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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ambassadors, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Ambassadors
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: February, 1996 [eBook #432]
+[Most recently updated: September 17, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Richard D. Hathaway and Julia P DeRanek
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMBASSADORS ***
+
+cover
+
+
+
+
+The Ambassadors
+
+by Henry James
+
+
+ New York Edition (1909) 
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ Volume I
+
+ Preface
+ Book First
+ Book Second
+ Book Third
+ Book Fourth
+ Book Fifth
+ Book Sixth
+
+ Volume II
+
+ Book Seventh
+ Book Eighth
+ Book Ninth
+ Book Tenth
+ Book Book Eleventh
+ Book Twelfth
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+Nothing is more easy than to state the subject of “The Ambassadors,”
+which first appeared in twelve numbers of _The North American Review_
+(1903) and was published as a whole the same year. The situation
+involved is gathered up betimes, that is in the second chapter of Book
+Fifth, for the reader’s benefit, into as few words as possible—planted
+or “sunk,” stiffly and saliently, in the centre of the current, almost
+perhaps to the obstruction of traffic. Never can a composition of this
+sort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of suggestion, and
+never can that grain, developed, overgrown and smothered, have yet
+lurked more in the mass as an independent particle. The whole case, in
+fine, is in Lambert Strether’s irrepressible outbreak to little Bilham
+on the Sunday afternoon in Gloriani’s garden, the candour with which he
+yields, for his young friend’s enlightenment, to the charming
+admonition of that crisis. The idea of the tale resides indeed in the
+very fact that an hour of such unprecedented ease should have been felt
+by him _as_ a crisis, and he is at pains to express it for us as neatly
+as we could desire. The remarks to which he thus gives utterance
+contain the essence of “The Ambassadors,” his fingers close, before he
+has done, round the stem of the full-blown flower; which, after that
+fashion, he continues officiously to present to us. “Live all you can;
+it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in
+particular so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what
+_have_ you had? I’m too old—too old at any rate for what I see. What
+one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. Still, we have the
+illusion of freedom; therefore don’t, like me to-day, be without the
+memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or
+too intelligent to have it, and now I’m a case of reaction against the
+mistake. Do what you like so long as you don’t make it. For it _was_ a
+mistake. Live, live!” Such is the gist of Strether’s appeal to the
+impressed youth, whom he likes and whom he desires to befriend; the
+word “mistake” occurs several times, it will be seen, in the course of
+his remarks—which gives the measure of the signal warning he feels
+attached to his case. He has accordingly missed too much, though
+perhaps after all constitutionally qualified for a better part, and he
+wakes up to it in conditions that press the spring of a terrible
+question. _Would_ there yet perhaps be time for reparation?—reparation,
+that is, for the injury done his character; for the affront, he is
+quite ready to say, so stupidly put upon it and in which he has even
+himself had so clumsy a hand? The answer to which is that he now at all
+events _sees_; so that the business of my tale and the march of my
+action, not to say the precious moral of everything, is just my
+demonstration of this process of vision.
+
+Nothing can exceed the closeness with which the whole fits again into
+its germ. That had been given me bodily, as usual, by the spoken word,
+for I was to take the image over exactly as I happened to have met it.
+A friend had repeated to me, with great appreciation, a thing or two
+said to him by a man of distinction, much his senior, and to which a
+sense akin to that of Strether’s melancholy eloquence might be
+imputed—said as chance would have, and so easily might, in Paris, and
+in a charming old garden attached to a house of art, and on a Sunday
+afternoon of summer, many persons of great interest being present. The
+observation there listened to and gathered up had contained part of the
+“note” that I was to recognise on the spot as to my purpose—had
+contained in fact the greater part; the rest was in the place and the
+time and the scene they sketched: these constituents clustered and
+combined to give me further support, to give me what I may call the
+note absolute. There it stands, accordingly, full in the tideway;
+driven in, with hard taps, like some strong stake for the noose of a
+cable, the swirl of the current roundabout it. What amplified the hint
+to more than the bulk of hints in general was the gift with it of the
+old Paris garden, for in that token were sealed up values infinitely
+precious. There was of course the seal to break and each item of the
+packet to count over and handle and estimate; but somehow, in the light
+of the hint, all the elements of a situation of the sort most to my
+taste were there. I could even remember no occasion on which, so
+confronted, I had found it of a livelier interest to take stock, in
+this fashion, of suggested wealth. For I think, verily, that there are
+degrees of merit in subjects—in spite of the fact that to treat even
+one of the most ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for
+the feverish and prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its
+dignity as _possibly_ absolute. What it comes to, doubtless, is that
+even among the supremely good—since with such alone is it one’s theory
+of one’s honour to be concerned—there is an ideal _beauty_ of goodness
+the invoked action of which is to raise the artistic faith to its
+maximum. Then truly, I hold, one’s theme may be said to shine, and that
+of “The Ambassadors,” I confess, wore this glow for me from beginning
+to end. Fortunately thus I am able to estimate this as, frankly, quite
+the best, “all round,” of all my productions; any failure of that
+justification would have made such an extreme of complacency publicly
+fatuous.
+
+I recall then in this connexion no moment of subjective intermittence,
+never one of those alarms as for a suspected hollow beneath one’s feet,
+a felt ingratitude in the scheme adopted, under which confidence fails
+and opportunity seems but to mock. If the motive of “The Wings of the
+Dove,” as I have noted, was to worry me at moments by a sealing-up of
+its face—though without prejudice to its again, of a sudden, fairly
+grimacing with expression—so in this other business I had absolute
+conviction and constant clearness to deal with; it had been a frank
+proposition, the whole bunch of data, installed on my premises like a
+monotony of fine weather. (The order of composition, in these things, I
+may mention, was reversed by the order of publication; the earlier
+written of the two books having appeared as the later.) Even under the
+weight of my hero’s years I could feel my postulate firm; even under
+the strain of the difference between those of Madame de Vionnet and
+those of Chad Newsome, a difference liable to be denounced as shocking,
+I could still feel it serene. Nothing resisted, nothing betrayed, I
+seem to make out, in this full and sound sense of the matter; it shed
+from any side I could turn it to the same golden glow. I rejoiced in
+the promise of a hero so mature, who would give me thereby the more to
+bite into—since it’s only into thickened motive and accumulated
+character, I think, that the painter of life bites more than a little.
+My poor friend should have accumulated character, certainly; or rather
+would be quite naturally and handsomely possessed of it, in the sense
+that he would have, and would always have felt he had, imagination
+galore, and that this yet wouldn’t have wrecked him. It was
+immeasurable, the opportunity to “do” a man of imagination, for if
+_there_ mightn’t be a chance to “bite,” where in the world might it be?
+This personage of course, so enriched, wouldn’t give me, for his type,
+imagination in _predominance_ or as his prime faculty, nor should I, in
+view of other matters, have found that convenient. So particular a
+luxury—some occasion, that is, for study of the high gift in _supreme_
+command of a case or of a career—would still doubtless come on the day
+I should be ready to pay for it; and till then might, as from far back,
+remain hung up well in view and just out of reach. The comparative case
+meanwhile would serve—it was only on the minor scale that I had treated
+myself even to comparative cases.
+
+I was to hasten to add however that, happy stopgaps as the minor scale
+had thus yielded, the instance in hand should enjoy the advantage of
+the full range of the major; since most immediately to the point was
+the question of that _supplement_ of situation logically involved in
+our gentleman’s impulse to deliver himself in the Paris garden on the
+Sunday afternoon—or if not involved by strict logic then all ideally
+and enchantingly implied in it. (I say “ideally,” because I need scarce
+mention that for development, for expression of its maximum, my
+glimmering story was, at the earliest stage, to have nipped the thread
+of connexion with the possibilities of the actual reported speaker.
+_He_ remains but the happiest of accidents; his actualities, all too
+definite, precluded any range of possibilities; it had only been his
+charming office to project upon that wide field of the artist’s
+vision—which hangs there ever in place like the white sheet suspended
+for the figures of a child’s magic-lantern—a more fantastic and more
+moveable shadow.) No privilege of the teller of tales and the handler
+of puppets is more delightful, or has more of the suspense and the
+thrill of a game of difficulty breathlessly played, than just this
+business of looking for the unseen and the occult, in a scheme
+half-grasped, by the light or, so to speak, by the clinging scent, of
+the gage already in hand. No dreadful old pursuit of the hidden slave
+with bloodhounds and the rag of association can ever, for “excitement,”
+I judge, have bettered it at its best. For the dramatist always, by the
+very law of his genius, believes not only in a possible right issue
+from the rightly-conceived tight place; he does much more than this—he
+believes, irresistibly, in the necessary, the precious “tightness” of
+the place (whatever the issue) on the strength of any respectable hint.
+It being thus the respectable hint that I had with such avidity picked
+up, what would be the story to which it would most inevitably form the
+centre? It is part of the charm attendant on such questions that the
+“story,” with the omens true, as I say, puts on from this stage the
+authenticity of concrete existence. It then is, essentially—it begins
+to be, though it may more or less obscurely lurk, so that the point is
+not in the least what to make of it, but only, very delightfully and
+very damnably, where to put one’s hand on it.
+
+In which truth resides surely much of the interest of that admirable
+mixture for salutary application which we know as art. Art deals with
+what we see, it must first contribute full-handed that ingredient; it
+plucks its material, otherwise expressed, in the garden of life—which
+material elsewhere grown is stale and uneatable. But it has no sooner
+done this than it has to take account of a _process_—from which only
+when it’s the basest of the servants of man, incurring ignominious
+dismissal with no “character,” does it, and whether under some muddled
+pretext of morality or on any other, pusillanimously edge away. The
+process, that of the expression, the literal squeezing-out, of value is
+another affair—with which the happy luck of mere finding has little to
+do. The joys of finding, at this stage, are pretty well over; that
+quest of the subject as a whole by “matching,” as the ladies say at the
+shops, the big piece with the snippet, having ended, we assume, with a
+capture. The subject is found, and if the problem is then transferred
+to the ground of what to do with it the field opens out for any amount
+of doing. This is precisely the infusion that, as I submit, completes
+the strong mixture. It is on the other hand the part of the business
+that can least be likened to the chase with horn and hound. It’s all a
+sedentary part—involves as much ciphering, of sorts, as would merit the
+highest salary paid to a chief accountant. Not, however, that the chief
+accountant hasn’t _his_ gleams of bliss; for the felicity, or at least
+the equilibrium of the artist’s state dwells less, surely, in the
+further delightful complications he can smuggle in than in those he
+succeeds in keeping out. He sows his seed at the risk of too thick a
+crop; wherefore yet again, like the gentlemen who audit ledgers, he
+must keep his head at any price. In consequence of all which, for the
+interest of the matter, I might seem here to have my choice of
+narrating my “hunt” for Lambert Strether, of describing the capture of
+the shadow projected by my friend’s anecdote, or of reporting on the
+occurrences subsequent to that triumph. But I had probably best attempt
+a little to glance in each direction; since it comes to me again and
+again, over this licentious record, that one’s bag of adventures,
+conceived or conceivable, has been only half-emptied by the mere
+telling of one’s story. It depends so on what one means by that
+equivocal quantity. There is the story of one’s hero, and then, thanks
+to the intimate connexion of things, the story of one’s story itself. I
+blush to confess it, but if one’s a dramatist one’s a dramatist, and
+the latter imbroglio is liable on occasion to strike me as really the
+more objective of the two.
+
+The philosophy imputed to him in that beautiful outbreak, the hour
+there, amid such happy provision, striking for him, would have been
+then, on behalf of my man of imagination, to be logically and, as the
+artless craft of comedy has it, “led up” to; the probable course to
+such a goal, the goal of so conscious a predicament, would have in
+short to be finely calculated. Where has he come from and why has he
+come, what is he doing (as we Anglo-Saxons, and we only, say, in our
+foredoomed clutch of exotic aids to expression) in that _galère?_ To
+answer these questions plausibly, to answer them as under
+cross-examination in the witness-box by counsel for the prosecution, in
+other words satisfactorily to account for Strether and for his
+“peculiar tone,” was to possess myself of the entire fabric. At the
+same time the clue to its whereabouts would lie in a certain principle
+of probability: he wouldn’t have indulged in his peculiar tone without
+a reason; it would take a felt predicament or a false position to give
+him so ironic an accent. One hadn’t been noting “tones” all one’s life
+without recognising when one heard it the voice of the false position.
+The dear man in the Paris garden was then admirably and unmistakeably
+_in_ one—which was no small point gained; what next accordingly
+concerned us was the determination of _this_ identity. One could only
+go by probabilities, but there was the advantage that the most general
+of the probabilities were virtual certainties. Possessed of our
+friend’s nationality, to start with, there was a general probability in
+his narrower localism; which, for that matter, one had really but to
+keep under the lens for an hour to see it give up its secrets. He would
+have issued, our rueful worthy, from the very heart of New England—at
+the heels of which matter of course a perfect train of secrets tumbled
+for me into the light. They had to be sifted and sorted, and I shall
+not reproduce the detail of that process; but unmistakeably they were
+all there, and it was but a question, auspiciously, of picking among
+them. What the “position” would infallibly be, and why, on his hands,
+it had turned “false”—these inductive steps could only be as rapid as
+they were distinct. I accounted for everything—and “everything” had by
+this time become the most promising quantity—by the view that he had
+come to Paris in some state of mind which was literally undergoing, as
+a result of new and unexpected assaults and infusions, a change almost
+from hour to hour. He had come with a view that might have been figured
+by a clear green liquid, say, in a neat glass phial; and the liquid,
+once poured into the open cup of _application_, once exposed to the
+action of another air, had begun to turn from green to red, or
+whatever, and might, for all he knew, be on its way to purple, to
+black, to yellow. At the still wilder extremes represented perhaps, for
+all he could say to the contrary, by a variability so violent, he would
+at first, naturally, but have gazed in surprise and alarm; whereby the
+_situation_ clearly would spring from the play of wildness and the
+development of extremes. I saw in a moment that, should this
+development proceed both with force and logic, my “story” would leave
+nothing to be desired. There is always, of course, for the
+story-teller, the irresistible determinant and the incalculable
+advantage of his interest in the story _as such_; it is ever,
+obviously, overwhelmingly, the prime and precious thing (as other than
+this I have never been able to see it); as to which what makes for it,
+with whatever headlong energy, may be said to pale before the energy
+with which it simply makes for itself. It rejoices, none the less, at
+its best, to seem to offer itself in a light, to seem to know, and with
+the very last knowledge, what it’s about—liable as it yet is at moments
+to be caught by us with its tongue in its cheek and absolutely no
+warrant but its splendid impudence. Let us grant then that the
+impudence is always there—there, so to speak, for grace and effect and
+_allure_; there, above all, because the Story is just the spoiled child
+of art, and because, as we are always disappointed when the pampered
+don’t “play up,” we like it, to that extent, to look all its character.
+It probably does so, in truth, even when we most flatter ourselves that
+we negotiate with it by treaty.
+
+All of which, again, is but to say that the _steps_, for my fable,
+placed themselves with a prompt and, as it were, functional
+assurance—an air quite as of readiness to have dispensed with logic had
+I been in fact too stupid for my clue. Never, positively, none the
+less, as the links multiplied, had I felt less stupid than for the
+determination of poor Strether’s errand and for the apprehension of his
+issue. These things continued to fall together, as by the neat action
+of their own weight and form, even while their commentator scratched
+his head about them; he easily sees now that they were always well in
+advance of him. As the case completed itself he had in fact, from a
+good way behind, to catch up with them, breathless and a little
+flurried, as he best could. _The_ false position, for our belated man
+of the world—belated because he had endeavoured so long to escape being
+one, and now at last had really to face his doom—the false position for
+him, I say, was obviously to have presented himself at the gate of that
+boundless menagerie primed with a moral scheme of the most approved
+pattern which was yet framed to break down on any approach to vivid
+facts; that is to any at all liberal appreciation of them. There would
+have been of course the case of the Strether prepared, wherever
+presenting himself, only to judge and to feel meanly; but _he_ would
+have moved for me, I confess, enveloped in no legend whatever. The
+actual man’s note, from the first of our seeing it struck, is the note
+of discrimination, just as his drama is to become, under stress, the
+drama of discrimination. It would have been his blest imagination, we
+have seen, that had already helped him to discriminate; the element
+that was for so much of the pleasure of my cutting thick, as I have
+intimated, into his intellectual, into his moral substance. Yet here it
+was, at the same time, just here, that a shade for a moment fell across
+the scene.
+
+There was the dreadful little old tradition, one of the platitudes of
+the human comedy, that people’s moral scheme _does_ break down in
+Paris; that nothing is more frequently observed; that hundreds of
+thousands of more or less hypocritical or more or less cynical persons
+annually visit the place for the sake of the probable catastrophe, and
+that I came late in the day to work myself up about it. There was in
+fine the _trivial_ association, one of the vulgarest in the world; but
+which give me pause no longer, I think, simply because its vulgarity is
+so advertised. The revolution performed by Strether under the influence
+of the most interesting of great cities was to have nothing to do with
+any _bêtise_ of the imputably “tempted” state; he was to be thrown
+forward, rather, thrown quite with violence, upon his lifelong trick of
+intense reflexion: which friendly test indeed was to bring him out,
+through winding passages, through alternations of darkness and light,
+very much _in_ Paris, but with the surrounding scene itself a minor
+matter, a mere symbol for more things than had been dreamt of in the
+philosophy of Woollett. Another surrounding scene would have done as
+well for our show could it have represented a place in which Strether’s
+errand was likely to lie and his crisis to await him. The _likely_
+place had the great merit of sparing me preparations; there would have
+been too many involved—not at all impossibilities, only rather worrying
+and delaying difficulties—in positing elsewhere Chad Newsome’s
+interesting relation, his so interesting complexity of relations.
+Strether’s appointed stage, in fine, could be but Chad’s most luckily
+selected one. The young man had gone in, as they say, for circumjacent
+charm; and where he would have found it, by the turn of his mind, most
+“authentic,” was where his earnest friend’s analysis would most find
+_him_; as well as where, for that matter, the former’s whole analytic
+faculty would be led such a wonderful dance.
+
+“The Ambassadors” had been, all conveniently, “arranged for”; its first
+appearance was from month to month, in the _North American Review_
+during 1903, and I had been open from far back to any pleasant
+provocation for ingenuity that might reside in one’s actively
+adopting—so as to make it, in its way, a small compositional
+law—recurrent breaks and resumptions. I had made up my mind here
+regularly to exploit and enjoy these often rather rude jolts—having
+found, as I believed an admirable way to it; yet every question of form
+and pressure, I easily remember, paled in the light of the major
+propriety, recognised as soon as really weighed; that of employing but
+one centre and keeping it all within my hero’s compass. The thing was
+to be so much this worthy’s intimate adventure that even the projection
+of his consciousness upon it from beginning to end without intermission
+or deviation would probably still leave a part of its value for him,
+and _a fortiori_ for ourselves, unexpressed. I might, however, express
+every grain of it that there would be room for—on condition of
+contriving a splendid particular economy. Other persons in no small
+number were to people the scene, and each with his or her axe to grind,
+his or her situation to treat, his or her coherency not to fail of, his
+or her relation to my leading motive, in a word, to establish and carry
+on. But Strether’s sense of these things, and Strether’s only, should
+avail me for showing them; I should know them but through his more or
+less groping knowledge of them, since his very gropings would figure
+among his most interesting motions, and a full observance of the rich
+rigour I speak of would give me more of the effect I should be most
+“after” than all other possible observances together. It would give me
+a large unity, and that in turn would crown me with the grace to which
+the enlightened story-teller will at any time, for his interest,
+sacrifice if need be all other graces whatever. I refer of course to
+the grace of intensity, which there are ways of signally achieving and
+ways of signally missing—as we see it, all round us, helplessly and
+woefully missed. Not that it isn’t, on the other hand, a virtue
+eminently subject to appreciation—there being no strict, no absolute
+measure of it; so that one may hear it acclaimed where it has quite
+escaped one’s perception, and see it unnoticed where one has gratefully
+hailed it. After all of which I am not sure, either, that the immense
+amusement of the whole cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not
+operate, for the fond fabulist, when judicious not less than fond, as
+his best of determinants. That charming principle is always there, at
+all events, to keep interest fresh: it is a principle, we remember,
+essentially ravenous, without scruple and without mercy, appeased with
+no cheap nor easy nourishment. It enjoys the costly sacrifice and
+rejoices thereby in the very odour of difficulty—even as ogres, with
+their “Fee-faw-fum!” rejoice in the smell of the blood of Englishmen.
+
+Thus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so
+speedy, definition of my gentleman’s job—his coming out, all solemnly
+appointed and deputed, to “save” Chad, and his then finding the young
+man so disobligingly and, at first, so bewilderingly not lost that a
+new issue altogether, in the connexion, prodigiously faces them, which
+has to be dealt with in a new light—promised as many calls on ingenuity
+and on the higher branches of the compositional art as one could
+possibly desire. Again and yet again, as, from book to book, I proceed
+with my survey, I find no source of interest equal to this verification
+after the fact, as I may call it, and the more in detail the better, of
+the scheme of consistency “gone in” for. As always—since the charm
+never fails—the retracing of the process from point to point brings
+back the old illusion. The old intentions bloom again and flower—in
+spite of all the blossoms they were to have dropped by the way. This is
+the charm, as I say, of adventure _transposed_—the thrilling ups and
+downs, the intricate ins and outs of the compositional problem, made
+after such a fashion admirably objective, becoming the question at
+issue and keeping the author’s heart in his mouth. Such an element, for
+instance, as his intention that Mrs. Newsome, away off with her finger
+on the pulse of Massachusetts, should yet be no less intensely than
+circuitously present through the whole thing, should be no less felt as
+to be reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest
+portrayal at first hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good
+faith, I say, once it’s unmistakeably there, takes on again an
+actuality not too much impaired by the comparative dimness of the
+particular success. Cherished intention too inevitably acts and
+operates, in the book, about fifty times as little as I had fondly
+dreamt it might; but that scarce spoils for me the pleasure of
+recognising the fifty ways in which I had sought to provide for it. The
+mere charm of seeing such an idea constituent, in its degree; the
+fineness of the measures taken—a real extension, if successful, of the
+very terms and possibilities of representation and figuration—such
+things alone were, after this fashion, inspiring, such things alone
+were a gage of the probable success of that dissimulated calculation
+with which the whole effort was to square. But oh the cares begotten,
+none the less, of that same “judicious” sacrifice to a particular form
+of interest! One’s work should have composition, because composition
+alone is positive beauty; but all the while—apart from one’s inevitable
+consciousness too of the dire paucity of readers ever recognising or
+ever missing positive beauty—how, as to the cheap and easy, at every
+turn, how, as to immediacy and facility, and even as to the commoner
+vivacity, positive beauty might have to be sweated for and paid for!
+Once achieved and installed it may always be trusted to make the poor
+seeker feel he would have blushed to the roots of his hair for failing
+of it; yet, how, as its virtue can be essentially but the virtue of the
+whole, the wayside traps set in the interest of muddlement and pleading
+but the cause of the moment, of the particular bit in itself, have to
+be kicked out of the path! All the sophistications in life, for
+example, might have appeared to muster on behalf of the menace—the
+menace to a bright variety—involved in Strether’s having all the
+subjective “say,” as it were, to himself.
+
+Had I, meanwhile, made him at once hero and historian, endowed him with
+the romantic privilege of the “first person”—the darkest abyss of
+romance this, inveterately, when enjoyed on the grand scale—variety,
+and many other queer matters as well, might have been smuggled in by a
+back door. Suffice it, to be brief, that the first person, in the long
+piece, is a form foredoomed to looseness and that looseness, never much
+my affair, had never been so little so as on this particular occasion.
+All of which reflexions flocked to the standard from the moment—a very
+early one—the question of how to keep my form amusing while sticking so
+close to my central figure and constantly taking its pattern from him
+had to be faced. He arrives (arrives at Chester) as for the dreadful
+purpose of giving his creator “no end” to tell about him—before which
+rigorous mission the serenest of creators might well have quailed. I
+was far from the serenest; I was more than agitated enough to reflect
+that, grimly deprived of one alternative or one substitute for
+“telling,” I must address myself tooth and nail to another. I couldn’t,
+save by implication, make other persons tell _each other_ about
+him—blest resource, blest necessity, of the drama, which reaches its
+effects of unity, all remarkably, by paths absolutely opposite to the
+paths of the novel: with other persons, save as they were primarily
+_his_ persons (not he primarily but one of theirs), I had simply
+nothing to do. I had relations for him none the less, by the mercy of
+Providence, quite as much as if my exhibition was to be a muddle; if I
+could only by implication and a show of consequence make other persons
+tell each other about him, I could at least make him tell _them_
+whatever in the world he must; and could so, by the same token—which
+was a further luxury thrown in—see straight into the deep differences
+between what that could do for me, or at all events for _him_, and the
+large ease of “autobiography.” It may be asked why, if one so keeps to
+one’s hero, one shouldn’t make a single mouthful of “method,” shouldn’t
+throw the reins on his neck and, letting them flap there as free as in
+“Gil Blas” or in “David Copperfield,” equip him with the double
+privilege of subject and object—a course that has at least the merit of
+brushing away questions at a sweep. The answer to which is, I think,
+that one makes that surrender only if one is prepared _not_ to make
+certain precious discriminations.
+
+The “first person” then, so employed, is addressed by the author
+directly to ourselves, his possible readers, whom he has to reckon
+with, at the best, by our English tradition, so loosely and vaguely
+after all, so little respectfully, on so scant a presumption of
+exposure to criticism. Strether, on the other hand, encaged and
+provided for as “The Ambassadors” encages and provides, has to keep in
+view proprieties much stiffer and more salutary than any our straight
+and credulous gape are likely to bring home to him, has exhibitional
+conditions to meet, in a word, that forbid the terrible _fluidity_ of
+self-revelation. I may seem not to better the case for my
+discrimination if I say that, for my first care, I had thus inevitably
+to set him up a confidant or two, to wave away with energy the custom
+of the seated mass of explanation after the fact, the inserted block of
+merely referential narrative, which flourishes so, to the shame of the
+modern impatience, on the serried page of Balzac, but which seems
+simply to appal our actual, our general weaker, digestion. “Harking
+back to make up” took at any rate more doing, as the phrase is, not
+only than the reader of to-day demands, but than he will tolerate at
+any price any call upon him either to understand or remotely to
+measure; and for the beauty of the thing when done the current
+editorial mind in particular appears wholly without sense. It is not,
+however, primarily for either of these reasons, whatever their weight,
+that Strether’s friend Waymarsh is so keenly clutched at, on the
+threshold of the book, or that no less a pounce is made on Maria
+Gostrey—without even the pretext, either, of _her_ being, in essence,
+Strether’s friend. She is the reader’s friend much rather—in
+consequence of dispositions that make him so eminently require one; and
+she acts in that capacity, and _really_ in that capacity alone, with
+exemplary devotion from beginning to and of the book. She is an
+enrolled, a direct, aid to lucidity; she is in fine, to tear off her
+mask, the most unmitigated and abandoned of _ficelles_. Half the
+dramatist’s art, as we well know—since if we don’t it’s not the fault
+of the proofs that lie scattered about us—is in the use of _ficelles_;
+by which I mean in a deep dissimulation of his dependence on them.
+Waymarsh only to a slighter degree belongs, in the whole business, less
+to my subject than to my treatment of it; the interesting proof, in
+these connexions, being that one has but to take one’s subject for the
+stuff of drama to interweave with enthusiasm as many Gostreys as need
+be.
+
+The material of “The Ambassadors,” conforming in this respect exactly
+to that of “The Wings of the Dove,” published just before it, is taken
+absolutely for the stuff of drama; so that, availing myself of the
+opportunity given me by this edition for some prefatory remarks on the
+latter work, I had mainly to make on its behalf the point of its scenic
+consistency. It disguises that virtue, in the oddest way in the world,
+by just _looking_, as we turn its pages, as little scenic as possible;
+but it sharply divides itself, just as the composition before us does,
+into the parts that prepare, that tend in fact to over-prepare, for
+scenes, and the parts, or otherwise into the scenes, that justify and
+crown the preparation. It may definitely be said, I think, that
+everything in it that is not scene (not, I of course mean, complete and
+functional scene, treating _all_ the submitted matter, as by logical
+start, logical turn, and logical finish) is discriminated preparation,
+is the fusion and synthesis of picture. These alternations propose
+themselves all recogniseably, I think, from an early stage, as the very
+form and figure of “The Ambassadors”; so that, to repeat, such an agent
+as Miss Gostrey pre-engaged at a high salary, but waits in the draughty
+wing with her shawl and her smelling-salts. Her function speaks at once
+for itself, and by the time she has dined with Strether in London and
+gone to a play with him her intervention as a _ficelle_ is, I hold,
+expertly justified. Thanks to it we have treated scenically, and
+scenically alone, the whole lumpish question of Strether’s “past,”
+which has seen us more happily on the way than anything else could have
+done; we have strained to a high lucidity and vivacity (or at least we
+hope we have) certain indispensable facts; we have seen our two or
+three immediate friends all conveniently and profitably in “action”; to
+say nothing of our beginning to descry others, of a remoter intensity,
+getting into motion, even if a bit vaguely as yet, for our further
+enrichment. Let my first point be here that the scene in question, that
+in which the whole situation at Woollett and the complex forces that
+have propelled my hero to where this lively extractor of his value and
+distiller of his essence awaits him, is normal and entire, is really an
+excellent _standard_ scene; copious, comprehensive, and accordingly
+never short, but with its office as definite as that of the hammer on
+the gong of the clock, the office of expressing _all that is in_ the
+hour.
+
+The “_ficelle_” character of the subordinate party is as artfully
+dissimulated, throughout, as may be, and to that extent that, with the
+seams or joints of Maria Gostrey’s ostensible connectedness taken
+particular care of, duly smoothed over, that is, and anxiously kept
+from showing as “pieced on,” this figure doubtless achieves, after a
+fashion, something of the dignity of a prime idea: which circumstance
+but shows us afresh how many quite incalculable but none the less clear
+sources of enjoyment for the infatuated artist, how many copious
+springs of our never-to-be-slighted “fun” for the reader and critic
+susceptible of contagion, may sound their incidental plash as soon as
+an artistic process begins to enjoy free development. Exquisite—in
+illustration of this—the mere interest and amusement of such at once
+“creative” and critical questions as how and where and why to make Miss
+Gostrey’s false connexion carry itself, under a due high polish, as a
+real one. Nowhere is it more of an artful expedient for mere
+consistency of form, to mention a case, than in the last “scene” of the
+book, where its function is to give or to add nothing whatever, but
+only to express as vividly as possible certain things quite other than
+itself and that are of the already fixed and appointed measure. Since,
+however, all art is _expression_, and is thereby vividness, one was to
+find the door open here to any amount of delightful dissimulation.
+These verily are the refinements and ecstasies of method—amid which, or
+certainly under the influence of any exhilarated demonstration of
+which, one must keep one’s head and not lose one’s way. To cultivate an
+adequate intelligence for them and to make that sense operative is
+positively to find a charm in any produced ambiguity of appearance that
+is not by the same stroke, and all helplessly, an ambiguity of sense.
+To project imaginatively, for my hero, a relation that has nothing to
+do with the matter (the matter of my subject) but has everything to do
+with the manner (the manner of my presentation of the same) and yet to
+treat it, at close quarters and for fully economic expression’s
+possible sake, as if it were important and essential—to do that sort of
+thing and yet muddle nothing may easily become, as one goes, a signally
+attaching proposition; even though it all remains but part and parcel,
+I hasten to recognise, of the merely general and related question of
+expressional curiosity and expressional decency.
+
+I am moved to add after so much insistence on the scenic side of my
+labour that I have found the steps of re-perusal almost as much waylaid
+here by quite another style of effort in the same signal interest—or
+have in other words not failed to note how, even so associated and so
+discriminated, the finest proprieties and charms of the non-scenic may,
+under the right hand for them, still keep their intelligibility and
+assert their office. Infinitely suggestive such an observation as this
+last on the whole delightful head, where representation is concerned,
+of possible variety, of effective expressional change and contrast. One
+would like, at such an hour as this, for critical licence, to go into
+the matter of the noted inevitable deviation (from too fond an original
+vision) that the exquisite treachery even of the straightest execution
+may ever be trusted to inflict even on the most mature plan—the case
+being that, though one’s last reconsidered production always seems to
+bristle with that particular evidence, “The Ambassadors” would place a
+flood of such light at my service. I must attach to my final remark
+here a different import; noting in the other connexion I just glanced
+at that such passages as that of my hero’s first encounter with Chad
+Newsome, absolute attestations of the non-scenic form though they be,
+yet lay the firmest hand too—so far at least as intention goes—on
+representational effect. To report at all closely and completely of
+what “passes” on a given occasion is inevitably to become more or less
+scenic; and yet in the instance I allude to, _with_ the conveyance,
+expressional curiosity and expressional decency are sought and arrived
+at under quite another law. The true inwardness of this may be at
+bottom but that one of the suffered treacheries has consisted
+precisely, for Chad’s whole figure and presence, of a direct
+presentability diminished and compromised—despoiled, that is, of its
+_proportional_ advantage; so that, in a word, the whole economy of his
+author’s relation to him has at important points to be redetermined.
+The book, however, critically viewed, is touchingly full of these
+disguised and repaired losses, these insidious recoveries, these
+intensely redemptive consistencies. The pages in which Mamie Pocock
+gives her appointed and, I can’t but think, duly felt lift to the whole
+action by the so inscrutably-applied side-stroke or short-cut of our
+just watching and as quite at an angle of vision as yet untried, her
+single hour of suspense in the hotel salon, in our partaking of her
+concentrated study of the sense of matters bearing on her own case, all
+the bright warm Paris afternoon, from the balcony that overlooks the
+Tuileries garden—these are as marked an example of the representational
+virtue that insists here and there on being, for the charm of
+opposition and renewal, other than the scenic. It wouldn’t take much to
+make me further argue that from an equal play of such oppositions the
+book gathers an intensity that fairly adds to the dramatic—though the
+latter is supposed to be the sum of all intensities; or that has at any
+rate nothing to fear from juxtaposition with it. I consciously fail to
+shrink in fact from that extravagance—I risk it rather, for the sake of
+the moral involved; which is not that the particular production before
+us exhausts the interesting questions it raises, but that the Novel
+remains still, under the right persuasion, the most independent, most
+elastic, most prodigious of literary forms.
+
+
+ HENRY JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+Book First
+
+
+ I
+
+Strether’s first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his
+friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive
+till evening he was not wholly disconcerted. A telegram from him
+bespeaking a room “only if not noisy,” reply paid, was produced for the
+enquirer at the office, so that the understanding they should meet at
+Chester rather than at Liverpool remained to that extent sound. The
+same secret principle, however, that had prompted Strether not
+absolutely to desire Waymarsh’s presence at the dock, that had led him
+thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of it, now operated to
+make him feel he could still wait without disappointment. They would
+dine together at the worst, and, with all respect to dear old
+Waymarsh—if not even, for that matter, to himself—there was little fear
+that in the sequel they shouldn’t see enough of each other. The
+principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most
+newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive—the fruit of a
+sharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking,
+after so much separation, into his comrade’s face, his business would
+be a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to
+present itself to the nearing steamer as the first “note,” of Europe.
+Mixed with everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether’s
+part, that it would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in
+quite a sufficient degree.
+
+That note had been meanwhile—since the previous afternoon, thanks to
+this happier device—such a consciousness of personal freedom as he
+hadn’t known for years; such a deep taste of change and of having above
+all for the moment nobody and nothing to consider, as promised already,
+if headlong hope were not too foolish, to colour his adventure with
+cool success. There were people on the ship with whom he had easily
+consorted—so far as ease could up to now be imputed to him—and who for
+the most part plunged straight into the current that set from the
+landing-stage to London; there were others who had invited him to a
+tryst at the inn and had even invoked his aid for a “look round” at the
+beauties of Liverpool; but he had stolen away from every one alike, had
+kept no appointment and renewed no acquaintance, had been indifferently
+aware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves fortunate in
+being, unlike himself, “met,” and had even independently, unsociably,
+alone, without encounter or relapse and by mere quiet evasion, given
+his afternoon and evening to the immediate and the sensible. They
+formed a qualified draught of Europe, an afternoon and an evening on
+the banks of the Mersey, but such as it was he took his potion at least
+undiluted. He winced a little, truly, at the thought that Waymarsh
+might be already at Chester; he reflected that, should he have to
+describe himself there as having “got in” so early, it would be
+difficult to make the interval look particularly eager; but he was like
+a man who, elatedly finding in his pocket more money than usual,
+handles it a while and idly and pleasantly chinks it before addressing
+himself to the business of spending. That he was prepared to be vague
+to Waymarsh about the hour of the ship’s touching, and that he both
+wanted extremely to see him and enjoyed extremely the duration of
+delay—these things, it is to be conceived, were early signs in him that
+his relation to his actual errand might prove none of the simplest. He
+was burdened, poor Strether—it had better be confessed at the
+outset—with the oddity of a double consciousness. There was detachment
+in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference.
+
+After the young woman in the glass cage had held up to him across her
+counter the pale-pink leaflet bearing his friend’s name, which she
+neatly pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall, facing
+a lady who met his eyes as with an intention suddenly determined, and
+whose features—not freshly young, not markedly fine, but on happy terms
+with each other—came back to him as from a recent vision. For a moment
+they stood confronted; then the moment placed her: he had noticed her
+the day before, noticed her at his previous inn, where—again in the
+hall—she had been briefly engaged with some people of his own ship’s
+company. Nothing had actually passed between them, and he would as
+little have been able to say what had been the sign of her face for him
+on the first occasion as to name the ground of his present recognition.
+Recognition at any rate appeared to prevail on her own side as
+well—which would only have added to the mystery. All she now began by
+saying to him nevertheless was that, having chanced to catch his
+enquiry, she was moved to ask, by his leave, if it were possibly a
+question of Mr. Waymarsh of Milrose Connecticut—Mr. Waymarsh the
+American lawyer.
+
+“Oh yes,” he replied, “my very well-known friend. He’s to meet me here,
+coming up from Malvern, and I supposed he’d already have arrived. But
+he doesn’t come till later, and I’m relieved not to have kept him. Do
+you know him?” Strether wound up.
+
+It wasn’t till after he had spoken that he became aware of how much
+there had been in him of response; when the tone of her own rejoinder,
+as well as the play of something more in her face—something more, that
+is, than its apparently usual restless light—seemed to notify him.
+“I’ve met him at Milrose—where I used sometimes, a good while ago, to
+stay; I had friends there who were friends of his, and I’ve been at his
+house. I won’t answer for it that he would know me,” Strether’s new
+acquaintance pursued; “but I should be delighted to see him. Perhaps,”
+she added, “I shall—for I’m staying over.” She paused while our friend
+took in these things, and it was as if a good deal of talk had already
+passed. They even vaguely smiled at it, and Strether presently observed
+that Mr. Waymarsh would, no doubt, be easily to be seen. This, however,
+appeared to affect the lady as if she might have advanced too far. She
+appeared to have no reserves about anything. “Oh,” she said, “he won’t
+care!”—and she immediately thereupon remarked that she believed
+Strether knew the Munsters; the Munsters being the people he had seen
+her with at Liverpool.
+
+But he didn’t, it happened, know the Munsters well enough to give the
+case much of a lift; so that they were left together as if over the
+mere laid table of conversation. Her qualification of the mentioned
+connexion had rather removed than placed a dish, and there seemed
+nothing else to serve. Their attitude remained, none the less, that of
+not forsaking the board; and the effect of this in turn was to give
+them the appearance of having accepted each other with an absence of
+preliminaries practically complete. They moved along the hall together,
+and Strether’s companion threw off that the hotel had the advantage of
+a garden. He was aware by this time of his strange inconsequence: he
+had shirked the intimacies of the steamer and had muffled the shock of
+Waymarsh only to find himself forsaken, in this sudden case, both of
+avoidance and of caution. He passed, under this unsought protection and
+before he had so much as gone up to his room, into the garden of the
+hotel, and at the end of ten minutes had agreed to meet there again, as
+soon as he should have made himself tidy, the dispenser of such good
+assurances. He wanted to look at the town, and they would forthwith
+look together. It was almost as if she had been in possession and
+received him as a guest. Her acquaintance with the place presented her
+in a manner as a hostess, and Strether had a rueful glance for the lady
+in the glass cage. It was as if this personage had seen herself
+instantly superseded.
+
+When in a quarter of an hour he came down, what his hostess saw, what
+she might have taken in with a vision kindly adjusted, was the lean,
+the slightly loose figure of a man of the middle height and something
+more perhaps than the middle age—a man of five-and-fifty, whose most
+immediate signs were a marked bloodless brownness of face, a thick dark
+moustache, of characteristically American cut, growing strong and
+falling low, a head of hair still abundant but irregularly streaked
+with grey, and a nose of bold free prominence, the even line, the high
+finish, as it might have been called, of which, had a certain effect of
+mitigation. A perpetual pair of glasses astride of this fine ridge, and
+a line, unusually deep and drawn, the prolonged pen-stroke of time,
+accompanying the curve of the moustache from nostril to chin, did
+something to complete the facial furniture that an attentive observer
+would have seen catalogued, on the spot, in the vision of the other
+party to Strether’s appointment. She waited for him in the garden, the
+other party, drawing on a pair of singularly fresh soft and elastic
+light gloves and presenting herself with a superficial readiness which,
+as he approached her over the small smooth lawn and in the watery
+English sunshine, he might, with his rougher preparation, have marked
+as the model for such an occasion. She had, this lady, a perfect plain
+propriety, an expensive subdued suitability, that her companion was not
+free to analyse, but that struck him, so that his consciousness of it
+was instantly acute, as a quality quite new to him. Before reaching her
+he stopped on the grass and went through the form of feeling for
+something, possibly forgotten, in the light overcoat he carried on his
+arm; yet the essence of the act was no more than the impulse to gain
+time. Nothing could have been odder than Strether’s sense of himself as
+at that moment launched in something of which the sense would be quite
+disconnected from the sense of his past and which was literally
+beginning there and then. It had begun in fact already upstairs and
+before the dressing glass that struck him as blocking further, so
+strangely, the dimness of the window of his dull bedroom; begun with a
+sharper survey of the elements of Appearance than he had for a long
+time been moved to make. He had during those moments felt these
+elements to be not so much to his hand as he should have liked, and
+then had fallen back on the thought that they were precisely a matter
+as to which help was supposed to come from what he was about to do. He
+was about to go up to London, so that hat and necktie might wait. What
+had come as straight to him as a ball in a well-played game—and caught
+moreover not less neatly—was just the air, in the person of his friend,
+of having seen and chosen, the air of achieved possession of those
+vague qualities and quantities that collectively figured to him as the
+advantage snatched from lucky chances. Without pomp or circumstance,
+certainly, as her original address to him, equally with his own
+response, had been, he would have sketched to himself his impression of
+her as: “Well, she’s more thoroughly civilized—!” If “More thoroughly
+than _whom?_” would not have been for him a sequel to this remark, that
+was just by reason of his deep consciousness of the bearing of his
+comparison.
+
+The amusement, at all events, of a civilisation intenser was
+what—familiar compatriot as she was, with the full tone of the
+compatriot and the rattling link not with mystery but only with dear
+dyspeptic Waymarsh—she appeared distinctly to promise. His pause while
+he felt in his overcoat was positively the pause of confidence, and it
+enabled his eyes to make out as much of a case for her, in proportion,
+as her own made out for himself. She affected him as almost insolently
+young; but an easily carried five-and-thirty could still do that. She
+was, however, like himself marked and wan; only it naturally couldn’t
+have been known to him how much a spectator looking from one to the
+other might have discerned that they had in common. It wouldn’t for
+such a spectator have been altogether insupposable that, each so finely
+brown and so sharply spare, each confessing so to dents of surface and
+aids to sight, to a disproportionate nose and a head delicately or
+grossly grizzled, they might have been brother and sister. On this
+ground indeed there would have been a residuum of difference; such a
+sister having surely known in respect to such a brother the extremity
+of separation, and such a brother now feeling in respect to such a
+sister the extremity of surprise. Surprise, it was true, was not on the
+other hand what the eyes of Strether’s friend most showed him while she
+gave him, stroking her gloves smoother, the time he appreciated. They
+had taken hold of him straightway measuring him up and down as if they
+knew how; as if he were human material they had already in some sort
+handled. Their possessor was in truth, it may be communicated, the
+mistress of a hundred cases or categories, receptacles of the mind,
+subdivisions for convenience, in which, from a full experience, she
+pigeon-holed her fellow mortals with a hand as free as that of a
+compositor scattering type. She was as equipped in this particular as
+Strether was the reverse, and it made an opposition between them which
+he might well have shrunk from submitting to if he had fully suspected
+it. So far as he did suspect it he was on the contrary, after a short
+shake of his consciousness, as pleasantly passive as might be. He
+really had a sort of sense of what she knew. He had quite the sense
+that she knew things he didn’t, and though this was a concession that
+in general he found not easy to make to women, he made it now as
+good-humouredly as if it lifted a burden. His eyes were so quiet behind
+his eternal nippers that they might almost have been absent without
+changing his face, which took its expression mainly, and not least its
+stamp of sensibility, from other sources, surface and grain and form.
+He joined his guide in an instant, and then felt she had profited still
+better than he by his having been for the moments just mentioned, so at
+the disposal of her intelligence. She knew even intimate things about
+him that he hadn’t yet told her and perhaps never would. He wasn’t
+unaware that he had told her rather remarkably many for the time, but
+these were not the real ones. Some of the real ones, however,
+precisely, were what she knew.
+
+They were to pass again through the hall of the inn to get into the
+street, and it was here she presently checked him with a question.
+“Have you looked up my name?”
+
+He could only stop with a laugh. “Have you looked up mine?”
+
+“Oh dear, yes—as soon as you left me. I went to the office and asked.
+Hadn’t _you_ better do the same?”
+
+He wondered. “Find out who you are?—after the uplifted young woman
+there has seen us thus scrape acquaintance!”
+
+She laughed on her side now at the shade of alarm in his amusement.
+“Isn’t it a reason the more? If what you’re afraid of is the injury for
+me—my being seen to walk off with a gentleman who has to ask who I am—I
+assure you I don’t in the least mind. Here, however,” she continued,
+“is my card, and as I find there’s something else again I have to say
+at the office, you can just study it during the moment I leave you.”
+
+She left him after he had taken from her the small pasteboard she had
+extracted from her pocket-book, and he had extracted another from his
+own, to exchange with it, before she came back. He read thus the simple
+designation “Maria Gostrey,” to which was attached, in a corner of the
+card, with a number, the name of a street, presumably in Paris, without
+other appreciable identity than its foreignness. He put the card into
+his waistcoat pocket, keeping his own meanwhile in evidence; and as he
+leaned against the door-post he met with the smile of a straying
+thought what the expanse before the hotel offered to his view. It was
+positively droll to him that he should already have Maria Gostrey,
+whoever she was—of which he hadn’t really the least idea—in a place of
+safe keeping. He had somehow an assurance that he should carefully
+preserve the little token he had just tucked in. He gazed with unseeing
+lingering eyes as he followed some of the implications of his act,
+asking himself if he really felt admonished to qualify it as disloyal.
+It was prompt, it was possibly even premature, and there was little
+doubt of the expression of face the sight of it would have produced in
+a certain person. But if it was “wrong”—why then he had better not have
+come out at all. At this, poor man, had he already—and even before
+meeting Waymarsh—arrived. He had believed he had a limit, but the limit
+had been transcended within thirty-six hours. By how long a space on
+the plane of manners or even of morals, moreover, he felt still more
+sharply after Maria Gostrey had come back to him and with a gay
+decisive “So now—!” led him forth into the world. This counted, it
+struck him as he walked beside her with his overcoat on an arm, his
+umbrella under another and his personal pasteboard a little stiffly
+retained between forefinger and thumb, this struck him as really, in
+comparison his introduction to things. It hadn’t been “Europe” at
+Liverpool no—not even in the dreadful delightful impressive streets the
+night before—to the extent his present companion made it so. She hadn’t
+yet done that so much as when, after their walk had lasted a few
+minutes and he had had time to wonder if a couple of sidelong glances
+from her meant that he had best have put on gloves she almost pulled
+him up with an amused challenge. “But why—fondly as it’s so easy to
+imagine your clinging to it—don’t you put it away? Or if it’s an
+inconvenience to you to carry it, one’s often glad to have one’s card
+back. The fortune one spends in them!”
+
+Then he saw both that his way of marching with his own prepared tribute
+had affected her as a deviation in one of those directions he couldn’t
+yet measure, and that she supposed this emblem to be still the one he
+had received from her. He accordingly handed her the card as if in
+restitution, but as soon as she had it she felt the difference and,
+with her eyes on it, stopped short for apology. “I like,” she observed,
+“your name.”
+
+“Oh,” he answered, “you won’t have heard of it!” Yet he had his reasons
+for not being sure but that she perhaps might.
+
+Ah it was but too visible! She read it over again as one who had never
+seen it. “‘Mr. Lewis Lambert Strether’”—she sounded it almost as freely
+as for any stranger. She repeated however that she liked
+it—“particularly the Lewis Lambert. It’s the name of a novel of
+Balzac’s.”
+
+“Oh I know that!” said Strether.
+
+“But the novel’s an awfully bad one.”
+
+“I know that too,” Strether smiled. To which he added with an
+irrelevance that was only superficial: “I come from Woollett
+Massachusetts.” It made her for some reason—the irrelevance or
+whatever—laugh. Balzac had described many cities, but hadn’t described
+Woollett Massachusetts. “You say that,” she returned, “as if you wanted
+one immediately to know the worst.”
+
+“Oh I think it’s a thing,” he said, “that you must already have made
+out. I feel it so that I certainly must look it, speak it, and, as
+people say there, ‘act’ it. It sticks out of me, and you knew surely
+for yourself as soon as you looked at me.”
+
+“The worst, you mean?”
+
+“Well, the fact of where I come from. There at any rate it _is_; so
+that you won’t be able, if anything happens, to say I’ve not been
+straight with you.”
+
+“I see”—and Miss Gostrey looked really interested in the point he had
+made. “But what do you think of as happening?”
+
+Though he wasn’t shy—which was rather anomalous—Strether gazed about
+without meeting her eyes; a motion that was frequent with him in talk,
+yet of which his words often seemed not at all the effect. “Why that
+you should find me too hopeless.” With which they walked on again
+together while she answered, as they went, that the most “hopeless” of
+her countryfolk were in general precisely those she liked best. All
+sorts of other pleasant small things—small things that were yet large
+for him—flowered in the air of the occasion, but the bearing of the
+occasion itself on matters still remote concerns us too closely to
+permit us to multiply our illustrations. Two or three, however, in
+truth, we should perhaps regret to lose. The tortuous wall—girdle, long
+since snapped, of the little swollen city, half held in place by
+careful civic hands—wanders in narrow file between parapets smoothed by
+peaceful generations, pausing here and there for a dismantled gate or a
+bridged gap, with rises and drops, steps up and steps down, queer
+twists, queer contacts, peeps into homely streets and under the brows
+of gables, views of cathedral tower and waterside fields, of huddled
+English town and ordered English country. Too deep almost for words was
+the delight of these things to Strether; yet as deeply mixed with it
+were certain images of his inward picture. He had trod this walks in
+the far-off time, at twenty-five; but that, instead of spoiling it,
+only enriched it for present feeling and marked his renewal as a thing
+substantial enough to share. It was with Waymarsh he should have shared
+it, and he was now accordingly taking from him something that was his
+due. He looked repeatedly at his watch, and when he had done so for the
+fifth time Miss Gostrey took him up.
+
+“You’re doing something that you think not right.”
+
+It so touched the place that he quite changed colour and his laugh grew
+almost awkward. “Am I enjoying it as much as _that?_”
+
+“You’re not enjoying it, I think, so much as you ought.”
+
+“I see”—he appeared thoughtfully to agree. “Great is my privilege.”
+
+“Oh it’s not your privilege! It has nothing to do with _me_. It has to
+do with yourself. Your failure’s general.”
+
+“Ah there you are!” he laughed. “It’s the failure of Woollett. _That’s_
+general.”
+
+“The failure to enjoy,” Miss Gostrey explained, “is what I mean.”
+
+“Precisely. Woollett isn’t sure it ought to enjoy. If it were it would.
+But it hasn’t, poor thing,” Strether continued, “any one to show it
+how. It’s not like me. I have somebody.”
+
+They had stopped, in the afternoon sunshine—constantly pausing, in
+their stroll, for the sharper sense of what they saw—and Strether
+rested on one of the high sides of the old stony groove of the little
+rampart. He leaned back on this support with his face to the tower of
+the cathedral, now admirably commanded by their station, the high
+red-brown mass, square and subordinately spired and crocketed,
+retouched and restored, but charming to his long-sealed eyes and with
+the first swallows of the year weaving their flight all round it. Miss
+Gostrey lingered near him, full of an air, to which she more and more
+justified her right, of understanding the effect of things. She quite
+concurred. “You’ve indeed somebody.” And she added: “I wish you _would_
+let me show you how!”
+
+“Oh I’m afraid of you!” he cheerfully pleaded.
+
+She kept on him a moment, through her glasses and through his own, a
+certain pleasant pointedness. “Ah no, you’re not! You’re not in the
+least, thank goodness! If you had been we shouldn’t so soon have found
+ourselves here together. I think,” she comfortably concluded, “you
+trust me.”
+
+“I think I do!—but that’s exactly what I’m afraid of. I shouldn’t mind
+if I didn’t. It’s falling thus in twenty minutes so utterly into your
+hands. I dare say,” Strether continued, “it’s a sort of thing you’re
+thoroughly familiar with; but nothing more extraordinary has ever
+happened to me.”
+
+She watched him with all her kindness. “That means simply that you’ve
+recognised me—which _is_ rather beautiful and rare. You see what I am.”
+As on this, however, he protested, with a good-humoured headshake, a
+resignation of any such claim, she had a moment of explanation. “If
+you’ll only come on further as you _have_ come you’ll at any rate make
+out. My own fate has been too many for me, and I’ve succumbed to it.
+I’m a general guide—to ‘Europe,’ don’t you know? I wait for people—I
+put them through. I pick them up—I set them down. I’m a sort of
+superior ‘courier-maid.’ I’m a companion at large. I take people, as
+I’ve told you, about. I never sought it—it has come to me. It has been
+my fate, and one’s fate one accepts. It’s a dreadful thing to have to
+say, in so wicked a world, but I verily believe that, such as you see
+me, there’s nothing I don’t know. I know all the shops and the
+prices—but I know worse things still. I bear on my back the huge load
+of our national consciousness, or, in other words—for it comes to
+that—of our nation itself. Of what is our nation composed but of the
+men and women individually on my shoulders? I don’t do it, you know,
+for any particular advantage. I don’t do it, for instance—some people
+do, you know—for money.”
+
+Strether could only listen and wonder and weigh his chance. “And yet,
+affected as you are then to so many of your clients, you can scarcely
+be said to do it for love.” He waited a moment. “How do we reward you?”
+
+She had her own hesitation, but “You don’t!” she finally returned,
+setting him again in motion. They went on, but in a few minutes, though
+while still thinking over what she had said, he once more took out his
+watch; mechanically, unconsciously and as if made nervous by the mere
+exhilaration of what struck him as her strange and cynical wit. He
+looked at the hour without seeing it, and then, on something again said
+by his companion, had another pause. “You’re really in terror of him.”
+
+He smiled a smile that he almost felt to be sickly. “Now you can see
+why I’m afraid of you.”
+
+“Because I’ve such illuminations? Why they’re all for your help! It’s
+what I told you,” she added, “just now. You feel as if this were
+wrong.”
+
+He fell back once more, settling himself against the parapet as if to
+hear more about it. “Then get me out!”
+
+Her face fairly brightened for the joy of the appeal, but, as if it
+were a question of immediate action, she visibly considered. “Out of
+waiting for him?—of seeing him at all?”
+
+“Oh no—not that,” said poor Strether, looking grave. “I’ve got to wait
+for him—and I want very much to see him. But out of the terror. You did
+put your finger on it a few minutes ago. It’s general, but it avails
+itself of particular occasions. That’s what it’s doing for me now. I’m
+always considering something else; something else, I mean, than the
+thing of the moment. The obsession of the other thing is the terror.
+I’m considering at present for instance something else than _you_.”
+
+She listened with charming earnestness. “Oh you oughtn’t to do that!”
+
+“It’s what I admit. Make it then impossible.”
+
+She continued to think. “Is it really an ‘order’ from you?—that I shall
+take the job? _Will_ you give yourself up?”
+
+Poor Strether heaved his sigh. “If I only could! But that’s the deuce
+of it—that I never can. No—I can’t.”
+
+She wasn’t, however, discouraged. “But you want to at least?”
+
+“Oh unspeakably!”
+
+“Ah then, if you’ll try!”—and she took over the job, as she had called
+it, on the spot. “Trust me!” she exclaimed, and the action of this, as
+they retraced their steps, was presently to make him pass his hand into
+her arm in the manner of a benign dependent paternal old person who
+wishes to be “nice” to a younger one. If he drew it out again indeed as
+they approached the inn this may have been because, after more talk had
+passed between them, the relation of age, or at least of
+experience—which, for that matter, had already played to and fro with
+some freedom—affected him as incurring a readjustment. It was at all
+events perhaps lucky that they arrived in sufficiently separate fashion
+within range of the hotel-door. The young lady they had left in the
+glass cage watched as if she had come to await them on the threshold.
+At her side stood a person equally interested, by his attitude, in
+their return, and the effect of the sight of whom was instantly to
+determine for Strether another of those responsive arrests that we have
+had so repeatedly to note. He left it to Miss Gostrey to name, with the
+fine full bravado as it almost struck him, of her “Mr. Waymarsh!” what
+was to have been, what—he more than ever felt as his short stare of
+suspended welcome took things in—would have been, but for herself, his
+doom. It was already upon him even at that distance—Mr. Waymarsh was
+for _his_ part joyless.
+
+
+ II
+
+He had none the less to confess to this friend that evening that he
+knew almost nothing about her, and it was a deficiency that Waymarsh,
+even with his memory refreshed by contact, by her own prompt and lucid
+allusions and enquiries, by their having publicly partaken of dinner in
+her company, and by another stroll, to which she was not a stranger,
+out into the town to look at the cathedral by moonlight—it was a blank
+that the resident of Milrose, though admitting acquaintance with the
+Munsters, professed himself unable to fill. He had no recollection of
+Miss Gostrey, and two or three questions that she put to him about
+those members of his circle had, to Strether’s observation, the same
+effect he himself had already more directly felt—the effect of
+appearing to place all knowledge, for the time, on this original
+woman’s side. It interested him indeed to mark the limits of any such
+relation for her with his friend as there could possibly be a question
+of, and it particularly struck him that they were to be marked
+altogether in Waymarsh’s quarter. This added to his own sense of having
+gone far with her—gave him an early illustration of a much shorter
+course. There was a certitude he immediately grasped—a conviction that
+Waymarsh would quite fail, as it were, and on whatever degree of
+acquaintances to profit by her.
+
+There had been after the first interchange among the three a talk of
+some five minutes in the hall, and then the two men had adjourned to
+the garden, Miss Gostrey for the time disappearing. Strether in due
+course accompanied his friend to the room he had bespoken and had,
+before going out, scrupulously visited; where at the end of another
+half-hour he had no less discreetly left him. On leaving him he
+repaired straight to his own room, but with the prompt effect of
+feeling the compass of that chamber resented by his condition. There he
+enjoyed at once the first consequence of their reunion. A place was too
+small for him after it that had seemed large enough before. He had
+awaited it with something he would have been sorry, have been almost
+ashamed not to recognise as emotion, yet with a tacit assumption at the
+same time that emotion would in the event find itself relieved. The
+actual oddity was that he was only more excited; and his excitement—to
+which indeed he would have found it difficult instantly to give a
+name—brought him once more downstairs and caused him for some minutes
+vaguely to wander. He went once more to the garden; he looked into the
+public room, found Miss Gostrey writing letters and backed out; he
+roamed, fidgeted and wasted time; but he was to have his more intimate
+session with his friend before the evening closed.
+
+It was late—not till Strether had spent an hour upstairs with him—that
+this subject consented to betake himself to doubtful rest. Dinner and
+the subsequent stroll by moonlight—a dream, on Strether’s part, of
+romantic effects rather prosaically merged in a mere missing of thicker
+coats—had measurably intervened, and this midnight conference was the
+result of Waymarsh’s having (when they were free, as he put it, of
+their fashionable friend) found the smoking-room not quite what he
+wanted, and yet bed what he wanted less. His most frequent form of
+words was that he knew himself, and they were applied on this occasion
+to his certainty of not sleeping. He knew himself well enough to know
+that he should have a night of prowling unless he should succeed, as a
+preliminary, in getting prodigiously tired. If the effort directed to
+this end involved till a late hour the presence of Strether—consisted,
+that is, in the detention of the latter for full discourse—there was
+yet an impression of minor discipline involved for our friend in the
+picture Waymarsh made as he sat in trousers and shirt on the edge of
+his couch. With his long legs extended and his large back much bent, he
+nursed alternately, for an almost incredible time, his elbows and his
+beard. He struck his visitor as extremely, as almost wilfully
+uncomfortable; yet what had this been for Strether, from that first
+glimpse of him disconcerted in the porch of the hotel, but the
+predominant notes. The discomfort was in a manner contagious, as well
+as also in a manner inconsequent and unfounded; the visitor felt that
+unless he should get used to it—or unless Waymarsh himself should—it
+would constitute a menace for his own prepared, his own already
+confirmed, consciousness of the agreeable. On their first going up
+together to the room Strether had selected for him Waymarsh had looked
+it over in silence and with a sigh that represented for his companion,
+if not the habit of disapprobation, at least the despair of felicity;
+and this look had recurred to Strether as the key of much he had since
+observed. “Europe,” he had begun to gather from these things, had up to
+now rather failed of its message to him; he hadn’t got into tune with
+it and had at the end of three months almost renounced any such
+expectation.
+
+He really appeared at present to insist on that by just perching there
+with the gas in his eyes. This of itself somehow conveyed the futility
+of single rectifications in a multiform failure. He had a large
+handsome head and a large sallow seamed face—a striking significant
+physiognomic total, the upper range of which, the great political brow,
+the thick loose hair, the dark fuliginous eyes, recalled even to a
+generation whose standard had dreadfully deviated the impressive image,
+familiar by engravings and busts, of some great national worthy of the
+earlier part of the mid-century. He was of the personal type—and it was
+an element in the power and promise that in their early time Strether
+had found in him—of the American statesman, the statesman trained in
+“Congressional halls,” of an elder day. The legend had been in later
+years that as the lower part of his face, which was weak, and slightly
+crooked, spoiled the likeness, this was the real reason for the growth
+of his beard, which might have seemed to spoil it for those not in the
+secret. He shook his mane; he fixed, with his admirable eyes, his
+auditor or his observer; he wore no glasses and had a way, partly
+formidable, yet also partly encouraging, as from a representative to a
+constituent, of looking very hard at those who approached him. He met
+you as if you had knocked and he had bidden you enter. Strether, who
+hadn’t seen him for so long an interval, apprehended him now with a
+freshness of taste, and had perhaps never done him such ideal justice.
+The head was bigger, the eyes finer, than they need have been for the
+career; but that only meant, after all, that the career was itself
+expressive. What it expressed at midnight in the gas-glaring bedroom at
+Chester was that the subject of it had, at the end of years, barely
+escaped, by flight in time, a general nervous collapse. But this very
+proof of the full life, as the full life was understood at Milrose,
+would have made to Strether’s imagination an element in which Waymarsh
+could have floated easily had he only consented to float. Alas nothing
+so little resembled floating as the rigour with which, on the edge of
+his bed, he hugged his posture of prolonged impermanence. It suggested
+to his comrade something that always, when kept up, worried him—a
+person established in a railway-coach with a forward inclination. It
+represented the angle at which poor Waymarsh was to sit through the
+ordeal of Europe.
+
+Thanks to the stress of occupation, the strain of professions, the
+absorption and embarrassment of each, they had not, at home, during
+years before this sudden brief and almost bewildering reign of
+comparative ease, found so much as a day for a meeting; a fact that was
+in some degree an explanation of the sharpness with which most of his
+friend’s features stood out to Strether. Those he had lost sight of
+since the early time came back to him; others that it was never
+possible to forget struck him now as sitting, clustered and expectant,
+like a somewhat defiant family-group, on the doorstep of their
+residence. The room was narrow for its length, and the occupant of the
+bed thrust so far a pair of slippered feet that the visitor had almost
+to step over them in his recurrent rebounds from his chair to fidget
+back and forth. There were marks the friends made on things to talk
+about, and on things not to, and one of the latter in particular fell
+like the tap of chalk on the blackboard. Married at thirty, Waymarsh
+had not lived with his wife for fifteen years, and it came up vividly
+between them in the glare of the gas that Strether wasn’t to ask about
+her. He knew they were still separate and that she lived at hotels,
+travelled in Europe, painted her face and wrote her husband abusive
+letters, of not one of which, to a certainty, that sufferer spared
+himself the perusal; but he respected without difficulty the cold
+twilight that had settled on this side of his companion’s life. It was
+a province in which mystery reigned and as to which Waymarsh had never
+spoken the informing word. Strether, who wanted to do him the highest
+justice wherever he _could_ do it, singularly admired him for the
+dignity of this reserve, and even counted it as one of the
+grounds—grounds all handled and numbered—for ranking him, in the range
+of their acquaintance, as a success. He _was_ a success, Waymarsh, in
+spite of overwork, or prostration, of sensible shrinkage, of his wife’s
+letters and of his not liking Europe. Strether would have reckoned his
+own career less futile had he been able to put into it anything so
+handsome as so much fine silence. One might one’s self easily have left
+Mrs. Waymarsh; and one would assuredly have paid one’s tribute to the
+ideal in covering with that attitude the derision of having been left
+by her. Her husband had held his tongue and had made a large income;
+and these were in especial the achievements as to which Strether envied
+him. Our friend had had indeed on his side too a subject for silence,
+which he fully appreciated; but it was a matter of a different sort,
+and the figure of the income he had arrived at had never been high
+enough to look any one in the face.
+
+“I don’t know as I quite see what you require it for. You don’t appear
+sick to speak of.” It was of Europe Waymarsh thus finally spoke.
+
+“Well,” said Strether, who fell as much as possible into step, “I guess
+I don’t _feel_ sick now that I’ve started. But I had pretty well run
+down before I did start.”
+
+Waymarsh raised his melancholy look. “Ain’t you about up to your usual
+average?”
+
+It was not quite pointedly sceptical, but it seemed somehow a plea for
+the purest veracity, and it thereby affected our friend as the very
+voice of Milrose. He had long since made a mental distinction—though
+never in truth daring to betray it—between the voice of Milrose and the
+voice even of Woollett. It was the former he felt, that was most in the
+real tradition. There had been occasions in his past when the sound of
+it had reduced him to temporary confusion, and the present, for some
+reason, suddenly became such another. It was nevertheless no light
+matter that the very effect of his confusion should be to make him
+again prevaricate. “That description hardly does justice to a man to
+whom it has done such a lot of good to see _you_.”
+
+Waymarsh fixed on his washing-stand the silent detached stare with
+which Milrose in person, as it were, might have marked the
+unexpectedness of a compliment from Woollett, and Strether for his
+part, felt once more like Woollett in person. “I mean,” his friend
+presently continued, “that your appearance isn’t as bad as I’ve seen
+it: it compares favourably with what it was when I last noticed it.” On
+this appearance Waymarsh’s eyes yet failed to rest; it was almost as if
+they obeyed an instinct of propriety, and the effect was still stronger
+when, always considering the basin and jug, he added: “You’ve filled
+out some since then.”
+
+“I’m afraid I have,” Strether laughed: “one does fill out some with all
+one takes in, and I’ve taken in, I dare say, more than I’ve natural
+room for. I was dog-tired when I sailed.” It had the oddest sound of
+cheerfulness.
+
+“_I_ was dog-tired,” his companion returned, “when I arrived, and it’s
+this wild hunt for rest that takes all the life out of me. The fact is,
+Strether—and it’s a comfort to have you here at last to say it to;
+though I don’t know, after all, that I’ve really waited; I’ve told it
+to people I’ve met in the cars—the fact is, such a country as this
+ain’t my _kind_ of country anyway. There ain’t a country I’ve seen over
+here that _does_ seem my kind. Oh I don’t say but what there are plenty
+of pretty places and remarkable old things; but the trouble is that I
+don’t seem to feel anywhere in tune. That’s one of the reasons why I
+suppose I’ve gained so little. I haven’t had the first sign of that
+lift I was led to expect.” With this he broke out more earnestly. “Look
+here—I want to go back.”
+
+His eyes were all attached to Strether’s now, for he was one of the men
+who fully face you when they talk of themselves. This enabled his
+friend to look at him hard and immediately to appear to the highest
+advantage in his eyes by doing so. “That’s a genial thing to say to a
+fellow who has come out on purpose to meet you!”
+
+Nothing could have been finer, on this, than Waymarsh’s sombre glow.
+“_Have_ you come out on purpose?”
+
+“Well—very largely.”
+
+“I thought from the way you wrote there was something back of it.”
+
+Strether hesitated. “Back of my desire to be with you?”
+
+“Back of your prostration.”
+
+Strether, with a smile made more dim by a certain consciousness, shook
+his head. “There are all the causes of it!”
+
+“And no particular cause that seemed most to drive you?”
+
+Our friend could at last conscientiously answer. “Yes. One. There _is_
+a matter that has had much to do with my coming out.”
+
+Waymarsh waited a little. “Too private to mention?”
+
+“No, not too private—for _you_. Only rather complicated.”
+
+“Well,” said Waymarsh, who had waited again, “I _may_ lose my mind over
+here, but I don’t know as I’ve done so yet.”
+
+“Oh you shall have the whole thing. But not tonight.”
+
+Waymarsh seemed to sit stiffer and to hold his elbows tighter. “Why
+not—if I can’t sleep?”
+
+“Because, my dear man, I _can!_”
+
+“Then where’s your prostration?”
+
+“Just in that—that I can put in eight hours.” And Strether brought it
+out that if Waymarsh didn’t “gain” it was because he didn’t go to bed:
+the result of which was, in its order, that, to do the latter justice,
+he permitted his friend to insist on his really getting settled.
+Strether, with a kind coercive hand for it, assisted him to this
+consummation, and again found his own part in their relation
+auspiciously enlarged by the smaller touches of lowering the lamp and
+seeing to a sufficiency of blanket. It somehow ministered for him to
+indulgence to feel Waymarsh, who looked unnaturally big and black in
+bed, as much tucked in as a patient in a hospital and, with his
+covering up to his chin, as much simplified by it. He hovered in vague
+pity, to be brief, while his companion challenged him out of the
+bedclothes. “Is she really after you? Is that what’s behind?”
+
+Strether felt an uneasiness at the direction taken by his companion’s
+insight, but he played a little at uncertainty. “Behind my coming out?”
+
+“Behind your prostration or whatever. It’s generally felt, you know,
+that she follows you up pretty close.”
+
+Strether’s candour was never very far off. “Oh it has occurred to you
+that I’m literally running away from Mrs. Newsome?”
+
+“Well, I haven’t _known_ but what you are. You’re a very attractive
+man, Strether. You’ve seen for yourself,” said Waymarsh “what that lady
+downstairs makes of it. Unless indeed,” he rambled on with an effect
+between the ironic and the anxious, “it’s you who are after _her_. Is
+Mrs. Newsome _over_ here?” He spoke as with a droll dread of her.
+
+It made his friend—though rather dimly—smile. “Dear no; she’s safe,
+thank goodness—as I think I more and more feel—at home. She thought of
+coming, but she gave it up. I’ve come in a manner instead of her; and
+come to that extent—for you’re right in your inference—on her business.
+So you see there _is_ plenty of connexion.”
+
+Waymarsh continued to see at least all there was. “Involving
+accordingly the particular one I’ve referred to?”
+
+Strether took another turn about the room, giving a twitch to his
+companion’s blanket and finally gaining the door. His feeling was that
+of a nurse who had earned personal rest by having made everything
+straight. “Involving more things than I can think of breaking ground on
+now. But don’t be afraid—you shall have them from me: you’ll probably
+find yourself having quite as much of them as you can do with. I
+shall—if we keep together—very much depend on your impression of some
+of them.”
+
+Waymarsh’s acknowledgement of this tribute was characteristically
+indirect. “You mean to say you don’t believe we _will_ keep together?”
+
+“I only glance at the danger,” Strether paternally said, “because when
+I hear you wail to go back I seem to see you open up such possibilities
+of folly.”
+
+Waymarsh took it—silent a little—like a large snubbed child “What are
+you going to do with me?”
+
+It was the very question Strether himself had put to Miss Gostrey, and
+he wondered if he had sounded like that. But _he_ at least could be
+more definite. “I’m going to take you right down to London.”
+
+“Oh I’ve been down to London!” Waymarsh more softly moaned. “I’ve no
+use, Strether, for anything down there.”
+
+“Well,” said Strether, good-humouredly, “I guess you’ve some use for
+_me_.”
+
+“So I’ve got to go?”
+
+“Oh you’ve got to go further yet.”
+
+“Well,” Waymarsh sighed, “do your damnedest! Only you _will_ tell me
+before you lead me on all the way—?”
+
+Our friend had again so lost himself, both for amusement and for
+contrition, in the wonder of whether he had made, in his own challenge
+that afternoon, such another figure, that he for an instant missed the
+thread. “Tell you—?”
+
+“Why what you’ve got on hand.”
+
+Strether hesitated. “Why it’s such a matter as that even if I
+positively wanted I shouldn’t be able to keep it from you.”
+
+Waymarsh gloomily gazed. “What does that mean then but that your trip
+is just _for_ her?”
+
+“For Mrs. Newsome? Oh it certainly is, as I say. Very much.”
+
+“Then why do you also say it’s for me?”
+
+Strether, in impatience, violently played with his latch. “It’s simple
+enough. It’s for both of you.”
+
+Waymarsh at last turned over with a groan. “Well, _I_ won’t marry you!”
+
+“Neither, when it comes to that—!” But the visitor had already laughed
+and escaped.
+
+
+ III
+
+He had told Miss Gostrey he should probably take, for departure with
+Waymarsh, some afternoon train, and it thereupon in the morning
+appeared that this lady had made her own plan for an earlier one. She
+had breakfasted when Strether came into the coffee-room; but, Waymarsh
+not having yet emerged, he was in time to recall her to the terms of
+their understanding and to pronounce her discretion overdone. She was
+surely not to break away at the very moment she had created a want. He
+had met her as she rose from her little table in a window, where, with
+the morning papers beside her, she reminded him, as he let her know, of
+Major Pendennis breakfasting at his club—a compliment of which she
+professed a deep appreciation; and he detained her as pleadingly as if
+he had already—and notably under pressure of the visions of the
+night—learned to be unable to do without her. She must teach him at all
+events, before she went, to order breakfast as breakfast was ordered in
+Europe, and she must especially sustain him in the problem of ordering
+for Waymarsh. The latter had laid upon his friend, by desperate sounds
+through the door of his room, dreadful divined responsibilities in
+respect to beefsteak and oranges—responsibilities which Miss Gostrey
+took over with an alertness of action that matched her quick
+intelligence. She had before this weaned the expatriated from
+traditions compared with which the matutinal beefsteak was but the
+creature of an hour, and it was not for her, with some of her memories,
+to falter in the path though she freely enough declared, on reflexion,
+that there was always in such cases a choice of opposed policies.
