“Nothing. He practically ignores us—or spares us. He doesn’t write.”
“I see. But there are all the same,” she went on, “two quite distinct things that—given the wonderful place he’s in—may have happened to him. One is that he may have got brutalised. The other is that he may have got refined.”
Strether stared—this was a novelty. “Refined?”
“Oh,” she said quietly, “there are refinements.”
The way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh. “You have them!”
“As one of the signs,” she continued in the same tone, “they constitute perhaps the worst.”
He thought it over and his gravity returned. “Is it a refinement not to answer his mother’s letters?”
She appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out. “Oh I should say the greatest of all.”
“Well,” said Strether, “I’m quite content to let it, as one of the signs, pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do what he likes with me.”
This appeared to strike her. “How do you know it?”