Almost resentful, Strether could at last be prompt. “How can I make out such things?”
She remained perfectly good-natured. “Ah but they’re beautiful little things, and you make out—don’t pretend—everything in the world. Haven’t you,” she asked, “been talking with her?”
“ Yes, but not about Chad. At least not much.”
“ Oh you don’t require ‘much’!” she reassuringly declared. But she immediately changed her ground. “I hope you remember your promise of the other day.”
“ To ‘save’ you, as you called it?”
“ I call it so still. You will? ” she insisted. “You haven’t repented?”
He wondered. “No—but I’ve been thinking what I meant.”
She kept it up. “And not, a little, what I did?”
“ No—that’s not necessary. It will be enough if I know what I meant myself.”
“ And
