Only, so far as he does see
you--if you don't mind--he sees you as awful."
"'Awful'?"--she wanted it all.
"A regular bad one--though of course of a tremendously superior kind.
Dreadful, delightful, irresistible."
"Ah dear Jim! I should like to know him. I MUST."
"Yes, naturally. But will it do? You may, you know," Strether
suggested, "disappoint him."
She was droll and humble about it. "I can but try. But my
wickedness then," she went on, "is my recommendation for him?"
"Your wickedness and the charms with which, in such a degree as
yours, he associates it. He understands, you see, that Chad and I
have above all wanted to have a good time, and his view is simple
and sharp. Nothing will persuade him--in the light, that is, of my
behaviour--that I really didn't, quite as much as Chad, come over
to have one before it was too late. He wouldn't have expected it of
me; but men of my age, at Woollett--and especially the least likely
ones--have been noted as liable to strange outbreaks, belated
uncanny clutches at the unusual, the ideal. It's an effect that a
lifetime of Woollett has quite been observed as having; and I thus
give it to you, in Jim's view, for what it's worth. Now his wife
and his mother-in-law," Strether continued to explain, "have, as in
honour bound, no patience with such phenomena, late or early--which
puts Jim, as against his relatives, on the other side.
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