“She is free from her chin up,” she mused; “and that will be enough for her.”
“It will be enough for me!” Strether ruefully laughed. “Waymarsh has really,” he then asked, “brought her to see you?”
“Yes—but that’s the worst of it. I could do you no good. And yet I tried hard.”
Strether wondered. “And how did you try?”
“Why I didn’t speak of you.”
“I see. That was better.”
“Then what would have been worse? For speaking or silent,” she lightly wailed, “I somehow ‘compromise.’ And it has never been any one but you.”
“That shows”—he was magnanimous—“that it’s something not in you, but in one’s self. It’s my fault.”
She was silent a little. “No, it’s Mr. Waymarsh’s. It’s the fault of his having brought her.”
“Ah then,” said Strether good-naturedly, “why did he bring her?”