the theory that
they saw in London--for all that was said--much further than in the
States: it wouldn't be the first time, he urged, that they had taught
the Americans to appreciate (especially when it was funny) some native
product. He didn't mean that Miss Theale was funny--though she was
weird, and this was precisely her magic; but it might very well be that
New York, in having her to show, hadn't been aware of its luck. There
_were_ plenty of people who were nothing over there and yet were
awfully taken up in England; just as--to make the balance right, thank
goodness--they sometimes sent out beauties and celebrities who left the
Briton cold. The Briton's temperature in truth wasn't to be
calculated--a formulation of the matter that was not reached, however,
without producing in Mrs. Stringham a final feverish sally. She
announced that if the point of view for a proper admiration of her
young friend _had_ seemed to fail a little in New York, there was no
manner of doubt of her having carried Boston by storm. It pointed the
moral that Boston, for the finer taste, left New York nowhere; and the
good lady, as the exponent of this doctrine--which she set forth at a
certain length--made, obviously, to Densher's mind, her nearest
approach to supplying the weirdness in which Milly's absence had left
them deficient. She made it indeed effective for him by suddenly
addressing him. "You know nothing, sir--but not the least little
bit--about my friend."

He hadn't pretended he did, but there was a purity of reproach in Mrs.
Stringham's face and tone, a purity charged apparently with solemn
meanings; so that for a little, small as had been his claim, he
couldn't but feel that she exaggerated. He wondered what she did mean,
but while doing so he defended himself. "I certainly don't know
enormously much--beyond her having been most kind to me, in New York,
as a poor bewildered and newly landed alien, and my having tremendously
appreciated it." To which he added, he scarce knew why, what had an
immediate success. "Remember, Mrs. Stringham, that you weren't then
present."

"Ah there you are!" said Kate with much gay expression, though what it
expressed he failed at the time to make out.

"You weren't present _then_, dearest," Mrs. Lowder richly concurred.
"You don't know," she continued with mellow gaiety, "how far things may
have gone."

It made the little woman, he could see, really lose her head. She had
more things in th