THE   AMBASSADORS
snatches at the growing rose of observation, constantly stronger for
him, as he felt, in scent and color, and in which he could bury his
nose even to wantonness. This last resource was offered him, for
that matter, in the very form of his next clear perception—the vis-
ion of a prompt meeting, in the doorway of the room, between little
Bilham and brilliant Miss Barrace, who was entering as Bilham
withdrew. She had apparently put him a question, to which he had
replied by turning to indicate his late interlocutor; toward whom,
after an interrogation further aided by a resort to that optical
machinery that seemed, like her other ornaments, curious and
archaic, the genial lady, suggesting more than ever, for her fellow-
guest, the old French print, the historic portrait, directed herself
with an intention that Strether instantly met. He knew in advance
the first note she would sound, and took in, as she approached, all
her need of sounding it. Nothing yet had been so " wonderful " be-
tween them as the present occasion; and it was her special sense of
this quality in occasions that she was there, as she was in most
places, to feed. That sense had already been so well fed by the
situation about them that she had quitted the other room, forsaken
the music, dropped out of the play, abandoned, in a word, the stage
itself, that she might stand a minute behind the scenes with Strether
and so perhaps figure as one of the famous augurs replying, behind
the oracle, to the wink of the other. Seated near him presently
where little Bilham had sat, she replied in truth to many things;
beginning as soon as he had said to her—what he hoped he said
without fatuity—" All you ladies are extraordinarily kind to me."
She played her long handle, which shifted her observation; she
saw in an instant all the absences that left them free. " How can we
be anything else? But isn't that exactly your plight? ' We ladies '
—oh, we're nice, and you must be having enough of us ! As one of
us, you know, I don't know that I'm crazy about us. But Miss Gos-
trey, at least, to-night, has left you alone, hasn't she ?" With which
she again looked about as if Maria might still lurk.
" Oh yes," said Strether ; " she's only sitting up for me at home."
And then as this elicited from his companion her gay " Oh, oh, oh!"
he explained that he meant sitting up in suspense and prayer. " We
thought it on the whole better she shouldn't be present; and either
way, of course, it's a terrible worry for her,"   He abounded in the
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