He doesn't
write."
"I see. But there are all the same," she went on, "two quite
distinct things that--given the wonderful place he's in--may have
happened to him. One is that he may have got brutalised. The other
is that he may have got refined."
Strether stared--this WAS a novelty. "Refined?"
"Oh," she said quietly, "there ARE refinements."
The way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh.
"YOU have them!"
"As one of the signs," she continued in the same tone, "they
constitute perhaps the worst."
He thought it over and his gravity returned. "Is it a refinement
not to answer his mother's letters?"
She appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out. "Oh I
should say the greatest of all."
"Well," said Strether, "I'M quite content to let it, as one of the
signs, pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do what he
likes with me."
This appeared to strike her. "How do you know it?"
"Oh I'm sure of it. I feel it in my bones."
"Feel he CAN do it?"
"Feel that he believes he can. It may come to the same thing!"
Strether laughed.
She wouldn't, however, have this. "Nothing for you will ever come
to the same thing as anything else." And she understood what she
meant, it seemed, sufficiently to go straight on.
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