+“There are times when to give them their head, you know—!”
+
+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?”
+
+“Oh that they shouldn’t come is as yet too much to ask. What I attend
+to is that they come quickly and return still more so. I meet them to
+help it to be over as soon as possible, and though I don’t stop them
+I’ve my way of putting them through. That’s my little system; and, if
+you want to know,” said Maria Gostrey, “it’s my real secret, my
+innermost mission and use. I only seem, you see, to beguile and
+approve; but I’ve thought it all out and I’m working all the while
+underground. I can’t perhaps quite give you my formula, but I think
+that practically I succeed. I send you back spent. So you stay back.
+Passed through my hands—”
+
+“We don’t turn up again?” The further she went the further he always
+saw himself able to follow. “I don’t want your formula—I feel quite
+enough, as I hinted yesterday, your abysses. Spent!” he echoed. “If
+that’s how you’re arranging so subtly to send me I thank you for the
+warning.”
+
+For a minute, amid the pleasantness—poetry in tariffed items, but all
+the more, for guests already convicted, a challenge to consumption—they
+smiled at each other in confirmed fellowship. “Do you call it subtly?
+It’s a plain poor tale. Besides, you’re a special case.”
+
+“Oh special cases—that’s weak!” She was weak enough, further still, to
+defer her journey and agree to accompany the gentlemen on their own,
+might a separate carriage mark her independence; though it was in spite
+of this to befall after luncheon that she went off alone and that, with
+a tryst taken for a day of her company in London, they lingered another
+night. She had, during the morning—spent in a way that he was to
+remember later on as the very climax of his foretaste, as warm with
+presentiments, with what he would have called collapses—had all sorts
+of things out with Strether; and among them the fact that though there
+was never a moment of her life when she wasn’t “due” somewhere, there
+was yet scarce a perfidy to others of which she wasn’t capable for his
+sake. She explained moreover that wherever she happened to be she found
+a dropped thread to pick up, a ragged edge to repair, some familiar
+appetite in ambush, jumping out as she approached, yet appeasable with
+a temporary biscuit. It became, on her taking the risk of the deviation
+imposed on him by her insidious arrangement of his morning meal, a
+point of honour for her not to fail with Waymarsh of the larger success
+too; and her subsequent boast to Strether was that she had made their
+friend fare—and quite without his knowing what was the matter—as Major
+Pendennis would have fared at the Megatherium. She had made him
+breakfast like a gentleman, and it was nothing, she forcibly asserted,
+to what she would yet make him do. She made him participate in the slow
+reiterated ramble with which, for Strether, the new day amply filled
+itself; and it was by her art that he somehow had the air, on the
+ramparts and in the Rows, of carrying a point of his own.
+
+The three strolled and stared and gossiped, or at least the two did;
+the case really yielding for their comrade, if analysed, but the
+element of stricken silence. This element indeed affected Strether as
+charged with audible rumblings, but he was conscious of the care of
+taking it explicitly as a sign of pleasant peace. He wouldn’t appeal
+too much, for that provoked stiffness; yet he wouldn’t be too freely
+tacit, for that suggested giving up. Waymarsh himself adhered to an
+ambiguous dumbness that might have represented either the growth of a
+perception or the despair of one; and at times and in places—where the
+low-browed galleries were darkest, the opposite gables queerest, the
+solicitations of every kind densest—the others caught him fixing hard
+some object of minor interest, fixing even at moments nothing
+discernible, as if he were indulging it with a truce. When he met
+Strether’s eye on such occasions he looked guilty and furtive, fell the
+next minute into some attitude of retractation. Our friend couldn’t
+show him the right things for fear of provoking some total
+renouncement, and was tempted even to show him the wrong in order to
+make him differ with triumph. There were moments when he himself felt
+shy of professing the full sweetness of the taste of leisure, and there
+were others when he found himself feeling as if his passages of
+interchange with the lady at his side might fall upon the third member
+of their party very much as Mr. Burchell, at Dr. Primrose’s fireside,
+was influenced by the high flights of the visitors from London. The
+smallest things so arrested and amused him that he repeatedly almost
+apologised—brought up afresh in explanation his plea of a previous
+grind. He was aware at the same time that his grind had been as nothing
+to Waymarsh’s, and he repeatedly confessed that, to cover his
+frivolity, he was doing his best for his previous virtue. Do what he
+might, in any case, his previous virtue was still there, and it seemed
+fairly to stare at him out of the windows of shops that were not as the
+shops of Woollett, fairly to make him want things that he shouldn’t
+know what to do with. It was by the oddest, the least admissible of
+laws demoralising him now; and the way it boldly took was to make him
+want more wants. These first walks in Europe were in fact a kind of
+finely lurid intimation of what one might find at the end of that
+process. Had he come back after long years, in something already so
+like the evening of life, only to be exposed to it? It was at all
+events over the shop-windows that he made, with Waymarsh, most free;
+though it would have been easier had not the latter most sensibly
+yielded to the appeal of the merely useful trades. He pierced with his
+sombre detachment the plate-glass of ironmongers and saddlers, while
+Strether flaunted an affinity with the dealers in stamped letter-paper
+and in smart neckties. Strether was in fact recurrently shameless in
+the presence of the tailors, though it was just over the heads of the
+tailors that his countryman most loftily looked. This gave Miss Gostrey
+a grasped opportunity to back up Waymarsh at his expense. The weary
+lawyer—it was unmistakeable—had a conception of dress; but that, in
+view of some of the features of the effect produced, was just what made
+the danger of insistence on it. Strether wondered if he by this time
+thought Miss Gostrey less fashionable or Lambert Strether more so; and
+it appeared probable that most of the remarks exchanged between this
+latter pair about passers, figures, faces, personal types, exemplified
+in their degree the disposition to talk as “society” talked.
+
+Was what was happening to himself then, was what already _had_
+happened, really that a woman of fashion was floating him into society
+and that an old friend deserted on the brink was watching the force of
+the current? When the woman of fashion permitted Strether—as she
+permitted him at the most—the purchase of a pair of gloves, the terms
+she made about it, the prohibition of neckties and other items till she
+should be able to guide him through the Burlington Arcade, were such as
+to fall upon a sensitive ear as a challenge to just imputations. Miss
+Gostrey was such a woman of fashion as could make without a symptom of
+vulgar blinking an appointment for the Burlington Arcade. Mere
+discriminations about a pair of gloves could thus at any rate
+represent—always for such sensitive ears as were in
+question—possibilities of something that Strether could make a mark
+against only as the peril of apparent wantonness. He had quite the
+consciousness of his new friend, for their companion, that he might
+have had of a Jesuit in petticoats, a representative of the recruiting
+interests of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, for
+Waymarsh—that was to say the enemy, the monster of bulging eyes and
+far-reaching quivering groping tentacles—was exactly society, exactly
+the multiplication of shibboleths, exactly the discrimination of types
+and tones, exactly the wicked old Rows of Chester, rank with feudalism;
+exactly in short Europe.
+
+There was light for observation, however, in an incident that occurred
+just before they turned back to luncheon. Waymarsh had been for a
+quarter of an hour exceptionally mute and distant, and something, or
+other—Strether was never to make out exactly what—proved, as it were,
+too much for him after his comrades had stood for three minutes taking
+in, while they leaned on an old balustrade that guarded the edge of the
+Row, a particularly crooked and huddled street-view. “He thinks us
+sophisticated, he thinks us worldly, he thinks us wicked, he thinks us
+all sorts of queer things,” Strether reflected; for wondrous were the
+vague quantities our friend had within a couple of short days acquired
+the habit of conveniently and conclusively lumping together. There
+seemed moreover a direct connexion between some such inference and a
+sudden grim dash taken by Waymarsh to the opposite side. This movement
+was startlingly sudden, and his companions at first supposed him to
+have espied, to be pursuing, the glimpse of an acquaintance. They next
+made out, however, that an open door had instantly received him, and
+they then recognised him as engulfed in the establishment of a
+jeweller, behind whose glittering front he was lost to view. The fact
+had somehow the note of a demonstration, and it left each of the others
+to show a face almost of fear. But Miss Gostrey broke into a laugh.
+“What’s the matter with him?”
+
+“Well,” said Strether, “he can’t stand it.”
+
+“But can’t stand what?”
+
+“Anything. Europe.”
+
+“Then how will that jeweller help him?”
+
+Strether seemed to make it out, from their position, between the
+interstices of arrayed watches, of close-hung dangling gewgaws. “You’ll
+see.”
+
+“Ah that’s just what—if he buys anything—I’m afraid of: that I shall
+see something rather dreadful.”
+
+Strether studied the finer appearances. “He may buy everything.”
+
+“Then don’t you think we ought to follow him?”
+
+“Not for worlds. Besides we can’t. We’re paralysed. We exchange a long
+scared look, we publicly tremble. The thing is, you see, we ‘realise.’
+He has struck for freedom.”
+
+She wondered but she laughed. “Ah what a price to pay! And I was
+preparing some for him so cheap.”
+
+“No, no,” Strether went on, frankly amused now; “don’t call it that:
+the kind of freedom you deal in is dear.” Then as to justify himself:
+“Am I not in _my_ way trying it? It’s this.”
+
+“Being here, you mean, with me?”
+
+“Yes, and talking to you as I do. I’ve known you a few hours, and I’ve
+known _him_ all my life; so that if the ease I thus take with you about
+him isn’t magnificent”—and the thought of it held him a moment—“why
+it’s rather base.”
+
+“It’s magnificent!” said Miss Gostrey to make an end of it. “And you
+should hear,” she added, “the ease _I_ take—and I above all intend to
+take—with Mr. Waymarsh.”
+
+Strether thought. “About _me?_ Ah that’s no equivalent. The equivalent
+would be Waymarsh’s himself serving me up—his remorseless analysis of
+me. And he’ll never do that”—he was sadly clear. “He’ll never
+remorselessly analyse me.” He quite held her with the authority of
+this. “He’ll never say a word to you about me.”
+
+She took it in; she did it justice; yet after an instant her reason,
+her restless irony, disposed of it. “Of course he won’t. For what do
+you take people, that they’re able to say words about anything, able
+remorselessly to analyse? There are not many like you and me. It will
+be only because he’s too stupid.”
+
+It stirred in her friend a sceptical echo which was at the same time
+the protest of the faith of years. “Waymarsh stupid?”
+
+“Compared with you.”
+
+Strether had still his eyes on the jeweller’s front, and he waited a
+moment to answer. “He’s a success of a kind that I haven’t approached.”
+
+“Do you mean he has made money?”
+
+“He makes it—to my belief. And I,” said Strether, “though with a back
+quite as bent, have never made anything. I’m a perfectly equipped
+failure.”
+
+He feared an instant she’d ask him if he meant he was poor; and he was
+glad she didn’t, for he really didn’t know to what the truth on this
+unpleasant point mightn’t have prompted her. She only, however,
+confirmed his assertion. “Thank goodness you’re a failure—it’s why I so
+distinguish you! Anything else to-day is too hideous. Look about
+you—look at the successes. Would you _be_ one, on your honour? Look,
+moreover,” she continued, “at me.”
+
+For a little accordingly their eyes met. “I see,” Strether returned.
+“You too are out of it.”
+
+“The superiority you discern in me,” she concurred, “announces my
+futility. If you knew,” she sighed, “the dreams of my youth! But our
+realities are what has brought us together. We’re beaten brothers in
+arms.”
+
+He smiled at her kindly enough, but he shook his head. “It doesn’t
+alter the fact that you’re expensive. You’ve cost me already—!”
+
+But he had hung fire. “Cost you what?”
+
+“Well, my past—in one great lump. But no matter,” he laughed: “I’ll pay
+with my last penny.”
+
+Her attention had unfortunately now been engaged by their comrade’s
+return, for Waymarsh met their view as he came out of his shop. “I hope
+he hasn’t paid,” she said, “with _his_ last; though I’m convinced he
+has been splendid, and has been so for you.”
+
+“Ah no—not that!”
+
+“Then for me?”
+
+“Quite as little.” Waymarsh was by this time near enough to show signs
+his friend could read, though he seemed to look almost carefully at
+nothing in particular.
+
+“Then for himself?”
+
+“For nobody. For nothing. For freedom.”
+
+“But what has freedom to do with it?”
+
+Strether’s answer was indirect. “To be as good as you and me. But
+different.”
+
+She had had time to take in their companion’s face; and with it, as
+such things were easy for her, she took in all. “Different—yes. But
+better!”
+
+If Waymarsh was sombre he was also indeed almost sublime. He told them
+nothing, left his absence unexplained, and though they were convinced
+he had made some extraordinary purchase they were never to learn its
+nature. He only glowered grandly at the tops of the old gables. “It’s
+the sacred rage,” Strether had had further time to say; and this sacred
+rage was to become between them, for convenient comprehension, the
+description of one of his periodical necessities. It was Strether who
+eventually contended that it did make him better than they. But by that
+time Miss Gostrey was convinced that she didn’t want to be better than
+Strether.
+
+
+
+
+Book Second
+
+
+ I
+
+Those occasions on which Strether was, in association with the exile
+from Milrose, to see the sacred rage glimmer through would doubtless
+have their due periodicity; but our friend had meanwhile to find names
+for many other matters. On no evening of his life perhaps, as he
+reflected, had he had to supply so many as on the third of his short
+stay in London; an evening spent by Miss Gostrey’s side at one of the
+theatres, to which he had found himself transported, without his own
+hand raised, on the mere expression of a conscientious wonder. She knew
+her theatre, she knew her play, as she had triumphantly known, three
+days running, everything else, and the moment filled to the brim, for
+her companion, that apprehension of the interesting which, whether or
+no the interesting happened to filter through his guide, strained now
+to its limits his brief opportunity. Waymarsh hadn’t come with them; he
+had seen plays enough, he signified, before Strether had joined him—an
+affirmation that had its full force when his friend ascertained by
+questions that he had seen two and a circus. Questions as to what he
+had seen had on him indeed an effect only less favourable than
+questions as to what he hadn’t. He liked the former to be
+discriminated; but how could it be done, Strether asked of their
+constant counsellor, without discriminating the latter?
+
+Miss Gostrey had dined with him at his hotel, face to face over a small
+table on which the lighted candles had rose-coloured shades; and the
+rose-coloured shades and the small table and the soft fragrance of the
+lady—had anything to his mere sense ever been so soft?—were so many
+touches in he scarce knew what positive high picture. He had been to
+the theatre, even to the opera, in Boston, with Mrs. Newsome, more than
+once acting as her only escort; but there had been no little confronted
+dinner, no pink lights, no whiff of vague sweetness, as a preliminary:
+one of the results of which was that at present, mildly rueful, though
+with a sharpish accent, he actually asked himself _why_ there hadn’t.
+There was much the same difference in his impression of the noticed
+state of his companion, whose dress was “cut down,” as he believed the
+term to be, in respect to shoulders and bosom, in a manner quite other
+than Mrs. Newsome’s, and who wore round her throat a broad red velvet
+band with an antique jewel—he was rather complacently sure it was
+antique—attached to it in front. Mrs. Newsome’s dress was never in any
+degree “cut down,” and she never wore round her throat a broad red
+velvet band: if she had, moreover, would it ever have served so to
+carry on and complicate, as he now almost felt, his vision?
+
+It would have been absurd of him to trace into ramifications the effect
+of the ribbon from which Miss Gostrey’s trinket depended, had he not
+for the hour, at the best, been so given over to uncontrolled
+perceptions. What was it but an uncontrolled perception that his
+friend’s velvet band somehow added, in her appearance, to the value of
+every other item—to that of her smile and of the way she carried her
+head, to that of her complexion, of her lips, her teeth, her eyes, her
+hair? What, certainly, had a man conscious of a man’s work in the world
+to do with red velvet bands? He wouldn’t for anything have so exposed
+himself as to tell Miss Gostrey how much he liked hers, yet he _had_
+none the less not only caught himself in the act—frivolous, no doubt,
+idiotic, and above all unexpected—of liking it: he had in addition
+taken it as a starting-point for fresh backward, fresh forward, fresh
+lateral flights. The manner in which Mrs. Newsome’s throat _was_
+encircled suddenly represented for him, in an alien order, almost as
+many things as the manner in which Miss Gostrey’s was. Mrs. Newsome
+wore, at operatic hours, a black silk dress—very handsome, he knew it
+was “handsome”—and an ornament that his memory was able further to
+identify as a ruche. He had his association indeed with the ruche, but
+it was rather imperfectly romantic. He had once said to the wearer—and
+it was as “free” a remark as he had ever made to her—that she looked,
+with her ruff and other matters, like Queen Elizabeth; and it had after
+this in truth been his fancy that, as a consequence of that tenderness
+and an acceptance of the idea, the form of this special tribute to the
+“frill” had grown slightly more marked. The connexion, as he sat there
+and let his imagination roam, was to strike him as vaguely pathetic;
+but there it all was, and pathetic was doubtless in the conditions the
+best thing it could possibly be. It had assuredly existed at any rate;
+for it seemed now to come over him that no gentleman of his age at
+Woollett could ever, to a lady of Mrs. Newsome’s, which was not much
+less than his, have embarked on such a simile.
+
+All sorts of things in fact now seemed to come over him, comparatively
+few of which his chronicler can hope for space to mention. It came over
+him for instance that Miss Gostrey looked perhaps like Mary Stuart:
+Lambert Strether had a candour of fancy which could rest for an instant
+gratified in such an antithesis. It came over him that never before—no,
+literally never—had a lady dined with him at a public place before
+going to the play. The publicity of the place was just, in the matter,
+for Strether, the rare strange thing; it affected him almost as the
+achievement of privacy might have affected a man of a different
+experience. He had married, in the far-away years, so young as to have
+missed the time natural in Boston for taking girls to the Museum; and
+it was absolutely true of hint that—even after the close of the period
+of conscious detachment occupying the centre of his life, the grey
+middle desert of the two deaths, that of his wife and that, ten years
+later, of his boy—he had never taken any one anywhere. It came over him
+in especial—though the monition had, as happened, already sounded,
+fitfully gleamed, in other forms—that the business he had come out on
+hadn’t yet been so brought home to him as by the sight of the people
+about him. She gave him the impression, his friend, at first, more
+straight than he got it for himself—gave it simply by saying with
+off-hand illumination: “Oh yes, they’re types!”—but after he had taken
+it he made to the full his own use of it; both while he kept silence
+for the four acts and while he talked in the intervals. It was an
+evening, it was a world of types, and this was a connexion above all in
+which the figures and faces in the stalls were interchangeable with
+those on the stage.
+
+He felt as if the play itself penetrated him with the naked elbow of
+his neighbour, a great stripped handsome red-haired lady who conversed
+with a gentleman on her other side in stray dissyllables which had for
+his ear, in the oddest way in the world, so much sound that he wondered
+they hadn’t more sense; and he recognised by the same law, beyond the
+footlights, what he was pleased to take for the very flush of English
+life. He had distracted drops in which he couldn’t have said if it were
+actors or auditors who were most true, and the upshot of which, each
+time, was the consciousness of new contacts. However he viewed his job
+it was “types” he should have to tackle. Those before him and around
+him were not as the types of Woollett, where, for that matter, it had
+begun to seem to him that there must only have been the male and the
+female. These made two exactly, even with the individual varieties.
+Here, on the other hand, apart from the personal and the sexual
+range—which might be greater or less—a series of strong stamps had been
+applied, as it were, from without; stamps that his observation played
+with as, before a glass case on a table, it might have passed from
+medal to medal and from copper to gold. It befell that in the drama
+precisely there was a bad woman in a yellow frock who made a pleasant
+weak good-looking young man in perpetual evening dress do the most
+dreadful things. Strether felt himself on the whole not afraid of the
+yellow frock, but he was vaguely anxious over a certain kindness into
+which he found himself drifting for its victim. He hadn’t come out, he
+reminded himself, to be too kind, or indeed to be kind at all, to
+Chadwick Newsome. Would Chad also be in perpetual evening dress? He
+somehow rather hoped it—it seemed so to add to _this_ young man’s
+general amenability; though he wondered too if, to fight him with his
+own weapons, he himself (a thought almost startling) would have
+likewise to be. This young man furthermore would have been much more
+easy to handle—at least for _him_—than appeared probable in respect to
+Chad.
+
+It came up for him with Miss Gostrey that there were things of which
+she would really perhaps after all have heard, and she admitted when a
+little pressed that she was never quite sure of what she heard as
+distinguished from things such as, on occasions like the present, she
+only extravagantly guessed. “I seem with this freedom, you see, to have
+guessed Mr. Chad. He’s a young man on whose head high hopes are placed
+at Woollett; a young man a wicked woman has got hold of and whom his
+family over there have sent you out to rescue. You’ve accepted the
+mission of separating him from the wicked woman. Are you quite sure
+she’s very bad for him?”
+
+Something in his manner showed it as quite pulling him up. “Of course
+we are. Wouldn’t _you_ be?”
+
+“Oh I don’t know. One never does—does one?—beforehand. One can only
+judge on the facts. Yours are quite new to me; I’m really not in the
+least, as you see, in possession of them: so it will be awfully
+interesting to have them from you. If you’re satisfied, that’s all
+that’s required. I mean if you’re sure you _are_ sure: sure it won’t
+do.”
+
+“That he should lead such a life? Rather!”
+
+“Oh but I don’t know, you see, about his life; you’ve not told me about
+his life. She may be charming—his life!”
+
+“Charming?”—Strether stared before him. “She’s base, venal—out of the
+streets.”
+
+“I see. And _he_—?”
+
+“Chad, wretched boy?”
+
+“Of what type and temper is he?” she went on as Strether had lapsed.
+
+“Well—the obstinate.” It was as if for a moment he had been going to
+say more and had then controlled himself.
+
+That was scarce what she wished. “Do you like him?”
+
+This time he was prompt. “No. How _can_ I?”
+
+“Do you mean because of your being so saddled with him?”
+
+“I’m thinking of his mother,” said Strether after a moment. “He has
+darkened her admirable life.” He spoke with austerity. “He has worried
+her half to death.”
+
+“Oh that’s of course odious.” She had a pause as if for renewed
+emphasis of this truth, but it ended on another note. “Is her life very
+admirable?”
+
+“Extraordinarily.”
+
+There was so much in the tone that Miss Gostrey had to devote another
+pause to the appreciation of it. “And has he only _her?_ I don’t mean
+the bad woman in Paris,” she quickly added—“for I assure you I
+shouldn’t even at the best be disposed to allow him more than one. But
+has he only his mother?”
+
+“He has also a sister, older than himself and married; and they’re both
+remarkably fine women.”
+
+“Very handsome, you mean?”
+
+This promptitude—almost, as he might have thought, this precipitation,
+gave him a brief drop; but he came up again. “Mrs. Newsome, I think, is
+handsome, though she’s not of course, with a son of twenty-eight and a
+daughter of thirty, in her very first youth. She married, however,
+extremely young.”
+
+“And is wonderful,” Miss Gostrey asked, “for her age?”
+
+Strether seemed to feel with a certain disquiet the pressure of it. “I
+don’t say she’s wonderful. Or rather,” he went on the next moment, “I
+do say it. It’s exactly what she _is_—wonderful. But I wasn’t thinking
+of her appearance,” he explained—“striking as that doubtless is. I was
+thinking—well, of many other things.” He seemed to look at these as if
+to mention some of them; then took, pulling himself up, another turn.
+“About Mrs. Pocock people may differ.”
+
+“Is that the daughter’s name—‘Pocock’?”
+
+“That’s the daughter’s name,” Strether sturdily confessed.
+
+“And people may differ, you mean, about _her_ beauty?”
+
+“About everything.”
+
+“But _you_ admire her?”
+
+He gave his friend a glance as to show how he could bear this “I’m
+perhaps a little afraid of her.”
+
+“Oh,” said Miss Gostrey, “I see her from here! You may say then I see
+very fast and very far, but I’ve already shown you I do. The young man
+and the two ladies,” she went on, “are at any rate all the family?”
+
+“Quite all. His father has been dead ten years, and there’s no brother,
+nor any other sister. They’d do,” said Strether, “anything 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.”
+
+Strether took this more lightly. “Oh I jam down the pedal too!”
+
+“Well,” she lucidly returned, “we must from this moment bear on it
+together with all our might.” And she forged ahead. “Have they money?”
+
+But it was as if, while her energetic image still held him, her enquiry
+fell short. “Mrs. Newsome,” he wished further to explain, “hasn’t
+moreover your courage on the question of contact. If she had come it
+would have been to see the person herself.”
+
+“The woman? Ah but that’s courage.”
+
+“No—it’s exaltation, which is a very different thing. Courage,” he,
+however, accommodatingly threw out, “is what _you_ have.”
+
+She shook her head. “You say that only to patch me up—to cover the
+nudity of my want of exaltation. I’ve neither the one nor the other.
+I’ve mere battered indifference. I see that what you mean,” Miss
+Gostrey pursued, “is that if your friend _had_ come she would take
+great views, and the great views, to put it simply, would be too much
+for her.”
+
+Strether looked amused at her notion of the simple, but he adopted her
+formula. “Everything’s too much for her.”
+
+“Ah then such a service as this of yours—”
+
+“Is more for her than anything else? Yes—far more. But so long as it
+isn’t too much for _me_—!”
+
+“Her condition doesn’t matter? Surely not; we leave her condition out;
+we take it, that is, for granted. I see it, her condition, as behind
+and beneath you; yet at the same time I see it as bearing you up.”
+
+“Oh it does bear me up!” Strether laughed.
+
+“Well then as yours bears _me_ nothing more’s needed.” With which she
+put again her question. “Has Mrs. Newsome money?”
+
+This time he heeded. “Oh plenty. That’s the root of the evil. There’s
+money, to very large amounts, in the concern. Chad has had the free use
+of a great deal. But if he’ll pull himself together and come home, all
+the same, he’ll find his account in it.”
+
+She had listened with all her interest. “And I hope to goodness you’ll
+find yours!”
+
+“He’ll take up his definite material reward,” said Strether without
+acknowledgement of this. “He’s at the parting of the ways. He can come
+into the business now—he can’t come later.”
+
+“Is there a business?”
+
+“Lord, yes—a big brave bouncing business. A roaring trade.”
+
+“A great shop?”
+
+“Yes—a workshop; a great production, a great industry. The concern’s a
+manufacture—and a manufacture that, if it’s only properly looked after,
+may well be on the way to become a monopoly. It’s a little thing they
+make—make better, it appears, than other people can, or than other
+people, at any rate, do. Mr. Newsome, being a man of ideas, at least in
+that particular line,” Strether explained, “put them on it with great
+effect, and gave the place altogether, in his time, an immense lift.”
+
+“It’s a place in itself?”
+
+“Well, quite a number of buildings; almost a little industrial colony.
+But above all it’s a thing. The article produced.”
+
+“And what _is_ the article produced?”
+
+Strether looked about him as in slight reluctance to say; then the
+curtain, which he saw about to rise, came to his aid. “I’ll tell you
+next time.” But when the next time came he only said he’d tell her
+later on—after they should have left the theatre; for she had
+immediately reverted to their topic, and even for himself the picture
+of the stage was now overlaid with another image. His postponements,
+however, made her wonder—wonder if the article referred to were
+anything bad. And she explained that she meant improper or ridiculous
+or wrong. But Strether, so far as that went, could satisfy her.
+“Unmentionable? Oh no, we constantly talk of it; we are quite familiar
+and brazen about it. Only, as a small, trivial, rather ridiculous
+object of the commonest domestic use, it’s just wanting in—what shall I
+say? Well, dignity, or the least approach to distinction. Right here
+therefore, with everything about us so grand—!” In short he shrank.
+
+“It’s a false note?”
+
+“Sadly. It’s vulgar.”
+
+“But surely not vulgarer than this.” Then on his wondering as she
+herself had done: “Than everything about us.” She seemed a trifle
+irritated. “What do you take this for?”
+
+“Why for—comparatively—divine!”
+
+“This dreadful London theatre? It’s impossible, if you really want to
+know.”
+
+“Oh then,” laughed Strether, “I _don’t_ really want to know!”
+
+It made between them a pause, which she, however, still fascinated by
+the mystery of the production at Woollett, presently broke. “‘Rather
+ridiculous’? Clothes-pins? Saleratus? Shoe-polish?”
+
+It brought him round. “No—you don’t even ‘burn.’ I don’t think, you
+know, you’ll guess it.”
+
+“How then can I judge how vulgar it is?”
+
+“You’ll judge when I do tell you”—and he persuaded her to patience. But
+it may even now frankly be mentioned that he in the sequel never _was_
+to tell her. He actually never did so, and it moreover oddly occurred
+that by the law, within her, of the incalculable, her desire for the
+information dropped and her attitude to the question converted itself
+into a positive cultivation of ignorance. In ignorance she could humour
+her fancy, and that proved a useful freedom. She could treat the little
+nameless object as indeed unnameable—she could make their abstention
+enormously definite. There might indeed have been for Strether the
+portent of this in what she next said.
+
+“Is it perhaps then because it’s so bad—because your industry as you
+call it, _is_ so vulgar—that Mr. Chad won’t come back? Does he feel the
+taint? Is he staying away not to be mixed up in it?”
+
+“Oh,” Strether laughed, “it wouldn’t appear—would it?—that he feels
+‘taints’! He’s glad enough of the money from it, and the money’s his
+whole basis. There’s appreciation in that—I mean as to the allowance
+his mother has hitherto made him. She has of course the resource of
+cutting this allowance off; but even then he has unfortunately, and on
+no small scale, his independent supply—money left him by his
+grandfather, her own father.”
+
+“Wouldn’t the fact you mention then,” Miss Gostrey asked, “make it just
+more easy for him to be particular? Isn’t he conceivable as fastidious
+about the source—the apparent and public source—of his income?”
+
+Strether was able quite good-humouredly to entertain the proposition.
+“The source of his grandfather’s wealth—and thereby of his own share in
+it—was not particularly noble.”
+
+“And what source was it?”
+
+Strether cast about. “Well—practices.”
+
+“In business? Infamies? He was an old swindler?”
+
+“Oh,” he said with more emphasis than spirit, “I shan’t describe _him_
+nor narrate his exploits.”
+
+“Lord, what abysses! And the late Mr. Newsome then?”
+
+“Well, what about him?”
+
+“Was he like the grandfather?”
+
+“No—he was on the other side of the house. And he was different.”
+
+Miss Gostrey kept it up. “Better?”
+
+Her friend for a moment hung fire. “No.”
+
+Her comment on his hesitation was scarce the less marked for being
+mute. “Thank you. _Now_ don’t you see,” she went on, “why the boy
+doesn’t come home? He’s drowning his shame.”
+
+“His shame? What shame?”
+
+“What shame? Comment donc? _The_ shame.”
+
+“But where and when,” Strether asked, “is ‘_the_ shame’—where is any
+shame—to-day? The men I speak of—they did as every one does; and
+(besides being ancient history) it was all a matter of appreciation.”
+
+She showed how she understood. “Mrs. Newsome has appreciated?”
+
+“Ah I can’t speak for _her!_”
+
+“In the midst of such doings—and, as I understand you, profiting by
+them, she at least has remained exquisite?”
+
+“Oh I can’t talk of her!” Strether said.
+
+“I thought she was just what you _could_ talk of. You _don’t_ trust
+me,” Miss Gostrey after a moment declared.
+
+It had its effect. “Well, her money is spent, her life conceived and
+carried on with a large beneficence—”
+
+“That’s a kind of expiation of wrongs? Gracious,” she added before he
+could speak, “how intensely you make me see her!”
+
+“If you see her,” Strether dropped, “it’s all that’s necessary.”
+
+She really seemed to have her. “I feel that. She _is_, in spite of
+everything, handsome.”
+
+This at least enlivened him. “What do you mean by everything?”
+
+“Well, I mean _you_.” With which she had one of her swift changes of
+ground. “You say the concern needs looking after; but doesn’t Mrs.
+Newsome look after it?”
+
+“So far as possible. She’s wonderfully able, but it’s not her affair,
+and her life’s a good deal overcharged. She has many, many things.”
+
+“And you also?”
+
+“Oh yes—I’ve many too, if you will.”
+
+“I see. But what I mean is,” Miss Gostrey amended, “do you also look
+after the business?”
+
+“Oh no, I don’t touch the business.”
+
+“Only everything else?”
+
+“Well, yes—some things.”
+
+“As for instance—?”
+
+Strether obligingly thought. “Well, the Review.”
+
+“The Review?—you have a Review?”
+
+“Certainly. Woollett has a Review—which Mrs. Newsome, for the most
+part, magnificently pays for and which I, not at all magnificently,
+edit. My name’s on the cover,” Strether pursued, “and I’m really rather
+disappointed and hurt that you seem never to have heard of it.”
+
+She neglected for a moment this grievance. “And what kind of a Review
+is it?”
+
+His serenity was now completely restored. “Well, it’s green.”
+
+“Do you mean in political colour as they say here—in thought?”
+
+“No; I mean the cover’s green—of the most lovely shade.”
+
+“And with Mrs. Newsome’s name on it too?”
+
+He waited a little. “Oh as for that you must judge if she peeps out.
+She’s behind the whole thing; but she’s of a delicacy and a
+discretion—!”
+
+Miss Gostrey took it all. “I’m sure. She _would_ be. I don’t underrate
+her. She must be rather a swell.”
+
+“Oh yes, she’s rather a swell!”
+
+“A Woollett swell—_bon!_ I like the idea of a Woollett swell. And you
+must be rather one too, to be so mixed up with her.”
+
+“Ah no,” said Strether, “that’s not the way it works.”
+
+But she had already taken him up. “The way it works—you needn’t tell
+me!—is of course that you efface yourself.”
+
+“With my name on the cover?” he lucidly objected.
+
+“Ah but you don’t put it on for yourself.”
+
+“I beg your pardon—that’s exactly what I do put it on for. It’s exactly
+the thing that I’m reduced to doing for myself. It seems to rescue a
+little, you see, from the wreck of hopes and ambitions, the refuse-heap
+of disappointments and failures, my one presentable little scrap of an
+identity.”
+
+On this she looked at him as to say many things, but what she at last
+simply said was: “She likes to see it there. You’re the bigger swell of
+the two,” she immediately continued, “because you think you’re not one.
+She thinks she _is_ one. However,” Miss Gostrey added, “she thinks
+you’re one too. You’re at all events the biggest she can get hold of.”
+She embroidered, she abounded. “I don’t say it to interfere between
+you, but on the day she gets hold of a bigger one—!” Strether had
+thrown back his head as in silent mirth over something that struck him
+in her audacity or felicity, and her flight meanwhile was already
+higher. “Therefore close with her—!”
+
+“Close with her?” he asked as she seemed to hang poised.
+
+“Before you lose your chance.”
+
+Their eyes met over it. “What do you mean by closing?”
+
+“And what do I mean by your chance? I’ll tell you when you tell me all
+the things _you_ don’t. Is it her _greatest_ fad?” she briskly pursued.
+
+“The Review?” He seemed to wonder how he could best describe it. This
+resulted however but in a sketch. “It’s her tribute to the ideal.”
+
+“I see. You go in for tremendous things.”
+
+“We go in for the unpopular side—that is so far as we dare.”
+
+“And how far _do_ you dare?”
+
+“Well, she very far. I much less. I don’t begin to have her faith. She
+provides,” said Strether, “three fourths of that. And she provides, as
+I’ve confided to you, _all_ the money.”
+
+It evoked somehow a vision of gold that held for a little Miss
+Gostrey’s eyes, and she looked as if she heard the bright dollars
+shovelled in. “I hope then you make a good thing—”
+
+“I _never_ made a good thing!” he at once returned.
+
+She just waited. “Don’t you call it a good thing to be loved?”
+
+“Oh we’re not loved. We’re not even hated. We’re only just sweetly
+ignored.”
+
+She had another pause. “You don’t trust me!” she once more repeated.
+
+“Don’t I when I lift the last veil?—tell you the very secret of the
+prison-house?”
+
+Again she met his eyes, but to the result that after an instant her own
+turned away with impatience. “You don’t sell? Oh I’m glad of _that!_”
+After which however, and before he could protest, she was off again.
+“She’s just a _moral_ swell.”
+
+He accepted gaily enough the definition. “Yes—I really think that
+describes her.”
+
+But it had for his friend the oddest connexion. “How does she do her
+hair?”
+
+He laughed out. “Beautifully!”
+
+“Ah that doesn’t tell me. However, it doesn’t matter—I know. It’s
+tremendously neat—a real reproach; quite remarkably thick and without,
+as yet, a single strand of white. There!”
+
+He blushed for her realism, but gaped at her truth. “You’re the very
+deuce.”
+
+“What else _should_ I be? It was as the very deuce I pounced on you.
+But don’t let it trouble you, for everything but the very deuce—at our
+age—is a bore and a delusion, and even he himself, after all, but half
+a joy.” With which, on a single sweep of her wing, she resumed. “You
+assist her to expiate—which is rather hard when you’ve yourself not
+sinned.”
+
+“It’s she who hasn’t sinned,” Strether replied. “I’ve sinned the most.”
+
+“Ah,” Miss Gostrey cynically laughed, “what a picture of _her!_ Have
+you robbed the widow and the orphan?”
+
+“I’ve sinned enough,” said Strether.
+
+“Enough for whom? Enough for what?”
+
+“Well, to be where I am.”
+
+“Thank you!” They were disturbed at this moment by the passage between
+their knees and the back of the seats before them of a gentleman who
+had been absent during a part of the performance and who now returned
+for the close; but the interruption left Miss Gostrey time, before the
+subsequent hush, to express as a sharp finality her sense of the moral
+of all their talk. “I knew you had something up your sleeve!” This
+finality, however, left them in its turn, at the end of the play, as
+disposed to hang back as if they had still much to say; so that they
+easily agreed to let every one go before them—they found an interest in
+waiting. They made out from the lobby that the night had turned to
+rain; yet Miss Gostrey let her friend know that he wasn’t to see her
+home. He was simply to put her, by herself, into a four-wheeler; she
+liked so in London, of wet nights after wild pleasures, thinking things
+over, on the return, in lonely four-wheelers. This was her great time,
+she intimated, for pulling herself together. The delays caused by the
+weather, the struggle for vehicles at the door, gave them occasion to
+subside on a divan at the back of the vestibule and just beyond the
+reach of the fresh damp gusts from the street. Here Strether’s comrade
+resumed that free handling of the subject to which his own imagination
+of it already owed so much. “Does your young friend in Paris like you?”
+
+It had almost, after the interval, startled him. “Oh I hope not! Why
+_should_ he?”
+
+“Why shouldn’t he?” Miss Gostrey asked. “That you’re coming down on him
+need have nothing to do with it.”
+
+“You see more in it,” he presently returned, “than I.”
+
+“Of course I see _you_ in it.”
+
+“Well then you see more in ‘me’!”
+
+“Than you see in yourself? Very likely. That’s always one’s right. What
+I was thinking of,” she explained, “is the possible particular effect
+on him of his _milieu_.”
+
+“Oh his _milieu_—!” Strether really felt he could imagine it better now
+than three hours before.
+
+“Do you mean it can only have been so lowering?”
+
+“Why that’s my very starting-point.”
+
+“Yes, but you start so far back. What do his letters say?”
+
+“Nothing. He practically ignores us—or spares us. He doesn’t write.”
+
+“I see. But there are all the same,” she went on, “two quite distinct
+things that—given the wonderful place he’s in—may have happened to him.
+One is that he may have got brutalised. The other is that he may have
+got refined.”
+
+Strether stared—this _was_ a novelty. “Refined?”
+
+“Oh,” she said quietly, “there _are_ refinements.”
+
+The way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh.
+“_You_ have them!”
+
+“As one of the signs,” she continued in the same tone, “they constitute
+perhaps the worst.”
+
+He thought it over and his gravity returned. “Is it a refinement not to
+answer his mother’s letters?”
+
+She appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out. “Oh I should
+say the greatest of all.”
+
+“Well,” said Strether, “_I’m_ quite content to let it, as one of the
+signs, pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do what he
+likes with me.”
+
+This appeared to strike her. “How do you know it?”
+
+“Oh I’m sure of it. I feel it in my bones.”
+
+“Feel he _can_ do it?”
+
+“Feel that he believes he can. It may come to the same thing!” Strether
+laughed.
+
+She wouldn’t, however, have this. “Nothing for you will ever come to
+the same thing as anything else.” And she understood what she meant, it
+seemed, sufficiently to go straight on. “You say that if he does break
+he’ll come in for things at home?”
+
+“Quite positively. He’ll come in for a particular chance—a chance that
+any properly constituted young man would jump at. The business has so
+developed that an opening scarcely apparent three years ago, but which
+his father’s will took account of as in certain conditions possible and
+which, under that will, attaches to Chad’s availing himself of it a
+large contingent advantage—this opening, the conditions having come
+about, now simply awaits him. His mother has kept it for him, holding
+out against strong pressure, till the last possible moment. It
+requires, naturally, as it carries with it a handsome ‘part,’ a large
+share in profits, his being on the spot and making a big effort for a
+big result. That’s what I mean by his chance. If he misses it he comes
+in, as you say, for nothing. And to see that he doesn’t miss it is, in
+a word, what I’ve come out for.”
+
+She let it all sink in. “What you’ve come out for then is simply to
+render him an immense service.”
+
+Well, poor Strether was willing to take it so. “Ah if you like.”
+
+“He stands, as they say, if you succeed with him, to gain—”
+
+“Oh a lot of advantages.” Strether had them clearly at his fingers’
+ends.
+
+“By which you mean of course a lot of money.”
+
+“Well, not only. I’m acting with a sense for him of other things too.
+Consideration and comfort and security—the general safety of being
+anchored by a strong chain. He wants, as I see him, to be protected.
+Protected I mean from life.”
+
+“Ah voilà!”—her thought fitted with a click. “From life. What you
+_really_ want to get him home for is to marry him.”
+
+“Well, that’s about the size of it.”
+
+“Of course,” she said, “it’s rudimentary. But to any one in
+particular?”
+
+He smiled at this, looking a little more conscious. “You get everything
+out.”
+
+For a moment again their eyes met. “You put everything in!”
+
+He acknowledged the tribute by telling her. “To Mamie Pocock.”
+
+She wondered; then gravely, even exquisitely, as if to make the oddity
+also fit: “His own niece?”
+
+“Oh you must yourself find a name for the relation. His
+brother-in-law’s sister. Mrs. Jim’s sister-in-law.”
+
+It seemed to have on Miss Gostrey a certain hardening effect. “And who
+in the world’s Mrs. Jim?”
+
+“Chad’s sister—who was Sarah Newsome. She’s married—didn’t I mention
+it?—to Jim Pocock.”
+
+“Ah yes,” she tacitly replied; but he had mentioned things—! Then,
+however, with all the sound it could have, “Who in the world’s Jim
+Pocock?” she asked.
+
+“Why Sally’s husband. That’s the only way we distinguish people at
+Woollett,” he good-humoredly explained.
+
+“And is it a great distinction—being Sally’s husband?”
+
+He considered. “I think there can be scarcely a greater—unless it may
+become one, in the future, to be Chad’s wife.”
+
+“Then how do they distinguish _you?_”
+
+“They _don’t_—except, as I’ve told you, by the green cover.”
+
+Once more their eyes met on it, and she held him an instant. “The green
+cover won’t—nor will _any_ cover—avail you with _me_. You’re of a depth
+of duplicity!” Still, she could in her own large grasp of the real
+condone it. “Is Mamie a great _parti?_”
+
+“Oh the greatest we have—our prettiest brightest girl.”
+
+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!_”
+Once more she embraced it all, but she had a moment of thought. “Poor
+Chad!”
+
+“Ah,” said Strether cheerfully “Mamie will save him!”
+
+She was looking away, still in her vision, and she spoke with
+impatience and almost as if he hadn’t understood her. “_You’ll_ save
+him. That’s who’ll save him.”
+
+“Oh but with Mamie’s aid. Unless indeed you mean,” he added, “that I
+shall effect so much more with yours!”
+
+It made her at last again look at him. “You’ll do more—as you’re so
+much better—than all of us put together.”
+
+“I think I’m only better since I’ve known _you!_” Strether bravely
+returned.
+
+The depletion of the place, the shrinkage of the crowd and now
+comparatively quiet withdrawal of its last elements had already brought
+them nearer the door and put them in relation with a messenger of whom
+he bespoke Miss Gostrey’s cab. But this left them a few minutes more,
+which she was clearly in no mood not to use. “You’ve spoken to me of
+what—by your success—Mr. Chad stands to gain. But you’ve not spoken to
+me of what you do.”
+
+“Oh I’ve nothing more to gain,” said Strether very simply.
+
+She took it as even quite too simple. “You mean you’ve got it all
+‘down’? You’ve been paid in advance?”
+
+“Ah don’t talk about payment!” he groaned.
+
+Something in the tone of it pulled her up, but as their messenger still
+delayed she had another chance and she put it in another way. “What—by
+failure—do you stand to lose?”
+
+He still, however, wouldn’t have it. “Nothing!” he exclaimed, and on
+the messenger’s at this instant reappearing he was able to sink the
+subject in their responsive advance. When, a few steps up the street,
+under a lamp, he had put her into her four-wheeler and she had asked
+him if the man had called for him no second conveyance, he replied
+before the door was closed. “You won’t take me with you?”
+
+“Not for the world.”
+
+“Then I shall walk.”
+
+“In the rain?”
+
+“I like the rain,” said Strether. “Good-night!”
+
+She kept him a moment, while his hand was on the door, by not
+answering; after which she answered by repeating her question. “What do
+you stand to lose?”
+
+Why the question now affected him as other he couldn’t have said; he
+could only this time meet it otherwise. “Everything.”
+
+“So I thought. Then you shall succeed. And to that end I’m yours—”
+
+“Ah, dear lady!” he kindly breathed.
+
+“Till death!” said Maria Gostrey. “Good-night.”
+
+
+ II
+
+Strether called, his second morning in Paris, on the bankers of the Rue
+Scribe to whom his letter of credit was addressed, and he made this
+visit attended by Waymarsh, in whose company he had crossed from London
+two days before. They had hastened to the Rue Scribe on the morrow of
+their arrival, but Strether had not then found the letters the hope of
+which prompted this errand. He had had as yet none at all; hadn’t
+expected them in London, but had counted on several in Paris, and,
+disconcerted now, had presently strolled back to the Boulevard with a
+sense of injury that he felt himself taking for as good a start as any
+other. It would serve, this spur to his spirit, he reflected, as,
+pausing at the top of the street, he looked up and down the great
+foreign avenue, it would serve to begin business with. His idea was to
+begin business immediately, and it did much for him the rest of his day
+that the beginning of business awaited him. He did little else till
+night but ask himself what he should do if he hadn’t fortunately had so
+much to do; but he put himself the question in many different
+situations and connexions. What carried him hither and yon was an
+admirable theory that nothing he could do wouldn’t be in some manner
+related to what he fundamentally had on hand, or _would_ be—should he
+happen to have a scruple—wasted for it. He did happen to have a
+scruple—a scruple about taking no definite step till he should get
+letters; but this reasoning carried it off. A single day to feel his
+feet—he had felt them as yet only at Chester and in London—was he could
+consider, none too much; and having, as he had often privately
+expressed it, Paris to reckon with, he threw these hours of freshness
+consciously into the reckoning. They made it continually greater, but
+that was what it had best be if it was to be anything at all, and he
+gave himself up till far into the evening, at the theatre and on the
+return, after the theatre, along the bright congested Boulevard, to
+feeling it grow. Waymarsh had accompanied him this time to the play,
+and the two men had walked together, as a first stage, from the Gymnase
+to the Café Riche, into the crowded “terrace” of which
+establishment—the night, or rather the morning, for midnight had
+struck, being bland and populous—they had wedged themselves for
+refreshment. Waymarsh, as a result of some discussion with his friend,
+had made a marked virtue of his having now let himself go; and there
+had been elements of impression in their half-hour over their watered
+beer-glasses that gave him his occasion for conveying that he held this
+compromise with his stiffer self to have become extreme. He conveyed
+it—for it was still, after all, his stiffer self who gloomed out of the
+glare of the terrace—in solemn silence; and there was indeed a great
+deal of critical silence, every way, between the companions, even till
+they gained the Place de l’Opéra, as to the character of their
+nocturnal progress.
+
+This morning there _were_ letters—letters which had reached London,
+apparently all together, the day of Strether’s journey, and had taken
+their time to follow him; so that, after a controlled impulse to go
+into them in the reception-room of the bank, which, reminding him of
+the post-office at Woollett, affected him as the abutment of some
+transatlantic bridge, he slipped them into the pocket of his loose grey
+overcoat with a sense of the felicity of carrying them off. Waymarsh,
+who had had letters yesterday, had had them again to-day, and Waymarsh
+suggested in this particular no controlled impulses. The last one he
+was at all events likely to be observed to struggle with was clearly
+that of bringing to a premature close any visit to the Rue Scribe.
+Strether had left him there yesterday; he wanted to see the papers, and
+he had spent, by what his friend could make out, a succession of hours
+with the papers. He spoke of the establishment, with emphasis, as a
+post of superior observation; just as he spoke generally of his actual
+damnable doom as a device for hiding from him what was going on. Europe
+was best described, to his mind, as an elaborate engine for
+dissociating the confined American from that indispensable knowledge,
+and was accordingly only rendered bearable by these occasional stations
+of relief, traps for the arrest of wandering western airs. Strether, on
+his side, set himself to walk again—he had his relief in his pocket;
+and indeed, much as he had desired his budget, the growth of
+restlessness might have been marked in him from the moment he had
+assured himself of the superscription of most of the missives it
+contained. This restlessness became therefore his temporary law; he
+knew he should recognise as soon as see it the best place of all for
+settling down with his chief correspondent. He had for the next hour an
+accidental air of looking for it in the windows of shops; he came down
+the Rue de la Paix in the sun and, passing across the Tuileries and the
+river, indulged more than once—as if on finding himself determined—in a
+sudden pause before the book-stalls of the opposite quay. In the garden
+of the Tuileries he had lingered, on two or three spots, to look; it
+was as if the wonderful Paris spring had stayed him as he roamed. The
+prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes—in a soft breeze and a
+sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the garden-floor, of
+bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong boxes, in the type of
+ancient thrifty persons basking betimes where terrace-walls were warm,
+in the blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and
+scrapers, in the deep references of a straight-pacing priest or the
+sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged soldier. He watched little
+brisk figures, figures whose movement was as the tick of the great
+Paris clock, take their smooth diagonal from point to point; the air
+had a taste as of something mixed with art, something that presented
+nature as a white-capped master-chef. The palace was gone, Strether
+remembered the palace; and when he gazed into the irremediable void of
+its site the historic sense in him might have been freely at play—the
+play under which in Paris indeed it so often winces like a touched
+nerve. He filled out spaces with dim symbols of scenes; he caught the
+gleam of white statues at the base of which, with his letters out, he
+could tilt back a straw-bottomed chair. But his drift was, for reasons,
+to the other side, and it floated him unspent up the Rue de Seine and
+as far as the Luxembourg. In the Luxembourg Gardens he pulled up; here
+at last he found his nook, and here, on a penny chair from which
+terraces, alleys, vistas, fountains, little trees in green tubs, little
+women in white caps and shrill little girls at play all sunnily
+“composed” together, he passed an hour in which the cup of his
+impressions seemed truly to overflow. But a week had elapsed since he
+quitted the ship, and there were more things in his mind than so few
+days could account for. More than once, during the time, he had
+regarded himself as admonished; but the admonition this morning was
+formidably sharp. It took as it hadn’t done yet the form of a
+question—the question of what he was doing with such an extraordinary
+sense of escape. This sense was sharpest after he had read his letters,
+but that was also precisely why the question pressed. Four of the
+letters were from Mrs. Newsome and none of them short; she had lost no
+time, had followed on his heels while he moved, so expressing herself
+that he now could measure the probable frequency with which he should
+hear. They would arrive, it would seem, her communications, at the rate
+of several a week; he should be able to count, it might even prove, on
+more than one by each mail. If he had begun yesterday with a small
+grievance he had therefore an opportunity to begin to-day with its
+opposite. He read the letters successively and slowly, putting others
+back into his pocket but keeping these for a long time afterwards
+gathered in his lap. He held them there, lost in thought, as if to
+prolong the presence of what they gave him; or as if at the least to
+assure them their part in the constitution of some lucidity. His friend
+wrote admirably, and her tone was even more in her style than in her
+voice—he might almost, for the hour, have had to come this distance to
+get its full carrying quality; yet the plentitude of his consciousness
+of difference consorted perfectly with the deepened intensity of the
+connexion. It was the difference, the difference of being just where he
+was and _as_ he was, that formed the escape—this difference was so much
+greater than he had dreamed it would be; and what he finally sat there
+turning over was the strange logic of his finding himself so free. He
+felt it in a manner his duty to think out his state, to approve the
+process, and when he came in fact to trace the steps and add up the
+items they sufficiently accounted for the sum. He had never
+expected—that was the truth of it—again to find himself young, and all
+the years and other things it had taken to make him so were exactly his
+present arithmetic. He had to make sure of them to put his scruple to
+rest.
+
+It all sprang at bottom from the beauty of Mrs. Newsome’s desire that
+he should be worried with nothing that was not of the essence of his
+task; by insisting that he should thoroughly intermit and break she had
+so provided for his freedom that she would, as it were, have only
+herself to thank. Strether could not at this point indeed have
+completed his thought by the image of what she might have to thank
+herself _for_: the image, at best, of his own likeness—poor Lambert
+Strether washed up on the sunny strand by the waves of a single day,
+poor Lambert Strether thankful for breathing-time and stiffening
+himself while he gasped. There he was, and with nothing in his aspect
+or his posture to scandalise: it was only true that if he had seen Mrs.
+Newsome coming he would instinctively have jumped up to walk away a
+little. He would have come round and back to her bravely, but he would
+have had first to pull himself together. She abounded in news of the
+situation at home, proved to him how perfectly she was arranging for
+his absence, told him who would take up this and who take up that
+exactly where he had left it, gave him in fact chapter and verse for
+the moral that nothing would suffer. It filled for him, this tone of
+hers, all the air; yet it struck him at the same time as the hum of
+vain things. This latter effect was what he tried to justify—and with
+the success that, grave though the appearance, he at last lighted on a
+form that was happy. He arrived at it by the inevitable recognition of
+his having been a fortnight before one of the weariest of men. If ever
+a man had come off tired Lambert Strether was that man; and hadn’t it
+been distinctly on the ground of his fatigue that his wonderful friend
+at home had so felt for him and so contrived? It seemed to him somehow
+at these instants that, could he only maintain with sufficient firmness
+his grasp of that truth, it might become in a manner his compass and
+his helm. What he wanted most was some idea that would simplify, and
+nothing would do this so much as the fact that he was done for and
+finished. If it had been in such a light that he had just detected in
+his cup the dregs of youth, that was a mere flaw of the surface of his
+scheme. He was so distinctly fagged-out that it must serve precisely as
+his convenience, and if he could but consistently be good for little
+enough he might do everything he wanted.
+
+Everything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon—the common
+unattainable art of taking things as they came. He appeared to himself
+to have given his best years to an active appreciation of the way they
+didn’t come; but perhaps—as they would seemingly here be things quite
+other—this long ache might at last drop to rest. He could easily see
+that from the moment he should accept the notion of his foredoomed
+collapse the last thing he would lack would be reasons and memories. Oh
+if he _should_ do the sum no slate would hold the figures! The fact
+that he had failed, as he considered, in everything, in each relation
+and in half a dozen trades, as he liked luxuriously to put it, might
+have made, might still make, for an empty present; but it stood solidly
+for a crowded past. It had not been, so much achievement missed, a
+light yoke nor a short load. It was at present as if the backward
+picture had hung there, the long crooked course, grey in the shadow of
+his solitude. It had been a dreadful cheerful sociable solitude, a
+solitude of life or choice, of community; but though there had been
+people enough all round it there had been but three or four persons
+_in_ it. Waymarsh was one of these, and the fact struck him just now as
+marking the record. Mrs. Newsome was another, and Miss Gostrey had of a
+sudden shown signs of becoming a third. Beyond, behind them was the
+pale figure of his real youth, which held against its breast the two
+presences paler than itself—the young wife he had early lost and the
+young son he had stupidly sacrificed. He had again and again made out
+for himself that he might have kept his little boy, his little dull boy
+who had died at school of rapid diphtheria, if he had not in those
+years so insanely given himself to merely missing the mother. It was
+the soreness of his remorse that the child had in all likelihood not
+really been dull—had been dull, as he had been banished and neglected,
+mainly because the father had been unwittingly selfish. This was
+doubtless but the secret habit of sorrow, which had slowly given way to
+time; yet there remained an ache sharp enough to make the spirit, at
+the sight now and again of some fair young man just growing up, wince
+with the thought of an opportunity lost. Had ever a man, he had finally
+fallen into the way of asking himself, lost so much and even done so
+much for so little? There had been particular reasons why all
+yesterday, beyond other days, he should have had in one ear this cold
+enquiry. His name on the green cover, where he had put it for Mrs.
+Newsome, expressed him doubtless just enough to make the world—the
+world as distinguished, both for more and for less, from Woollett—ask
+who he was. He had incurred the ridicule of having to have his
+explanation explained. He was Lambert Strether because he was on the
+cover, whereas it should have been, for anything like glory, that he
+was on the cover because he was Lambert Strether. He would have done
+anything for Mrs. Newsome, have been still more ridiculous—as he might,
+for that matter, have occasion to be yet; which came to saying that
+this acceptance of fate was all he had to show at fifty-five.
+
+He judged the quantity as small because it _was_ small, and all the
+more egregiously since it couldn’t, as he saw the case, so much as
+thinkably have been larger. He hadn’t had the gift of making the most
+of what he tried, and if he had tried and tried again—no one but
+himself knew how often—it appeared to have been that he might
+demonstrate what else, in default of that, _could_ be made. Old ghosts
+of experiments came back to him, old drudgeries and delusions, and
+disgusts, old recoveries with their relapses, old fevers with their
+chills, broken moments of good faith, others of still better doubt;
+adventures, for the most part, of the sort qualified as lessons. The
+special spring that had constantly played for him the day before was
+the recognition—frequent enough to surprise him—of the promises to
+himself that he had after his other visit never kept. The reminiscence
+to-day most quickened for him was that of the vow taken in the course
+of the pilgrimage that, newly-married, with the War just over, and
+helplessly young in spite of it, he had recklessly made with the
+creature who was so much younger still. It had been a bold dash, for
+which they had taken money set apart for necessities, but kept sacred
+at the moment in a hundred ways, and in none more so than by this
+private pledge of his own to treat the occasion as a relation formed
+with the higher culture and see that, as they said at Woollett, it
+should bear a good harvest. He had believed, sailing home again, that
+he had gained something great, and his theory—with an elaborate
+innocent plan of reading, digesting, coming back even, every few
+years—had then been to preserve, cherish and extend it. As such plans
+as these had come to nothing, however, in respect to acquisitions still
+more precious, it was doubtless little enough of a marvel that he
+should have lost account of that handful of seed. Buried for long years
+in dark corners at any rate these few germs had sprouted again under
+forty-eight hours of Paris. The process of yesterday had really been
+the process of feeling the general stirred life of connexions long
+since individually dropped. Strether had become acquainted even on this
+ground with short gusts of speculation—sudden flights of fancy in
+Louvre galleries, hungry gazes through clear plates behind which
+lemon-coloured volumes were as fresh as fruit on the tree.
+
+There were instants at which he could ask whether, since there had been
+fundamentally so little question of his keeping anything, the fate
+after all decreed for him hadn’t been only to _be_ kept. Kept for
+something, in that event, that he didn’t pretend, didn’t possibly dare
+as yet to divine; something that made him hover and wonder and laugh
+and sigh, made him advance and retreat, feeling half ashamed of his
+impulse to plunge and more than half afraid of his impulse to wait. He
+remembered for instance how he had gone back in the sixties with
+lemon-coloured volumes in general on the brain as well as with a
+dozen—selected for his wife too—in his trunk; and nothing had at the
+moment shown more confidence than this invocation of the finer taste.
+They were still somewhere at home, the dozen—stale and soiled and never
+sent to the binder; but what had become of the sharp initiation they
+represented? They represented now the mere sallow paint on the door of
+the temple of taste that he had dreamed of raising up—a structure he
+had practically never carried further. Strether’s present highest
+flights were perhaps those in which this particular lapse figured to
+him as a symbol, a symbol of his long grind and his want of odd
+moments, his want moreover of money, of opportunity, of positive
+dignity. That the memory of the vow of his youth should, in order to
+throb again, have had to wait for this last, as he felt it, of all his
+accidents—that was surely proof enough of how his conscience had been
+encumbered. If any further proof were needed it would have been to be
+found in the fact that, as he perfectly now saw, he had ceased even to
+measure his meagreness, a meagreness that sprawled, in this retrospect,
+vague and comprehensive, stretching back like some unmapped Hinterland
+from a rough coast-settlement. His conscience had been amusing itself
+for the forty-eight hours by forbidding him the purchase of a book; he
+held off from that, held off from everything; from the moment he didn’t
+yet call on Chad he wouldn’t for the world have taken any other step.
+On this evidence, however, of the way they actually affected him he
+glared at the lemon-coloured covers in confession of the
+subconsciousness that, all the same, in the great desert of the years,
+he must have had of them. The green covers at home comprised, by the
+law of their purpose, no tribute to letters; it was of a mere rich
+kernel of economics, politics, ethics that, glazed and, as Mrs. Newsome
+maintained rather against _his_ view, pre-eminently pleasant to touch,
+they formed the specious shell. Without therefore any needed
+instinctive knowledge of what was coming out, in Paris, on the bright
+highway, he struck himself at present as having more than once flushed
+with a suspicion: he couldn’t otherwise at present be feeling so many
+fears confirmed. There were “movements” he was too late for: weren’t
+they, with the fun of them, already spent? There were sequences he had
+missed and great gaps in the procession: he might have been watching it
+all recede in a golden cloud of dust. If the playhouse wasn’t closed
+his seat had at least fallen to somebody else. He had had an uneasy
+feeling the night before that if he was at the theatre at all—though he
+indeed justified the theatre, in the specific sense, and with a
+grotesqueness to which his imagination did all honour, as something he
+owed poor Waymarsh—he should have been there with, and as might have
+been said, _for_ Chad.
+
+This suggested the question of whether he could properly have taken him
+to such a play, and what effect—it was a point that suddenly rose—his
+peculiar responsibility might be held in general to have on his choice
+of entertainment. It had literally been present to him at the
+Gymnase—where one was held moreover comparatively safe—that having his
+young friend at his side would have been an odd feature of the work of
+redemption; and this quite in spite of the fact that the picture
+presented might well, confronted with Chad’s own private stage, have
+seemed the pattern of propriety. He clearly hadn’t come out in the name
+of propriety but to visit unattended equivocal performances; yet still
+less had he done so to undermine his authority by sharing them with the
+graceless youth. Was he to renounce all amusement for the sweet sake of
+that authority? and _would_ such renouncement give him for Chad a moral
+glamour? The little problem bristled the more by reason of poor
+Strether’s fairly open sense of the irony of things. Were there then
+sides on which his predicament threatened to look rather droll to him?
+Should he have to pretend to believe—either to himself or the wretched
+boy—that there was anything that could make the latter worse? Wasn’t
+some such pretence on the other hand involved in the assumption of
+possible processes that would make him better? His greatest uneasiness
+seemed to peep at him out of the imminent impression that almost any
+acceptance of Paris might give one’s authority away. It hung before him
+this morning, the vast bright Babylon, like some huge iridescent
+object, a jewel brilliant and hard, in which parts were not to be
+discriminated nor differences comfortably marked. It twinkled and
+trembled and melted together, and what seemed all surface one moment
+seemed all depth the next. It was a place of which, unmistakeably, Chad
+was fond; wherefore if he, Strether, should like it too much, what on
+earth, with such a bond, would become of either of them? It all
+depended of course—which was a gleam of light—on how the “too much” was
+measured; though indeed our friend fairly felt, while he prolonged the
+meditation I describe, that for himself even already a certain measure
+had been reached. It will have been sufficiently seen that he was not a
+man to neglect any good chance for reflexion. Was it at all possible
+for instance to like Paris enough without liking it too much? He
+luckily however hadn’t promised Mrs. Newsome not to like it at all. He
+was ready to recognise at this stage that such an engagement _would_
+have tied his hands. The Luxembourg Gardens were incontestably just so
+adorable at this hour by reason—in addition to their intrinsic charm—of
+his not having taken it. The only engagement he had taken, when he
+looked the thing in the face, was to do what he reasonably could.
+
+It upset him a little none the less and after a while to find himself
+at last remembering on what current of association he had been floated
+so far. Old imaginations of the Latin Quarter had played their part for
+him, and he had duly recalled its having been with this scene of rather
+ominous legend that, like so many young men in fiction as well as in
+fact, Chad had begun. He was now quite out of it, with his “home,” as
+Strether figured the place, in the Boulevard Malesherbes, now; which
+was perhaps why, repairing, not to fail of justice either, to the elder
+neighbourhood, our friend had felt he could allow for the element of
+the usual, the immemorial, without courting perturbation. He was not at
+least in danger of seeing the youth and the particular Person flaunt by
+together; and yet he was in the very air of which—just to feel what the
+early natural note must have been—he wished most to take counsel. It
+became at once vivid to him that he had originally had, for a few days,
+an almost envious vision of the boy’s romantic privilege. Melancholy
+Mürger, with Francine and Musette and Rodolphe, at home, was, in the
+company of the tattered, one—if he not in his single self two or
+three—of the unbound, the paper-covered dozen on the shelf; and when
+Chad had written, five years ago, after a sojourn then already
+prolonged to six months, that he had decided to go in for economy and
+the real thing, Strether’s fancy had quite fondly accompanied him in
+this migration, which was to convey him, as they somewhat confusedly
+learned at Woollett, across the bridges and up the Montagne
+Sainte-Geneviève. This was the region—Chad had been quite distinct
+about it—in which the best French, and many other things, were to be
+learned at least cost, and in which all sorts of clever fellows,
+compatriots there for a purpose, formed an awfully pleasant set. The
+clever fellows, the friendly countrymen were mainly young painters,
+sculptors, architects, medical students; but they were, Chad sagely
+opined, a much more profitable lot to be with—even on the footing of
+not being quite one of them—than the “terrible toughs” (Strether
+remembered the edifying discrimination) of the American bars and banks
+roundabout the Opéra. Chad had thrown out, in the communications
+following this one—for at that time he did once in a while
+communicate—that several members of a band of earnest workers under one
+of the great artists had taken him right in, making him dine every
+night, almost for nothing, at their place, and even pressing him not to
+neglect the hypothesis of there being as much “in him” as in any of
+them. There had been literally a moment at which it appeared there
+might be something in him; there had been at any rate a moment at which
+he had written that he didn’t know but what a month or two more might
+see him enrolled in some _atelier_. The season had been one at which
+Mrs. Newsome was moved to gratitude for small mercies; it had broken on
+them all as a blessing that their absentee _had_ perhaps a
+conscience—that he was sated in fine with idleness, was ambitious of
+variety. The exhibition was doubtless as yet not brilliant, but
+Strether himself, even by that time much enlisted and immersed, had
+determined, on the part of the two ladies, a temperate approval and in
+fact, as he now recollected, a certain austere enthusiasm.
+
+But the very next thing that happened had been a dark drop of the
+curtain. The son and brother had not browsed long on the Montagne
+Sainte-Geneviève—his effective little use of the name of which, like
+his allusion to the best French, appeared to have been but one of the
+notes of his rough cunning. The light refreshment of these vain
+appearances had not accordingly carried any of them very far. On the
+other hand it had gained Chad time; it had given him a chance,
+unchecked, to strike his roots, had paved the way for initiations more
+direct and more deep. It was Strether’s belief that he had been
+comparatively innocent before this first migration, and even that the
+first effects of the migration would not have been, without some
+particular bad accident, to have been deplored. There had been three
+months—he had sufficiently figured it out—in which Chad had wanted to
+try. He _had_ tried, though not very hard—he had had his little hour of
+good faith. The weakness of this principle in him was that almost any
+accident attestedly bad enough was stronger. Such had at any rate
+markedly been the case for the precipitation of a special series of
+impressions. They had proved, successively, these impressions—all of
+Musette and Francine, but Musette and Francine vulgarised by the larger
+evolution of the type—irresistibly sharp: he had “taken up,” by what
+was at the time to be shrinkingly gathered, as it was scantly
+mentioned, with one ferociously “interested” little person after
+another. Strether had read somewhere of a Latin motto, a description of
+the hours, observed on a clock by a traveller in Spain; and he had been
+led to apply it in thought to Chad’s number one, number two, number
+three. _Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat_—they had all morally wounded,
+the last had morally killed. The last had been longest in possession—in
+possession, that is, of whatever was left of the poor boy’s finer
+mortality. And it hadn’t been she, it had been one of her early
+predecessors, who had determined the second migration, the expensive
+return and relapse, the exchange again, as was fairly to be presumed,
+of the vaunted best French for some special variety of the worst.
+
+He pulled himself then at last together for his own progress back; not
+with the feeling that he had taken his walk in vain. He prolonged it a
+little, in the immediate neighbourhood, after he had quitted his chair;
+and the upshot of the whole morning for him was that his campaign had
+begun. He had wanted to put himself in relation, and he would be hanged
+if he were _not_ in relation. He was that at no moment so much as
+while, under the old arches of the Odéon, he lingered before the
+charming open-air array of literature classic and casual. He found the
+effect of tone and tint, in the long charged tables and shelves,
+delicate and appetising; the impression—substituting one kind of
+low-priced _consommation_ for another—might have been that of one of
+the pleasant cafés that overlapped, under an awning, to the pavement;
+but he edged along, grazing the tables, with his hands firmly behind
+him. He wasn’t there to dip, to consume—he was there to reconstruct. He
+wasn’t there for his own profit—not, that is, the direct; he was there
+on some chance of feeling the brush of the wing of the stray spirit of
+youth. He felt it in fact, he had it beside him; the old arcade indeed,
+as his inner sense listened, gave out the faint sound, as from far off,
+of the wild waving of wings. They were folded now over the breasts of
+buried generations; but a flutter or two lived again in the turned page
+of shock-headed slouch-hatted loiterers whose young intensity of type,
+in the direction of pale acuteness, deepened his vision, and even his
+appreciation, of racial differences, and whose manipulation of the
+uncut volume was too often, however, but a listening at closed doors.
+He reconstructed a possible groping Chad of three or four years before,
+a Chad who had, after all, simply—for that was the only way to see
+it—been too vulgar for his privilege. Surely it _was_ a privilege to
+have been young and happy just there. Well, the best thing Strether
+knew of him was that he had had such a dream.
+
+But his own actual business, half an hour later, was with a third floor
+on the Boulevard Malesherbes—so much as that was definite; and the fact
+of the enjoyment by the third-floor windows of a continuous balcony, to
+which he was helped by this knowledge, had perhaps something to do with
+his lingering for five minutes on the opposite side of the street.
+There were points as to which he had quite made up his mind, and one of
+these bore precisely on the wisdom of the abruptness to which events
+had finally committed him, a policy that he was pleased to find not at
+all shaken as he now looked at his watch and wondered. He _had_
+announced himself—six months before; had written out at least that Chad
+wasn’t to be surprised should he see him some day turn up. Chad had
+thereupon, in a few words of rather carefully colourless answer,
+offered him a general welcome; and Strether, ruefully reflecting that
+he might have understood the warning as a hint to hospitality, a bid
+for an invitation, had fallen back upon silence as the corrective most
+to his own taste. He had asked Mrs. Newsome moreover not to announce
+him again; he had so distinct an opinion on his attacking his job,
+should he attack it at all, in his own way. Not the least of this
+lady’s high merits for him was that he could absolutely rest on her
+word. She was the only woman he had known, even at Woollett, as to whom
+his conviction was positive that to lie was beyond her art. Sarah
+Pocock, for instance, her own daughter, though with social ideals, as
+they said, in some respects different—Sarah who _was_, in her way,
+æsthetic, had never refused to human commerce that mitigation of
+rigour; there were occasions when he had distinctly seen her apply it.
+Since, accordingly, at all events, he had had it from Mrs. Newsome that
+she had, at whatever cost to her more strenuous view, conformed, in the
+matter of preparing Chad, wholly to his restrictions, he now looked up
+at the fine continuous balcony with a safe sense that if the case had
+been bungled the mistake was at least his property. Was there perhaps
+just a suspicion of that in his present pause on the edge of the
+Boulevard and well in the pleasant light?
+
+Many things came over him here, and one of them was that he should
+doubtless presently know whether he had been shallow or sharp. Another
+was that the balcony in question didn’t somehow show as a convenience
+easy to surrender. Poor Strether had at this very moment to recognise
+the truth that wherever one paused in Paris the imagination reacted
+before one could stop it. This perpetual reaction put a price, if one
+would, on pauses; but it piled up consequences till there was scarce
+room to pick one’s steps among them. What call had he, at such a
+juncture, for example, to like Chad’s very house? High broad clear—he
+was expert enough to make out in a moment that it was admirably
+built—it fairly embarrassed our friend by the quality that, as he would
+have said, it “sprang” on him. He had struck off the fancy that it
+might, as a preliminary, be of service to him to be seen, by a happy
+accident, from the third-story windows, which took all the March sun,
+but of what service was it to find himself making out after a moment
+that the quality “sprung,” the quality produced by measure and balance,
+the fine relation of part to part and space to space, was
+probably—aided by the presence of ornament as positive as it was
+discreet, and by the complexion of the stone, a cold fair grey, warmed
+and polished a little by life—neither more nor less than a case of
+distinction, such a case as he could only feel unexpectedly as a sort
+of delivered challenge? Meanwhile, however, the chance he had allowed
+for—the chance of being seen in time from the balcony—had become a
+fact. Two or three of the windows stood open to the violet air; and,
+before Strether had cut the knot by crossing, a young man had come out
+and looked about him, had lighted a cigarette and tossed the match
+over, and then, resting on the rail, had given himself up to watching
+the life below while he smoked. His arrival contributed, in its order,
+to keeping Strether in position; the result of which in turn was that
+Strether soon felt himself noticed. The young man began to look at him
+as in acknowledgement of his being himself in observation.
+
+This was interesting so far as it went, but the interest was affected
+by the young man’s not being Chad. Strether wondered at first if he
+were perhaps Chad altered, and then saw that this was asking too much
+of alteration. The young man was light bright and alert—with an air too
+pleasant to have been arrived at by patching. Strether had conceived
+Chad as patched, but not beyond recognition. He was in presence, he
+felt, of amendments enough as they stood; it was a sufficient amendment
+that the gentleman up there should be Chad’s friend. He was young too
+then, the gentleman up there—he was very young; young enough apparently
+to be amused at an elderly watcher, to be curious even to see what the
+elderly watcher would do on finding himself watched. There was youth in
+that, there was youth in the surrender to the balcony, there was youth
+for Strether at this moment in everything but his own business; and
+Chad’s thus pronounced association with youth had given the next
+instant an extraordinary quick lift to the issue. The balcony, the
+distinguished front, testified suddenly, for Strether’s fancy, to
+something that was up and up; they placed the whole case materially,
+and as by an admirable image, on a level that he found himself at the
+end of another moment rejoicing to think he might reach. The young man
+looked at him still, he looked at the young man; and the issue, by a
+rapid process, was that this knowledge of a perched privacy appeared to
+him the last of luxuries. To him too the perched privacy was open, and
+he saw it now but in one light—that of the only domicile, the only
+fireside, in the great ironic city, on which he had the shadow of a
+claim. Miss Gostrey had a fireside; she had told him of it, and it was
+something that doubtless awaited him; but Miss Gostrey hadn’t yet
+arrived—she mightn’t arrive for days; and the sole attenuation of his
+excluded state was his vision of the small, the admittedly secondary
+hotel in the bye-street from the Rue de la Paix, in which her
+solicitude for his purse had placed him, which affected him somehow as
+all indoor chill, glass-roofed court and slippery staircase, and which,
+by the same token, expressed the presence of Waymarsh even at times
+when Waymarsh might have been certain to be round at the bank. It came
+to pass before he moved that Waymarsh, and Waymarsh alone, Waymarsh not
+only undiluted but positively strengthened, struck him as the present
+alternative to the young man in the balcony. When he did move it was
+fairly to escape that alternative. Taking his way over the street at
+last and passing through the _porte-cochère_ of the house was like
+consciously leaving Waymarsh out. However, he would tell him all about
+it.
