Henry James

“ That's why," Miss Barrace kindly went on, "we take such an interest in you. We feel that you'll come up to the scratch." And then as he seemed perhaps not quite to take fire: "Don't let him do it."
"Don't let Chad go?"
"Yes, keep hold of him. With all this"—and she indicated the general tribute—"he has done enough. We love him here—he's charming."
"It's beautiful," said Strether, "the way you all can simplify when you will."
But she gave it him back. "It's nothing to the way you will when you must." ”

“ It's awfully awkward for a man when a girl's in love with him."
"Ah, but she isn't—now."
Little Bilham sat staring before him; then he sprang up as if his friend's penetration, recurrent and insistent, made him really, after all, too nervous. "No—she isn't now. It isn't in the least," he went on, "Chad's fault. He's really all right .I mean he would have been willing. But she came over with ideas. Those she had got at home. They had been her motive and support in joining her brother and his wife. She was to save our friend."
"Ah, like me, poor thing?" Strether also got to his feet. ”

“ Their presence gave a distinction to Chad's entertainment, and the interest of calculating their effect on Sarah was actually so sharp as to be almost painful. Unmistakably, in her single person, the motive of the composition, and dressed in a splendour of crimson which affected Strether as the crash of a fall through a skylight, she would now be in the forefront of the listening circle and committed by it up to her eyes. ”

“ Everything he has 'picked up'—and the way he knows how. She sees no difficulty in that. She'd run the show herself, and she'll make the handsome concession that Woollett would be, on the whole, in some ways the better for it. Not that it wouldn't be also, in some ways, the better for Woollett. The people there are just as good."
"Just as good as you and these others? Ah, that may be. But such an occasion as this, whether or no," Strether said, "isn't the people. It's what has made the people possible." ”

“ Miss Barrace quite agreed; and it was as if, for a moment, they saw the quantity in each other's face.
But indeed the whole thing was present. "How much she must care!"
"Ah, there it is. She does care. But it isn't, is it," Miss Barrace considerately added, "as if you had ever had any doubt of that?"
Strether seemed suddenly to like to feel that he really never had. "Why, of course it's the whole point."
"Voilà!" Miss Barrace smiled.
"It's why one came out," Strether went on. "And it's why one has stayed so long. And it's also"—he abounded—"why one's going home. ”

“ His situation, don't you see, is reduced now to the bare facts one has to recognise. Mamie doesn't want him, and he doesn't want Mamie: so much as that these days have made clear. It's a thread we can wind up and tuck in."
But little Bilham still questioned. "You can—since you seem so much to want to. But why should I?"
Poor Strether thought it over, but was obliged of course to admit that his demonstration did superficially fail. "Seriously, there is no reason. It's my affair—I must do it alone. I've only my fantastic need of making my dose stiff." ”

“ But her nerve has given way."
Miss Barrace looked at him a moment. "She has too much at stake." Then less gravely: "Mine, luckily for me, holds out."
"Luckily for me too"—Strether came back to that. "My own isn't so firm, my appetite for responsibility isn't so sharp, as that I haven't felt the very principle of this occasion to be 'the more the merrier.' If we are so merry, it's because Chad has understood so well."
"He has understood amazingly," said Miss Barrace. ”

“ He detained her, however, on her appearing about to leave him alone in the rather cold clearance their talk had made. "There positively isn't a sign of a hero to-night; the hero's dodging and shirking, the hero's ashamed. Therefore, you know, I think, what you must all really be occupied with is the heroine."
Miss Barrace took a minute. "The heroine?"
"The heroine. I've treated her," said Strether, "not a bit like a hero. ”

“ Too late for the miracle."
"Yes"—his companion saw enough. "Still, if the worst fault of his condition is that it may be all there for her to profit by———?"
"Oh, she doesn't want to 'profit,' in that flat way. She doesn't want to profit by another woman's work—she wants the miracle to have been her own miracle. That's what she's too late for."
Strether quite felt how it all fitted; yet there seemed one stray piece. "I'm bound to say, you know, that she strikes one, on these lines, as fastidious—what you call here difficile."
Little Bilham tossed up his chin. ”

“ Strether took it smoothly in. "Ah then, I shall have news of her."
"I don't want to frighten you, but I think that likely. However," little Bilham continued, "if I'm of the least use to you to hold on by———!"
"You're not of the least!"—and Strether laid an appreciative hand on him to say it. "No one's of the least." With which, to mark how gaily he could take it, he patted his companion's knee. "I must meet my fate alone, and I shall—oh, you'll see! And yet," he pursued the next moment, "you can help me too. You once said to me"—he followed this further—"that you held Chad should marry. ”

“ It's why, it's why———"
"It's why everything!" she concurred. "It's why she might be to-night—for all she looks and shows, and for all your friend 'Jim' does—about twenty years old. That's another of her ideas; to be, for him, and to be quite easily and charmingly, as young as a little girl." ”