Strether's theory that it was none of his business was somehow not damaged by the way he took it in. "More, you mean, than he?" On this his companion looked round at him, and now, for an instant, their eyes met. "More than he? " he repeated.
Little Bilham, for as long, hung fire. "Will you never tell anyone?"
Strether thought. "Whom should I tell?"
"Why, I supposed you reported regularly———"
"To people at home?"—Strether took him up. "Well, I won't tell them this."
The young man at last looked away. "Then she does now care more than he."
"Oh!" Strether oddly exclaimed.
But his companion immediately met it. "Haven't you, after all, had your impression of it? That's how you've got hold of him."
"Ah, but I haven't got hold of him!"
"Oh, I say!" But it was all little Bilham said.
"It's at any rate none of my business. I mean," Strether explained, "nothing else than getting hold of him is." It appeared, however, to strike him as his business to add: "The fact remains, nevertheless, that she has saved him."
Little Bilham just waited. "I thought that was what you were to do."
But Strether had his answer ready. "I'm speaking—in connection with her—of his manners and morals, his character and life. I'm speaking of him as a person to deal with and talk with and live with—speaking of him as a social animal."
"And isn't it as a social animal that you also want him?"
"Certainly; so that it's as if she had saved him for us."
"It strikes you accordingly then," the young man threw out, "as for you all to save her?"
"Oh, for us 'all'———!" Strether could but laugh at that. It brought him back, however, to the point he had really wished to make. "They've accepted their situation—hard as it is. They're not free—at least she's not; but they take what's left to them. It's a friendship, of a beautiful sort, and that's what makes them so strong. They're straight, they feel, and they keep each other up.
