Pocock will produce them; she'll bring over the
whole collection. They'll be," he added with a pensive smile "a
part of the 'fun' you speak of."
She was quite in the current now and floating by his side. "It's
Mamie--so far as I've had it from you--who'll be their great card."
And then as his contemplative silence wasn't a denial she
significantly added: "I think I'm sorry for her."
"I think I am!"--and Strether sprang up, moving about a little as
her eyes followed him. "But it can't be helped."
"You mean her coming out can't be?"
He explained after another turn what he meant. "The only way for
her not to come is for me to go home--as I believe that on the spot
I could prevent it. But the difficulty as to that is that if I do
go home--"
"I see, I see"--she had easily understood. "Mr. Newsome will do the
same, and that's not"--she laughed out now--"to be thought of."
Strether had no laugh; he had only a quiet comparatively placid
look that might have shown him as proof against ridicule. "Strange,
isn't it?"
They had, in the matter that so much interested them, come so far
as this without sounding another name--to which however their
present momentary silence was full of a conscious reference.
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