“He wouldn’t”—she quite understood—“have taken all this trouble? I dare say not, and, if I may be quite free and dreadful, I very much hope he won’t take any more. Of course I won’t pretend now,” she added, “not to know what it’s a question of.”
“Oh every one must know now,” poor Strether thoughtfully admitted; “and it’s strange enough and funny enough that one should feel everybody here at this very moment to be knowing and watching and waiting.”
“Yes—isn’t it indeed funny?” Miss Barrace quite rose to it. “That’s the way we are in Paris.” She was always pleased with a new contribution to that queerness. “It’s wonderful! But, you know,” she declared, “it all depends on you. I don’t want to turn the knife in your vitals, but that’s naturally what you just now meant by our all being on top of you. We know you as the hero of the drama, and we’re gathered to see what you’ll do.”
Strether looked at her a moment with a light perhaps slightly obscured. “I think that must be why the hero has taken refuge in this corner. He’s scared at his heroism—he shrinks from his part.”
“Ah but we nevertheless believe he’ll play it. That’s why,” Miss Barrace kindly went on, “we take such an interest in you. We feel you’ll come up to the scratch.” And then as he seemed perhaps not quite to take fire: “Don’t let him do it.”
“Don’t let Chad go?”
“Yes, keep hold of him. With all this”—and she indicated the general tribute—“he has done enough. We love him here—he’s charming.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Strether, “the way you all can simplify when you will.”
But she gave it to him back. “It’s nothing to the way you will when you must.”
He winced at it as at the very voice of prophecy, and it kept him a moment quiet. He detained her, however, on her appearing about to leave him alone in the rather cold clearance their talk had made. “There positively isn’t a sign of a hero to-night; the hero’s dodging and shirking, the hero’s ashamed. Therefore, you know, I think, what you must all really be occupied with is the heroine.”