It puzzled her a moment. “All?—Mr. Newsome with them?”
“Ah not yet! Sarah and Jim and Mamie. But Waymarsh with them—for Sarah. It’s too beautiful,” Strether continued; “I find I don’t get over that—it’s always a fresh joy. But it’s a fresh joy too,” he added, “that—well, what do you think? Little Bilham also goes. But he of course goes for Mamie.”
Miss Gostrey wondered. “‘For’ her? Do you mean they’re already engaged?”
“Well,” said Strether, “say then for me. He’ll do anything for me; just as I will, for that matter—anything I can—for him. Or for Mamie either. She’ll do anything for me.”
Miss Gostrey gave a comprehensive sigh. “The way you reduce people to subjection!”
“It’s certainly, on one side, wonderful. But it’s quite equalled, on another, by the way I don’t. I haven’t reduced Sarah, since yesterday; though I’ve succeeded in seeing her again, as I’ll presently tell you. The others however are really all right. Mamie, by that blessed law of ours, absolutely must have a young man.”
“But what must poor Mr. Bilham have? Do you mean they’ll marry for you?”
“I mean that, by the same blessed law, it won’t matter a grain if they don’t—I shan’t have in the least to worry.”
She saw as usual what he meant. “And Mr. Jim?—who goes for him?”
“Oh,” Strether had to admit, “I couldn’t manage that. He’s thrown, as usual, on the world; the world which, after all, by his account—for he has prodigious adventures—seems very good to him. He fortunately—‘over here,’ as he says—finds the world everywhere; and his most prodigious adventure of all,” he went on, “has been of course of the last few days.”