Strether hesitated. “But your privation, your keeping out of everything, has been—hasn’t it?—by your own choice.” “Oh yes; it has been necessary—that is it has been better for you. What I mean is only that I seem to have ceased to serve you.” “How can you tell that?” he asked. “You don’t know how you serve me. When you cease—” “Well?” she said as he dropped. “Well, I’ll _let_ you know. Be quiet till then.” She thought a moment. “Then you positively like me to stay?” “Don’t I treat you as if I did?” “You’re certainly very kind to me. But that,” said Maria, “is for myself. It’s getting late, as you see, and Paris turning rather hot and dusty. People are scattering, and some of them, in other places want me. But if you want me here—!” She had spoken as resigned to his word, but he had of a sudden a still sharper sense than he would have expected of desiring not to lose her. “I want you here.” She took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they brought her, gave her something that was the compensation of her case. “Thank you,” she simply answered. And then as he looked at her a little harder, “Thank you very much,” she repeated. It had broken as with a slight arrest into the current of their talk, and it held him a moment longer. “Why, two months, or whatever the time was, ago, did you so suddenly dash off? The reason you afterwards gave me for having kept away three weeks wasn’t the real one.” She recalled. “I never supposed you believed it was. Yet,” she continued, “if you didn’t guess it that was just what helped you.” He looked away from her on this; he indulged, so far as space permitted, in one of his slow absences. “I’ve often thought of it, but never to feel that I could guess it. And you see the consideration with which I’ve treated you in never asking till now.” “Now then why _do_ you ask?” “To show you how I miss you when you’re not here, and what it does for me.” “It doesn’t seem to have done,” she laughed, “all it might! However,” she added, “if you’ve really never guessed the truth I’ll tell it you.” “I’ve never guessed it,” Strether declared. “Never?” “Never.” “Well then I dashed off, as you say, so as not to have the confusion of being there if Marie de Vionnet should tell you anything to my detriment.” He looked as if he considerably doubted. “You even then would have had to face it on your return.” “Oh if I had found reason to believe it something very bad I’d have left you altogether.” “So then,” he continued, “it was only on guessing she had been on the whole merciful that you ventured back?” Maria kept it together. “I owe her thanks. Whatever her temptation she didn’t separate us. That’s one of my reasons,” she went on “for admiring her so.” “Let it pass then,” said Strether, “for one of mine as well. But what would have been her temptation?” “What are ever the temptations of women?” He thought—but hadn’t, naturally, to think too long. “Men?”