+
+
+
+
+Book Third
+
+
+ I
+
+Strether told Waymarsh all about it that very evening, on their dining
+together at the hotel; which needn’t have happened, he was all the
+while aware, hadn’t he chosen to sacrifice to this occasion a rarer
+opportunity. The mention to his companion of the sacrifice was moreover
+exactly what introduced his recital—or, as he would have called it with
+more confidence in his interlocutor, his confession. His confession was
+that he had been captured and that one of the features of the affair
+had just failed to be his engaging himself on the spot to dinner. As by
+such a freedom Waymarsh would have lost him he had obeyed his scruple;
+and he had likewise obeyed another scruple—which bore on the question
+of his himself bringing a guest.
+
+Waymarsh looked gravely ardent, over the finished soup, at this array
+of scruples; Strether hadn’t yet got quite used to being so unprepared
+for the consequences of the impression he produced. It was
+comparatively easy to explain, however, that he hadn’t felt sure his
+guest would please. The person was a young man whose acquaintance he
+had made but that afternoon in the course of rather a hindered enquiry
+for another person—an enquiry his new friend had just prevented in fact
+from being vain. “Oh,” said Strether, “I’ve all sorts of things to tell
+you!”—and he put it in a way that was a virtual hint to Waymarsh to
+help him to enjoy the telling. He waited for his fish, he drank of his
+wine, he wiped his long moustache, he leaned back in his chair, he took
+in the two English ladies who had just creaked past them and whom he
+would even have articulately greeted if they hadn’t rather chilled the
+impulse; so that all he could do was—by way of doing something—to say
+“Merci, François!” out quite loud when his fish was brought. Everything
+was there that he wanted, everything that could make the moment an
+occasion, that would do beautifully—everything but what Waymarsh might
+give. The little waxed salle-à-manger was sallow and sociable;
+François, dancing over it, all smiles, was a man and a brother; the
+high-shouldered patronne, with her high-held, much-rubbed hands, seemed
+always assenting exuberantly to something unsaid; the Paris evening in
+short was, for Strether, in the very taste of the soup, in the
+goodness, as he was innocently pleased to think it, of the wine, in the
+pleasant coarse texture of the napkin and the crunch of the
+thick-crusted bread. These all were things congruous with his
+confession, and his confession was that he _had_—it would come out
+properly just there if Waymarsh would only take it properly—agreed to
+breakfast out, at twelve literally, the next day. He didn’t quite know
+where; the delicacy of the case came straight up in the remembrance of
+his new friend’s “We’ll see; I’ll take you somewhere!”—for it had
+required little more than that, after all, to let him right in. He was
+affected after a minute, face to face with his actual comrade, by the
+impulse to overcolour. There had already been things in respect to
+which he knew himself tempted by this perversity. If Waymarsh thought
+them bad he should at least have his reason for his discomfort; so
+Strether showed them as worse. Still, he was now, in his way, sincerely
+perplexed.
+
+Chad had been absent from the Boulevard Malesherbes—was absent from
+Paris altogether; he had learned that from the concierge, but had
+nevertheless gone up, and gone up—there were no two ways about it—from
+an uncontrollable, a really, if one would, depraved curiosity. The
+concierge had mentioned to him that a friend of the tenant of the
+troisième was for the time in possession; and this had been Strether’s
+pretext for a further enquiry, an experiment carried on, under Chad’s
+roof, without his knowledge. “I found his friend in fact there keeping
+the place warm, as he called it, for him; Chad himself being, as
+appears, in the south. He went a month ago to Cannes and though his
+return begins to be looked for it can’t be for some days. I might, you
+see, perfectly have waited a week; might have beaten a retreat as soon
+as I got this essential knowledge. But I beat no retreat; I did the
+opposite; I stayed, I dawdled, I trifled; above all I looked round. I
+saw, in fine; and—I don’t know what to call it—I sniffed. It’s a
+detail, but it’s as if there were something—something very good—_to_
+sniff.”
+
+Waymarsh’s face had shown his friend an attention apparently so remote
+that the latter was slightly surprised to find it at this point abreast
+with him. “Do you mean a smell? What of?”
+
+“A charming scent. But I don’t know.”
+
+Waymarsh gave an inferential grunt. “Does he live there with a woman?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+Waymarsh waited an instant for more, then resumed. “Has he taken her
+off with him?”
+
+“And will he bring her back?”—Strether fell into the enquiry. But he
+wound it up as before. “I don’t know.”
+
+The way he wound it up, accompanied as this was with another drop back,
+another degustation of the Léoville, another wipe of his moustache and
+another good word for François, seemed to produce in his companion a
+slight irritation. “Then what the devil _do_ you know?”
+
+“Well,” said Strether almost gaily, “I guess I don’t know anything!”
+His gaiety might have been a tribute to the fact that the state he had
+been reduced to did for him again what had been done by his talk of the
+matter with Miss Gostrey at the London theatre. It was somehow
+enlarging; and the air of that amplitude was now doubtless more or
+less—and all for Waymarsh to feel—in his further response. “That’s what
+I found out from the young man.”
+
+“But I thought you said you found out nothing.”
+
+“Nothing but that—that I don’t know anything.”
+
+“And what good does that do you?”
+
+“It’s just,” said Strether, “what I’ve come to you to help me to
+discover. I mean anything about anything over here. I _felt_ that, up
+there. It regularly rose before me in its might. The young man
+moreover—Chad’s friend—as good as told me so.”
+
+“As good as told you you know nothing about anything?” Waymarsh
+appeared to look at some one who might have as good as told _him_. “How
+old is he?”
+
+“Well, I guess not thirty.”
+
+“Yet you had to take that from him?”
+
+“Oh I took a good deal more—since, as I tell you, I took an invitation
+to déjeuner.”
+
+“And are you _going_ to that unholy meal?”
+
+“If you’ll come with me. He wants you too, you know. I told him about
+you. He gave me his card,” Strether pursued, “and his name’s rather
+funny. It’s John Little Bilham, and he says his two surnames are, on
+account of his being small, inevitably used together.”
+
+“Well,” Waymarsh asked with due detachment from these details, “what’s
+he doing up there?”
+
+“His account of himself is that he’s ‘only a little artist-man.’ That
+seemed to me perfectly to describe him. But he’s yet in the phase of
+study; this, you know, is the great art-school—to pass a certain number
+of years in which he came over. And he’s a great friend of Chad’s, and
+occupying Chad’s rooms just now because they’re so pleasant. _He’s_
+very pleasant and curious too,” Strether added—“though he’s not from
+Boston.”
+
+Waymarsh looked already rather sick of him. “Where _is_ he from?”
+
+Strether thought. “I don’t know that, either. But he’s ‘notoriously,’
+as he put it himself, not from Boston.”
+
+“Well,” Waymarsh moralised from dry depths, “every one can’t
+notoriously _be_ from Boston. Why,” he continued, “is he curious?”
+
+“Perhaps just for _that_—for one thing! But really,” Strether added,
+“for everything. When you meet him you’ll see.”
+
+“Oh I don’t want to meet him,” Waymarsh impatiently growled. “Why don’t
+he go home?”
+
+Strether hesitated. “Well, because he likes it over here.”
+
+This appeared in particular more than Waymarsh could bear. “He ought
+then to be ashamed of himself, and, as you admit that you think so too,
+why drag him in?”
+
+Strether’s reply again took time. “Perhaps I do think so myself—though
+I don’t quite yet admit it. I’m not a bit sure—it’s again one of the
+things I want to find out. I liked him, and _can_ you like people—? But
+no matter.” He pulled himself up. “There’s no doubt I want you to come
+down on me and squash me.”
+
+Waymarsh helped himself to the next course, which, however proving not
+the dish he had just noted as supplied to the English ladies, had the
+effect of causing his imagination temporarily to wander. But it
+presently broke out at a softer spot. “Have they got a handsome place
+up there?”
+
+“Oh a charming place; full of beautiful and valuable things. I never
+saw such a place”—and Strether’s thought went back to it. “For a little
+artist-man—!” He could in fact scarce express it.
+
+But his companion, who appeared now to have a view, insisted. “Well?”
+
+“Well, life can hold nothing better. Besides, they’re things of which
+he’s in charge.”
+
+“So that he does doorkeeper for your precious pair? Can life,” Waymarsh
+enquired, “hold nothing better than _that?_” Then as Strether, silent,
+seemed even yet to wonder, “Doesn’t he know what _she_ is?” he went on.
+
+“_I_ don’t know. I didn’t ask him. I couldn’t. It was impossible. You
+wouldn’t either. Besides I didn’t want to. No more would you.” Strether
+in short explained it at a stroke. “You can’t make out over here what
+people do know.”
+
+“Then what did you come over for?”
+
+“Well, I suppose exactly to see for myself—without their aid.”
+
+“Then what do you want mine for?”
+
+“Oh,” Strether laughed, “you’re not one of _them!_ I do know what _you_
+know.”
+
+As, however, this last assertion caused Waymarsh again to look at him
+hard—such being the latter’s doubt of its implications—he felt his
+justification lame. Which was still more the case when Waymarsh
+presently said: “Look here, Strether. Quit this.”
+
+Our friend smiled with a doubt of his own. “Do you mean my tone?”
+
+“No—damn your tone. I mean your nosing round. Quit the whole job. Let
+them stew in their juice. You’re being used for a thing you ain’t fit
+for. People don’t take a fine-tooth comb to groom a horse.”
+
+“Am I a fine-tooth comb?” Strether laughed. “It’s something I never
+called myself!”
+
+“It’s what you are, all the same. You ain’t so young as you were, but
+you’ve kept your teeth.”
+
+He acknowledged his friend’s humour. “Take care I don’t get them into
+_you!_ You’d like them, my friends at home, Waymarsh,” he declared;
+“you’d really particularly like them. And I know”—it was slightly
+irrelevant, but he gave it sudden and singular force—“I know they’d
+like you!”
+
+“Oh don’t work them off on _me!_” Waymarsh groaned.
+
+Yet Strether still lingered with his hands in his pockets. “It’s really
+quite as indispensable as I say that Chad should be got back.”
+
+“Indispensable to whom? To you?”
+
+“Yes,” Strether presently said.
+
+“Because if you get him you also get Mrs. Newsome?”
+
+Strether faced it. “Yes.”
+
+“And if you don’t get him you don’t get her?”
+
+It might be merciless, but he continued not to flinch. “I think it
+might have some effect on our personal understanding. Chad’s of real
+importance—or can easily become so if he will—to the business.”
+
+“And the business is of real importance to his mother’s husband?”
+
+“Well, I naturally want what my future wife wants. And the thing will
+be much better if we have our own man in it.”
+
+“If you have your own man in it, in other words,” Waymarsh said,
+“you’ll marry—you personally—more money. She’s already rich, as I
+understand you, but she’ll be richer still if the business can be made
+to boom on certain lines that you’ve laid down.”
+
+“_I_ haven’t laid them down,” Strether promptly returned. “Mr.
+Newsome—who knew extraordinarily well what he was about—laid them down
+ten years ago.”
+
+Oh well, Waymarsh seemed to indicate with a shake of his mane, _that_
+didn’t matter! “You’re fierce for the boom anyway.”
+
+His friend weighed a moment in silence the justice of the charge. “I
+can scarcely be called fierce, I think, when I so freely take my chance
+of the possibility, the danger, of being influenced in a sense counter
+to Mrs. Newsome’s own feelings.”
+
+Waymarsh gave this proposition a long hard look. “I see. You’re afraid
+yourself of being squared. But you’re a humbug,” he added, “all the
+same.”
+
+“Oh!” Strether quickly protested.
+
+“Yes, you ask me for protection—which makes you very interesting; and
+then you won’t take it. You say you want to be squashed—”
+
+“Ah but not so easily! Don’t you see,” Strether demanded “where my
+interest, as already shown you, lies? It lies in my not being squared.
+If I’m squared where’s my marriage? If I miss my errand I miss that;
+and if I miss that I miss everything—I’m nowhere.”
+
+Waymarsh—but all relentlessly—took this in. “What do I care where you
+are if you’re spoiled?”
+
+Their eyes met on it an instant. “Thank you awfully,” Strether at last
+said. “But don’t you think _her_ judgement of that—?”
+
+“Ought to content me? No.”
+
+It kept them again face to face, and the end of this was that Strether
+again laughed. “You do her injustice. You really _must_ know her.
+Good-night.”
+
+He breakfasted with Mr. Bilham on the morrow, and, as inconsequently
+befell, with Waymarsh massively of the party. The latter announced, at
+the eleventh hour and much to his friend’s surprise, that, damn it, he
+would as soon join him as do anything else; on which they proceeded
+together, strolling in a state of detachment practically luxurious for
+them to the Boulevard Malesherbes, a couple engaged that day with the
+sharp spell of Paris as confessedly, it might have been seen, as any
+couple among the daily thousands so compromised. They walked, wandered,
+wondered and, a little, lost themselves; Strether hadn’t had for years
+so rich a consciousness of time—a bag of gold into which he constantly
+dipped for a handful. It was present to him that when the little
+business with Mr. Bilham should be over he would still have shining
+hours to use absolutely as he liked. There was no great pulse of haste
+yet in this process of saving Chad; nor was that effect a bit more
+marked as he sat, half an hour later, with his legs under Chad’s
+mahogany, with Mr. Bilham on one side, with a friend of Mr. Bilham’s on
+the other, with Waymarsh stupendously opposite, and with the great hum
+of Paris coming up in softness, vagueness—for Strether himself indeed
+already positive sweetness—through the sunny windows toward which, the
+day before, his curiosity had raised its wings from below. The feeling
+strongest with him at that moment had borne fruit almost faster than he
+could taste it, and Strether literally felt at the present hour that
+there was a precipitation in his fate. He had known nothing and nobody
+as he stood in the street; but hadn’t his view now taken a bound in the
+direction of every one and of every thing?
+
+“What’s he up to, what’s he up to?”—something like that was at the back
+of his head all the while in respect to little Bilham; but meanwhile,
+till he should make out, every one and every thing were as good as
+represented for him by the combination of his host and the lady on his
+left. The lady on his left, the lady thus promptly and ingeniously
+invited to “meet” Mr. Strether and Mr. Waymarsh—it was the way she
+herself expressed her case—was a very marked person, a person who had
+much to do with our friend’s asking himself if the occasion weren’t in
+its essence the most baited, the most gilded of traps. Baited it could
+properly be called when the repast was of so wise a savour, and gilded
+surrounding objects seemed inevitably to need to be when Miss
+Barrace—which was the lady’s name—looked at them with convex Parisian
+eyes and through a glass with a remarkably long tortoise-shell handle.
+Why Miss Barrace, mature meagre erect and eminently gay, highly
+adorned, perfectly familiar, freely contradictious and reminding him of
+some last-century portrait of a clever head without powder—why Miss
+Barrace should have been in particular the note of a “trap” Strether
+couldn’t on the spot have explained; he blinked in the light of a
+conviction that he should know later on, and know well—as it came over
+him, for that matter, with force, that he should need to. He wondered
+what he was to think exactly of either of his new friends; since the
+young man, Chad’s intimate and deputy, had, in thus constituting the
+scene, practised so much more subtly than he had been prepared for, and
+since in especial Miss Barrace, surrounded clearly by every
+consideration, hadn’t scrupled to figure as a familiar object. It was
+interesting to him to feel that he was in the presence of new measures,
+other standards, a different scale of relations, and that evidently
+here were a happy pair who didn’t think of things at all as he and
+Waymarsh thought. Nothing was less to have been calculated in the
+business than that it should now be for him as if he and Waymarsh were
+comparatively quite at one.
+
+The latter was magnificent—this at least was an assurance privately
+given him by Miss Barrace. “Oh your friend’s a type, the grand old
+American—what shall one call it? The Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel, Jeremiah,
+who used when I was a little girl in the Rue Montaigne to come to see
+my father and who was usually the American Minister to the Tuileries or
+some other court. I haven’t seen one these ever so many years; the
+sight of it warms my poor old chilled heart; this specimen is
+wonderful; in the right quarter, you know, he’ll have a _succès fou_.”
+Strether hadn’t failed to ask what the right quarter might be, much as
+he required his presence of mind to meet such a change in their scheme.
+“Oh the artist-quarter and that kind of thing; _here_ already, for
+instance, as you see.” He had been on the point of echoing “‘Here’?—is
+_this_ the artist-quarter?” but she had already disposed of the
+question with a wave of all her tortoise-shell and an easy “Bring him
+to _me!_” He knew on the spot how little he should be able to bring
+him, for the very air was by this time, to his sense, thick and hot
+with poor Waymarsh’s judgement of it. He was in the trap still more
+than his companion and, unlike his companion, not making the best of
+it; which was precisely what doubtless gave him his admirable sombre
+glow. Little did Miss Barrace know that what was behind it was his
+grave estimate of her own laxity. The general assumption with which our
+two friends had arrived had been that of finding Mr. Bilham ready to
+conduct them to one or other of those resorts of the earnest, the
+æsthetic fraternity which were shown among the sights of Paris. In this
+character it would have justified them in a proper insistence on
+discharging their score. Waymarsh’s only proviso at the last had been
+that nobody should pay for him; but he found himself, as the occasion
+developed, paid for on a scale as to which Strether privately made out
+that he already nursed retribution. Strether was conscious across the
+table of what worked in him, conscious when they passed back to the
+small salon to which, the previous evening, he himself had made so rich
+a reference; conscious most of all as they stepped out to the balcony
+in which one would have had to be an ogre not to recognise the perfect
+place for easy aftertastes. These things were enhanced for Miss Barrace
+by a succession of excellent cigarettes—acknowledged, acclaimed, as a
+part of the wonderful supply left behind him by Chad—in an almost equal
+absorption of which Strether found himself blindly, almost wildly
+pushing forward. He might perish by the sword as well as by famine, and
+he knew that his having abetted the lady by an excess that was rare
+with him would count for little in the sum—as Waymarsh might so easily
+add it up—of her licence. Waymarsh had smoked of old, smoked hugely;
+but Waymarsh did nothing now, and that gave him his advantage over
+people who took things up lightly just when others had laid them
+heavily down. Strether had never smoked, and he felt as if he flaunted
+at his friend that this had been only because of a reason. The reason,
+it now began to appear even to himself, was that he had never had a
+lady to smoke with.
+
+It was this lady’s being there at all, however, that was the strange
+free thing; perhaps, since she _was_ there, her smoking was the least
+of her freedoms. If Strether had been sure at each juncture of
+what—with Bilham in especial—she talked about, he might have traced
+others and winced at them and felt Waymarsh wince; but he was in fact
+so often at sea that his sense of the range of reference was merely
+general and that he on several different occasions guessed and
+interpreted only to doubt. He wondered what they meant, but there were
+things he scarce thought they could be supposed to mean, and “Oh no—not
+_that!_” was at the end of most of his ventures. This was the very
+beginning with him of a condition as to which, later on, it will be
+seen, he found cause to pull himself up; and he was to remember the
+moment duly as the first step in a process. The central fact of the
+place was neither more nor less, when analysed—and a pressure
+superficial sufficed—than the fundamental impropriety of Chad’s
+situation, round about which they thus seemed cynically clustered.
+Accordingly, since they took it for granted, they took for granted all
+that was in connexion with it taken for granted at Woollett—matters as
+to which, verily, he had been reduced with Mrs. Newsome to the last
+intensity of silence. That was the consequence of their being too bad
+to be talked about, and was the accompaniment, by the same token, of a
+deep conception of their badness. It befell therefore that when poor
+Strether put it to himself that their badness was ultimately, or
+perhaps even insolently, what such a scene as the one before him was,
+so to speak, built upon, he could scarce shirk the dilemma of reading a
+roundabout echo of them into almost anything that came up. This, he was
+well aware, was a dreadful necessity; but such was the stern logic, he
+could only gather, of a relation to the irregular life.
+
+It was the way the irregular life sat upon Bilham and Miss Barrace that
+was the insidious, the delicate marvel. He was eager to concede that
+their relation to it was all indirect, for anything else in him would
+have shown the grossness of bad manners; but the indirectness was none
+the less consonant—_that_ was striking—with a grateful enjoyment of
+everything that was Chad’s. They spoke of him repeatedly, invoking his
+good name and good nature, and the worst confusion of mind for Strether
+was that all their mention of him was of a kind to do him honour. They
+commended his munificence and approved his taste, and in doing so sat
+down, as it seemed to Strether, in the very soil out of which these
+things flowered. Our friend’s final predicament was that he himself was
+sitting down, for the time, _with_ them, and there was a supreme moment
+at which, compared with his collapse, Waymarsh’s erectness affected him
+as really high. One thing was certain—he saw he must make up his mind.
+He must approach Chad, must wait for him, deal with him, master him,
+but he mustn’t dispossess himself of the faculty of seeing things as
+they were. He must bring him to _him_—not go himself, as it were, so
+much of the way. He must at any rate be clearer as to what—should he
+continue to do that for convenience—he was still condoning. It was on
+the detail of this quantity—and what could the fact be but
+mystifying?—that Bilham and Miss Barrace threw so little light. So
+there they were.
+
+
+ II
+
+When Miss Gostrey arrived, at the end of a week, she made him a sign;
+he went immediately to see her, and it wasn’t till then that he could
+again close his grasp on the idea of a corrective. This idea however
+was luckily all before him again from the moment he crossed the
+threshold of the little entresol of the Quartier Marbœuf into which she
+had gathered, as she said, picking them up in a thousand flights and
+funny little passionate pounces, the makings of a final nest. He
+recognised in an instant that there really, there only, he should find
+the boon with the vision of which he had first mounted Chad’s stairs.
+He might have been a little scared at the picture of how much more, in
+this place, he should know himself “in” hadn’t his friend been on the
+spot to measure the amount to his appetite. Her compact and crowded
+little chambers, almost dusky, as they at first struck him, with
+accumulations, represented a supreme general adjustment to
+opportunities and conditions. Wherever he looked he saw an old ivory or
+an old brocade, and he scarce knew where to sit for fear of a
+misappliance. The life of the occupant struck him of a sudden as more
+charged with possession even than Chad’s or than Miss Barrace’s; wide
+as his glimpse had lately become of the empire of “things,” what was
+before him still enlarged it; the lust of the eyes and the pride of
+life had indeed thus their temple. It was the innermost nook of the
+shrine—as brown as a pirate’s cave. In the brownness were glints of
+gold; patches of purple were in the gloom; objects all that caught,
+through the muslin, with their high rarity, the light of the low
+windows. Nothing was clear about them but that they were precious, and
+they brushed his ignorance with their contempt as a flower, in a
+liberty taken with him, might have been whisked under his nose. But
+after a full look at his hostess he knew none the less what most
+concerned him. The circle in which they stood together was warm with
+life, and every question between them would live there as nowhere else.
+A question came up as soon as they had spoken, for his answer, with a
+laugh, was quickly: “Well, they’ve got hold of me!” Much of their talk
+on this first occasion was his development of that truth. He was
+extraordinarily glad to see her, expressing to her frankly what she
+most showed him, that one might live for years without a blessing
+unsuspected, but that to know it at last for no more than three days
+was to need it or miss it for ever. She was the blessing that had now
+become his need, and what could prove it better than that without her
+he had lost himself?
+
+“What do you mean?” she asked with an absence of alarm that, correcting
+him as if he had mistaken the “period” of one of her pieces, gave him
+afresh a sense of her easy movement through the maze he had but begun
+to tread. “What in the name of all the Pococks have you managed to do?”
+
+“Why exactly the wrong thing. I’ve made a frantic friend of little
+Bilham.”
+
+“Ah that sort of thing was of the essence of your case and to have been
+allowed for from the first.” And it was only after this that, quite as
+a minor matter, she asked who in the world little Bilham might be. When
+she learned that he was a friend of Chad’s and living for the time in
+Chad’s rooms in Chad’s absence, quite as if acting in Chad’s spirit and
+serving Chad’s cause, she showed, however, more interest. “Should you
+mind my seeing him? Only once, you know,” she added.
+
+“Oh the oftener the better: he’s amusing—he’s original.”
+
+“He doesn’t shock you?” Miss Gostrey threw out.
+
+“Never in the world! We escape that with a perfection—! I feel it to be
+largely, no doubt, because I don’t half-understand him; but our _modus
+vivendi_ isn’t spoiled even by that. You must dine with me to meet
+him,” Strether went on. “Then you’ll see.’
+
+“Are you giving dinners?”
+
+“Yes—there I am. That’s what I mean.”
+
+All her kindness wondered. “That you’re spending too much money?”
+
+“Dear no—they seem to cost so little. But that I do it to _them_. I
+ought to hold off.”
+
+She thought again—she laughed. “The money you must be spending to think
+it cheap! But I must be out of it—to the naked eye.”
+
+He looked for a moment as if she were really failing him. “Then you
+won’t meet them?” It was almost as if she had developed an unexpected
+personal prudence.
+
+She hesitated. “Who are they—first?”
+
+“Why little Bilham to begin with.” He kept back for the moment Miss
+Barrace. “And Chad—when he comes—you must absolutely see.”
+
+“When then does he come?”
+
+“When Bilham has had time to write him, and hear from him about me.
+Bilham, however,” he pursued, “will report favourably—favourably for
+Chad. That will make him not afraid to come. I want you the more
+therefore, you see, for my bluff.”
+
+“Oh you’ll do yourself for your bluff.” She was perfectly easy. “At the
+rate you’ve gone I’m quiet.”
+
+“Ah but I haven’t,” said Strether, “made one protest.”
+
+She turned it over. “Haven’t you been seeing what there’s to protest
+about?”
+
+He let her, with this, however ruefully, have the whole truth. “I
+haven’t yet found a single thing.”
+
+“Isn’t there any one _with_ him then?”
+
+“Of the sort I came out about?” Strether took a moment. “How do I know?
+And what do I care?”
+
+“Oh oh!”—and her laughter spread. He was struck in fact by the effect
+on her of his joke. He saw now how he meant it as a joke. _She_ saw,
+however, still other things, though in an instant she had hidden them.
+“You’ve got at no facts at all?”
+
+He tried to muster them. “Well, he has a lovely home.”
+
+“Ah that, in Paris,” she quickly returned, “proves nothing. That is
+rather it _dis_proves nothing. They may very well, you see, the people
+your mission is concerned with, have done it _for_ him.”
+
+“Exactly. And it was on the scene of their doings then that Waymarsh
+and I sat guzzling.”
+
+“Oh if you forbore to guzzle here on scenes of doings,” she replied,
+“you might easily die of starvation.” With which she smiled at him.
+“You’ve worse before you.”
+
+“Ah I’ve _everything_ before me. But on our hypothesis, you know, they
+must be wonderful.”
+
+“They _are!_” said Miss Gostrey. “You’re not therefore, you see,” she
+added, “wholly without facts. They’ve _been_, in effect, wonderful.”
+
+To have got at something comparatively definite appeared at last a
+little to help—a wave by which moreover, the next moment, recollection
+was washed. “My young man does admit furthermore that they’re our
+friend’s great interest.”
+
+“Is that the expression he uses?”
+
+Strether more exactly recalled. “No—not quite.”
+
+“Something more vivid? Less?”
+
+He had bent, with neared glasses, over a group of articles on a small
+stand; and at this he came up. “It was a mere allusion, but, on the
+lookout as I was, it struck me. ‘Awful, you know, as Chad is’—those
+were Bilham’s words.”
+
+“‘Awful, you know’—? Oh!”—and Miss Gostrey turned them over. She
+seemed, however, satisfied. “Well, what more do you want?”
+
+He glanced once more at a bibelot or two, and everything sent him back.
+“But it _is_ all the same as if they wished to let me have it between
+the eyes.”
+
+She wondered. “Quoi donc?”
+
+“Why what I speak of. The amenity. They can stun you with that as well
+as with anything else.”
+
+“Oh,” she answered, “you’ll come round! I must see them each,” she went
+on, “for myself. I mean Mr. Bilham and Mr. Newsome—Mr. Bilham naturally
+first. Once only—once for each; that will do. But face to face—for half
+an hour. What’s Mr. Chad,” she immediately pursued, “doing at Cannes?
+Decent men don’t go to Cannes with the—well, with the kind of ladies
+you mean.”
+
+“Don’t they?” Strether asked with an interest in decent men that amused
+her.
+
+“No, elsewhere, but not to Cannes. Cannes is different. Cannes is
+better. Cannes is best. I mean it’s all people you know—when you do
+know them. And if _he_ does, why that’s different too. He must have
+gone alone. She can’t be with him.”
+
+“I haven’t,” Strether confessed in his weakness, “the least idea.”
+There seemed much in what she said, but he was able after a little to
+help her to a nearer impression. The meeting with little Bilham took
+place, by easy arrangement, in the great gallery of the Louvre; and
+when, standing with his fellow visitor before one of the splendid
+Titians—the overwhelming portrait of the young man with the
+strangely-shaped glove and the blue-grey eyes—he turned to see the
+third member of their party advance from the end of the waxed and
+gilded vista, he had a sense of having at last taken hold. He had
+agreed with Miss Gostrey—it dated even from Chester—for a morning at
+the Louvre, and he had embraced independently the same idea as thrown
+out by little Bilham, whom he had already accompanied to the museum of
+the Luxembourg. The fusion of these schemes presented no difficulty,
+and it was to strike him again that in little Bilham’s company
+contrarieties in general dropped.
+
+“Oh he’s all right—he’s one of _us!_” Miss Gostrey, after the first
+exchange, soon found a chance to murmur to her companion; and Strether,
+as they proceeded and paused and while a quick unanimity between the
+two appeared to have phrased itself in half a dozen remarks—Strether
+knew that he knew almost immediately what she meant, and took it as
+still another sign that he had got his job in hand. This was the more
+grateful to him that he could think of the intelligence now serving him
+as an acquisition positively new. He wouldn’t have known even the day
+before what she meant—that is if she meant, what he assumed, that they
+were intense Americans together. He had just worked round—and with a
+sharper turn of the screw than any yet—to the conception of an American
+intense as little Bilham was intense. The young man was his first
+specimen; the specimen had profoundly perplexed him; at present however
+there was light. It was by little Bilham’s amazing serenity that he had
+at first been affected, but he had inevitably, in his circumspection,
+felt it as the trail of the serpent, the corruption, as he might
+conveniently have said, of Europe; whereas the promptness with which it
+came up for Miss Gostrey but as a special little form of the oldest
+thing they knew justified it at once to his own vision as well. He
+wanted to be able to like his specimen with a clear good conscience,
+and this fully permitted it. What had muddled him was precisely the
+small artist-man’s way—it was so complete—of being more American than
+anybody. But it now for the time put Strether vastly at his ease to
+have this view of a new way.
+
+The amiable youth then looked out, as it had first struck Strether, at
+a world in respect to which he hadn’t a prejudice. The one our friend
+most instantly missed was the usual one in favour of an occupation
+accepted. Little Bilham had an occupation, but it was only an
+occupation declined; and it was by his general exemption from alarm,
+anxiety or remorse on this score that the impression of his serenity
+was made. He had come out to Paris to paint—to fathom, that is, at
+large, that mystery; but study had been fatal to him so far as anything
+_could_ be fatal, and his productive power faltered in proportion as
+his knowledge grew. Strether had gathered from him that at the moment
+of his finding him in Chad’s rooms he hadn’t saved from his shipwreck a
+scrap of anything but his beautiful intelligence and his confirmed
+habit of Paris. He referred to these things with an equal fond
+familiarity, and it was sufficiently clear that, as an outfit, they
+still served him. They were charming to Strether through the hour spent
+at the Louvre, where indeed they figured for him as an unseparated part
+of the charged iridescent air, the glamour of the name, the splendour
+of the space, the colour of the masters. Yet they were present too
+wherever the young man led, and the day after the visit to the Louvre
+they hung, in a different walk, about the steps of our party. He had
+invited his companions to cross the river with him, offering to show
+them his own poor place; and his own poor place, which was very poor,
+gave to his idiosyncrasies, for Strether—the small sublime indifference
+and independences that had struck the latter as fresh—an odd and
+engaging dignity. He lived at the end of an alley that went out of an
+old short cobbled street, a street that went in turn out of a new long
+smooth avenue—street and avenue and alley having, however, in common a
+sort of social shabbiness; and he introduced them to the rather cold
+and blank little studio which he had lent to a comrade for the term of
+his elegant absence. The comrade was another ingenuous compatriot, to
+whom he had wired that tea was to await them “regardless,” and this
+reckless repast, and the second ingenuous compatriot, and the faraway
+makeshift life, with its jokes and its gaps, its delicate daubs and its
+three or four chairs, its overflow of taste and conviction and its lack
+of nearly all else—these things wove round the occasion a spell to
+which our hero unreservedly surrendered.
+
+He liked the ingenuous compatriots—for two or three others soon
+gathered; he liked the delicate daubs and the free
+discriminations—involving references indeed, involving enthusiasms and
+execrations that made him, as they said, sit up; he liked above all the
+legend of good-humoured poverty, of mutual accommodation fairly raised
+to the romantic, that he soon read into the scene. The ingenuous
+compatriots showed a candour, he thought, surpassing even the candour
+of Woollett; they were red-haired and long-legged, they were quaint and
+queer and dear and droll; they made the place resound with the
+vernacular, which he had never known so marked as when figuring for the
+chosen language, he must suppose, of contemporary art. They twanged
+with a vengeance the æsthetic lyre—they drew from it wonderful airs.
+This aspect of their life had an admirable innocence; and he looked on
+occasion at Maria Gostrey to see to what extent that element reached
+her. She gave him however for the hour, as she had given him the
+previous day, no further sign than to show how she dealt with boys;
+meeting them with the air of old Parisian practice that she had for
+every one, for everything, in turn. Wonderful about the delicate daubs,
+masterful about the way to make tea, trustful about the legs of chairs
+and familiarly reminiscent of those, in the other time, the named, the
+numbered or the caricatured, who had flourished or failed, disappeared
+or arrived, she had accepted with the best grace her second course of
+little Bilham, and had said to Strether, the previous afternoon on his
+leaving them, that, since her impression was to be renewed, she would
+reserve judgement till after the new evidence.
+
+The new evidence was to come, as it proved, in a day or two. He soon
+had from Maria a message to the effect that an excellent box at the
+Français had been lent her for the following night; it seeming on such
+occasions not the least of her merits that she was subject to such
+approaches. The sense of how she was always paying for something in
+advance was equalled on Strether’s part only by the sense of how she
+was always being paid; all of which made for his consciousness, in the
+larger air, of a lively bustling traffic, the exchange of such values
+as were not for him to handle. She hated, he knew, at the French play,
+anything but a box—just as she hated at the English anything but a
+stall; and a box was what he was already in this phase girding himself
+to press upon her. But she had for that matter her community with
+little Bilham: she too always, on the great issues, showed as having
+known in time. It made her constantly beforehand with him and gave him
+mainly the chance to ask himself how on the day of their settlement
+their account would stand. He endeavoured even now to keep it a little
+straight by arranging that if he accepted her invitation she should
+dine with him first; but the upshot of this scruple was that at eight
+o’clock on the morrow he awaited her with Waymarsh under the pillared
+portico. She hadn’t dined with him, and it was characteristic of their
+relation that she had made him embrace her refusal without in the least
+understanding it. She ever caused her rearrangements to affect him as
+her tenderest touches. It was on that principle for instance that,
+giving him the opportunity to be amiable again to little Bilham, she
+had suggested his offering the young man a seat in their box. Strether
+had dispatched for this purpose a small blue missive to the Boulevard
+Malesherbes, but up to the moment of their passing into the theatre he
+had received no response to his message. He held, however, even after
+they had been for some time conveniently seated, that their friend, who
+knew his way about, would come in at his own right moment. His
+temporary absence moreover seemed, as never yet, to make the right
+moment for Miss Gostrey. Strether had been waiting till tonight to get
+back from her in some mirrored form her impressions and conclusions.
+She had elected, as they said, to see little Bilham once; but now she
+had seen him twice and had nevertheless not said more than a word.
+
+Waymarsh meanwhile sat opposite him with their hostess between; and
+Miss Gostrey spoke of herself as an instructor of youth introducing her
+little charges to a work that was one of the glories of literature. The
+glory was happily unobjectionable, and the little charges were candid;
+for herself she had travelled that road and she merely waited on their
+innocence. But she referred in due time to their absent friend, whom it
+was clear they should have to give up. “He either won’t have got your
+note,” she said, “or you won’t have got his: he has had some kind of
+hindrance, and, of course, for that matter, you know, a man never
+writes about coming to a box.” She spoke as if, with her look, it might
+have been Waymarsh who had written to the youth, and the latter’s face
+showed a mixture of austerity and anguish. She went on however as if to
+meet this. “He’s far and away, you know, the best of them.”
+
+“The best of whom, ma’am?”
+
+“Why of all the long procession—the boys, the girls, or the old men and
+old women as they sometimes really are; the hope, as one may say, of
+our country. They’ve all passed, year after year; but there has been no
+one in particular I’ve ever wanted to stop. I feel—don’t _you?_—that I
+want to stop little Bilham; he’s so exactly right as he is.” She
+continued to talk to Waymarsh. “He’s too delightful. If he’ll only not
+spoil it! But they always _will_; they always do; they always have.”
+
+“I don’t think Waymarsh knows,” Strether said after a moment, “quite
+what it’s open to Bilham to spoil.”
+
+“It can’t be a good American,” Waymarsh lucidly enough replied; “for it
+didn’t strike me the young man had developed much in _that_ shape.”
+
+“Ah,” Miss Gostrey sighed, “the name of the good American is as easily
+given as taken away! What _is_ it, to begin with, to _be_ one, and
+what’s the extraordinary hurry? Surely nothing that’s so pressing was
+ever so little defined. It’s such an order, really, that before we cook
+you the dish we must at least have your receipt. Besides the poor
+chicks have time! What I’ve seen so often spoiled,” she pursued, “is
+the happy attitude itself, the state of faith and—what shall I call
+it?—the sense of beauty. You’re right about him”—she now took in
+Strether; “little Bilham has them to a charm, we must keep little
+Bilham along.” Then she was all again for Waymarsh. “The others have
+all wanted so dreadfully to do something, and they’ve gone and done it
+in too many cases indeed. It leaves them never the same afterwards; the
+charm’s always somehow broken. Now _he_, I think, you know, really
+won’t. He won’t do the least dreadful little thing. We shall continue
+to enjoy him just as he is. No—he’s quite beautiful. He sees
+everything. He isn’t a bit ashamed. He has every scrap of the courage
+of it that one could ask. Only think what he _might_ do. One wants
+really—for fear of some accident—to keep him in view. At this very
+moment perhaps what mayn’t he be up to? I’ve had my disappointments—the
+poor things are never really safe; or only at least when you have them
+under your eye. One can never completely trust them. One’s uneasy, and
+I think that’s why I most miss him now.”
+
+She had wound up with a laugh of enjoyment over her embroidery of her
+idea—an enjoyment that her face communicated to Strether, who almost
+wished none the less at this moment that she would let poor Waymarsh
+alone. _He_ knew more or less what she meant; but the fact wasn’t a
+reason for her not pretending to Waymarsh that he didn’t. It was craven
+of him perhaps, but he would, for the high amenity of the occasion,
+have liked Waymarsh not to be so sure of his wit. Her recognition of it
+gave him away and, before she had done with him or with that article,
+would give him worse. What was he, all the same, to do? He looked
+across the box at his friend; their eyes met; something queer and
+stiff, something that bore on the situation but that it was better not
+to touch, passed in silence between them. Well, the effect of it for
+Strether was an abrupt reaction, a final impatience of his own tendency
+to temporise. Where was that taking him anyway? It was one of the quiet
+instants that sometimes settle more matters than the outbreaks dear to
+the historic muse. The only qualification of the quietness was the
+synthetic “Oh hang it!” into which Strether’s share of the silence
+soundlessly flowered. It represented, this mute ejaculation, a final
+impulse to burn his ships. These ships, to the historic muse, may seem
+of course mere cockles, but when he presently spoke to Miss Gostrey it
+was with the sense at least of applying the torch. “Is it then a
+conspiracy?”
+
+“Between the two young men? Well, I don’t pretend to be a seer or a
+prophetess,” she presently replied; “but if I’m simply a woman of sense
+he’s working for you to-night. I don’t quite know how—but it’s in my
+bones.” And she looked at him at last as if, little material as she yet
+gave him, he’d really understand. “For an opinion _that’s_ my opinion.
+He makes you out too well not to.”
+
+“Not to work for me to-night?” Strether wondered. “Then I hope he isn’t
+doing anything very bad.”
+
+“They’ve got you,” she portentously answered.
+
+“Do you mean he _is_—?”
+
+“They’ve got you,” she merely repeated. Though she disclaimed the
+prophetic vision she was at this instant the nearest approach he had
+ever met to the priestess of the oracle. The light was in her eyes.
+“You must face it now.”
+
+He faced it on the spot. “They _had_ arranged—?”
+
+“Every move in the game. And they’ve been arranging ever since. He has
+had every day his little telegram from Cannes.”
+
+It made Strether open his eyes. “Do you _know_ that?”
+
+“I do better. I see it. This was, before I met him, what I wondered
+whether I _was_ to see. But as soon as I met him I ceased to wonder,
+and our second meeting made me sure. I took him all in. He was
+acting—he is still—on his daily instructions.”
+
+“So that Chad has done the whole thing?”
+
+“Oh no—not the whole. _We’ve_ done some of it. You and I and ‘Europe.’”
+
+“Europe—yes,” Strether mused.
+
+“Dear old Paris,” she seemed to explain. But there was more, and, with
+one of her turns, she risked it. “And dear old Waymarsh. You,” she
+declared, “have been a good bit of it.”
+
+He sat massive. “A good bit of what, ma’am?”
+
+“Why of the wonderful consciousness of our friend here. You’ve helped
+too in your way to float him to where he is.”
+
+“And where the devil _is_ he?”
+
+She passed it on with a laugh. “Where the devil, Strether, are you?”
+
+He spoke as if he had just been thinking it out. “Well, quite already
+in Chad’s hands, it would seem.” And he had had with this another
+thought. “Will that be—just all through Bilham—the way he’s going to
+work it? It would be, for him, you know, an idea. And Chad with an
+idea—!”
+
+“Well?” she asked while the image held him.
+
+“Well, is Chad—what shall I say?—monstrous?”
+
+“Oh as much as you like! But the idea you speak of,” she said, “won’t
+have been his best. He’ll have a better. It won’t be all through little
+Bilham that he’ll work it.”
+
+This already sounded almost like a hope destroyed. “Through whom else
+then?”
+
+“That’s what we shall see!” But quite as she spoke she turned, and
+Strether turned; for the door of the box had opened, with the click of
+the _ouvreuse_, from the lobby, and a gentleman, a stranger to them,
+had come in with a quick step. The door closed behind him, and, though
+their faces showed him his mistake, his air, which was striking, was
+all good confidence. The curtain had just again arisen, and, in the
+hush of the general attention, Strether’s challenge was tacit, as was
+also the greeting, with a quickly deprecating hand and smile, of the
+unannounced visitor. He discreetly signed that he would wait, would
+stand, and these things and his face, one look from which she had
+caught, had suddenly worked for Miss Gostrey. She fitted to them all an
+answer for Strether’s last question. The solid stranger was simply the
+answer—as she now, turning to her friend, indicated. She brought it
+straight out for him—it presented the intruder. “Why, through this
+gentleman!” The gentleman indeed, at the same time, though sounding for
+Strether a very short name, did practically as much to explain.
+Strether gasped the name back—then only had he seen Miss Gostrey had
+said more than she knew. They were in presence of Chad himself.
+
+Our friend was to go over it afterwards again and again—he was going
+over it much of the time that they were together, and they were
+together constantly for three or four days: the note had been so
+strongly struck during that first half-hour that everything happening
+since was comparatively a minor development. The fact was that his
+perception of the young man’s identity—so absolutely checked for a
+minute—had been quite one of the sensations that count in life; he
+certainly had never known one that had acted, as he might have said,
+with more of a crowded rush. And the rush though both vague and
+multitudinous, had lasted a long time, protected, as it were, yet at
+the same time aggravated, by the circumstance of its coinciding with a
+stretch of decorous silence. They couldn’t talk without disturbing the
+spectators in the part of the balcony just below them; and it, for that
+matter, came to Strether—being a thing of the sort that did come to
+him—that these were the accidents of a high civilisation; the imposed
+tribute to propriety, the frequent exposure to conditions, usually
+brilliant, in which relief has to await its time. Relief was never
+quite near at hand for kings, queens, comedians and other such people,
+and though you might be yourself not exactly one of those, you could
+yet, in leading the life of high pressure, guess a little how they
+sometimes felt. It was truly the life of high pressure that Strether
+had seemed to feel himself lead while he sat there, close to Chad,
+during the long tension of the act. He was in presence of a fact that
+occupied his whole mind, that occupied for the half-hour his senses
+themselves all together; but he couldn’t without inconvenience show
+anything—which moreover might count really as luck. What he might have
+shown, had he shown at all, was exactly the kind of emotion—the emotion
+of bewilderment—that he had proposed to himself from the first,
+whatever should occur, to show least. The phenomenon that had suddenly
+sat down there with him was a phenomenon of change so complete that his
+imagination, which had worked so beforehand, felt itself, in the
+connexion, without margin or allowance. It had faced every contingency
+but that Chad should not _be_ Chad, and this was what it now had to
+face with a mere strained smile and an uncomfortable flush.
+
+He asked himself if, by any chance, before he should have in some way
+to commit himself, he might feel his mind settled to the new vision,
+might habituate it, so to speak, to the remarkable truth. But oh it was
+too remarkable, the truth; for what could be more remarkable than this
+sharp rupture of an identity? You could deal with a man as himself—you
+couldn’t deal with him as somebody else. It was a small source of peace
+moreover to be reduced to wondering how little he might know in such an
+event what a sum he was setting you. He couldn’t absolutely not know,
+for you couldn’t absolutely not let him. It was a _case_ then simply, a
+strong case, as people nowadays called such things, a case of
+transformation unsurpassed, and the hope was but in the general law
+that strong cases were liable to control from without. Perhaps he,
+Strether himself, was the only person after all aware of it. Even Miss
+Gostrey, with all her science, wouldn’t be, would she?—and he had never
+seen any one less aware of anything than Waymarsh as he glowered at
+Chad. The social sightlessness of his old friend’s survey marked for
+him afresh, and almost in an humiliating way, the inevitable limits of
+direct aid from this source. He was not certain, however, of not
+drawing a shade of compensation from the privilege, as yet untasted, of
+knowing more about something in particular than Miss Gostrey did. His
+situation too was a case, for that matter, and he was now so
+interested, quite so privately agog, about it, that he had already an
+eye to the fun it would be to open up to her afterwards. He derived
+during his half-hour no assistance from her, and just this fact of her
+not meeting his eyes played a little, it must be confessed, into his
+predicament.
+
+He had introduced Chad, in the first minutes, under his breath, and
+there was never the primness in her of the person unacquainted; but she
+had none the less betrayed at first no vision but of the stage, where
+she occasionally found a pretext for an appreciative moment that she
+invited Waymarsh to share. The latter’s faculty of participation had
+never had, all round, such an assault to meet; the pressure on him
+being the sharper for this chosen attitude in her, as Strether judged
+it, of isolating, for their natural intercourse, Chad and himself. This
+intercourse was meanwhile restricted to a frank friendly look from the
+young man, something markedly like a smile, but falling far short of a
+grin, and to the vivacity of Strether’s private speculation as to
+whether _he_ carried himself like a fool. He didn’t quite see how he
+could so feel as one without somehow showing as one. The worst of that
+question moreover was that he knew it as a symptom the sense of which
+annoyed him. “If I’m going to be odiously conscious of how I may strike
+the fellow,” he reflected, “it was so little what I came out for that I
+may as well stop before I begin.” This sage consideration too,
+distinctly, seemed to leave untouched the fact that he _was_ going to
+be conscious. He was conscious of everything but of what would have
+served him.
+
+He was to know afterwards, in the watches of the night, that nothing
+would have been more open to him than after a minute or two to propose
+to Chad to seek with him the refuge of the lobby. He hadn’t only not
+proposed it, but had lacked even the presence of mind to see it as
+possible. He had stuck there like a schoolboy wishing not to miss a
+minute of the show; though for that portion of the show then presented
+he hadn’t had an instant’s real attention. He couldn’t when the curtain
+fell have given the slightest account of what had happened. He had
+therefore, further, not at that moment acknowledged the amenity added
+by this acceptance of his awkwardness to Chad’s general patience.
+Hadn’t he none the less known at the very time—known it stupidly and
+without reaction—that the boy was accepting something? He was modestly
+benevolent, the boy—that was at least what he had been capable of the
+superiority of making out his chance to be; and one had one’s self
+literally not had the gumption to get in ahead of him. If we should go
+into all that occupied our friend in the watches of the night we should
+have to mend our pen; but an instance or two may mark for us the
+vividness with which he could remember. He remembered the two
+absurdities that, if his presence of mind _had_ failed, were the things
+that had had most to do with it. He had never in his life seen a young
+man come into a box at ten o’clock at night, and would, if challenged
+on the question in advance, have scarce been ready to pronounce as to
+different ways of doing so. But it was in spite of this definite to him
+that Chad had had a way that was wonderful: a fact carrying with it an
+implication that, as one might imagine it, he knew, he had learned,
+how.
+
+Here already then were abounding results; he had on the spot and
+without the least trouble of intention taught Strether that even in so
+small a thing as that there were different ways. He had done in the
+same line still more than this; had by a mere shake or two of the head
+made his old friend observe that the change in him was perhaps more
+than anything else, for the eye, a matter of the marked streaks of
+grey, extraordinary at his age, in his thick black hair; as well as
+that this new feature was curiously becoming to him, did something for
+him, as characterisation, also even—of all things in the world—as
+refinement, that had been a good deal wanted. Strether felt, however,
+he would have had to confess, that it wouldn’t have been easy just now,
+on this and other counts, in the presence of what had been supplied, to
+be quite clear as to what had been missed. A reflexion a candid critic
+might have made of old, for instance, was that it would have been
+happier for the son to look more like the mother; but this was a
+reflexion that at present would never occur. The ground had quite
+fallen away from it, yet no resemblance whatever to the mother had
+supervened. It would have been hard for a young man’s face and air to
+disconnect themselves more completely than Chad’s at this juncture from
+any discerned, from any imaginable aspect of a New England female
+parent. That of course was no more than had been on the cards; but it
+produced in Strether none the less one of those frequent phenomena of
+mental reference with which all judgement in him was actually beset.
+
+Again and again as the days passed he had had a sense of the pertinence
+of communicating quickly with Woollett—communicating with a quickness
+with which telegraphy alone would rhyme; the fruit really of a fine
+fancy in him for keeping things straight, for the happy forestalment of
+error. No one could explain better when needful, nor put more
+conscience into an account or a report; which burden of conscience is
+perhaps exactly the reason why his heart always sank when the clouds of
+explanation gathered. His highest ingenuity was in keeping the sky of
+life clear of them. Whether or no he had a grand idea of the lucid, he
+held that nothing ever was in fact—for any one else—explained. One went
+through the vain motions, but it was mostly a waste of life. A personal
+relation was a relation only so long as people either perfectly
+understood or, better still, didn’t care if they didn’t. From the
+moment they cared if they didn’t it was living by the sweat of one’s
+brow; and the sweat of one’s brow was just what one might buy one’s
+self off from by keeping the ground free of the wild weed of delusion.
+It easily grew too fast, and the Atlantic cable now alone could race
+with it. That agency would each day have testified for him to something
+that was not what Woollett had argued. He was not at this moment
+absolutely sure that the effect of the morrow’s—or rather of the
+night’s—appreciation of the crisis wouldn’t be to determine some brief
+missive. “Have at last seen him, but oh dear!”—some temporary relief of
+that sort seemed to hover before him. It hovered somehow as preparing
+them all—yet preparing them for what? If he might do so more luminously
+and cheaply he would tick out in four words: “Awfully old—grey hair.”
+To this particular item in Chad’s appearance he constantly, during
+their mute half-hour, reverted; as if so very much more than he could
+have said had been involved in it. The most he could have said would
+have been: “If he’s going to make me feel young—!” which indeed,
+however, carried with it quite enough. If Strether was to feel young,
+that is, it would be because Chad was to feel old; and an aged and
+hoary sinner had been no part of the scheme.
+
+The question of Chadwick’s true time of life was, doubtless, what came
+up quickest after the adjournment of the two, when the play was over,
+to a café in the Avenue de l’Opéra. Miss Gostrey had in due course been
+perfect for such a step; she had known exactly what they wanted—to go
+straight somewhere and talk; and Strether had even felt she had known
+what he wished to say and that he was arranging immediately to begin.
+She hadn’t pretended this, as she _had_ pretended on the other hand, to
+have divined Waymarsh’s wish to extend to her an independent protection
+homeward; but Strether nevertheless found how, after he had Chad
+opposite to him at a small table in the brilliant halls that his
+companion straightway selected, sharply and easily discriminated from
+others, it was quite, to his mind, as if she heard him speak; as if,
+sitting up, a mile away, in the little apartment he knew, she would
+listen hard enough to catch. He found too that he liked that idea, and
+he wished that, by the same token, Mrs. Newsome might have caught as
+well. For what had above all been determined in him as a necessity of
+the first order was not to lose another hour, nor a fraction of one;
+was to advance, to overwhelm, with a rush. This was how he would
+anticipate—by a night-attack, as might be—any forced maturity that a
+crammed consciousness of Paris was likely to take upon itself to assert
+on behalf of the boy. He knew to the full, on what he had just
+extracted from Miss Gostrey, Chad’s marks of alertness; but they were a
+reason the more for not dawdling. If he was himself moreover to be
+treated as young he wouldn’t at all events be so treated before he
+should have struck out at least once. His arms might be pinioned
+afterwards, but it would have been left on record that he was fifty.
+The importance of this he had indeed begun to feel before they left the
+theatre; it had become a wild unrest, urging him to seize his chance.
+He could scarcely wait for it as they went; he was on the verge of the
+indecency of bringing up the question in the street; he fairly caught
+himself going on—so he afterwards invidiously named it—as if there
+would be for him no second chance should the present be lost. Not till,
+on the purple divan before the perfunctory _bock_, he had brought out
+the words themselves, was he sure, for that matter, that the present
+would be saved.
+
+
+
+
+Book Fourth
+
+
+ I
+
+“I’ve come, you know, to make you break with everything, neither more
+nor less, and take you straight home; so you’ll be so good as
+immediately and favourably to consider it!”—Strether, face to face with
+Chad after the play, had sounded these words almost breathlessly, and
+with an effect at first positively disconcerting to himself alone. For
+Chad’s receptive attitude was that of a person who had been gracefully
+quiet while the messenger at last reaching him has run a mile through
+the dust. During some seconds after he had spoken Strether felt as if
+_he_ had made some such exertion; he was not even certain that the
+perspiration wasn’t on his brow. It was the kind of consciousness for
+which he had to thank the look that, while the strain lasted, the young
+man’s eyes gave him. They reflected—and the deuce of the thing was that
+they reflected really with a sort of shyness of kindness—his
+momentarily disordered state; which fact brought on in its turn for our
+friend the dawn of a fear that Chad might simply “take it out”—take
+everything out—in being sorry for him. Such a fear, any fear, was
+unpleasant. But everything was unpleasant; it was odd how everything
+had suddenly turned so. This however was no reason for letting the
+least thing go. Strether had the next minute proceeded as roundly as if
+with an advantage to follow up. “Of course I’m a busybody, if you want
+to fight the case to the death; but after all mainly in the sense of
+having known you and having given you such attention as you kindly
+permitted when you were in jackets and knickerbockers. Yes—it was
+knickerbockers, I’m busybody enough to remember that; and that you had,
+for your age—I speak of the first far-away time—tremendously stout
+legs. Well, we want you to break. Your mother’s heart’s passionately
+set upon it, but she has above and beyond that excellent arguments and
+reasons. I’ve not put them into her head—I needn’t remind you how
+little she’s a person who needs that. But they exist—you must take it
+from me as a friend both of hers and yours—for myself as well. I didn’t
+invent them, I didn’t originally work them out; but I understand them,
+I think I can explain them—by which I mean make you actively do them
+justice; and that’s why you see me here. You had better know the worst
+at once. It’s a question of an immediate rupture and an immediate
+return. I’ve been conceited enough to dream I can sugar that pill. I
+take at any rate the greatest interest in the question. I took it
+already before I left home, and I don’t mind telling you that, altered
+as you are, I take it still more now that I’ve seen you. You’re older
+and—I don’t know what to call it!—more of a handful; but you’re by so
+much the more, I seem to make out, to our purpose.”
+
+“Do I strike you as improved?” Strether was to recall that Chad had at
+this point enquired.
+
+He was likewise to recall—and it had to count for some time as his
+greatest comfort—that it had been “given” him, as they said at
+Woollett, to reply with some presence of mind: “I haven’t the least
+idea.” He was really for a while to like thinking he had been
+positively hard. On the point of conceding that Chad had improved in
+appearance, but that to the question of appearance the remark must be
+confined, he checked even that compromise and left his reservation
+bare. Not only his moral, but also, as it were, his æsthetic sense had
+a little to pay for this, Chad being unmistakeably—and wasn’t it a
+matter of the confounded grey hair again?—handsomer than he had ever
+promised. That however fell in perfectly with what Strether had said.
+They had no desire to keep down his proper expansion, and he wouldn’t
+be less to their purpose for not looking, as he had too often done of
+old, only bold and wild. There was indeed a signal particular in which
+he would distinctly be more so. Strether didn’t, as he talked,
+absolutely follow himself; he only knew he was clutching his thread and
+that he held it from moment to moment a little tighter; his mere
+uninterruptedness during the few minutes helped him to do that. He had
+frequently for a month, turned over what he should say on this very
+occasion, and he seemed at last to have said nothing he had thought
+of—everything was so totally different.
+
+But in spite of all he had put the flag at the window. This was what he
+had done, and there was a minute during which he affected himself as
+having shaken it hard, flapped it with a mighty flutter, straight in
+front of his companion’s nose. It gave him really almost the sense of
+having already acted his part. The momentary relief—as if from the
+knowledge that nothing of _that_ at least could be undone—sprang from a
+particular cause, the cause that had flashed into operation, in Miss
+Gostrey’s box, with direct apprehension, with amazed recognition, and
+that had been concerned since then in every throb of his consciousness.
+What it came to was that with an absolutely _new_ quantity to deal with
+one simply couldn’t know. The new quantity was represented by the fact
+that Chad had been made over. That was all; whatever it was it was
+everything. Strether had never seen the thing so done before—it was
+perhaps a speciality of Paris. If one had been present at the process
+one might little by little have mastered the result; but he was face to
+face, as matters stood, with the finished business. It had freely been
+noted for him that he might be received as a dog among skittles, but
+that was on the basis of the old quantity. He had originally thought of
+lines and tones as things to be taken, but these possibilities had now
+quite melted away. There was no computing at all what the young man
+before him would think or feel or say on any subject whatever. This
+intelligence Strether had afterwards, to account for his nervousness,
+reconstituted as he might, just as he had also reconstituted the
+promptness with which Chad had corrected his uncertainty. An
+extraordinarily short time had been required for the correction, and
+there had ceased to be anything negative in his companion’s face and
+air as soon as it was made. “Your engagement to my mother has become
+then what they call here a _fait accompli?_”—it had consisted, the
+determinant touch, in nothing more than that.
+
+Well, that was enough, Strether had felt while his answer hung fire. He
+had felt at the same time, however, that nothing could less become him
+than that it should hang fire too long. “Yes,” he said brightly, “it
+was on the happy settlement of the question that I started. You see
+therefore to what tune I’m in your family. Moreover,” he added, “I’ve
+been supposing you’d suppose it.”
+
+“Oh I’ve been supposing it for a long time, and what you tell me helps
+me to understand that you should want to do something. To do something,
+I mean,” said Chad, “to commemorate an event so—what do they call
+it?—so auspicious. I see you make out, and not unnaturally,” he
+continued, “that bringing me home in triumph as a sort of
+wedding-present to Mother would commemorate it better than anything
+else. You want to make a bonfire in fact,” he laughed, “and you pitch
+me on. Thank you, thank you!” he laughed again.
+
+He was altogether easy about it, and this made Strether now see how at
+bottom, and in spite of the shade of shyness that really cost him
+nothing, he had from the first moment been easy about everything. The
+shade of shyness was mere good taste. People with manners formed could
+apparently have, as one of their best cards, the shade of shyness too.
+He had leaned a little forward to speak; his elbows were on the table;
+and the inscrutable new face that he had got somewhere and somehow was
+brought by the movement nearer to his critic’s. There was a fascination
+for that critic in its not being, this ripe physiognomy, the face that,
+under observation at least, he had originally carried away from
+Woollett. Strether found a certain freedom on his own side in defining
+it as that of a man of the world—a formula that indeed seemed to come
+now in some degree to his relief; that of a man to whom things had
+happened and were variously known. In gleams, in glances, the past did
+perhaps peep out of it; but such lights were faint and instantly
+merged. Chad was brown and thick and strong, and of old Chad had been
+rough. Was all the difference therefore that he was actually smooth?
+Possibly; for that he _was_ smooth was as marked as in the taste of a
+sauce or in the rub of a hand. The effect of it was general—it had
+retouched his features, drawn them with a cleaner line. It had cleared
+his eyes and settled his colour and polished his fine square teeth—the
+main ornament of his face; and at the same time that it had given him a
+form and a surface, almost a design, it had toned his voice,
+established his accent, encouraged his smile to more play and his other
+motions to less. He had formerly, with a great deal of action,
+expressed very little; and he now expressed whatever was necessary with
+almost none at all. It was as if in short he had really, copious
+perhaps but shapeless, been put into a firm mould and turned
+successfully out. The phenomenon—Strether kept eyeing it as a
+phenomenon, an eminent case—was marked enough to be touched by the
+finger. He finally put his hand across the table and laid it on Chad’s
+arm. “If you’ll promise me—here on the spot and giving me your word of
+honour—to break straight off, you’ll make the future the real right
+thing for all of us alike. You’ll ease off the strain of this decent
+but none the less acute suspense in which I’ve for so many days been
+waiting for you, and let me turn in to rest. I shall leave you with my
+blessing and go to bed in peace.”
+
+Chad again fell back at this and, his hands pocketed, settled himself a
+little; in which posture he looked, though he rather anxiously smiled,
+only the more earnest. Then Strether seemed to see that he was really
+nervous, and he took that as what he would have called a wholesome
+sign. The only mark of it hitherto had been his more than once taking
+off and putting on his wide-brimmed crush hat. He had at this moment
+made the motion again to remove it, then had only pushed it back, so
+that it hung informally on his strong young grizzled crop. It was a
+touch that gave the note of the familiar—the intimate and the
+belated—to their quiet colloquy; and it was indeed by some such trivial
+aid that Strether became aware at the same moment of something else.
+The observation was at any rate determined in him by some light too
+fine to distinguish from so many others, but it was none the less
+sharply determined. Chad looked unmistakeably during these
+instants—well, as Strether put it to himself, all he was worth. Our
+friend had a sudden apprehension of what that would on certain sides
+be. He saw him in a flash as the young man marked out by women; and for
+a concentrated minute the dignity, the comparative austerity, as he
+funnily fancied it, of this character affected him almost with awe.
+There was an experience on his interlocutor’s part that looked out at
+him from under the displaced hat, and that looked out moreover by a
+force of its own, the deep fact of its quantity and quality, and not
+through Chad’s intending bravado or swagger. That was then the way men
+marked out by women _were_—and also the men by whom the women were
+doubtless in turn sufficiently distinguished. It affected Strether for
+thirty seconds as a relevant truth, a truth which, however, the next
+minute, had fallen into its relation. “Can’t you imagine there being
+some questions,” Chad asked, “that a fellow—however much impressed by
+your charming way of stating things—would like to put to you first?”
+
+“Oh yes—easily. I’m here to answer everything. I think I can even tell
+you things, of the greatest interest to you, that you won’t know enough
+to ask me. We’ll take as many days to it as you like. But I want,”
+Strether wound up, “to go to bed now.”
+
+“Really?”
+
+Chad had spoken in such surprise that he was amused. “Can’t you believe
+it?—with what you put me through?”
+
+The young man seemed to consider. “Oh I haven’t put you through
+much—yet.”
+
+“Do you mean there’s so much more to come?” Strether laughed. “All the
+more reason then that I should gird myself.” And as if to mark what he
+felt he could by this time count on he was already on his feet.
+
+Chad, still seated, stayed him, with a hand against him, as he passed
+between their table and the next. “Oh we shall get on!”
+
+The tone was, as who should say, everything Strether could have
+desired; and quite as good the expression of face with which the
+speaker had looked up at him and kindly held him. All these things
+lacked was their not showing quite so much as the fruit of experience.
+Yes, experience was what Chad did play on him, if he didn’t play any
+grossness of defiance. Of course experience was in a manner defiance;
+but it wasn’t, at any rate—rather indeed quite the contrary!—grossness;
+which was so much gained. He fairly grew older, Strether thought, while
+he himself so reasoned. Then with his mature pat of his visitor’s arm
+he also got up; and there had been enough of it all by this time to
+make the visitor feel that something _was_ settled. Wasn’t it settled
+that he had at least the testimony of Chad’s own belief in a
+settlement? Strether found himself treating Chad’s profession that they
+would get on as a sufficient basis for going to bed. He hadn’t
+nevertheless after this gone to bed directly; for when they had again
+passed out together into the mild bright night a check had virtually
+sprung from nothing more than a small circumstance which might have
+acted only as confirming quiescence. There were people, expressive
+sound, projected light, still abroad, and after they had taken in for a
+moment, through everything, the great clear architectural street, they
+turned off in tacit union to the quarter of Strether’s hotel. “Of
+course,” Chad here abruptly began, “of course Mother’s making things
+out with you about me has been natural—and of course also you’ve had a
+good deal to go upon. Still, you must have filled out.”
+
+He had stopped, leaving his friend to wonder a little what point he
+wished to make; and this it was that enabled Strether meanwhile to make
+one. “Oh we’ve never pretended to go into detail. We weren’t in the
+least bound to _that_. It was ‘filling out’ enough to miss you as we
+did.”
+
+But Chad rather oddly insisted, though under the high lamp at their
+corner, where they paused, he had at first looked as if touched by
+Strether’s allusion to the long sense, at home, of his absence. “What I
+mean is you must have imagined.”
+
+“Imagined what?”
+
+“Well—horrors.”
+
+It affected Strether: horrors were so little—superficially at least—in
+this robust and reasoning image. But he was none the less there to be
+veracious. “Yes, I dare say we _have_ imagined horrors. But where’s the
+harm if we haven’t been wrong?”
+
+Chad raised his face to the lamp, and it was one of the moments at
+which he had, in his extraordinary way, most his air of designedly
+showing himself. It was as if at these instants he just presented
+himself, his identity so rounded off, his palpable presence and his
+massive young manhood, as such a link in the chain as might practically
+amount to a kind of demonstration. It was as if—and how but
+anomalously?—he couldn’t after all help thinking sufficiently well of
+these things to let them go for what they were worth. What could there
+be in this for Strether but the hint of some self-respect, some sense
+of power, oddly perverted; something latent and beyond access, ominous
+and perhaps enviable? The intimation had the next thing, in a flash,
+taken on a name—a name on which our friend seized as he asked himself
+if he weren’t perhaps really dealing with an irreducible young Pagan.
+This description—he quite jumped at it—had a sound that gratified his
+mental ear, so that of a sudden he had already adopted it. Pagan—yes,
+that was, wasn’t it? what Chad _would_ logically be. It was what he
+must be. It was what he was. The idea was a clue and, instead of
+darkening the prospect, projected a certain clearness. Strether made
+out in this quick ray that a Pagan was perhaps, at the pass they had
+come to, the thing most wanted at Woollett. They’d be able to do with
+one—a good one; he’d find an opening—yes; and Strether’s imagination
+even now prefigured and accompanied the first appearance there of the
+rousing personage. He had only the slight discomfort of feeling, as the
+young man turned away from the lamp, that his thought had in the
+momentary silence possibly been guessed. “Well, I’ve no doubt,” said
+Chad, “you’ve come near enough. The details, as you say, don’t matter.
+It _has_ been generally the case that I’ve let myself go. But I’m
+coming round—I’m not so bad now.” With which they walked on again to
+Strether’s hotel.
+
+“Do you mean,” the latter asked as they approached the door, “that
+there isn’t any woman with you now?”
+
+“But pray what has that to do with it?”
+
+“Why it’s the whole question.”
+
+“Of my going home?” Chad was clearly surprised. “Oh not much! Do you
+think that when I want to go any one will have any power—”
+
+“To keep you”—Strether took him straight up—“from carrying out your
+wish? Well, our idea has been that somebody has hitherto—or a good many
+persons perhaps—kept you pretty well from ‘wanting.’ That’s what—if
+you’re in anybody’s hands—may again happen. You don’t answer my
+question”—he kept it up; “but if you aren’t in anybody’s hands so much
+the better. There’s nothing then but what makes for your going.”
+
+Chad turned this over. “I don’t answer your question?” He spoke quite
+without resenting it. “Well, such questions have always a rather
+exaggerated side. One doesn’t know quite what you mean by being in
+women’s ‘hands.’ It’s all so vague. One is when one isn’t. One isn’t
+when one is. And then one can’t quite give people away.” He seemed
+kindly to explain. “I’ve _never_ got stuck—so very hard; and, as
+against anything at any time really better, I don’t think I’ve ever
+been afraid.” There was something in it that held Strether to wonder,
+and this gave him time to go on. He broke out as with a more helpful
+thought. “Don’t you know how I like Paris itself?”
+
+The upshot was indeed to make our friend marvel. “Oh if _that’s_ all
+that’s the matter with you—!” It was _he_ who almost showed resentment.
+
+Chad’s smile of a truth more than met it. “But isn’t that enough?”
+
+Strether hesitated, but it came out. “Not enough for your mother!”
+Spoken, however, it sounded a trifle odd—the effect of which was that
+Chad broke into a laugh. Strether, at this, succumbed as well, though
+with extreme brevity. “Permit us to have still our theory. But if you
+_are_ so free and so strong you’re inexcusable. I’ll write in the
+morning,” he added with decision. “I’ll say I’ve got you.”
+
+This appeared to open for Chad a new interest. “How often do you
+write?”
+
+“Oh perpetually.”
+
+“And at great length?”
+
+Strether had become a little impatient. “I hope it’s not found too
+great.”
+
+“Oh I’m sure not. And you hear as often?”
+
+Again Strether paused. “As often as I deserve.”
+
+“Mother writes,” said Chad, “a lovely letter.”
+
+Strether, before the closed _porte-cochère_, fixed him a moment. “It’s
+more, my boy, than _you_ do! But our suppositions don’t matter,” he
+added, “if you’re actually not entangled.”
+
+Chad’s pride seemed none the less a little touched. “I never _was_
+that—let me insist. I always had my own way.” With which he pursued:
+“And I have it at present.”
+
+“Then what are you here for? What has kept you,” Strether asked, “if
+you _have_ been able to leave?”
+
+It made Chad, after a stare, throw himself back. “Do you think one’s
+kept only by women?” His surprise and his verbal emphasis rang out so
+clear in the still street that Strether winced till he remembered the
+safety of their English speech. “Is that,” the young man demanded,
+“what they think at Woollett?” At the good faith in the question
+Strether had changed colour, feeling that, as he would have said, he
+had put his foot in it. He had appeared stupidly to misrepresent what
+they thought at Woollett; but before he had time to rectify Chad again
+was upon him. “I must say then you show a low mind!”
+
+It so fell in, unhappily for Strether, with that reflexion of his own
+prompted in him by the pleasant air of the Boulevard Malesherbes, that
+its disconcerting force was rather unfairly great. It was a dig that,
+administered by himself—and administered even to poor Mrs. Newsome—was
+no more than salutary; but administered by Chad—and quite logically—it
+came nearer drawing blood. They _hadn’t_ a low mind—nor any approach to
+one; yet incontestably they had worked, and with a certain smugness, on
+a basis that might be turned against them. Chad had at any rate pulled
+his visitor up; he had even pulled up his admirable mother; he had
+absolutely, by a turn of the wrist and a jerk of the far-flung noose,
+pulled up, in a bunch, Woollett browsing in its pride. There was no
+doubt Woollett _had_ insisted on his coarseness; and what he at present
+stood there for in the sleeping street was, by his manner of striking
+the other note, to make of such insistence a preoccupation compromising
+to the insisters. It was exactly as if they had imputed to him a
+vulgarity that he had by a mere gesture caused to fall from him. The
+devil of the case was that Strether felt it, by the same stroke, as
+falling straight upon himself. He had been wondering a minute ago if
+the boy weren’t a Pagan, and he found himself wondering now if he
+weren’t by chance a gentleman. It didn’t in the least, on the spot,
+spring up helpfully for him that a person couldn’t at the same time be
+both. There was nothing at this moment in the air to challenge the
+combination; there was everything to give it on the contrary something
+of a flourish. It struck Strether into the bargain as doing something
+to meet the most difficult of the questions; though perhaps indeed only
+by substituting another. Wouldn’t it be precisely by having learned to
+be a gentleman that he had mastered the consequent trick of looking so
+well that one could scarce speak to him straight? But what in the world
+was the clue to such a prime producing cause? There were too many clues
+then that Strether still lacked, and these clues to clues were among
+them. What it accordingly amounted to for him was that he had to take
+full in the face a fresh attribution of ignorance. He had grown used by
+this time to reminders, especially from his own lips, of what he didn’t
+know; but he had borne them because in the first place they were
+private and because in the second they practically conveyed a tribute.
+He didn’t know what was bad, and—as others didn’t know how little he
+knew it—he could put up with his state. But if he didn’t know, in so
+important a particular, what was good, Chad at least was now aware he
+didn’t; and that, for some reason, affected our friend as curiously
+public. It was in fact an exposed condition that the young man left him
+in long enough for him to feel its chill—till he saw fit, in a word,
+generously again to cover him. This last was in truth what Chad quite
+gracefully did. But he did it as with a simple thought that met the
+whole of the case. “Oh I’m all right!” It was what Strether had rather
+bewilderedly to go to bed on.
