 meaning of the »Oh, oh, oh!« that had made him, a
fortnight before, challenge Miss Barrace in vain. She had always the air, this
picturesque and original lady, who struck him, so oddly, as both antique and
modern - she had always the air of taking up some joke that one had already had
out with her. The point itself, no doubt, was what was antique, and the use she
made of it what was modern. He felt just now that her good-natured irony did
bear on something, and it troubled him a little that she wouldn't be more
explicit, only assuring him, with the pleasure of observation so visible in her,
that she wouldn't tell him more for the world. He could take refuge but in
asking her what she had done with Waymarsh, though it must be added that he felt
himself a little on the way to a clue after she had answered that this personage
was, in the other room, engaged in conversation with Madame de Vionnet. He
stared a moment at the image of such a conjunction; then, for Miss Barrace's
benefit, he wondered. »Is she too then under the charm -?«
    »No, not a bit« - Miss Barrace was prompt. »She makes nothing of him. She's
bored. She won't help you with him.«
    »Oh,« Strether laughed, »she can't do everything.«
    »Of course not - wonderful as she is. Besides, he makes nothing of her. She
won't take him from me - though she wouldn't, no doubt, having other affairs in
hand, even if she could. I've never,« said Miss Barrace, »seen her fail with any
one before. And to-night, when she's so magnificent, it would seem to her
strange - if she minded. So at any rate I have him all. Je suis tranquille!«
    Strether understood, so far as that went; but he was feeling for his clue.
»She strikes you to-night as particularly magnificent?«
    »Surely. Almost as I've never seen her. Doesn't she you? Why it's for you.«
    He persisted in his candour. »For me -?«
    »Oh, oh, oh!« cried Miss Barrace, who persisted in the opposite of that
quality.
    »Well,« he acutely admitted, »she is different. She's gay.«
    »
