THE   AMBASSADORS
doubly woful amid all her dim, diffused elegance; consenting to
it as he had consented to the rest, and even conscious of some vague
inward irony in the presence of such a fine, free range of bliss and
bale. He couldn't say it was not no matter; for he was serving her
to the end, he now knew, anyway—quite as if what he thought of
her had nothing to do with it. It was actually moreover as if he
didn't think of her at all, as if he could think of nothing but the
passion, mature, abysmal, pitiful, she represented, and the possi-
bilities she betrayed. She was older for him to-night, visibly less
exempt from the touch of time; but she was as much as ever the
finest and subtlest creature, the happiest apparition, it had been
given him, in all his years, to meet; and yet he could see her there
as vulgarly troubled, in very truth, as a maidservant crying for her
young man. The only thing was that she judged herself as the
maidservant wouldn't; the weakness of which wisdom too, the dis-
honor of which judgment, seemed but to sink her lower. Her
collapse, however, no doubt, was briefer and she had in a manner
recovered herself before he intervened. " Of course, I'm afraid for
my life.   But that's nothing.   It isn't that."
He was silent a little longer, as if thinking what it might be.
" There's something I have in mind that I can still do."
But she threw off at last, with a sharp, sad headshake, drying her
eyes, what he could still do. " I don't care for that. Of course,
as I've said, you're acting, in your wonderful way, for yourself; and
what's for yourself is no more my business—though I may reach
out unholy hands so clumsily to touch it—than if it were some-
thing in Timbuctoo. It's only that you don't snub me, as you've
had fifty chances to do—it's only your beautiful patience that
makes one forget one's manners. In spite of your patience, all the
same," she went on, " you'd do anything rather than be with us
here, even if that were possible. You'd do everything for us but be
mixed up with us—which is a statement you can easily answer to
the advantage of your own manners. You can say ' What's the use
of talking of things that at the best are impossible?' What is, of
course, the use? It's only my little madness. You'd talk if you
were tormented. And I don't mean now about him. Oh, for
him—!" Positively, strangely, bitterly, as it seemed to Strether,
•ho gave "him," for the moment, away.   "You don't care what I
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