"You've excited ME," Miss Gostrey smiled.
"I'M distinctly restless."
"Oh you were that when I found you.
It seems to me I've rather got you out of it.
What's this," he asked as he looked about him, "but a haunt of ancient peace?"
"I wish with all my heart," she presently replied, "I could make you treat it as a haven of rest."
On which they fronted each other, across the table, as if things unuttered were in the air.
Strether seemed, in his way, when he next spoke, to take some of them up.
"It wouldn't give me—that would be the trouble—what it will, no doubt, still give you.
I'm not," he explained, leaning back in his chair, but with his eyes on a small ripe round melon—"in real harmony with what surrounds me.
You ARE.
I take it too hard.
You DON'T.
It makes—that's what it comes to in the end—a fool of me."
Then at a tangent, "What has he been doing in London?" he demanded.
"Ah one may go to London," Maria laughed.
"You know I did."
Yes—he took the reminder.
"And you brought ME back." He brooded there opposite to her, but without gloom.
"Whom has Chad brought?
He's full of ideas.
And I wrote to Sarah," he added, "the first thing this morning.
So I'm square.
I'm ready for them."
She neglected certain parts of this speech in the interest of others.
"Marie said to me the other day that she felt him to have the makings of an immense man of business."
"There it is.
He's the son of his father!"
"But SUCH a father!"
"Ah just the right one from that point of view!
But it isn't his father in him," Strether added, "that troubles me."
"What is it then?"
He came back to his breakfast; he partook presently of the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was only after this that he met her question. Then moreover it was but to remark that he'd answer her presently.
She waited, she watched, she served him and amused him, and it was perhaps with this last idea that she soon reminded him of his having never even yet named to her the article produced at Woollett.
"Do you remember our talking of it in London—that night at the play?"
Before he could say yes, however, she had put it to him for other matters.
Did he remember, did he remember—this and that of their first days?
He remembered everything, bringing up with humour even things of which she professed no recollection, things she vehemently denied; and falling back above all on the great interest of their early time, the curiosity felt by both of them as to where he would "come out."
They had so assumed it was to be in some wonderful place—they had thought of it as so very MUCH out.
Well, that was doubtless what it had been—since he had come out just there.
He was out, in truth, as far as it was possible to be, and must now rather bethink himself of getting in again.
He found on the spot the image of his recent history; he was like one of the figures of the old clock at Berne. THEY came out, on one side, at their hour, jigged along their little course in the public eye, and went in on the other side. He too had jigged his little course—him too a modest retreat awaited.
He offered now, should she really like to know, to name the great product of Woollett.
It would be a great commentary on everything.
At this she stopped him off; she not only had no wish to know, but she wouldn't know for the world.
She had done with the products of Woollett—for all the good she had got from them.
She desired no further news of them, and she mentioned that Madame de Vionnet herself had, to her knowledge, lived exempt from the information he was ready to supply. She had never consented to receive it, though she would have taken it, under stress, from Mrs. Pocock.
But it was a matter about which Mrs. Pocock appeared to have had little to say—never sounding the word—and it didn't signify now.
There was nothing clearly for Maria Gostrey that signified now—save one sharp point, that is, to which she came in time.
"I don't know whether it's before you as a possibility that, left to himself, Mr. Chad may after all go back.