"Because the fact itself IS the woman?"
"A woman. Some woman or other. It's one of the things that HAVE to
be."
"But you mean then at least a good one."
"A good woman?" She threw up her arms with a laugh. "I should call
her excellent!"
"Then why does he deny her?"
Miss Gostrey thought a moment. "Because she's too good to admit!
Don't you see," she went on, "how she accounts for him?"
Strether clearly, more and more, did see; yet it made him also see
other things. "But isn't what we want that he shall account for
HER?"
"Well, he does. What you have before you is his way. You must
forgive him if it isn't quite outspoken. In Paris such debts are
tacit."
Strether could imagine; but still--! "Even when the woman's good?"
Again she laughed out. "Yes, and even when the man is! There's
always a caution in such cases," she more seriously explained--
"for what it may seem to show. There's nothing that's taken as
showing so much here as sudden unnatural goodness."
"Ah then you're speaking now," Strether said, "of people who are
NOT nice."
"I delight," she replied, "in your classifications. But do you
want me," she asked, "to give you in the matter, on this ground,
the wisest advice I'm capable of? Don't consider her, don't judge
her at all in herself.
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