re than ever for her fellow
guest the old French print, the historic portrait, directed herself
with an intention that Strether instantly met. He knew in advance the
first note she would sound, and took in as she approached all her need
of sounding it. Nothing yet had been so "wonderful" between them as
the present occasion; and it was her special sense of this quality in
occasions that she was there, as she was in most places, to feed. That
sense had already been so well fed by the situation about them that she
had quitted the other room, forsaken the music, dropped out of the
play, abandoned, in a word, the stage itself, that she might stand a
minute behind the scenes with Strether and so perhaps figure as one of
the famous augurs replying, behind the oracle, to the wink of the
other. Seated near him presently where little Bilham had sat, she
replied in truth to many things; beginning as soon as he had said to
her--what he hoped he said without fatuity--"All you ladies are
extraordinarily kind to me."

She played her long handle, which shifted her observation; she saw in
an instant all the absences that left them free. "How can we be
anything else? But isn't that exactly your plight? 'We ladies'--oh
we're nice, and you must be having enough of us! As one of us, you
know, I don't pretend I'm crazy about us. But Miss Gostrey at least
to-night has left you alone, hasn't she?" With which she again looked
about as if Maria might still lurk.

"Oh yes," said Strether; "she's only sitting up for me at home." And
then as this elicited from his companion her gay "Oh, oh, oh!" he
explained that he meant sitting up in suspense and prayer. "We thought
it on the whole better she shouldn't be present; and either way of
course it's a terrible worry for her." He abounded in the sense of his
appeal to the ladies, and they might take their choice of his doing so
from humility or from pride. "Yet she inclines to believe I shall come
out."

"Oh I incline to believe too you'll come out!"--Miss Barrace, with her
laugh, was not to be behind. "Only the question's about WHERE, isn't
it? However," she happily continued, "if it's anywhere at all it must
be very far on, mustn't it? To do us justice, I think, you know," she
laughed, "we do, among us all, want you rather far on. Yes, yes," she
repeated in her quick droll way; "we want you very, VERY far on!" After
which she wished to know why he had thought it better Maria should