It's what plays you least false." Interesting, touching, strikingly sincere as she let these things come from her, she yet puzzled and troubled him--so fine was the quaver of her quietness.

He felt what he had felt before with her, that there was always more behind what she showed, and more and more again behind that.

"You know so, at least," she added, "where you are!" "YOU ought to know it indeed then; for isn't what you've been giving exactly what has brought us together this way?
You've been making, as I've so fully let you know I've felt," Strether said, "the most precious present I've ever seen made, and if you can't sit down peacefully on that performance you ARE, no doubt, born to torment yourself.

But you ought," he wound up, "to be easy." "And not trouble you any more, no doubt--not thrust on you even the wonder and the beauty of what I've done; only let you regard our business as over, and well over, and see you depart in a peace that matches my own?
No doubt, no doubt, no doubt," she nervously repeated--"all the more that I don't really pretend I believe you couldn't, for yourself, NOT have done what you have.

I don't pretend you feel yourself victimised, for this evidently is the way you live, and it's what--we're agreed--is the best way.