She spoke now as if her art were all an
innocence, and then again as if her innocence were all an art.
"Oh he's giving himself up, and he'll do so to the end. How can he
but want, now that it's within reach, his full impression?--which is
much more important, you know, than either yours or mine. But he's
just soaking," Strether said as he came back; "he's going in
conscientiously for a saturation. I'm bound to say he IS very good."
"Ah," she quietly replied, "to whom do you say it?" And then more
quietly still: "He's capable of anything."
Strether more than reaffirmed--"Oh he's excellent. I more and more
like," he insisted, "to see him with them;" though the oddity of
this tone between them grew sharper for him even while they spoke.
It placed the young man so before them as the result of her
interest and the product of her genius, acknowledged so her part in
the phenomenon and made the phenomenon so rare, that more than ever
yet he might have been on the very point of asking her for some
more detailed account of the whole business than he had yet
received from her. The occasion almost forced upon him some
question as to how she had managed and as to the appearance such
miracles presented from her own singularly close place of survey.
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