 »Well, I won't tell them this.«
    The young man at last looked away. »Then she does now care more than he.«
    »Oh!« Strether oddly exclaimed.
    But his companion immediately met it. »Haven't you after all had your
impression of it? That's how you've got hold of him.«
    »Ah but I haven't got hold of him!«
    »Oh I say!« But it was all little Bilham said.
    »It's at any rate none of my business. I mean,« Strether explained, »nothing
else than getting hold of him is.« It appeared, however, to strike him as his
business to add: »The fact remains nevertheless that she has saved him.«
    Little Bilham just waited. »I thought that was what you were to do.«
    But Strether had his answer ready. »I'm speaking - in connexion with her -
of his manners and morals, his character and life. I'm speaking of him as a
person to deal with and talk with and live with - speaking of him as a social
animal.«
    »And isn't it as a social animal that you also want him?«
    »Certainly; so that it's as if she had saved him for us.«
    »It strikes you accordingly then,« the young man threw out, »as for you all
to save her?«
    »Oh for us all -!« Strether could but laugh at that. It brought him back,
however, to the point he had really wished to make. »They've accepted their
situation - hard as it is. They're not free - at least she's not; but they take
what's left to them. It's a friendship, of a beautiful sort; and that's what
makes them so strong. They're straight, they feel; and they keep each other up.
It's doubtless she, however, who, as you yourself have hinted, feels it most.«
    Little Bilham appeared to wonder what he had hinted. »Feels most that
they're straight?«
    »Well, feels that she is, and the strength that comes from it. She keeps him
up - she keeps the whole thing up. When people are able to it's fine. She's
wonderful, wonderful, as Miss Barrace says; and he is, in his way, too; however,
as a mere man,
