 man -?«
    »I mean yours. I mean Mr. Newsome.« It flashed for Strether the next moment
a finer light, and the light deepened as she went on. »He takes, thank God, the
truest tenderest interest in her.«
    It deepened indeed. »Oh I'm sure of that!«
    »You were talking,« she said, »about one's trusting him. You see then how I
do.«
    He waited a moment - it all came. »I see - I see.« He felt he really did
see.
    »He wouldn't hurt her for the world, nor - assuming she marries at all -
risk anything that might make against her happiness. And - willingly, at least -
he would never hurt me.«
    Her face, with what he had by this time grasped, told him more than her
words; whether something had come into it, or whether he only read clearer, her
whole story - what at least he then took for such - reached out to him from it.
With the initiative she now attributed to Chad it all made a sense, and this
sense - a light, a lead, was what had abruptly risen before him. He wanted, once
more, to get off with these things; which was at last made easy, a servant
having, for his assistance, on hearing voices in the hall, just come forward.
All that Strether had made out was, while the man opened the door and
impersonally waited, summed up in his last word. »I don't think, you know, Chad
will tell me anything.«
    »No - perhaps not yet.«
    »And I won't as yet speak to him.«
    »Ah that's as you'll think best. You must judge.«
    She had finally given him her hand, which he held a moment. »How much I have
to judge!«
    »Everything,« said Madame de Vionnet: a remark that was indeed - with the
refined disguised suppressed passion of her face - what he most carried away.

                                       II

 
So far as a direct approach was concerned Sarah had neglected him, for the week
now about to end, with a civil consistency of chill that, giving him a higher
idea of her social resource, threw him back on the general reflexion that a
woman could always be amazing. It indeed helped a little to console him that he
felt sure she had for the same period also left Chad's curiosity hanging; though
on the other hand
