His companion had meanwhile thought. "She imagined stupidly--so it
comes to the same thing."
"Stupidly? Oh!" said Strether.
But she insisted. "She imagined meanly."
He had it, however, better. "It couldn't but be ignorantly."
"Well, intensity with ignorance--what do you want worse?"
This question might have held him, but he let it pass. "Sarah
isn't ignorant--now; she keeps up the theory of the horrible."
"Ah but she's intense--and that by itself will do sometimes as
well. If it doesn't do, in this case, at any rate, to deny that
Marie's charming, it will do at least to deny that she's good."
"What I claim is that she's good for Chad."
"You don't claim"--she seemed to like it clear--"that she's good
for YOU."
But he continued without heeding. "That's what I wanted them to
come out for--to see for themselves if she's bad for him."
"And now that they've done so they won't admit that she's good even
for anything?"
"They do think," Strether presently admitted, "that she's on the
whole about as bad for me. But they're consistent of course,
inasmuch as they've their clear view of what's good for both of us."
"For you, to begin with"--Maria, all responsive, confined the
question for the moment--"to eliminate from your existence and if
possible even from your memory the dreadful creature that I must
gruesomely shadow forth for them, even more than to eliminate the
distincter evil--thereby a little less portentous--of the person
whose confederate you've suffered yourself to become.
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