+
+
+ II
+
+It really looked true moreover from the way Chad was to behave after
+this. He was full of attentions to his mother’s ambassador; in spite of
+which, all the while, the latter’s other relations rather remarkably
+contrived to assert themselves. Strether’s sittings pen in hand with
+Mrs. Newsome up in his own room were broken, yet they were richer; and
+they were more than ever interspersed with the hours in which he
+reported himself, in a different fashion, but with scarce less
+earnestness and fulness, to Maria Gostrey. Now that, as he would have
+expressed it, he had really something to talk about he found himself,
+in respect to any oddity that might reside for him in the double
+connexion, at once more aware and more indifferent. He had been fine to
+Mrs. Newsome about his useful friend, but it had begun to haunt his
+imagination that Chad, taking up again for her benefit a pen too long
+disused, might possibly be finer. It wouldn’t at all do, he saw, that
+anything should come up for him at Chad’s hand but what specifically
+_was_ to have come; the greatest divergence from which would be
+precisely the element of any lubrication of their intercourse by
+levity. It was accordingly to forestall such an accident that he
+frankly put before the young man the several facts, just as they had
+occurred, of his funny alliance. He spoke of these facts, pleasantly
+and obligingly, as “the whole story,” and felt that he might qualify
+the alliance as funny if he remained sufficiently grave about it. He
+flattered himself that he even exaggerated the wild freedom of his
+original encounter with the wonderful lady; he was scrupulously
+definite about the absurd conditions in which they had made
+acquaintance—their having picked each other up almost in the street;
+and he had (finest inspiration of all!) a conception of carrying the
+war into the enemy’s country by showing surprise at the enemy’s
+ignorance.
+
+He had always had a notion that this last was the grand style of
+fighting; the greater therefore the reason for it, as he couldn’t
+remember that he had ever before fought in the grand style. Every one,
+according to this, knew Miss Gostrey: how came it Chad didn’t know her?
+The difficulty, the impossibility, was really to escape it; Strether
+put on him, by what he took for granted, the burden of proof of the
+contrary. This tone was so far successful as that Chad quite appeared
+to recognise her as a person whose fame had reached him, but against
+his acquaintance with whom much mischance had worked. He made the point
+at the same time that his social relations, such as they could be
+called, were perhaps not to the extent Strether supposed with the
+rising flood of their compatriots. He hinted at his having more and
+more given way to a different principle of selection; the moral of
+which seemed to be that he went about little in the “colony.” For the
+moment certainly he had quite another interest. It was deep, what he
+understood, and Strether, for himself, could only so observe it. He
+couldn’t see as yet how deep. Might he not all too soon! For there was
+really too much of their question that Chad had already committed
+himself to liking. He liked, to begin with, his prospective stepfather;
+which was distinctly what had not been on the cards. His hating him was
+the untowardness for which Strether had been best prepared; he hadn’t
+expected the boy’s actual form to give him more to do than his imputed.
+It gave him more through suggesting that he must somehow make up to
+himself for not being sure he was sufficiently disagreeable. That had
+really been present to him as his only way to be sure he was
+sufficiently thorough. The point was that if Chad’s tolerance of his
+thoroughness were insincere, were but the best of devices for gaining
+time, it none the less did treat everything as tacitly concluded.
+
+That seemed at the end of ten days the upshot of the abundant, the
+recurrent talk through which Strether poured into him all it concerned
+him to know, put him in full possession of facts and figures. Never
+cutting these colloquies short by a minute, Chad behaved, looked and
+spoke as if he were rather heavily, perhaps even a trifle gloomily, but
+none the less fundamentally and comfortably free. He made no crude
+profession of eagerness to yield, but he asked the most intelligent
+questions, probed, at moments, abruptly, even deeper than his friend’s
+layer of information, justified by these touches the native estimate of
+his latent stuff, and had in every way the air of trying to live,
+reflectively, into the square bright picture. He walked up and down in
+front of this production, sociably took Strether’s arm at the points at
+which he stopped, surveyed it repeatedly from the right and from the
+left, inclined a critical head to either quarter, and, while he puffed
+a still more critical cigarette, animadverted to his companion on this
+passage and that. Strether sought relief—there were hours when he
+required it—in repeating himself; it was in truth not to be blinked
+that Chad had a way. The main question as yet was of what it was a way
+_to_. It made vulgar questions no more easy; but that was unimportant
+when all questions save those of his own asking had dropped. That he
+was free was answer enough, and it wasn’t quite ridiculous that this
+freedom should end by presenting itself as what was difficult to move.
+His changed state, his lovely home, his beautiful things, his easy
+talk, his very appetite for Strether, insatiable and, when all was
+said, flattering—what were such marked matters all but the notes of his
+freedom? He had the effect of making a sacrifice of it just in these
+handsome forms to his visitor; which was mainly the reason the visitor
+was privately, for the time, a little out of countenance. Strether was
+at this period again and again thrown back on a felt need to remodel
+somehow his plan. He fairly caught himself shooting rueful glances, shy
+looks of pursuit, toward the embodied influence, the definite
+adversary, who had by a stroke of her own failed him and on a fond
+theory of whose palpable presence he had, under Mrs. Newsome’s
+inspiration, altogether proceeded. He had once or twice, in secret,
+literally expressed the irritated wish that _she_ would come out and
+find her.
+
+He couldn’t quite yet force it upon Woollett that such a career, such a
+perverted young life, showed after all a certain plausible side, _did_
+in the case before them flaunt something like an impunity for the
+social man; but he could at least treat himself to the statement that
+would prepare him for the sharpest echo. This echo—as distinct over
+there in the dry thin air as some shrill “heading” above a column of
+print—seemed to reach him even as he wrote. “He says there’s no woman,”
+he could hear Mrs. Newsome report, in capitals almost of newspaper
+size, to Mrs. Pocock; and he could focus in Mrs. Pocock the response of
+the reader of the journal. He could see in the younger lady’s face the
+earnestness of her attention and catch the full scepticism of her but
+slightly delayed “What is there then?” Just so he could again as little
+miss the mother’s clear decision: “There’s plenty of disposition, no
+doubt, to pretend there isn’t.” Strether had, after posting his letter,
+the whole scene out; and it was a scene during which, coming and going,
+as befell, he kept his eye not least upon the daughter. He had his fine
+sense of the conviction Mrs. Pocock would take occasion to reaffirm—a
+conviction bearing, as he had from the first deeply divined it to bear,
+on Mr. Strether’s essential inaptitude. She had looked him in his
+conscious eyes even before he sailed, and that she didn’t believe _he_
+would find the woman had been written in her book. Hadn’t she at the
+best but a scant faith in his ability to find women? It wasn’t even as
+if he had found her mother—so much more, to her discrimination, had her
+mother performed the finding. Her mother had, in a case her private
+judgement of which remained educative of Mrs. Pocock’s critical sense,
+found the man. The man owed his unchallenged state, in general, to the
+fact that Mrs. Newsome’s discoveries were accepted at Woollett; but he
+knew in his bones, our friend did, how almost irresistibly Mrs. Pocock
+would now be moved to show what she thought of his own. Give _her_ a
+free hand, would be the moral, and the woman would soon be found.
+
+His impression of Miss Gostrey after her introduction to Chad was
+meanwhile an impression of a person almost unnaturally on her guard. He
+struck himself as at first unable to extract from her what he wished;
+though indeed _of_ what he wished at this special juncture he would
+doubtless have contrived to make but a crude statement. It sifted and
+settled nothing to put to her, _tout bêtement_, as she often said, “Do
+you like him, eh?”—thanks to his feeling it actually the least of his
+needs to heap up the evidence in the young man’s favour. He repeatedly
+knocked at her door to let her have it afresh that Chad’s case—whatever
+else of minor interest it might yield—was first and foremost a miracle
+almost monstrous. It was the alteration of the entire man, and was so
+signal an instance that nothing else, for the intelligent observer,
+could—_could_ it?—signify. “It’s a plot,” he declared—“there’s more in
+it than meets the eye.” He gave the rein to his fancy. “It’s a plant!”
+
+His fancy seemed to please her. “Whose then?”
+
+“Well, the party responsible is, I suppose, the fate that waits for
+one, the dark doom that rides. What I mean is that with such elements
+one can’t count. I’ve but my poor individual, my modest human means. It
+isn’t playing the game to turn on the uncanny. All one’s energy goes to
+facing it, to tracking it. One wants, confound it, don’t you see?” he
+confessed with a queer face—“one wants to enjoy anything so rare. Call
+it then life”—he puzzled it out—“call it poor dear old life simply that
+springs the surprise. Nothing alters the fact that the surprise is
+paralysing, or at any rate engrossing—all, practically, hang it, that
+one sees, that one _can_ see.”
+
+Her silences were never barren, nor even dull. “Is that what you’ve
+written home?”
+
+He tossed it off. “Oh dear, yes!”
+
+She had another pause while, across her carpets, he had another walk.
+“If you don’t look out you’ll have them straight over.”
+
+“Oh but I’ve said he’ll go back.”
+
+“And _will_ he?” Miss Gostrey asked.
+
+The special tone of it made him, pulling up, look at her long. “What’s
+that but just the question I’ve spent treasures of patience and
+ingenuity in giving _you_, by the sight of him—after everything had led
+up—every facility to answer? What is it but just the thing I came here
+to-day to get out of you? Will he?”
+
+“No—he won’t,” she said at last. “He’s not free.”
+
+The air of it held him. “Then you’ve all the while known—?”
+
+“I’ve known nothing but what I’ve seen; and I wonder,” she declared
+with some impatience, “that you didn’t see as much. It was enough to be
+with him there—”
+
+“In the box? Yes,” he rather blankly urged.
+
+“Well—to feel sure.”
+
+“Sure of what?”
+
+She got up from her chair, at this, with a nearer approach than she had
+ever yet shown to dismay at his dimness. She even, fairly pausing for
+it, spoke with a shade of pity. “Guess!”
+
+It was a shade, fairly, that brought a flush into his face; so that for
+a moment, as they waited together, their difference was between them.
+“You mean that just your hour with him told you so much of his story?
+Very good; I’m not such a fool, on my side, as that I don’t understand
+you, or as that I didn’t in some degree understand _him_. That he has
+done what he liked most isn’t, among any of us, a matter the least in
+dispute. There’s equally little question at this time of day of what it
+is he does like most. But I’m not talking,” he reasonably explained,
+“of any mere wretch he may still pick up. I’m talking of some person
+who in his present situation may have held her own, may really have
+counted.”
+
+“That’s exactly what _I_ am!” said Miss Gostrey. But she as quickly
+made her point. “I thought you thought—or that they think at
+Woollett—that that’s what mere wretches necessarily do. Mere wretches
+necessarily _don’t!_” she declared with spirit. “There must, behind
+every appearance to the contrary, still be somebody—somebody who’s not
+a mere wretch, since we accept the miracle. What else but such a
+somebody can such a miracle be?”
+
+He took it in. “Because the fact itself _is_ the woman?”
+
+“_A_ woman. Some woman or other. It’s one of the things that _have_ to
+be.”
+
+“But you mean then at least a good one.”
+
+“A good woman?” She threw up her arms with a laugh. “I should call her
+excellent!”
+
+“Then why does he deny her?”
+
+Miss Gostrey thought a moment. “Because she’s too good to admit! Don’t
+you see,” she went on, “how she accounts for him?”
+
+Strether clearly, more and more, did see; yet it made him also see
+other things. “But isn’t what we want that he shall account for _her?_”
+
+“Well, he does. What you have before you is his way. You must forgive
+him if it isn’t quite outspoken. In Paris such debts are tacit.”
+
+Strether could imagine; but still—! “Even when the woman’s good?”
+
+Again she laughed out. “Yes, and even when the man is! There’s always a
+caution in such cases,” she more seriously explained—“for what it may
+seem to show. There’s nothing that’s taken as showing so much here as
+sudden unnatural goodness.”
+
+“Ah then you’re speaking now,” Strether said, “of people who are _not_
+nice.”
+
+“I delight,” she replied, “in your classifications. But do you want
+me,” she asked, “to give you in the matter, on this ground, the wisest
+advice I’m capable of? Don’t consider her, don’t judge her at all in
+herself. Consider her and judge her only in Chad.”
+
+He had the courage at least of his companion’s logic. “Because then I
+shall like her?” He almost looked, with his quick imagination as if he
+already did, though seeing at once also the full extent of how little
+it would suit his book. “But is that what I came out for?”
+
+She had to confess indeed that it wasn’t. But there was something else.
+“Don’t make up your mind. There are all sorts of things. You haven’t
+seen him all.”
+
+This on his side Strether recognised; but his acuteness none the less
+showed him the danger. “Yes, but if the more I see the better he
+seems?”
+
+Well, she found something. “That may be—but his disavowal of her isn’t,
+all the same, pure consideration. There’s a hitch.” She made it out.
+“It’s the effort to sink her.”
+
+Strether winced at the image. “To ‘sink’—?”
+
+“Well, I mean there’s a struggle, and a part of it is just what he
+hides. Take time—that’s the only way not to make some mistake that
+you’ll regret. Then you’ll see. He does really want to shake her off.”
+
+Our friend had by this time so got into the vision that he almost
+gasped. “After all she has done for him?”
+
+Miss Gostrey gave him a look which broke the next moment into a
+wonderful smile. “He’s not so good as you think!”
+
+They remained with him, these words, promising him, in their character
+of warning, considerable help; but the support he tried to draw from
+them found itself on each renewal of contact with Chad defeated by
+something else. What could it be, this disconcerting force, he asked
+himself, but the sense, constantly renewed, that Chad _was_—quite in
+fact insisted on being—as good as he thought? It seemed somehow as if
+he couldn’t _but_ be as good from the moment he wasn’t as bad. There
+was a succession of days at all events when contact with him—and in its
+immediate effect, as if it could produce no other—elbowed out of
+Strether’s consciousness everything but itself. Little Bilham once more
+pervaded the scene, but little Bilham became even in a higher degree
+than he had originally been one of the numerous forms of the inclusive
+relation; a consequence promoted, to our friend’s sense, by two or
+three incidents with which we have yet to make acquaintance. Waymarsh
+himself, for the occasion, was drawn into the eddy; it absolutely,
+though but temporarily, swallowed him down, and there were days when
+Strether seemed to bump against him as a sinking swimmer might brush a
+submarine object. The fathomless medium held them—Chad’s manner was the
+fathomless medium; and our friend felt as if they passed each other, in
+their deep immersion, with the round impersonal eye of silent fish. It
+was practically produced between them that Waymarsh was giving him then
+his chance; and the shade of discomfort that Strether drew from the
+allowance resembled not a little the embarrassment he had known at
+school, as a boy, when members of his family had been present at
+exhibitions. He could perform before strangers, but relatives were
+fatal, and it was now as if, comparatively, Waymarsh were a relative.
+He seemed to hear him say “Strike up then!” and to enjoy a foretaste of
+conscientious domestic criticism. He _had_ struck up, so far as he
+actually could; Chad knew by this time in profusion what he wanted; and
+what vulgar violence did his fellow pilgrim expect of him when he had
+really emptied his mind? It went somehow to and fro that what poor
+Waymarsh meant was “I told you so—that you’d lose your immortal soul!”
+but it was also fairly explicit that Strether had his own challenge and
+that, since they must go to the bottom of things, he wasted no more
+virtue in watching Chad than Chad wasted in watching him. His dip for
+duty’s sake—where was it worse than Waymarsh’s own? For _he_ needn’t
+have stopped resisting and refusing, needn’t have parleyed, at that
+rate, with the foe.
+
+The strolls over Paris to see something or call somewhere were
+accordingly inevitable and natural, and the late sessions in the
+wondrous troisième, the lovely home, when men dropped in and the
+picture composed more suggestively through the haze of tobacco, of
+music more or less good and of talk more or less polyglot, were on a
+principle not to be distinguished from that of the mornings and the
+afternoons. Nothing, Strether had to recognise as he leaned back and
+smoked, could well less resemble a scene of violence than even the
+liveliest of these occasions. They were occasions of discussion, none
+the less, and Strether had never in his life heard so many opinions on
+so many subjects. There were opinions at Woollett, but only on three or
+four. The differences were there to match; if they were doubtless deep,
+though few, they were quiet—they were, as might be said, almost as shy
+as if people had been ashamed of them. People showed little diffidence
+about such things, on the other hand, in the Boulevard Malesherbes, and
+were so far from being ashamed of them—or indeed of anything else—that
+they often seemed to have invented them to avert those agreements that
+destroy the taste of talk. No one had ever done that at Woollett,
+though Strether could remember times when he himself had been tempted
+to it without quite knowing why. He saw why at present—he had but
+wanted to promote intercourse.
+
+These, however, were but parenthetic memories, and the turn taken by
+his affair on the whole was positively that if his nerves were on the
+stretch it was because he missed violence. When he asked himself if
+none would then, in connexion with it, ever come at all, he might
+almost have passed as wondering how to provoke it. It would be too
+absurd if such a vision as _that_ should have to be invoked for relief;
+it was already marked enough as absurd that he should actually have
+begun with flutters and dignities on the score of a single accepted
+meal. What sort of a brute had he expected Chad to be, anyway?—Strether
+had occasion to make the enquiry but was careful to make it in private.
+He could himself, comparatively recent as it was—it was truly but the
+fact of a few days since—focus his primal crudity; but he would on the
+approach of an observer, as if handling an illicit possession, have
+slipped the reminiscence out of sight. There were echoes of it still in
+Mrs. Newsome’s letters, and there were moments when these echoes made
+him exclaim on her want of tact. He blushed of course, at once, still
+more for the explanation than for the ground of it: it came to him in
+time to save his manners that she couldn’t at the best become tactful
+as quickly as he. Her tact had to reckon with the Atlantic Ocean, the
+General Post-Office and the extravagant curve of the globe. Chad had
+one day offered tea at the Boulevard Malesherbes to a chosen few, a
+group again including the unobscured Miss Barrace; and Strether had on
+coming out walked away with the acquaintance whom in his letters to
+Mrs. Newsome he always spoke of as the little artist-man. He had had
+full occasion to mention him as the other party, so oddly, to the only
+close personal alliance observation had as yet detected in Chad’s
+existence. Little Bilham’s way this afternoon was not Strether’s, but
+he had none the less kindly come with him, and it was somehow a part of
+his kindness that as it had sadly begun to rain they suddenly found
+themselves seated for conversation at a café in which they had taken
+refuge. He had passed no more crowded hour in Chad’s society than the
+one just ended; he had talked with Miss Barrace, who had reproached him
+with not having come to see her, and he had above all hit on a happy
+thought for causing Waymarsh’s tension to relax. Something might
+possibly be extracted for the latter from the idea of his success with
+that lady, whose quick apprehension of what might amuse her had given
+Strether a free hand. What had she meant if not to ask whether she
+couldn’t help him with his splendid encumbrance, and mightn’t the
+sacred rage at any rate be kept a little in abeyance by thus creating
+for his comrade’s mind even in a world of irrelevance the possibility
+of a relation? What was it but a relation to be regarded as so
+decorative and, in especial, on the strength of it, to be whirled away,
+amid flounces and feathers, in a coupé lined, by what Strether could
+make out, with dark blue brocade? He himself had never been whirled
+away—never at least in a coupé and behind a footman; he had driven with
+Miss Gostrey in cabs, with Mrs. Pocock, a few times, in an open buggy,
+with Mrs. Newsome in a four-seated cart and, occasionally up at the
+mountains, on a buckboard; but his friend’s actual adventure
+transcended his personal experience. He now showed his companion soon
+enough indeed how inadequate, as a general monitor, this last queer
+quantity could once more feel itself.
+
+“What game under the sun is he playing?” He signified the next moment
+that his allusion was not to the fat gentleman immersed in dominoes on
+whom his eyes had begun by resting, but to their host of the previous
+hour, as to whom, there on the velvet bench, with a final collapse of
+all consistency, he treated himself to the comfort of indiscretion.
+“Where do you see him come out?”
+
+Little Bilham, in meditation, looked at him with a kindness almost
+paternal. “Don’t you like it over here?”
+
+Strether laughed out—for the tone was indeed droll; he let himself go.
+“What has that to do with it? The only thing I’ve any business to like
+is to feel that I’m moving him. That’s why I ask you whether you
+believe I _am?_ Is the creature”—and he did his best to show that he
+simply wished to ascertain—“honest?”
+
+His companion looked responsible, but looked it through a small dim
+smile. “What creature do you mean?”
+
+It was on this that they did have for a little a mute interchange. “Is
+it untrue that he’s free? How then,” Strether asked wondering “does he
+arrange his life?”
+
+“Is the creature you mean Chad himself?” little Bilham said.
+
+Strether here, with a rising hope, just thought, “We must take one of
+them at a time.” But his coherence lapsed. “_Is_ there some woman? Of
+whom he’s really afraid of course I mean—or who does with him what she
+likes.”
+
+“It’s awfully charming of you,” Bilham presently remarked, “not to have
+asked me that before.”
+
+“Oh I’m not fit for my job!”
+
+The exclamation had escaped our friend, but it made little Bilham more
+deliberate. “Chad’s a rare case!” he luminously observed. “He’s awfully
+changed,” he added.
+
+“Then you see it too?”
+
+“The way he has improved? Oh yes—I think every one must see it. But I’m
+not sure,” said little Bilham, “that I didn’t like him about as well in
+his other state.”
+
+“Then this _is_ really a new state altogether?”
+
+“Well,” the young man after a moment returned, “I’m not sure he was
+really meant by nature to be quite so good. It’s like the new edition
+of an old book that one has been fond of—revised and amended, brought
+up to date, but not quite the thing one knew and loved. However that
+may be at all events,” he pursued, “I don’t think, you know, that he’s
+really playing, as you call it, any game. I believe he really wants to
+go back and take up a career. He’s capable of one, you know, that will
+improve and enlarge him still more. He won’t then,” little Bilham
+continued to remark, “be my pleasant well-rubbed old-fashioned volume
+at all. But of course I’m beastly immoral. I’m afraid it would be a
+funny world altogether—a world with things the way I like them. I
+ought, I dare say, to go home and go into business myself. Only I’d
+simply rather die—simply. And I’ve not the least difficulty in making
+up my mind not to, and in knowing exactly why, and in defending my
+ground against all comers. All the same,” he wound up, “I assure you I
+don’t say a word against it—for himself, I mean—to Chad. I seem to see
+it as much the best thing for him. You see he’s not happy.”
+
+“_Do_ I?”—Strether stared. “I’ve been supposing I see just the
+opposite—an extraordinary case of the equilibrium arrived at and
+assured.”
+
+“Oh there’s a lot behind it.”
+
+“Ah there you are!” Strether exclaimed. “That’s just what I want to get
+at. You speak of your familiar volume altered out of recognition. Well,
+who’s the editor?”
+
+Little Bilham looked before him a minute in silence. “He ought to get
+married. _That_ would do it. And he wants to.”
+
+“Wants to marry her?”
+
+Again little Bilham waited, and, with a sense that he had information,
+Strether scarce knew what was coming. “He wants to be free. He isn’t
+used, you see,” the young man explained in his lucid way, “to being so
+good.”
+
+Strether hesitated. “Then I may take it from you that he _is_ good?”
+
+His companion matched his pause, but making it up with a quiet fulness.
+“_Do_ take it from me.”
+
+“Well then why isn’t he free? He swears to me he is, but meanwhile does
+nothing—except of course that he’s so kind to me—to prove it; and
+couldn’t really act much otherwise if he weren’t. My question to you
+just now was exactly on this queer impression of his diplomacy: as if
+instead of really giving ground his line were to keep me on here and
+set me a bad example.”
+
+As the half-hour meanwhile had ebbed Strether paid his score, and the
+waiter was presently in the act of counting out change. Our friend
+pushed back to him a fraction of it, with which, after an emphatic
+recognition, the personage in question retreated. “You give too much,”
+little Bilham permitted himself benevolently to observe.
+
+“Oh I always give too much!” Strether helplessly sighed. “But you
+don’t,” he went on as if to get quickly away from the contemplation of
+that doom, “answer my question. Why isn’t he free?”
+
+Little Bilham had got up as if the transaction with the waiter had been
+a signal, and had already edged out between the table and the divan.
+The effect of this was that a minute later they had quitted the place,
+the gratified waiter alert again at the open door. Strether had found
+himself deferring to his companion’s abruptness as to a hint that he
+should be answered as soon as they were more isolated. This happened
+when after a few steps in the outer air they had turned the next
+corner. There our friend had kept it up. “Why isn’t he free if he’s
+good?”
+
+Little Bilham looked him full in the face. “Because it’s a virtuous
+attachment.”
+
+This had settled the question so effectually for the time—that is for
+the next few days—that it had given Strether almost a new lease of
+life. It must be added however that, thanks to his constant habit of
+shaking the bottle in which life handed him the wine of experience, he
+presently found the taste of the lees rising as usual into his draught.
+His imagination had in other words already dealt with his young
+friend’s assertion; of which it had made something that sufficiently
+came out on the very next occasion of his seeing Maria Gostrey. This
+occasion moreover had been determined promptly by a new circumstance—a
+circumstance he was the last man to leave her for a day in ignorance
+of. “When I said to him last night,” he immediately began, “that
+without some definite word from him now that will enable me to speak to
+them over there of our sailing—or at least of mine, giving them some
+sort of date—my responsibility becomes uncomfortable and my situation
+awkward; when I said that to him what do you think was his reply?” And
+then as she this time gave it up: “Why that he has two particular
+friends, two ladies, mother and daughter, about to arrive in
+Paris—coming back from an absence; and that he wants me so furiously to
+meet them, know them and like them, that I shall oblige him by kindly
+not bringing our business to a crisis till he has had a chance to see
+them again himself. Is that,” Strether enquired, “the way he’s going to
+try to get off? These are the people,” he explained, “that he must have
+gone down to see before I arrived. They’re the best friends he has in
+the world, and they take more interest than any one else in what
+concerns him. As I’m his next best he sees a thousand reasons why we
+should comfortably meet. He hasn’t broached the question sooner because
+their return was uncertain—seemed in fact for the present impossible.
+But he more than intimates that—if you can believe it—their desire to
+make my acquaintance has had to do with their surmounting
+difficulties.”
+
+“They’re dying to see you?” Miss Gostrey asked.
+
+“Dying. Of course,” said Strether, “they’re the virtuous attachment.”
+He had already told her about that—had seen her the day after his talk
+with little Bilham; and they had then threshed out together the bearing
+of the revelation. She had helped him to put into it the logic in which
+little Bilham had left it slightly deficient Strether hadn’t pressed
+him as to the object of the preference so unexpectedly described;
+feeling in the presence of it, with one of his irrepressible scruples,
+a delicacy from which he had in the quest of the quite other article
+worked himself sufficiently free. He had held off, as on a small
+principle of pride, from permitting his young friend to mention a name;
+wishing to make with this the great point that Chad’s virtuous
+attachments were none of his business. He had wanted from the first not
+to think too much of his dignity, but that was no reason for not
+allowing it any little benefit that might turn up. He had often enough
+wondered to what degree his interference might pass for interested; so
+that there was no want of luxury in letting it be seen whenever he
+could that he didn’t interfere. That had of course at the same time not
+deprived him of the further luxury of much private astonishment; which
+however he had reduced to some order before communicating his
+knowledge. When he had done this at last it was with the remark that,
+surprised as Miss Gostrey might, like himself, at first be, she would
+probably agree with him on reflexion that such an account of the matter
+did after all fit the confirmed appearances. Nothing certainly, on all
+the indications, could have been a greater change for him than a
+virtuous attachment, and since they had been in search of the “word” as
+the French called it, of that change, little Bilham’s
+announcement—though so long and so oddly delayed—would serve as well as
+another. She had assured Strether in fact after a pause that the more
+she thought of it the more it did serve; and yet her assurance hadn’t
+so weighed with him as that before they parted he hadn’t ventured to
+challenge her sincerity. Didn’t she believe the attachment _was_
+virtuous?—he had made sure of her again with the aid of that question.
+The tidings he brought her on this second occasion were moreover such
+as would help him to make surer still.
+
+She showed at first none the less as only amused. “You say there are
+two? An attachment to them both then would, I suppose, almost
+necessarily be innocent.”
+
+Our friend took the point, but he had his clue. “Mayn’t he be still in
+the stage of not quite knowing which of them, mother or daughter, he
+likes best?”
+
+She gave it more thought. “Oh it must be the daughter—at his age.”
+
+“Possibly. Yet what do we know,” Strether asked, “about hers? She may
+be old enough.”
+
+“Old enough for what?”
+
+“Why to marry Chad. That may be, you know, what they want. And if Chad
+wants it too, and little Bilham wants it, and even _we_, at a pinch,
+could do with it—that is if she doesn’t prevent repatriation—why it may
+be plain sailing yet.”
+
+It was always the case for him in these counsels that each of his
+remarks, as it came, seemed to drop into a deeper well. He had at all
+events to wait a moment to hear the slight splash of this one. “I don’t
+see why if Mr. Newsome wants to marry the young lady he hasn’t already
+done it or hasn’t been prepared with some statement to you about it.
+And if he both wants to marry her and is on good terms with them why
+isn’t he ‘free’?”
+
+Strether, responsively, wondered indeed. “Perhaps the girl herself
+doesn’t like him.”
+
+“Then why does he speak of them to you as he does?”
+
+Strether’s mind echoed the question, but also again met it. “Perhaps
+it’s with the mother he’s on good terms.”
+
+“As against the daughter?”
+
+“Well, if she’s trying to persuade the daughter to consent to him, what
+could make him like the mother more? Only,” Strether threw out, “why
+shouldn’t the daughter consent to him?”
+
+“Oh,” said Miss Gostrey, “mayn’t it be that every one else isn’t quite
+so struck with him as you?”
+
+“Doesn’t regard him you mean as such an ‘eligible’ young man? _Is_ that
+what I’ve come to?” he audibly and rather gravely sought to know.
+“However,” he went on, “his marriage is what his mother most
+desires—that is if it will help. And oughtn’t _any_ marriage to help?
+They must want him”—he had already worked it out—“to be better off.
+Almost any girl he may marry will have a direct interest in his taking
+up his chances. It won’t suit _her_ at least that he shall miss them.”
+
+Miss Gostrey cast about. “No—you reason well! But of course on the
+other hand there’s always dear old Woollett itself.”
+
+“Oh yes,” he mused—“there’s always dear old Woollett itself.”
+
+She waited a moment. “The young lady mayn’t find herself able to
+swallow _that_ quantity. She may think it’s paying too much; she may
+weigh one thing against another.”
+
+Strether, ever restless in such debates, took a vague turn “It will all
+depend on who she is. That of course—the proved ability to deal with
+dear old Woollett, since I’m sure she does deal with it—is what makes
+so strongly for Mamie.”
+
+“Mamie?”
+
+He stopped short, at her tone, before her; then, though seeing that it
+represented not vagueness, but a momentary embarrassed fulness, let his
+exclamation come. “You surely haven’t forgotten about Mamie!”
+
+“No, I haven’t forgotten about Mamie,” she smiled. “There’s no doubt
+whatever that there’s ever so much to be said for her. Mamie’s _my_
+girl!” she roundly declared.
+
+Strether resumed for a minute his walk. “She’s really perfectly lovely,
+you know. Far prettier than any girl I’ve seen over here yet.”
+
+“That’s precisely on what I perhaps most build.” And she mused a moment
+in her friend’s way. “I should positively like to take her in hand!”
+
+He humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it. “Oh but
+don’t, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and can’t, you
+know, be left.”
+
+But she kept it up. “I wish they’d send her out to me!”
+
+“If they knew you,” he returned, “they would.”
+
+“Ah but don’t they?—after all that, as I’ve understood you you’ve told
+them about me?”
+
+He had paused before her again, but he continued his course “They
+_will_—before, as you say, I’ve done.” Then he came out with the point
+he had wished after all most to make. “It seems to give away now his
+game. This is what he has been doing—keeping me along for. He has been
+waiting for them.”
+
+Miss Gostrey drew in her lips. “You see a good deal in it!”
+
+“I doubt if I see as much as you. Do you pretend,” he went on, “that
+you don’t see—?”
+
+“Well, what?”—she pressed him as he paused.
+
+“Why that there must be a lot between them—and that it has been going
+on from the first; even from before I came.”
+
+She took a minute to answer. “Who are they then—if it’s so grave?”
+
+“It mayn’t be grave—it may be gay. But at any rate it’s marked. Only I
+don’t know,” Strether had to confess, “anything about them. Their name
+for instance was a thing that, after little Bilham’s information, I
+found it a kind of refreshment not to feel obliged to follow up.”
+
+“Oh,” she returned, “if you think you’ve got off—!”
+
+Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom. “I don’t think I’ve got
+off. I only think I’m breathing for about five minutes. I dare say I
+_shall_ have, at the best, still to get on.” A look, over it all,
+passed between them, and the next minute he had come back to good
+humour. “I don’t meanwhile take the smallest interest in their name.”
+
+“Nor in their nationality?—American, French, English, Polish?”
+
+“I don’t care the least little ‘hang,’” he smiled, “for their
+nationality. It would be nice if they’re Polish!” he almost immediately
+added.
+
+“Very nice indeed.” The transition kept up her spirits. “So you see you
+do care.”
+
+He did this contention a modified justice. “I think I should if they
+_were_ Polish. Yes,” he thought—“there might be joy in _that_.”
+
+“Let us then hope for it.” But she came after this nearer to the
+question. “If the girl’s of the right age of course the mother can’t
+be. I mean for the virtuous attachment. If the girl’s twenty—and she
+can’t be less—the mother must be at least forty. So it puts the mother
+out. _She’s_ too old for him.”
+
+Strether, arrested again, considered and demurred. “Do you think so? Do
+you think any one would be too old for him? _I’m_ eighty, and I’m too
+young. But perhaps the girl,” he continued, “_isn’t_ twenty. Perhaps
+she’s only ten—but such a little dear that Chad finds himself counting
+her in as an attraction of the acquaintance. Perhaps she’s only five.
+Perhaps the mother’s but five-and-twenty—a charming young widow.”
+
+Miss Gostrey entertained the suggestion. “She _is_ a widow then?”
+
+“I haven’t the least idea!” They once more, in spite of this vagueness,
+exchanged a look—a look that was perhaps the longest yet. It seemed in
+fact, the next thing, to require to explain itself; which it did as it
+could. “I only feel what I’ve told you—that he has some reason.”
+
+Miss Gostrey’s imagination had taken its own flight. “Perhaps she’s
+_not_ a widow.”
+
+Strether seemed to accept the possibility with reserve. Still he
+accepted it. “Then that’s why the attachment—if it’s to her—is
+virtuous.”
+
+But she looked as if she scarce followed. “Why is it virtuous if—since
+she’s free—there’s nothing to impose on it any condition?”
+
+He laughed at her question. “Oh I perhaps don’t mean as virtuous as
+_that!_ Your idea is that it can be virtuous—in any sense worthy of the
+name—only if she’s _not_ free? But what does it become then,” he asked,
+“for _her?_”
+
+“Ah that’s another matter.” He said nothing for a moment, and she soon
+went on. “I dare say you’re right, at any rate, about Mr. Newsome’s
+little plan. He _has_ been trying you—has been reporting on you to
+these friends.”
+
+Strether meanwhile had had time to think more. “Then where’s his
+straightness?”
+
+“Well, as we say, it’s struggling up, breaking out, asserting itself as
+it can. We can be on the side, you see, of his straightness. We can
+help him. But he has made out,” said Miss Gostrey, “that you’ll do.”
+
+“Do for what?”
+
+“Why, for _them_—for _ces dames_. He has watched you, studied you,
+liked you—and recognised that _they_ must. It’s a great compliment to
+you, my dear man; for I’m sure they’re particular. You came out for a
+success. Well,” she gaily declared, “you’re having it!”
+
+He took it from her with momentary patience and then turned abruptly
+away. It was always convenient to him that there were so many fine
+things in her room to look at. But the examination of two or three of
+them appeared soon to have determined a speech that had little to do
+with them. “You don’t believe in it!”
+
+“In what?”
+
+“In the character of the attachment. In its innocence.”
+
+But she defended herself. “I don’t pretend to know anything about it.
+Everything’s possible. We must see.”
+
+“See?” he echoed with a groan. “Haven’t we seen enough?”
+
+“_I_ haven’t,” she smiled.
+
+“But do you suppose then little Bilham has lied?”
+
+“You must find out.”
+
+It made him almost turn pale. “Find out any _more?_”
+
+He had dropped on a sofa for dismay; but she seemed, as she stood over
+him, to have the last word. “Wasn’t what you came out for to find out
+_all?_”
+
+
+
+
+Book Fifth
+
+
+ I
+
+The Sunday of the next week was a wonderful day, and Chad Newsome had
+let his friend know in advance that he had provided for it. There had
+already been a question of his taking him to see the great Gloriani,
+who was at home on Sunday afternoons and at whose house, for the most
+part, fewer bores were to be met than elsewhere; but the project,
+through some accident, had not had instant effect, and now revived in
+happier conditions. Chad had made the point that the celebrated
+sculptor had a queer old garden, for which the weather—spring at last
+frank and fair—was propitious; and two or three of his other allusions
+had confirmed for Strether the expectation of something special. He had
+by this time, for all introductions and adventures, let himself
+recklessly go, cherishing the sense that whatever the young man showed
+him he was showing at least himself. He could have wished indeed, so
+far as this went, that Chad were less of a mere cicerone; for he was
+not without the impression—now that the vision of his game, his plan,
+his deep diplomacy, did recurrently assert itself—of his taking refuge
+from the realities of their intercourse in profusely dispensing, as our
+friend mentally phrased it, _panem et circenses_. Our friend continued
+to feel rather smothered in flowers, though he made in his other
+moments the almost angry inference that this was only because of his
+odious ascetic suspicion of any form of beauty. He periodically assured
+himself—for his reactions were sharp—that he shouldn’t reach the truth
+of anything till he had at least got rid of that.
+
+He had known beforehand that Madame de Vionnet and her daughter would
+probably be on view, an intimation to that effect having constituted
+the only reference again made by Chad to his good friends from the
+south. The effect of Strether’s talk about them with Miss Gostrey had
+been quite to consecrate his reluctance to pry; something in the very
+air of Chad’s silence—judged in the light of that talk—offered it to
+him as a reserve he could markedly match. It shrouded them about with
+he scarce knew what, a consideration, a distinction; he was in presence
+at any rate—so far as it placed him there—of ladies; and the one thing
+that was definite for him was that they themselves should be, to the
+extent of his responsibility, in presence of a gentleman. Was it
+because they were very beautiful, very clever, or even very good—was it
+for one of these reasons that Chad was, so to speak, nursing his
+effect? Did he wish to spring them, in the Woollett phrase, with a
+fuller force—to confound his critic, slight though as yet the
+criticism, with some form of merit exquisitely incalculable? The most
+the critic had at all events asked was whether the persons in question
+were French; and that enquiry had been but a proper comment on the
+sound of their name. “Yes. That is no!” had been Chad’s reply; but he
+had immediately added that their English was the most charming in the
+world, so that if Strether were wanting an excuse for not getting on
+with them he wouldn’t in the least find one. Never in fact had
+Strether—in the mood into which the place had quickly launched
+him—felt, for himself, less the need of an excuse. Those he might have
+found would have been, at the worst, all for the others, the people
+before him, in whose liberty to be as they were he was aware that he
+positively rejoiced. His fellow guests were multiplying, and these
+things, their liberty, their intensity, their variety, their conditions
+at large, were in fusion in the admirable medium of the scene.
+
+The place itself was a great impression—a small pavilion, clear-faced
+and sequestered, an effect of polished parquet, of fine white panel and
+spare sallow gilt, of decoration delicate and rare, in the heart of the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain and on the edge of a cluster of gardens attached
+to old noble houses. Far back from streets and unsuspected by crowds,
+reached by a long passage and a quiet court, it was as striking to the
+unprepared mind, he immediately saw, as a treasure dug up; giving him
+too, more than anything yet, the note of the range of the immeasurable
+town and sweeping away, as by a last brave brush, his usual landmarks
+and terms. It was in the garden, a spacious cherished remnant, out of
+which a dozen persons had already passed, that Chad’s host presently
+met them while the tall bird-haunted trees, all of a twitter with the
+spring and the weather, and the high party-walls, on the other side of
+which grave _hôtels_ stood off for privacy, spoke of survival,
+transmission, association, a strong indifferent persistent order. The
+day was so soft that the little party had practically adjourned to the
+open air but the open air was in such conditions all a chamber of
+state. Strether had presently the sense of a great convent, a convent
+of missions, famous for he scarce knew what, a nursery of young
+priests, of scattered shade, of straight alleys and chapel-bells, that
+spread its mass in one quarter; he had the sense of names in the air,
+of ghosts at the windows, of signs and tokens, a whole range of
+expression, all about him, too thick for prompt discrimination.
+
+This assault of images became for a moment, in the address of the
+distinguished sculptor, almost formidable: Gloriani showed him, in such
+perfect confidence, on Chad’s introduction of him, a fine worn handsome
+face, a face that was like an open letter in a foreign tongue. With his
+genius in his eyes, his manners on his lips, his long career behind him
+and his honours and rewards all round, the great artist, in the course
+of a single sustained look and a few words of delight at receiving him,
+affected our friend as a dazzling prodigy of type. Strether had seen in
+museums—in the Luxembourg as well as, more reverently, later on, in the
+New York of the billionaires—the work of his hand; knowing too that
+after an earlier time in his native Rome he had migrated, in
+mid-career, to Paris, where, with a personal lustre almost violent, he
+shone in a constellation: all of which was more than enough to crown
+him, for his guest, with the light, with the romance, of glory.
+Strether, in contact with that element as he had never yet so
+intimately been, had the consciousness of opening to it, for the happy
+instant, all the windows of his mind, of letting this rather grey
+interior drink in for once the sun of a clime not marked in his old
+geography. He was to remember again repeatedly the medal-like Italian
+face, in which every line was an artist’s own, in which time told only
+as tone and consecration; and he was to recall in especial, as the
+penetrating radiance, as the communication of the illustrious spirit
+itself, the manner in which, while they stood briefly, in welcome and
+response, face to face, he was held by the sculptor’s eyes. He wasn’t
+soon to forget them, was to think of them, all unconscious,
+unintending, preoccupied though they were, as the source of the deepest
+intellectual sounding to which he had ever been exposed. He was in fact
+quite to cherish his vision of it, to play with it in idle hours; only
+speaking of it to no one and quite aware he couldn’t have spoken
+without appearing to talk nonsense. Was what it had told him or what it
+had asked him the greater of the mysteries? Was it the most special
+flare, unequalled, supreme, of the æsthetic torch, lighting that
+wondrous world for ever, or was it above all the long straight shaft
+sunk by a personal acuteness that life had seasoned to steel? Nothing
+on earth could have been stranger and no one doubtless more surprised
+than the artist himself, but it was for all the world to Strether just
+then as if in the matter of his accepted duty he had positively been on
+trial. The deep human expertness in Gloriani’s charming smile—oh the
+terrible life behind it!—was flashed upon him as a test of his stuff.
+
+Chad meanwhile, after having easily named his companion, had still more
+easily turned away and was already greeting other persons present. He
+was as easy, clever Chad, with the great artist as with his obscure
+compatriot, and as easy with every one else as with either: this fell
+into its place for Strether and made almost a new light, giving him, as
+a concatenation, something more he could enjoy. He liked Gloriani, but
+should never see him again; of that he was sufficiently sure. Chad
+accordingly, who was wonderful with both of them, was a kind of link
+for hopeless fancy, an implication of possibilities—oh if everything
+had been different! Strether noted at all events that he was thus on
+terms with illustrious spirits, and also that—yes, distinctly—he hadn’t
+in the least swaggered about it. Our friend hadn’t come there only for
+this figure of Abel Newsome’s son, but that presence threatened to
+affect the observant mind as positively central. Gloriani indeed,
+remembering something and excusing himself, pursued Chad to speak to
+him, and Strether was left musing on many things. One of them was the
+question of whether, since he had been tested, he had passed. Did the
+artist drop him from having made out that he wouldn’t do? He really
+felt just to-day that he might do better than usual. Hadn’t he done
+well enough, so far as that went, in being exactly so dazzled? and in
+not having too, as he almost believed, wholly hidden from his host that
+he felt the latter’s plummet? Suddenly, across the garden, he saw
+little Bilham approach, and it was a part of the fit that was on him
+that as their eyes met he guessed also _his_ knowledge. If he had said
+to him on the instant what was uppermost he would have said: “_Have_ I
+passed?—for of course I know one has to pass here.” Little Bilham would
+have reassured him, have told him that he exaggerated, and have adduced
+happily enough the argument of little Bilham’s own very presence;
+which, in truth, he could see, was as easy a one as Gloriani’s own or
+as Chad’s. He himself would perhaps then after a while cease to be
+frightened, would get the point of view for some of the faces—types
+tremendously alien, alien to Woollett—that he had already begun to take
+in. Who were they all, the dispersed groups and couples, the ladies
+even more unlike those of Woollett than the gentlemen?—this was the
+enquiry that, when his young friend had greeted him, he did find
+himself making.
+
+“Oh they’re every one—all sorts and sizes; of course I mean within
+limits, though limits down perhaps rather more than limits up. There
+are always artists—he’s beautiful and inimitable to the _cher
+confrère_; and then _gros bonnets_ of many kinds—ambassadors, cabinet
+ministers, bankers, generals, what do I know? even Jews. Above all
+always some awfully nice women—and not too many; sometimes an actress,
+an artist, a great performer—but only when they’re not monsters; and in
+particular the right _femmes du monde_. You can fancy his history on
+that side—I believe it’s fabulous: they _never_ give him up. Yet he
+keeps them down: no one knows how he manages; it’s too beautiful and
+bland. Never too many—and a mighty good thing too; just a perfect
+choice. But there are not in any way many bores; it has always been so;
+he has some secret. It’s extraordinary. And you don’t find it out. He’s
+the same to every one. He doesn’t ask questions.’
+
+“Ah doesn’t he?” Strether laughed.
+
+Bilham met it with all his candour. “How then should _I_ be here?
+
+“Oh for what you tell me. You’re part of the perfect choice.”
+
+Well, the young man took in the scene. “It seems rather good to-day.”
+
+Strether followed the direction of his eyes. “Are they all, this time,
+_femmes du monde?_”
+
+Little Bilham showed his competence. “Pretty well.”
+
+This was a category our friend had a feeling for; a light, romantic and
+mysterious, on the feminine element, in which he enjoyed for a little
+watching it. “Are there any Poles?”
+
+His companion considered. “I think I make out a ‘Portuguee.’ But I’ve
+seen Turks.”
+
+Strether wondered, desiring justice. “They seem—all the women—very
+harmonious.”
+
+“Oh in closer quarters they come out!” And then, while Strether was
+aware of fearing closer quarters, though giving himself again to the
+harmonies, “Well,” little Bilham went on, “it _is_ at the worst rather
+good, you know. If you like it, you feel it, this way, that shows
+you’re not in the least out. But you always know things,” he handsomely
+added, “immediately.”
+
+Strether liked it and felt it only too much; so “I say, don’t lay traps
+for me!” he rather helplessly murmured.
+
+“Well,” his companion returned, “he’s wonderfully kind to _us_.”
+
+“To us Americans you mean?”
+
+“Oh no—he doesn’t know anything about _that_. That’s half the battle
+here—that you can never hear politics. We don’t talk them. I mean to
+poor young wretches of all sorts. And yet it’s always as charming as
+this; it’s as if, by something in the air, our squalor didn’t show. It
+puts us all back—into the last century.”
+
+“I’m afraid,” Strether said, amused, “that it puts me rather forward:
+oh ever so far!”
+
+“Into the next? But isn’t that only,” little Bilham asked, “because
+you’re really of the century before?”
+
+“The century before the last? Thank you!” Strether laughed. “If I ask
+you about some of the ladies it can’t be then that I may hope, as such
+a specimen of the rococo, to please them.”
+
+“On the contrary they adore—we all adore here—the rococo, and where is
+there a better setting for it than the whole thing, the pavilion and
+the garden, together? There are lots of people with collections,”
+little Bilham smiled as he glanced round. “You’ll be secured!”
+
+It made Strether for a moment give himself again to contemplation.
+There were faces he scarce knew what to make of. Were they charming or
+were they only strange? He mightn’t talk politics, yet he suspected a
+Pole or two. The upshot was the question at the back of his head from
+the moment his friend had joined him. “Have Madame de Vionnet and her
+daughter arrived?”
+
+“I haven’t seen them yet, but Miss Gostrey has come. She’s in the
+pavilion looking at objects. One can see _she’s_ a collector,” little
+Bilham added without offence.
+
+“Oh yes, she’s a collector, and I knew she was to come. Is Madame de
+Vionnet a collector?” Strether went on.
+
+“Rather, I believe; almost celebrated.” The young man met, on it, a
+little, his friend’s eyes. “I happen to know—from Chad, whom I saw last
+night—that they’ve come back; but only yesterday. He wasn’t sure—up to
+the last. This, accordingly,” little Bilham went on, “will be—if they
+_are_ here—their first appearance after their return.”
+
+Strether, very quickly, turned these things over. “Chad told you last
+night? To me, on our way here, he said nothing about it.”
+
+“But did you ask him?”
+
+Strether did him the justice. “I dare say not.”
+
+“Well,” said little Bilham, “you’re not a person to whom it’s easy to
+tell things you don’t want to know. Though it _is_ easy, I admit—it’s
+quite beautiful,” he benevolently added, “when you do want to.”
+
+Strether looked at him with an indulgence that matched his
+intelligence. “Is that the deep reasoning on which—about these
+ladies—you’ve been yourself so silent?”
+
+Little Bilham considered the depth of his reasoning. “I haven’t been
+silent. I spoke of them to you the other day, the day we sat together
+after Chad’s tea-party.”
+
+Strether came round to it. “They then are the virtuous attachment?”
+
+“I can only tell you that it’s what they pass for. But isn’t that
+enough? What more than a vain appearance does the wisest of us know? I
+commend you,” the young man declared with a pleasant emphasis, “the
+vain appearance.”
+
+Strether looked more widely round, and what he saw, from face to face,
+deepened the effect of his young friend’s words. “Is it so good?”
+
+“Magnificent.”
+
+Strether had a pause. “The husband’s dead?”
+
+“Dear no. Alive.”
+
+“Oh!” said Strether. After which, as his companion laughed: “How then
+can it be so good?”
+
+“You’ll see for yourself. One does see.”
+
+“Chad’s in love with the daughter?”
+
+“That’s what I mean.”
+
+Strether wondered. “Then where’s the difficulty?”
+
+“Why, aren’t you and I—with our grander bolder ideas?”
+
+“Oh mine—!” Strether said rather strangely. But then as if to
+attenuate: “You mean they won’t hear of Woollett?”
+
+Little Bilham smiled. “Isn’t that just what you must see about?”
+
+It had brought them, as she caught the last words, into relation with
+Miss Barrace, whom Strether had already observed—as he had never before
+seen a lady at a party—moving about alone. Coming within sound of them
+she had already spoken, and she took again, through her long-handled
+glass, all her amused and amusing possession. “How much, poor Mr.
+Strether, you seem to have to see about! But you can’t say,” she gaily
+declared, “that I don’t do what I can to help you. Mr. Waymarsh is
+placed. I’ve left him in the house with Miss Gostrey.”
+
+“The way,” little Bilham exclaimed, “Mr. Strether gets the ladies to
+work for him! He’s just preparing to draw in another; to pounce—don’t
+you see him?—on Madame de Vionnet.”
+
+“Madame de Vionnet? Oh, oh, oh!” Miss Barrace cried in a wonderful
+crescendo. There was more in it, our friend made out, than met the ear.
+Was it after all a joke that he should be serious about anything? He
+envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not being. She seemed,
+with little cries and protests and quick recognitions, movements like
+the darts of some fine high-feathered free-pecking bird, to stand
+before life as before some full shop-window. You could fairly hear, as
+she selected and pointed, the tap of her tortoise-shell against the
+glass. “It’s certain that we do need seeing about; only I’m glad it’s
+not I who have to do it. One does, no doubt, begin that way; then
+suddenly one finds that one has given it up. It’s too much, it’s too
+difficult. You’re wonderful, you people,” she continued to Strether,
+“for not feeling those things—by which I mean impossibilities. You
+never feel them. You face them with a fortitude that makes it a lesson
+to watch you.”
+
+“Ah but”—little Bilham put it with discouragement—“what do we achieve
+after all? We see about you and report—when we even go so far as
+reporting. But nothing’s done.”
+
+“Oh you, Mr. Bilham,” she replied as with an impatient rap on the
+glass, “you’re not worth sixpence! You come over to convert the
+savages—for I know you verily did, I remember you—and the savages
+simply convert _you_.”
+
+“Not even!” the young man woefully confessed: “they haven’t gone
+through that form. They’ve simply—the cannibals!—eaten me; converted me
+if you like, but converted me into food. I’m but the bleached bones of
+a Christian.”
+
+“Well then there we are! Only”—and Miss Barrace appealed again to
+Strether—“don’t let it discourage you. You’ll break down soon enough,
+but you’ll meanwhile have had your moments. _Il faut en avoir_. I
+always like to see you while you last. And I’ll tell you who _will_
+last.”
+
+“Waymarsh?”—he had already taken her up.
+
+She laughed out as at the alarm of it. “He’ll resist even Miss Gostrey:
+so grand is it not to understand. He’s wonderful.”
+
+“He is indeed,” Strether conceded. “He wouldn’t tell me of this
+affair—only said he had an engagement; but with such a gloom, you must
+let me insist, as if it had been an engagement to be hanged. Then
+silently and secretly he turns up here with you. Do you call _that_
+‘lasting’?”
+
+“Oh I hope it’s lasting!” Miss Barrace said. “But he only, at the best,
+bears with me. He doesn’t understand—not one little scrap. He’s
+delightful. He’s wonderful,” she repeated.
+
+“Michelangelesque!”—little Bilham completed her meaning. “He _is_ a
+success. Moses, on the ceiling, brought down to the floor;
+overwhelming, colossal, but somehow portable.”
+
+“Certainly, if you mean by portable,” she returned, “looking so well in
+one’s carriage. He’s too funny beside me in his corner; he looks like
+somebody, somebody foreign and famous, _en exil_; so that people
+wonder—it’s very amusing—whom I’m taking about. I show him Paris, show
+him everything, and he never turns a hair. He’s like the Indian chief
+one reads about, who, when he comes up to Washington to see the Great
+Father, stands wrapt in his blanket and gives no sign. _I_ might be the
+Great Father—from the way he takes everything.” She was delighted at
+this hit of her identity with that personage—it fitted so her
+character; she declared it was the title she meant henceforth to adopt.
+“And the way he sits, too, in the corner of my room, only looking at my
+visitors very hard and as if he wanted to start something! They wonder
+what he does want to start. But he’s wonderful,” Miss Barrace once more
+insisted. “He has never started anything yet.”
+
+It presented him none the less, in truth, to her actual friends, who
+looked at each other in intelligence, with frank amusement on Bilham’s
+part and a shade of sadness on Strether’s. Strether’s sadness
+sprang—for the image had its grandeur—from his thinking how little he
+himself was wrapt in his blanket, how little, in marble halls, all too
+oblivious of the Great Father, he resembled a really majestic
+aboriginal. But he had also another reflexion. “You’ve all of you here
+so much visual sense that you’ve somehow all ‘run’ to it. There are
+moments when it strikes one that you haven’t any other.”
+
+“Any moral,” little Bilham explained, watching serenely, across the
+garden, the several _femmes du monde_. “But Miss Barrace has a moral
+distinction,” he kindly continued; speaking as if for Strether’s
+benefit not less than for her own.
+
+“_Have_ you?” Strether, scarce knowing what he was about, asked of her
+almost eagerly.
+
+“Oh not a distinction”—she was mightily amused at his tone—“Mr.
+Bilham’s too good. But I think I may say a sufficiency. Yes, a
+sufficiency. Have you supposed strange things of me?”—and she fixed him
+again, through all her tortoise-shell, with the droll interest of it.
+“You _are_ all indeed wonderful. I should awfully disappoint you. I do
+take my stand on my sufficiency. But I know, I confess,” she went on,
+“strange people. I don’t know how it happens; I don’t do it on purpose;
+it seems to be my doom—as if I were always one of their habits: it’s
+wonderful! I dare say moreover,” she pursued with an interested
+gravity, “that I do, that we all do here, run too much to mere eye. But
+how can it be helped? We’re all looking at each other—and in the light
+of Paris one sees what things resemble. That’s what the light of Paris
+seems always to show. It’s the fault of the light of Paris—dear old
+light!”
+
+“Dear old Paris!” little Bilham echoed.
+
+“Everything, every one shows,” Miss Barrace went on.
+
+“But for what they really are?” Strether asked.
+
+“Oh I like your Boston ‘reallys’! But sometimes—yes.”
+
+“Dear old Paris then!” Strether resignedly sighed while for a moment
+they looked at each other. Then he broke out: “Does Madame de Vionnet
+do that? I mean really show for what she is?”
+
+Her answer was prompt. “She’s charming. She’s perfect.”
+
+“Then why did you a minute ago say ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ at her name?”
+
+She easily remembered. “Why just because—! She’s wonderful.”
+
+“Ah she too?”—Strether had almost a groan.
+
+But Miss Barrace had meanwhile perceived relief. “Why not put your
+question straight to the person who can answer it best?”
+
+“No,” said little Bilham; “don’t put any question; wait, rather—it will
+be much more fun—to judge for yourself. He has come to take you to
+her.”
+
+
+ II
+
+On which Strether saw that Chad was again at hand, and he afterwards
+scarce knew, absurd as it may seem, what had then quickly occurred. The
+moment concerned him, he felt, more deeply than he could have
+explained, and he had a subsequent passage of speculation as to
+whether, on walking off with Chad, he hadn’t looked either pale or red.
+The only thing he was clear about was that, luckily, nothing indiscreet
+had in fact been said and that Chad himself was more than ever, in Miss
+Barrace’s great sense, wonderful. It was one of the connexions—though
+really why it should be, after all, was none so apparent—in which the
+whole change in him came out as most striking. Strether recalled as
+they approached the house that he had impressed him that first night as
+knowing how to enter a box. Well, he impressed him scarce less now as
+knowing how to make a presentation. It did something for Strether’s own
+quality—marked it as estimated; so that our poor friend, conscious and
+passive, really seemed to feel himself quite handed over and delivered;
+absolutely, as he would have said, made a present of, given away. As
+they reached the house a young woman, about to come forth, appeared,
+unaccompanied, on the steps; at the exchange with whom of a word on
+Chad’s part Strether immediately perceived that, obligingly, kindly,
+she was there to meet them. Chad had left her in the house, but she had
+afterwards come halfway and then the next moment had joined them in the
+garden. Her air of youth, for Strether, was at first almost
+disconcerting, while his second impression was, not less sharply, a
+degree of relief at there not having just been, with the others, any
+freedom used about her. It was upon him at a touch that she was no
+subject for that, and meanwhile, on Chad’s introducing him, she had
+spoken to him, very simply and gently, in an English clearly of the
+easiest to her, yet unlike any other he had ever heard. It wasn’t as if
+she tried; nothing, he could see after they had been a few minutes
+together, was as if she tried; but her speech, charming correct and
+odd, was like a precaution against her passing for a Pole. There were
+precautions, he seemed indeed to see, only when there were really
+dangers.
+
+Later on he was to feel many more of them, but by that time he was to
+feel other things besides. She was dressed in black, but in black that
+struck him as light and transparent; she was exceedingly fair, and,
+though she was as markedly slim, her face had a roundness, with eyes
+far apart and a little strange. Her smile was natural and dim; her hat
+not extravagant; he had only perhaps a sense of the clink, beneath her
+fine black sleeves, of more gold bracelets and bangles than he had ever
+seen a lady wear. Chad was excellently free and light about their
+encounter; it was one of the occasions on which Strether most wished he
+himself might have arrived at such ease and such humour: “Here you are
+then, face to face at last; you’re made for each other—_vous allez
+voir_; and I bless your union.” It was indeed, after he had gone off,
+as if he had been partly serious too. This latter motion had been
+determined by an enquiry from him about “Jeanne”; to which her mother
+had replied that she was probably still in the house with Miss Gostrey,
+to whom she had lately committed her. “Ah but you know,” the young man
+had rejoined, “he must see her”; with which, while Strether pricked up
+his ears, he had started as if to bring her, leaving the other objects
+of his interest together. Strether wondered to find Miss Gostrey
+already involved, feeling that he missed a link; but feeling also, with
+small delay, how much he should like to talk with her of Madame de
+Vionnet on this basis of evidence.
+
+The evidence as yet in truth was meagre; which, for that matter, was
+perhaps a little why his expectation had had a drop. There was somehow
+not quite a wealth in her; and a wealth was all that, in his
+simplicity, he had definitely prefigured. Still, it was too much to be
+sure already that there was but a poverty. They moved away from the
+house, and, with eyes on a bench at some distance, he proposed that
+they should sit down. “I’ve heard a great deal about you,” she said as
+they went; but he had an answer to it that made her stop short. “Well,
+about _you_, Madame de Vionnet, I’ve heard, I’m bound to say, almost
+nothing”—those struck him as the only words he himself could utter with
+any lucidity; conscious as he was, and as with more reason, of the
+determination to be in respect to the rest of his business perfectly
+plain and go perfectly straight. It hadn’t at any rate been in the
+least his idea to spy on Chad’s proper freedom. It was possibly,
+however, at this very instant and under the impression of Madame de
+Vionnet’s pause, that going straight began to announce itself as a
+matter for care. She had only after all to smile at him ever so gently
+in order to make him ask himself if he weren’t already going crooked.
+It might be going crooked to find it of a sudden just only clear that
+she intended very definitely to be what he would have called nice to
+him. This was what passed between them while, for another instant, they
+stood still; he couldn’t at least remember afterwards what else it
+might have been. The thing indeed really unmistakeable was its rolling
+over him as a wave that he had been, in conditions incalculable and
+unimaginable, a subject of discussion. He had been, on some ground that
+concerned her, answered for; which gave her an advantage he should
+never be able to match.
+
+“Hasn’t Miss Gostrey,” she asked, “said a good word for me?”
+
+What had struck him first was the way he was bracketed with that lady;
+and he wondered what account Chad would have given of their
+acquaintance. Something not as yet traceable, at all events, had
+obviously happened. “I didn’t even know of her knowing you.”
+
+“Well, now she’ll tell you all. I’m so glad you’re in relation with
+her.”
+
+This was one of the things—the “all” Miss Gostrey would now tell
+him—that, with every deference to present preoccupation, was uppermost
+for Strether after they had taken their seat. One of the others was, at
+the end of five minutes, that she—oh incontestably, yes—_differed_
+less; differed, that is, scarcely at all—well, superficially speaking,
+from Mrs. Newsome or even from Mrs. Pocock. She was ever so much
+younger than the one and not so young as the other; but what _was_
+there in her, if anything, that would have made it impossible he should
+meet her at Woollett? And wherein was her talk during their moments on
+the bench together not the same as would have been found adequate for a
+Woollett garden-party?—unless perhaps truly in not being quite so
+bright. She observed to him that Mr. Newsome had, to her knowledge,
+taken extraordinary pleasure in his visit; but there was no good lady
+at Woollett who wouldn’t have been at least up to that. Was there in
+Chad, by chance, after all, deep down, a principle of aboriginal
+loyalty that had made him, for sentimental ends, attach himself to
+elements, happily encountered, that would remind him most of the old
+air and the old soil? Why accordingly be in a flutter—Strether could
+even put it that way—about this unfamiliar phenomenon of the _femme du
+monde?_ On these terms Mrs. Newsome herself was as much of one. Little
+Bilham verily had testified that they came out, the ladies of the type,
+in close quarters; but it was just in these quarters—now comparatively
+close—that he felt Madame de Vionnet’s common humanity. She did come
+out, and certainly to his relief, but she came out as the usual thing.
+There might be motives behind, but so could there often be even at
+Woollett. The only thing was that if she showed him she wished to like
+him—as the motives behind might conceivably prompt—it would possibly
+have been more thrilling for him that she should have shown as more
+vividly alien. Ah she was neither Turk nor Pole!—which would be indeed
+flat once more for Mrs. Newsome and Mrs. Pocock. A lady and two
+gentlemen had meanwhile, however, approached their bench, and this
+accident stayed for the time further developments.
+
+They presently addressed his companion, the brilliant strangers; she
+rose to speak to them, and Strether noted how the escorted lady, though
+mature and by no means beautiful, had more of the bold high look, the
+range of expensive reference, that he had, as might have been said,
+made his plans for. Madame de Vionnet greeted her as “Duchesse” and was
+greeted in turn, while talk started in French, as “Ma toute-belle”;
+little facts that had their due, their vivid interest for Strether.
+Madame de Vionnet didn’t, none the less, introduce him—a note he was
+conscious of as false to the Woollett scale and the Woollett humanity;
+though it didn’t prevent the Duchess, who struck him as confident and
+free, very much what he had obscurely supposed duchesses, from looking
+at him as straight and as hard—for it _was_ hard—as if she would have
+liked, all the same, to know him. “Oh yes, my dear, it’s all right,
+it’s _me_; and who are _you_, with your interesting wrinkles and your
+most effective (is it the handsomest, is it the ugliest?) of
+noses?”—some such loose handful of bright flowers she seemed,
+fragrantly enough, to fling at him. Strether almost wondered—at such a
+pace was he going—if some divination of the influence of either party
+were what determined Madame de Vionnet’s abstention. One of the
+gentlemen, in any case, succeeded in placing himself in close relation
+with our friend’s companion; a gentleman rather stout and importantly
+short, in a hat with a wonderful wide curl to its brim and a frock coat
+buttoned with an effect of superlative decision. His French had quickly
+turned to equal English, and it occurred to Strether that he might well
+be one of the ambassadors. His design was evidently to assert a claim
+to Madame de Vionnet’s undivided countenance, and he made it good in
+the course of a minute—led her away with a trick of three words; a
+trick played with a social art of which Strether, looking after them as
+the four, whose backs were now all turned, moved off, felt himself no
+master.
+
+He sank again upon his bench and, while his eyes followed the party,
+reflected, as he had done before, on Chad’s strange communities. He sat
+there alone for five minutes, with plenty to think of; above all with
+his sense of having suddenly been dropped by a charming woman overlaid
+now by other impressions and in fact quite cleared and indifferent. He
+hadn’t yet had so quiet a surrender; he didn’t in the least care if
+nobody spoke to him more. He might have been, by his attitude, in for
+something of a march so broad that the want of ceremony with which he
+had just been used could fall into its place as but a minor incident of
+the procession. Besides, there would be incidents enough, as he felt
+when this term of contemplation was closed by the reappearance of
+little Bilham, who stood before him a moment with a suggestive “Well?”
+in which he saw himself reflected as disorganised, as possibly floored.
+He replied with a “Well!” intended to show that he wasn’t floored in
+the least. No indeed; he gave it out, as the young man sat down beside
+him, that if, at the worst, he had been overturned at all, he had been
+overturned into the upper air, the sublimer element with which he had
+an affinity and in which he might be trusted a while to float. It
+wasn’t a descent to earth to say after an instant and in sustained
+response to the reference: “You’re quite sure her husband’s living?”
+
+“Oh dear, yes.”
+
+“Ah then—!”
+
+“Ah then what?”
+
+Strether had after all to think. “Well, I’m sorry for them.” But it
+didn’t for the moment matter more than that. He assured his young
+friend he was quite content. They wouldn’t stir; were all right as they
+were. He didn’t want to be introduced; had been introduced already
+about as far as he could go. He had seen moreover an immensity; liked
+Gloriani, who, as Miss Barrace kept saying, was wonderful; had made
+out, he was sure, the half-dozen other men who were distinguished, the
+artists, the critics and oh the great dramatist—_him_ it was easy to
+spot; but wanted—no, thanks, really—to talk with none of them; having
+nothing at all to say and finding it would do beautifully as it was; do
+beautifully because what it was—well, was just simply too late. And
+when after this little Bilham, submissive and responsive, but with an
+eye to the consolation nearest, easily threw off some “Better late than
+never!” all he got in return for it was a sharp “Better early than
+late!” This note indeed the next thing overflowed for Strether into a
+quiet stream of demonstration that as soon as he had let himself go he
+felt as the real relief. It had consciously gathered to a head, but the
+reservoir had filled sooner than he knew, and his companion’s touch was
+to make the waters spread. There were some things that had to come in
+time if they were to come at all. If they didn’t come in time they were
+lost for ever. It was the general sense of them that had overwhelmed
+him with its long slow rush.
+
+“It’s not too late for _you_, on any side, and you don’t strike me as
+in danger of missing the train; besides which people can be in general
+pretty well trusted, of course—with the clock of their freedom ticking
+as loud as it seems to do here—to keep an eye on the fleeting hour. All
+the same don’t forget that you’re young—blessedly young; be glad of it
+on the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can; it’s a mistake not
+to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you
+have your life. If you haven’t had that what _have_ you had? This place
+and these impressions—mild as you may find them to wind a man up so;
+all my impressions of Chad and of people I’ve seen at _his_ place—well,
+have had their abundant message for me, have just dropped _that_ into
+my mind. I see it now. I haven’t done so enough before—and now I’m old;
+too old at any rate for what I see. Oh I _do_ see, at least; and more
+than you’d believe or I can express. It’s too late. And it’s as if the
+train had fairly waited at the station for me without my having had the
+gumption to know it was there. Now I hear its faint receding whistle
+miles and miles down the line. What one loses one loses; make no
+mistake about that. The affair—I mean the affair of life—couldn’t, no
+doubt, have been different for me; for it’s at the best a tin mould,
+either fluted and embossed, with ornamental excrescences, or else
+smooth and dreadfully plain, into which, a helpless jelly, one’s
+consciousness is poured—so that one ‘takes’ the form as the great cook
+says, and is more or less compactly held by it: one lives in fine as
+one can. Still, one has the illusion of freedom; therefore don’t be,
+like me, without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the
+right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it; I don’t quite
+know which. Of course at present I’m a case of reaction against the
+mistake; and the voice of reaction should, no doubt, always be taken
+with an allowance. But that doesn’t affect the point that the right
+time is now yours. The right time is _any_ time that one is still so
+lucky as to have. You’ve plenty; that’s the great thing; you’re, as I
+say, damn you, so happily and hatefully young. Don’t at any rate miss
+things out of stupidity. Of course I don’t take you for a fool, or I
+shouldn’t be addressing you thus awfully. Do what you like so long as
+you don’t make _my_ mistake. For it was a mistake. Live!” ... Slowly
+and sociably, with full pauses and straight dashes, Strether had so
+delivered himself; holding little Bilham from step to step deeply and
+gravely attentive. The end of all was that the young man had turned
+quite solemn, and that this was a contradiction of the innocent gaiety
+the speaker had wished to promote. He watched for a moment the
+consequence of his words, and then, laying a hand on his listener’s
+knee and as if to end with the proper joke: “And now for the eye I
+shall keep on you!”
+
+“Oh but I don’t know that I want to be, at your age, too different from
+you!”
+
+“Ah prepare while you’re about it,” said Strether, “to be more
+amusing.”
+
+Little Bilham continued to think, but at last had a smile. “Well, you
+_are_ amusing—to _me_.”
+
+“_Impayable_, as you say, no doubt. But what am I to myself?” Strether
+had risen with this, giving his attention now to an encounter that, in
+the middle of the garden, was in the act of taking place between their
+host and the lady at whose side Madame de Vionnet had quitted him. This
+lady, who appeared within a few minutes to have left her friends,
+awaited Gloriani’s eager approach with words on her lips that Strether
+couldn’t catch, but of which her interesting witty face seemed to give
+him the echo. He was sure she was prompt and fine, but also that she
+had met her match, and he liked—in the light of what he was quite sure
+was the Duchess’s latent insolence—the good humour with which the great
+artist asserted equal resources. Were they, this pair, of the “great
+world”?—and was he himself, for the moment and thus related to them by
+his observation, _in_ it? Then there was something in the great world
+covertly tigerish, which came to him across the lawn and in the
+charming air as a waft from the jungle. Yet it made him admire most of
+the two, made him envy, the glossy male tiger, magnificently marked.
+These absurdities of the stirred sense, fruits of suggestion ripening
+on the instant, were all reflected in his next words to little Bilham.
+“I know—if we talk of that—whom _I_ should enjoy being like!”
+
+Little Bilham followed his eyes; but then as with a shade of knowing
+surprise: “Gloriani?”
+
+Our friend had in fact already hesitated, though not on the hint of his
+companion’s doubt, in which there were depths of critical reserve. He
+had just made out, in the now full picture, something and somebody
+else; another impression had been superimposed. A young girl in a white
+dress and a softly plumed white hat had suddenly come into view, and
+what was presently clear was that her course was toward them. What was
+clearer still was that the handsome young man at her side was Chad
+Newsome, and what was clearest of all was that she was therefore
+Mademoiselle de Vionnet, that she was unmistakeably pretty—bright
+gentle shy happy wonderful—and that Chad now, with a consummate
+calculation of effect, was about to present her to his old friend’s
+vision. What was clearest of all indeed was something much more than
+this, something at the single stroke of which—and wasn’t it simply
+juxtaposition?—all vagueness vanished. It was the click of a spring—he
+saw the truth. He had by this time also met Chad’s look; there was more
+of it in that; and the truth, accordingly, so far as Bilham’s enquiry
+was concerned, had thrust in the answer. “Oh Chad!”—it was that rare
+youth he should have enjoyed being “like.” The virtuous attachment
+would be all there before him; the virtuous attachment would be in the
+very act of appeal for his blessing; Jeanne de Vionnet, this charming
+creature, would be exquisitely, intensely now—the object of it. Chad
+brought her straight up to him, and Chad was, oh yes, at this
+moment—for the glory of Woollett or whatever—better still even than
+Gloriani. He had plucked this blossom; he had kept it over-night in
+water; and at last as he held it up to wonder he did enjoy his effect.
+That was why Strether had felt at first the breath of calculation—and
+why moreover, as he now knew, his look at the girl would be, for the
+young man, a sign of the latter’s success. What young man had ever
+paraded about that way, without a reason, a maiden in her flower? And
+there was nothing in his reason at present obscure. Her type
+sufficiently told of it—they wouldn’t, they couldn’t, want her to go to
+Woollett. Poor Woollett, and what it might miss!—though brave Chad
+indeed too, and what it might gain! Brave Chad however had just
+excellently spoken. “This is a good little friend of mine who knows all
+about you and has moreover a message for you. And this, my dear”—he had
+turned to the child herself—“is the best man in the world, who has it
+in his power to do a great deal for us and whom I want you to like and
+revere as nearly as possible as much as I do.”
+
+She stood there quite pink, a little frightened, prettier and prettier
+and not a bit like her mother. There was in this last particular no
+resemblance but that of youth to youth; and here was in fact suddenly
+Strether’s sharpest impression. It went wondering, dazed, embarrassed,
+back to the woman he had just been talking with; it was a revelation in
+the light of which he already saw she would become more interesting. So
+slim and fresh and fair, she had yet put forth this perfection; so that
+for really believing it of her, for seeing her to any such developed
+degree as a mother, comparison would be urgent. Well, what was it now
+but fairly thrust upon him? “Mamma wishes me to tell you before we go,”
+the girl said, “that she hopes very much you’ll come to see us very
+soon. She has something important to say to you.”
+
+“She quite reproaches herself,” Chad helpfully explained: “you were
+interesting her so much when she accidentally suffered you to be
+interrupted.”
+
+“Ah don’t mention it!” Strether murmured, looking kindly from one to
+the other and wondering at many things.
+
+“And I’m to ask you for myself,” Jeanne continued with her hands
+clasped together as if in some small learnt prayer—“I’m to ask you for
+myself if you won’t positively come.”
