 together, but there was nature in her wish to make them clearer still. »I
didn't want you to put it to me.«
    »To put it to you -?«
    »The question of what you were at last - a week ago - to see for yourself. I
didn't want to have to lie for her. I felt that to be too much for me. A man of
course is always expected to do it - to do it, I mean, for a woman; but not a
woman for another woman; unless perhaps on the tit-for-tat principle, as an
indirect way of protecting herself. I don't need protection, so that I was free
to funk you - simply to dodge your test. The responsibility was too much for me.
I gained time, and when I came back the need of a test had blown over.«
    Strether thought of it serenely. »Yes; when you came back little Bilham had
shown me what's expected of a gentleman. Little Bilham had lied like one.«
    »And like what you believed him?«
    »Well,« said Strether, »it was but a technical lie - he classed the
attachment as virtuous. That was a view for which there was much to be said -
and the virtue came out for me hugely. There was of course a great deal of it. I
got it full in the face, and I haven't, you see, done with it yet.«
    »What I see, what I saw,« Maria returned, »is that you dressed up even the
virtue. You were wonderful - you were beautiful, as I've had the honour of
telling you before; but, if you wish really to know,« she sadly confessed, »I
never quite knew where you were. There were moments,« she explained, »when you
struck me as grandly cynical; there were others when you struck me as grandly
vague.«
    Her friend considered. »I had phases. I had flights.«
    »Yes, but things must have a basis.«
    »A basis seemed to me just what her beauty supplied.«
    »Her beauty of person?«
    »Well, her beauty of everything. The impression she makes. She has such
variety and yet such harmony.«
    She considered him with one of her deep returns of indulgence - returns out
of all proportion to the irritations they flooded over. »You're complete.«
    »You're always too personal,«
