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Waymarsh's dry bare humour as it gave itself to be taken gloomed out to demand justice. "Well, if you talk of Miss Barrace I've MY chance too," it appeared stiffly to nod, and it granted that it was giving him away, but struggled to add that it did so only to save him.
"Yes; how much more she does it," Strether gravely reflected, "than I help HER!" It all came over him as with the near presence of the beauty, the grace, the intense, dissimulated spirit with which he had, as he said, been putting off contact. "SHE has courage." "Ah she has courage!" Miss Barrace quite agreed; and it was as if for a moment they saw the quantity in each other's face.
Why it's FOR you." He persisted in his candour. "'For' me ?" "Oh, oh, oh!" cried Miss Barrace, who persisted in the opposite of that quality. "Well," he acutely admitted, "she IS different. She's gay." "She's gay!" Miss Barrace laughed. "And she has beautiful shoulders though there's nothing different in that." "No," said Strether, "one was sure of her shoulders. It isn't her shoulders."
He had seen moreover an immensity; liked Gloriani, who, as Miss Barrace kept saying, was wonderful; had made out, he was sure, the half-dozen other 'men who were distinguished, the artists, the critics and oh the great dramatist HIM it was easy to spot; but wanted no, thanks, really to talk with none of them; having nothing at all to say and finding it would do beautifully as it was; do beautifully because what it was well, was just simply too late.
But he's wonderful," Miss Barrace once more insisted. "He has never started anything yet." It presented him none the less, in truth, to her actual friends, who looked at each other in intelligence, with frank amusement on Bilham's part and a shade of sadness on Strether's.
He detained her, however, on her appearing about to leave him alone in the rather cold clearance their talk had made. "There positively isn't a sign of a hero to-night; the hero's dodging and shirking, the hero's ashamed. Therefore, you know, I think, what you must all REALLY be occupied with is the heroine." Miss Barrace took a minute. "The heroine?" "The heroine.
I've never," said Miss Barrace, "seen her fail with any one before. And to-night, when she's so magnificent, it would seem to her strange if she minded. So at any rate I have him all. Je suis tranquille!" Strether understood, so far as that went; but he was feeling for his clue. "She strikes you to-night as particularly magnificent?" "Surely. Almost as I've never seen her. Doesn't she you?
"Yet she inclines to believe I shall come out." "Oh I incline to believe too you'll come out!" Miss Barrace, with her laugh, was not to be behind. "Only the question's about WHERE, isn't it? However," she happily continued, "if it's anywhere at all it must be very far on, mustn't it? To do us justice, I think, you know," she laughed, "we do, among us all, want you rather far on.
It was in this general attitude that he had of late altogether taken refuge; with the drop of discussion they were solemnly sadly superficial; Strether recognised in him the mere portentous rumination to which Miss Barrace had so good-humouredly described herself as assigning a corner of her salon.
He already knew that the sculptor admired Madame de Vionnet; but did this admiration also represent an attachment of which the innocence was discussable? He was moving verily in a strange air and on ground not of the firmest. He looked hard for an instant at Miss Barrace, but she had already gone on. "All right with Mr. Newsome?
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