She took him all in again. “Well, I promise you not again to leave you, but it will only be to follow you. You’ve got your momentum and can toddle alone.”

He intelligently accepted it. “Yes—I suppose I can toddle. It’s the sight of that in fact that has upset Waymarsh. He can bear it—the way I strike him as going—no longer. That’s only the climax of his original feeling. He wants me to quit; and he must have written to Woollett that I’m in peril of perdition.”

“Ah good!” she murmured. “But is it only your supposition?”

“I make it out—it explains.”

“Then he denies?—or you haven’t asked him?”

“I’ve not had time,” Strether said; “I made it out but last night, putting various things together, and I’ve not been since then face to face with him.”

She wondered. “Because you’re too disgusted? You can’t trust yourself?”

He settled his glasses on his nose. “Do I look in a great rage?”

“You look divine!”

“There’s nothing,” he went on, “to be angry about. He has done me on the contrary a service.”