The waste of wonder might be proscribed; but Strether, characteristically, was even by this time in the immensity of space. “By which you mean that you know where she is?”
She just hesitated. “I mean that if she comes to see me I shall—now that I’ve pulled myself round a bit after the shock—not be at home.”
Strether hung poised. “You call it—your recognition—a shock?”
She gave one of her rare flickers of impatience. “It was a surprise, an emotion. Don’t be so literal. I wash my hands of her.”
Poor Strether’s face lengthened. “She’s impossible—?”
“She’s even more charming than I remembered her.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
She had to think how to put it. “Well, I’m impossible. It’s impossible. Everything’s impossible.”
He looked at her an instant. “I see where you’re coming out. Everything’s possible.” Their eyes had on it in fact an exchange of some duration; after which he pursued: “Isn’t it that beautiful child?” Then as she still said nothing: “Why don’t you mean to receive her?”
Her answer in an instant rang clear. “Because I wish to keep out of the business.”