+
+“Leave it to me, dear—I’ll take care of it!” Chad genially declared in
+answer to this, while Strether himself almost held his breath. What was
+in the girl was indeed too soft, too unknown for direct dealing; so
+that one could only gaze at it as at a picture, quite staying one’s own
+hand. But with Chad he was now on ground—Chad he could meet; so
+pleasant a confidence in that and in everything did the young man
+freely exhale. There was the whole of a story in his tone to his
+companion, and he spoke indeed as if already of the family. It made
+Strether guess the more quickly what it might be about which Madame de
+Vionnet was so urgent. Having seen him then she had found him easy; she
+wished to have it out with him that some way for the young people must
+be discovered, some way that would not impose as a condition the
+transplantation of her daughter. He already saw himself discussing with
+this lady the attractions of Woollett as a residence for Chad’s
+companion. Was that youth going now to trust her with the affair—so
+that it would be after all with one of his “lady-friends” that his
+mother’s missionary should be condemned to deal? It was quite as if for
+an instant the two men looked at each other on this question. But there
+was no mistaking at last Chad’s pride in the display of such a
+connexion. This was what had made him so carry himself while, three
+minutes before, he was bringing it into view; what had caused his
+friend, first catching sight of him, to be so struck with his air. It
+was, in a word, just when he thus finally felt Chad putting things
+straight off on him that he envied him, as he had mentioned to little
+Bilham, most. The whole exhibition however was but a matter of three or
+four minutes, and the author of it had soon explained that, as Madame
+de Vionnet was immediately going “on,” this could be for Jeanne but a
+snatch. They would all meet again soon, and Strether was meanwhile to
+stay and amuse himself—“I’ll pick you up again in plenty of time.” He
+took the girl off as he had brought her, and Strether, with the faint
+sweet foreignness of her “Au revoir, monsieur!” in his ears as a note
+almost unprecedented, watched them recede side by side and felt how,
+once more, her companion’s relation to her got an accent from it. They
+disappeared among the others and apparently into the house; whereupon
+our friend turned round to give out to little Bilham the conviction of
+which he was full. But there was no little Bilham any more; little
+Bilham had within the few moments, for reasons of his own, proceeded
+further: a circumstance by which, in its order, Strether was also
+sensibly affected.
+
+
+ III
+
+Chad was not in fact on this occasion to keep his promise of coming
+back; but Miss Gostrey had soon presented herself with an explanation
+of his failure. There had been reasons at the last for his going off
+with _ces dames_; and he had asked her with much instance to come out
+and take charge of their friend. 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. They were
+neither more nor less, she and the child’s mother, than old
+school-friends—friends who had scarcely met for years but whom this
+unlooked-for chance had brought together with a rush. It was a relief,
+Miss Gostrey hinted, to feel herself no longer groping; she was
+unaccustomed to grope and as a general thing, he might well have seen,
+made straight enough for her clue. With the one she had now picked up
+in her hands there need be at least no waste of wonder. “She’s coming
+to see me—that’s for _you_,” Strether’s counsellor continued; “but I
+don’t require it to know where I am.”
+
+The waste of wonder might be proscribed; but Strether,
+characteristically, was even by this time in the immensity of space.
+“By which you mean that you know where _she_ is?”
+
+She just hesitated. “I mean that if she comes to see me I shall—now
+that I’ve pulled myself round a bit after the shock—not be at home.”
+
+Strether hung poised. “You call it—your recognition—a shock?”
+
+She gave one of her rare flickers of impatience. “It was a surprise, an
+emotion. Don’t be so literal. I wash my hands of her.”
+
+Poor Strether’s face lengthened. “She’s impossible—?”
+
+“She’s even more charming than I remembered her.”
+
+“Then what’s the matter?”
+
+She had to think how to put it. “Well, _I’m_ impossible. It’s
+impossible. Everything’s impossible.”
+
+He looked at her an instant. “I see where you’re coming out.
+Everything’s possible.” Their eyes had on it in fact an exchange of
+some duration; after which he pursued: “Isn’t it that beautiful child?”
+Then as she still said nothing: “Why don’t you mean to receive her?”
+
+Her answer in an instant rang clear. “Because I wish to keep out of the
+business.”
+
+It provoked in him a weak wail. “You’re going to abandon me _now?_”
+
+“No, I’m only going to abandon _her_. She’ll want me to help her with
+you. And I won’t.”
+
+“You’ll only help me with her? Well then—!” Most of the persons
+previously gathered had, in the interest of tea, passed into the house,
+and they had the gardens mainly to themselves. The shadows were long,
+the last call of the birds, who had made a home of their own in the
+noble interspaced quarter, sounded from the high trees in the other
+gardens as well, those of the old convent and of the old _hôtels_; it
+was as if our friends had waited for the full charm to come out.
+Strether’s impressions were still present; it was as if something had
+happened that “nailed” them, made them more intense; but he was to ask
+himself soon afterwards, that evening, what really _had_
+happened—conscious as he could after all remain that for a gentleman
+taken, and taken the first time, into the “great world,” the world of
+ambassadors and duchesses, the items made a meagre total. It was
+nothing new to him, however, as we know, that a man might have—at all
+events such a man as he—an amount of experience out of any proportion
+to his adventures; so that, though it was doubtless no great adventure
+to sit on there with Miss Gostrey and hear about Madame de Vionnet, the
+hour, the picture, the immediate, the recent, the possible—as well as
+the communication itself, not a note of which failed to
+reverberate—only gave the moments more of the taste of history.
+
+It was history, to begin with, that Jeanne’s mother had been
+three-and-twenty years before, at Geneva, schoolmate and good
+girlfriend to Maria Gostrey, who had moreover enjoyed since then,
+though interruptedly and above all with a long recent drop, other
+glimpses of her. Twenty-three years put them both on, no doubt; and
+Madame de Vionnet—though she had married straight after school—couldn’t
+be today an hour less than thirty-eight. This made her ten years older
+than Chad—though ten years, also, if Strether liked, older than she
+looked; the least, at any rate, that a prospective mother-in-law could
+be expected to do with. She would be of all mothers-in-law the most
+charming; unless indeed, through some perversity as yet insupposeable,
+she should utterly belie herself in that relation. There was none
+surely in which, as Maria remembered her, she mustn’t be charming; and
+this frankly in spite of the stigma of failure in the tie where failure
+always most showed. It was no test there—when indeed _was_ it a test
+there?—for Monsieur de Vionnet had been a brute. She had lived for
+years apart from him—which was of course always a horrid position; but
+Miss Gostrey’s impression of the matter had been that she could scarce
+have made a better thing of it had she done it on purpose to show she
+was amiable. She was so amiable that nobody had had a word to say;
+which was luckily not the case for her husband. He was so impossible
+that she had the advantage of all her merits.
+
+It was still history for Strether that the Comte de Vionnet—it being
+also history that the lady in question was a Countess—should now, under
+Miss Gostrey’s sharp touch, rise before him as a high distinguished
+polished impertinent reprobate, the product of a mysterious order; it
+was history, further, that the charming girl so freely sketched by his
+companion should have been married out of hand by a mother, another
+figure of striking outline, full of dark personal motive; it was
+perhaps history most of all that this company was, as a matter of
+course, governed by such considerations as put divorce out of the
+question. “_Ces gens-là_ don’t divorce, you know, any more than they
+emigrate or abjure—they think it impious and vulgar”; a fact in the
+light of which they seemed but the more richly special. It was all
+special; it was all, for Strether’s imagination, more or less rich. The
+girl at the Genevese school, an isolated interesting attaching
+creature, then both sensitive and violent, audacious but always
+forgiven, was the daughter of a French father and an English mother
+who, early left a widow, had married again—tried afresh with a
+foreigner; in her career with whom she had apparently given her child
+no example of comfort. All these people—the people of the English
+mother’s side—had been of condition more or less eminent; yet with
+oddities and disparities that had often since made Maria, thinking them
+over, wonder what they really quite rhymed to. It was in any case her
+belief that the mother, interested and prone to adventure, had been
+without conscience, had only thought of ridding herself most quickly of
+a possible, an actual encumbrance. The father, by her impression, a
+Frenchman with a name one knew, had been a different matter, leaving
+his child, she clearly recalled, a memory all fondness, as well as an
+assured little fortune which was unluckily to make her more or less of
+a prey later on. She had been in particular, at school, dazzlingly,
+though quite booklessly, clever; as polyglot as a little Jewess (which
+she wasn’t, oh no!) and chattering French, English, German, Italian,
+anything one would, in a way that made a clean sweep, if not of prizes
+and parchments, at least of every “part,” whether memorised or
+improvised, in the curtained costumed school repertory, and in especial
+of all mysteries of race and vagueness of reference, all swagger about
+“home,” among their variegated mates.
+
+It would doubtless be difficult to-day, as between French and English,
+to name her and place her; she would certainly show, on knowledge, Miss
+Gostrey felt, as one of those convenient types who don’t keep you
+explaining—minds with doors as numerous as the many-tongued cluster of
+confessionals at Saint Peter’s. You might confess to her with
+confidence in Roumelian, and even Roumelian sins. Therefore—! But
+Strether’s narrator covered her implication with a laugh; a laugh by
+which his betrayal of a sense of the lurid in the picture was also
+perhaps sufficiently protected. He had a moment of wondering, while his
+friend went on, what sins might be especially Roumelian. She went on at
+all events to the mention of her having met the young thing—again by
+some Swiss lake—in her first married state, which had appeared for the
+few intermediate years not at least violently disturbed. She had been
+lovely at that moment, delightful to _her_, full of responsive emotion,
+of amused recognitions and amusing reminders, and then once more, much
+later, after a long interval, equally but differently charming—touching
+and rather mystifying for the five minutes of an encounter at a
+railway-station _en province_, during which it had come out that her
+life was all changed. Miss Gostrey had understood enough to see,
+essentially, what had happened, and yet had beautifully dreamed that
+she was herself faultless. There were doubtless depths in her, but she
+was all right; Strether would see if she wasn’t. She was another person
+however—that had been promptly marked—from the small child of nature at
+the Geneva school, a little person quite made over (as foreign women
+_were_, compared with American) by marriage. Her situation too had
+evidently cleared itself up; there would have been—all that was
+possible—a judicial separation. She had settled in Paris, brought up
+her daughter, steered her boat. It was no very pleasant boat—especially
+there—to be in; but Marie de Vionnet would have headed straight. She
+would have friends, certainly—and very good ones. There she was at all
+events—and it was very interesting. Her knowing Mr. Chad didn’t in the
+least prove she hadn’t friends; what it proved was what good ones _he_
+had. “I saw that,” said Miss Gostrey, “that night at the Français; it
+came out for me in three minutes. I saw _her_—or somebody like her. And
+so,” she immediately added, “did you.”
+
+“Oh no—not anybody like her!” Strether laughed. “But you mean,” he as
+promptly went on, “that she has had such an influence on him?”
+
+Miss Gostrey was on her feet; it was time for them to go. “She has
+brought him up for her daughter.”
+
+Their eyes, as so often, in candid conference, through their settled
+glasses, met over it long; after which Strether’s again took in the
+whole place. They were quite alone there now. “Mustn’t she rather—in
+the time then—have rushed it?”
+
+“Ah she won’t of course have lost an hour. But that’s just the good
+mother—the good French one. You must remember that of her—that as a
+mother she’s French, and that for them there’s a special providence. It
+precisely however—that she mayn’t have been able to begin as far back
+as she’d have liked—makes her grateful for aid.”
+
+Strether took this in as they slowly moved to the house on their way
+out. “She counts on me then to put the thing through?”
+
+“Yes—she counts on you. Oh and first of all of course,” Miss Gostrey
+added, “on her—well, convincing you.”
+
+“Ah,” her friend returned, “she caught Chad young!”
+
+“Yes, but there are women who are for all your ‘times of life.’ They’re
+the most wonderful sort.”
+
+She had laughed the words out, but they brought her companion, the next
+thing, to a stand. “Is what you mean that she’ll try to make a fool of
+me?”
+
+“Well, I’m wondering what she _will_—with an opportunity—make.”
+
+“What do you call,” Strether asked, “an opportunity? My going to see
+her?”
+
+“Ah you must go to see her”—Miss Gostrey was a trifle evasive. “You
+can’t not do that. You’d have gone to see the other woman. I mean if
+there had been one—a different sort. It’s what you came out for.”
+
+It might be; but Strether distinguished. “I didn’t come out to see
+_this_ sort.”
+
+She had a wonderful look at him now. “Are you disappointed she isn’t
+worse?”
+
+He for a moment entertained the question, then found for it the
+frankest of answers. “Yes. If she were worse she’d be better for our
+purpose. It would be simpler.”
+
+“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But won’t this be pleasanter?”
+
+“Ah you know,” he promptly replied, “I didn’t come out—wasn’t that just
+what you originally reproached me with?—for the pleasant.”
+
+“Precisely. Therefore I say again what I said at first. You must take
+things as they come. Besides,” Miss Gostrey added, “I’m not afraid for
+myself.”
+
+“For yourself—?”
+
+“Of your seeing her. I trust her. There’s nothing she’ll say about me.
+In fact there’s nothing she _can_.”
+
+Strether wondered—little as he had thought of this. Then he broke out.
+“Oh you women!”
+
+There was something in it at which she flushed. “Yes—there we are.
+We’re abysses.” At last she smiled. “But I risk her!”
+
+He gave himself a shake. “Well then so do I!” But he added as they
+passed into the house that he would see Chad the first thing in the
+morning.
+
+This was the next day the more easily effected that the young man, as
+it happened, even before he was down, turned up at his hotel. Strether
+took his coffee, by habit, in the public room; but on his descending
+for this purpose Chad instantly proposed an adjournment to what he
+called greater privacy. He had himself as yet had nothing—they would
+sit down somewhere together; and when after a few steps and a turn into
+the Boulevard they had, for their greater privacy, sat down among
+twenty others, our friend saw in his companion’s move a fear of the
+advent of Waymarsh. It was the first time Chad had to that extent given
+this personage “away”; and Strether found himself wondering of what it
+was symptomatic. He made out in a moment that the youth was in earnest
+as he hadn’t yet seen him; which in its turn threw a ray perhaps a
+trifle startling on what they had each up to that time been treating as
+earnestness. It was sufficiently flattering however that the real
+thing—if this _was_ at last the real thing—should have been determined,
+as appeared, precisely by an accretion of Strether’s importance. For
+this was what it quickly enough came to—that Chad, rising with the
+lark, had rushed down to let him know while his morning consciousness
+was yet young that he had literally made the afternoon before a
+tremendous impression. Madame de Vionnet wouldn’t, couldn’t rest till
+she should have some assurance from him that he _would_ consent again
+to see her. The announcement was made, across their marble-topped
+table, while the foam of the hot milk was in their cups and its plash
+still in the air, with the smile of Chad’s easiest urbanity; and this
+expression of his face caused our friend’s doubts to gather on the spot
+into a challenge of the lips. “See here”—that was all; he only for the
+moment said again “See here.” Chad met it with all his air of straight
+intelligence, while Strether remembered again that fancy of the first
+impression of him, the happy young Pagan, handsome and hard but oddly
+indulgent, whose mysterious measure he had under the street-lamp tried
+mentally to take. The young Pagan, while a long look passed between
+them, sufficiently understood. Strether scarce needed at last to say
+the rest—“I want to know where I am.” But he said it, adding before any
+answer something more. “Are you engaged to be married—is that your
+secret?—to the young lady?”
+
+Chad shook his head with the slow amenity that was one of his ways of
+conveying that there was time for everything. “I have no secret—though
+I may have secrets! I haven’t at any rate that one. We’re not engaged.
+No.”
+
+“Then where’s the hitch?”
+
+“Do you mean why I haven’t already started with you?” Chad, beginning
+his coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to explain. “Nothing
+would have induced me—nothing will still induce me—not to try to keep
+you here as long as you can be made to stay. It’s too visibly good for
+you.” Strether had himself plenty to say about this, but it was amusing
+also to measure the march of Chad’s tone. He had never been more a man
+of the world, and it was always in his company present to our friend
+that one was seeing how in successive connexions a man of the world
+acquitted himself. Chad kept it up beautifully. “My idea—_voyons!_—is
+simply that you should let Madame de Vionnet know you, simply that you
+should consent to know _her_. I don’t in the least mind telling you
+that, clever and charming as she is, she’s ever so much in my
+confidence. All I ask of you is to let her talk to you. You’ve asked me
+about what you call my hitch, and so far as it goes she’ll explain it
+to you. She’s herself my hitch, hang it—if you must really have it all
+out. But in a sense,” he hastened in the most wonderful manner to add,
+“that you’ll quite make out for yourself. She’s too good a friend,
+confound her. Too good, I mean, for me to leave without—without—” It
+was his first hesitation.
+
+“Without what?”
+
+“Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms of my
+sacrifice.”
+
+“It _will_ be a sacrifice then?”
+
+“It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered. I owe her so much.”
+
+It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was now
+confessedly—oh quite flagrantly and publicly—interesting. The moment
+really took on for Strether an intensity. Chad owed Madame de Vionnet
+so much? What _did_ that do then but clear up the whole mystery? He was
+indebted for alterations, and she was thereby in a position to have
+sent in her bill for expenses incurred in reconstruction. What was this
+at bottom but what had been to be arrived at? Strether sat there
+arriving at it while he munched toast and stirred his second cup. To do
+this with the aid of Chad’s pleasant earnest face was also to do more
+besides. No, never before had he been so ready to take him as he was.
+What was it that had suddenly so cleared up? It was just everybody’s
+character; that is everybody’s but—in a measure—his own. Strether felt
+_his_ character receive for the instant a smutch from all the wrong
+things he had suspected or believed. The person to whom Chad owed it
+that he could positively turn out such a comfort to other persons—such
+a person was sufficiently raised above any “breath” by the nature of
+her work and the young man’s steady light. All of which was vivid
+enough to come and go quickly; though indeed in the midst of it
+Strether could utter a question. “Have I your word of honour that if I
+surrender myself to Madame de Vionnet you’ll surrender yourself to
+_me?_”
+
+Chad laid his hand firmly on his friend’s. “My dear man, you have it.”
+
+There was finally something in his felicity almost embarrassing and
+oppressive—Strether had begun to fidget under it for the open air and
+the erect posture. He had signed to the waiter that he wished to pay,
+and this transaction took some moments, during which he thoroughly
+felt, while he put down money and pretended—it was quite hollow—to
+estimate change, that Chad’s higher spirit, his youth, his practice,
+his paganism, his felicity, his assurance, his impudence, whatever it
+might be, had consciously scored a success. Well, that was all right so
+far as it went; his sense of the thing in question covered our friend
+for a minute like a veil through which—as if he had been muffled—he
+heard his interlocutor ask him if he mightn’t take him over about five.
+“Over” was over the river, and over the river was where Madame de
+Vionnet lived, and five was that very afternoon. They got at last out
+of the place—got out before he answered. He lighted, in the street, a
+cigarette, which again gave him more time. But it was already sharp for
+him that there was no use in time. “What does she propose to do to me?”
+he had presently demanded.
+
+Chad had no delays. “Are you afraid of her?”
+
+“Oh immensely. Don’t you see it?”
+
+“Well,” said Chad, “she won’t do anything worse to you than make you
+like her.”
+
+“It’s just of that I’m afraid.”
+
+“Then it’s not fair to me.”
+
+Strether cast about. “It’s fair to your mother.”
+
+“Oh,” said Chad, “are you afraid of _her?_”
+
+“Scarcely less. Or perhaps even more. But is this lady against your
+interests at home?” Strether went on.
+
+“Not directly, no doubt; but she’s greatly in favour of them here.”
+
+“And what—‘here’—does she consider them to be?”
+
+“Well, good relations!”
+
+“With herself?”
+
+“With herself.”
+
+“And what is it that makes them so good?”
+
+“What? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll make out if you’ll only go, as
+I’m supplicating you, to see her.”
+
+Strether stared at him with a little of the wanness, no doubt, that the
+vision of more to “make out” could scarce help producing. “I mean _how_
+good are they?”
+
+“Oh awfully good.”
+
+Again Strether had faltered, but it was brief. It was all very well,
+but there was nothing now he wouldn’t risk. “Excuse me, but I must
+really—as I began by telling you—know where I am. Is she bad?”
+
+“‘Bad’?”—Chad echoed it, but without a shock. “Is that what’s
+implied—?”
+
+“When relations are good?” Strether felt a little silly, and was even
+conscious of a foolish laugh, at having it imposed on him to have
+appeared to speak so. What indeed was he talking about? His stare had
+relaxed; he looked now all round him. But something in him brought him
+back, though he still didn’t know quite how to turn it. The two or
+three ways he thought of, and one of them in particular, were, even
+with scruples dismissed, too ugly. He none the less at last found
+something. “Is her life without reproach?”
+
+It struck him, directly he had found it, as pompous and priggish; so
+much so that he was thankful to Chad for taking it only in the right
+spirit. The young man spoke so immensely to the point that the effect
+was practically of positive blandness. “Absolutely without reproach. A
+beautiful life. _Allez donc voir!_”
+
+These last words were, in the liberality of their confidence, so
+imperative that Strether went through no form of assent; but before
+they separated it had been confirmed that he should be picked up at a
+quarter to five.
+
+
+
+
+Book Sixth
+
+
+ I
+
+It was quite by half-past five—after the two men had been together in
+Madame de Vionnet’s drawing-room not more than a dozen minutes—that
+Chad, with a look at his watch and then another at their hostess, said
+genially, gaily: “I’ve an engagement, and I know you won’t complain if
+I leave him with you. He’ll interest you immensely; and as for her,” he
+declared to Strether, “I assure you, if you’re at all nervous, she’s
+perfectly safe.”
+
+He had left them to be embarrassed or not by this guarantee, as they
+could best manage, and embarrassment was a thing that Strether wasn’t
+at first sure Madame de Vionnet escaped. He escaped it himself, to his
+surprise; but he had grown used by this time to thinking of himself as
+brazen. She occupied, his hostess, in the Rue de Bellechasse, the first
+floor of an old house to which our visitors had had access from an old
+clean court. The court was large and open, full of revelations, for our
+friend, of the habit of privacy, the peace of intervals, the dignity of
+distances and approaches; the house, to his restless sense, was in the
+high homely style of an elder day, and the ancient Paris that he was
+always looking for—sometimes intensely felt, sometimes more acutely
+missed—was in the immemorial polish of the wide waxed staircase and in
+the fine _boiseries_, the medallions, mouldings, mirrors, great clear
+spaces, of the greyish-white salon into which he had been shown. He
+seemed at the very outset to see her in the midst of possessions not
+vulgarly numerous, but hereditary cherished charming. While his eyes
+turned after a little from those of his hostess and Chad freely
+talked—not in the least about _him_, but about other people, people he
+didn’t know, and quite as if he did know them—he found himself making
+out, as a background of the occupant, some glory, some prosperity of
+the First Empire, some Napoleonic glamour, some dim lustre of the great
+legend; elements clinging still to all the consular chairs and
+mythological brasses and sphinxes’ heads and faded surfaces of satin
+striped with alternate silk.
+
+The place itself went further back—that he guessed, and how old Paris
+continued in a manner to echo there; but the post-revolutionary period,
+the world he vaguely thought of as the world of Châteaubriand, of
+Madame de Staël, even of the young Lamartine, had left its stamp of
+harps and urns and torches, a stamp impressed on sundry small objects,
+ornaments and relics. He had never before, to his knowledge, had
+present to him relics, of any special dignity, of a private
+order—little old miniatures, medallions, pictures, books; books in
+leather bindings, pinkish and greenish, with gilt garlands on the back,
+ranged, together with other promiscuous properties, under the glass of
+brass-mounted cabinets. His attention took them all tenderly into
+account. They were among the matters that marked Madame de Vionnet’s
+apartment as something quite different from Miss Gostrey’s little
+museum of bargains and from Chad’s lovely home; he recognised it as
+founded much more on old accumulations that had possibly from time to
+time shrunken than on any contemporary method of acquisition or form of
+curiosity. Chad and Miss Gostrey had rummaged and purchased and picked
+up and exchanged, sifting, selecting, comparing; whereas the mistress
+of the scene before him, beautifully passive under the spell of
+transmission—transmission from her father’s line, he quite made up his
+mind—had only received, accepted and been quiet. When she hadn’t been
+quiet she had been moved at the most to some occult charity for some
+fallen fortune. There had been objects she or her predecessors might
+even conceivably have parted with under need, but Strether couldn’t
+suspect them of having sold old pieces to get “better” ones. They would
+have felt no difference as to better or worse. He could but imagine
+their having felt—perhaps in emigration, in proscription, for his
+sketch was slight and confused—the pressure of want or the obligation
+of sacrifice.
+
+The pressure of want—whatever might be the case with the other
+force—was, however, presumably not active now, for the tokens of a
+chastened ease still abounded after all, many marks of a taste whose
+discriminations might perhaps have been called eccentric. He guessed at
+intense little preferences and sharp little exclusions, a deep
+suspicion of the vulgar and a personal view of the right. The general
+result of this was something for which he had no name on the spot quite
+ready, but something he would have come nearest to naming in speaking
+of it as the air of supreme respectability, the consciousness, small,
+still, reserved, but none the less distinct and diffused, of private
+honour. The air of supreme respectability—that was a strange blank wall
+for his adventure to have brought him to break his nose against. It had
+in fact, as he was now aware, filled all the approaches, hovered in the
+court as he passed, hung on the staircase as he mounted, sounded in the
+grave rumble of the old bell, as little electric as possible, of which
+Chad, at the door, had pulled the ancient but neatly-kept tassel; it
+formed in short the clearest medium of its particular kind that he had
+ever breathed. He would have answered for it at the end of a quarter of
+an hour that some of the glass cases contained swords and epaulettes of
+ancient colonels and generals; medals and orders once pinned over
+hearts that had long since ceased to beat; snuff-boxes bestowed on
+ministers and envoys; copies of works presented, with inscriptions, by
+authors now classic. At bottom of it all for him was the sense of her
+rare unlikeness to the women he had known. This sense had grown, since
+the day before, the more he recalled her, and had been above all
+singularly fed by his talk with Chad in the morning. Everything in fine
+made her immeasurably new, and nothing so new as the old house and the
+old objects. There were books, two or three, on a small table near his
+chair, but they hadn’t the lemon-coloured covers with which his eye had
+begun to dally from the hour of his arrival and to the opportunity of a
+further acquaintance with which he had for a fortnight now altogether
+succumbed. On another table, across the room, he made out the great
+_Revue_; but even that familiar face, conspicuous in Mrs. Newsome’s
+parlours, scarce counted here as a modern note. He was sure on the
+spot—and he afterwards knew he was right—that this was a touch of
+Chad’s own hand. What would Mrs. Newsome say to the circumstance that
+Chad’s interested “influence” kept her paper-knife in the _Revue_? The
+interested influence at any rate had, as we say, gone straight to the
+point—had in fact soon left it quite behind.
+
+She was seated, near the fire, on a small stuffed and fringed chair one
+of the few modern articles in the room, and she leaned back in it with
+her hands clasped in her lap and no movement, in all her person, but
+the fine prompt play of her deep young face. The fire, under the low
+white marble, undraped and academic, had burnt down to the silver ashes
+of light wood, one of the windows, at a distance, stood open to the
+mildness and stillness, out of which, in the short pauses, came the
+faint sound, pleasant and homely, almost rustic, of a plash and a
+clatter of _sabots_ from some coach-house on the other side of the
+court. Madame de Vionnet, while Strether sat there, wasn’t to shift her
+posture by an inch. “I don’t think you seriously believe in what you’re
+doing,” she said; “but all the same, you know, I’m going to treat you
+quite as if I did.”
+
+“By which you mean,” Strether directly replied, “quite as if you
+didn’t! I assure you it won’t make the least difference with me how you
+treat me.”
+
+“Well,” she said, taking that menace bravely and philosophically
+enough, “the only thing that really matters is that you shall get on
+with me.”
+
+“Ah but I don’t!” he immediately returned.
+
+It gave her another pause; which, however, she happily enough shook
+off. “Will you consent to go on with me a little—provisionally—as if
+you did?”
+
+Then it was that he saw how she had decidedly come all the way; and
+there accompanied it an extraordinary sense of her raising from
+somewhere below him her beautiful suppliant eyes. He might have been
+perched at his door-step or at his window and she standing in the road.
+For a moment he let her stand and couldn’t moreover have spoken. It had
+been sad, of a sudden, with a sadness that was like a cold breath in
+his face. “What can I do,” he finally asked, “but listen to you as I
+promised Chadwick?”
+
+“Ah but what I’m asking you,” she quickly said, “isn’t what Mr. Newsome
+had in mind.” She spoke at present, he saw, as if to take courageously
+_all_ her risk. “This is my own idea and a different thing.”
+
+It gave poor Strether in truth—uneasy as it made him too—something of
+the thrill of a bold perception justified. “Well,” he answered kindly
+enough, “I was sure a moment since that some idea of your own had come
+to you.”
+
+She seemed still to look up at him, but now more serenely. “I made out
+you were sure—and that helped it to come. So you see,” she continued,
+“we do get on.”
+
+“Oh but it appears to me I don’t at all meet your request. How can I
+when I don’t understand it?”
+
+“It isn’t at all necessary you should understand; it will do quite well
+enough if you simply remember it. Only feel I trust you—and for nothing
+so tremendous after all. Just,” she said with a wonderful smile, “for
+common civility.”
+
+Strether had a long pause while they sat again face to face, as they
+had sat, scarce less conscious, before the poor lady had crossed the
+stream. She was the poor lady for Strether now because clearly she had
+some trouble, and her appeal to him could only mean that her trouble
+was deep. He couldn’t help it; it wasn’t his fault; he had done
+nothing; but by a turn of the hand she had somehow made their encounter
+a relation. And the relation profited by a mass of things that were not
+strictly in it or of it; by the very air in which they sat, by the high
+cold delicate room, by the world outside and the little plash in the
+court, by the First Empire and the relics in the stiff cabinets, by
+matters as far off as those and by others as near as the unbroken clasp
+of her hands in her lap and the look her expression had of being most
+natural when her eyes were most fixed. “You count upon me of course for
+something really much greater than it sounds.”
+
+“Oh it sounds great enough too!” she laughed at this.
+
+He found himself in time on the point of telling her that she was, as
+Miss Barrace called it, wonderful; but, catching himself up, he said
+something else instead. “What was it Chad’s idea then that you should
+say to me?”
+
+“Ah his idea was simply what a man’s idea always is—to put every effort
+off on the woman.”
+
+“The ‘woman’—?” Strether slowly echoed.
+
+“The woman he likes—and just in proportion as he likes her. In
+proportion too—for shifting the trouble—as she likes _him_.”
+
+Strether followed it; then with an abruptness of his own: “How much do
+you like Chad?”
+
+“Just as much as _that_—to take all, with you, on myself.” But she got
+at once again away from this. “I’ve been trembling as if we were to
+stand or fall by what you may think of me; and I’m even now,” she went
+on wonderfully, “drawing a long breath—and, yes, truly taking a great
+courage—from the hope that I don’t in fact strike you as impossible.”
+
+“That’s at all events, clearly,” he observed after an instant, “the way
+I don’t strike _you_.”
+
+“Well,” she so far assented, “as you haven’t yet said you _won’t_ have
+the little patience with me I ask for—”
+
+“You draw splendid conclusions? Perfectly. But I don’t understand
+them,” Strether pursued. “You seem to me to ask for much more than you
+need. What, at the worst for you, what at the best for myself, can I
+after all do? I can use no pressure that I haven’t used. You come
+really late with your request. I’ve already done all that for myself
+the case admits of. I’ve said my say, and here I am.”
+
+“Yes, here you are, fortunately!” Madame de Vionnet laughed. “Mrs.
+Newsome,” she added in another tone, “didn’t think you can do so
+little.”
+
+He had an hesitation, but he brought the words out. “Well, she thinks
+so now.”
+
+“Do you mean by that—?” But she also hung fire.
+
+“Do I mean what?”
+
+She still rather faltered. “Pardon me if I touch on it, but if I’m
+saying extraordinary things, why, perhaps, mayn’t I? Besides, doesn’t
+it properly concern us to know?”
+
+“To know what?” he insisted as after thus beating about the bush she
+had again dropped.
+
+She made the effort. “Has she given you up?”
+
+He was amazed afterwards to think how simply and quietly he had met it.
+“Not yet.” It was almost as if he were a trifle disappointed—had
+expected still more of her freedom. But he went straight on. “Is that
+what Chad has told you will happen to me?”
+
+She was evidently charmed with the way he took it. “If you mean if
+we’ve talked of it—most certainly. And the question’s not what has had
+least to do with my wishing to see you.”
+
+“To judge if I’m the sort of man a woman _can_—?”
+
+“Precisely,” she exclaimed—“you wonderful gentleman! I do judge—I
+_have_ judged. A woman can’t. You’re safe—with every right to be. You’d
+be much happier if you’d only believe it.”
+
+Strether was silent a little; then he found himself speaking with a
+cynicism of confidence of which even at the moment the sources were
+strange to him. “I try to believe it. But it’s a marvel,” he exclaimed,
+“how _you_ already get at it!”
+
+Oh she was able to say. “Remember how much I was on the way to it
+through Mr. Newsome—before I saw you. He thinks everything of your
+strength.”
+
+“Well, I can bear almost anything!” our friend briskly interrupted.
+Deep and beautiful on this her smile came back, and with the effect of
+making him hear what he had said just as she had heard it. He easily
+enough felt that it gave him away, but what in truth had everything
+done but that? It had been all very well to think at moments that he
+was holding her nose down and that he had coerced her: what had he by
+this time done but let her practically see that he accepted their
+relation? What was their relation moreover—though light and brief
+enough in form as yet—but whatever she might choose to make it? Nothing
+could prevent her—certainly he couldn’t—from making it pleasant. At the
+back of his head, behind everything, was the sense that she was—there,
+before him, close to him, in vivid imperative form—one of the rare
+women he had so often heard of, read of, thought of, but never met,
+whose very presence, look, voice, the mere contemporaneous _fact_ of
+whom, from the moment it was at all presented, made a relation of mere
+recognition. That was not the kind of woman he had ever found Mrs.
+Newsome, a contemporaneous fact who had been distinctly slow to
+establish herself; and at present, confronted with Madame de Vionnet,
+he felt the simplicity of his original impression of Miss Gostrey. She
+certainly had been a fact of rapid growth; but the world was wide, each
+day was more and more a new lesson. There were at any rate even among
+the stranger ones relations and relations. “Of course I suit Chad’s
+grand way,” he quickly added. “He hasn’t had much difficulty in working
+me in.”
+
+She seemed to deny a little, on the young man’s behalf, by the rise of
+her eyebrows, an intention of any process at all inconsiderate. “You
+must know how grieved he’d be if you were to lose anything. He believes
+you can keep his mother patient.”
+
+Strether wondered with his eyes on her. “I see. _That’s_ then what you
+really want of me. And how am I to do it? Perhaps you’ll tell me that.”
+
+“Simply tell her the truth.”
+
+“And what do you call the truth?”
+
+“Well, _any_ truth—about us all—that you see yourself. I leave it to
+you.”
+
+“Thank you very much. I like,” Strether laughed with a slight
+harshness, “the way you leave things!”
+
+But she insisted kindly, gently, as if it wasn’t so bad. “Be perfectly
+honest. Tell her all.”
+
+“All?” he oddly echoed.
+
+“Tell her the simple truth,” Madame de Vionnet again pleaded.
+
+“But what _is_ the simple truth? The simple truth is exactly what I’m
+trying to discover.”
+
+She looked about a while, but presently she came back to him. “Tell
+her, fully and clearly, about _us_.”
+
+Strether meanwhile had been staring. “You and your daughter?”
+
+“Yes—little Jeanne and me. Tell her,” she just slightly quavered, “you
+like us.”
+
+“And what good will that do me? Or rather”—he caught himself up—“what
+good will it do _you?_”
+
+She looked graver. “None, you believe, really?”
+
+Strether debated. “She didn’t send me out to ‘like’ you.”
+
+“Oh,” she charmingly contended, “she sent you out to face the facts.”
+
+He admitted after an instant that there was something in that. “But how
+can I face them till I know what they are? Do you want him,” he then
+braced himself to ask, “to marry your daughter?”
+
+She gave a headshake as noble as it was prompt. “No—not that.”
+
+“And he really doesn’t want to himself?”
+
+She repeated the movement, but now with a strange light in her face.
+“He likes her too much.”
+
+Strether wondered. “To be willing to consider, you mean, the question
+of taking her to America?”
+
+“To be willing to do anything with her but be immensely kind and
+nice—really tender of her. We watch over her, and you must help us. You
+must see her again.”
+
+Strether felt awkward. “Ah with pleasure—she’s so remarkably
+attractive.”
+
+The mother’s eagerness with which Madame de Vionnet jumped at this was
+to come back to him later as beautiful in its grace. “The dear thing
+_did_ please you?” Then as he met it with the largest “Oh!” of
+enthusiasm: “She’s perfect. She’s my joy.”
+
+“Well, I’m sure that—if one were near her and saw more of her—she’d be
+mine.”
+
+“Then,” said Madame de Vionnet, “tell Mrs. Newsome that!”
+
+He wondered the more. “What good will that do you?” As she appeared
+unable at once to say, however, he brought out something else. “Is your
+daughter in love with our friend?”
+
+“Ah,” she rather startlingly answered, “I wish you’d find out!”
+
+He showed his surprise. “I? A stranger?”
+
+“Oh you won’t be a stranger—presently. You shall see her quite, I
+assure you, as if you weren’t.”
+
+It remained for him none the less an extraordinary notion. “It seems to
+me surely that if her mother can’t—”
+
+“Ah little girls and their mothers to-day!” she rather inconsequently
+broke in. But she checked herself with something she seemed to give out
+as after all more to the point. “Tell her I’ve been good for him. Don’t
+you think I have?”
+
+It had its effect on him—more than at the moment he quite measured. Yet
+he was consciously enough touched. “Oh if it’s all _you_—!”
+
+“Well, it may not be ‘all,’” she interrupted, “but it’s to a great
+extent. Really and truly,” she added in a tone that was to take its
+place with him among things remembered.
+
+“Then it’s very wonderful.” He smiled at her from a face that he felt
+as strained, and her own face for a moment kept him so. At last she
+also got up. “Well, don’t you think that for that—”
+
+“I ought to save you?” So it was that the way to meet her—and the way,
+as well, in a manner, to get off—came over him. He heard himself use
+the exorbitant word, the very sound of which helped to determine his
+flight. “I’ll save you if I can.”
+
+
+ II
+
+In Chad’s lovely home, however, one evening ten days later, he felt
+himself present at the collapse of the question of Jeanne de Vionnet’s
+shy secret. He had been dining there in the company of that young lady
+and her mother, as well as of other persons, and he had gone into the
+_petit salon_, at Chad’s request, on purpose to talk with her. The
+young man had put this to him as a favour—“I should like so awfully to
+know what you think of her. It will really be a chance for you,” he had
+said, “to see the _jeune fille_—I mean the type—as she actually is, and
+I don’t think that, as an observer of manners, it’s a thing you ought
+to miss. It will be an impression that—whatever else you take—you can
+carry home with you, where you’ll find again so much to compare it
+with.”
+
+Strether knew well enough with what Chad wished him to compare it, and
+though he entirely assented he hadn’t yet somehow been so deeply
+reminded that he was being, as he constantly though mutely expressed
+it, used. He was as far as ever from making out exactly to what end;
+but he was none the less constantly accompanied by a sense of the
+service he rendered. He conceived only that this service was highly
+agreeable to those who profited by it; and he was indeed still waiting
+for the moment at which he should catch it in the act of proving
+disagreeable, proving in some degree intolerable, to himself. He failed
+quite to see how his situation could clear up at all logically except
+by some turn of events that would give him the pretext of disgust. He
+was building from day to day on the possibility of disgust, but each
+day brought forth meanwhile a new and more engaging bend of the road.
+That possibility was now ever so much further from sight than on the
+eve of his arrival, and he perfectly felt that, should it come at all,
+it would have to be at best inconsequent and violent. He struck himself
+as a little nearer to it only when he asked himself what service, in
+such a life of utility, he was after all rendering Mrs. Newsome. When
+he wished to help himself to believe that he was still all right he
+reflected—and in fact with wonder—on the unimpaired frequency of their
+correspondence; in relation to which what was after all more natural
+than that it should become more frequent just in proportion as their
+problem became more complicated?
+
+Certain it is at any rate that he now often brought himself balm by the
+question, with the rich consciousness of yesterday’s letter, “Well,
+what can I do more than that—what can I do more than tell her
+everything?” To persuade himself that he did tell her, had told her,
+everything, he used to try to think of particular things he hadn’t told
+her. When at rare moments and in the watches of the night he pounced on
+one it generally showed itself to be—to a deeper scrutiny—not quite
+truly of the essence. When anything new struck him as coming up, or
+anything already noted as reappearing, he always immediately wrote, as
+if for fear that if he didn’t he would miss something; and also that he
+might be able to say to himself from time to time “She knows it
+_now_—even while I worry.” It was a great comfort to him in general not
+to have left past things to be dragged to light and explained; not to
+have to produce at so late a stage anything not produced, or anything
+even veiled and attenuated, at the moment. She knew it now: that was
+what he said to himself to-night in relation to the fresh fact of
+Chad’s acquaintance with the two ladies—not to speak of the fresher one
+of his own. Mrs. Newsome knew in other words that very night at
+Woollett that he himself knew Madame de Vionnet and that he had
+conscientiously been to see her; also that he had found her remarkably
+attractive and that there would probably be a good deal more to tell.
+But she further knew, or would know very soon, that, again
+conscientiously, he hadn’t repeated his visit; and that when Chad had
+asked him on the Countess’s behalf—Strether made her out vividly, with
+a thought at the back of his head, a Countess—if he wouldn’t name a day
+for dining with her, he had replied lucidly: “Thank you very
+much—impossible.” He had begged the young man would present his excuses
+and had trusted him to understand that it couldn’t really strike one as
+quite the straight thing. He hadn’t reported to Mrs. Newsome that he
+had promised to “save” Madame de Vionnet; but, so far as he was
+concerned with that reminiscence, he hadn’t at any rate promised to
+haunt her house. What Chad had understood could only, in truth, be
+inferred from Chad’s behaviour, which had been in this connexion as
+easy as in every other. He was easy, always, when he understood; he was
+easier still, if possible, when he didn’t; he had replied that he would
+make it all right; and he had proceeded to do this by substituting the
+present occasion—as he was ready to substitute others—for any, for
+every occasion as to which his old friend should have a funny scruple.
+
+“Oh but I’m not a little foreign girl; I’m just as English as I can
+be,” Jeanne de Vionnet had said to him as soon as, in the _petit
+salon_, he sank, shyly enough on his own side, into the place near her
+vacated by Madame Gloriani at his approach. Madame Gloriani, who was in
+black velvet, with white lace and powdered hair, and whose somewhat
+massive majesty melted, at any contact, into the graciousness of some
+incomprehensible tongue, moved away to make room for the vague
+gentleman, after benevolent greetings to him which embodied, as he
+believed, in baffling accents, some recognition of his face from a
+couple of Sundays before. Then he had remarked—making the most of the
+advantage of his years—that it frightened him quite enough to find
+himself dedicated to the entertainment of a little foreign girl. There
+were girls he wasn’t afraid of—he was quite bold with little Americans.
+Thus it was that she had defended herself to the end—“Oh but I’m almost
+American too. That’s what mamma has wanted me to be—I mean _like_ that;
+for she has wanted me to have lots of freedom. She has known such good
+results from it.”
+
+She was fairly beautiful to him—a faint pastel in an oval frame: he
+thought of her already as of some lurking image in a long gallery, the
+portrait of a small old-time princess of whom nothing was known but
+that she had died young. Little Jeanne wasn’t, doubtless, to die young,
+but one couldn’t, all the same, bear on her lightly enough. It was
+bearing hard, it was bearing as _he_, in any case, wouldn’t bear, to
+concern himself, in relation to her, with the question of a young man.
+Odious really the question of a young man; one didn’t treat such a
+person as a maid-servant suspected of a “follower.” And then young men,
+young men—well, the thing was their business simply, or was at all
+events hers. She was fluttered, fairly fevered—to the point of a little
+glitter that came and went in her eyes and a pair of pink spots that
+stayed in her cheeks—with the great adventure of dining out and with
+the greater one still, possibly, of finding a gentleman whom she must
+think of as very, very old, a gentleman with eye-glasses, wrinkles, a
+long grizzled moustache. She spoke the prettiest English, our friend
+thought, that he had ever heard spoken, just as he had believed her a
+few minutes before to be speaking the prettiest French. He wondered
+almost wistfully if such a sweep of the lyre didn’t react on the spirit
+itself; and his fancy had in fact, before he knew it, begun so to stray
+and embroider that he finally found himself, absent and extravagant,
+sitting with the child in a friendly silence. Only by this time he felt
+her flutter to have fortunately dropped and that she was more at her
+ease. She trusted him, liked him, and it was to come back to him
+afterwards that she had told him things. She had dipped into the
+waiting medium at last and found neither surge nor chill—nothing but
+the small splash she could herself make in the pleasant warmth, nothing
+but the safety of dipping and dipping again. At the end of the ten
+minutes he was to spend with her his impression—with all it had thrown
+off and all it had taken in—was complete. She had been free, as she
+knew freedom, partly to show him that, unlike other little persons she
+knew, she had imbibed that ideal. She was delightfully quaint about
+herself, but the vision of what she had imbibed was what most held him.
+It really consisted, he was soon enough to feel, in just one great
+little matter, the fact that, whatever her nature, she was
+thoroughly—he had to cast about for the word, but it came—bred. He
+couldn’t of course on so short an acquaintance speak for her nature,
+but the idea of breeding was what she had meanwhile dropped into his
+mind. He had never yet known it so sharply presented. Her mother gave
+it, no doubt; but her mother, to make that less sensible, gave so much
+else besides, and on neither of the two previous occasions,
+extraordinary woman, Strether felt, anything like what she was giving
+tonight. Little Jeanne was a case, an exquisite case of education;
+whereas the Countess, whom it so amused him to think of by that
+denomination, was a case, also exquisite, of—well, he didn’t know what.
+
+“He has wonderful taste, _notre jeune homme_”: this was what Gloriani
+said to him on turning away from the inspection of a small picture
+suspended near the door of the room. The high celebrity in question had
+just come in, apparently in search of Mademoiselle de Vionnet, but
+while Strether had got up from beside her their fellow guest, with his
+eye sharply caught, had paused for a long look. The thing was a
+landscape, of no size, but of the French school, as our friend was glad
+to feel he knew, and also of a quality—which he liked to think he
+should also have guessed; its frame was large out of proportion to the
+canvas, and he had never seen a person look at anything, he thought,
+just as Gloriani, with his nose very near and quick movements of the
+head from side to side and bottom to top, examined this feature of
+Chad’s collection. The artist used that word the next moment smiling
+courteously, wiping his nippers and looking round him further—paying
+the place in short by the very manner of his presence and by something
+Strether fancied he could make out in this particular glance, such a
+tribute as, to the latter’s sense, settled many things once for all.
+Strether was conscious at this instant, for that matter, as he hadn’t
+yet been, of how, round about him, quite without him, they _were_
+consistently settled. Gloriani’s smile, deeply Italian, he considered,
+and finely inscrutable, had had for him, during dinner, at which they
+were not neighbours, an indefinite greeting; but the quality in it was
+gone that had appeared on the other occasion to turn him inside out; it
+was as if even the momentary link supplied by the doubt between them
+had snapped. He was conscious now of the final reality, which was that
+there wasn’t so much a doubt as a difference altogether; all the more
+that over the difference the famous sculptor seemed to signal almost
+condolingly, yet oh how vacantly! as across some great flat sheet of
+water. He threw out the bridge of a charming hollow civility on which
+Strether wouldn’t have trusted his own full weight a moment. That idea,
+even though but transient and perhaps belated, had performed the office
+of putting Strether more at his ease, and the blurred picture had
+already dropped—dropped with the sound of something else said and with
+his becoming aware, by another quick turn, that Gloriani was now on the
+sofa talking with Jeanne, while he himself had in his ears again the
+familiar friendliness and the elusive meaning of the “Oh, oh, oh!” that
+had made him, a fortnight before, challenge Miss Barrace in vain. She
+had always the air, this picturesque and original lady, who struck him,
+so oddly, as both antique and modern—she had always the air of taking
+up some joke that one had already had out with her. The point itself,
+no doubt, was what was antique, and the use she made of it what was
+modern. He felt just now that her good-natured irony did bear on
+something, and it troubled him a little that she wouldn’t be more
+explicit only assuring him, with the pleasure of observation so visible
+in her, that she wouldn’t tell him more for the world. He could take
+refuge but in asking her what she had done with Waymarsh, though it
+must be added that he felt himself a little on the way to a clue after
+she had answered that this personage was, in the other room, engaged in
+conversation with Madame de Vionnet. He stared a moment at the image of
+such a conjunction; then, for Miss Barrace’s benefit, he wondered. “Is
+she too then under the charm—?”
+
+“No, not a bit”—Miss Barrace was prompt. “She makes nothing of him.
+She’s bored. She won’t help you with him.”
+
+“Oh,” Strether laughed, “she can’t do everything.
+
+“Of course not—wonderful as she is. Besides, he makes nothing of _her_.
+She won’t take him from me—though she wouldn’t, no doubt, having other
+affairs in hand, even if she could. I’ve never,” said Miss Barrace,
+“seen her fail with any one before. And to-night, when she’s so
+magnificent, it would seem to her strange—if she minded. So at any rate
+I have him all. _Je suis tranquille!_”
+
+Strether understood, so far as that went; but he was feeling for his
+clue. “She strikes you to-night as particularly magnificent?”
+
+“Surely. Almost as I’ve never seen her. Doesn’t she you? Why it’s _for_
+you.”
+
+He persisted in his candour. “‘For’ me—?”
+
+“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Miss Barrace, who persisted in the opposite of that
+quality.
+
+“Well,” he acutely admitted, “she _is_ different. She’s gay.”
+
+“She’s gay!” Miss Barrace laughed. “And she has beautiful
+shoulders—though there’s nothing different in that.”
+
+“No,” said Strether, “one was sure of her shoulders. It isn’t her
+shoulders.”
+
+His companion, with renewed mirth and the finest sense, between the
+puffs of her cigarette, of the drollery of things, appeared to find
+their conversation highly delightful. “Yes, it isn’t her shoulders.”
+
+“What then is it?” Strether earnestly enquired.
+
+“Why, it’s _she_—simply. It’s her mood. It’s her charm.”
+
+“Of course it’s her charm, but we’re speaking of the difference.”
+“Well,” Miss Barrace explained, “she’s just brilliant, as we used to
+say. That’s all. She’s various. She’s fifty women.”
+
+“Ah but only one”—Strether kept it clear—“at a time.”
+
+“Perhaps. But in fifty times—!”
+
+“Oh we shan’t come to that,” our friend declared; and the next moment
+he had moved in another direction. “Will you answer me a plain
+question? Will she ever divorce?”
+
+Miss Barrace looked at him through all her tortoise-shell. “Why should
+she?”
+
+It wasn’t what he had asked for, he signified; but he met it well
+enough. “To marry Chad.”
+
+“Why should she marry Chad?”
+
+“Because I’m convinced she’s very fond of him. She has done wonders for
+him.”
+
+“Well then, how could she do more? Marrying a man, or woman either,”
+Miss Barrace sagely went on, “is never the wonder for any Jack and Jill
+can bring _that_ off. The wonder is their doing such things without
+marrying.”
+
+Strether considered a moment this proposition. “You mean it’s so
+beautiful for our friends simply to go on so?”
+
+But whatever he said made her laugh. “Beautiful.”
+
+He nevertheless insisted. “And _that_ because it’s disinterested?”
+
+She was now, however, suddenly tired of the question. “Yes then—call it
+that. Besides, she’ll never divorce. Don’t, moreover,” she added,
+“believe everything you hear about her husband.”
+
+“He’s not then,” Strether asked, “a wretch?”
+
+“Oh yes. But charming.”
+
+“Do you know him?”
+
+“I’ve met him. He’s _bien aimable_.”
+
+“To every one but his wife?”
+
+“Oh for all I know, to her too—to any, to every woman. I hope you at
+any rate,” she pursued with a quick change, “appreciate the care I take
+of Mr. Waymarsh.”
+
+“Oh immensely.” But Strether was not yet in line. “At all events,” he
+roundly brought out, “the attachment’s an innocent one.”
+
+“Mine and his? Ah,” she laughed, “don’t rob it of _all_ interest!”
+
+“I mean our friend’s here—to the lady we’ve been speaking of.” That was
+what he had settled to as an indirect but none the less closely
+involved consequence of his impression of Jeanne. That was where he
+meant to stay. “It’s innocent,” he repeated—“I see the whole thing.”
+
+Mystified by his abrupt declaration, she had glanced over at Gloriani
+as at the unnamed subject of his allusion, but the next moment she had
+understood; though indeed not before Strether had noticed her momentary
+mistake and wondered what might possibly be behind that too. He already
+knew that the sculptor admired Madame de Vionnet; but did this
+admiration also represent an attachment of which the innocence was
+discussable? He was moving verily in a strange air and on ground not of
+the firmest. He looked hard for an instant at Miss Barrace, but she had
+already gone on. “All right with Mr. Newsome? Why of course she
+is!”—and she got gaily back to the question of her own good friend. “I
+dare say you’re surprised that I’m not worn out with all I see—it being
+so much!—of Sitting Bull. But I’m not, you know—I don’t mind him; I
+bear up, and we get on beautifully. I’m very strange; I’m like that;
+and often I can’t explain. There are people who are supposed
+interesting or remarkable or whatever, and who bore me to death; and
+then there are others as to whom nobody can understand what anybody
+sees in them—in whom I see no end of things.” Then after she had smoked
+a moment, “He’s touching, you know,” she said.
+
+“‘Know’?” Strether echoed—“don’t I, indeed? We must move you almost to
+tears.”
+
+“Oh but I don’t mean _you!_” she laughed.
+
+“You ought to then, for the worst sign of all—as I must have it for
+you—is that you can’t help me. That’s when a woman pities.”
+
+“Ah but I do help you!” she cheerfully insisted.
+
+Again he looked at her hard, and then after a pause: “No you don’t!”
+
+Her tortoise-shell, on its long chain, rattled down. “I help you with
+Sitting Bull. That’s a good deal.”
+
+“Oh that, yes.” But Strether hesitated. “Do you mean he talks of me?”
+
+“So that I have to defend you? No, never.’
+
+“I see,” Strether mused. “It’s too deep.”
+
+“That’s his only fault,” she returned—“that everything, with him, is
+too deep. He has depths of silence—which he breaks only at the longest
+intervals by a remark. And when the remark comes it’s always something
+he has seen or felt for himself—never a bit banal. _That_ would be what
+one might have feared and what would kill me. But never.” She smoked
+again as she thus, with amused complacency, appreciated her
+acquisition. “And never about you. We keep clear of you. We’re
+wonderful. But I’ll tell you what he does do,” she continued: “he tries
+to make me presents.”
+
+“Presents?” poor Strether echoed, conscious with a pang that _he_
+hadn’t yet tried that in any quarter.
+
+“Why you see,” she explained, “he’s as fine as ever in the victoria; so
+that when I leave him, as I often do almost for hours—he likes it so—at
+the doors of shops, the sight of him there helps me, when I come out,
+to know my carriage away off in the rank. But sometimes, for a change,
+he goes with me into the shops, and then I’ve all I can do to prevent
+his buying me things.”
+
+“He wants to ‘treat’ you?” Strether almost gasped at all he himself
+hadn’t thought of. He had a sense of admiration. “Oh he’s much more in
+the real tradition than I. Yes,” he mused, “it’s the sacred rage.”
+
+“The sacred rage, exactly!”—and Miss Barrace, who hadn’t before heard
+this term applied, recognised its bearing with a clap of her gemmed
+hands. “Now I do know why he’s not banal. But I do prevent him all the
+same—and if you saw what he sometimes selects—from buying. I save him
+hundreds and hundreds. I only take flowers.”
+
+“Flowers?” Strether echoed again with a rueful reflexion. How many
+nosegays had her present converser sent?
+
+“Innocent flowers,” she pursued, “as much as he likes. And he sends me
+splendours; he knows all the best places—he has found them for himself;
+he’s wonderful.”
+
+“He hasn’t told them to _me_,” her friend smiled, “he has a life of his
+own.” But Strether had swung back to the consciousness that for himself
+after all it never would have done. Waymarsh hadn’t Mrs. Waymarsh in
+the least to consider, whereas Lambert Strether had constantly, in the
+inmost honour of his thoughts, to consider Mrs. Newsome. He liked
+moreover to feel how much his friend was in the real tradition. Yet he
+had his conclusion. “_What_ a rage it is!” He had worked it out. “It’s
+an opposition.”
+
+She followed, but at a distance. “That’s what I feel. Yet to what?”
+
+“Well, he thinks, you know, that _I’ve_ a life of my own. And I
+haven’t!”
+
+“You haven’t?” She showed doubt, and her laugh confirmed it. “Oh, oh,
+oh!”
+
+“No—not for myself. I seem to have a life only for other people.”
+
+“Ah for them and _with_ them! Just now for instance with—”
+
+“Well, with whom?” he asked before she had had time to say.
+
+His tone had the effect of making her hesitate and even, as he guessed,
+speak with a difference. “Say with Miss Gostrey. What do you do for
+_her?_” It really made him wonder. “Nothing at all!”
+
+
+ III
+
+Madame de Vionnet, having meanwhile come in, was at present close to
+them, and Miss Barrace hereupon, instead of risking a rejoinder, became
+again with a look that measured her from top to toe all mere
+long-handled appreciative tortoise-shell. She had struck our friend,
+from the first of her appearing, as dressed for a great occasion, and
+she met still more than on either of the others the conception
+reawakened in him at their garden-party, the idea of the _femme du
+monde_ in her habit as she lived. Her bare shoulders and arms were
+white and beautiful; the materials of her dress, a mixture, as he
+supposed, of silk and crape, were of a silvery grey so artfully
+composed as to give an impression of warm splendour; and round her neck
+she wore a collar of large old emeralds, the green note of which was
+more dimly repeated, at other points of her apparel, in embroidery, in
+enamel, in satin, in substances and textures vaguely rich. Her head,
+extremely fair and exquisitely festal, was like a happy fancy, a notion
+of the antique, on an old precious medal, some silver coin of the
+Renaissance; while her slim lightness and brightness, her gaiety, her
+expression, her decision, contributed to an effect that might have been
+felt by a poet as half mythological and half conventional. He could
+have compared her to a goddess still partly engaged in a morning cloud,
+or to a sea-nymph waist-high in the summer surge. Above all she
+suggested to him the reflexion that the _femme du monde_—in these
+finest developments of the type—was, like Cleopatra in the play, indeed
+various and multifold. She had aspects, characters, days, nights—or had
+them at least, showed them by a mysterious law of her own, when in
+addition to everything she happened also to be a woman of genius. She
+was an obscure person, a muffled person one day, and a showy person, an
+uncovered person the next. He thought of Madame de Vionnet to-night as
+showy and uncovered, though he felt the formula rough, because, thanks
+to one of the short-cuts of genius she had taken all his categories by
+surprise. Twice during dinner he had met Chad’s eyes in a longish look;
+but these communications had in truth only stirred up again old
+ambiguities—so little was it clear from them whether they were an
+appeal or an admonition. “You see how I’m fixed,” was what they
+appeared to convey; yet how he was fixed was exactly what Strether
+didn’t see. However, perhaps he should see now.
+
+“Are you capable of the very great kindness of going to relieve
+Newsome, for a few minutes, of the rather crushing responsibility of
+Madame Gloriani, while I say a word, if he’ll allow me, to Mr.
+Strether, of whom I’ve a question to ask? Our host ought to talk a bit
+to those other ladies, and I’ll come back in a minute to your rescue.”
+She made this proposal to Miss Barrace as if her consciousness of a
+special duty had just flickered-up, but that lady’s recognition of
+Strether’s little start at it—as at a betrayal on the speaker’s part of
+a domesticated state—was as mute as his own comment; and after an
+instant, when their fellow guest had good-naturedly left them, he had
+been given something else to think of. “Why has Maria so suddenly gone?
+Do you know?” That was the question Madame de Vionnet had brought with
+her.
+
+“I’m afraid I’ve no reason to give you but the simple reason I’ve had
+from her in a note—the sudden obligation to join in the south a sick
+friend who has got worse.”
+
+“Ah then she has been writing you?”
+
+“Not since she went—I had only a brief explanatory word before she
+started. I went to see her,” Strether explained—“it was the day after I
+called on you—but she was already on her way, and her concierge told me
+that in case of my coming I was to be informed she had written to me. I
+found her note when I got home.”
+
+Madame de Vionnet listened with interest and with her eyes on
+Strether’s face; then her delicately decorated head had a small
+melancholy motion. “She didn’t write to _me_. I went to see her,” she
+added, “almost immediately after I had seen you, and as I assured her I
+would do when I met her at Gloriani’s. She hadn’t then told me she was
+to be absent, and I felt at her door as if I understood. She’s
+absent—with all respect to her sick friend, though I know indeed she
+has plenty—so that I may not see her. She doesn’t want to meet me
+again. Well,” she continued with a beautiful conscious mildness, “I
+liked and admired her beyond every one in the old time, and she knew
+it—perhaps that’s precisely what has made her go—and I dare say I
+haven’t lost her for ever.” Strether still said nothing; he had a
+horror, as he now thought of himself, of being in question between
+women—was in fact already quite enough on his way to that, and there
+was moreover, as it came to him, perceptibly, something behind these
+allusions and professions that, should he take it in, would square but
+ill with his present resolve to simplify. It was as if, for him, all
+the same, her softness and sadness were sincere. He felt that not less
+when she soon went on: “I’m extremely glad of her happiness.” But it
+also left him mute—sharp and fine though the imputation it conveyed.
+What it conveyed was that _he_ was Maria Gostrey’s happiness, and for
+the least little instant he had the impulse to challenge the thought.
+He could have done so however only by saying “What then do you suppose
+to be between us?” and he was wonderfully glad a moment later not to
+have spoken. He would rather seem stupid any day than fatuous, and he
+drew back as well, with a smothered inward shudder, from the
+consideration of what women—of highly-developed type in
+particular—might think of each other. Whatever he had come out for he
+hadn’t come to go into that; so that he absolutely took up nothing his
+interlocutress had now let drop. Yet, though he had kept away from her
+for days, had laid wholly on herself the burden of their meeting again,
+she hadn’t a gleam of irritation to show him. “Well, about Jeanne now?”
+she smiled—it had the gaiety with which she had originally come in. He
+felt it on the instant to represent her motive and real errand. But he
+had been schooling her of a truth to say much in proportion to his
+little. “_Do_ you make out that she has a sentiment? I mean for Mr.
+Newsome.”
+
+Almost resentful, Strether could at last be prompt. “How can I make out
+such things?”
+
+She remained perfectly good-natured. “Ah but they’re beautiful little
+things, and you make out—don’t pretend—everything in the world. Haven’t
+you,” she asked, “been talking with her?”
+
+“Yes, but not about Chad. At least not much.”
+
+“Oh you don’t require ‘much’!” she reassuringly declared. But she
+immediately changed her ground. “I hope you remember your promise of
+the other day.”
+
+“To ‘save’ you, as you called it?”
+
+“I call it so still. You _will?_” she insisted. “You haven’t repented?”
+
+He wondered. “No—but I’ve been thinking what I meant.”
+
+She kept it up. “And not, a little, what _I_ did?”
+
+“No—that’s not necessary. It will be enough if I know what I meant
+myself.”
+
+“And don’t you know,” she asked, “by this time?”
+
+Again he had a pause. “I think you ought to leave it to me. But how
+long,” he added, “do you give me?”
+
+“It seems to me much more a question of how long you give _me_. Doesn’t
+our friend here himself, at any rate,” she went on, “perpetually make
+me present to you?”
+
+“Not,” Strether replied, “by ever speaking of you to me.”
+
+“He never does that?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+She considered, and, if the fact was disconcerting to her, effectually
+concealed it. The next minute indeed she had recovered. “No, he
+wouldn’t. But do you _need_ that?”
+
+Her emphasis was wonderful, and though his eyes had been wandering he
+looked at her longer now. “I see what you mean.”
+
+“Of course you see what I mean.”
+
+Her triumph was gentle, and she really had tones to make justice weep.
+“I’ve before me what he owes you.”
+
+“Admit then that that’s something,” she said, yet still with the same
+discretion in her pride.
+
+He took in this note but went straight on. “You’ve made of him what I
+see, but what I don’t see is how in the world you’ve done it.”
+
+“Ah that’s another question!” she smiled. “The point is of what use is
+your declining to know me when to know Mr. Newsome—as you do me the
+honour to find him—_is_ just to know me.”
+
+“I see,” he mused, still with his eyes on her. “I shouldn’t have met
+you to-night.”
+
+She raised and dropped her linked hands. “It doesn’t matter. If I trust
+you why can’t you a little trust me too? And why can’t you also,” she
+asked in another tone, “trust yourself?” But she gave him no time to
+reply. “Oh I shall be so easy for you! And I’m glad at any rate you’ve
+seen my child.”
+
+“I’m glad too,” he said; “but she does you no good.”
+
+“No good?”—Madame de Vionnet had a clear stare. “Why she’s an angel of
+light.”
+
+“That’s precisely the reason. Leave her alone. Don’t try to find out. I
+mean,” he explained, “about what you spoke to me of—the way she feels.”
+
+His companion wondered. “Because one really won’t?”
+
+“Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to. She’s the most
+charming creature I’ve ever seen. Therefore don’t touch her. Don’t
+know—don’t want to know. And moreover—yes—you _won’t_.”
+
+It was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in. “As a favour to
+you?”
+
+“Well—since you ask me.”
+
+“Anything, everything you ask,” she smiled. “I shan’t know then—never.
+Thank you,” she added with peculiar gentleness as she turned away.
+
+The sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if he had
+been tripped up and had a fall. In the very act of arranging with her
+for his independence he had, under pressure from a particular
+perception, inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed himself, and,
+with her subtlety sensitive on the spot to an advantage, she had driven
+in by a single word a little golden nail, the sharp intention of which
+he signally felt. He hadn’t detached, he had more closely connected
+himself, and his eyes, as he considered with some intensity this
+circumstance, met another pair which had just come within their range
+and which struck him as reflecting his sense of what he had done. He
+recognised them at the same moment as those of little Bilham, who had
+apparently drawn near on purpose to speak to him, and little Bilham
+wasn’t, in the conditions, the person to whom his heart would be most
+closed. They were seated together a minute later at the angle of the
+room obliquely opposite the corner in which Gloriani was still engaged
+with Jeanne de Vionnet, to whom at first and in silence their attention
+had been benevolently given. “I can’t see for my life,” Strether had
+then observed, “how a young fellow of any spirit—such a one as you for
+instance—can be admitted to the sight of that young lady without being
+hard hit. Why don’t you go in, little Bilham?” He remembered the tone
+into which he had been betrayed on the garden-bench at the sculptor’s
+reception, and this might make up for that by being much more the right
+sort of thing to say to a young man worthy of any advice at all. “There
+_would_ be some reason.”
+
+“Some reason for what?”
+
+“Why for hanging on here.”
+
+“To offer my hand and fortune to Mademoiselle de Vionnet?”
+
+“Well,” Strether asked, “to what lovelier apparition _could_ you offer
+them? She’s the sweetest little thing I’ve ever seen.”
+
+“She’s certainly immense. I mean she’s the real thing. I believe the
+pale pink petals are folded up there for some wondrous efflorescence in
+time; to open, that is, to some great golden sun. _I’m_ unfortunately
+but a small farthing candle. What chance in such a field for a poor
+little painter-man?”
+
+“Oh you’re good enough,” Strether threw out.
+
+“Certainly I’m good enough. We’re good enough, I consider, _nous
+autres_, for anything. But she’s _too_ good. There’s the difference.
+They wouldn’t look at me.”
+
+Strether, lounging on his divan and still charmed by the young girl,
+whose eyes had consciously strayed to him, he fancied, with a vague
+smile—Strether, enjoying the whole occasion as with dormant pulses at
+last awake and in spite of new material thrust upon him, thought over
+his companion’s words. “Whom do you mean by ‘they’? She and her
+mother?”
+
+“She and her mother. And she has a father too, who, whatever else he
+may be, certainly can’t be indifferent to the possibilities she
+represents. Besides, there’s Chad.”
+
+Strether was silent a little. “Ah but he doesn’t care for her—not, I
+mean, it appears, after all, in the sense I’m speaking of. He’s _not_
+in love with her.”
+
+“No—but he’s her best friend; after her mother. He’s very fond of her.
+He has his ideas about what can be done for her.”
+
+“Well, it’s very strange!” Strether presently remarked with a sighing
+sense of fulness.
+
+“Very strange indeed. That’s just the beauty of it. Isn’t it very much
+the kind of beauty you had in mind,” little Bilham went on, “when you
+were so wonderful and so inspiring to me the other day? Didn’t you
+adjure me, in accents I shall never forget, to see, while I’ve a
+chance, everything I can?—and _really_ to see, for it must have been
+that only you meant. Well, you did me no end of good, and I’m doing my
+best. I _do_ make it out a situation.”
+
+“So do I!” Strether went on after a moment. But he had the next minute
+an inconsequent question. “How comes Chad so mixed up, anyway?”
+
+“Ah, ah, ah!”—and little Bilham fell back on his cushions.
+
+It reminded our friend of Miss Barrace, and he felt again the brush of
+his sense of moving in a maze of mystic closed allusions. Yet he kept
+hold of his thread. “Of course I understand really; only the general
+transformation makes me occasionally gasp. Chad with such a voice in
+the settlement of the future of a little countess—no,” he declared, “it
+takes more time! You say moreover,” he resumed, “that we’re inevitably,
+people like you and me, out of the running. The curious fact remains
+that Chad himself isn’t. The situation doesn’t make for it, but in a
+different one he could have her if he would.”
+
+“Yes, but that’s only because he’s rich and because there’s a
+possibility of his being richer. They won’t think of anything but a
+great name or a great fortune.”
+
+“Well,” said Strether, “he’ll have no great fortune on _these_ lines.
+He must stir his stumps.”
+
+“Is that,” little Bilham enquired, “what you were saying to Madame de
+Vionnet?”
+
+“No—I don’t say much to her. Of course, however,” Strether continued,
+“he can make sacrifices if he likes.”
+
+Little Bilham had a pause. “Oh he’s not keen for sacrifices; or thinks,
+that is, possibly, that he has made enough.”
+
+“Well, it _is_ virtuous,” his companion observed with some decision.
+
+“That’s exactly,” the young man dropped after a moment, “what I mean.”
+
+It kept Strether himself silent a little. “I’ve made it out for
+myself,” he then went on; “I’ve really, within the last half-hour, got
+hold of it. I understand it in short at last; which at first—when you
+originally spoke to me—I didn’t. Nor when Chad originally spoke to me
+either.”
+
+“Oh,” said little Bilham, “I don’t think that at that time you believed
+me.”
+
+“Yes—I did; and I believed Chad too. It would have been odious and
+unmannerly—as well as quite perverse—if I hadn’t. What interest have
+you in deceiving me?”
+
+The young man cast about. “What interest have I?”
+
+“Yes. Chad _might_ have. But you?”
+
+“Ah, ah, ah!” little Bilham exclaimed.
+
+It might, on repetition, as a mystification, have irritated our friend
+a little, but he knew, once more, as we have seen, where he was, and
+his being proof against everything was only another attestation that he
+meant to stay there. “I couldn’t, without my own impression, realise.
+She’s a tremendously clever brilliant capable woman, and with an
+extraordinary charm on top of it all—the charm we surely all of us this
+evening know what to think of. It isn’t every clever brilliant capable
+woman that has it. In fact it’s rare with any woman. So there you are,”
+Strether proceeded as if not for little Bilham’s benefit alone. “I
+understand what a relation with such a woman—what such a high fine
+friendship—may be. It can’t be vulgar or coarse, anyway—and that’s the
+point.”
+
+“Yes, that’s the point,” said little Bilham. “It can’t be vulgar or
+coarse. And, bless us and save us, it _isn’t!_ It’s, upon my word, the
+very finest thing I ever saw in my life, and the most distinguished.”
+
+Strether, from beside him and leaning back with him as he leaned,
+dropped on him a momentary look which filled a short interval and of
+which he took no notice. He only gazed before him with intent
+participation. “Of course what it has done for him,” Strether at all
+events presently pursued, “of course what it has done for him—that is
+as to _how_ it has so wonderfully worked—isn’t a thing I pretend to
+understand. I’ve to take it as I find it. There he is.”
+
+“There he is!” little Bilham echoed. “And it’s really and truly she. I
+don’t understand either, even with my longer and closer opportunity.
+But I’m like you,” he added; “I can admire and rejoice even when I’m a
+little in the dark. You see I’ve watched it for some three years, and
+especially for this last. He wasn’t so bad before it as I seem to have
+made out that you think—”
+
+“Oh I don’t think anything now!” Strether impatiently broke in: “that
+is but what I _do_ think! I mean that originally, for her to have cared
+for him—”
+
+“There must have been stuff in him? Oh yes, there was stuff indeed, and
+much more of it than ever showed, I dare say, at home. Still, you
+know,” the young man in all fairness developed, “there was room for
+her, and that’s where she came in. She saw her chance and took it.
+That’s what strikes me as having been so fine. But of course,” he wound
+up, “he liked her first.”
+
+“Naturally,” said Strether.
+
+“I mean that they first met somehow and somewhere—I believe in some
+American house—and she, without in the least then intending it, made
+her impression. Then with time and opportunity he made his; and after
+_that_ she was as bad as he.”
+
+Strether vaguely took it up. “As ‘bad’?”
+
+“She began, that is, to care—to care very much. Alone, and in her
+horrid position, she found it, when once she had started, an interest.
+It was, it is, an interest, and it did—it continues to do—a lot for
+herself as well. So she still cares. She cares in fact,” said little
+Bilham thoughtfully “more.”
+
+Strether’s theory that it was none of his business was somehow not
+damaged by the way he took this. “More, you mean, than he?” On which
+his companion looked round at him, and now for an instant their eyes
+met. “More than he?” he repeated.
+
+Little Bilham, for as long, hung fire. “Will you never tell any one?”
+
+Strether thought. “Whom should I tell?”
+
+“Why I supposed you reported regularly—”
+
+“To people at home?”—Strether took him up. “Well, I won’t tell them
+this.”
+
+The young man at last looked away. “Then she does now care more than
+he.”
+
+“Oh!” Strether oddly exclaimed.
+
+But his companion immediately met it. “Haven’t you after all had your
+impression of it? That’s how you’ve got hold of him.”
+
+“Ah but I haven’t got hold of him!”
+
+“Oh I say!” But it was all little Bilham said.
+
+“It’s at any rate none of my business. I mean,” Strether explained,
+“nothing else than getting hold of him is.” It appeared, however, to
+strike him as his business to add: “The fact remains nevertheless that
+she has saved him.”
+
+Little Bilham just waited. “I thought that was what _you_ were to do.”
+
+But Strether had his answer ready. “I’m speaking—in connexion with
+her—of his manners and morals, his character and life. I’m speaking of
+him as a person to deal with and talk with and live with—speaking of
+him as a social animal.”
+
+“And isn’t it as a social animal that you also want him?”
+
+“Certainly; so that it’s as if she had saved him _for_ us.”
