The Ambassadors by Henry James

Newsome?”
    “Well, I haven’t
known
but what you are. You’re a very attractive man, Strether. You’ve seen for yourself,” said Waymarsh, “what that lady downstairs makes of it. Unless indeed,” he rambled on with an effect between the ironic and the anxious, “it’s you who are after
her
. Is Mrs. Newsome
over
here?” He spoke as with a droll dread of her.
    It made his friend—though rather dimly—smile. “Dear no; she’s safe, thank goodness—as I think I more and more feel—at home. She thought of coming, but she gave it up. I’ve come in a manner instead of her; and come to that extent—for you’re right in your inference—on her business. So you see there
is
plenty of connexion.”
    Waymarsh continued to see at least all there was. “Involving accordingly the particular one I’ve referred to?”
    Strether took another turn about the room, giving a twitch to his companion’s blanket and finally gaining the door. His feeling was that of a nurse who had earned personal rest by having made everything straight. “Involving more things than I can think of breaking ground on now. But don’t be afraid—you shall have them from me: you’ll probably find yourself having quite as muchof them as you can do with. I shall—if we keep together—very much depend on your impression of some of them.”
    Waymarsh’s acknowledgement of this tribute was characteristically indirect. “You mean to say you don’t believe we
will
keep together?”
    “I only glance at the danger,” Strether paternally said, “because when I hear you wail to go back I seem to see you open up such possibilities of folly.”
    Waymarsh took it—silent a little—like a large snubbed child. “What are you going to do with me?”
    It was the very question Strether himself had put to Miss Gostrey, and he wondered if he had sounded like that. But
he
at least could be more definite. “I’m going to take you right down to London.”
    “Oh I’ve
been
down to London!” Waymarsh more softly moaned. “I’ve no use, Strether, for anything down there.”
    “Well,” said Strether, good-humouredly, “I guess you’ve some use for me.”
    “So I’ve got to go?”
    “Oh you’ve got to go further yet.”
    “Well,” Waymarsh sighed, “do your damnedest! Only you
will
tell me before you lead me on all the way—?”
    Our friend had again so lost himself, both for amusement and for contrition, in the wonder of whether he had made, in his own challenge that afternoon, such another figure, that he for an instant missed the thread. “Tell you—?”
    “Why what you’ve got on hand.”
    Strether hesitated. “Why it’s such a matter as that even if I positively wanted I shouldn’t be able to keep it from you.”
    Waymarsh gloomily gazed. “What does that mean then but that your trip is just
for
her?”
    “For Mrs. Newsome? Oh it certainly is, as I say. Very much.”
    “Then why do you also say it’s for me?”
    Strether, in impatience, violently played with his latch. “It’s simple enough. It’s for both of you.”
    Waymarsh at last turned over with a groan. “Well,
I
won’t marry you!”
    “Neither, when it comes to that—!” But the visitor had already laughed and escaped.

III
     
    He had told Miss Gostrey he should probably take, for departure with Waymarsh, some afternoon train, and it thereupon in the morning appeared that this lady had made her own plan for an earlier one. She had breakfasted when Strether came into the coffee-room; but, Waymarsh not having yet emerged, he was in time to recall her to the terms of their understanding and to pronounce her discretion overdone. She was surely not to break away at the very moment she had created a want. He had met her as she rose from her little table in a window, where, with the morning papers beside her, she reminded him, as he let her know, of Major Pendennis breakfasting at his club—a compliment of which she professed a deep appreciation; and he detained her