, and hanging over her balcony on that of seeing your cab drive up. I don’t know what you want more.” Little Bilham after a moment found it. “Only just to know what proves to you that I like _her_.”