ght time nothing else ever was. What I meant just now
therefore is that it would all go--go before doing its work--if they
were to fail me."

On which, just here, Miss Gostrey inveterately questioned. "What do
you, in particular, call its work?"

"Well, to see me through."

"But through what?"--she liked to get it all out of him.

"Why through this experience." That was all that would come.

It regularly gave her none the less the last word. "Don't you remember
how in those first days of our meeting it was I who was to see you
through?"

"Remember? Tenderly, deeply"--he always rose to it. "You're just
doing your part in letting me maunder to you thus."

"Ah don't speak as if my part were small; since whatever else fails
you--"

"YOU won't, ever, ever, ever?"--he thus took her up. "Oh I beg your
pardon; you necessarily, you inevitably WILL. Your conditions--that's
what I mean--won't allow me anything to do for you."

"Let alone--I see what you mean--that I'm drearily dreadfully old. I
AM, but there's a service--possible for you to render--that I know, all
the same, I shall think of."

"And what will it be?"

This, in fine, however, she would never tell him. "You shall hear only
if your smash takes place. As that's really out of the question, I
won't expose myself"--a point at which, for reasons of his own,
Strether ceased to press.

He came round, for publicity--it was the easiest thing--to the idea
that his smash WAS out of the question, and this rendered idle the
discussion of what might follow it. He attached an added importance,
as the days elapsed, to the arrival of the Pococks; he had even a
shameful sense of waiting for it insincerely and incorrectly. He
accused himself of making believe to his own mind that Sarah's
presence, her impression, her judgement would simplify and harmonise,
he accused himself of being so afraid of what they MIGHT do that he
sought refuge, to beg the whole question, in a vain fury. He had
abundantly seen at home what they were in the habit of doing, and he
had not at present the smallest ground. His clearest vision was when
he made out that what he most desired was an account more full and free
of Mrs. Newsome's state of mind than any he felt he could now expect
from herself; that calculation at least went hand in hand with the
sharp consciousness of wishing to prove to himself that he was not
afraid to look his behaviour in the face. If he was by an inexor