Strether considered. “I shan’t go before I hear from her. You’re too much afraid of her,” he added.
It produced between them a long look from which neither shrank. “I don’t think you believe that—believe I’ve not really reason to fear her.”
“She’s capable of great generosity,” Strether presently stated.
“Well then let her trust me a little. That’s all I ask. Let her recognise in spite of everything what I’ve done.”
“Ah remember,” our friend replied, “that she can’t effectually recognise it without seeing it for herself. Let Chad go over and show her what you’ve done, and let him plead with her there for it and, as it were, for you.”
She measured the depth of this suggestion. “Do you give me your word of honour that if she once has him there she won’t do her best to marry him?”
It made her companion, this enquiry, look again a while out at the view; after which he spoke without sharpness. “When she sees for herself what he is—”
But she had already broken in. “It’s when she sees for herself what he is that she’ll want to marry him most.”
Strether’s attitude, that of due deference to what she said, permitted him to attend for a minute to his luncheon. “I doubt if that will come off. It won’t be easy to make it.”
“It will be easy if he remains there—and he’ll remain for the money. The money appears to be, as a probability, so hideously much.”