Miss Gostrey seemed to fix the poor child. "I know what they CAN
be. And with money?"

"Not perhaps with a great deal of that--but with so much of
everything else that we don't miss it. We DON'T miss money much,
you know," Strether added, "in general, in America, in pretty
girls."

"No," she conceded; "but I know also what you do sometimes miss.
And do you," she asked, "yourself admire her?"

It was a question, he indicated, that there might be several ways
of taking; but he decided after an instant for the humorous.
"Haven't I sufficiently showed you how I admire ANY pretty girl?';

Her interest in his problem was by this time such that it scarce
left her freedom, and she kept close to the facts. "I supposed
that at Woollett you wanted them--what shall I call it?--
blameless. I mean your young men for your pretty girls."

"So did I!" Strether confessed. "But you strike there a curious
fact--the fact that Woollett too accommodates itself to the spirit
of the age and the increasing mildness of manners. Everything
changes, and I hold that our situation precisely marks a date. We
SHOULD prefer them blameless, but we have to make the best of them
as we find them. Since the spirit of the age and the increasing
mildness send them so much more to Paris--"

"You've to take them back as they come. When they DO come. Bon!"