"The only way for her not to come is for me to go home--as I believe that on the spot I could prevent it.

But the difficulty as to that is that if I do go home--" "I see, I see"-- she had easily understood.

"Mr.Newsome will do the same, and that's not"-- she laughed out now--"to be thought of." Strether had no laugh; he had only a quiet comparatively placid look that might have shown him as proof against ridicule.

"Strange, isn't it ?" They had, in the matter that so much interested them, come so far as this without sounding another name--to which however their present momentary silence was full of a conscious reference.

Strether's question was a sufficient implication of the weight it had gained with him during the absence of his hostess; and just for that reason a single gesture from her could pass for him as a vivid answer.