 should understand; it will do quite well
enough if you simply remember it. Only feel I trust you - and for nothing so
tremendous after all. Just,« she said with a wonderful smile, »for common
civility.«
    Strether had a long pause while they sat again face to face, as they had
sat, scarce less conscious, before the poor lady had crossed the stream. She was
the poor lady for Strether now because clearly she had some trouble, and her
appeal to him could only mean that her trouble was deep. He couldn't help it; it
wasn't his fault; he had done nothing; but by a turn of the hand she had somehow
made their encounter a relation. And the relation profited by a mass of things
that were not strictly in it or of it; by the very air in which they sat, by the
high cold delicate room, by the world outside and the little plash in the court,
by the First Empire and the relics in the stiff cabinets, by matters as far off
as those and by others as near as the unbroken clasp of her hands in her lap and
the look her expression had of being most natural when her eyes were most fixed.
»You count upon me of course for something really much greater than it sounds.«
    »Oh it sounds great enough too!« she laughed at this.
    He found himself in time on the point of telling her that she was, as Miss
Barrace called it, wonderful; but, catching himself up, he said something else
instead. »What was it Chad's idea then that you should say to me?«
    »Ah his idea was simply what a man's idea always is - to put every effort
off on the woman.«
    »The woman -?« Strether slowly echoed.
    »The woman he likes - and just in proportion as he likes her. In proportion
too - for shifting the trouble - as she likes him.«
    Strether followed it; then with an abruptness of his own: »How much do you
like Chad?«
    »Just as much as that - to take all, with you, on myself.« But she got at
once again away from this. »I've been trembling as if we were to stand or fall
by what you may think of me; and I'm even now,« she went on wonderfully,
»drawing a long breath - and, yes, truly taking a great courage - from the hope
that I don't in fact strike you as impossible
