She had her indulgent headshake. “I’ve known nothing of what you know. I could only tell her I’d ask you.”
“Then I’ve not seen him for a week—and of course I’ve wondered.” His wonderment showed at this moment as sharper, but he presently went on. “Still, I dare say I can put my hand on him. Did she strike you,” he asked, “as anxious?”
“She’s always anxious.”
“After all I’ve done for her?” And he had one of the last flickers of his occasional mild mirth. “To think that was just what I came out to prevent!”
She took it up but to reply. “You don’t regard him then as safe?”
“I was just going to ask you how in that respect you regard Madame de Vionnet.”
She looked at him a little. “What woman was ever safe? She told me,” she added—and it was as if at the touch of the connexion—“of your extraordinary meeting in the country. After that à quoi se fier?”
“It was, as an accident, in all the possible or impossible chapter,” Strether conceded, “amazing enough. But still, but still—!”
“But still she didn’t mind?”
“She doesn’t mind anything.”