+
+“It strikes you accordingly then,” the young man threw out, “as for you
+all to save _her?_”
+
+“Oh for us ‘all’—!” Strether could but laugh at that. It brought him
+back, however, to the point he had really wished to make. “They’ve
+accepted their situation—hard as it is. They’re not free—at least she’s
+not; but they take what’s left to them. It’s a friendship, of a
+beautiful sort; and that’s what makes them so strong. They’re straight,
+they feel; and they keep each other up. It’s doubtless she, however,
+who, as you yourself have hinted, feels it most.”
+
+Little Bilham appeared to wonder what he had hinted. “Feels most that
+they’re straight?”
+
+“Well, feels that _she_ is, and the strength that comes from it. She
+keeps _him_ up—she keeps the whole thing up. When people are able to
+it’s fine. She’s wonderful, wonderful, as Miss Barrace says; and he is,
+in his way, too; however, as a mere man, he may sometimes rebel and not
+feel that he finds his account in it. She has simply given him an
+immense moral lift, and what that can explain is prodigious. That’s why
+I speak of it as a situation. It _is_ one, if there ever was.” And
+Strether, with his head back and his eyes on the ceiling, seemed to
+lose himself in the vision of it.
+
+His companion attended deeply. “You state it much better than I could.”
+“Oh you see it doesn’t concern you.”
+
+Little Bilham considered. “I thought you said just now that it doesn’t
+concern you either.”
+
+“Well, it doesn’t a bit as Madame de Vionnet’s affair. But as we were
+again saying just now, what did I come out for but to save him?”
+
+“Yes—to remove him.”
+
+“To save him _by_ removal; to win him over to _himself_ thinking it
+best he shall take up business—thinking he must immediately do
+therefore what’s necessary to that end.”
+
+“Well,” said little Bilham after a moment, “you _have_ won him over. He
+does think it best. He has within a day or two again said to me as
+much.”
+
+“And that,” Strether asked, “is why you consider that he cares less
+than she?”
+
+“Cares less for her than she for him? Yes, that’s one of the reasons.
+But other things too have given me the impression. A man, don’t you
+think?” little Bilham presently pursued, “_Can’t_, in such conditions,
+care so much as a woman. It takes different conditions to make him, and
+then perhaps he cares more. Chad,” he wound up, “has his possible
+future before him.”
+
+“Are you speaking of his business future?”
+
+“No—on the contrary; of the other, the future of what you so justly
+call their situation. M. de Vionnet may live for ever.”
+
+“So that they can’t marry?”
+
+The young man waited a moment. “Not being able to marry is all they’ve
+with any confidence to look forward to. A woman—a particular woman—may
+stand that strain. But can a man?” he propounded.
+
+Strether’s answer was as prompt as if he had already, for himself,
+worked it out. “Not without a very high ideal of conduct. But that’s
+just what we’re attributing to Chad. And how, for that matter,” he
+mused, “does his going to America diminish the particular strain?
+Wouldn’t it seem rather to add to it?”
+
+“Out of sight out of mind!” his companion laughed. Then more bravely:
+“Wouldn’t distance lessen the torment?” But before Strether could
+reply, “The thing is, you see, Chad ought to marry!” he wound up.
+
+Strether, for a little, appeared to think of it. “If you talk of
+torments you don’t diminish mine!” he then broke out. The next moment
+he was on his feet with a question. “He ought to marry whom?”
+
+Little Bilham rose more slowly. “Well, some one he _can_—some
+thoroughly nice girl.”
+
+Strether’s eyes, as they stood together, turned again to Jeanne. “Do
+you mean _her?_”
+
+His friend made a sudden strange face. “After being in love with her
+mother? No.”
+
+“But isn’t it exactly your idea that he _isn’t_ in love with her
+mother?”
+
+His friend once more had a pause. “Well, he isn’t at any rate in love
+with Jeanne.”
+
+“I dare say not.”
+
+“How _can_ he be with any other woman?”
+
+“Oh that I admit. But being in love isn’t, you know, here”—little
+Bilham spoke in friendly reminder—“thought necessary, in strictness,
+for marriage.”
+
+“And what torment—to call a torment—can there ever possibly be with a
+woman like that?” As if from the interest of his own question Strether
+had gone on without hearing. “Is it for her to have turned a man out so
+wonderfully, too, only for somebody else?” He appeared to make a point
+of this, and little Bilham looked at him now. “When it’s for each other
+that people give things up they don’t miss them.” Then he threw off as
+with an extravagance of which he was conscious: “Let them face the
+future together!”
+
+Little Bilham looked at him indeed. “You mean that after all he
+shouldn’t go back?”
+
+“I mean that if he gives her up—!”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself.” But Strether spoke with a
+sound that might have passed for a laugh.
+
+
+
+
+ Volume II
+
+
+
+
+Book Seventh
+
+
+ I
+
+It wasn’t the first time Strether had sat alone in the great dim
+church—still less was it the first of his giving himself up, so far as
+conditions permitted, to its beneficent action on his nerves. He had
+been to Notre Dame with Waymarsh, he had been there with Miss Gostrey,
+he had been there with Chad Newsome, and had found the place, even in
+company, such a refuge from the obsession of his problem that, with
+renewed pressure from that source, he had not unnaturally recurred to a
+remedy meeting the case, for the moment, so indirectly, no doubt, but
+so relievingly. He was conscious enough that it was only for the
+moment, but good moments—if he could call them good—still had their
+value for a man who by this time struck himself as living almost
+disgracefully from hand to mouth. Having so well learnt the way, he had
+lately made the pilgrimage more than once by himself—had quite stolen
+off, taking an unnoticed chance and making no point of speaking of the
+adventure when restored to his friends.
+
+His great friend, for that matter, was still absent, as well as
+remarkably silent; even at the end of three weeks Miss Gostrey hadn’t
+come back. She wrote to him from Mentone, admitting that he must judge
+her grossly inconsequent—perhaps in fact for the time odiously
+faithless; but asking for patience, for a deferred sentence, throwing
+herself in short on his generosity. For her too, she could assure him,
+life was complicated—more complicated than he could have guessed; she
+had moreover made certain of him—certain of not wholly missing him on
+her return—before her disappearance. If furthermore she didn’t burden
+him with letters it was frankly because of her sense of the other great
+commerce he had to carry on. He himself, at the end of a fortnight, had
+written twice, to show how his generosity could be trusted; but he
+reminded himself in each case of Mrs. Newsome’s epistolary manner at
+the times when Mrs. Newsome kept off delicate ground. He sank his
+problem, he talked of Waymarsh and Miss Barrace, of little Bilham and
+the set over the river, with whom he had again had tea, and he was
+easy, for convenience, about Chad and Madame de Vionnet and Jeanne. He
+admitted that he continued to see them, he was decidedly so confirmed a
+haunter of Chad’s premises and that young man’s practical intimacy with
+them was so undeniably great; but he had his reason for not attempting
+to render for Miss Gostrey’s benefit the impression of these last days.
+That would be to tell her too much about himself—it being at present
+just from himself he was trying to escape.
+
+This small struggle sprang not a little, in its way, from the same
+impulse that had now carried him across to Notre Dame; the impulse to
+let things be, to give them time to justify themselves or at least to
+pass. He was aware of having no errand in such a place but the desire
+not to be, for the hour, in certain other places; a sense of safety, of
+simplification, which each time he yielded to it he amused himself by
+thinking of as a private concession to cowardice. The great church had
+no altar for his worship, no direct voice for his soul; but it was none
+the less soothing even to sanctity; for he could feel while there what
+he couldn’t elsewhere, that he was a plain tired man taking the holiday
+he had earned. He was tired, but he wasn’t plain—that was the pity and
+the trouble of it; he was able, however, to drop his problem at the
+door very much as if it had been the copper piece that he deposited, on
+the threshold, in the receptacle of the inveterate blind beggar. He
+trod the long dim nave, sat in the splendid choir, paused before the
+cluttered chapels of the east end, and the mighty monument laid upon
+him its spell. He might have been a student under the charm of a
+museum—which was exactly what, in a foreign town, in the afternoon of
+life, he would have liked to be free to be. This form of sacrifice did
+at any rate for the occasion as well as another; it made him quite
+sufficiently understand how, within the precinct, for the real refugee,
+the things of the world could fall into abeyance. That was the
+cowardice, probably—to dodge them, to beg the question, not to deal
+with it in the hard outer light; but his own oblivions were too brief,
+too vain, to hurt any one but himself, and he had a vague and fanciful
+kindness for certain persons whom he met, figures of mystery and
+anxiety, and whom, with observation for his pastime, he ranked as those
+who were fleeing from justice. Justice was outside, in the hard light,
+and injustice too; but one was as absent as the other from the air of
+the long aisles and the brightness of the many altars.
+
+Thus it was at all events that, one morning some dozen days after the
+dinner in the Boulevard Malesherbes at which Madame de Vionnet had been
+present with her daughter, he was called upon to play his part in an
+encounter that deeply stirred his imagination. He had the habit, in
+these contemplations, of watching a fellow visitant, here and there,
+from a respectable distance, remarking some note of behaviour, of
+penitence, of prostration, of the absolved, relieved state; this was
+the manner in which his vague tenderness took its course, the degree of
+demonstration to which it naturally had to confine itself. It hadn’t
+indeed so felt its responsibility as when on this occasion he suddenly
+measured the suggestive effect of a lady whose supreme stillness, in
+the shade of one of the chapels, he had two or three times noticed as
+he made, and made once more, his slow circuit. She wasn’t prostrate—not
+in any degree bowed, but she was strangely fixed, and her prolonged
+immobility showed her, while he passed and paused, as wholly given up
+to the need, whatever it was, that had brought her there. She only sat
+and gazed before her, as he himself often sat; but she had placed
+herself, as he never did, within the focus of the shrine, and she had
+lost herself, he could easily see, as he would only have liked to do.
+She was not a wandering alien, keeping back more than she gave, but one
+of the familiar, the intimate, the fortunate, for whom these dealings
+had a method and a meaning. She reminded our friend—since it was the
+way of nine tenths of his current impressions to act as recalls of
+things imagined—of some fine firm concentrated heroine of an old story,
+something he had heard, read, something that, had he had a hand for
+drama, he might himself have written, renewing her courage, renewing
+her clearness, in splendidly-protected meditation. Her back, as she
+sat, was turned to him, but his impression absolutely required that she
+should be young and interesting, and she carried her head moreover,
+even in the sacred shade, with a discernible faith in herself, a kind
+of implied conviction of consistency, security, impunity. But what had
+such a woman come for if she hadn’t come to pray? Strether’s reading of
+such matters was, it must be owned, confused; but he wondered if her
+attitude were some congruous fruit of absolution, of “indulgence.” He
+knew but dimly what indulgence, in such a place, might mean; yet he
+had, as with a soft sweep, a vision of how it might indeed add to the
+zest of active rites. All this was a good deal to have been denoted by
+a mere lurking figure who was nothing to him; but, the last thing
+before leaving the church, he had the surprise of a still deeper
+quickening.
+
+He had dropped upon a seat halfway down the nave and, again in the
+museum mood, was trying with head thrown back and eyes aloft, to
+reconstitute a past, to reduce it in fact to the convenient terms of
+Victor Hugo, whom, a few days before, giving the rein for once in a way
+to the joy of life, he had purchased in seventy bound volumes, a
+miracle of cheapness, parted with, he was assured by the shopman, at
+the price of the red-and-gold alone. He looked, doubtless, while he
+played his eternal nippers over Gothic glooms, sufficiently rapt in
+reverence; but what his thought had finally bumped against was the
+question of where, among packed accumulations, so multiform a wedge
+would be able to enter. Were seventy volumes in red-and-gold to be
+perhaps what he should most substantially have to show at Woollett as
+the fruit of his mission? It was a possibility that held him a
+minute—held him till he happened to feel that some one, unnoticed, had
+approached him and paused. Turning, he saw that a lady stood there as
+for a greeting, and he sprang up as he next took her, securely, for
+Madame de Vionnet, who appeared to have recognised him as she passed
+near him on her way to the door. She checked, quickly and gaily, a
+certain confusion in him, came to meet it, turned it back, by an art of
+her own; the confusion having threatened him as he knew her for the
+person he had lately been observing. She was the lurking figure of the
+dim chapel; she had occupied him more than she guessed; but it came to
+him in time, luckily, that he needn’t tell her and that no harm, after
+all, had been done. She herself, for that matter, straightway showing
+she felt their encounter as the happiest of accidents, had for him a
+“You come here too?” that despoiled surprise of every awkwardness.
+
+“I come often,” she said. “I love this place, but I’m terrible, in
+general, for churches. The old women who live in them all know me; in
+fact I’m already myself one of the old women. It’s like that, at all
+events, that I foresee I shall end.” Looking about for a chair, so that
+he instantly pulled one nearer, she sat down with him again to the
+sound of an “Oh, I like so much your also being fond—!”
+
+He confessed the extent of his feeling, though she left the object
+vague; and he was struck with the tact, the taste of her vagueness,
+which simply took for granted in him a sense of beautiful things. He
+was conscious of how much it was affected, this sense, by something
+subdued and discreet in the way she had arranged herself for her
+special object and her morning walk—he believed her to have come on
+foot; the way her slightly thicker veil was drawn—a mere touch, but
+everything; the composed gravity of her dress, in which, here and
+there, a dull wine-colour seemed to gleam faintly through black; the
+charming discretion of her small compact head; the quiet note, as she
+sat, of her folded, grey-gloved hands. It was, to Strether’s mind, as
+if she sat on her own ground, the light honours of which, at an open
+gate, she thus easily did him, while all the vastness and mystery of
+the domain stretched off behind. When people were so completely in
+possession they could be extraordinarily civil; and our friend had
+indeed at this hour a kind of revelation of her heritage. She was
+romantic for him far beyond what she could have guessed, and again he
+found his small comfort in the conviction that, subtle though she was,
+his impression must remain a secret from her. The thing that, once
+more, made him uneasy for secrets in general was this particular
+patience she could have with his own want of colour; albeit that on the
+other hand his uneasiness pretty well dropped after he had been for ten
+minutes as colourless as possible and at the same time as responsive.
+
+The moments had already, for that matter, drawn their deepest tinge
+from the special interest excited in him by his vision of his
+companion’s identity with the person whose attitude before the
+glimmering altar had so impressed him. This attitude fitted admirably
+into the stand he had privately taken about her connexion with Chad on
+the last occasion of his seeing them together. It helped him to stick
+fast at the point he had then reached; it was there he had resolved
+that he _would_ stick, and at no moment since had it seemed as easy to
+do so. Unassailably innocent was a relation that could make one of the
+parties to it so carry herself. If it wasn’t innocent why did she haunt
+the churches?—into which, given the woman he could believe he made out,
+she would never have come to flaunt an insolence of guilt. She haunted
+them for continued help, for strength, for peace—sublime support which,
+if one were able to look at it so, she found from day to day. They
+talked, in low easy tones and with lifted lingering looks, about the
+great monument and its history and its beauty—all of which, Madame de
+Vionnet professed, came to her most in the other, the outer view.
+“We’ll presently, after we go,” she said, “walk round it again if you
+like. I’m not in a particular hurry, and it will be pleasant to look at
+it well with you.” He had spoken of the great romancer and the great
+romance, and of what, to his imagination, they had done for the whole,
+mentioning to her moreover the exorbitance of his purchase, the seventy
+blazing volumes that were so out of proportion.
+
+“Out of proportion to what?”
+
+“Well, to any other plunge.” Yet he felt even as he spoke how at that
+instant he was plunging. He had made up his mind and was impatient to
+get into the air; for his purpose was a purpose to be uttered outside,
+and he had a fear that it might with delay still slip away from him.
+She however took her time; she drew out their quiet gossip as if she
+had wished to profit by their meeting, and this confirmed precisely an
+interpretation of her manner, of her mystery. While she rose, as he
+would have called it, to the question of Victor Hugo, her voice itself,
+the light low quaver of her deference to the solemnity about them,
+seemed to make her words mean something that they didn’t mean openly.
+Help, strength, peace, a sublime support—she hadn’t found so much of
+these things as that the amount wouldn’t be sensibly greater for any
+scrap his appearance of faith in her might enable her to feel in her
+hand. Every little, in a long strain, helped, and if he happened to
+affect her as a firm object she could hold on by, he wouldn’t jerk
+himself out of her reach. People in difficulties held on by what was
+nearest, and he was perhaps after all not further off than sources of
+comfort more abstract. It was as to this he had made up his mind; he
+had made it up, that is, to give her a sign. The sign would be
+that—though it was her own affair—he understood; the sign would be
+that—though it was her own affair—she was free to clutch. Since she
+took him for a firm object—much as he might to his own sense appear at
+times to rock—he would do his best to _be_ one.
+
+The end of it was that half an hour later they were seated together for
+an early luncheon at a wonderful, a delightful house of entertainment
+on the left bank—a place of pilgrimage for the knowing, they were both
+aware, the knowing who came, for its great renown, the homage of
+restless days, from the other end of the town. Strether had already
+been there three times—first with Miss Gostrey, then with Chad, then
+with Chad again and with Waymarsh and little Bilham, all of whom he had
+himself sagaciously entertained; and his pleasure was deep now on
+learning that Madame de Vionnet hadn’t yet been initiated. When he had
+said as they strolled round the church, by the river, acting at last on
+what, within, he had made up his mind to, “Will you, if you have time,
+come to déjeuner with me somewhere? For instance, if you know it, over
+there on the other side, which is so easy a walk”—and then had named
+the place; when he had done this she stopped short as for quick
+intensity, and yet deep difficulty, of response. She took in the
+proposal as if it were almost too charming to be true; and there had
+perhaps never yet been for her companion so unexpected a moment of
+pride—so fine, so odd a case, at any rate, as his finding himself thus
+able to offer to a person in such universal possession a new, a rare
+amusement. She had heard of the happy spot, but she asked him in reply
+to a further question how in the world he could suppose her to have
+been there. He supposed himself to have supposed that Chad might have
+taken her, and she guessed this the next moment to his no small
+discomfort.
+
+“Ah, let me explain,” she smiled, “that I don’t go about with him in
+public; I never have such chances—not having them otherwise—and it’s
+just the sort of thing that, as a quiet creature living in my hole, I
+adore.” It was more than kind of him to have thought of it—though,
+frankly, if he asked whether she had time she hadn’t a single minute.
+That however made no difference—she’d throw everything over. Every duty
+at home, domestic, maternal, social, awaited her; but it was a case for
+a high line. Her affairs would go to smash, but hadn’t one a right to
+one’s snatch of scandal when one was prepared to pay? It was on this
+pleasant basis of costly disorder, consequently, that they eventually
+seated themselves, on either side of a small table, at a window
+adjusted to the busy quay and the shining barge-burdened Seine; where,
+for an hour, in the matter of letting himself go, of diving deep,
+Strether was to feel he had touched bottom. He was to feel many things
+on this occasion, and one of the first of them was that he had
+travelled far since that evening in London, before the theatre, when
+his dinner with Maria Gostrey, between the pink-shaded candles, had
+struck him as requiring so many explanations. He had at that time
+gathered them in, the explanations—he had stored them up; but it was at
+present as if he had either soared above or sunk below them—he couldn’t
+tell which; he could somehow think of none that didn’t seem to leave
+the appearance of collapse and cynicism easier for him than lucidity.
+How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one, that he, for
+the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright clean ordered
+water-side life came in at the open window?—the mere way Madame de
+Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their
+_omelette aux tomates_, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, thanked
+him for everything almost with the smile of a child, while her grey
+eyes moved in and out of their talk, back to the quarter of the warm
+spring air, in which early summer had already begun to throb, and then
+back again to his face and their human questions.
+
+Their human questions became many before they had done—many more, as
+one after the other came up, than our friend’s free fancy had at all
+foreseen. The sense he had had before, the sense he had had repeatedly,
+the sense that the situation was running away with him, had never been
+so sharp as now; and all the more that he could perfectly put his
+finger on the moment it had taken the bit in its teeth. That accident
+had definitely occurred, the other evening, after Chad’s dinner; it had
+occurred, as he fully knew, at the moment when he interposed between
+this lady and her child, when he suffered himself so to discuss with
+her a matter closely concerning them that her own subtlety, marked by
+its significant “Thank you!” instantly sealed the occasion in her
+favour. Again he had held off for ten days, but the situation had
+continued out of hand in spite of that; the fact that it was running so
+fast being indeed just _why_ he had held off. What had come over him as
+he recognised her in the nave of the church was that holding off could
+be but a losing game from the instant she was worked for not only by
+her subtlety, but by the hand of fate itself. If all the accidents were
+to fight on her side—and by the actual showing they loomed large—he
+could only give himself up. This was what he had done in privately
+deciding then and there to propose she should breakfast with him. What
+did the success of his proposal in fact resemble but the smash in which
+a regular runaway properly ends? The smash was their walk, their
+déjeuner, their omelette, the Chablis, the place, the view, their
+present talk and his present pleasure in it—to say nothing, wonder of
+wonders, of her own. To this tune and nothing less, accordingly, was
+his surrender made good. It sufficiently lighted up at least the folly
+of holding off. Ancient proverbs sounded, for his memory, in the tone
+of their words and the clink of their glasses, in the hum of the town
+and the plash of the river. It _was_ clearly better to suffer as a
+sheep than as a lamb. One might as well perish by the sword as by
+famine.
+
+“Maria’s still away?”—that was the first thing she had asked him; and
+when he had found the frankness to be cheerful about it in spite of the
+meaning he knew her to attach to Miss Gostrey’s absence, she had gone
+on to enquire if he didn’t tremendously miss her. There were reasons
+that made him by no means sure, yet he nevertheless answered
+“Tremendously”; which she took in as if it were all she had wished to
+prove. Then, “A man in trouble _must_ be possessed somehow of a woman,”
+she said; “if she doesn’t come in one way she comes in another.”
+
+“Why do you call me a man in trouble?”
+
+“Ah because that’s the way you strike me.” She spoke ever so gently and
+as if with all fear of wounding him while she sat partaking of his
+bounty. “_Aren’t_ you in trouble?”
+
+He felt himself colour at the question, and then hated that—hated to
+pass for anything so idiotic as woundable. Woundable by Chad’s lady, in
+respect to whom he had come out with such a fund of indifference—was he
+already at that point? Perversely, none the less, his pause gave a
+strange air of truth to her supposition; and what was he in fact but
+disconcerted at having struck her just in the way he had most dreamed
+of not doing? “I’m not in trouble yet,” he at last smiled. “I’m not in
+trouble now.”
+
+“Well, I’m always so. But that you sufficiently know.” She was a woman
+who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.
+It was a posture unknown to Mrs. Newsome, but it was easy for a _femme
+du monde_. “Yes—I am ‘now’!”
+
+“There was a question you put to me,” he presently returned, “the night
+of Chad’s dinner. I didn’t answer it then, and it has been very
+handsome of you not to have sought an occasion for pressing me about it
+since.”
+
+She was instantly all there. “Of course I know what you allude to. I
+asked you what you had meant by saying, the day you came to see me,
+just before you left me, that you’d save me. And you then said—at our
+friend’s—that you’d have really to wait to see, for yourself, what you
+did mean.”
+
+“Yes, I asked for time,” said Strether. “And it sounds now, as you put
+it, like a very ridiculous speech.”
+
+“Oh!” she murmured—she was full of attenuation. But she had another
+thought. “If it does sound ridiculous why do you deny that you’re in
+trouble?”
+
+“Ah if I were,” he replied, “it wouldn’t be the trouble of fearing
+ridicule. I don’t fear it.”
+
+“What then do you?”
+
+“Nothing—now.” And he leaned back in his chair.
+
+“I like your ‘now’!” she laughed across at him.
+
+“Well, it’s precisely that it fully comes to me at present that I’ve
+kept you long enough. I know by this time, at any rate, what I meant by
+my speech; and I really knew it the night of Chad’s dinner.”
+
+“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
+
+“Because it was difficult at the moment. I had already at that moment
+done something for you, in the sense of what I had said the day I went
+to see you; but I wasn’t then sure of the importance I might represent
+this as having.”
+
+She was all eagerness. “And you’re sure now?”
+
+“Yes; I see that, practically, I’ve done for you—had done for you when
+you put me your question—all that it’s as yet possible to me to do. I
+feel now,” he went on, “that it may go further than I thought. What I
+did after my visit to you,” he explained, “was to write straight off to
+Mrs. Newsome about you, and I’m at last, from one day to the other,
+expecting her answer. It’s this answer that will represent, as I
+believe, the consequences.”
+
+Patient and beautiful was her interest. “I see—the consequences of your
+speaking for me.” And she waited as if not to hustle him.
+
+He acknowledged it by immediately going on. “The question, you
+understand, was _how_ I should save you. Well, I’m trying it by thus
+letting her know that I consider you worth saving.”
+
+“I see—I see.” Her eagerness broke through.
+
+“How can I thank you enough?” He couldn’t tell her that, however, and
+she quickly pursued. “You do really, for yourself, consider it?”
+
+His only answer at first was to help her to the dish that had been
+freshly put before them. “I’ve written to her again since then—I’ve
+left her in no doubt of what I think. I’ve told her all about you.”
+
+“Thanks—not so much. ‘All about’ me,” she went on—“yes.”
+
+“All it seems to me you’ve done for him.”
+
+“Ah and you might have added all it seems to _me!_” She laughed again,
+while she took up her knife and fork, as in the cheer of these
+assurances. “But you’re not sure how she’ll take it.”
+
+“No, I’ll not pretend I’m sure.”
+
+“Voilà.” And she waited a moment. “I wish you’d tell me about her.”
+
+“Oh,” said Strether with a slightly strained smile, “all that need
+concern you about her is that she’s really a grand person.”
+
+Madame de Vionnet seemed to demur. “Is that all that need concern me
+about her?”
+
+But Strether neglected the question. “Hasn’t Chad talked to you?”
+
+“Of his mother? Yes, a great deal—immensely. But not from your point of
+view.”
+
+“He can’t,” our friend returned, “have said any ill of her.”
+
+“Not the least bit. He has given me, like you, the assurance that she’s
+really grand. But her being really grand is somehow just what hasn’t
+seemed to simplify our case. Nothing,” she continued, “is further from
+me than to wish to say a word against her; but of course I feel how
+little she can like being told of her owing me anything. No woman ever
+enjoys such an obligation to another woman.”
+
+This was a proposition Strether couldn’t contradict. “And yet what
+other way could I have expressed to her what I felt? It’s what there
+was most to say about you.”
+
+“Do you mean then that she _will_ be good to me?”
+
+“It’s what I’m waiting to see. But I’ve little doubt she would,” he
+added, “if she could comfortably see you.”
+
+It seemed to strike her as a happy, a beneficent thought. “Oh then
+couldn’t that be managed? Wouldn’t she come out? Wouldn’t she if you so
+put it to her? _Did_ you by any possibility?” she faintly quavered.
+
+“Oh no”—he was prompt. “Not that. It would be, much more, to give an
+account of you that—since there’s no question of _your_ paying the
+visit—I should go home first.”
+
+It instantly made her graver. “And are you thinking of that?”
+
+“Oh all the while, naturally.”
+
+“Stay with us—stay with us!” she exclaimed on this. “That’s your only
+way to make sure.”
+
+“To make sure of what?”
+
+“Why that he doesn’t break up. You didn’t come out to do that to him.”
+
+“Doesn’t it depend,” Strether returned after a moment, “on what you
+mean by breaking up?”
+
+“Oh you know well enough what I mean!”
+
+His silence seemed again for a little to denote an understanding. “You
+take for granted remarkable things.”
+
+“Yes, I do—to the extent that I don’t take for granted vulgar ones.
+You’re perfectly capable of seeing that what you came out for wasn’t
+really at all to do what you’d now have to do.”
+
+“Ah it’s perfectly simple,” Strether good-humouredly pleaded. “I’ve had
+but one thing to do—to put our case before him. To put it as it could
+only be put here on the spot—by personal pressure. My dear lady,” he
+lucidly pursued, “my work, you see, is really done, and my reasons for
+staying on even another day are none of the best. Chad’s in possession
+of our case and professes to do it full justice. What remains is with
+himself. I’ve had my rest, my amusement and refreshment; I’ve had, as
+we say at Woollett, a lovely time. Nothing in it has been more lovely
+than this happy meeting with you—in these fantastic conditions to which
+you’ve so delightfully consented. I’ve a sense of success. It’s what I
+wanted. My getting all this good is what Chad has waited for, and I
+gather that if I’m ready to go he’s the same.”
+
+She shook her head with a finer deeper wisdom. “You’re not ready. If
+you’re ready why did you write to Mrs. Newsome in the sense you’ve
+mentioned to me?”
+
+Strether considered. “I shan’t go before I hear from her. You’re too
+much afraid of her,” he added.
+
+It produced between them a long look from which neither shrank. “I
+don’t think you believe that—believe I’ve not really reason to fear
+her.”
+
+“She’s capable of great generosity,” Strether presently stated.
+
+“Well then let her trust me a little. That’s all I ask. Let her
+recognise in spite of everything what I’ve done.”
+
+“Ah remember,” our friend replied, “that she can’t effectually
+recognise it without seeing it for herself. Let Chad go over and show
+her what you’ve done, and let him plead with her there for it and, as
+it were, for _you_.”
+
+She measured the depth of this suggestion. “Do you give me your word of
+honour that if she once has him there she won’t do her best to marry
+him?”
+
+It made her companion, this enquiry, look again a while out at the
+view; after which he spoke without sharpness. “When she sees for
+herself what he is—”
+
+But she had already broken in. “It’s when she sees for herself what he
+is that she’ll want to marry him most.”
+
+Strether’s attitude, that of due deference to what she said, permitted
+him to attend for a minute to his luncheon. “I doubt if that will come
+off. It won’t be easy to make it.”
+
+“It will be easy if he remains there—and he’ll remain for the money.
+The money appears to be, as a probability, so hideously much.”
+
+“Well,” Strether presently concluded, “nothing _could_ really hurt you
+but his marrying.”
+
+She gave a strange light laugh. “Putting aside what may really hurt
+_him_.”
+
+But her friend looked at her as if he had thought of that too. “The
+question will come up, of course, of the future that you yourself offer
+him.”
+
+She was leaning back now, but she fully faced him. “Well, let it come
+up!”
+
+“The point is that it’s for Chad to make of it what he can. His being
+proof against marriage will show what he does make.”
+
+“If he _is_ proof, yes”—she accepted the proposition. “But for myself,”
+she added, “the question is what _you_ make.”
+
+“Ah I make nothing. It’s not my affair.”
+
+“I beg your pardon. It’s just there that, since you’ve taken it up and
+are committed to it, it most intensely becomes yours. You’re not saving
+me, I take it, for your interest in myself, but for your interest in
+our friend. The one’s at any rate wholly dependent on the other. You
+can’t in honour not see me through,” she wound up, “because you can’t
+in honour not see _him_.”
+
+Strange and beautiful to him was her quiet soft acuteness. The thing
+that most moved him was really that she was so deeply serious. She had
+none of the portentous forms of it, but he had never come in contact,
+it struck him, with a force brought to so fine a head. Mrs. Newsome,
+goodness knew, was serious; but it was nothing to this. He took it all
+in, he saw it all together. “No,” he mused, “I can’t in honour not see
+him.”
+
+Her face affected him as with an exquisite light. “You _will_ then?”
+
+“I will.”
+
+At this she pushed back her chair and was the next moment on her feet.
+“Thank you!” she said with her hand held out to him across the table
+and with no less a meaning in the words than her lips had so
+particularly given them after Chad’s dinner. The golden nail she had
+then driven in pierced a good inch deeper. Yet he reflected that he
+himself had only meanwhile done what he had made up his mind to on the
+same occasion. So far as the essence of the matter went he had simply
+stood fast on the spot on which he had then planted his feet.
+
+
+ II
+
+He received three days after this a communication from America, in the
+form of a scrap of blue paper folded and gummed, not reaching him
+through his bankers, but delivered at his hotel by a small boy in
+uniform, who, under instructions from the concierge, approached him as
+he slowly paced the little court. It was the evening hour, but daylight
+was long now and Paris more than ever penetrating. The scent of flowers
+was in the streets, he had the whiff of violets perpetually in his
+nose; and he had attached himself to sounds and suggestions, vibrations
+of the air, human and dramatic, he imagined, as they were not in other
+places, that came out for him more and more as the mild afternoons
+deepened—a far-off hum, a sharp near click on the asphalt, a voice
+calling, replying, somewhere and as full of tone as an actor’s in a
+play. He was to dine at home, as usual, with Waymarsh—they had settled
+to that for thrift and simplicity; and he now hung about before his
+friend came down.
+
+He read his telegram in the court, standing still a long time where he
+had opened it and giving five minutes afterwards to the renewed study
+of it. At last, quickly, he crumpled it up as if to get it out of the
+way; in spite of which, however, he kept it there—still kept it when,
+at the end of another turn, he had dropped into a chair placed near a
+small table. Here, with his scrap of paper compressed in his fist and
+further concealed by his folding his arms tight, he sat for some time
+in thought, gazed before him so straight that Waymarsh appeared and
+approached him without catching his eye. The latter in fact, struck
+with his appearance, looked at him hard for a single instant and then,
+as if determined to that course by some special vividness in it,
+dropped back into the _salon de lecture_ without addressing him. But
+the pilgrim from Milrose permitted himself still to observe the scene
+from behind the clear glass plate of that retreat. Strether ended, as
+he sat, by a fresh scrutiny of his compressed missive, which he
+smoothed out carefully again as he placed it on his table. There it
+remained for some minutes, until, at last looking up, he saw Waymarsh
+watching him from within. It was on this that their eyes met—met for a
+moment during which neither moved. But Strether then got up, folding
+his telegram more carefully and putting it into his waistcoat pocket.
+
+A few minutes later the friends were seated together at dinner; but
+Strether had meanwhile said nothing about it, and they eventually
+parted, after coffee in the court, with nothing said on either side.
+Our friend had moreover the consciousness that even less than usual was
+on this occasion said between them, so that it was almost as if each
+had been waiting for something from the other. Waymarsh had always more
+or less the air of sitting at the door of his tent, and silence, after
+so many weeks, had come to play its part in their concert. This note
+indeed, to Strether’s sense, had lately taken a fuller tone, and it was
+his fancy to-night that they had never quite so drawn it out. Yet it
+befell, none the less that he closed the door to confidence when his
+companion finally asked him if there were anything particular the
+matter with him. “Nothing,” he replied, “more than usual.”
+
+On the morrow, however, at an early hour, he found occasion to give an
+answer more in consonance with the facts. What was the matter had
+continued to be so all the previous evening, the first hours of which,
+after dinner, in his room, he had devoted to the copious composition of
+a letter. He had quitted Waymarsh for this purpose, leaving him to his
+own resources with less ceremony than their wont, but finally coming
+down again with his letter unconcluded and going forth into the streets
+without enquiry for his comrade. He had taken a long vague walk, and
+one o’clock had struck before his return and his re-ascent to his room
+by the aid of the glimmering candle-end left for him on the shelf
+outside the porter’s lodge. He had possessed himself, on closing his
+door, of the numerous loose sheets of his unfinished composition, and
+then, without reading them over, had torn them into small pieces. He
+had thereupon slept—as if it had been in some measure thanks to that
+sacrifice—the sleep of the just, and had prolonged his rest
+considerably beyond his custom. Thus it was that when, between nine and
+ten, the tap of the knob of a walking-stick sounded on his door, he had
+not yet made himself altogether presentable. Chad Newsome’s bright deep
+voice determined quickly enough none the less the admission of the
+visitor. The little blue paper of the evening before, plainly an object
+the more precious for its escape from premature destruction, now lay on
+the sill of the open window, smoothed out afresh and kept from blowing
+away by the superincumbent weight of his watch. Chad, looking about
+with careless and competent criticism, as he looked wherever he went
+immediately espied it and permitted himself to fix it for a moment
+rather hard. After which he turned his eyes to his host. “It has come
+then at last?”
+
+Strether paused in the act of pinning his necktie. “Then you know—?
+You’ve had one too?”
+
+“No, I’ve had nothing, and I only know what I see. I see that thing and
+I guess. Well,” he added, “it comes as pat as in a play, for I’ve
+precisely turned up this morning—as I would have done yesterday, but it
+was impossible—to take you.”
+
+“To take me?” Strether had turned again to his glass.
+
+“Back, at last, as I promised. I’m ready—I’ve really been ready this
+month. I’ve only been waiting for you—as was perfectly right. But
+you’re better now; you’re safe—I see that for myself; you’ve got all
+your good. You’re looking, this morning, as fit as a flea.”
+
+Strether, at his glass, finished dressing; consulting that witness
+moreover on this last opinion. _Was_ he looking preternaturally fit?
+There was something in it perhaps for Chad’s wonderful eye, but he had
+felt himself for hours rather in pieces. Such a judgement, however, was
+after all but a contribution to his resolve; it testified unwittingly
+to his wisdom. He was still firmer, apparently—since it shone in him as
+a light—than he had flattered himself. His firmness indeed was slightly
+compromised, as he faced about to his friend, by the way this very
+personage looked—though the case would of course have been worse hadn’t
+the secret of personal magnificence been at every hour Chad’s unfailing
+possession. There he was in all the pleasant morning freshness of
+it—strong and sleek and gay, easy and fragrant and fathomless, with
+happy health in his colour, and pleasant silver in his thick young
+hair, and the right word for everything on the lips that his clear
+brownness caused to show as red. He had never struck Strether as
+personally such a success; it was as if now, for his definite
+surrender, he had gathered himself vividly together. This, sharply and
+rather strangely, was the form in which he was to be presented to
+Woollett. Our friend took him in again—he was always taking him in and
+yet finding that parts of him still remained out; though even thus his
+image showed through a mist of other things. “I’ve had a cable,”
+Strether said, “from your mother.”
+
+“I dare say, my dear man. I hope she’s well.”
+
+Strether hesitated. “No—she’s not well, I’m sorry to have to tell you.”
+
+“Ah,” said Chad, “I must have had the instinct of it. All the more
+reason then that we should start straight off.”
+
+Strether had now got together hat, gloves and stick, but Chad had
+dropped on the sofa as if to show where he wished to make his point. He
+kept observing his companion’s things; he might have been judging how
+quickly they could be packed. He might even have wished to hint that
+he’d send his own servant to assist. “What do you mean,” Strether
+enquired, “by ‘straight off’?”
+
+“Oh by one of next week’s boats. Everything at this season goes out so
+light that berths will be easy anywhere.”
+
+Strether had in his hand his telegram, which he had kept there after
+attaching his watch, and he now offered it to Chad, who, however, with
+an odd movement, declined to take it. “Thanks, I’d rather not. Your
+correspondence with Mother’s your own affair. I’m only _with_ you both
+on it, whatever it is.” Strether, at this, while their eyes met, slowly
+folded the missive and put it in his pocket; after which, before he had
+spoken again, Chad broke fresh ground. “Has Miss Gostrey come back?”
+
+But when Strether presently spoke it wasn’t in answer. “It’s not, I
+gather, that your mother’s physically ill; her health, on the whole,
+this spring, seems to have been better than usual. But she’s worried,
+she’s anxious, and it appears to have risen within the last few days to
+a climax. We’ve tired out, between us, her patience.”
+
+“Oh it isn’t _you!_” Chad generously protested.
+
+“I beg your pardon—it _is_ me.” Strether was mild and melancholy, but
+firm. He saw it far away and over his companion’s head. “It’s very
+particularly me.”
+
+“Well then all the more reason. _Marchons, marchons!_” said the young
+man gaily. His host, however, at this, but continued to stand agaze;
+and he had the next thing repeated his question of a moment before.
+“Has Miss Gostrey come back?”
+
+“Yes, two days ago.”
+
+“Then you’ve seen her?”
+
+“No—I’m to see her to-day.” But Strether wouldn’t linger now on Miss
+Gostrey. “Your mother sends me an ultimatum. If I can’t bring you I’m
+to leave you; I’m to come at any rate myself.”
+
+“Ah but you _can_ bring me now,” Chad, from his sofa, reassuringly
+replied.
+
+Strether had a pause. “I don’t think I understand you. Why was it that,
+more than a month ago, you put it to me so urgently to let Madame de
+Vionnet speak for you?”
+
+“‘Why’?” Chad considered, but he had it at his fingers’ ends. “Why but
+because I knew how well she’d do it? It was the way to keep you quiet
+and, to that extent, do you good. Besides,” he happily and comfortably
+explained, “I wanted you really to know her and to get the impression
+of her—and you see the good that _has_ done you.”
+
+“Well,” said Strether, “the way she has spoken for you, all the same—so
+far as I’ve given her a chance—has only made me feel how much she
+wishes to keep you. If you make nothing of that I don’t see why you
+wanted me to listen to her.”
+
+“Why my dear man,” Chad exclaimed, “I make everything of it! How can
+you doubt—?”
+
+“I doubt only because you come to me this morning with your signal to
+start.”
+
+Chad stared, then gave a laugh. “And isn’t my signal to start just what
+you’ve been waiting for?”
+
+Strether debated; he took another turn. “This last month I’ve been
+awaiting, I think, more than anything else, the message I have here.”
+
+“You mean you’ve been afraid of it?”
+
+“Well, I was doing my business in my own way. And I suppose your
+present announcement,” Strether went on, “isn’t merely the result of
+your sense of what I’ve expected. Otherwise you wouldn’t have put me in
+relation—” But he paused, pulling up.
+
+At this Chad rose. “Ah _her_ wanting me not to go has nothing to do
+with it! It’s only because she’s afraid—afraid of the way that, over
+there, I may get caught. But her fear’s groundless.”
+
+He had met again his companion’s sufficiently searching look. “Are you
+tired of her?”
+
+Chad gave him in reply to this, with a movement of the head, the
+strangest slow smile he had ever had from him. “Never.”
+
+It had immediately, on Strether’s imagination, so deep and soft an
+effect that our friend could only for the moment keep it before him.
+“Never?”
+
+“Never,” Chad obligingly and serenely repeated.
+
+It made his companion take several more steps. “Then _you’re_ not
+afraid.”
+
+“Afraid to go?”
+
+Strether pulled up again. “Afraid to stay.”
+
+The young man looked brightly amazed. “You want me now to ‘stay’?”
+
+“If I don’t immediately sail the Pococks will immediately come out.
+That’s what I mean,” said Strether, “by your mother’s ultimatum.”
+
+Chad showed a still livelier, but not an alarmed interest. “She has
+turned on Sarah and Jim?”
+
+Strether joined him for an instant in the vision. “Oh and you may be
+sure Mamie. _That’s_ whom she’s turning on.”
+
+This also Chad saw—he laughed out. “Mamie—to corrupt me?”
+
+“Ah,” said Strether, “she’s very charming.”
+
+“So you’ve already more than once told me. I should like to see her.”
+
+Something happy and easy, something above all unconscious, in the way
+he said this, brought home again to his companion the facility of his
+attitude and the enviability of his state. “See her then by all means.
+And consider too,” Strether went on, “that you really give your sister
+a lift in letting her come to you. You give her a couple of months of
+Paris, which she hasn’t seen, if I’m not mistaken, since just after she
+was married, and which I’m sure she wants but the pretext to visit.”
+
+Chad listened, but with all his own knowledge of the world. “She has
+had it, the pretext, these several years, yet she has never taken it.”
+
+“Do you mean _you?_” Strether after an instant enquired.
+
+“Certainly—the lone exile. And whom do you mean?” said Chad.
+
+“Oh I mean _me_. I’m her pretext. That is—for it comes to the same
+thing—I’m your mother’s.”
+
+“Then why,” Chad asked, “doesn’t Mother come herself?”
+
+His friend gave him a long look. “Should you like her to?” And as he
+for the moment said nothing: “It’s perfectly open to you to cable for
+her.”
+
+Chad continued to think. “Will she come if I do?”
+
+“Quite possibly. But try, and you’ll see.”
+
+“Why don’t _you_ try?” Chad after a moment asked.
+
+“Because I don’t want to.”
+
+Chad thought. “Don’t desire her presence here?”
+
+Strether faced the question, and his answer was the more emphatic.
+“Don’t put it off, my dear boy, on _me!_”
+
+“Well—I see what you mean. I’m sure you’d behave beautifully but you
+_don’t_ want to see her. So I won’t play you that trick.’
+
+“Ah,” Strether declared, “I shouldn’t call it a trick. You’ve a perfect
+right, and it would be perfectly straight of you.” Then he added in a
+different tone: “You’d have moreover, in the person of Madame de
+Vionnet, a very interesting relation prepared for her.”
+
+Their eyes, on this proposition, continued to meet, but Chad’s pleasant
+and bold, never flinched for a moment. He got up at last and he said
+something with which Strether was struck. “She wouldn’t understand her,
+but that makes no difference. Madame de Vionnet would like to see her.
+She’d like to be charming to her. She believes she could work it.”
+
+Strether thought a moment, affected by this, but finally turning away.
+“She couldn’t!”
+
+“You’re quite sure?” Chad asked.
+
+“Well, risk it if you like!”
+
+Strether, who uttered this with serenity, had urged a plea for their
+now getting into the air; but the young man still waited. “Have you
+sent your answer?”
+
+“No, I’ve done nothing yet.”
+
+“Were you waiting to see me?”
+
+“No, not that.”
+
+“Only waiting”—and Chad, with this, had a smile for him—“to see Miss
+Gostrey?”
+
+“No—not even Miss Gostrey. I wasn’t waiting to see any one. I had only
+waited, till now, to make up my mind—in complete solitude; and, since I
+of course absolutely owe you the information, was on the point of going
+out with it quite made up. Have therefore a little more patience with
+me. Remember,” Strether went on, “that that’s what you originally asked
+_me_ to have. I’ve had it, you see, and you see what has come of it.
+Stay on with me.”
+
+Chad looked grave. “How much longer?”
+
+“Well, till I make you a sign. I can’t myself, you know, at the best,
+or at the worst, stay for ever. Let the Pococks come,” Strether
+repeated.
+
+“Because it gains you time?”
+
+“Yes—it gains me time.”
+
+Chad, as if it still puzzled him, waited a minute. “You don’t want to
+get back to Mother?”
+
+“Not just yet. I’m not ready.”
+
+“You feel,” Chad asked in a tone of his own, “the charm of life over
+here?”
+
+“Immensely.” Strether faced it. “You’ve helped me so to feel it that
+that surely needn’t surprise you.”
+
+“No, it doesn’t surprise me, and I’m delighted. But what, my dear man,”
+Chad went on with conscious queerness, “does it all lead to for you?”
+
+The change of position and of relation, for each, was so oddly betrayed
+in the question that Chad laughed out as soon as he had uttered
+it—which made Strether also laugh. “Well, to my having a certitude that
+has been tested—that has passed through the fire. But oh,” he couldn’t
+help breaking out, “if within my first month here you had been willing
+to move with me—!”
+
+“Well?” said Chad, while he broke down as for weight of thought.
+
+“Well, we should have been over there by now.”
+
+“Ah but you wouldn’t have had your fun!”
+
+“I should have had a month of it; and I’m having now, if you want to
+know,” Strether continued, “enough to last me for the rest of my days.”
+
+Chad looked amused and interested, yet still somewhat in the dark;
+partly perhaps because Strether’s estimate of fun had required of him
+from the first a good deal of elucidation. “It wouldn’t do if I left
+you—?”
+
+“Left me?”—Strether remained blank.
+
+“Only for a month or two—time to go and come. Madame de Vionnet,” Chad
+smiled, “would look after you in the interval.”
+
+“To go back by yourself, I remaining here?” Again for an instant their
+eyes had the question out; after which Strether said: “Grotesque!”
+
+“But I want to see Mother,” Chad presently returned. “Remember how long
+it is since I’ve seen Mother.”
+
+“Long indeed; and that’s exactly why I was originally so keen for
+moving you. Hadn’t you shown us enough how beautifully you could do
+without it?”
+
+“Oh but,” said Chad wonderfully, “I’m better now.”
+
+There was an easy triumph in it that made his friend laugh out again.
+“Oh if you were worse I _should_ know what to do with you. In that case
+I believe I’d have you gagged and strapped down, carried on board
+resisting, kicking. How _much_,” Strether asked, “do you want to see
+Mother?”
+
+“How much?”—Chad seemed to find it in fact difficult to say.
+
+“How much.”
+
+“Why as much as you’ve made me. I’d give anything to see her. And
+you’ve left me,” Chad went on, “in little enough doubt as to how much
+_she_ wants it.”
+
+Strether thought a minute. “Well then if those things are really your
+motive catch the French steamer and sail to-morrow. Of course, when it
+comes to that, you’re absolutely free to do as you choose. From the
+moment you can’t hold yourself I can only accept your flight.”
+
+“I’ll fly in a minute then,” said Chad, “if you’ll stay here.”
+
+“I’ll stay here till the next steamer—then I’ll follow you.”
+
+“And do you call that,” Chad asked, “accepting my flight?”
+
+“Certainly—it’s the only thing to call it. The only way to keep me
+here, accordingly,” Strether explained, “is by staying yourself.”
+
+Chad took it in. “All the more that I’ve really dished you, eh?”
+
+“Dished me?” Strether echoed as inexpressively as possible.
+
+“Why if she sends out the Pococks it will be that she doesn’t trust
+you, and if she doesn’t trust you, that bears upon—well, you know
+what.”
+
+Strether decided after a moment that he did know what, and in
+consonance with this he spoke. “You see then all the more what you owe
+me.”
+
+“Well, if I do see, how can I pay?”
+
+“By not deserting me. By standing by me.”
+
+“Oh I say—!” But Chad, as they went downstairs, clapped a firm hand, in
+the manner of a pledge, upon his shoulder. They descended slowly
+together and had, in the court of the hotel, some further talk, of
+which the upshot was that they presently separated. Chad Newsome
+departed, and Strether, left alone, looked about, superficially, for
+Waymarsh. But Waymarsh hadn’t yet, it appeared, come down, and our
+friend finally went forth without sight of him.
+
+
+ III
+
+At four o’clock that afternoon he had still not seen him, but he was
+then, as to make up for this, engaged in talk about him with Miss
+Gostrey. Strether had kept away from home all day, given himself up to
+the town and to his thoughts, wandered and mused, been at once restless
+and absorbed—and all with the present climax of a rich little welcome
+in the Quartier Marbœuf. “Waymarsh has been, ‘unbeknown’ to me, I’m
+convinced”—for Miss Gostrey had enquired—“in communication with
+Woollett: the consequence of which was, last night, the loudest
+possible call for me.”
+
+“Do you mean a letter to bring you home?”
+
+“No—a cable, which I have at this moment in my pocket: a ‘Come back by
+the first ship.’”
+
+Strether’s hostess, it might have been made out, just escaped changing
+colour. Reflexion arrived but in time and established a provisional
+serenity. It was perhaps exactly this that enabled her to say with
+duplicity: “And you’re going—?”
+
+“You almost deserve it when you abandon me so.”
+
+She shook her head as if this were not worth taking up. “My absence has
+helped you—as I’ve only to look at you to see. It was my calculation,
+and I’m justified. You’re not where you were. And the thing,” she
+smiled, “was for me not to be there either. You can go of yourself.”
+
+“Oh but I feel to-day,” he comfortably declared, “that I shall want you
+yet.”
+
+She took him all in again. “Well, I promise you not again to leave you,
+but it will only be to follow you. You’ve got your momentum and can
+toddle alone.”
+
+He intelligently accepted it. “Yes—I suppose I can toddle. It’s the
+sight of that in fact that has upset Waymarsh. He can bear it—the way I
+strike him as going—no longer. That’s only the climax of his original
+feeling. He wants me to quit; and he must have written to Woollett that
+I’m in peril of perdition.”
+
+“Ah good!” she murmured. “But is it only your supposition?”
+
+“I make it out—it explains.”
+
+“Then he denies?—or you haven’t asked him?”
+
+“I’ve not had time,” Strether said; “I made it out but last night,
+putting various things together, and I’ve not been since then face to
+face with him.”
+
+She wondered. “Because you’re too disgusted? You can’t trust yourself?”
+
+He settled his glasses on his nose. “Do I look in a great rage?”
+
+“You look divine!”
+
+“There’s nothing,” he went on, “to be angry about. He has done me on
+the contrary a service.”
+
+She made it out. “By bringing things to a head?”
+
+“How well you understand!” he almost groaned. “Waymarsh won’t in the
+least, at any rate, when I have it out with him, deny or extenuate. He
+has acted from the deepest conviction, with the best conscience and
+after wakeful nights. He’ll recognise that he’s fully responsible, and
+will consider that he has been highly successful; so that any
+discussion we may have will bring us quite together again—bridge the
+dark stream that has kept us so thoroughly apart. We shall have at
+last, in the consequences of his act, something we can definitely talk
+about.”
+
+She was silent a little. “How wonderfully you take it! But you’re
+always wonderful.”
+
+He had a pause that matched her own; then he had, with an adequate
+spirit, a complete admission. “It’s quite true. I’m extremely wonderful
+just now. I dare say in fact I’m quite fantastic, and I shouldn’t be at
+all surprised if I were mad.”
+
+“Then tell me!” she earnestly pressed. As he, however, for the time
+answered nothing, only returning the look with which she watched him,
+she presented herself where it was easier to meet her. “What will Mr.
+Waymarsh exactly have done?”
+
+“Simply have written a letter. One will have been quite enough. He has
+told them I want looking after.”
+
+“And _do_ you?”—she was all interest.
+
+“Immensely. And I shall get it.”
+
+“By which you mean you don’t budge?”
+
+“I don’t budge.”
+
+“You’ve cabled?”
+
+“No—I’ve made Chad do it.”
+
+“That you decline to come?”
+
+“That _he_ declines. We had it out this morning and I brought him
+round. He had come in, before I was down, to tell me he was
+ready—ready, I mean, to return. And he went off, after ten minutes with
+me, to say he wouldn’t.”
+
+Miss Gostrey followed with intensity. “Then you’ve _stopped_ him?”
+
+Strether settled himself afresh in his chair. “I’ve stopped him. That
+is for the time. That”—he gave it to her more vividly—“is where I am.”
+
+“I see, I see. But where’s Mr. Newsome? He was ready,” she asked, “to
+go?”
+
+“All ready.”
+
+“And sincerely—believing _you’d_ be?”
+
+“Perfectly, I think; so that he was amazed to find the hand I had laid
+on him to pull him over suddenly converted into an engine for keeping
+him still.”
+
+It was an account of the matter Miss Gostrey could weigh. “Does he
+think the conversion sudden?”
+
+“Well,” said Strether, “I’m not altogether sure what he thinks. I’m not
+sure of anything that concerns him, except that the more I’ve seen of
+him the less I’ve found him what I originally expected. He’s obscure,
+and that’s why I’m waiting.”
+
+She wondered. “But for what in particular?”
+
+“For the answer to his cable.”
+
+“And what was his cable?”
+
+“I don’t know,” Strether replied; “it was to be, when he left me,
+according to his own taste. I simply said to him: ‘I want to stay, and
+the only way for me to do so is for _you_ to.’ That I wanted to stay
+seemed to interest him, and he acted on that.”
+
+Miss Gostrey turned it over. “He wants then himself to stay.”
+
+“He half wants it. That is he half wants to go. My original appeal has
+to that extent worked in him. Nevertheless,” Strether pursued, “he
+won’t go. Not, at least, so long as I’m here.”
+
+“But you can’t,” his companion suggested, “stay here always. I wish you
+could.”
+
+“By no means. Still, I want to see him a little further. He’s not in
+the least the case I supposed, he’s quite another case. And it’s as
+such that he interests me.” It was almost as if for his own
+intelligence that, deliberate and lucid, our friend thus expressed the
+matter. “I don’t want to give him up.”
+
+Miss Gostrey but desired to help his lucidity. She had however to be
+light and tactful. “Up, you mean—a—to his mother?”
+
+“Well, I’m not thinking of his mother now. I’m thinking of the plan of
+which I was the mouthpiece, which, as soon as we met, I put before him
+as persuasively as I knew how, and which was drawn up, as it were, in
+complete ignorance of all that, in this last long period, has been
+happening to him. It took no account whatever of the impression I was
+here on the spot immediately to begin to receive from him—impressions
+of which I feel sure I’m far from having had the last.”
+
+Miss Gostrey had a smile of the most genial criticism. “So your idea
+is—more or less—to stay out of curiosity?”
+
+“Call it what you like! I don’t care what it’s called—”
+
+“So long as you do stay? Certainly not then. I call it, all the same,
+immense fun,” Maria Gostrey declared; “and to see you work it out will
+be one of the sensations of my life. It _is_ clear you can toddle
+alone!”
+
+He received this tribute without elation. “I shan’t be alone when the
+Pococks have come.”
+
+Her eyebrows went up. “The Pococks are coming?”
+
+“That, I mean, is what will happen—and happen as quickly as possible—in
+consequence of Chad’s cable. They’ll simply embark. Sarah will come to
+speak for her mother—with an effect different from _my_ muddle.”
+
+Miss Gostrey more gravely wondered. “_She_ then will take him back?”
+
+“Very possibly—and we shall see. She must at any rate have the chance,
+and she may be trusted to do all she can.”
+
+“And do you _want_ that?”
+
+“Of course,” said Strether, “I want it. I want to play fair.”
+
+But she had lost for a moment the thread. “If it devolves on the
+Pococks why do you stay?”
+
+“Just to see that I _do_ play fair—and a little also, no doubt, that
+they do.” Strether was luminous as he had never been. “I came out to
+find myself in presence of new facts—facts that have kept striking me
+as less and less met by our old reasons. The matter’s perfectly simple.
+New reasons—reasons as new as the facts themselves—are wanted; and of
+this our friends at Woollett—Chad’s and mine—were at the earliest
+moment definitely notified. If any are producible Mrs. Pocock will
+produce them; she’ll bring over the whole collection. They’ll be,” he
+added with a pensive smile “a part of the ‘fun’ you speak of.”
+
+She was quite in the current now and floating by his side. “It’s
+Mamie—so far as I’ve had it from you—who’ll be their great card.” And
+then as his contemplative silence wasn’t a denial she significantly
+added: “I think I’m sorry for her.”
+
+“I think _I_ am!”—and Strether sprang up, moving about a little as her
+eyes followed him. “But it can’t be helped.”
+
+“You mean her coming out can’t be?”
+
+He explained after another turn what he meant. “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. Yet he
+was answered still better when she said in a moment: “Will Mr. Newsome
+introduce his sister—?”
+
+“To Madame de Vionnet?” Strether spoke the name at last. “I shall be
+greatly surprised if he doesn’t.”
+
+She seemed to gaze at the possibility. “You mean you’ve thought of it
+and you’re prepared.”
+
+“I’ve thought of it and I’m prepared.”
+
+It was to her visitor now that she applied her consideration. “Bon! You
+_are_ magnificent!”
+
+“Well,” he answered after a pause and a little wearily, but still
+standing there before her—“well, that’s what, just once in all my dull
+days, I think I shall like to have been!”
+
+Two days later he had news from Chad of a communication from Woollett
+in response to their determinant telegram, this missive being addressed
+to Chad himself and announcing the immediate departure for France of
+Sarah and Jim and Mamie. Strether had meanwhile on his own side cabled;
+he had but delayed that act till after his visit to Miss Gostrey, an
+interview by which, as so often before, he felt his sense of things
+cleared up and settled. His message to Mrs. Newsome, in answer to her
+own, had consisted of the words: “Judge best to take another month, but
+with full appreciation of all re-enforcements.” He had added that he
+was writing, but he was of course always writing; it was a practice
+that continued, oddly enough, to relieve him, to make him come nearer
+than anything else to the consciousness of doing something: so that he
+often wondered if he hadn’t really, under his recent stress, acquired
+some hollow trick, one of the specious arts of make-believe. Wouldn’t
+the pages he still so freely dispatched by the American post have been
+worthy of a showy journalist, some master of the great new science of
+beating the sense out of words? Wasn’t he writing against time, and
+mainly to show he was kind?—since it had become quite his habit not to
+like to read himself over. On those lines he could still be liberal,
+yet it was at best a sort of whistling in the dark. It was
+unmistakeable moreover that the sense of being in the dark now pressed
+on him more sharply—creating thereby the need for a louder and livelier
+whistle. He whistled long and hard after sending his message; he
+whistled again and again in celebration of Chad’s news; there was an
+interval of a fortnight in which this exercise helped him. He had no
+great notion of what, on the spot, Sarah Pocock would have to say,
+though he had indeed confused premonitions; but it shouldn’t be in her
+power to say—it shouldn’t be in any one’s anywhere to say—that he was
+neglecting her mother. He might have written before more freely, but he
+had never written more copiously; and he frankly gave for a reason at
+Woollett that he wished to fill the void created there by Sarah’s
+departure.
+
+The increase of his darkness, however, and the quickening, as I have
+called it, of his tune, resided in the fact that he was hearing almost
+nothing. He had for some time been aware that he was hearing less than
+before, and he was now clearly following a process by which Mrs.
+Newsome’s letters could but logically stop. He hadn’t had a line for
+many days, and he needed no proof—though he was, in time, to have
+plenty—that she wouldn’t have put pen to paper after receiving the hint
+that had determined her telegram. She wouldn’t write till Sarah should
+have seen him and reported on him. It was strange, though it might well
+be less so than his own behaviour appeared at Woollett. It was at any
+rate significant, and what _was_ remarkable was the way his friend’s
+nature and manner put on for him, through this very drop of
+demonstration, a greater intensity. It struck him really that he had
+never so lived with her as during this period of her silence; the
+silence was a sacred hush, a finer clearer medium, in which her
+idiosyncrasies showed. He walked about with her, sat with her, drove
+with her and dined face-to-face with her—a rare treat “in his life,” as
+he could perhaps have scarce escaped phrasing it; and if he had never
+seen her so soundless he had never, on the other hand, felt her so
+highly, so almost austerely, herself: pure and by the vulgar estimate
+“cold,” but deep devoted delicate sensitive noble. Her vividness in
+these respects became for him, in the special conditions, almost an
+obsession; and though the obsession sharpened his pulses, adding really
+to the excitement of life, there were hours at which, to be less on the
+stretch, he directly sought forgetfulness. He knew it for the queerest
+of adventures—a circumstance capable of playing such a part only for
+Lambert Strether—that in Paris itself, of all places, he should find
+this ghost of the lady of Woollett more importunate than any other
+presence.
+
+When he went back to Maria Gostrey it was for the change to something
+else. And yet after all the change scarcely operated for he talked to
+her of Mrs. Newsome in these days as he had never talked before. He had
+hitherto observed in that particular a discretion and a law;
+considerations that at present broke down quite as if relations had
+altered. They hadn’t _really_ altered, he said to himself, so much as
+that came to; for if what had occurred was of course that Mrs. Newsome
+had ceased to trust him, there was nothing on the other hand to prove
+that he shouldn’t win back her confidence. It was quite his present
+theory that he would leave no stone unturned to do so; and in fact if
+he now told Maria things about her that he had never told before this
+was largely because it kept before him the idea of the honour of such a
+woman’s esteem. His relation with Maria as well was, strangely enough,
+no longer quite the same; this truth—though not too disconcertingly—had
+come up between them on the renewal of their meetings. It was all
+contained in what she had then almost immediately said to him; it was
+represented by the remark she had needed but ten minutes to make and
+that he hadn’t been disposed to gainsay. He could toddle alone, and the
+difference that showed was extraordinary. The turn taken by their talk
+had promptly confirmed this difference; his larger confidence on the
+score of Mrs. Newsome did the rest; and the time seemed already far off
+when he had held out his small thirsty cup to the spout of her pail.
+Her pail was scarce touched now, and other fountains had flowed for
+him; she fell into her place as but one of his tributaries; and there
+was a strange sweetness—a melancholy mildness that touched him—in her
+acceptance of the altered order.
+
+It marked for himself the flight of time, or at any rate what he was
+pleased to think of with irony and pity as the rush of experience; it
+having been but the day before yesterday that he sat at her feet and
+held on by her garment and was fed by her hand. It was the proportions
+that were changed, and the proportions were at all times, he
+philosophised, the very conditions of perception, the terms of thought.
+It was as if, with her effective little _entresol_ and and her wide
+acquaintance, her activities, varieties, promiscuities, the duties and
+devotions that took up nine tenths of her time and of which he got,
+guardedly, but the side-wind—it was as if she had shrunk to a secondary
+element and had consented to the shrinkage with the perfection of tact.
+This perfection had never failed her; it had originally been greater
+than his prime measure for it; it had kept him quite apart, kept him
+out of the shop, as she called her huge general acquaintance, made
+their commerce as quiet, as much a thing of the home alone—the opposite
+of the shop—as if she had never another customer. She had been
+wonderful to him at first, with the memory of her little _entresol_,
+the image to which, on most mornings at that time, his eyes directly
+opened; but now she mainly figured for him as but part of the bristling
+total—though of course always as a person to whom he should never cease
+to be indebted. It would never be given to him certainly to inspire a
+greater kindness. She had decked him out for others, and he saw at this
+point at least nothing she would ever ask for. She only wondered and
+questioned and listened, rendering him the homage of a wistful
+speculation. She expressed it repeatedly; he was already far beyond
+her, and she must prepare herself to lose him. There was but one little
+chance for her.
+
+Often as she had said it he met it—for it was a touch he liked—each
+time the same way. “My coming to grief?”
+
+“Yes—then I might patch you up.”
+
+“Oh for my real smash, if it takes place, there will be no patching.”
+
+“But you surely don’t mean it will kill you.”
+
+“No—worse. It will make me old.”
+
+“Ah nothing can do that! The wonderful and special thing about you is
+that you _are_, at this time of day, youth.” Then she always made,
+further, one of those remarks that she had completely ceased to adorn
+with hesitations or apologies, and that had, by the same token, in
+spite of their extreme straightness, ceased to produce in Strether the
+least embarrassment. She made him believe them, and they became thereby
+as impersonal as truth itself. “It’s just your particular charm.”
+
+His answer too was always the same. “Of course I’m youth—youth for the
+trip to Europe. I began to be young, or at least to get the benefit of
+it, the moment I met you at Chester, and that’s what has been taking
+place ever since. I never had the benefit at the proper time—which
+comes to saying that I never had the thing itself. I’m having the
+benefit at this moment; I had it the other day when I said to Chad
+‘Wait’; I shall have it still again when Sarah Pocock arrives. It’s a
+benefit that would make a poor show for many people; and I don’t know
+who else but you and I, frankly, could begin to see in it what I feel.
+I don’t get drunk; I don’t pursue the ladies; I don’t spend money; I
+don’t even write sonnets. But nevertheless I’m making up late for what
+I didn’t have early. I cultivate my little benefit in my own little
+way. It amuses me more than anything that has happened to me in all my
+life. They may say what they like—it’s my surrender, it’s my tribute,
+to youth. One puts that in where one can—it has to come in somewhere,
+if only out of the lives, the conditions, the feelings of other
+persons. Chad gives me the sense of it, for all his grey hairs, which
+merely make it solid in him and safe and serene; and _she_ does the
+same, for all her being older than he, for all her marriageable
+daughter, her separated husband, her agitated history. Though they’re
+young enough, my pair, I don’t say they’re, in the freshest way, their
+_own_ absolutely prime adolescence; for that has nothing to do with it.
+The point is that they’re mine. Yes, they’re my youth; since somehow at
+the right time nothing else ever was. What I meant just now therefore
+is that it would all go—go before doing its work—if they were to fail
+me.”
+
+On which, just here, Miss Gostrey inveterately questioned. “What do
+you, in particular, call its work?”
+
+“Well, to see me through.”
+
+“But through what?”—she liked to get it all out of him.
+
+“Why through this experience.” That was all that would come.
+
+It regularly gave her none the less the last word. “Don’t you remember
+how in those first days of our meeting it was _I_ who was to see you
+through?”
+
+“Remember? Tenderly, deeply”—he always rose to it. “You’re just doing
+your part in letting me maunder to you thus.”
+
+“Ah don’t speak as if my part were small; since whatever else fails
+you—”
+
+“_You_ won’t, ever, ever, ever?”—he thus took her up. “Oh I beg your
+pardon; you necessarily, you inevitably _will_. Your conditions—that’s
+what I mean—won’t allow me anything to do for you.”
+
+“Let alone—I see what you mean—that I’m drearily dreadfully old. I
+_am_, but there’s a service—possible for you to render—that I know, all
+the same, I shall think of.”
+
+“And what will it be?”
+
+This, in fine, however, she would never tell him. “You shall hear only
+if your smash takes place. As that’s really out of the question, I
+won’t expose myself”—a point at which, for reasons of his own, Strether
+ceased to press.
+
+He came round, for publicity—it was the easiest thing—to the idea that
+his smash _was_ out of the question, and this rendered idle the
+discussion of what might follow it. He attached an added importance, as
+the days elapsed, to the arrival of the Pococks; he had even a shameful
+sense of waiting for it insincerely and incorrectly. He accused himself
+of making believe to his own mind that Sarah’s presence, her
+impression, her judgement would simplify and harmonise, he accused
+himself of being so afraid of what they _might_ do that he sought
+refuge, to beg the whole question, in a vain fury. He had abundantly
+seen at home what they were in the habit of doing, and he had not at
+present the smallest ground. His clearest vision was when he made out
+that what he most desired was an account more full and free of Mrs.
+Newsome’s state of mind than any he felt he could now expect from
+herself; that calculation at least went hand in hand with the sharp
+consciousness of wishing to prove to himself that he was not afraid to
+look his behaviour in the face. If he was by an inexorable logic to pay
+for it he was literally impatient to know the cost, and he held himself
+ready to pay in instalments. The first instalment would be precisely
+this entertainment of Sarah; as a consequence of which moreover, he
+should know vastly better how he stood.
+
+
+
+
+Book Eighth
+
+
+ I
+
+Strether rambled alone during these few days, the effect of the
+incident of the previous week having been to simplify in a marked
+fashion his mixed relations with Waymarsh. Nothing had passed between
+them in reference to Mrs. Newsome’s summons but that our friend had
+mentioned to his own the departure of the deputation actually at
+sea—giving him thus an opportunity to confess to the occult
+intervention he imputed to him. Waymarsh however in the event confessed
+to nothing; and though this falsified in some degree Strether’s
+forecast the latter amusedly saw in it the same depth of good
+conscience out of which the dear man’s impertinence had originally
+sprung. He was patient with the dear man now and delighted to observe
+how unmistakeably he had put on flesh; he felt his own holiday so
+successfully large and free that he was full of allowances and
+charities in respect to those cabined and confined: his instinct toward
+a spirit so strapped down as Waymarsh’s was to walk round it on tiptoe
+for fear of waking it up to a sense of losses by this time
+irretrievable. It was all very funny he knew, and but the difference,
+as he often said to himself, of tweedledum and tweedledee—an
+emancipation so purely comparative that it was like the advance of the
+door-mat on the scraper; yet the present crisis was happily to profit
+by it and the pilgrim from Milrose to know himself more than ever in
+the right.
+
+Strether felt that when he heard of the approach of the Pococks the
+impulse of pity quite sprang up in him beside the impulse of triumph.
+That was exactly why Waymarsh had looked at him with eyes in which the
+heat of justice was measured and shaded. He had looked very hard, as if
+affectionately sorry for the friend—the friend of fifty-five—whose
+frivolity had had thus to be recorded; becoming, however, but obscurely
+sententious and leaving his companion to formulate a charge. It was in
+this general attitude that he had of late altogether taken refuge; with
+the drop of discussion they were solemnly sadly superficial; Strether
+recognised in him the mere portentous rumination to which Miss Barrace
+had so good-humouredly described herself as assigning a corner of her
+salon. It was quite as if he knew his surreptitious step had been
+divined, and it was also as if he missed the chance to explain the
+purity of his motive; but this privation of relief should be precisely
+his small penance: it was not amiss for Strether that he should find
+himself to that degree uneasy. If he had been challenged or accused,
+rebuked for meddling or otherwise pulled up, he would probably have
+shown, on his own system, all the height of his consistency, all the
+depth of his good faith. Explicit resentment of his course would have
+made him take the floor, and the thump of his fist on the table would
+have affirmed him as consciously incorruptible. Had what now really
+prevailed with Strether been but a dread of that thump—a dread of
+wincing a little painfully at what it might invidiously demonstrate?
+However this might be, at any rate, one of the marks of the crisis was
+a visible, a studied lapse, in Waymarsh, of betrayed concern. As if to
+make up to his comrade for the stroke by which he had played providence
+he now conspicuously ignored his movements, withdrew himself from the
+pretension to share them, stiffened up his sensibility to neglect, and,
+clasping his large empty hands and swinging his large restless foot,
+clearly looked to another quarter for justice.
+
+This made for independence on Strether’s part, and he had in truth at
+no moment of his stay been so free to go and come. The early summer
+brushed the picture over and blurred everything but the near; it made a
+vast warm fragrant medium in which the elements floated together on the
+best of terms, in which rewards were immediate and reckonings
+postponed. Chad was out of town again, for the first time since his
+visitor’s first view of him; he had explained this necessity—without
+detail, yet also without embarrassment, the circumstance was one of
+those which, in the young man’s life, testified to the variety of his
+ties. Strether wasn’t otherwise concerned with it than for its so
+testifying—a pleasant multitudinous image in which he took comfort. He
+took comfort, by the same stroke, in the swing of Chad’s pendulum back
+from that other swing, the sharp jerk towards Woollett, so stayed by
+his own hand. He had the entertainment of thinking that if he had for
+that moment stopped the clock it was to promote the next minute this
+still livelier motion. He himself did what he hadn’t done before; he
+took two or three times whole days off—irrespective of others, of two
+or three taken with Miss Gostrey, two or three taken with little
+Bilham: he went to Chartres and cultivated, before the front of the
+cathedral, a general easy beatitude; he went to Fontainebleau and
+imagined himself on the way to Italy; he went to Rouen with a little
+handbag and inordinately spent the night.
+
+One afternoon he did something quite different; finding himself in the
+neighbourhood of a fine old house across the river, he passed under the
+great arch of its doorway and asked at the porter’s lodge for Madame de
+Vionnet. He had already hovered more than once about that possibility,
+been aware of it, in the course of ostensible strolls, as lurking but
+round the corner. Only it had perversely happened, after his morning at
+Notre Dame, that his consistency, as he considered and intended it, had
+come back to him; whereby he had reflected that the encounter in
+question had been none of his making; clinging again intensely to the
+strength of his position, which was precisely that there was nothing in
+it for himself. From the moment he actively pursued the charming
+associate of his adventure, from that moment his position weakened, for
+he was then acting in an interested way. It was only within a few days
+that he had fixed himself a limit: he promised himself his consistency
+should end with Sarah’s arrival. It was arguing correctly to feel the
+title to a free hand conferred on him by this event. If he wasn’t to be
+let alone he should be merely a dupe to act with delicacy. If he wasn’t
+to be trusted he could at least take his ease. If he was to be placed
+under control he gained leave to try what his position _might_
+agreeably give him. An ideal rigour would perhaps postpone the trial
+till after the Pococks had shown their spirit; and it was to an ideal
+rigour that he had quite promised himself to conform.
+
+Suddenly, however, on this particular day, he felt a particular fear
+under which everything collapsed. He knew abruptly that he was afraid
+of himself—and yet not in relation to the effect on his sensibilities
+of another hour of Madame de Vionnet. What he dreaded was the effect of
+a single hour of Sarah Pocock, as to whom he was visited, in troubled
+nights, with fantastic waking dreams. She loomed at him larger than
+life; she increased in volume as she drew nearer; she so met his eyes
+that, his imagination taking, after the first step, all, and more than
+all, the strides, he already felt her come down on him, already burned,
+under her reprobation, with the blush of guilt, already consented, by
+way of penance, to the instant forfeiture of everything. He saw
+himself, under her direction, recommitted to Woollett as juvenile
+offenders are committed to reformatories. It wasn’t of course that
+Woollett was really a place of discipline; but he knew in advance that
+Sarah’s salon at the hotel would be. His danger, at any rate, in such
+moods of alarm, was some concession, on this ground, that would involve
+a sharp rupture with the actual; therefore if he waited to take leave
+of that actual he might wholly miss his chance. It was represented with
+supreme vividness by Madame de Vionnet, and that is why, in a word, he
+waited no longer. He had seen in a flash that he must anticipate Mrs.
