She did so, Strether felt as she took her place beside him, in a manner that left nothing to desire.

He had dropped back on his bench, alone again for a time, and the more conscious for little Bilham's defection of his unexpressed thought; in respect to which however this next converser was a still more capacious vessel.

"It's the child!" he had exclaimed to her almost as soon as she appeared; and though her direct response was for some time delayed he could feel in her meanwhile the working of this truth.

It might have been simply, as she waited, that they were now in presence altogether of truth spreading like a flood and not for the moment to be offered her in the mere cupful; inasmuch as who should ces dames prove to be but persons about whom--once thus face to face with them--she found she might from the first have told him almost everything?
This would have freely come had he taken the simple precaution of giving her their name.

There could be no better example--and she appeared to note it with high amusement--than the way, making things out already so much for himself, he was at last throwing precautions to the winds.