“ I haven’t laid them down,” Strether promptly returned. “Mr. Newsome—who knew extraordinarily well what he was about—laid them down ten years ago.”
Oh well, Waymarsh seemed to indicate with a shake of his mane, that didn’t matter! “You’re fierce for the boom anyway.”
His friend weighed a moment in silence the justice of the charge. “I can scarcely be called fierce, I think, when I so freely take my chance of the possibility, the danger, of being influenced in a sense counter to Mrs. Newsome’s own feelings.”
Waymarsh gave this proposition a long hard look. “I see. You’re afraid yourself of being squared. But you’re a humbug,” he added, “all the same.”
“ Oh!” Strether quickly protested.
“ Yes, you ask me for protection—which makes you very interesting; and then you