+Pocock. He was accordingly much disappointed on now learning from the
+portress that the lady of his quest was not in Paris. She had gone for
+some days to the country. There was nothing in this accident but what
+was natural; yet it produced for poor Strether a drop of all
+confidence. It was suddenly as if he should never see her again, and as
+if moreover he had brought it on himself by not having been quite kind
+to her.
+
+It was the advantage of his having let his fancy lose itself for a
+little in the gloom that, as by reaction, the prospect began really to
+brighten from the moment the deputation from Woollett alighted on the
+platform of the station. They had come straight from Havre, having
+sailed from New York to that port, and having also, thanks to a happy
+voyage, made land with a promptitude that left Chad Newsome, who had
+meant to meet them at the dock, belated. He had received their
+telegram, with the announcement of their immediate further advance,
+just as he was taking the train for Havre, so that nothing had remained
+for him but to await them in Paris. He hastily picked up Strether, at
+the hotel, for this purpose, and he even, with easy pleasantry,
+suggested the attendance of Waymarsh as well—Waymarsh, at the moment
+his cab rattled up, being engaged, under Strether’s contemplative
+range, in a grave perambulation of the familiar court. Waymarsh had
+learned from his companion, who had already had a note, delivered by
+hand, from Chad, that the Pococks were due, and had ambiguously,
+though, as always, impressively, glowered at him over the circumstance;
+carrying himself in a manner in which Strether was now expert enough to
+recognise his uncertainty, in the premises, as to the best tone. The
+only tone he aimed at with confidence was a full tone—which was
+necessarily difficult in the absence of a full knowledge. The Pococks
+were a quantity as yet unmeasured, and, as he had practically brought
+them over, so this witness had to that extent exposed himself. He
+wanted to feel right about it, but could only, at the best, for the
+time, feel vague. “I shall look to you, you know, immensely,” our
+friend had said, “to help me with them,” and he had been quite
+conscious of the effect of the remark, and of others of the same sort,
+on his comrade’s sombre sensibility. He had insisted on the fact that
+Waymarsh would quite like Mrs. Pocock—one could be certain he would: he
+would be with her about everything, and she would also be with _him_,
+and Miss Barrace’s nose, in short, would find itself out of joint.
+
+Strether had woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in the
+court for Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself quiet
+while, caged and leonine, his fellow traveller paced and turned before
+him. Chad Newsome was doubtless to be struck, when he arrived, with the
+sharpness of their opposition at this particular hour; he was to
+remember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came with him and with Strether
+to the street and stood there with a face half-wistful and half-rueful.
+They talked of him, the two others, as they drove, and Strether put
+Chad in possession of much of his own strained sense of things. He had
+already, a few days before, named to him the wire he was convinced
+their friend had pulled—a confidence that had made on the young man’s
+part quite hugely for curiosity and diversion. The action of the
+matter, moreover, Strether could see, was to penetrate; he saw that is,
+how Chad judged a system of influence in which Waymarsh had served as a
+determinant—an impression just now quickened again; with the whole
+bearing of such a fact on the youth’s view of his relatives. As it came
+up between them that they might now take their friend for a feature of
+the control of these latter now sought to be exerted from Woollett,
+Strether felt indeed how it would be stamped all over him, half an hour
+later for Sarah Pocock’s eyes, that he was as much on Chad’s “side” as
+Waymarsh had probably described him. He was letting himself at present,
+go; there was no denying it; it might be desperation, it might be
+confidence; he should offer himself to the arriving travellers
+bristling with all the lucidity he had cultivated.
+
+He repeated to Chad what he had been saying in the court to Waymarsh;
+how there was no doubt whatever that his sister would find the latter a
+kindred spirit, no doubt of the alliance, based on an exchange of
+views, that the pair would successfully strike up. They would become as
+thick as thieves—which moreover was but a development of what Strether
+remembered to have said in one of his first discussions with his mate,
+struck as he had then already been with the elements of affinity
+between that personage and Mrs. Newsome herself. “I told him, one day,
+when he had questioned me on your mother, that she was a person who,
+when he should know her, would rouse in him, I was sure, a special
+enthusiasm; and that hangs together with the conviction we now
+feel—this certitude that Mrs. Pocock will take him into her boat. For
+it’s your mother’s own boat that she’s pulling.”
+
+“Ah,” said Chad, “Mother’s worth fifty of Sally!”
+
+“A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same you’ll be
+meeting your mother’s representative—just as I shall. I feel like the
+outgoing ambassador,” said Strether, “doing honour to his appointed
+successor.” A moment after speaking as he had just done he felt he had
+inadvertently rather cheapened Mrs. Newsome to her son; an impression
+audibly reflected, as at first seen, in Chad’s prompt protest. He had
+recently rather failed of apprehension of the young man’s attitude and
+temper—remaining principally conscious of how little worry, at the
+worst, he wasted, and he studied him at this critical hour with renewed
+interest. Chad had done exactly what he had promised him a fortnight
+previous—had accepted without another question his plea for delay. He
+was waiting cheerfully and handsomely, but also inscrutably and with a
+slight increase perhaps of the hardness originally involved in his
+acquired high polish. He was neither excited nor depressed; was easy
+and acute and deliberate—unhurried unflurried unworried, only at most a
+little less amused than usual. Strether felt him more than ever a
+justification of the extraordinary process of which his own absurd
+spirit had been the arena; he knew as their cab rolled along, knew as
+he hadn’t even yet known, that nothing else than what Chad had done and
+had been would have led to his present showing. They had made him,
+these things, what he was, and the business hadn’t been easy; it had
+taken time and trouble, it had cost, above all, a price. The result at
+any rate was now to be offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that
+was concerned, was glad to be there to witness. Would she in the least
+make it out or take it in, the result, or would she in the least care
+for it if she did? He scratched his chin as he asked himself by what
+name, when challenged—as he was sure he should be—he could call it for
+her. Oh those were determinations she must herself arrive at; since she
+wanted so much to see, let her see then and welcome. She had come out
+in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in Strether’s inner sense
+that she practically wouldn’t see.
+
+That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a
+word that next dropped from him. “They’re children; they play at
+life!”—and the exclamation was significant and reassuring. It implied
+that he hadn’t then, for his companion’s sensibility, appeared to give
+Mrs. Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend’s presently asking him
+if it were his idea that Mrs. Pocock and Madame de Vionnet should
+become acquainted. Strether was still more sharply struck, hereupon,
+with Chad’s lucidity. “Why, isn’t that exactly—to get a sight of the
+company I keep—what she has come out for?”
+
+“Yes—I’m afraid it is,” Strether unguardedly replied.
+
+Chad’s quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation. “Why do you say
+you’re afraid?”
+
+“Well, because I feel a certain responsibility. It’s my testimony, I
+imagine, that will have been at the bottom of Mrs. Pocock’s curiosity.
+My letters, as I’ve supposed you to understand from the beginning, have
+spoken freely. I’ve certainly said my little say about Madame de
+Vionnet.”
+
+All that, for Chad, was beautifully obvious. “Yes, but you’ve only
+spoken handsomely.”
+
+“Never more handsomely of any woman. But it’s just that tone—!”
+
+“That tone,” said Chad, “that has fetched her? I dare say; but I’ve no
+quarrel with you about it. And no more has Madame de Vionnet. Don’t you
+know by this time how she likes you?”
+
+“Oh!”—and Strether had, with his groan, a real pang of melancholy. “For
+all I’ve done for her!”
+
+“Ah you’ve done a great deal.”
+
+Chad’s urbanity fairly shamed him, and he was at this moment absolutely
+impatient to see the face Sarah Pocock would present to a sort of
+thing, as he synthetically phrased it to himself, with no adequate
+forecast of which, despite his admonitions, she would certainly arrive.
+“I’ve done _this!_”
+
+“Well, this is all right. She likes,” Chad comfortably remarked, “to be
+liked.”
+
+
+It gave his companion a moment’s thought. “And she’s sure Mrs. Pocock
+_will_—?”
+
+“No, I say that for you. She likes your liking her; it’s so much, as it
+were,” Chad laughed, “to the good. However, she doesn’t despair of
+Sarah either, and is prepared, on her own side, to go all lengths.”
+
+“In the way of appreciation?”
+
+“Yes, and of everything else. In the way of general amiability,
+hospitality and welcome. She’s under arms,” Chad laughed again; “she’s
+prepared.”
+
+Strether took it in; then as if an echo of Miss Barrace were in the
+air: “She’s wonderful.”
+
+“You don’t begin to know _how_ wonderful!”
+
+There was a depth in it, to Strether’s ear, of confirmed luxury—almost
+a kind of unconscious insolence of proprietorship; but the effect of
+the glimpse was not at this moment to foster speculation: there was
+something so conclusive in so much graceful and generous assurance. It
+was in fact a fresh evocation; and the evocation had before many
+minutes another consequence. “Well, I shall see her oftener now. I
+shall see her as much as I like—by your leave; which is what I hitherto
+haven’t done.”
+
+“It has been,” said Chad, but without reproach, “only your own fault. I
+tried to bring you together, and _she_, my dear fellow—I never saw her
+more charming to any man. But you’ve got your extraordinary ideas.”
+
+“Well, I _did_ have,” Strether murmured, while he felt both how they
+had possessed him and how they had now lost their authority. He
+couldn’t have traced the sequence to the end, but it was all because of
+Mrs. Pocock. Mrs. Pocock might be because of Mrs. Newsome, but that was
+still to be proved. What came over him was the sense of having stupidly
+failed to profit where profit would have been precious. It had been
+open to him to see so much more of her, and he had but let the good
+days pass. Fierce in him almost was the resolve to lose no more of
+them, and he whimsically reflected, while at Chad’s side he drew nearer
+to his destination, that it was after all Sarah who would have
+quickened his chance. What her visit of inquisition might achieve in
+other directions was as yet all obscure—only not obscure that it would
+do supremely much to bring two earnest persons together. He had but to
+listen to Chad at this moment to feel it; for Chad was in the act of
+remarking to him that they of course both counted on him—he himself and
+the other earnest person—for cheer and support. It was brave to
+Strether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out
+was to make things ravishing to the Pococks. No, if Madame de Vionnet
+compassed _that_, compassed the ravishment of the Pococks, Madame de
+Vionnet would be prodigious. It would be a beautiful plan if it
+succeeded, and it all came to the question of Sarah’s being really
+bribeable. The precedent of his own case helped Strether perhaps but
+little to consider she might prove so; it being distinct that her
+character would rather make for every possible difference. This idea of
+his own bribeability set him apart for himself; with the further mark
+in fact that his case was absolutely proved. He liked always, where
+Lambert Strether was concerned, to know the worst, and what he now
+seemed to know was not only that he was bribeable, but that he had been
+effectually bribed. The only difficulty was that he couldn’t quite have
+said with what. It was as if he had sold himself, but hadn’t somehow
+got the cash. That, however, was what, characteristically, _would_
+happen to him. It would naturally be his kind of traffic. While he
+thought of these things he reminded Chad of the truth they mustn’t lose
+sight of—the truth that, with all deference to her susceptibility to
+new interests, Sarah would have come out with a high firm definite
+purpose. “She hasn’t come out, you know, to be bamboozled. We may all
+be ravishing—nothing perhaps can be more easy for us; but she hasn’t
+come out to be ravished. She has come out just simply to take you
+home.”
+
+“Oh well, with _her_ I’ll go,” said Chad good-humouredly. “I suppose
+you’ll allow _that_.” And then as for a minute Strether said nothing:
+“Or is your idea that when I’ve seen her I shan’t want to go?” As this
+question, however, again left his friend silent he presently went on:
+“My own idea at any rate is that they shall have while they’re here the
+best sort of time.”
+
+It was at this that Strether spoke. “Ah there you are! I think if you
+really wanted to go—!”
+
+“Well?” said Chad to bring it out.
+
+“Well, you wouldn’t trouble about our good time. You wouldn’t care what
+sort of a time we have.”
+
+Chad could always take in the easiest way in the world any ingenious
+suggestion. “I see. But can I help it? I’m too decent.”
+
+“Yes, you’re too decent!” Strether heavily sighed. And he felt for the
+moment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission.
+
+It ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made no
+rejoinder. But he spoke again as they came in sight of the station. “Do
+you mean to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?”
+
+As to this Strether was ready. “No.”
+
+“But haven’t you told me they know about her?”
+
+“I think I’ve told you your mother knows.”
+
+“And won’t she have told Sally?”
+
+“That’s one of the things I want to see.”
+
+“And if you find she _has_—?”
+
+“Will I then, you mean, bring them together?”
+
+“Yes,” said Chad with his pleasant promptness: “to show her there’s
+nothing in it.”
+
+Strether hesitated. “I don’t know that I care very much what she may
+think there’s in it.”
+
+“Not if it represents what Mother thinks?”
+
+“Ah what _does_ your mother think?” There was in this some sound of
+bewilderment.
+
+But they were just driving up, and help, of a sort, might after all be
+quite at hand. “Isn’t that, my dear man, what we’re both just going to
+make out?”
+
+
+ II
+
+Strether quitted the station half an hour later in different company.
+Chad had taken charge, for the journey to the hotel, of Sarah, Mamie,
+the maid and the luggage, all spaciously installed and conveyed; and it
+was only after the four had rolled away that his companion got into a
+cab with Jim. A strange new feeling had come over Strether, in
+consequence of which his spirits had risen; it was as if what had
+occurred on the alighting of his critics had been something other than
+his fear, though his fear had yet not been of an instant scene of
+violence. His impression had been nothing but what was inevitable—he
+said that to himself; yet relief and reassurance had softly dropped
+upon him. Nothing could be so odd as to be indebted for these things to
+the look of faces and the sound of voices that had been with him to
+satiety, as he might have said, for years; but he now knew, all the
+same, how uneasy he had felt; that was brought home to him by his
+present sense of a respite. It had come moreover in the flash of an
+eye, it had come in the smile with which Sarah, whom, at the window of
+her compartment, they had effusively greeted from the platform, rustled
+down to them a moment later, fresh and handsome from her cool June
+progress through the charming land. It was only a sign, but enough: she
+was going to be gracious and unallusive, she was going to play the
+larger game—which was still more apparent, after she had emerged from
+Chad’s arms, in her direct greeting to the valued friend of her family.
+
+Strether _was_ then as much as ever the valued friend of her family, it
+was something he could at all events go on with; and the manner of his
+response to it expressed even for himself how little he had enjoyed the
+prospect of ceasing to figure in that likeness. He had always seen
+Sarah gracious—had in fact rarely seen her shy or dry, her marked
+thin-lipped smile, intense without brightness and as prompt to act as
+the scrape of a safety-match; the protrusion of her rather remarkably
+long chin, which in her case represented invitation and urbanity, and
+not, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance; the penetration of her
+voice to a distance, the general encouragement and approval of her
+manner, were all elements with which intercourse had made him familiar,
+but which he noted today almost as if she had been a new acquaintance.
+This first glimpse of her had given a brief but vivid accent to her
+resemblance to her mother; he could have taken her for Mrs. Newsome
+while she met his eyes as the train rolled into the station. It was an
+impression that quickly dropped; Mrs. Newsome was much handsomer, and
+while Sarah inclined to the massive her mother had, at an age, still
+the girdle of a maid; also the latter’s chin was rather short, than
+long, and her smile, by good fortune, much more, oh ever so much more,
+mercifully vague. Strether had seen Mrs. Newsome reserved; he had
+literally heard her silent, though he had never known her unpleasant.
+It was the case with Mrs. Pocock that he had known _her_ unpleasant,
+even though he had never known her not affable. She had forms of
+affability that were in a high degree assertive; nothing for instance
+had ever been more striking than that she was affable to Jim.
+
+What had told in any case at the window of the train was her high clear
+forehead, that forehead which her friends, for some reason, always
+thought of as a “brow”; the long reach of her eyes—it came out at this
+juncture in such a manner as to remind him, oddly enough, also of that
+of Waymarsh’s; and the unusual gloss of her dark hair, dressed and
+hatted, after her mother’s refined example, with such an avoidance of
+extremes that it was always spoken of at Woollett as “their own.”
+Though this analogy dropped as soon as she was on the platform it had
+lasted long enough to make him feel all the advantage, as it were, of
+his relief. The woman at home, the woman to whom he was attached, was
+before him just long enough to give him again the measure of the
+wretchedness, in fact really of the shame, of their having to recognise
+the formation, between them, of a “split.” He had taken this measure in
+solitude and meditation: but the catastrophe, as Sarah steamed up,
+looked for its seconds unprecedentedly dreadful—or proved, more
+exactly, altogether unthinkable; so that his finding something free and
+familiar to respond to brought with it an instant renewal of his
+loyalty. He had suddenly sounded the whole depth, had gasped at what he
+might have lost.
+
+Well, he could now, for the quarter of an hour of their detention hover
+about the travellers as soothingly as if their direct message to him
+was that he had lost nothing. He wasn’t going to have Sarah write to
+her mother that night that he was in any way altered or strange. There
+had been times enough for a month when it had seemed to him that he was
+strange, that he was altered, in every way; but that was a matter for
+himself; he knew at least whose business it was _not_; it was not at
+all events such a circumstance as Sarah’s own unaided lights would help
+her to. Even if she had come out to flash those lights more than yet
+appeared she wouldn’t make much headway against mere pleasantness. He
+counted on being able to be merely pleasant to the end, and if only
+from incapacity moreover to formulate anything different. He couldn’t
+even formulate to himself his being changed and queer; it had taken
+place, the process, somewhere deep down; Maria Gostrey had caught
+glimpses of it; but how was he to fish it up, even if he desired, for
+Mrs. Pocock? This was then the spirit in which he hovered, and with the
+easier throb in it much indebted furthermore to the impression of high
+and established adequacy as a pretty girl promptly produced in him by
+Mamie. He had wondered vaguely—turning over many things in the fidget
+of his thoughts—if Mamie _were_ as pretty as Woollett published her; as
+to which issue seeing her now again was to be so swept away by
+Woollett’s opinion that this consequence really let loose for the
+imagination an avalanche of others. There were positively five minutes
+in which the last word seemed of necessity to abide with a Woollett
+represented by a Mamie. This was the sort of truth the place itself
+would feel; it would send her forth in confidence; it would point to
+her with triumph; it would take its stand on her with assurance; it
+would be conscious of no requirements she didn’t meet, of no question
+she couldn’t answer.
+
+Well, it was right, Strether slipped smoothly enough into the
+cheerfulness of saying: granted that a community _might_ be best
+represented by a young lady of twenty-two, Mamie perfectly played the
+part, played it as if she were used to it, and looked and spoke and
+dressed the character. He wondered if she mightn’t, in the high light
+of Paris, a cool full studio-light, becoming yet treacherous, show as
+too conscious of these matters; but the next moment he felt satisfied
+that her consciousness was after all empty for its size, rather too
+simple than too mixed, and that the kind way with her would be not to
+take many things out of it, but to put as many as possible in. She was
+robust and conveniently tall; just a trifle too bloodlessly fair
+perhaps, but with a pleasant public familiar radiance that affirmed her
+vitality. She might have been “receiving” for Woollett, wherever she
+found herself, and there was something in her manner, her tone, her
+motion, her pretty blue eyes, her pretty perfect teeth and her very
+small, too small, nose, that immediately placed her, to the fancy,
+between the windows of a hot bright room in which voices were high—up
+at that end to which people were brought to be “presented.” They were
+there to congratulate, these images, and Strether’s renewed vision, on
+this hint, completed the idea. What Mamie was like was the happy bride,
+the bride after the church and just before going away. She wasn’t the
+mere maiden, and yet was only as much married as that quantity came to.
+She was in the brilliant acclaimed festal stage. Well, might it last
+her long!
+
+Strether rejoiced in these things for Chad, who was all genial
+attention to the needs of his friends, besides having arranged that his
+servant should reinforce him; the ladies were certainly pleasant to
+see, and Mamie would be at any time and anywhere pleasant to exhibit.
+She would look extraordinarily like his young wife—the wife of a
+honeymoon, should he go about with her; but that was his own affair—or
+perhaps it was hers; it was at any rate something she couldn’t help.
+Strether remembered how he had seen him come up with Jeanne de Vionnet
+in Gloriani’s garden, and the fancy he had had about that—the fancy
+obscured now, thickly overlaid with others; the recollection was during
+these minutes his only note of trouble. He had often, in spite of
+himself, wondered if Chad but too probably were not with Jeanne the
+object of a still and shaded flame. It was on the cards that the child
+_might_ be tremulously in love, and this conviction now flickered up
+not a bit the less for his disliking to think of it, for its being, in
+a complicated situation, a complication the more, and for something
+indescribable in Mamie, something at all events straightway lent her by
+his own mind, something that gave her value, gave her intensity and
+purpose, as the symbol of an opposition. Little Jeanne wasn’t really at
+all in question—how _could_ she be?—yet from the moment Miss Pocock had
+shaken her skirts on the platform, touched up the immense bows of her
+hat and settled properly over her shoulder the strap of her
+morocco-and-gilt travelling-satchel, from that moment little Jeanne was
+opposed.
+
+It was in the cab with Jim that impressions really crowded on Strether,
+giving him the strangest sense of length of absence from people among
+whom he had lived for years. Having them thus come out to him was as if
+he had returned to find them: and the droll promptitude of Jim’s mental
+reaction threw his own initiation far back into the past. Whoever might
+or mightn’t be suited by what was going on among them, Jim, for one,
+would certainly be: his instant recognition—frank and whimsical—of what
+the affair was for _him_ gave Strether a glow of pleasure. “I say, you
+know, this _is_ about my shape, and if it hadn’t been for _you_—!” so
+he broke out as the charming streets met his healthy appetite; and he
+wound up, after an expressive nudge, with a clap of his companion’s
+knee and an “Oh you, you—you _are_ doing it!” that was charged with
+rich meaning. Strether felt in it the intention of homage, but, with a
+curiosity otherwise occupied, postponed taking it up. What he was
+asking himself for the time was how Sarah Pocock, in the opportunity
+already given her, had judged her brother—from whom he himself, as they
+finally, at the station, separated for their different conveyances, had
+had a look into which he could read more than one message. However
+Sarah was judging her brother, Chad’s conclusion about his sister, and
+about her husband and her husband’s sister, was at the least on the way
+not to fail of confidence. Strether felt the confidence, and that, as
+the look between them was an exchange, what he himself gave back was
+relatively vague. This comparison of notes however could wait;
+everything struck him as depending on the effect produced by Chad.
+Neither Sarah nor Mamie had in any way, at the station—where they had
+had after all ample time—broken out about it; which, to make up for
+this, was what our friend had expected of Jim as soon as they should
+find themselves together.
+
+It was queer to him that he had that noiseless brush with Chad; an
+ironic intelligence with this youth on the subject of his relatives, an
+intelligence carried on under their nose and, as might be said, at
+their expense—such a matter marked again for him strongly the number of
+stages he had come; albeit that if the number seemed great the time
+taken for the final one was but the turn of a hand. He had before this
+had many moments of wondering if he himself weren’t perhaps changed
+even as Chad was changed. Only what in Chad was conspicuous
+improvement—well, he had no name ready for the working, in his own
+organism, of his own more timid dose. He should have to see first what
+this action would amount to. And for his occult passage with the young
+man, after all, the directness of it had no greater oddity than the
+fact that the young man’s way with the three travellers should have
+been so happy a manifestation. Strether liked him for it, on the spot,
+as he hadn’t yet liked him; it affected him while it lasted as he might
+have been affected by some light pleasant perfect work of art: to that
+degree that he wondered if they were really worthy of it, took it in
+and did it justice; to that degree that it would have been scarce a
+miracle if, there in the luggage-room, while they waited for their
+things, Sarah had pulled his sleeve and drawn him aside. “You’re right;
+we haven’t quite known what you mean, Mother and I, but now we see.
+Chad’s magnificent; what can one want more? If _this_ is the kind of
+thing—!” On which they might, as it were, have embraced and begun to
+work together.
+
+Ah how much, as it was, for all her bridling brightness—which was
+merely general and noticed nothing—_would_ they work together? Strether
+knew he was unreasonable; he set it down to his being nervous: people
+couldn’t notice everything and speak of everything in a quarter of an
+hour. Possibly, no doubt, also, he made too much of Chad’s display.
+Yet, none the less, when, at the end of five minutes, in the cab, Jim
+Pocock had said nothing either—hadn’t said, that is, what Strether
+wanted, though he had said much else—it all suddenly bounced back to
+their being either stupid or wilful. It was more probably on the whole
+the former; so that that would be the drawback of the bridling
+brightness. Yes, they would bridle and be bright; they would make the
+best of what was before them, but their observation would fail; it
+would be beyond them; they simply wouldn’t understand. Of what use
+would it be then that they had come?—if they weren’t to be intelligent
+up to _that_ point: unless indeed he himself were utterly deluded and
+extravagant? Was he, on this question of Chad’s improvement, fantastic
+and away from the truth? Did he live in a false world, a world that had
+grown simply to suit him, and was his present slight irritation—in the
+face now of Jim’s silence in particular—but the alarm of the vain thing
+menaced by the touch of the real? Was this contribution of the real
+possibly the mission of the Pococks?—had they come to make the work of
+observation, as _he_ had practised observation, crack and crumble, and
+to reduce Chad to the plain terms in which honest minds could deal with
+him? Had they come in short to be sane where Strether was destined to
+feel that he himself had only been silly?
+
+He glanced at such a contingency, but it failed to hold him long when
+once he had reflected that he would have been silly, in this case, with
+Maria Gostrey and little Bilham, with Madame de Vionnet and little
+Jeanne, with Lambert Strether, in fine, and above all with Chad Newsome
+himself. Wouldn’t it be found to have made more for reality to be silly
+with these persons than sane with Sarah and Jim? Jim in fact, he
+presently made up his mind, was individually out of it; Jim didn’t
+care; Jim hadn’t come out either for Chad or for him; Jim in short left
+the moral side to Sally and indeed simply availed himself now, for the
+sense of recreation, of the fact that he left almost everything to
+Sally. He was nothing compared to Sally, and not so much by reason of
+Sally’s temper and will as by that of her more developed type and
+greater acquaintance with the world. He quite frankly and serenely
+confessed, as he sat there with Strether, that he felt his type hang
+far in the rear of his wife’s and still further, if possible, in the
+rear of his sister’s. Their types, he well knew, were recognised and
+acclaimed; whereas the most a leading Woollett business-man could hope
+to achieve socially, and for that matter industrially, was a certain
+freedom to play into this general glamour.
+
+The impression he made on our friend was another of the things that
+marked our friend’s road. It was a strange impression, especially as so
+soon produced; Strether had received it, he judged, all in the twenty
+minutes; it struck him at least as but in a minor degree the work of
+the long Woollett years. Pocock was normally and consentingly though
+not quite wittingly out of the question. It was despite his being
+normal; it was despite his being cheerful; it was despite his being a
+leading Woollett business-man; and the determination of his fate left
+him thus perfectly usual—as everything else about it was clearly, to
+his sense, not less so. He seemed to say that there was a whole side of
+life on which the perfectly usual _was_ for leading Woollett
+business-men to be out of the question. He made no more of it than
+that, and Strether, so far as Jim was concerned, desired to make no
+more. Only Strether’s imagination, as always, worked, and he asked
+himself if this side of life were not somehow connected, for those who
+figured on it with the fact of marriage. Would _his_ relation to it,
+had he married ten years before, have become now the same as Pocock’s?
+Might it even become the same should he marry in a few months? Should
+he ever know himself as much out of the question for Mrs. Newsome as
+Jim knew himself—in a dim way—for Mrs. Jim?
+
+To turn his eyes in that direction was to be personally reassured; he
+was different from Pocock; he had affirmed himself differently and was
+held after all in higher esteem. What none the less came home to him,
+however, at this hour, was that the society over there, that of which
+Sarah and Mamie—and, in a more eminent way, Mrs. Newsome herself—were
+specimens, was essentially a society of women, and that poor Jim wasn’t
+in it. He himself Lambert Strether, _was_ as yet in some degree—which
+was an odd situation for a man; but it kept coming back to him in a
+whimsical way that he should perhaps find his marriage had cost him his
+place. This occasion indeed, whatever that fancy represented, was not a
+time of sensible exclusion for Jim, who was in a state of manifest
+response to the charm of his adventure. Small and fat and constantly
+facetious, straw-coloured and destitute of marks, he would have been
+practically indistinguishable hadn’t his constant preference for
+light-grey clothes, for white hats, for very big cigars and very little
+stories, done what it could for his identity. There were signs in him,
+though none of them plaintive, of always paying for others; and the
+principal one perhaps was just this failure of type. It was with this
+that he paid, rather than with fatigue or waste; and also doubtless a
+little with the effort of humour—never irrelevant to the conditions, to
+the relations, with which he was acquainted.
+
+He gurgled his joy as they rolled through the happy streets; he
+declared that his trip was a regular windfall, and that he wasn’t
+there, he was eager to remark, to hang back from anything: he didn’t
+know quite what Sally had come for, but _he_ had come for a good time.
+Strether indulged him even while wondering if what Sally wanted her
+brother to go back for was to become like her husband. He trusted that
+a good time was to be, out and out, the programme for all of them; and
+he assented liberally to Jim’s proposal that, disencumbered and
+irresponsible—his things were in the omnibus with those of the
+others—they should take a further turn round before going to the hotel.
+It wasn’t for _him_ to tackle Chad—it was Sally’s job; and as it would
+be like her, he felt, to open fire on the spot, it wouldn’t be amiss of
+them to hold off and give her time. Strether, on his side, only asked
+to give her time; so he jogged with his companion along boulevards and
+avenues, trying to extract from meagre material some forecast of his
+catastrophe. He was quick enough to see that Jim Pocock declined
+judgement, had hovered quite round the outer edge of discussion and
+anxiety, leaving all analysis of their question to the ladies alone and
+now only feeling his way toward some small droll cynicism. It broke out
+afresh, the cynicism—it had already shown a flicker—in a but slightly
+deferred: “Well, hanged if I would if _I_ were he!”
+
+“You mean you wouldn’t in Chad’s place—?”
+
+“Give up this to go back and boss the advertising!” Poor Jim, with his
+arms folded and his little legs out in the open fiacre, drank in the
+sparkling Paris noon and carried his eyes from one side of their vista
+to the other. “Why I want to come right out and live here myself. And I
+want to live while I _am_ here too. I feel with _you_—oh you’ve been
+grand, old man, and I’ve twigged—that it ain’t right to worry Chad. _I_
+don’t mean to persecute him; I couldn’t in conscience. It’s thanks to
+you at any rate that I’m here, and I’m sure I’m much obliged. You’re a
+lovely pair.”
+
+There were things in this speech that Strether let pass for the time.
+“Don’t you then think it important the advertising should be thoroughly
+taken in hand? Chad _will_ be, so far as capacity is concerned,” he
+went on, “the man to do it.”
+
+“Where did he get his capacity,” Jim asked, “over here?”
+
+“He didn’t get it over here, and the wonderful thing is that over here
+he hasn’t inevitably lost it. He has a natural turn for business, an
+extraordinary head. He comes by that,” Strether explained, “honestly
+enough. He’s in that respect his father’s son, and also—for she’s
+wonderful in her way too—his mother’s. He has other tastes and other
+tendencies; but Mrs. Newsome and your wife are quite right about his
+having that. He’s very remarkable.”
+
+“Well, I guess he is!” Jim Pocock comfortably sighed. “But if you’ve
+believed so in his making us hum, why have you so prolonged the
+discussion? Don’t you know we’ve been quite anxious about you?”
+
+These questions were not informed with earnestness, but Strether saw he
+must none the less make a choice and take a line. “Because, you see,
+I’ve greatly liked it. I’ve liked my Paris, I dare say I’ve liked it
+too much.”
+
+“Oh you old wretch!” Jim gaily exclaimed.
+
+“But nothing’s concluded,” Strether went on. “The case is more complex
+than it looks from Woollett.”
+
+“Oh well, it looks bad enough from Woollett!” Jim declared.
+
+“Even after all I’ve written?”
+
+Jim bethought himself. “Isn’t it what you’ve written that has made Mrs.
+Newsome pack us off? That at least and Chad’s not turning up?”
+
+Strether made a reflexion of his own. “I see. That she should do
+something was, no doubt, inevitable, and your wife has therefore of
+course come out to act.”
+
+“Oh yes,” Jim concurred—“to act. But Sally comes out to act, you know,”
+he lucidly added, “every time she leaves the house. She never comes out
+but she _does_ act. She’s acting moreover now for her mother, and that
+fixes the scale.” Then he wound up, opening all his senses to it, with
+a renewed embrace of pleasant Paris. “We haven’t all the same at
+Woollett got anything like this.”
+
+Strether continued to consider. “I’m bound to say for you all that you
+strike me as having arrived in a very mild and reasonable frame of
+mind. You don’t show your claws. I felt just now in Mrs. Pocock no
+symptom of that. She isn’t fierce,” he went on. “I’m such a nervous
+idiot that I thought she might be.”
+
+“Oh don’t you know her well enough,” Pocock asked, “to have noticed
+that she never gives herself away, any more than her mother ever does?
+They ain’t fierce, either of ‘em; they let you come quite close. They
+wear their fur the smooth side out—the warm side in. Do you know what
+they are?” Jim pursued as he looked about him, giving the question, as
+Strether felt, but half his care—“do you know what they are? They’re
+about as intense as they can live.”
+
+“Yes”—and Strether’s concurrence had a positive precipitation; “they’re
+about as intense as they can live.”
+
+“They don’t lash about and shake the cage,” said Jim, who seemed
+pleased with his analogy; “and it’s at feeding-time that they’re
+quietest. But they always get there.”
+
+“They do indeed—they always get there!” Strether replied with a laugh
+that justified his confession of nervousness. He disliked to be talking
+sincerely of Mrs. Newsome with Pocock; he could have talked
+insincerely. But there was something he wanted to know, a need created
+in him by her recent intermission, by his having given from the first
+so much, as now more than ever appeared to him, and got so little. It
+was as if a queer truth in his companion’s metaphor had rolled over him
+with a rush. She _had_ been quiet at feeding-time; she had fed, and
+Sarah had fed with her, out of the big bowl of all his recent free
+communication, his vividness and pleasantness, his ingenuity and even
+his eloquence, while the current of her response had steadily run thin.
+Jim meanwhile however, it was true, slipped characteristically into
+shallowness from the moment he ceased to speak out of the experience of
+a husband.
+
+“But of course Chad has now the advantage of being there before her. If
+he doesn’t work that for all it’s worth—!” He sighed with contingent
+pity at his brother-in-law’s possible want of resource. “He has worked
+it on _you_, pretty well, eh?” and he asked the next moment if there
+were anything new at the Varieties, which he pronounced in the American
+manner. They talked about the Varieties—Strether confessing to a
+knowledge which produced again on Pocock’s part a play of innuendo as
+vague as a nursery-rhyme, yet as aggressive as an elbow in his side;
+and they finished their drive under the protection of easy themes.
+Strether waited to the end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim
+had seen Chad as different; and he could scarce have explained the
+discouragement he drew from the absence of this testimony. It was what
+he had taken his own stand on, so far as he had taken a stand; and if
+they were all only going to see nothing he had only wasted his time. He
+gave his friend till the very last moment, till they had come into
+sight of the hotel; and when poor Pocock only continued cheerful and
+envious and funny he fairly grew to dislike him, to feel him
+extravagantly common. If they were _all_ going to see nothing!—Strether
+knew, as this came back to him, that he was also letting Pocock
+represent for him what Mrs. Newsome wouldn’t see. He went on disliking,
+in the light of Jim’s commonness, to talk to him about that lady; yet
+just before the cab pulled up he knew the extent of his desire for the
+real word from Woollett.
+
+“Has Mrs. Newsome at all given way—?”
+
+“‘Given way’?”—Jim echoed it with the practical derision of his sense
+of a long past.
+
+“Under the strain, I mean, of hope deferred, of disappointment repeated
+and thereby intensified.”
+
+“Oh is she prostrate, you mean?”—he had his categories in hand. “Why
+yes, she’s prostrate—just as Sally is. But they’re never so lively, you
+know, as when they’re prostrate.”
+
+“Ah Sarah’s prostrate?” Strether vaguely murmured.
+
+“It’s when they’re prostrate that they most sit up.”
+
+“And Mrs. Newsome’s sitting up?”
+
+“All night, my boy—for _you!_” And Jim fetched him, with a vulgar
+little guffaw, a thrust that gave relief to the picture. But he had got
+what he wanted. He felt on the spot that this _was_ the real word from
+Woollett. “So don’t you go home!” Jim added while he alighted and while
+his friend, letting him profusely pay the cabman, sat on in a momentary
+muse. Strether wondered if that were the real word too.
+
+
+ III
+
+As the door of Mrs. Pocock’s salon was pushed open for him, the next
+day, well before noon, he was reached by a voice with a charming sound
+that made him just falter before crossing the threshold. Madame de
+Vionnet was already on the field, and this gave the drama a quicker
+pace than he felt it as yet—though his suspense had increased—in the
+power of any act of his own to do. He had spent the previous evening
+with all his old friends together yet he would still have described
+himself as quite in the dark in respect to a forecast of their
+influence on his situation. It was strange now, none the less, that in
+the light of this unexpected note of her presence he felt Madame de
+Vionnet a part of that situation as she hadn’t even yet been. She was
+alone, he found himself assuming, with Sarah, and there was a bearing
+in that—somehow beyond his control—on his personal fate. Yet she was
+only saying something quite easy and independent—the thing she had
+come, as a good friend of Chad’s, on purpose to say. “There isn’t
+anything at all—? I should be so delighted.”
+
+It was clear enough, when they were there before him, how she had been
+received. He saw this, as Sarah got up to greet him, from something
+fairly hectic in Sarah’s face. He saw furthermore that they weren’t, as
+had first come to him, alone together; he was at no loss as to the
+identity of the broad high back presented to him in the embrasure of
+the window furthest from the door. Waymarsh, whom he had to-day not yet
+seen, whom he only knew to have left the hotel before him, and who had
+taken part, the night previous, on Mrs. Pocock’s kind invitation,
+conveyed by Chad, in the entertainment, informal but cordial, promptly
+offered by that lady—Waymarsh had anticipated him even as Madame de
+Vionnet had done, and, with his hands in his pockets and his attitude
+unaffected by Strether’s entrance, was looking out, in marked
+detachment, at the Rue de Rivoli. The latter felt it in the air—it was
+immense how Waymarsh could mark things—-that he had remained deeply
+dissociated from the overture to their hostess that we have recorded on
+Madame de Vionnet’s side. He had, conspicuously, tact, besides a stiff
+general view; and this was why he had left Mrs. Pocock to struggle
+alone. He would outstay the visitor; he would unmistakeably wait; to
+what had he been doomed for months past but waiting? Therefore she was
+to feel that she had him in reserve. What support she drew from this
+was still to be seen, for, although Sarah was vividly bright, she had
+given herself up for the moment to an ambiguous flushed formalism. She
+had had to reckon more quickly than she expected; but it concerned her
+first of all to signify that she was not to be taken unawares. Strether
+arrived precisely in time for her showing it. “Oh you’re too good; but
+I don’t think I feel quite helpless. I have my brother—and these
+American friends. And then you know I’ve been to Paris. I _know_
+Paris,” said Sally Pocock in a tone that breathed a certain chill on
+Strether’s heart.
+
+“Ah but a woman, in this tiresome place where everything’s always
+changing, a woman of good will,” Madame de Vionnet threw off, “can
+always help a woman. I’m sure you ‘know’—but we know perhaps different
+things.” She too, visibly, wished to make no mistake; but it was a fear
+of a different order and more kept out of sight. She smiled in welcome
+at Strether; she greeted him more familiarly than Mrs. Pocock; she put
+out her hand to him without moving from her place; and it came to him
+in the course of a minute and in the oddest way that—yes,
+positively—she was giving him over to ruin. She was all kindness and
+ease, but she couldn’t help so giving him; she was exquisite, and her
+being just as she was poured for Sarah a sudden rush of meaning into
+his own equivocations. How could she know how she was hurting him? She
+wanted to show as simple and humble—in the degree compatible with
+operative charm; but it was just this that seemed to put him on her
+side. She struck him as dressed, as arranged, as prepared infinitely to
+conciliate—with the very poetry of good taste in her view of the
+conditions of her early call. She was ready to advise about dressmakers
+and shops; she held herself wholly at the disposition of Chad’s family.
+Strether noticed her card on the table—her coronet and her
+“Comtesse”—and the imagination was sharp in him of certain private
+adjustments in Sarah’s mind. She had never, he was sure, sat with a
+“Comtesse” before, and such was the specimen of that class he had been
+keeping to play on her. She had crossed the sea very particularly for a
+look at her; but he read in Madame de Vionnet’s own eyes that this
+curiosity hadn’t been so successfully met as that she herself wouldn’t
+now have more than ever need of him. She looked much as she had looked
+to him that morning at Notre Dame; he noted in fact the suggestive
+sameness of her discreet and delicate dress. It seemed to speak—perhaps
+a little prematurely or too finely—of the sense in which she would help
+Mrs. Pocock with the shops. The way that lady took her in, moreover,
+added depth to his impression of what Miss Gostrey, by their common
+wisdom, had escaped. He winced as he saw himself but for that timely
+prudence ushering in Maria as a guide and an example. There was however
+a touch of relief for him in his glimpse, so far as he had got it, of
+Sarah’s line. She “knew Paris.” Madame de Vionnet had, for that matter,
+lightly taken this up. “Ah then you’ve a turn for that, an affinity
+that belongs to your family. Your brother, though his long experience
+makes a difference, I admit, has become one of us in a marvellous way.”
+And she appealed to Strether in the manner of a woman who could always
+glide off with smoothness into another subject. Wasn’t _he_ struck with
+the way Mr. Newsome had made the place his own, and hadn’t he been in a
+position to profit by his friend’s wondrous expertness?
+
+Strether felt the bravery, at the least, of her presenting herself so
+promptly to sound that note, and yet asked himself what other note,
+after all, she _could_ strike from the moment she presented herself at
+all. She could meet Mrs. Pocock only on the ground of the obvious, and
+what feature of Chad’s situation was more eminent than the fact that he
+had created for himself a new set of circumstances? Unless she hid
+herself altogether she could show but as one of these, an illustration
+of his domiciled and indeed of his confirmed condition. And the
+consciousness of all this in her charming eyes was so clear and fine
+that as she thus publicly drew him into her boat she produced in him
+such a silent agitation as he was not to fail afterwards to denounce as
+pusillanimous. “Ah don’t be so charming to me!—for it makes us
+intimate, and after all what _is_ between us when I’ve been so
+tremendously on my guard and have seen you but half a dozen times?” He
+recognised once more the perverse law that so inveterately governed his
+poor personal aspects: it would be exactly _like_ the way things always
+turned out for him that he should affect Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh as
+launched in a relation in which he had really never been launched at
+all. They were at this very moment—they could only be—attributing to
+him the full licence of it, and all by the operation of her own tone
+with him; whereas his sole licence had been to cling with intensity to
+the brink, not to dip so much as a toe into the flood. But the flicker
+of his fear on this occasion was not, as may be added, to repeat
+itself; it sprang up, for its moment, only to die down and then go out
+for ever. To meet his fellow visitor’s invocation and, with Sarah’s
+brilliant eyes on him, answer, _was_ quite sufficiently to step into
+her boat. During the rest of the time her visit lasted he felt himself
+proceed to each of the proper offices, successively, for helping to
+keep the adventurous skiff afloat. It rocked beneath him, but he
+settled himself in his place. He took up an oar and, since he was to
+have the credit of pulling, pulled.
+
+“That will make it all the pleasanter if it so happens that we _do_
+meet,” Madame de Vionnet had further observed in reference to Mrs.
+Pocock’s mention of her initiated state; and she had immediately added
+that, after all, her hostess couldn’t be in need with the good offices
+of Mr. Strether so close at hand. “It’s he, I gather, who has learnt to
+know his Paris, and to love it, better than any one ever before in so
+short a time; so that between him and your brother, when it comes to
+the point, how can you possibly want for good guidance? The great
+thing, Mr. Strether will show you,” she smiled, “is just to let one’s
+self go.”
+
+“Oh I’ve not let myself go very far,” Strether answered, feeling quite
+as if he had been called upon to hint to Mrs. Pocock how Parisians
+could talk. “I’m only afraid of showing I haven’t let myself go far
+enough. I’ve taken a good deal of time, but I must quite have had the
+air of not budging from one spot.” He looked at Sarah in a manner that
+he thought she might take as engaging, and he made, under Madame de
+Vionnet’s protection, as it were, his first personal point. “What has
+really happened has been that, all the while, I’ve done what I came out
+for.”
+
+Yet it only at first gave Madame de Vionnet a chance immediately to
+take him up. “You’ve renewed acquaintance with your friend—you’ve
+learnt to know him again.” She spoke with such cheerful helpfulness
+that they might, in a common cause, have been calling together and
+pledged to mutual aid.
+
+Waymarsh, at this, as if he had been in question, straightway turned
+from the window. “Oh yes, Countess—he has renewed acquaintance with
+_me_, and he _has_, I guess, learnt something about me, though I don’t
+know how much he has liked it. It’s for Strether himself to say whether
+he has felt it justifies his course.”
+
+“Oh but _you_,” said the Countess gaily, “are not in the least what he
+came out for—is he really, Strether? and I hadn’t you at all in my
+mind. I was thinking of Mr. Newsome, of whom we think so much and with
+whom, precisely, Mrs. Pocock has given herself the opportunity to take
+up threads. What a pleasure for you both!” Madame de Vionnet, with her
+eyes on Sarah, bravely continued.
+
+Mrs. Pocock met her handsomely, but Strether quickly saw she meant to
+accept no version of her movements or plans from any other lips. She
+required no patronage and no support, which were but other names for a
+false position; she would show in her own way what she chose to show,
+and this she expressed with a dry glitter that recalled to him a fine
+Woollett winter morning. “I’ve never wanted for opportunities to see my
+brother. We’ve many things to think of at home, and great
+responsibilities and occupations, and our home’s not an impossible
+place. We’ve plenty of reasons,” Sarah continued a little piercingly,
+“for everything we do”—and in short she wouldn’t give herself the least
+little scrap away. But she added as one who was always bland and who
+could afford a concession: “I’ve come because—well, because we do
+come.”
+
+“Ah then fortunately!”—Madame de Vionnet breathed it to the air. Five
+minutes later they were on their feet for her to take leave, standing
+together in an affability that had succeeded in surviving a further
+exchange of remarks; only with the emphasised appearance on Waymarsh’s
+part of a tendency to revert, in a ruminating manner and as with an
+instinctive or a precautionary lightening of his tread, to an open
+window and his point of vantage. The glazed and gilded room, all red
+damask, ormolu, mirrors, clocks, looked south, and the shutters were
+bowed upon the summer morning; but the Tuileries garden and what was
+beyond it, over which the whole place hung, were things visible through
+gaps; so that the far-spreading presence of Paris came up in coolness,
+dimness and invitation, in the twinkle of gilt-tipped palings, the
+crunch of gravel, the click of hoofs, the crack of whips, things that
+suggested some parade of the circus. “I think it probable,” said Mrs.
+Pocock, “that I shall have the opportunity of going to my brother’s.
+I’ve no doubt it’s very pleasant indeed.” She spoke as to Strether, but
+her face was turned with an intensity of brightness to Madame de
+Vionnet, and there was a moment during which, while she thus fronted
+her, our friend expected to hear her add: “I’m much obliged to you, I’m
+sure, for inviting me there.” He guessed that for five seconds these
+words were on the point of coming; he heard them as clearly as if they
+had been spoken; but he presently knew they had just failed—knew it by
+a glance, quick and fine, from Madame de Vionnet, which told him that
+she too had felt them in the air, but that the point had luckily not
+been made in any manner requiring notice. This left her free to reply
+only to what had been said.
+
+“That the Boulevard Malesherbes may be common ground for us offers me
+the best prospect I see for the pleasure of meeting you again.”
+
+“Oh I shall come to see you, since you’ve been so good”: and Mrs.
+Pocock looked her invader well in the eyes. The flush in Sarah’s cheeks
+had by this time settled to a small definite crimson spot that was not
+without its own bravery; she held her head a good deal up, and it came
+to Strether that of the two, at this moment, she was the one who most
+carried out the idea of a Countess. He quite took in, however, that she
+would really return her visitor’s civility: she wouldn’t report again
+at Woollett without at least so much producible history as that in her
+pocket.
+
+“I want extremely to be able to show you my little daughter.” Madame de
+Vionnet went on; “and I should have brought her with me if I hadn’t
+wished first to ask your leave. I was in hopes I should perhaps find
+Miss Pocock, of whose being with you I’ve heard from Mr. Newsome and
+whose acquaintance I should so much like my child to make. If I have
+the pleasure of seeing her and you do permit it I shall venture to ask
+her to be kind to Jeanne. Mr. Strether will tell you”—she beautifully
+kept it up—“that my poor girl is gentle and good and rather lonely.
+They’ve made friends, he and she, ever so happily, and he doesn’t, I
+believe, think ill of her. As for Jeanne herself he has had the same
+success with her that I know he has had here wherever he has turned.”
+She seemed to ask him for permission to say these things, or seemed
+rather to take it, softly and happily, with the ease of intimacy, for
+granted, and he had quite the consciousness now that not to meet her at
+any point more than halfway would be odiously, basely to abandon her.
+Yes, he was _with_ her, and, opposed even in this covert, this
+semi-safe fashion to those who were not, he felt, strangely and
+confusedly, but excitedly, inspiringly, how much and how far. It was as
+if he had positively waited in suspense for something from her that
+would let him in deeper, so that he might show her how he could take
+it. And what did in fact come as she drew out a little her farewell
+served sufficiently the purpose. “As his success is a matter that I’m
+sure he’ll never mention for himself, I feel, you see, the less
+scruple; which it’s very good of me to say, you know, by the way,” she
+added as she addressed herself to him; “considering how little direct
+advantage I’ve gained from your triumphs with _me_. When does one ever
+see you? I wait at home and I languish. You’ll have rendered me the
+service, Mrs. Pocock, at least,” she wound up, “of giving me one of my
+much-too-rare glimpses of this gentleman.”
+
+“I certainly should be sorry to deprive you of anything that seems so
+much, as you describe it, your natural due. Mr. Strether and I are very
+old friends,” Sarah allowed, “but the privilege of his society isn’t a
+thing I shall quarrel about with any one.”
+
+“And yet, dear Sarah,” he freely broke in, “I feel, when I hear you say
+that, that you don’t quite do justice to the important truth of the
+extent to which—as you’re also mine—I’m _your_ natural due. I should
+like much better,” he laughed, “to see you fight for me.”
+
+She met him, Mrs. Pocock, on this, with an arrest of speech—with a
+certain breathlessness, as he immediately fancied, on the score of a
+freedom for which she wasn’t quite prepared. It had flared up—for all
+the harm he had intended by it—because, confoundedly, he didn’t want
+any more to be afraid about her than he wanted to be afraid about
+Madame de Vionnet. He had never, naturally, called her anything but
+Sarah at home, and though he had perhaps never quite so markedly
+invoked her as his “dear,” that was somehow partly because no occasion
+had hitherto laid so effective a trap for it. But something admonished
+him now that it was too late—unless indeed it were possibly too early;
+and that he at any rate shouldn’t have pleased Mrs. Pocock the more by
+it. “Well, Mr. Strether—!” she murmured with vagueness, yet with
+sharpness, while her crimson spot burned a trifle brighter and he was
+aware that this must be for the present the limit of her response.
+Madame de Vionnet had already, however, come to his aid, and Waymarsh,
+as if for further participation, moved again back to them. It was true
+that the aid rendered by Madame de Vionnet was questionable; it was a
+sign that, for all one might confess to with her, and for all she might
+complain of not enjoying, she could still insidiously show how much of
+the material of conversation had accumulated between them.
+
+“The real truth is, you know, that you sacrifice one without mercy to
+dear old Maria. She leaves no room in your life for anybody else. Do
+you know,” she enquired of Mrs. Pocock, “about dear old Maria? The
+worst is that Miss Gostrey is really a wonderful woman.”
+
+“Oh yes indeed,” Strether answered for her, “Mrs. Pocock knows about
+Miss Gostrey. Your mother, Sarah, must have told you about her; your
+mother knows everything,” he sturdily pursued. “And I cordially admit,”
+he added with his conscious gaiety of courage, “that she’s as wonderful
+a woman as you like.”
+
+“Ah it isn’t _I_ who ‘like,’ dear Mr. Strether, anything to do with the
+matter!” Sarah Pocock promptly protested; “and I’m by no means sure I
+have—from my mother or from any one else—a notion of whom you’re
+talking about.”
+
+“Well, he won’t let you see her, you know,” Madame de Vionnet
+sympathetically threw in. “He never lets _me_—old friends as we are: I
+mean as I am with Maria. He reserves her for his best hours; keeps her
+consummately to himself; only gives us others the crumbs of the feast.”
+
+“Well, Countess, _I’ve_ had some of the crumbs,” Waymarsh observed with
+weight and covering her with his large look; which led her to break in
+before he could go on.
+
+“_Comment donc_, he shares her with _you?_” she exclaimed in droll
+stupefaction. “Take care you don’t have, before you go much further,
+rather more of all _ces dames_ than you may know what to do with!”
+
+But he only continued in his massive way. “I can post you about the
+lady, Mrs. Pocock, so far as you may care to hear. I’ve seen her quite
+a number of times, and I was practically present when they made
+acquaintance. I’ve kept my eye on her right along, but I don’t know as
+there’s any real harm in her.”
+
+“‘Harm’?” Madame de Vionnet quickly echoed. “Why she’s the dearest and
+cleverest of all the clever and dear.”
+
+“Well, you run her pretty close, Countess,” Waymarsh returned with
+spirit; “though there’s no doubt she’s pretty well up in things. She
+knows her way round Europe. Above all there’s no doubt she does love
+Strether.”
+
+“Ah but we all do that—we all love Strether: it isn’t a merit!” their
+fellow visitor laughed, keeping to her idea with a good conscience at
+which our friend was aware that he marvelled, though he trusted also
+for it, as he met her exquisitely expressive eyes, to some later light.
+
+The prime effect of her tone, however—and it was a truth which his own
+eyes gave back to her in sad ironic play—could only be to make him feel
+that, to say such things to a man in public, a woman must practically
+think of him as ninety years old. He had turned awkwardly, responsively
+red, he knew, at her mention of Maria Gostrey; Sarah Pocock’s
+presence—the particular quality of it—had made this inevitable; and
+then he had grown still redder in proportion as he hated to have shown
+anything at all. He felt indeed that he was showing much, as,
+uncomfortably and almost in pain, he offered up his redness to
+Waymarsh, who, strangely enough, seemed now to be looking at him with a
+certain explanatory yearning. Something deep—something built on their
+old old relation—passed, in this complexity, between them; he got the
+side-wind of a loyalty that stood behind all actual queer questions.
+Waymarsh’s dry bare humour—as it gave itself to be taken—gloomed out to
+demand justice. “Well, if you talk of Miss Barrace I’ve _my_ chance
+too,” it appeared stiffly to nod, and it granted that it was giving him
+away, but struggled to add that it did so only to save him. The sombre
+glow stared it at him till it fairly sounded out—“to save you, poor old
+man, to save you; to save you in spite of yourself.” Yet it was somehow
+just this communication that showed him to himself as more than ever
+lost. Still another result of it was to put before him as never yet
+that between his comrade and the interest represented by Sarah there
+was already a basis. Beyond all question now, yes: Waymarsh had been in
+occult relation with Mrs. Newsome—out, out it all came in the very
+effort of his face. “Yes, you’re feeling my hand”—he as good as
+proclaimed it; “but only because this at least I _shall_ have got out
+of the damned Old World: that I shall have picked up the pieces into
+which it has caused you to crumble.” It was as if in short, after an
+instant, Strether had not only had it from him, but had recognised that
+so far as this went the instant had cleared the air. Our friend
+understood and approved; he had the sense that they wouldn’t otherwise
+speak of it. This would be all, and it would mark in himself a kind of
+intelligent generosity. It was with grim Sarah then—Sarah grim for all
+her grace—that Waymarsh had begun at ten o’clock in the morning to save
+him. Well—if he _could_, poor dear man, with his big bleak kindness!
+The upshot of which crowded perception was that Strether, on his own
+side, still showed no more than he absolutely had to. He showed the
+least possible by saying to Mrs. Pocock after an interval much briefer
+than our glance at the picture reflected in him: “Oh it’s as true as
+they please!—There’s no Miss Gostrey for any one but me—not the least
+little peep. I keep her to myself.”
+
+“Well, it’s very good of you to notify me,” Sarah replied without
+looking at him and thrown for a moment by this discrimination, as the
+direction of her eyes showed, upon a dimly desperate little community
+with Madame de Vionnet. “But I hope I shan’t miss her too much.”
+
+Madame de Vionnet instantly rallied. “And you know—though it might
+occur to one—it isn’t in the least that he’s ashamed of her. She’s
+really—in a way—extremely good-looking.”
+
+“Ah but extremely!” Strether laughed while he wondered at the odd part
+he found thus imposed on him.
+
+It continued to be so by every touch from Madame de Vionnet. “Well, as
+I say, you know, I wish you would keep _me_ a little more to yourself.
+Couldn’t you name some day for me, some hour—and better soon than late?
+I’ll be at home whenever it best suits you. There—I can’t say fairer.”
+
+Strether thought a moment while Waymarsh and Mrs. Pocock affected him
+as standing attentive. “I did lately call on you. Last week—while Chad
+was out of town.”
+
+“Yes—and I was away, as it happened, too. You choose your moments well.
+But don’t wait for my next absence, for I shan’t make another,” Madame
+de Vionnet declared, “while Mrs. Pocock’s here.”
+
+“That vow needn’t keep you long, fortunately,” Sarah observed with
+reasserted suavity. “I shall be at present but a short time in Paris. I
+have my plans for other countries. I meet a number of charming
+friends”—and her voice seemed to caress that description of these
+persons.
+
+“Ah then,” her visitor cheerfully replied, “all the more reason!
+To-morrow, for instance, or next day?” she continued to Strether.
+“Tuesday would do for me beautifully.”
+
+“Tuesday then with pleasure.”
+
+“And at half-past five?—or at six?”
+
+It was ridiculous, but Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh struck him as fairly
+waiting for his answer. It was indeed as if they were arranged,
+gathered for a performance, the performance of “Europe” by his
+confederate and himself. Well, the performance could only go on. “Say
+five forty-five.”
+
+“Five forty-five—good.” And now at last Madame de Vionnet must leave
+them, though it carried, for herself, the performance a little further.
+“I _did_ hope so much also to see Miss Pocock. Mayn’t I still?”
+
+Sarah hesitated, but she rose equal. “She’ll return your visit with me.
+She’s at present out with Mr. Pocock and my brother.”
+
+“I see—of course Mr. Newsome has everything to show them. He has told
+me so much about her. My great desire’s to give my daughter the
+opportunity of making her acquaintance. I’m always on the lookout for
+such chances for her. If I didn’t bring her to-day it was only to make
+sure first that you’d let me.” After which the charming woman risked a
+more intense appeal. “It wouldn’t suit _you_ also to mention some near
+time, so that we shall be sure not to lose you?” Strether on his side
+waited, for Sarah likewise had, after all, to perform; and it occupied
+him to have been thus reminded that she had stayed at home—and on her
+first morning of Paris—while Chad led the others forth. Oh she was up
+to her eyes; if she had stayed at home she had stayed by an
+understanding, arrived at the evening before, that Waymarsh would come
+and find her alone. This was beginning well—for a first day in Paris;
+and the thing might be amusing yet. But Madame de Vionnet’s earnestness
+was meanwhile beautiful. “You may think me indiscreet, but I’ve _such_
+a desire my Jeanne shall know an American girl of the really delightful
+kind. You see I throw myself for it on your charity.”
+
+The manner of this speech gave Strether such a sense of depths below it
+and behind it as he hadn’t yet had—ministered in a way that almost
+frightened him to his dim divinations of reasons; but if Sarah still,
+in spite of it, faltered, this was why he had time for a sign of
+sympathy with her petitioner. “Let me say then, dear lady, to back your
+plea, that Miss Mamie is of the most delightful kind of all—is charming
+among the charming.”
+
+Even Waymarsh, though with more to produce on the subject, could get
+into motion in time. “Yes, Countess, the American girl’s a thing that
+your country must at least allow ours the privilege to say we _can_
+show you. But her full beauty is only for those who know how to make
+use of her.”
+
+“Ah then,” smiled Madame de Vionnet, “that’s exactly what I want to do.
+I’m sure she has much to teach us.”
+
+It was wonderful, but what was scarce less so was that Strether found
+himself, by the quick effect of it, moved another way. “Oh that may be!
+But don’t speak of your own exquisite daughter, you know, as if she
+weren’t pure perfection. _I_ at least won’t take that from you.
+Mademoiselle de Vionnet,” he explained, in considerable form, to Mrs.
+Pocock, “_is_ pure perfection. Mademoiselle de Vionnet _is_ exquisite.”
+
+It had been perhaps a little portentous, but “Ah?” Sarah simply
+glittered.
+
+Waymarsh himself, for that matter, apparently recognised, in respect to
+the facts, the need of a larger justice, and he had with it an
+inclination to Sarah. “Miss Jane’s strikingly handsome—in the regular
+French style.”
+
+It somehow made both Strether and Madame de Vionnet laugh out, though
+at the very moment he caught in Sarah’s eyes, as glancing at the
+speaker, a vague but unmistakeable “You too?” It made Waymarsh in fact
+look consciously over her head. Madame de Vionnet meanwhile, however,
+made her point in her own way. “I wish indeed I could offer you my poor
+child as a dazzling attraction: it would make one’s position simple
+enough! She’s as good as she can be, but of course she’s different, and
+the question is now—in the light of the way things seem to go—if she
+isn’t after all _too_ different: too different I mean from the splendid
+type every one is so agreed that your wonderful country produces. On
+the other hand of course Mr. Newsome, who knows it so well, has, as a
+good friend, dear kind man that he is, done everything he can—to keep
+us from fatal benightedness—for my small shy creature. Well,” she wound
+up after Mrs. Pocock had signified, in a murmur still a little stiff,
+that she would speak to her own young charge on the question—“well, we
+shall sit, my child and I, and wait and wait and wait for you.” But her
+last fine turn was for Strether. “Do speak of us in such a way—!”
+
+“As that something can’t but come of it? Oh something _shall_ come of
+it! I take a great interest!” he further declared; and in proof of it,
+the next moment, he had gone with her down to her carriage.
+
+
+
+
+Book Ninth
+
+
+ I
+
+“The difficulty is,” Strether said to Madame de Vionnet a couple of
+days later, “that I can’t surprise them into the smallest sign of his
+not being the same old Chad they’ve been for the last three years
+glowering at across the sea. They simply won’t give any, and as a
+policy, you know—what you call a _parti pris_, a deep game—that’s
+positively remarkable.”
+
+It was so remarkable that our friend had pulled up before his hostess
+with the vision of it; he had risen from his chair at the end of ten
+minutes and begun, as a help not to worry, to move about before her
+quite as he moved before Maria. He had kept his appointment with her to
+the minute and had been intensely impatient, though divided in truth
+between the sense of having everything to tell her and the sense of
+having nothing at all. The short interval had, in the face of their
+complication, multiplied his impressions—it being meanwhile to be
+noted, moreover, that he already frankly, already almost publicly,
+viewed the complication as common to them. If Madame de Vionnet, under
+Sarah’s eyes, had pulled him into her boat, there was by this time no
+doubt whatever that he had remained in it and that what he had really
+most been conscious of for many hours together was the movement of the
+vessel itself. They were in it together this moment as they hadn’t yet
+been, and he hadn’t at present uttered the least of the words of alarm
+or remonstrance that had died on his lips at the hotel. He had other
+things to say to her than that she had put him in a position; so
+quickly had his position grown to affect him as quite excitingly,
+altogether richly, inevitable. That the outlook, however—given the
+point of exposure—hadn’t cleared up half so much as he had reckoned was
+the first warning she received from him on his arrival. She had replied
+with indulgence that he was in too great a hurry, and had remarked
+soothingly that if she knew how to be patient surely _he_ might be. He
+felt her presence, on the spot, he felt her tone and everything about
+her, as an aid to that effort; and it was perhaps one of the proofs of
+her success with him that he seemed so much to take his ease while they
+talked. By the time he had explained to her why his impressions, though
+multiplied, still baffled him, it was as if he had been familiarly
+talking for hours. They baffled him because Sarah—well, Sarah was deep,
+deeper than she had ever yet had a chance to show herself. He didn’t
+say that this was partly the effect of her opening so straight down, as
+it were, into her mother, and that, given Mrs. Newsome’s profundity,
+the shaft thus sunk might well have a reach; but he wasn’t without a
+resigned apprehension that, at such a rate of confidence between the
+two women, he was likely soon to be moved to show how already, at
+moments, it had been for him as if he were dealing directly with Mrs.
+Newsome. Sarah, to a certainty, would have begun herself to feel it in
+him—and this naturally put it in her power to torment him the more.
+From the moment she knew he _could_ be tormented—!
+
+“But _why_ can you be?”—his companion was surprised at his use of the
+word.
+
+“Because I’m made so—I think of everything.”
+
+“Ah one must never do that,” she smiled. “One must think of as few
+things as possible.”
+
+“Then,” he answered, “one must pick them out right. But all I mean
+is—for I express myself with violence—that she’s in a position to watch
+me. There’s an element of suspense for me, and she can see me wriggle.
+But my wriggling doesn’t matter,” he pursued. “I can bear it. Besides,
+I shall wriggle out.”
+
+The picture at any rate stirred in her an appreciation that he felt to
+be sincere. “I don’t see how a man can be kinder to a woman than you
+are to me.”
+
+Well, kind was what he wanted to be; yet even while her charming eyes
+rested on him with the truth of this he none the less had his humour of
+honesty. “When I say suspense I mean, you know,” he laughed, “suspense
+about my own case too!”
+
+“Oh yes—about your own case too!” It diminished his magnanimity, but
+she only looked at him the more tenderly.
+
+“Not, however,” he went on, “that I want to talk to you about that.
+It’s my own little affair, and I mentioned it simply as part of Mrs.
+Pocock’s advantage.” No, no; though there was a queer present
+temptation in it, and his suspense was so real that to fidget was a
+relief, he wouldn’t talk to her about Mrs. Newsome, wouldn’t work off
+on her the anxiety produced in him by Sarah’s calculated omissions of
+reference. The effect she produced of representing her mother had been
+produced—and that was just the immense, the uncanny part of it—without
+her having so much as mentioned that lady. She had brought no message,
+had alluded to no question, had only answered his enquiries with
+hopeless limited propriety. She had invented a way of meeting them—as
+if he had been a polite perfunctory poor relation, of distant
+degree—that made them almost ridiculous in him. He couldn’t moreover on
+his own side ask much without appearing to publish how he had lately
+lacked news; a circumstance of which it was Sarah’s profound policy not
+to betray a suspicion. These things, all the same, he wouldn’t breathe
+to Madame de Vionnet—much as they might make him walk up and down. And
+what he didn’t say—as well as what _she_ didn’t, for she had also her
+high decencies—enhanced the effect of his being there with her at the
+end of ten minutes more intimately on the basis of saving her than he
+had yet had occasion to be. It ended in fact by being quite beautiful
+between them, the number of things they had a manifest consciousness of
+not saying. He would have liked to turn her, critically, to the subject
+of Mrs. Pocock, but he so stuck to the line he felt to be the point of
+honour and of delicacy that he scarce even asked her what her personal
+impression had been. He knew it, for that matter, without putting her
+to trouble: that she wondered how, with such elements, Sarah could
+still have no charm, was one of the principal things she held her
+tongue about. Strether would have been interested in her estimate of
+the elements—indubitably there, some of them, and to be appraised
+according to taste—but he denied himself even the luxury of this
+diversion. The way Madame de Vionnet affected him to-day was in itself
+a kind of demonstration of the happy employment of gifts. How could a
+woman think Sarah had charm who struck one as having arrived at it
+herself by such different roads? On the other hand of course Sarah
+wasn’t obliged to have it. He felt as if somehow Madame de Vionnet
+_was_. The great question meanwhile was what Chad thought of his
+sister; which was naturally ushered in by that of Sarah’s apprehension
+of Chad. _That_ they could talk of, and with a freedom purchased by
+their discretion in other senses. The difficulty however was that they
+were reduced as yet to conjecture. He had given them in the day or two
+as little of a lead as Sarah, and Madame de Vionnet mentioned that she
+hadn’t seen him since his sister’s arrival.
+
+“And does that strike you as such an age?”
+
+She met it in all honesty. “Oh I won’t pretend I don’t miss him.
+Sometimes I see him every day. Our friendship’s like that. Make what
+you will of it!” she whimsically smiled; a little flicker of the kind,
+occasional in her, that had more than once moved him to wonder what he
+might best make of _her_. “But he’s perfectly right,” she hastened to
+add, “and I wouldn’t have him fail in any way at present for the world.
+I’d sooner not see him for three months. I begged him to be beautiful
+to them, and he fully feels it for himself.”
+
+Strether turned away under his quick perception; she was so odd a
+mixture of lucidity and mystery. She fell in at moments with the theory
+about her he most cherished, and she seemed at others to blow it into
+air. She spoke now as if her art were all an innocence, and then again
+as if her innocence were all an art. “Oh he’s giving himself up, and
+he’ll do so to the end. How can he but want, now that it’s within
+reach, his full impression?—which is much more important, you know,
+than either yours or mine. But he’s just soaking,” Strether said as he
+came back; “he’s going in conscientiously for a saturation. I’m bound
+to say he _is_ very good.”
+
+“Ah,” she quietly replied, “to whom do you say it?” And then more
+quietly still: “He’s capable of anything.”
+
+Strether more than reaffirmed—“Oh he’s excellent. I more and more
+like,” he insisted, “to see him with them;” though the oddity of this
+tone between them grew sharper for him even while they spoke. It placed
+the young man so before them as the result of her interest and the
+product of her genius, acknowledged so her part in the phenomenon and
+made the phenomenon so rare, that more than ever yet he might have been
+on the very point of asking her for some more detailed account of the
+whole business than he had yet received from her. The occasion almost
+forced upon him some question as to how she had managed and as to the
+appearance such miracles presented from her own singularly close place
+of survey. The moment in fact however passed, giving way to more
+present history, and he continued simply to mark his appreciation of
+the happy truth. “It’s a tremendous comfort to feel how one can trust
+him.” And then again while for a little she said nothing—as if after
+all to _her_ trust there might be a special limit: “I mean for making a
+good show to them.”
+
+“Yes,” she thoughtfully returned—“but if they shut their eyes to it!”
+
+Strether for an instant had his own thought. “Well perhaps that won’t
+matter!”
+
+“You mean because he probably—do what they will—won’t like them?”
+
+“Oh ‘do what they will’—! They won’t do much; especially if Sarah
+hasn’t more—well, more than one has yet made out—to give.”
+
+Madame de Vionnet weighed it. “Ah she has all her grace!” It was a
+statement over which, for a little, they could look at each other
+sufficiently straight, and though it produced no protest from Strether
+the effect was somehow as if he had treated it as a joke. “She may be
+persuasive and caressing with him; she may be eloquent beyond words.
+She may get hold of him,” she wound up—“well, as neither you nor I
+have.”
+
+“Yes, she _may_”—and now Strether smiled. “But he has spent all his
+time each day with Jim. He’s still showing Jim round.”
+
+She visibly wondered. “Then how about Jim?”
+
+Strether took a turn before he answered. “Hasn’t he given you Jim?
+Hasn’t he before this ‘done’ him for you?” He was a little at a loss.
+“Doesn’t he tell you things?”
+
+She hesitated. “No”—and their eyes once more gave and took. “Not as you
+do. You somehow make me see them—or at least feel them. And I haven’t
+asked too much,” she added; “I’ve of late wanted so not to worry him.”
+
+“Ah for that, so have I,” he said with encouraging assent; so that—as
+if she had answered everything—they were briefly sociable on it. It
+threw him back on his other thought, with which he took another turn;
+stopping again, however, presently with something of a glow. “You see
+Jim’s really immense. I think it will be Jim who’ll do it.”
+
+She wondered. “Get hold of him?”
+
+“No—just the other thing. Counteract Sarah’s spell.” And he showed now,
+our friend, how far he had worked it out. “Jim’s intensely cynical.”
+
+“Oh dear Jim!” Madame de Vionnet vaguely smiled.
+
+“Yes, literally—dear Jim! He’s awful. What _he_ wants, heaven forgive
+him, is to help us.”
+
+“You mean”—she was eager—“help _me?_”
+
+“Well, Chad and me in the first place. But he throws you in too, though
+without as yet seeing you much. Only, so far as he does see you—if you
+don’t mind—he sees you as awful.”
+
+“‘Awful’?”—she wanted it all.
+
+“A regular bad one—though of course of a tremendously superior kind.
+Dreadful, delightful, irresistible.”
+
+“Ah dear Jim! I should like to know him. I _must_.”
+
+“Yes, naturally. But will it do? You may, you know,” Strether
+suggested, “disappoint him.”
+
+She was droll and humble about it. “I can but try. But my wickedness
+then,” she went on, “is my recommendation for him?”
+
+“Your wickedness and the charms with which, in such a degree as yours,
+he associates it. He understands, you see, that Chad and I have above
+all wanted to have a good time, and his view is simple and sharp.
+Nothing will persuade him—in the light, that is, of my behaviour—that I
+really didn’t, quite as much as Chad, come over to have one before it
+was too late. He wouldn’t have expected it of me; but men of my age, at
+Woollett—and especially the least likely ones—have been noted as liable
+to strange outbreaks, belated uncanny clutches at the unusual, the
+ideal. It’s an effect that a lifetime of Woollett has quite been
+observed as having; and I thus give it to you, in Jim’s view, for what
+it’s worth. Now his wife and his mother-in-law,” Strether continued to
+explain, “have, as in honour bound, no patience with such phenomena,
+late or early—which puts Jim, as against his relatives, on the other
+side. Besides,” he added, “I don’t think he really wants Chad back. If
+Chad doesn’t come—”
+
+“He’ll have”—Madame de Vionnet quite apprehended—“more of the free
+hand?”
+
+“Well, Chad’s the bigger man.”
+
+“So he’ll work now, _en dessous_, to keep him quiet?”
+
+“No—he won’t ‘work’ at all, and he won’t do anything _en dessous_. He’s
+very decent and won’t be a traitor in the camp. But he’ll be amused
+with his own little view of our duplicity, he’ll sniff up what he
+supposes to be Paris from morning till night, and he’ll be, as to the
+rest, for Chad—well, just what he is.”
+
+She thought it over. “A warning?”
+
+He met it almost with glee. “You _are_ as wonderful as everybody says!”
+And then to explain all he meant: “I drove him about for his first
+hour, and do you know what—all beautifully unconscious—he most put
+before me? Why that something like _that_ is at bottom, as an
+improvement to his present state, as in fact the real redemption of it,
+what they think it may not be too late to make of our friend.” With
+which, as, taking it in, she seemed, in her recurrent alarm, bravely to
+gaze at the possibility, he completed his statement. “But it _is_ too
+late. Thanks to you!”
