just now was exactly
on this queer impression of his diplomacy: as if instead of really giving ground
his line were to keep me on here and set me a bad example.«
    As the half-hour meanwhile had ebbed Strether paid his score, and the waiter
was presently in the act of counting out change. Our friend pushed back to him a
fraction of it, with which, after an emphatic recognition, the personage in
question retreated. »You give too much,« little Bilham permitted himself
benevolently to observe.
    »Oh I always give too much!« Strether helplessly sighed. »But you don't,« he
went on as if to get quickly away from the contemplation of that doom, »answer
my question. Why isn't he free?«
    Little Bilham had got up as if the transaction with the waiter had been a
signal, and had already edged out between the table and the divan. The effect of
this was that a minute later they had quitted the place, the gratified waiter
alert again at the open door. Strether had found himself deferring to his
companion's abruptness as to a hint that he should be answered as soon as they
were more isolated. This happened when after a few steps in the outer air they
had turned the next corner. There our friend had kept it up. »Why isn't he free
if he's good?«
    Little Bilham looked him full in the face. »Because it's a virtuous
attachment.«
    This had settled the question so effectually for the time - that is for the
next few days - that it had given Strether almost a new lease of life. It must
be added however that, thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle in
which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste of
the lees rising as usual into his draught. His imagination had in other words
already dealt with his young friend's assertion; of which it had made something
that sufficiently came out on the very next occasion of his seeing Maria
Gostrey. This occasion moreover had been determined promptly by a new
circumstance - a circumstance he was the last man to leave her for a day in
ignorance of. »When I said to him last night,« he immediately began, »that
without some definite word from him now that will enable me to speak to them
over there of our sailing - or at least of mine, giving them some sort of date -
my responsibility becomes uncomfortable and my situation awkward; when I said
that to him what do you think was