"
"He hasn't told them to me," her friend smiled, "he has a life of
his own." But Strether had swung back to the consciousness that for
himself after all it never would have done. Waymarsh hadn't Mrs.
Waymarsh in the least to consider, whereas Lambert Strether had
constantly, in the inmost honour of his thoughts, to consider Mrs.
Newsome. He liked moreover to feel how much his friend was in the
real tradition. Yet he had his conclusion. "WHAT a rage it is!"
He had worked it out. "It's an opposition."
She followed, but at a distance. "That's what I feel. Yet to what?"
"Well, he thinks, you know, that I'VE a life of my own. And I haven't!"
"You haven't?" She showed doubt, and her laugh confirmed it.
"Oh, oh, oh!"
"No--not for myself. I seem to have a life only for other people."
"Ah for them and WITH them! Just now for instance with--"
"Well, with whom?" he asked before she had had time to say.
His tone had the effect of making her hesitate and even, as he
guessed, speak with a difference. "Say with Miss Gostrey. What do
you do for HER?" It really made him wonder. "Nothing at all!"
III
Madame de Vionnet, having meanwhile come in, was at present
close to them, and Miss Barrace hereupon, instead of risking a
rejoinder, became again with a look that measured her from top to
toe all mere long-handled appreciative tortoise-shell.
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