They had gone to wait together in the garden for the dressing of
the meal, and Strether found her more suggestive than ever "Well,
what?"

"Is to bring about for them such a complexity of relations-unless
indeed we call it a simplicity!--that the situation HAS to wind
itself up. They want to go back."

"And you want them to go!" Strether gaily concluded.

"I always want them to go, and I send them as fast as I can.'

"Oh I know--you take them to Liverpool."

"Any port will serve in a storm. I'm--with all my other functions--
an agent for repatriation. I want to re-people our stricken
country. What will become of it else? I want to discourage others."

The ordered English garden, in the freshness of the day, was
delightful to Strether, who liked the sound, under his feet, of
the tight fine gravel, packed with the chronic damp, and who had
the idlest eye for the deep smoothness of turf and the clean
curves of paths. "Other people?"

"Other countries. Other people--yes. I want to encourage our own."

Strether wondered. "Not to come? Why then do you 'meet' them--
since it doesn't appear to be to stop them?"