 glad too,« he said; »but she does you no good.«
    »No good?« - Madame de Vionnet had a clear stare. »Why she's an angel of
light.«
    »That's precisely the reason. Leave her alone. Don't try to find out. I
mean,« he explained, »about what you spoke to me of - the way she feels.«
    His companion wondered. »Because one really won't?«
    »Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to. She's the most
charming creature I've ever seen. Therefore don't touch her. Don't know - don't
want to know. And moreover - yes - you won't.«
    It was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in. »As a favour to you?«
    »Well - since you ask me.«
    »Anything, everything you ask,« she smiled. »I shan't know then - never.
Thank you,« she added with peculiar gentleness as she turned away.
    The sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if he had been
tripped up and had a fall. In the very act of arranging with her for his
independence he had, under pressure from a particular perception,
inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed himself, and, with her subtlety
sensitive on the spot to an advantage, she had driven in by a single word a
little golden nail, the sharp intention of which he signally felt. He hadn't
detached, he had more closely connected himself, and his eyes, as he considered
with some intensity this circumstance, met another pair which had just come
within their range and which struck him as reflecting his sense of what he had
done. He recognised them at the same moment as those of little Bilham, who had
apparently drawn near on purpose to speak to him, and little Bilham wasn't, in
the conditions, the person to whom his heart would be most closed. They were
seated together a minute later at the angle of the room obliquely opposite the
corner in which Gloriani was still engaged with Jeanne de Vionnet, to whom at
first and in silence their attention had been benevolently given. »I can't see
for my life,« Strether had then observed, »how a young fellow of any spirit -
such a one as you for instance - can be admitted to the sight of that young lady
without being hard hit. Why don
