She had her own hesitation, but “You don’t!” she finally returned, setting him again in motion. They went on, but in a few minutes, though while still thinking over what she had said, he once more took out his watch; mechanically, unconsciously and as if made nervous by the mere exhilaration of what struck him as her strange and cynical wit. He looked at the hour without seeing it, and then, on something again said by his companion, had another pause. “You’re really in terror of him.” He smiled a smile that he almost felt to be sickly. “Now you can see why I’m afraid of you.” “Because I’ve such illuminations? Why they’re all for your help! It’s what I told you,” she added, “just now. You feel as if this were wrong.” He fell back once more, settling himself against the parapet as if to hear more about it. “Then get me out!” Her face fairly brightened for the joy of the appeal, but, as if it were a question of immediate action, she visibly considered. “Out of waiting for him?—of seeing him at all?” “Oh no—not that,” said poor Strether, looking grave. “I’ve got to wait for him—and I want very much to see him. But out of the terror. You did put your finger on it a few minutes ago. It’s general, but it avails itself of particular occasions. That’s what it’s doing for me now. I’m always considering something else; something else, I mean, than the thing of the moment. The obsession of the other thing is the terror. I’m considering at present for instance something else than _you_.” She listened with charming earnestness. “Oh you oughtn’t to do that!” “It’s what I admit. Make it then impossible.” She continued to think. “Is it really an ‘order’ from you?—that I shall take the job? _Will_ you give yourself up?” Poor Strether heaved his sigh. “If I only could! But that’s the deuce of it—that I never can. No—I can’t.” She wasn’t, however, discouraged. “But you want to at least?” “Oh unspeakably!”