"You won't take me with
you?"
"Not for the world."
"Then I shall walk."
"In the rain?"
"I like the rain," said Strether. "Good-night!"
She kept him a moment, while his hand was on the door, by not
answering; after which she answered by repeating her question.
"What do you stand to lose?"
Why the question now affected him as other he couldn't have said;
he could only this time meet it otherwise. "Everything."
"So I thought. Then you shall succeed. And to that end I'm yours--"
"Ah, dear lady!" he kindly breathed.
"Till death!" said Maria Gostrey. "Good-night."
II
Strether called, his second morning in Paris, on the bankers of
the Rue Scribe to whom his letter of credit was addressed, and he
made this visit attended by Waymarsh, in whose company he had
crossed from London two days before. They had hastened to the Rue
Scribe on the morrow of their arrival, but Strether had not then
found the letters the hope of which prompted this errand. He had
had as yet none at all; hadn't expected them in London, but had
counted on several in Paris, and, disconcerted now, had presently
strolled back to the Boulevard with a sense of injury that he felt
himself taking for as good a start as any other.
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