"It's wonderful!" she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face to face over it, they largely and recklessly laughed.
But she presently added: "Oh I see the principle.
If one didn't one would be lost.
But when once one has got hold of it—"
"It's as simple as twice two!
From the moment he had to do something—"
"A crowd"—she took him straight up—"was the only thing?
Rather, rather: a rumpus of sound," she laughed, "or nothing.
Mrs. Pocock's built in, or built out—whichever you call it; she's packed so tight she can't move.
She's in splendid isolation"—Miss Barrace embroidered the theme.
Strether followed, but scrupulous of justice. "Yet with every one in the place successively introduced to her."
"Wonderfully—but just so that it does build her out.
She's bricked up, she's buried alive!"
Strether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him to a sigh.
"Oh but she's not dead!
It will take more than this to kill her."
His companion had a pause that might have been for pity.
"No, I can't pretend I think she's finished—or that it's for more than to-night."
She remained pensive as if with the same compunction.
"It's only up to her chin." Then again for the fun of it:
"She can breathe."
"She can breathe!"—he echoed it in the same spirit.
"And do you know," he went on, "what's really all this time happening to me?—through the beauty of music, the gaiety of voices, the uproar in short of our revel and the felicity of your wit? The sound of Mrs. Pocock's respiration drowns for me, I assure you, every other.
It's literally all I hear."
She focussed him with her clink of chains.
"Well—!" she breathed ever so kindly.
"Well, what?"
"She IS free from her chin up," she mused; "and that WILL be enough for her."
"It will be enough for me!"
Strether ruefully laughed.
"Waymarsh has really," he then asked, "brought her to see you?"
"Yes—but that's the worst of it.
I could do you no good.
And yet I tried hard."
Strether wondered. "And how did you try?"
"Why I didn't speak of you."
"I see. That was better."
"Then what would have been worse?
For speaking or silent," she lightly wailed, "I somehow 'compromise.' And it has never been any one but you."
"That shows"—he was magnanimous—"that it's something not in you, but in one's self.
It's MY fault."
She was silent a little. "No, it's Mr. Waymarsh's.
It's the fault of his having brought her."
"Ah then," said Strether good-naturedly, "why DID he bring her?"
"He couldn't afford not to."
"Oh you were a trophy—one of the spoils of conquest?
But why in that case, since you do 'compromise'—"
"Don't I compromise HIM as well?
I do compromise him as well," Miss Barrace smiled.
"I compromise him as hard as I can.