She did so,
Strether felt as she took her place beside him, in a manner that
left nothing to desire. He had dropped back on his bench, alone
again for a time, and the more conscious for little Bilham's
defection of his unexpressed thought; in respect to which however
this next converser was a still more capacious vessel. "It's the
child!" he had exclaimed to her almost as soon as she appeared; and
though her direct response was for some time delayed he could feel
in her meanwhile the working of this truth. It might have been
simply, as she waited, that they were now in presence altogether of
truth spreading like a flood and not for the moment to be offered
her in the mere cupful; inasmuch as who should ces dames prove to
be but persons about whom--once thus face to face with them--she
found she might from the first have told him almost everything?
This would have freely come had he taken the simple precaution of
giving her their name. There could be no better example--and she
appeared to note it with high amusement--than the way, making
things out already so much for himself, he was at last throwing
precautions to the winds. They were neither more nor less, she and
the child's mother, than old school-friends--friends who had
scarcely met for years but whom this unlooked-for chance had
brought together with a rush.
Pages:
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288