“Then for me?”
“Quite as little.” Waymarsh was by this time near enough to show signs his friend could read, though he seemed to look almost carefully at nothing in particular.
“Then for himself?”
“For nobody. For nothing. For freedom.”
“But what has freedom to do with it?”
Strether’s answer was indirect. “To be as good as you and me. But different.”
She had had time to take in their companion’s face; and with it, as such things were easy for her, she took in all. “Different—yes. But better!”
If Waymarsh was sombre he was also indeed almost sublime. He told them nothing, left his absence unexplained, and though they were convinced he had made some extraordinary purchase they were never to learn its nature. He only glowered grandly at the tops of the old gables. “It’s the sacred rage,” Strether had had further time to say; and this sacred rage was to become between them, for convenient comprehension, the description of one of his periodical necessities. It was Strether who eventually contended that it did make him better than they. But by that time Miss Gostrey was convinced that she didn’t want to be better than Strether.