She
has had in short to recognise the breaking out for her of a real
affinity--and with everything to enhance the drama."
Miss Gostrey followed. "Jim for instance?"
"Jim. Jim hugely enhances. Jim was made to enhance. And then
Mr. Waymarsh. It's the crowning touch--it supplies the colour.
He's positively separated."
"And she herself unfortunately isn't--that supplies the colour
too." Miss Gostrey was all there. But somehow--! "Is HE in love?"
Strether looked at her a long time; then looked all about the room;
then came a little nearer. "Will you never tell any one in the
world as long as ever you live?"
"Never." It was charming.
"He thinks Sarah really is. But he has no fear," Strether hastened
to add.
"Of her being affected by it?"
"Of HIS being. He likes it, but he knows she can hold out. He's
helping her, he's floating her over, by kindness."
Maria rather funnily considered it. "Floating her over in
champagne? The kindness of dining her, nose to nose, at the hour
when all Paris is crowding to profane delights, and in the--well,
in the great temple, as one hears of it, of pleasure?"
"That's just IT, for both of them," Strether insisted--"and all of
a supreme innocence. The Parisian place, the feverish hour, the
putting before her of a hundred francs' worth of food and drink,
which they'll scarcely touch--all that's the dear man's own
romance; the expensive kind, expensive in francs and centimes, in
which he abounds.
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