“So I supposed—all of which, thank God, is in our innocent and natural manners. But do you know,” Strether asked, “if Chad knows—?” And then as this interlocutor seemed at a loss: “Why where she has come out.”
Little Bilham, at this, met his face with a conscious look—it was as if, more than anything yet, the allusion had penetrated. “Do you know yourself?”
Strether lightly shook his head. “There I stop. Oh, odd as it may appear to you, there are things I don’t know. I only got the sense from her of something very sharp, and yet very deep down, that she was keeping all to herself. That is I had begun with the belief that she had kept it to herself; but face to face with her there I soon made out that there was a person with whom she would have shared it. I had thought she possibly might with me—but I saw then that I was only half in her confidence. When, turning to me to greet me—for she was on the balcony and I had come in without her knowing it—she showed me she had been expecting you and was proportionately disappointed, I got hold of the tail of my conviction. Half an hour later I was in possession of all the rest of it. You know what has happened.” He looked at his young friend hard—then he felt sure. “For all you say, you’re up to your eyes. So there you are.”
Little Bilham after an instant pulled half round. “I assure you she hasn’t told me anything.”
“Of course she hasn’t. For what do you suggest that I suppose her to take you? But you’ve been with her every day, you’ve seen her freely, you’ve liked her greatly—I stick to that—and you’ve made your profit of it. You know what she has been through as well as you know that she has dined here to-night—which must have put her, by the way, through a good deal more.”
The young man faced this blast; after which he pulled round the rest of the way. “I haven’t in the least said she hasn’t been nice to me. But she’s proud.”
“And quite properly. But not too proud for that.”
“It’s just her pride that has made her. Chad,” little Bilham loyally went on, “has really been as kind to her as possible. It’s 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.”