in the world for him."

"And you'd do anything in the world for THEM?"

He shifted again; she had made it perhaps just a shade too affirmative
for his nerves. "Oh I don't know!"

"You'd do at any rate this, and the 'anything' they'd do is
represented by their MAKING you do it."

"Ah they couldn't have come--either of them. They're very busy
people and Mrs. Newsome in particular has a large full life. She's
moreover highly nervous--and not at all strong."

"You mean she's an American invalid?"

He carefully distinguished. "There's nothing she likes less than to
be called one, but she would consent to be one of those things, I
think," he laughed, "if it were the only way to be the other."

"Consent to be an American in order to be an invalid?"

"No," said Strether, "the other way round. She's at any rate
delicate sensitive high-strung. She puts so much of herself into
everything--"

Ah Maria knew these things! "That she has nothing left for anything
else? Of course she hasn't. To whom do you say it? High-strung?
Don't I spend my life, for them, jamming down the pedal? I see
moreover how it has told on you."