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He sank his problem, he talked of Waymarsh and Miss Barrace, of little Bilham and the set over the river, with whom he had again had tea, and he was easy, for convenience, about Chad and Madame de Vionnet and Jeanne.
His danger, at any rate, in such moods of alarm, was some concession, on this ground, that would involve a sharp rupture with the actual; therefore if he waited to take leave of that actual he might wholly miss his chance. It was represented with supreme vividness by Madame de Vionnet, and that is why, in a word, he waited no longer. He had seen in a flash that he must anticipate Mrs. Pocock.
"Why has Maria so suddenly gone? Do you know?" That was the question Madame de Vionnet had brought with her. "I'm afraid I've no reason to give you but the simple reason I've had from her in a note the sudden obligation to join in the south a sick friend who has got worse." "Ah then she has been writing you?" "Not since she went I had only a brief explanatory word before she started.
"It WILL be a sacrifice then?" "It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered. I owe her so much." It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was now confessedly oh quite flagrantly and publicly interesting. The moment really took on for Strether an intensity. Chad owed Madame de Vionnet so much? What DID that do then but clear up the whole mystery?
"It matters so little has nothing to do, practically, with either of us." "All the same" Maria continued to smile "they go, the five, as I understand you, and you and Madame de Vionnet stay." "Oh and Chad." To which Strether added: "And you." "Ah 'me'!" she gave a small impatient wail again, in which something of the unreconciled seemed suddenly to break out.
So I won't play you that trick. "Ah," Strether declared, "I shouldn't call it a trick. You've a perfect right, and it would be perfectly straight of you." Then he added in a different tone: "You'd have moreover, in the person of Madame de Vionnet, a very interesting relation prepared for her."
Counteract Sarah's spell." And he showed now, our friend, how far he had worked it out. "Jim's intensely cynical." "Oh dear Jim!" Madame de Vionnet vaguely smiled. "Yes, literally dear Jim! He's awful. What HE wants, heaven forgive him, is to help us." "You mean" she was eager "help ME?" "Well, Chad and me in the first place. But he throws you in too, though without as yet seeing you much.
Strether had already been there three times first with Miss Gostrey, then with Chad, then with Chad again and with Waymarsh and little Bilham, all of whom he had himself sagaciously entertained; and his pleasure was deep now on learning that Madame de Vionnet hadn't yet been initiated.
He had begged the young man would present his excuses and had trusted him to understand that it couldn't really strike one as quite the straight thing. He hadn't reported to Mrs. Newsome that he had promised to "save" Madame de Vionnet; but, so far as he was concerned with that reminiscence, he hadn't at any rate promised to haunt her house.
He had known beforehand that Madame de Vionnet and her daughter would probably be on view, an intimation to that effect having constituted the only reference again made by Chad to his good friends from the south.
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