. »She has too much at stake.« Then less
gravely: »Mine, luckily for me, holds out.«
    »Luckily for me too« - Strether came back to that. »My own isn't so firm, my
appetite for responsibility isn't so sharp, as that I haven't felt the very
principle of this occasion to be the more the merrier. If we are so merry it's
because Chad has understood so well.«
    »He has understood amazingly,« said Miss Barrace.
    »It's wonderful!« - Strether anticipated for her.
    »It's wonderful!« she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face to face over
it, they largely and recklessly laughed. But she presently added: »Oh I see the
principle. If one didn't one would be lost. But when once one has got hold of it
-«
    »It's as simple as twice two! From the moment he had to do something -«
    »A crowd« - she took him straight up - »was the only thing? Rather, rather:
a rumpus of sound,« she laughed, »or nothing. Mrs. Pocock's built in, or built
out - whichever you call it; she's packed so tight she can't move. She's in
splendid isolation« - Miss Barrace embroidered the theme.
    Strether followed, but scrupulous of justice. »Yet with every one in the
place successively introduced to her.«
    »Wonderfully - but just so that it does build her out. She's bricked up,
she's buried alive!«
    Strether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him to a sigh.
»Oh but she's not dead! It will take more than this to kill her.«
    His companion had a pause that might have been for pity. »No, I can't
pretend I think she's finished - or that it's for more than to-night.« She
remained pensive as if with the same compunction. »It's only up to her chin.«
Then again for the fun of it: »She can breathe.«
    »She can breathe!« - he echoed it in the same spirit. »And do you know,« he
went on, »what's really all this time happening to me? - through the beauty of
music, the gaiety of voices, the uproar in short of our revel and the felicity
of your
