I didn't want to have to lie for her. I felt that to
be too much for me. A man of course is always expected to do it--
to do it, I mean, for a woman; but not a woman for another woman;
unless perhaps on the tit-for-tat principle, as an indirect way of
protecting herself. I don't need protection, so that I was free to
'funk' you--simply to dodge your test. The responsibility was too
much for me. I gained time, and when I came back the need of a
test had blown over."
Strether thought of it serenely. "Yes; when you came back little
Bilham had shown me what's expected of a gentleman. Little Bilham
had lied like one."
"And like what you believed him?"
"Well," said Strether, "it was but a technical lie--he classed the
attachment as virtuous. That was a view for which there was much
to be said--and the virtue came out for me hugely There was of
course a great deal of it. I got it full in the face, and I haven't,
you see, done with it yet."
"What I see, what I saw," Maria returned, "is that you dressed up
even the virtue. You were wonderful--you were beautiful, as I've
had the honour of telling you before; but, if you wish really to
know," she sadly confessed, "I never quite knew WHERE you were.
There were moments," she explained, "when you struck me as grandly
cynical; there were others when you struck me as grandly vague.
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