."

"Oh but with Mamie's aid. Unless indeed you mean," he added, "that I
shall effect so much more with yours!"

It made her at last again look at him. "You'll do more--as you're so
much better--than all of us put together."

"I think I'm only better since I've known YOU!" Strether bravely
returned.

The depletion of the place, the shrinkage of the crowd and now
comparatively quiet withdrawal of its last elements had already brought
them nearer the door and put them in relation with a messenger of whom
he bespoke Miss Gostrey's cab. But this left them a few minutes more,
which she was clearly in no mood not to use. "You've spoken to me of
what--by your success--Mr. Chad stands to gain. But you've not spoken
to me of what you do."

"Oh I've nothing more to gain," said Strether very simply.

She took it as even quite too simple. "You mean you've got it all
'down'? You've been paid in advance?"

"Ah don't talk about payment!" he groaned.

Something in the tone of it pulled her up, but as their messenger still
delayed she had another chance and she put it in another way. "What--by
failure--do you stand to lose?"

He still, however, wouldn't have it. "Nothing!" he exclaimed, and on
the messenger's at this instant reappearing he was able to sink the
subject in their responsive advance. When, a few steps up the street,
under a lamp, he had put her into her four-wheeler and she had asked
him if the man had called for him no second conveyance, he replied
before the door was closed. "You won't take me with you?"

"Not for the world."

"Then I shall walk."

"In the rain?"

"I like the rain," said Strether. "Good-night!"

She kept him a moment, while his hand was on the door, by not
answering; after which she answered by repeating her question. "What do
you stand to lose?"

Why the question now affected him as other he couldn't have said; he
could only this time meet it otherwise. "Everything."

"So I thought. Then you shall succeed. And to that end I'm yours--"

"Ah, dear lady!" he kindly breathed.

"Till death!" said Maria Gostrey. "Good-night."

II

Strether called, his second morning in Paris, on the bankers of the Rue
Scribe to whom his letter of credit was addressed, and he made this
visit attended by Waymarsh, in whose company he had crossed from London
two days before. They had hastened to the Rue Scribe on the morrow of
their arrival, but Strether had not then found the lett