“I call it so still. You will?” she insisted. “You haven’t repented?”
He wondered. “No—but I’ve been thinking what I meant.”
She kept it up. “And not, a little, what I did?”
“No—that’s not necessary. It will be enough if I know what I meant myself.”
“And don’t you know,” she asked, “by this time?”
Again he had a pause. “I think you ought to leave it to me. But how long,” he added, “do you give me?”
“It seems to me much more a question of how long you give me. Doesn’t our friend here himself, at any rate,” she went on, “perpetually make me present to you?”
“Not,” Strether replied, “by ever speaking of you to me.”
“He never does that?”
“Never.”