“Call that then workable. But Mr. Newsome has much more to forget. How can he do it?”
“Ah there again we are! That’s just what I was to have made him do; just where I was to have worked with him and helped.”
She took it in silence and without attenuation—as if perhaps from very familiarity with the facts; and her thought made a connexion without showing the links. “Do you remember how we used to talk at Chester and in London about my seeing you through?” She spoke as of far-off things and as if they had spent weeks at the places she named.
“It’s just what you are doing.”
“Ah but the worst—since you’ve left such a margin—may be still to come. You may yet break down.”
“Yes, I may yet break down. But will you take me—?”
He had hesitated, and she waited. “Take you?”
“For as long as I can bear it.”
She also debated “Mr. Newsome and Madame de Vionnet may, as we were saying, leave town. How long do you think you can bear it without them?”
Strether’s reply to this was at first another question. “Do you mean in order to get away from me?”