“Well, she very far. I much less. I don’t begin to have her faith. She provides,” said Strether, “three fourths of that. And she provides, as I’ve confided to you, all the money.”
It evoked somehow a vision of gold that held for a little Miss Gostrey’s eyes, and she looked as if she heard the bright dollars shovelled in. “I hope then you make a good thing—”
“I never made a good thing!” he at once returned.
She just waited. “Don’t you call it a good thing to be loved?”
“Oh we’re not loved. We’re not even hated. We’re only just sweetly ignored.”
She had another pause. “You don’t trust me!” she once more repeated.
“Don’t I when I lift the last veil?—tell you the very secret of the prison-house?”
Again she met his eyes, but to the result that after an instant her own turned away with impatience. “You don’t sell? Oh I’m glad of that!” After which however, and before he could protest, she was off again. “She’s just a moral swell.”
He accepted gaily enough the definition. “Yes—I really think that describes her.”
But it had for his friend the oddest connexion. “How does she do her hair?”