"
"The woman? Ah but that's courage."
"No--it's exaltation, which is a very different thing. Courage,"
he, however, accommodatingly threw out, "is what YOU have."
She shook her head. "You say that only to patch me up--to cover the
nudity of my want of exaltation. I've neither the one nor the
other. I've mere battered indifference. I see that what you mean,"
Miss Gostrey pursued, "is that if your friend HAD come she would
take great views, and the great views, to put it simply, would be
too much for her."
Strether looked amused at her notion of the simple, but he adopted
her formula. "Everything's too much for her."
"Ah then such a service as this of yours--"
"Is more for her than anything else? Yes--far more. But so long as
it isn't too much for ME--!"
"Her condition doesn't matter? Surely not; we leave her condition
out; we take it, that is, for granted. I see it, her condition, as
behind and beneath you; yet at the same time I see it as bearing
you up."
"Oh it does bear me up!" Strether laughed.
"Well then as yours bears ME nothing more's needed." With which she
put again her question. "Has Mrs. Newsome money?"
This time he heeded. "Oh plenty. That's the root of the evil.
There's money, to very large amounts, in the concern.
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