Don't you so much, when all's said, as care a little?"
"That," he answered with no loss of promptness, "is what even Chad
himself asked me last night. He asked me if I don't mind the loss--
well, the loss of an opulent future. Which moreover," he hastened
to add, "was a perfectly natural question."
"I call your attention, all the same," said Miss Gostrey, "to the
fact that I don't ask it. What I venture to ask is whether it's to
Mrs. Newsome herself that you're indifferent."
"I haven't been so"--he spoke with all assurance. "I've been the
very opposite. I've been, from the first moment, preoccupied with
the impression everything might be making on her--quite oppressed,
haunted, tormented by it. I've been interested ONLY in her seeing
what I've seen. And I've been as disappointed in her refusal to
see it as she has been in what has appeared to her the perversity
of my insistence."
"Do you mean that she has shocked you as you've shocked her?"
Strether weighed it. "I'm probably not so shockable. But on the
other hand I've gone much further to meet her. She, on her side,
hasn't budged an inch."
"So that you're now at last"--Maria pointed the moral--"in the sad
stage of recriminations."
"No--it's only to you I speak.
Pages:
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610