Chad," little Bilham
loyally went on, "has really been as kind to her as possible.
It's awkward for a man when a girl's in love with him."
"Ah but she isn't--now."
Little Bilham sat staring before him; then he sprang up as if his
friend's penetration, recurrent and insistent, made him really
after all too nervous. "No--she isn't now. It isn't in the
least," he went on, "Chad's fault. He's really all right. I mean
he would have been willing. But she came over with ideas. Those
she had got at home. They had been her motive and support in
joining her brother and his wife. She was to SAVE our friend."
"Ah like me, poor thing?" Strether also got to his feet.
"Exactly--she had a bad moment. It was very soon distinct to her,
to pull her up, to let her down, that, alas, he was, he IS, saved.
There's nothing left for her to do."
"Not even to love him?"
"She would have loved him better as she originally believed him."
Strether wondered "Of course one asks one's self what notion a
little girl forms, where a young man's in question, of such a
history and such a state."
"Well, this little girl saw them, no doubt, as obscure, but she saw
them practically as wrong. The wrong for her WAS the obscure.
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