"
"It's all the comfort, I judge," she returned, "that you WILL have!"
"At any rate," he said, "it will have been a month more. Paris may
grow, from day to day, hot and dusty, as you say; but there are
other things that are hotter and dustier. I'm not afraid to stay
on; the summer here must be amusing in a wild--if it isn't a tame--
way of its own; the place at no time more picturesque. I think I
shall like it. And then," he benevolently smiled for her, "there
will be always you."
"Oh," she objected, "it won't be as a part of the picturesqueness
that I shall stay, for I shall be the plainest thing about you.
You may, you see, at any rate," she pursued, "have nobody else.
Madame de Vionnet may very well be going off, mayn't she?--and
Mr. Newsome by the same stroke: unless indeed you've had an assurance
from them to the contrary. So that if your idea's to stay for them"--
it was her duty to suggest it--"you may be left in the lurch.
Of course if they do stay"--she kept it up--"they would be part of
the picturesqueness. Or else indeed you might join them somewhere."
Strether seemed to face it as if it were a happy thought; but the
next moment he spoke more critically. "Do you mean that they'll
probably go off together?"
She just considered.
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