“I doubt if I see as much as you. Do you pretend,” he went on, “that you don’t see—?”
“Well, what?”—she pressed him as he paused.
“Why that there must be a lot between them—and that it has been going on from the first; even from before I came.”
She took a minute to answer. “Who are they then—if it’s so grave?”
“It mayn’t be grave—it may be gay. But at any rate it’s marked. Only I don’t know,” Strether had to confess, “anything about them. Their name for instance was a thing that, after little Bilham’s information, I found it a kind of refreshment not to feel obliged to follow up.”
“Oh,” she returned, “if you think you’ve got off—!”
Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom. “I don’t think I’ve got off. I only think I’m breathing for about five minutes. I dare say I shall have, at the best, still to get on.” A look, over it all, passed between them, and the next minute he had come back to good humour. “I don’t meanwhile take the smallest interest in their name.”
“Nor in their nationality?—American, French, English, Polish?”
“I don’t care the least little ‘hang,’” he smiled, “for their nationality. It would be nice if they’re Polish!” he almost immediately added.
“Very nice indeed.” The transition kept up her spirits. “So you see you do care.”