te, and one's fate one accepts. It's a dreadful thing to
have to say, in so wicked a world, but I verily believe that, such as
you see me, there's nothing I don't know. I know all the shops and the
prices--but I know worse things still. I bear on my back the huge load
of our national consciousness, or, in other words--for it comes to
that--of our nation itself. Of what is our nation composed but of the
men and women individually on my shoulders? I don't do it, you know,
for any particular advantage. I don't do it, for instance--some people
do, you know--for money."

Strether could only listen and wonder and weigh his chance. "And yet,
affected as you are then to so many of your clients, you can scarcely
be said to do it for love." He waited a moment. "How do we reward
you?"

She had her own hesitation, but "You don't!" she finally returned,
setting him again in motion. They went on, but in a few minutes,
though while still thinking over what she had said, he once more took
out his watch; mechanically, unconsciously and as if made nervous by
the mere exhilaration of what struck him as her strange and cynical
wit. He looked at the hour without seeing it, and then, on something
again said by his companion, had another pause. "You're really in
terror of him."

He smiled a smile that he almost felt to be sickly. "Now you can see
why I'm afraid of you."

"Because I've such illuminations? Why they're all for your help! It's
what I told you," she added, "just now. You feel as if this were
wrong."

He fell back once more, settling himself against the parapet as if to
hear more about it. "Then get me out!"

Her face fairly brightened for the joy of the appeal, but, as if it
were a question of immediate action, she visibly considered. "Out of
waiting for him?--of seeing him at all?"

"Oh no--not that," said poor Strether, looking grave. "I've got to
wait for him--and I want very much to see him. But out of the terror.
You did put your finger on it a few minutes ago. It's general, but it
avails itself of particular occasions. That's what it's doing for me
now. I'm always considering something else; something else, I mean,
than the thing of the moment. The obsession of the other thing is the
terror. I'm considering at present for instance something else than
YOU."

She listened with charming earnestness. "Oh you oughtn't to do that!"

"It's what I admit. Make it then impossible."

She continued