On this she looked at him as to say many things, but what she at last simply said was: “She likes to see it there. You’re the bigger swell of the two,” she immediately continued, “because you think you’re not one. She thinks she _is_ one. However,” Miss Gostrey added, “she thinks you’re one too. You’re at all events the biggest she can get hold of.” She embroidered, she abounded. “I don’t say it to interfere between you, but on the day she gets hold of a bigger one—!” Strether had thrown back his head as in silent mirth over something that struck him in her audacity or felicity, and her flight meanwhile was already higher. “Therefore close with her—!” “Close with her?” he asked as she seemed to hang poised. “Before you lose your chance.” Their eyes met over it. “What do you mean by closing?” “And what do I mean by your chance? I’ll tell you when you tell me all the things _you_ don’t. Is it her _greatest_ fad?” she briskly pursued. “The Review?” He seemed to wonder how he could best describe it. This resulted however but in a sketch. “It’s her tribute to the ideal.” “I see. You go in for tremendous things.” “We go in for the unpopular side—that is so far as we dare.” “And how far _do_ you dare?” “Well, she very far. I much less. I don’t begin to have her faith. She provides,” said Strether, “three fourths of that. And she provides, as I’ve confided to you, _all_ the money.” It evoked somehow a vision of gold that held for a little Miss Gostrey’s eyes, and she looked as if she heard the bright dollars shovelled in. “I hope then you make a good thing—” “I _never_ made a good thing!” he at once returned. She just waited. “Don’t you call it a good thing to be loved?” “Oh we’re not loved. We’re not even hated. We’re only just sweetly ignored.” She had another pause. “You don’t trust me!” she once more repeated. “Don’t I when I lift the last veil?—tell you the very secret of the prison-house?” Again she met his eyes, but to the result that after an instant her own turned away with impatience. “You don’t sell? Oh I’m glad of _that!_” After which however, and before he could protest, she was off again. “She’s just a _moral_ swell.” He accepted gaily enough the definition. “Yes—I really think that describes her.” But it had for his friend the oddest connexion. “How does she do her hair?” He laughed out. “Beautifully!” “Ah that doesn’t tell me. However, it doesn’t matter—I know. It’s tremendously neat—a real reproach; quite remarkably thick and without, as yet, a single strand of white. There!” He blushed for her realism, but gaped at her truth. “You’re the very deuce.” “What else _should_ I be? It was as the very deuce I pounced on you. But don’t let it trouble you, for everything but the very deuce—at our age—is a bore and a delusion, and even he himself, after all, but half a joy.” With which, on a single sweep of her wing, she resumed. “You assist her to expiate—which is rather hard when you’ve yourself not sinned.”