Henry James Fullscreen Ambassadors (1903)

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"Why she's an angel of light."

"That's precisely the reason.

Leave her alone.

Don't try to find out.

I mean," he explained, "about what you spoke to me of—the way she feels." His companion wondered.

"Because one really won't?"

"Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to.

She's the most charming creature I've ever seen.

Therefore don't touch her.

Don't know—don't want to know.

And moreover—yes—you won't."

It was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in.

"As a favour to you?"

"Well—since you ask me."

"Anything, everything you ask," she smiled.

"I shan't know then—never.

Thank you," she added with peculiar gentleness as she turned away.

The sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if he had been tripped up and had a fall.

In the very act of arranging with her for his independence he had, under pressure from a particular perception, inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed himself, and, with her subtlety sensitive on the spot to an advantage, she had driven in by a single word a little golden nail, the sharp intention of which he signally felt.

He hadn't detached, he had more closely connected himself, and his eyes, as he considered with some intensity this circumstance, met another pair which had just come within their range and which struck him as reflecting his sense of what he had done.

He recognised them at the same moment as those of little Bilham, who had apparently drawn near on purpose to speak to him, and little Bilham wasn't, in the conditions, the person to whom his heart would be most closed.

They were seated together a minute later at the angle of the room obliquely opposite the corner in which Gloriani was still engaged with Jeanne de Vionnet, to whom at first and in silence their attention had been benevolently given.

"I can't see for my life," Strether had then observed, "how a young fellow of any spirit—such a one as you for instance—can be admitted to the sight of that young lady without being hard hit.

Why don't you go in, little Bilham?"

He remembered the tone into which he had been betrayed on the garden-bench at the sculptor's reception, and this might make up for that by being much more the right sort of thing to say to a young man worthy of any advice at all.

"There WOULD be some reason."

"Some reason for what?"

"Why for hanging on here."

"To offer my hand and fortune to Mademoiselle de Vionnet?"

"Well," Strether asked, "to what lovelier apparition COULD you offer them?

She's the sweetest little thing I've ever seen."

"She's certainly immense.

I mean she's the real thing.

I believe the pale pink petals are folded up there for some wondrous efflorescence in time; to open, that is, to some great golden sun.

I'M unfortunately but a small farthing candle.

What chance in such a field for a poor little painter-man?"

"Oh you're good enough," Strether threw out.

"Certainly I'm good enough.

We're good enough, I consider, nous autres, for anything.

But she's TOO good.

There's the difference.

They wouldn't look at me."

Strether, lounging on his divan and still charmed by the young girl, whose eyes had consciously strayed to him, he fancied, with a vague smile—Strether, enjoying the whole occasion as with dormant pulses at last awake and in spite of new material thrust upon him, thought over his companion's words.

"Whom do you mean by 'they'?

She and her mother?"

"She and her mother.

And she has a father too, who, whatever else he may be, certainly can't be indifferent to the possibilities she represents.

Besides, there's Chad."

Strether was silent a little. "Ah but he doesn't care for her—not, I mean, it appears, after all, in the sense I'm speaking of.

He's NOT in love with her."