 out as nothing had come yet; links were missing and connexions
unnamed, but it was suddenly as if they were at the heart of their subject.
»Yes; how much more she does it,« Strether gravely reflected, »than I help her!«
It all came over him as with the near presence of the beauty, the grace, the
intense, dissimulated spirit with which he had, as he said, been putting off
contact. »She has courage.«
    »Ah she has courage!« Miss Barrace quite agreed; and it was as if for a
moment they saw the quantity in each other's face.
    But indeed the whole thing was present. »How much she must care!«
    »Ah there it is. She does care. But it isn't, is it,« Miss Barrace
considerately added, »as if you had ever had any doubt of that?«
    Strether seemed suddenly to like to feel that he really never had. »Why of
course it's the whole point.«
    »Voilà!« Miss Barrace smiled.
    »It's why one came out,« Strether went on. »And it's why one has stayed so
long. And it's also« - he abounded - »why one's going home. It's why, it's why
-«
    »It's why everything!« she concurred. »It's why she might be to-night - for
all she looks and shows, and for all your friend Jim does - about twenty years
old. That's another of her ideas; to be for him, and to be quite easily and
charmingly, as young as a little girl.«
    Strether assisted at his distance. »For him? For Chad -?«
    »For Chad, in a manner, naturally, always. But in particular to-night for
Mr. Pocock.« And then as her friend still stared: »Yes, it is of a bravery! But
that's what she has: her high sense of duty.« It was more than sufficiently
before them. »When Mr. Newsome has his hands so embarrassed with his sister -«
    »It's quite the least« - Strether filled it out - »that she should take his
sister's husband? Certainly - quite the least. So she has taken him.«
    »She has taken him.« It was all Miss Barrace had meant.
    Still it remained enough. »It must be funny.«
    »Oh it
