 glasses on his nose. »Do I look in a great rage?«
    »You look divine!«
    »There's nothing,« he went on, »to be angry about. He has done me on the
contrary a service.«
    She made it out. »By bringing things to a head?«
    »How well you understand!« he almost groaned. »Waymarsh won't in the least,
at any rate, when I have it out with him, deny or extenuate. He has acted from
the deepest conviction, with the best conscience and after wakeful nights. He'll
recognise that he's fully responsible, and will consider that he has been highly
successful; so that any discussion we may have will bring us quite together
again - bridge the dark stream that has kept us so thoroughly apart. We shall
have at last, in the consequences of his act, something we can definitely talk
about.«
    She was silent a little. »How wonderfully you take it! But you're always
wonderful.«
    He had a pause that matched her own; then he had, with an adequate spirit, a
complete admission. »It's quite true. I'm extremely wonderful just now. I dare
say in fact I'm quite fantastic, and I shouldn't be at all surprised if I were
mad.«
    »Then tell me!« she earnestly pressed. As he, however, for the time answered
nothing, only returning the look with which she watched him, she presented
herself where it was easier to meet her. »What will Mr. Waymarsh exactly have
done?«
    »Simply have written a letter. One will have been quite enough. He has told
them I want looking after.«
    »And do you?« - she was all interest.
    »Immensely. And I shall get it.«
    »By which you mean you don't budge?«
    »I don't budge.«
    »You've cabled?«
    »No - I've made Chad do it.«
    »That you decline to come?«
    »That he declines. We had it out this morning and I brought him round. He
had come in, before I was down, to tell me he was ready - ready, I mean, to
return. And he went off, after ten minutes with me, to say he wouldn't.«
    Miss Gostrey followed with intensity. »Then you've stopped him?«
    Strether settled himself afresh in his chair. »I