+
+It drew from her again one of her indefinite reflexions. “Oh ‘me’—after
+all!”
+
+He stood before her so exhilarated by his demonstration that he could
+fairly be jocular. “Everything’s comparative. You’re better than
+_that_.”
+
+“You”—she could but answer him—“are better than anything.” But she had
+another thought. “_Will_ Mrs. Pocock come to me?”
+
+“Oh yes—she’ll do that. As soon, that is, as my friend Waymarsh—_her_
+friend now—leaves her leisure.”
+
+She showed an interest. “Is he so much her friend as that?”
+
+“Why, didn’t you see it all at the hotel?”
+
+“Oh”—she was amused—“‘all’ is a good deal to say. I don’t know—I
+forget. I lost myself in _her_.”
+
+“You were splendid,” Strether returned—“but ‘all’ isn’t a good deal to
+say: it’s only a little. Yet it’s charming so far as it goes. She wants
+a man to herself.”
+
+“And hasn’t she got _you?_”
+
+“Do you think she looked at me—or even at you—as if she had?” Strether
+easily dismissed that irony. “Every one, you see, must strike her as
+having somebody. You’ve got Chad—and Chad has got you.”
+
+“I see”—she made of it what she could. “And you’ve got Maria.”
+
+Well, he on his side accepted that. “I’ve got Maria. And Maria has got
+me. So it goes.”
+
+“But Mr. Jim—whom has he got?”
+
+“Oh he has got—or it’s as _if_ he had—the whole place.”
+
+“But for Mr. Waymarsh”—she recalled—“isn’t Miss Barrace before any one
+else?”
+
+He shook his head. “Miss Barrace is a _raffinée_, and her amusement
+won’t lose by Mrs. Pocock. It will gain rather—especially if Sarah
+triumphs and she comes in for a view of it.”
+
+“How well you know us!” Madame de Vionnet, at this, frankly sighed.
+
+“No—it seems to me it’s we that I know. I know Sarah—it’s perhaps on
+that ground only that my feet are firm. Waymarsh will take her round
+while Chad takes Jim—and I shall be, I assure you, delighted for both
+of them. Sarah will have had what she requires—she will have paid her
+tribute to the ideal; and he will have done about the same. In Paris
+it’s in the air—so what can one do less? If there’s a point that,
+beyond any other, Sarah wants to make, it’s that she didn’t come out to
+be narrow. We shall feel at least that.”
+
+“Oh,” she sighed, “the quantity we seem likely to ‘feel’! But what
+becomes, in these conditions, of the girl?”
+
+“Of Mamie—if we’re all provided? Ah for that,” said Strether, “you can
+trust Chad.”
+
+“To be, you mean, all right to her?”
+
+“To pay her every attention as soon as he has polished off Jim. He
+wants what Jim can give him—and what Jim really won’t—though he has had
+it all, and more than all, from me. He wants in short his own personal
+impression, and he’ll get it—strong. But as soon as he has got it Mamie
+won’t suffer.”
+
+“Oh Mamie mustn’t _suffer!_” Madame de Vionnet soothingly emphasised.
+
+But Strether could reassure her. “Don’t fear. As soon as he has done
+with Jim, Jim will fall to me. And then you’ll see.”
+
+It was as if in a moment she saw already; yet she still waited. Then
+“Is she really quite charming?” she asked.
+
+He had got up with his last words and gathered in his hat and gloves.
+“I don’t know; I’m watching. I’m studying the case, as it were—and I
+dare say I shall be able to tell you.”
+
+She wondered. “Is it a case?”
+
+“Yes—I think so. At any rate I shall see.’
+
+“But haven’t you known her before?”
+
+“Yes,” he smiled—“but somehow at home she wasn’t a case. She has become
+one since.” It was as if he made it out for himself. “She has become
+one here.”
+
+“So very very soon?”
+
+He measured it, laughing. “Not sooner than I did.”
+
+“And you became one—?”
+
+“Very very soon. The day I arrived.”
+
+Her intelligent eyes showed her thought of it. “Ah but the day you
+arrived you met Maria. Whom has Miss Pocock met?”
+
+He paused again, but he brought it out. “Hasn’t she met Chad?”
+
+“Certainly—but not for the first time. He’s an old friend.” At which
+Strether had a slow amused significant headshake that made her go on:
+“You mean that for _her_ at least he’s a new person—that she sees him
+as different?”
+
+“She sees him as different.”
+
+“And how does she see him?”
+
+Strether gave it up. “How can one tell how a deep little girl sees a
+deep young man?”
+
+“Is every one so deep? Is she too?”
+
+“So it strikes me deeper than I thought. But wait a little—between us
+we’ll make it out. You’ll judge for that matter yourself.”
+
+Madame de Vionnet looked for the moment fairly bent on the chance.
+“Then she _will_ come with her?—I mean Mamie with Mrs. Pocock?”
+
+“Certainly. Her curiosity, if nothing else, will in any case work that.
+But leave it all to Chad.”
+
+“Ah,” wailed Madame de Vionnet, turning away a little wearily, “the
+things I leave to Chad!”
+
+The tone of it made him look at her with a kindness that showed his
+vision of her suspense. But he fell back on his confidence. “Oh
+well—trust him. Trust him all the way.” He had indeed no sooner so
+spoken than the queer displacement of his point of view appeared again
+to come up for him in the very sound, which drew from him a short
+laugh, immediately checked. He became still more advisory. “When they
+do come give them plenty of Miss Jeanne. Let Mamie see her well.”
+
+She looked for a moment as if she placed them face to face. “For Mamie
+to hate her?”
+
+He had another of his corrective headshakes. “Mamie won’t. Trust
+_them_.”
+
+She looked at him hard, and then as if it were what she must always
+come back to: “It’s _you_ I trust. But I was sincere,” she said, “at
+the hotel. I did, I do, want my child—”
+
+“Well?”—Strether waited with deference while she appeared to hesitate
+as to how to put it.
+
+“Well, to do what she can for me.”
+
+Strether for a little met her eyes on it; after which something that
+might have been unexpected to her came from him. “Poor little duck!”
+
+Not more expected for himself indeed might well have been her echo of
+it. “Poor little duck! But she immensely wants herself,” she said, “to
+see our friend’s cousin.”
+
+“Is that what she thinks her?”
+
+“It’s what we call the young lady.”
+
+He thought again; then with a laugh: “Well, your daughter will help
+you.”
+
+And now at last he took leave of her, as he had been intending for five
+minutes. But she went part of the way with him, accompanying him out of
+the room and into the next and the next. Her noble old apartment
+offered a succession of three, the first two of which indeed, on
+entering, smaller than the last, but each with its faded and formal
+air, enlarged the office of the antechamber and enriched the sense of
+approach. Strether fancied them, liked them, and, passing through them
+with her more slowly now, met a sharp renewal of his original
+impression. He stopped, he looked back; the whole thing made a vista,
+which he found high melancholy and sweet—full, once more, of dim
+historic shades, of the faint faraway cannon-roar of the great Empire.
+It was doubtless half the projection of his mind, but his mind was a
+thing that, among old waxed parquets, pale shades of pink and green,
+pseudo-classic candelabra, he had always needfully to reckon with. They
+could easily make him irrelevant. The oddity, the originality, the
+poetry—he didn’t know what to call it—of Chad’s connexion reaffirmed
+for him its romantic side. “They ought to see this, you know. They
+_must_.”
+
+“The Pococks?”—she looked about in deprecation; she seemed to see gaps
+he didn’t.
+
+“Mamie and Sarah—Mamie in particular.”
+
+“My shabby old place? But _their_ things—!”
+
+“Oh their things! You were talking of what will do something for you—”
+
+“So that it strikes you,” she broke in, “that my poor place may? Oh,”
+she ruefully mused, “that _would_ be desperate!”
+
+“Do you know what I wish?” he went on. “I wish Mrs. Newsome herself
+could have a look.”
+
+She stared, missing a little his logic. “It would make a difference?”
+
+Her tone was so earnest that as he continued to look about he laughed.
+“It might!”
+
+“But you’ve told her, you tell me—”
+
+“All about you? Yes, a wonderful story. But there’s all the
+indescribable—what one gets only on the spot.”
+
+“Thank you!” she charmingly and sadly smiled.
+
+“It’s all about me here,” he freely continued. “Mrs. Newsome feels
+things.”
+
+But she seemed doomed always to come back to doubt. “No one feels so
+much as _you_. No—not any one.”
+
+“So much the worse then for every one. It’s very easy.”
+
+They were by this time in the antechamber, still alone together, as she
+hadn’t rung for a servant. The antechamber was high and square, grave
+and suggestive too, a little cold and slippery even in summer, and with
+a few old prints that were precious, Strether divined, on the walls. He
+stood in the middle, slightly lingering, vaguely directing his glasses,
+while, leaning against the door-post of the room, she gently pressed
+her cheek to the side of the recess. “_You_ would have been a friend.”
+
+“I?”—it startled him a little.
+
+“For the reason you say. You’re not stupid.” And then abruptly, as if
+bringing it out were somehow founded on that fact: “We’re marrying
+Jeanne.”
+
+It affected him on the spot as a move in a game, and he was even then
+not without the sense that that wasn’t the way Jeanne should be
+married. But he quickly showed his interest, though—as quickly
+afterwards struck him—with an absurd confusion of mind. “‘You’? You
+and—a—not Chad?” Of course it was the child’s father who made the ‘we,’
+but to the child’s father it would have cost him an effort to allude.
+Yet didn’t it seem the next minute that Monsieur de Vionnet was after
+all not in question?—since she had gone on to say that it was indeed to
+Chad she referred and that he had been in the whole matter kindness
+itself.
+
+“If I must tell you all, it is he himself who has put us in the way. I
+mean in the way of an opportunity that, so far as I can yet see, is all
+I could possibly have dreamed of. For all the trouble Monsieur de
+Vionnet will ever take!” It was the first time she had spoken to him of
+her husband, and he couldn’t have expressed how much more intimate with
+her it suddenly made him feel. It wasn’t much, in truth—there were
+other things in what she was saying that were far more; but it was as
+if, while they stood there together so easily in these cold chambers of
+the past, the single touch had shown the reach of her confidence. “But
+our friend,” she asked, “hasn’t then told you?”
+
+“He has told me nothing.”
+
+“Well, it has come with rather a rush—all in a very few days; and
+hasn’t moreover yet taken a form that permits an announcement. It’s
+only for you—absolutely you alone—that I speak; I so want you to know.”
+The sense he had so often had, since the first hour of his
+disembarkment, of being further and further “in,” treated him again at
+this moment to another twinge; but in this wonderful way of her putting
+him in there continued to be something exquisitely remorseless.
+“Monsieur de Vionnet will accept what he _must_ accept. He has proposed
+half a dozen things—each one more impossible than the other; and he
+wouldn’t have found this if he lives to a hundred. Chad found it,” she
+continued with her lighted, faintly flushed, her conscious confidential
+face, “in the quietest way in the world. Or rather it found _him_—for
+everything finds him; I mean finds him right. You’ll think we do such
+things strangely—but at my age,” she smiled, “one has to accept one’s
+conditions. Our young man’s people had seen her; one of his sisters, a
+charming woman—we know all about them—had observed her somewhere with
+me. She had spoken to her brother—turned him on; and we were again
+observed, poor Jeanne and I, without our in the least knowing it. It
+was at the beginning of the winter; it went on for some time; it
+outlasted our absence; it began again on our return; and it luckily
+seems all right. The young man had met Chad, and he got a friend to
+approach him—as having a decent interest in us. Mr. Newsome looked well
+before he leaped; he kept beautifully quiet and satisfied himself
+fully; then only he spoke. It’s what has for some time past occupied
+us. It seems as if it were what would do; really, really all one could
+wish. There are only two or three points to be settled—they depend on
+her father. But this time I think we’re safe.”
+
+Strether, consciously gaping a little, had fairly hung upon her lips.
+“I hope so with all my heart.” And then he permitted himself: “Does
+nothing depend on _her?_”
+
+“Ah naturally; everything did. But she’s pleased _comme tout_. She has
+been perfectly free; and he—our young friend—is really a combination. I
+quite adore him.”
+
+Strether just made sure. “You mean your future son-in-law?”
+
+“Future if we all bring it off.”
+
+“Ah well,” said Strether decorously, “I heartily hope you may.” There
+seemed little else for him to say, though her communication had the
+oddest effect on him. Vaguely and confusedly he was troubled by it;
+feeling as if he had even himself been concerned in something deep and
+dim. He had allowed for depths, but these were greater: and it was as
+if, oppressively—indeed absurdly—he was responsible for what they had
+now thrown up to the surface. It was—through something ancient and cold
+in it—what he would have called the real thing. In short his hostess’s
+news, though he couldn’t have explained why, was a sensible shock, and
+his oppression a weight he felt he must somehow or other immediately
+get rid of. There were too many connexions missing to make it tolerable
+he should do anything else. He was prepared to suffer—before his own
+inner tribunal—for Chad; he was prepared to suffer even for Madame de
+Vionnet. But he wasn’t prepared to suffer for the little girl. So now
+having said the proper thing, he wanted to get away. She held him an
+instant, however, with another appeal.
+
+“Do I seem to you very awful?”
+
+“Awful? Why so?” But he called it to himself, even as he spoke, his
+biggest insincerity yet.
+
+“Our arrangements are so different from yours.”
+
+“Mine?” Oh he could dismiss that too! “I haven’t any arrangements.”
+
+“Then you must accept mine; all the more that they’re excellent.
+They’re founded on a _vieille sagesse_. There will be much more, if all
+goes well, for you to hear and to know, and everything, believe me, for
+you to like. Don’t be afraid; you’ll be satisfied.” Thus she could talk
+to him of what, of her innermost life—for that was what it came to—he
+must “accept”; thus she could extraordinarily speak as if in such an
+affair his being satisfied had an importance. It was all a wonder and
+made the whole case larger. He had struck himself at the hotel, before
+Sarah and Waymarsh, as being in her boat; but where on earth was he
+now? This question was in the air till her own lips quenched it with
+another. “And do you suppose _he_—who loves her so—would do anything
+reckless or cruel?”
+
+He wondered what he supposed. “Do you mean your young man—?”
+
+“I mean yours. I mean Mr. Newsome.” It flashed for Strether the next
+moment a finer light, and the light deepened as she went on. “He takes,
+thank God, the truest tenderest interest in her.”
+
+It deepened indeed. “Oh I’m sure of that!”
+
+“You were talking,” she said, “about one’s trusting him. You see then
+how I do.”
+
+He waited a moment—it all came. “I see—I see.” He felt he really did
+see.
+
+“He wouldn’t hurt her for the world, nor—assuming she marries at
+all—risk anything that might make against her happiness. And—willingly,
+at least—he would never hurt _me_.”
+
+Her face, with what he had by this time grasped, told him more than her
+words; whether something had come into it, or whether he only read
+clearer, her whole story—what at least he then took for such—reached
+out to him from it. With the initiative she now attributed to Chad it
+all made a sense, and this sense—a light, a lead, was what had abruptly
+risen before him. He wanted, once more, to get off with these things;
+which was at last made easy, a servant having, for his assistance, on
+hearing voices in the hall, just come forward. All that Strether had
+made out was, while the man opened the door and impersonally waited,
+summed up in his last word. “I don’t think, you know, Chad will tell me
+anything.”
+
+“No—perhaps not yet.”
+
+“And I won’t as yet speak to him.”
+
+“Ah that’s as you’ll think best. You must judge.”
+
+She had finally given him her hand, which he held a moment. “How _much_
+I have to judge!”
+
+“Everything,” said Madame de Vionnet: a remark that was indeed—with the
+refined disguised suppressed passion of her face—what he most carried
+away.
+
+
+ II
+
+So far as a direct approach was concerned Sarah had neglected him, for
+the week now about to end, with a civil consistency of chill that,
+giving him a higher idea of her social resource, threw him back on the
+general reflexion that a woman could always be amazing. It indeed
+helped a little to console him that he felt sure she had for the same
+period also left Chad’s curiosity hanging; though on the other hand,
+for his personal relief, Chad could at least go through the various
+motions—and he made them extraordinarily numerous—of seeing she had a
+good time. There wasn’t a motion on which, in her presence, poor
+Strether could so much as venture, and all he could do when he was out
+of it was to walk over for a talk with Maria. He walked over of course
+much less than usual, but he found a special compensation in a certain
+half-hour during which, toward the close of a crowded empty expensive
+day, his several companions seemed to him so disposed of as to give his
+forms and usages a rest. He had been with them in the morning and had
+nevertheless called on the Pococks in the afternoon; but their whole
+group, he then found, had dispersed after a fashion of which it would
+amuse Miss Gostrey to hear. He was sorry again, gratefully sorry she
+was so out of it—she who had really put him in; but she had fortunately
+always her appetite for news. The pure flame of the disinterested
+burned in her cave of treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine vault. It was
+just now, as happened, that for so fine a sense as hers a near view
+would have begun to pay. Within three days, precisely, the situation on
+which he was to report had shown signs of an equilibrium; the effect of
+his look in at the hotel was to confirm this appearance. If the
+equilibrium might only prevail! Sarah was out with Waymarsh, Mamie was
+out with Chad, and Jim was out alone. Later on indeed he himself was
+booked to Jim, was to take him that evening to the Varieties—which
+Strether was careful to pronounce as Jim pronounced them.
+
+Miss Gostrey drank it in. “What then to-night do the others do?”
+
+“Well, it has been arranged. Waymarsh takes Sarah to dine at Bignon’s.”
+
+She wondered. “And what do they do after? They can’t come straight
+home.”
+
+“No, they can’t come straight home—at least Sarah can’t. It’s their
+secret, but I think I’ve guessed it.” Then as she waited: “The circus.”
+
+It made her stare a moment longer, then laugh almost to extravagance.
+“There’s no one like you!”
+
+“Like _me?_”—he only wanted to understand.
+
+“Like all of you together—like all of us: Woollett, Milrose and their
+products. We’re abysmal—but may we never be less so! Mr. Newsome,” she
+continued, “meanwhile takes Miss Pocock—?”
+
+“Precisely—to the Français: to see what _you_ took Waymarsh and me to,
+a family-bill.”
+
+“Ah then may Mr. Chad enjoy it as _I_ did!” But she saw so much in
+things. “Do they spend their evenings, your young people, like that,
+alone together?”
+
+“Well, they’re young people—but they’re old friends.”
+
+“I see, I see. And do _they_ dine—for a difference—at Brébant’s?”
+
+“Oh where they dine is their secret too. But I’ve my idea that it will
+be, very quietly, at Chad’s own place.”
+
+“She’ll come to him there alone?”
+
+They looked at each other a moment. “He has known her from a child.
+Besides,” said Strether with emphasis, “Mamie’s remarkable. She’s
+splendid.”
+
+She wondered. “Do you mean she expects to bring it off?”
+
+“Getting hold of him? No—I think not.”
+
+“She doesn’t want him enough?—or doesn’t believe in her power?” On
+which as he said nothing she continued: “She finds she doesn’t care for
+him?”
+
+“No—I think she finds she does. But that’s what I mean by so describing
+her. It’s _if_ she does that she’s splendid. But we’ll see,” he wound
+up, “where she comes out.”
+
+“You seem to show me sufficiently,” Miss Gostrey laughed, “where she
+goes in! But is her childhood’s friend,” she asked, “permitting himself
+recklessly to flirt with her?”
+
+“No—not that. Chad’s also splendid. They’re _all_ splendid!” he
+declared with a sudden strange sound of wistfulness and envy. “They’re
+at least _happy_.”
+
+“Happy?”—it appeared, with their various difficulties, to surprise her.
+
+“Well—I seem to myself among them the only one who isn’t.”
+
+She demurred. “With your constant tribute to the ideal?”
+
+He had a laugh at his tribute to the ideal, but he explained after a
+moment his impression. “I mean they’re living. They’re rushing about.
+I’ve already had my rushing. I’m waiting.”
+
+“But aren’t you,” she asked by way of cheer, “waiting with _me?_”
+
+He looked at her in all kindness. “Yes—if it weren’t for that!”
+
+“And you help me to wait,” she said. “However,” she went on, “I’ve
+really something for you that will help you to wait and which you shall
+have in a minute. Only there’s something more I want from you first. I
+revel in Sarah.”
+
+“So do I. If it weren’t,” he again amusedly sighed, “for _that_—!”
+
+“Well, you owe more to women than any man I ever saw. We do seem to
+keep you going. Yet Sarah, as I see her, must be great.”
+
+“She _is_” Strether fully assented: “great! Whatever happens, she
+won’t, with these unforgettable days, have lived in vain.”
+
+Miss Gostrey had a pause. “You mean she has fallen in love?”
+
+“I mean she wonders if she hasn’t—and it serves all her purpose.”
+
+“It has indeed,” Maria laughed, “served women’s purposes before!”
+
+“Yes—for giving in. But I doubt if the idea—as an idea—has ever up to
+now answered so well for holding out. That’s _her_ tribute to the
+ideal—we each have our own. It’s her romance—and it seems to me better
+on the whole than mine. To have it in Paris too,” he explained—“on this
+classic ground, in this charged infectious air, with so sudden an
+intensity: well, it’s more than she expected. She has had in short to
+recognise the breaking out for her of a real affinity—and with
+everything to enhance the drama.”
+
+Miss Gostrey followed. “Jim for instance?”
+
+“Jim. Jim hugely enhances. Jim was made to enhance. And then Mr.
+Waymarsh. It’s the crowning touch—it supplies the colour. He’s
+positively separated.”
+
+“And she herself unfortunately isn’t—that supplies the colour too.”
+Miss Gostrey was all there. But somehow—! “Is _he_ in love?”
+
+Strether looked at her a long time; then looked all about the room;
+then came a little nearer. “Will you never tell any one in the world as
+long as ever you live?”
+
+“Never.” It was charming.
+
+“He thinks Sarah really is. But he has no fear,” Strether hastened to
+add.
+
+“Of her being affected by it?”
+
+“Of _his_ being. He likes it, but he knows she can hold out. He’s
+helping her, he’s floating her over, by kindness.”
+
+Maria rather funnily considered it. “Floating her over in champagne?
+The kindness of dining her, nose to nose, at the hour when all Paris is
+crowding to profane delights, and in the—well, in the great temple, as
+one hears of it, of pleasure?”
+
+“That’s just _it_, for both of them,” Strether insisted—“and all of a
+supreme innocence. The Parisian place, the feverish hour, the putting
+before her of a hundred francs’ worth of food and drink, which they’ll
+scarcely touch—all that’s the dear man’s own romance; the expensive
+kind, expensive in francs and centimes, in which he abounds. And the
+circus afterwards—which is cheaper, but which he’ll find some means of
+making as dear as possible—that’s also _his_ tribute to the ideal. It
+does for him. He’ll see her through. They won’t talk of anything worse
+than you and me.”
+
+“Well, we’re bad enough perhaps, thank heaven,” she laughed, “to upset
+them! Mr. Waymarsh at any rate is a hideous old coquette.” And the next
+moment she had dropped everything for a different pursuit. “What you
+don’t appear to know is that Jeanne de Vionnet has become engaged.
+She’s to marry—it has been definitely arranged—young Monsieur de
+Montbron.”
+
+He fairly blushed. “Then—if you know it—it’s ‘out’?”
+
+“Don’t I often know things that are _not_ out? However,” she said,
+“this will be out to-morrow. But I see I’ve counted too much on your
+possible ignorance. You’ve been before me, and I don’t make you jump as
+I hoped.”
+
+He gave a gasp at her insight. “You never fail! I’ve _had_ my jump. I
+had it when I first heard.”
+
+“Then if you knew why didn’t you tell me as soon as you came in?”
+
+“Because I had it from her as a thing not yet to be spoken of.”
+
+Miss Gostrey wondered. “From Madame de Vionnet herself?”
+
+“As a probability—not quite a certainty: a good cause in which Chad has
+been working. So I’ve waited.”
+
+“You need wait no longer,” she returned. “It reached me
+yesterday—roundabout and accidental, but by a person who had had it
+from one of the young man’s own people—as a thing quite settled. I was
+only keeping it for you.”
+
+“You thought Chad wouldn’t have told me?”
+
+She hesitated. “Well, if he hasn’t—”
+
+“He hasn’t. And yet the thing appears to have been practically his
+doing. So there we are.”
+
+“There we are!” Maria candidly echoed.
+
+“That’s why I jumped. I jumped,” he continued to explain, “because it
+means, this disposition of the daughter, that there’s now nothing else:
+nothing else but him and the mother.”
+
+“Still—it simplifies.”
+
+“It simplifies”—he fully concurred. “But that’s precisely where we are.
+It marks a stage in his relation. The act is his answer to Mrs.
+Newsome’s demonstration.”
+
+“It tells,” Maria asked, “the worst?”
+
+“The worst.”
+
+“But is the worst what he wants Sarah to know?”
+
+“He doesn’t care for Sarah.”
+
+At which Miss Gostrey’s eyebrows went up. “You mean she has already
+dished herself?”
+
+Strether took a turn about; he had thought it out again and again
+before this, to the end; but the vista seemed each time longer. “He
+wants his good friend to know the best. I mean the measure of his
+attachment. She asked for a sign, and he thought of that one. There it
+is.”
+
+“A concession to her jealousy?”
+
+Strether pulled up. “Yes—call it that. Make it lurid—for that makes my
+problem richer.”
+
+“Certainly, let us have it lurid—for I quite agree with you that we
+want none of our problems poor. But let us also have it clear. Can he,
+in the midst of such a preoccupation, or on the heels of it, have
+seriously cared for Jeanne?—cared, I mean, as a young man at liberty
+would have cared?”
+
+Well, Strether had mastered it. “I think he can have thought it would
+be charming if he _could_ care. It would be nicer.”
+
+“Nicer than being tied up to Marie?”
+
+“Yes—than the discomfort of an attachment to a person he can never
+hope, short of a catastrophe, to marry. And he was quite right,” said
+Strether. “It would certainly have been nicer. Even when a thing’s
+already nice there mostly _is_ some other thing that would have been
+nicer—or as to which we wonder if it wouldn’t. But his question was all
+the same a dream. He _couldn’t_ care in that way. He _is_ tied up to
+Marie. The relation is too special and has gone too far. It’s the very
+basis, and his recent lively contribution toward establishing Jeanne in
+life has been his definite and final acknowledgement to Madame de
+Vionnet that he has ceased squirming. I doubt meanwhile,” he went on,
+“if Sarah has at all directly attacked him.”
+
+His companion brooded. “But won’t he wish for his own satisfaction to
+make his ground good to her?”
+
+“No—he’ll leave it to me, he’ll leave everything to me. I ‘sort of’
+feel”—he worked it out—“that the whole thing will come upon me. Yes, I
+shall have every inch and every ounce of it. I shall be _used_ for
+it—!” And Strether lost himself in the prospect. Then he fancifully
+expressed the issue. “To the last drop of my blood.”
+
+Maria, however, roundly protested. “Ah you’ll please keep a drop for
+_me_. I shall have a use for it!”—which she didn’t however follow up.
+She had come back the next moment to another matter. “Mrs. Pocock, with
+her brother, is trusting only to her general charm?”
+
+“So it would seem.”
+
+“And the charm’s not working?”
+
+Well, Strether put it otherwise, “She’s sounding the note of home—which
+is the very best thing she can do.”
+
+“The best for Madame de Vionnet?”
+
+“The best for home itself. The natural one; the right one.”
+
+“Right,” Maria asked, “when it fails?”
+
+Strether had a pause. “The difficulty’s Jim. Jim’s the note of home.”
+
+She debated. “Ah surely not the note of Mrs. Newsome.”
+
+But he had it all. “The note of the home for which Mrs. Newsome wants
+him—the home of the business. Jim stands, with his little legs apart,
+at the door of _that_ tent; and Jim _is_, frankly speaking, extremely
+awful.”
+
+Maria stared. “And you in, you poor thing, for your evening with him?”
+
+“Oh he’s all right for _me!_” Strether laughed. “Any one’s good enough
+for _me_. But Sarah shouldn’t, all the same, have brought him. She
+doesn’t appreciate him.”
+
+His friend was amused with this statement of it. “Doesn’t know, you
+mean, how bad he is?”
+
+Strether shook his head with decision. “Not really.”
+
+She wondered. “Then doesn’t Mrs. Newsome?”
+
+It made him frankly do the same. “Well, no—since you ask me.”
+
+Maria rubbed it in. “Not really either?”
+
+“Not at all. She rates him rather high.” With which indeed,
+immediately, he took himself up. “Well, he _is_ good too, in his way.
+It depends on what you want him for.”
+
+Miss Gostrey, however, wouldn’t let it depend on anything—wouldn’t have
+it, and wouldn’t want him, at any price. “It suits my book,” she said,
+“that he should be impossible; and it suits it still better,” she more
+imaginatively added, “that Mrs. Newsome doesn’t know he is.”
+
+Strether, in consequence, had to take it from her, but he fell back on
+something else. “I’ll tell you who does really know.”
+
+“Mr. Waymarsh? Never!”
+
+“Never indeed. I’m not _always_ thinking of Mr. Waymarsh; in fact I
+find now I never am.” Then he mentioned the person as if there were a
+good deal in it. “Mamie.”
+
+“His own sister?” Oddly enough it but let her down. “What good will
+that do?”
+
+“None perhaps. But there—as usual—we are!”
+
+
+ III
+
+There they were yet again, accordingly, for two days more; when
+Strether, on being, at Mrs. Pocock’s hotel, ushered into that lady’s
+salon, found himself at first assuming a mistake on the part of the
+servant who had introduced him and retired. The occupants hadn’t come
+in, for the room looked empty as only a room can look in Paris, of a
+fine afternoon when the faint murmur of the huge collective life,
+carried on out of doors, strays among scattered objects even as a
+summer air idles in a lonely garden. Our friend looked about and
+hesitated; observed, on the evidence of a table charged with purchases
+and other matters, that Sarah had become possessed—by no aid from
+_him_—of the last number of the salmon-coloured Revue; noted further
+that Mamie appeared to have received a present of Fromentin’s “Maîtres
+d’Autrefois” from Chad, who had written her name on the cover; and
+pulled up at the sight of a heavy letter addressed in a hand he knew.
+This letter, forwarded by a banker and arriving in Mrs. Pocock’s
+absence, had been placed in evidence, and it drew from the fact of its
+being unopened a sudden queer power to intensify the reach of its
+author. It brought home to him the scale on which Mrs. Newsome—for she
+had been copious indeed this time—was writing to her daughter while she
+kept _him_ in durance; and it had altogether such an effect upon him as
+made him for a few minutes stand still and breathe low. In his own
+room, at his own hotel, he had dozens of well-filled envelopes
+superscribed in that character; and there was actually something in the
+renewal of his interrupted vision of the character that played straight
+into the so frequent question of whether he weren’t already
+disinherited beyond appeal. It was such an assurance as the sharp
+downstrokes of her pen hadn’t yet had occasion to give him; but they
+somehow at the present crisis stood for a probable absoluteness in any
+decree of the writer. He looked at Sarah’s name and address, in short,
+as if he had been looking hard into her mother’s face, and then turned
+from it as if the face had declined to relax. But since it was in a
+manner as if Mrs. Newsome were thereby all the more, instead of the
+less, in the room, and were conscious, sharply and sorely conscious, of
+himself, so he felt both held and hushed, summoned to stay at least and
+take his punishment. By staying, accordingly, he took it—creeping
+softly and vaguely about and waiting for Sarah to come in. She _would_
+come in if he stayed long enough, and he had now more than ever the
+sense of her success in leaving him a prey to anxiety. It wasn’t to be
+denied that she had had a happy instinct, from the point of view of
+Woollett, in placing him thus at the mercy of her own initiative. It
+was very well to try to say he didn’t care—that she might break ground
+when she would, might never break it at all if she wouldn’t, and that
+he had no confession whatever to wait upon her with: he breathed from
+day to day an air that damnably required clearing, and there were
+moments when he quite ached to precipitate that process. He couldn’t
+doubt that, should she only oblige him by surprising him just as he
+then was, a clarifying scene of some sort would result from the
+concussion.
+
+He humbly circulated in this spirit till he suddenly had a fresh
+arrest. Both the windows of the room stood open to the balcony, but it
+was only now that, in the glass of the leaf of one of them, folded
+back, he caught a reflexion quickly recognised as the colour of a
+lady’s dress. Somebody had been then all the while on the balcony, and
+the person, whoever it might be, was so placed between the windows as
+to be hidden from him; while on the other hand the many sounds of the
+street had covered his own entrance and movements. If the person were
+Sarah he might on the spot therefore be served to his taste. He might
+lead her by a move or two up to the remedy for his vain tension; as to
+which, should he get nothing else from it, he would at least have the
+relief of pulling down the roof on their heads. There was fortunately
+no one at hand to observe—in respect to his valour—that even on this
+completed reasoning he still hung fire. He had been waiting for Mrs.
+Pocock and the sound of the oracle; but he had to gird himself
+afresh—which he did in the embrasure of the window, neither advancing
+nor retreating—before provoking the revelation. It was apparently for
+Sarah to come more into view; he was in that case there at her service.
+She did however, as meanwhile happened, come more into view; only she
+luckily came at the last minute as a contradiction of Sarah. The
+occupant of the balcony was after all quite another person, a person
+presented, on a second look, by a charming back and a slight shift of
+her position, as beautiful brilliant unconscious Mamie—Mamie alone at
+home, Mamie passing her time in her own innocent way, Mamie in short
+rather shabbily used, but Mamie absorbed interested and interesting.
+With her arms on the balustrade and her attention dropped to the street
+she allowed Strether to watch her, to consider several things, without
+her turning round.
+
+But the oddity was that when he _had_ so watched and considered he
+simply stepped back into the room without following up his advantage.
+He revolved there again for several minutes, quite as with something
+new to think of and as if the bearings of the possibility of Sarah had
+been superseded. For frankly, yes, it _had_ bearings thus to find the
+girl in solitary possession. There was something in it that touched him
+to a point not to have been reckoned beforehand, something that softly
+but quite pressingly spoke to him, and that spoke the more each time he
+paused again at the edge of the balcony and saw her still unaware. Her
+companions were plainly scattered; Sarah would be off somewhere with
+Waymarsh and Chad off somewhere with Jim. Strether didn’t at all
+mentally impute to Chad that he was with his “good friend”; he gave him
+the benefit of supposing him involved in appearances that, had he had
+to describe them—for instance to Maria—he would have conveniently
+qualified as more subtle. It came to him indeed the next thing that
+there was perhaps almost an excess of refinement in having left Mamie
+in such weather up there alone; however she might in fact have
+extemporised, under the charm of the Rue de Rivoli, a little makeshift
+Paris of wonder and fancy. Our friend in any case now recognised—and it
+was as if at the recognition Mrs. Newsome’s fixed intensity had
+suddenly, with a deep audible gasp, grown thin and vague—that day after
+day he had been conscious in respect to his young lady of something odd
+and ambiguous, yet something into which he could at last read a
+meaning. It had been at the most, this mystery, an obsession—oh an
+obsession agreeable; and it had just now fallen into its place as at
+the touch of a spring. It had represented the possibility between them
+of some communication baffled by accident and delay—the possibility
+even of some relation as yet unacknowledged.
+
+There was always their old relation, the fruit of the Woollett years;
+but that—and it was what was strangest—had nothing whatever in common
+with what was now in the air. As a child, as a “bud,” and then again as
+a flower of expansion, Mamie had bloomed for him, freely, in the almost
+incessantly open doorways of home; where he remembered her as first
+very forward, as then very backward—for he had carried on at one
+period, in Mrs. Newsome’s parlours (oh Mrs. Newsome’s phases and his
+own!) a course of English Literature re-enforced by exams and teas—and
+once more, finally, as very much in advance. But he had kept no great
+sense of points of contact; it not being in the nature of things at
+Woollett that the freshest of the buds should find herself in the same
+basket with the most withered of the winter apples. The child had given
+sharpness, above all, to his sense of the flight of time; it was but
+the day before yesterday that he had tripped up on her hoop, yet his
+experience of remarkable women—destined, it would seem, remarkably to
+grow—felt itself ready this afternoon, quite braced itself, to include
+her. She had in fine more to say to him than he had ever dreamed the
+pretty girl of the moment _could_ have; and the proof of the
+circumstance was that, visibly, unmistakeably, she had been able to say
+it to no one else. It was something she could mention neither to her
+brother, to her sister-in-law nor to Chad; though he could just imagine
+that had she still been at home she might have brought it out, as a
+supreme tribute to age, authority and attitude, for Mrs. Newsome. It
+was moreover something in which they all took an interest; the strength
+of their interest was in truth just the reason of her prudence. All
+this then, for five minutes, was vivid to Strether, and it put before
+him that, poor child, she had now but her prudence to amuse her. That,
+for a pretty girl in Paris, struck him, with a rush, as a sorry state;
+so that under the impression he went out to her with a step as
+hypocritically alert, he was well aware, as if he had just come into
+the room. She turned with a start at his voice; preoccupied with him
+though she might be, she was just a scrap disappointed. “Oh I thought
+you were Mr. Bilham!”
+
+The remark had been at first surprising and our friend’s private
+thought, under the influence of it, temporarily blighted; yet we are
+able to add that he presently recovered his inward tone and that many a
+fresh flower of fancy was to bloom in the same air. Little Bilham—since
+little Bilham was, somewhat incongruously, expected—appeared
+behindhand; a circumstance by which Strether was to profit. They came
+back into the room together after a little, the couple on the balcony,
+and amid its crimson-and-gold elegance, with the others still absent,
+Strether passed forty minutes that he appraised even at the time as
+far, in the whole queer connexion, from his idlest. Yes indeed, since
+he had the other day so agreed with Maria about the inspiration of the
+lurid, here was something for his problem that surely didn’t make it
+shrink and that was floated in upon him as part of a sudden flood. He
+was doubtless not to know till afterwards, on turning them over in
+thought, of how many elements his impression was composed; but he none
+the less felt, as he sat with the charming girl, the signal growth of a
+confidence. For she _was_ charming, when all was said—and none the less
+so for the visible habit and practice of freedom and fluency. She was
+charming, he was aware, in spite of the fact that if he hadn’t found
+her so he would have found her something he should have been in peril
+of expressing as “funny.” Yes, she was funny, wonderful Mamie, and
+without dreaming it; she was bland, she was bridal—with never, that he
+could make out as yet, a bridegroom to support it; she was handsome and
+portly and easy and chatty, soft and sweet and almost disconcertingly
+reassuring. She was dressed, if we might so far discriminate, less as a
+young lady than as an old one—had an old one been supposable to
+Strether as so committed to vanity; the complexities of her hair missed
+moreover also the looseness of youth; and she had a mature manner of
+bending a little, as to encourage and reward, while she held neatly
+together in front of her a pair of strikingly polished hands: the
+combination of all of which kept up about her the glamour of her
+“receiving,” placed her again perpetually between the windows and
+within sound of the ice-cream plates, suggested the enumeration of all
+the names, all the Mr. Brookses and Mr. Snookses, gregarious specimens
+of a single type, she was happy to “meet.” But if all this was where
+she was funny, and if what was funnier than the rest was the contrast
+between her beautiful benevolent patronage—such a hint of the
+polysyllabic as might make her something of a bore toward middle
+age—and her rather flat little voice, the voice, naturally,
+unaffectedly yet, of a girl of fifteen; so Strether, none the less, at
+the end of ten minutes, felt in her a quiet dignity that pulled things
+bravely together. If quiet dignity, almost more than matronly, with
+voluminous, too voluminous clothes, was the effect she proposed to
+produce, that was an ideal one could like in her when once one had got
+into relation. The great thing now for her visitor was that this was
+exactly what he had done; it made so extraordinary a mixture of the
+brief and crowded hour. It was the mark of a relation that he had begun
+so quickly to find himself sure she was, of all people, as might have
+been said, on the side and of the party of Mrs. Newsome’s original
+ambassador. She was in _his_ interest and not in Sarah’s, and some sign
+of that was precisely what he had been feeling in her, these last days,
+as imminent. Finally placed, in Paris, in immediate presence of the
+situation and of the hero of it—by whom Strether was incapable of
+meaning any one but Chad—she had accomplished, and really in a manner
+all unexpected to herself, a change of base; deep still things had come
+to pass within her, and by the time she had grown sure of them Strether
+had become aware of the little drama. When she knew where she was, in
+short, he had made it out; and he made it out at present still better;
+though with never a direct word passing between them all the while on
+the subject of his own predicament. There had been at first, as he sat
+there with her, a moment during which he wondered if she meant to break
+ground in respect to his prime undertaking. That door stood so
+strangely ajar that he was half-prepared to be conscious, at any
+juncture, of her having, of any one’s having, quite bounced in. But,
+friendly, familiar, light of touch and happy of tact, she exquisitely
+stayed out; so that it was for all the world as if to show she could
+deal with him without being reduced to—well, scarcely anything.
+
+It fully came up for them then, by means of their talking of everything
+_but_ Chad, that Mamie, unlike Sarah, unlike Jim, knew perfectly what
+had become of him. It fully came up that she had taken to the last
+fraction of an inch the measure of the change in him, and that she
+wanted Strether to know what a secret she proposed to make of it. They
+talked most conveniently—as if they had had no chance yet—about
+Woollett; and that had virtually the effect of their keeping the secret
+more close. The hour took on for Strether, little by little, a queer
+sad sweetness of quality, he had such a revulsion in Mamie’s favour and
+on behalf of her social value as might have come from remorse at some
+early injustice. She made him, as under the breath of some vague
+western whiff, homesick and freshly restless; he could really for the
+time have fancied himself stranded with her on a far shore, during an
+ominous calm, in a quaint community of shipwreck. Their little
+interview was like a picnic on a coral strand; they passed each other,
+with melancholy smiles and looks sufficiently allusive, such cupfuls of
+water as they had saved. Especially sharp in Strether meanwhile was the
+conviction that his companion really knew, as we have hinted, where she
+had come out. It was at a very particular place—only _that_ she would
+never tell him; it would be above all what he should have to puzzle for
+himself. This was what he hoped for, because his interest in the girl
+wouldn’t be complete without it. No more would the appreciation to
+which she was entitled—so assured was he that the more he saw of her
+process the more he should see of her pride. She saw, herself,
+everything; but she knew what she didn’t want, and that it was that had
+helped her. What didn’t she want?—there was a pleasure lost for her old
+friend in not yet knowing, as there would doubtless be a thrill in
+getting a glimpse. Gently and sociably she kept that dark to him, and
+it was as if she soothed and beguiled him in other ways to make up for
+it. She came out with her impression of Madame de Vionnet—of whom she
+had “heard so much”; she came out with her impression of Jeanne, whom
+she had been “dying to see”: she brought it out with a blandness by
+which her auditor was really stirred that she had been with Sarah early
+that very afternoon, and after dreadful delays caused by all sorts of
+things, mainly, eternally, by the purchase of clothes—clothes that
+unfortunately wouldn’t be themselves eternal—to call in the Rue de
+Bellechasse.
+
+At the sound of these names Strether almost blushed to feel that he
+couldn’t have sounded them first—and yet couldn’t either have justified
+his squeamishness. Mamie made them easy as he couldn’t have begun to
+do, and yet it could only have cost her more than he should ever have
+had to spend. It was as friends of Chad’s, friends special,
+distinguished, desirable, enviable, that she spoke of them, and she
+beautifully carried it off that much as she had heard of them—though
+she didn’t say how or where, which was a touch of her own—she had found
+them beyond her supposition. She abounded in praise of them, and after
+the manner of Woollett—which made the manner of Woollett a loveable
+thing again to Strether. He had never so felt the true inwardness of it
+as when his blooming companion pronounced the elder of the ladies of
+the Rue de Bellechasse too fascinating for words and declared of the
+younger that she was perfectly ideal, a real little monster of charm.
+“Nothing,” she said of Jeanne, “ought ever to happen to her—she’s so
+awfully right as she is. Another touch will spoil her—so she oughtn’t
+to _be_ touched.”
+
+“Ah but things, here in Paris,” Strether observed, “do happen to little
+girls.” And then for the joke’s and the occasion’s sake: “Haven’t you
+found that yourself?”
+
+“That things happen—? Oh I’m not a little girl. I’m a big battered
+blowsy one. _I_ don’t care,” Mamie laughed, “_what_ happens.”
+
+Strether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn’t happen that he
+should give her the pleasure of learning that he found her nicer than
+he had really dreamed—a pause that ended when he had said to himself
+that, so far as it at all mattered for her, she had in fact perhaps
+already made this out. He risked accordingly a different
+question—though conscious, as soon as he had spoken, that he seemed to
+place it in relation to her last speech. “But that Mademoiselle de
+Vionnet is to be married—I suppose you’ve heard of _that_.”
+
+For all, he then found, he need fear! “Dear, yes; the gentleman was
+there: Monsieur de Montbron, whom Madame de Vionnet presented to us.”
+
+“And was he nice?”
+
+Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner. “Any man’s
+nice when he’s in love.”
+
+It made Strether laugh. “But is Monsieur de Montbron in
+love—already—with _you?_”
+
+“Oh that’s not necessary—it’s so much better he should be so with
+_her_: which, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for myself.
+He’s perfectly gone—and I couldn’t have borne it for her if he hadn’t
+been. She’s just too sweet.”
+
+Strether hesitated. “And through being in love too?”
+
+On which with a smile that struck him as wonderful Mamie had a
+wonderful answer. “She doesn’t know if she is or not.”
+
+It made him again laugh out. “Oh but _you_ do!”
+
+She was willing to take it that way. “Oh yes, I know everything.” And
+as she sat there rubbing her polished hands and making the best of
+it—only holding her elbows perhaps a little too much out—the momentary
+effect for Strether was that every one else, in all their affair,
+seemed stupid.
+
+“Know that poor little Jeanne doesn’t know what’s the matter with her?”
+
+It was as near as they came to saying that she was probably in love
+with Chad; but it was quite near enough for what Strether wanted; which
+was to be confirmed in his certitude that, whether in love or not, she
+appealed to something large and easy in the girl before him. Mamie
+would be fat, too fat, at thirty; but she would always be the person
+who, at the present sharp hour, had been disinterestedly tender. “If I
+see a little more of her, as I hope I shall, I think she’ll like me
+enough—for she seemed to like me to-day—to want me to tell her.”
+
+“And _shall_ you?”
+
+“Perfectly. I shall tell her the matter with her is that she wants only
+too much to do right. To do right for her, naturally,” said Mamie, “is
+to please.”
+
+“Her mother, do you mean?”
+
+“Her mother first.”
+
+Strether waited. “And then?”
+
+“Well, ‘then’—Mr. Newsome.”
+
+There was something really grand for him in the serenity of this
+reference. “And last only Monsieur de Montbron?”
+
+“Last only”—she good-humouredly kept it up.
+
+Strether considered. “So that every one after all then will be suited?”
+
+She had one of her few hesitations, but it was a question only of a
+moment; and it was her nearest approach to being explicit with him
+about what was between them. “I think I can speak for myself. _I_ shall
+be.”
+
+It said indeed so much, told such a story of her being ready to help
+him, so committed to him that truth, in short, for such use as he might
+make of it toward those ends of his own with which, patiently and
+trustfully, she had nothing to do—it so fully achieved all this that he
+appeared to himself simply to meet it in its own spirit by the last
+frankness of admiration. Admiration was of itself almost accusatory,
+but nothing less would serve to show her how nearly he understood. He
+put out his hand for good-bye with a “Splendid, splendid, splendid!”
+And he left her, in her splendour, still waiting for little Bilham.
+
+
+
+
+Book Tenth
+
+
+ I
+
+Strether occupied beside little Bilham, three evenings after his
+interview with Mamie Pocock, the same deep divan they had enjoyed
+together on the first occasion of our friend’s meeting Madame de
+Vionnet and her daughter in the apartment of the Boulevard Malesherbes,
+where his position affirmed itself again as ministering to an easy
+exchange of impressions. The present evening had a different stamp; if
+the company was much more numerous, so, inevitably, were the ideas set
+in motion. It was on the other hand, however, now strongly marked that
+the talkers moved, in respect to such matters, round an inner, a
+protected circle. They knew at any rate what really concerned them
+to-night, and Strether had begun by keeping his companion close to it.
+Only a few of Chad’s guests had dined—that is fifteen or twenty, a few
+compared with the large concourse offered to sight by eleven o’clock;
+but number and mass, quantity and quality, light, fragrance, sound, the
+overflow of hospitality meeting the high tide of response, had all from
+the first pressed upon Strether’s consciousness, and he felt himself
+somehow part and parcel of the most festive scene, as the term was, in
+which he had ever in his life been engaged. He had perhaps seen, on
+Fourths of July and on dear old domestic Commencements, more people
+assembled, but he had never seen so many in proportion to the space, or
+had at all events never known so great a promiscuity to show so
+markedly as picked. Numerous as was the company, it had still been made
+so by selection, and what was above all rare for Strether was that, by
+no fault of his own, he was in the secret of the principle that had
+worked. He hadn’t enquired, he had averted his head, but Chad had put
+him a pair of questions that themselves smoothed the ground. He hadn’t
+answered the questions, he had replied that they were the young man’s
+own affair; and he had then seen perfectly that the latter’s direction
+was already settled.
+
+Chad had applied for counsel only by way of intimating that he knew
+what to do; and he had clearly never known it better than in now
+presenting to his sister the whole circle of his society. This was all
+in the sense and the spirit of the note struck by him on that lady’s
+arrival; he had taken at the station itself a line that led him without
+a break, and that enabled him to lead the Pococks—though dazed a
+little, no doubt, breathless, no doubt, and bewildered—to the uttermost
+end of the passage accepted by them perforce as pleasant. He had made
+it for them violently pleasant and mercilessly full; the upshot of
+which was, to Strether’s vision, that they had come all the way without
+discovering it to be really no passage at all. It was a brave blind
+alley, where to pass was impossible and where, unless they stuck fast,
+they would have—which was always awkward—publicly to back out. They
+were touching bottom assuredly tonight; the whole scene represented the
+terminus of the _cul-de-sac_. So could things go when there was a hand
+to keep them consistent—a hand that pulled the wire with a skill at
+which the elder man more and more marvelled. The elder man felt
+responsible, but he also felt successful, since what had taken place
+was simply the issue of his own contention, six weeks before, that they
+properly should wait to see what their friends would have really to
+say. He had determined Chad to wait, he had determined him to see; he
+was therefore not to quarrel with the time given up to the business. As
+much as ever, accordingly, now that a fortnight had elapsed, the
+situation created for Sarah, and against which she had raised no
+protest, was that of her having accommodated herself to her adventure
+as to a pleasure-party surrendered perhaps even somewhat in excess to
+bustle and to “pace.” If her brother had been at any point the least
+bit open to criticism it might have been on the ground of his spicing
+the draught too highly and pouring the cup too full. Frankly treating
+the whole occasion of the presence of his relatives as an opportunity
+for amusement, he left it, no doubt, but scant margin as an opportunity
+for anything else. He suggested, invented, abounded—yet all the while
+with the loosest easiest rein. Strether, during his own weeks, had
+gained a sense of knowing Paris; but he saw it afresh, and with fresh
+emotion, in the form of the knowledge offered to his colleague.
+
+A thousand unuttered thoughts hummed for him in the air of these
+observations; not the least frequent of which was that Sarah might well
+of a truth not quite know whither she was drifting. She was in no
+position not to appear to expect that Chad should treat her handsomely;
+yet she struck our friend as privately stiffening a little each time
+she missed the chance of marking the great _nuance_. The great _nuance_
+was in brief that of course her brother must treat her handsomely—she
+should like to see him not; but that treating her handsomely, none the
+less, wasn’t all in all—treating her handsomely buttered no parsnips;
+and that in fine there were moments when she felt the fixed eyes of
+their admirable absent mother fairly screw into the flat of her back.
+Strether, watching, after his habit, and overscoring with thought,
+positively had moments of his own in which he found himself sorry for
+her—occasions on which she affected him as a person seated in a runaway
+vehicle and turning over the question of a possible jump. _Would_ she
+jump, could she, would _that_ be a safe place?—this question, at such
+instants, sat for him in her lapse into pallor, her tight lips, her
+conscious eyes. It came back to the main point at issue: would she be,
+after all, to be squared? He believed on the whole she would jump; yet
+his alternations on this subject were the more especial stuff of his
+suspense. One thing remained well before him—a conviction that was in
+fact to gain sharpness from the impressions of this evening: that if
+she _should_ gather in her skirts, close her eyes and quit the carriage
+while in motion, he would promptly enough become aware. She would
+alight from her headlong course more or less directly upon him; it
+would be appointed to him, unquestionably, to receive her entire
+weight. Signs and portents of the experience thus in reserve for him
+had as it happened, multiplied even through the dazzle of Chad’s party.
+It was partly under the nervous consciousness of such a prospect that,
+leaving almost every one in the two other rooms, leaving those of the
+guests already known to him as well as a mass of brilliant strangers of
+both sexes and of several varieties of speech, he had desired five
+quiet minutes with little Bilham, whom he always found soothing and
+even a little inspiring, and to whom he had actually moreover something
+distinct and important to say.
+
+He had felt of old—for it already seemed long ago—rather humiliated at
+discovering he could learn in talk with a personage so much his junior
+the lesson of a certain moral ease; but he had now got used to
+that—whether or no the mixture of the fact with other humiliations had
+made it indistinct, whether or no directly from little Bilham’s
+example, the example of his being contentedly just the obscure and
+acute little Bilham he was. It worked so for him, Strether seemed to
+see; and our friend had at private hours a wan smile over the fact that
+he himself, after so many more years, was still in search of something
+that would work. However, as we have said, it worked just now for them
+equally to have found a corner a little apart. What particularly kept
+it apart was the circumstance that the music in the salon was
+admirable, with two or three such singers as it was a privilege to hear
+in private. Their presence gave a distinction to Chad’s entertainment,
+and the interest of calculating their effect on Sarah was actually so
+sharp as to be almost painful. Unmistakeably, in her single person, the
+motive of the composition and dressed in a splendour of crimson which
+affected Strether as the sound of a fall through a skylight, she would
+now be in the forefront of the listening circle and committed by it up
+to her eyes. Those eyes during the wonderful dinner itself he hadn’t
+once met; having confessedly—perhaps a little pusillanimously—arranged
+with Chad that he should be on the same side of the table. But there
+was no use in having arrived now with little Bilham at an unprecedented
+point of intimacy unless he could pitch everything into the pot. “You
+who sat where you could see her, what does she make of it all? By which
+I mean on what terms does she take it?”
+
+“Oh she takes it, I judge, as proving that the claim of his family is
+more than ever justified.”
+
+“She isn’t then pleased with what he has to show?”
+
+“On the contrary; she’s pleased with it as with his capacity to do this
+kind of thing—more than she has been pleased with anything for a long
+time. But she wants him to show it _there_. He has no right to waste it
+on the likes of us.”
+
+Strether wondered. “She wants him to move the whole thing over?”
+
+“The whole thing—with an important exception. Everything he has ‘picked
+up’—and the way he knows how. She sees no difficulty in that. She’d run
+the show herself, and she’ll make the handsome concession that Woollett
+would be on the whole in some ways the better for it. Not that it
+wouldn’t be also in some ways the better for Woollett. The people there
+are just as good.”
+
+“Just as good as you and these others? Ah that may be. But such an
+occasion as this, whether or no,” Strether said, “isn’t the people.
+It’s what has made the people possible.”
+
+“Well then,” his friend replied, “there you are; I give you my
+impression for what it’s worth. Mrs. Pocock has _seen_, and that’s
+to-night how she sits there. If you were to have a glimpse of her face
+you’d understand me. She has made up her mind—to the sound of expensive
+music.”
+
+Strether took it freely in. “Ah then I shall have news of her.”
+
+“I don’t want to frighten you, but I think that likely. However,”
+little Bilham continued, “if I’m of the least use to you to hold on
+by—!”
+
+“You’re not of the least!”—and Strether laid an appreciative hand on
+him to say it. “No one’s of the least.” With which, to mark how gaily
+he could take it, he patted his companion’s knee. “I must meet my fate
+alone, and I _shall_—oh you’ll see! And yet,” he pursued the next
+moment, “you _can_ help me too. You once said to me”—he followed this
+further—“that you held Chad should marry. I didn’t see then so well as
+I know now that you meant he should marry Miss Pocock. Do you still
+consider that he should? Because if you do”—he kept it up—“I want you
+immediately to change your mind. You can help me that way.”
+
+“Help you by thinking he should _not_ marry?”
+
+“Not marry at all events Mamie.”
+
+“And who then?”
+
+“Ah,” Strether returned, “that I’m not obliged to say. But Madame de
+Vionnet—I suggest—when he can.’
+
+“Oh!” said little Bilham with some sharpness.
+
+“Oh precisely! But he needn’t marry at all—I’m at any rate not obliged
+to provide for it. Whereas in your case I rather feel that I _am_.”
+
+Little Bilham was amused. “Obliged to provide for my marrying?”
+
+“Yes—after all I’ve done to you!”
+
+The young man weighed it. “Have you done as much as that?”
+
+“Well,” said Strether, thus challenged, “of course I must remember what
+you’ve also done to _me_. We may perhaps call it square. But all the
+same,” he went on, “I wish awfully you’d marry Mamie Pocock yourself.”
+
+Little Bilham laughed out. “Why it was only the other night, in this
+very place, that you were proposing to me a different union
+altogether.”
+
+“Mademoiselle de Vionnet?” Well, Strether easily confessed it. “That, I
+admit, was a vain image. _This_ is practical politics. I want to do
+something good for both of you—I wish you each so well; and you can see
+in a moment the trouble it will save me to polish you off by the same
+stroke. She likes you, you know. You console her. And she’s splendid.”
+
+Little Bilham stared as a delicate appetite stares at an overheaped
+plate. “What do I console her for?”
+
+It just made his friend impatient. “Oh come, you know!”
+
+“And what proves for you that she likes me?”
+
+“Why the fact that I found her three days ago stopping at home alone
+all the golden afternoon on the mere chance that you’d come to her, and
+hanging over her balcony on that of seeing your cab drive up. I don’t
+know what you want more.”
+
+Little Bilham after a moment found it. “Only just to know what proves
+to you that I like _her_.”
+
+“Oh if what I’ve just mentioned isn’t enough to make you do it, you’re
+a stony-hearted little fiend. Besides”—Strether encouraged his fancy’s
+flight—“you showed your inclination in the way you kept her waiting,
+kept her on purpose to see if she cared enough for you.”
+
+His companion paid his ingenuity the deference of a pause. “I didn’t
+keep her waiting. I came at the hour. I wouldn’t have kept her waiting
+for the world,” the young man honourably declared.
+
+“Better still—then there you are!” And Strether, charmed, held him the
+faster. “Even if you didn’t do her justice, moreover,” he continued, “I
+should insist on your immediately coming round to it. I want awfully to
+have worked it. I want”—and our friend spoke now with a yearning that
+was really earnest—“at least to have done _that_.”
+
+“To have married me off—without a penny?”
+
+“Well, I shan’t live long; and I give you my word, now and here, that
+I’ll leave you every penny of my own. I haven’t many, unfortunately,
+but you shall have them all. And Miss Pocock, I think, has a few. I
+want,” Strether went on, “to have been at least to that extent
+constructive even expiatory. I’ve been sacrificing so to strange gods
+that I feel I want to put on record, somehow, my fidelity—fundamentally
+unchanged after all—to our own. I feel as if my hands were embrued with
+the blood of monstrous alien altars—of another faith altogether. There
+it is—it’s done.” And then he further explained. “It took hold of me
+because the idea of getting her quite out of the way for Chad helps to
+clear my ground.”
+
+The young man, at this, bounced about, and it brought them face to face
+in admitted amusement. “You want me to marry as a convenience to Chad?”
+
+“No,” Strether debated—“_he_ doesn’t care whether you marry or not.
+It’s as a convenience simply to my own plan _for_ him.”
+
+“‘Simply’!”—and little Bilham’s concurrence was in itself a lively
+comment. “Thank you. But I thought,” he continued, “you had exactly
+_no_ plan ‘for’ him.”
+
+“Well then call it my plan for myself—which may be well, as you say, to
+have none. His situation, don’t you see? is reduced now to the bare
+facts one has to recognise. Mamie doesn’t want him, and he doesn’t want
+Mamie: so much as that these days have made clear. It’s a thread we can
+wind up and tuck in.”
+
+But little Bilham still questioned. “_You_ can—since you seem so much
+to want to. But why should I?”
+
+Poor Strether thought it over, but was obliged of course to admit that
+his demonstration did superficially fail. “Seriously, there _is_ no
+reason. It’s my affair—I must do it alone. I’ve only my fantastic need
+of making my dose stiff.”
+
+Little Bilham wondered. “What do you call your dose?”
+
+“Why what I have to swallow. I want my conditions unmitigated.”
+
+He had spoken in the tone of talk for talk’s sake, and yet with an
+obscure truth lurking in the loose folds; a circumstance presently not
+without its effect on his young friend. Little Bilham’s eyes rested on
+him a moment with some intensity; then suddenly, as if everything had
+cleared up, he gave a happy laugh. It seemed to say that if pretending,
+or even trying, or still even hoping, to be able to care for Mamie
+would be of use, he was all there for the job. “I’ll do anything in the
+world for you!”
+
+“Well,” Strether smiled, “anything in the world is all I want. I don’t
+know anything that pleased me in her more,” he went on, “than the way
+that, on my finding her up there all alone, coming on her unawares and
+feeling greatly for her being so out of it, she knocked down my tall
+house of cards with her instant and cheerful allusion to the next young
+man. It was somehow so the note I needed—her staying at home to receive
+him.”
+
+“It was Chad of course,” said little Bilham, “who asked the next young
+man—I like your name for me!—to call.”
+
+“So I supposed—all of which, thank God, is in our innocent and natural
+manners. But do you know,” Strether asked, “if Chad knows—?” And then
+as this interlocutor seemed at a loss: “Why where she has come out.”
+
+Little Bilham, at this, met his face with a conscious look—it was as
+if, more than anything yet, the allusion had penetrated. “Do you know
+yourself?”
+
+Strether lightly shook his head. “There I stop. Oh, odd as it may
+appear to you, there _are_ things I don’t know. I only got the sense
+from her of something very sharp, and yet very deep down, that she was
+keeping all to herself. That is I had begun with the belief that she
+_had_ kept it to herself; but face to face with her there I soon made
+out that there was a person with whom she would have shared it. I had
+thought she possibly might with _me_—but I saw then that I was only
+half in her confidence. When, turning to me to greet me—for she was on
+the balcony and I had come in without her knowing it—she showed me she
+had been expecting _you_ and was proportionately disappointed, I got
+hold of the tail of my conviction. Half an hour later I was in
+possession of all the rest of it. You know what has happened.” He
+looked at his young friend hard—then he felt sure. “For all you say,
+you’re up to your eyes. So there you are.”
+
+Little Bilham after an instant pulled half round. “I assure you she
+hasn’t told me anything.”
+
+“Of course she hasn’t. For what do you suggest that I suppose her to
+take you? But you’ve been with her every day, you’ve seen her freely,
+you’ve liked her greatly—I stick to that—and you’ve made your profit of
+it. You know what she has been through as well as you know that she has
+dined here to-night—which must have put her, by the way, through a good
+deal more.”
+
+The young man faced this blast; after which he pulled round the rest of
+the way. “I haven’t in the least said she hasn’t been nice to me. But
+she’s proud.”
+
+“And quite properly. But not too proud for that.”
+
+“It’s just her pride that has made her. Chad,” little Bilham loyally
+went on, “has really been as kind to her as possible. It’s awkward for
+a man when a girl’s in love with him.”
+
+“Ah but she isn’t—now.”
+
+Little Bilham sat staring before him; then he sprang up as if his
+friend’s penetration, recurrent and insistent, made him really after
+all too nervous. “No—she isn’t now. It isn’t in the least,” he went on,
+“Chad’s fault. He’s really all right. I mean he would have been
+willing. But she came over with ideas. Those she had got at home. They
+had been her motive and support in joining her brother and his wife.
+She was to _save_ our friend.”
+
+“Ah like me, poor thing?” Strether also got to his feet.
+
+“Exactly—she had a bad moment. It was very soon distinct to her, to
+pull her up, to let her down, that, alas, he was, he _is_, saved.
+There’s nothing left for her to do.”
+
+“Not even to love him?”
+
+“She would have loved him better as she originally believed him.”
+
+Strether wondered. “Of course one asks one’s self what notion a little
+girl forms, where a young man’s in question, of such a history and such
+a state.”
+
+“Well, this little girl saw them, no doubt, as obscure, but she saw
+them practically as wrong. The wrong for her _was_ the obscure. Chad
+turns out at any rate right and good and disconcerting, while what she
+was all prepared for, primed and girded and wound up for, was to deal
+with him as the general opposite.”
+
+“Yet wasn’t her whole point”—Strether weighed it—“that he was to be,
+that he _could_ be, made better, redeemed?”
+
+Little Bilham fixed it all a moment, and then with a small headshake
+that diffused a tenderness: “She’s too late. Too late for the miracle.”
+
+“Yes”—his companion saw enough. “Still, if the worst fault of his
+condition is that it may be all there for her to profit by—?”
+
+“Oh she doesn’t want to ‘profit,’ in that flat way. She doesn’t want to
+profit by another woman’s work—she wants the miracle to have been her
+own miracle. _That’s_ what she’s too late for.”
+
+Strether quite felt how it all fitted, yet there seemed one loose
+piece. “I’m bound to say, you know, that she strikes one, on these
+lines, as fastidious—what you call here _difficile_.”
+
+Little Bilham tossed up his chin. “Of course she’s _difficile_—on any
+lines! What else in the world _are_ our Mamies—the real, the right
+ones?”
+
+“I see, I see,” our friend repeated, charmed by the responsive wisdom
+he had ended by so richly extracting. “Mamie is one of the real and the
+right.”
+
+“The very thing itself.”
+
+“And what it comes to then,” Strether went on, “is that poor awful Chad
+is simply too good for her.”
+
+“Ah too good was what he was after all to be; but it was she herself,
+and she herself only, who was to have made him so.”
+
+It hung beautifully together, but with still a loose end. “Wouldn’t he
+do for her even if he should after all break—”
+
+“With his actual influence?” Oh little Bilham had for this enquiry the
+sharpest of all his controls. “How can he ‘do’—on any terms
+whatever—when he’s flagrantly spoiled?”
+
+Strether could only meet the question with his passive, his receptive
+pleasure. “Well, thank goodness, _you’re_ not! _You_ remain for her to
+save, and I come back, on so beautiful and full a demonstration, to my
+contention of just now—that of your showing distinct signs of her
+having already begun.”
+
+The most he could further say to himself—as his young friend turned
+away—was that the charge encountered for the moment no renewed denial.
+Little Bilham, taking his course back to the music, only shook his
+good-natured ears an instant, in the manner of a terrier who has got
+wet; while Strether relapsed into the sense—which had for him in these
+days most of comfort—that he was free to believe in anything that from
+hour to hour kept him going. He had positively motions and flutters of
+this conscious hour-to-hour kind, temporary surrenders to irony, to
+fancy, frequent instinctive snatches at the growing rose of
+observation, constantly stronger for him, as he felt, in scent and
+colour, and in which he could bury his nose even to wantonness. This
+last resource was offered him, for that matter, in the very form of his
+next clear perception—the vision of a prompt meeting, in the doorway of
+the room, between little Bilham and brilliant Miss Barrace, who was
+entering as Bilham withdrew. She had apparently put him a question, to
+which he had replied by turning to indicate his late interlocutor;
+toward whom, after an interrogation further aided by a resort to that
+optical machinery which seemed, like her other ornaments, curious and
+archaic, the genial lady, suggesting more than ever for her fellow
+guest the old French print, the historic portrait, directed herself
+with an intention that Strether instantly met. He knew in advance the
+first note she would sound, and took in as she approached all her need
+of sounding it. Nothing yet had been so “wonderful” between them as the
+present occasion; and it was her special sense of this quality in
+occasions that she was there, as she was in most places, to feed. That
+sense had already been so well fed by the situation about them that she
+had quitted the other room, forsaken the music, dropped out of the
+play, abandoned, in a word, the stage itself, that she might stand a
+minute behind the scenes with Strether and so perhaps figure as one of
+the famous augurs replying, behind the oracle, to the wink of the
+other. Seated near him presently where little Bilham had sat, she
+replied in truth to many things; beginning as soon as he had said to
+her—what he hoped he said without fatuity—“All you ladies are
+extraordinarily kind to me.”
+
+She played her long handle, which shifted her observation; she saw in
+an instant all the absences that left them free. “How can we be
+anything else? But isn’t that exactly your plight? ‘We ladies’—oh we’re
+nice, and you must be having enough of us! As one of us, you know, I
+don’t pretend I’m crazy about us. But Miss Gostrey at least to-night
+has left you alone, hasn’t she?” With which she again looked about as
+if Maria might still lurk.
+
+“Oh yes,” said Strether; “she’s only sitting up for me at home.” And
+then as this elicited from his companion her gay “Oh, oh, oh!” he
+explained that he meant sitting up in suspense and prayer. “We thought
+it on the whole better she shouldn’t be present; and either way of
+course it’s a terrible worry for her.” He abounded in the sense of his
+appeal to the ladies, and they might take their choice of his doing so
+from humility or from pride. “Yet she inclines to believe I shall come
+out.”
+
+“Oh I incline to believe too you’ll come out!”—Miss Barrace, with her
+laugh, was not to be behind. “Only the question’s about _where_, isn’t
+it? However,” she happily continued, “if it’s anywhere at all it must
+be very far on, mustn’t it? To do us justice, I think, you know,” she
+laughed, “we do, among us all, want you rather far on. Yes, yes,” she
+repeated in her quick droll way; “we want you very, _very_ far on!”
+After which she wished to know why he had thought it better Maria
+shouldn’t be present.
+
+“Oh,” he replied, “it was really her own idea. I should have wished it.
+But she dreads responsibility.”
+
+“And isn’t that a new thing for her?”
+
+“To dread it? No doubt—no doubt. But her nerve has given way.”
+
+Miss Barrace looked at him a moment. “She has too much at stake.” Then
+less gravely: “Mine, luckily for me, holds out.”
+
+“Luckily for me too”—Strether came back to that. “My own isn’t so firm,
+_my_ appetite for responsibility isn’t so sharp, as that I haven’t felt
+the very principle of this occasion to be ‘the more the merrier.’ If we
+_are_ so merry it’s because Chad has understood so well.”
+
+“He has understood amazingly,” said Miss Barrace.
+
+“It’s wonderful—Strether anticipated for her.
+
+“It’s wonderful!” she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face to face
+over it, they largely and recklessly laughed. But she presently added:
+“Oh I see the principle. If one didn’t one would be lost. But when once
+one has got hold of it—”
+
+“It’s as simple as twice two! From the moment he had to do something—”
+
+“A crowd”—she took him straight up—“was the only thing? Rather, rather:
+a rumpus of sound,” she laughed, “or nothing. Mrs. Pocock’s built in,
+or built out—whichever you call it; she’s packed so tight she can’t
+move. She’s in splendid isolation”—Miss Barrace embroidered the theme.
+
+Strether followed, but scrupulous of justice. “Yet with every one in
+the place successively introduced to her.”
+
+“Wonderfully—but just so that it does build her out. She’s bricked up,
+she’s buried alive!”
+
+Strether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him to a
+sigh. “Oh but she’s not dead! It will take more than this to kill her.”
+
+His companion had a pause that might have been for pity. “No, I can’t
+pretend I think she’s finished—or that it’s for more than to-night.”
+She remained pensive as if with the same compunction. “It’s only up to
+her chin.” Then again for the fun of it: “She can breathe.”
+
+“She can breathe!”—he echoed it in the same spirit. “And do you know,”
+he went on, “what’s really all this time happening to me?—through the
+beauty of music, the gaiety of voices, the uproar in short of our revel
+and the felicity of your wit? The sound of Mrs. Pocock’s respiration
+drowns for me, I assure you, every other. It’s literally all I hear.”
+
+She focussed him with her clink of chains. “Well—!” she breathed ever
+so kindly.
+
+“Well, what?”
+
+“She _is_ free from her chin up,” she mused; “and that _will_ be enough
+for her.”
+
+“It will be enough for me!” Strether ruefully laughed. “Waymarsh has
+really,” he then asked, “brought her to see you?”
+
+“Yes—but that’s the worst of it. I could do you no good. And yet I
+tried hard.”
+
+Strether wondered. “And how did you try?”
+
+“Why I didn’t speak of you.”
+
+“I see. That was better.”
+
+“Then what would have been worse? For speaking or silent,” she lightly
+wailed, “I somehow ‘compromise.’ And it has never been any one but
+you.”
+
+“That shows”—he was magnanimous—“that it’s something not in you, but in
+one’s self. It’s _my_ fault.”
+
+She was silent a little. “No, it’s Mr. Waymarsh’s. It’s the fault of
+his having brought her.”
+
+“Ah then,” said Strether good-naturedly, “why _did_ he bring her?”
+
+“He couldn’t afford not to.”
+
+“Oh you were a trophy—one of the spoils of conquest? But why in that
+case, since you do ‘compromise’—”
+
+“Don’t I compromise _him_ as well? I do compromise him as well,” Miss
+Barrace smiled. “I compromise him as hard as I can. But for Mr.
+Waymarsh it isn’t fatal. It’s—so far as his wonderful relation with
+Mrs. Pocock is concerned—favourable.” And then, as he still seemed
+slightly at sea: “The man who had succeeded with _me_, don’t you see?
+For her to get him from me was such an added incentive.”
+
+Strether saw, but as if his path was still strewn with surprises. “It’s
+‘from’ you then that she has got him?”
+
+She was amused at his momentary muddle. “You can fancy my fight! She
+believes in her triumph. I think it has been part of her joy.
+
+“Oh her joy!” Strether sceptically murmured.
+
+“Well, she thinks she has had her own way. And what’s to-night for her
+but a kind of apotheosis? Her frock’s really good.”
+
+“Good enough to go to heaven in? For after a real apotheosis,” Strether
+went on, “there’s nothing _but_ heaven. For Sarah there’s only
+to-morrow.”
+
+“And you mean that she won’t find to-morrow heavenly?”
+
+“Well, I mean that I somehow feel to-night—on her behalf—too good to be
+true. She has had her cake; that is she’s in the act now of having it,
+of swallowing the largest and sweetest piece. There won’t be another
+left for her. Certainly _I_ haven’t one. It can only, at the best, be
+Chad.” He continued to make it out as for their common entertainment.
+“He may have one, as it were, up his sleeve; yet it’s borne in upon me
+that if he had—”
+
+“He wouldn’t”—she quite understood—“have taken all _this_ trouble? I
+dare say not, and, if I may be quite free and dreadful, I very much
+hope he won’t take any more. Of course I won’t pretend now,” she added,
+“not to know what it’s a question of.”
+
+“Oh every one must know now,” poor Strether thoughtfully admitted; “and
+it’s strange enough and funny enough that one should feel everybody
+here at this very moment to be knowing and watching and waiting.”
+
+“Yes—isn’t it indeed funny?” Miss Barrace quite rose to it. “That’s the
+way we _are_ in Paris.” She was always pleased with a new contribution
+to that queerness. “It’s wonderful! But, you know,” she declared, “it
+all depends on you. I don’t want to turn the knife in your vitals, but
+that’s naturally what you just now meant by our all being on top of
+you. We know you as the hero of the drama, and we’re gathered to see
+what you’ll do.”
+
+Strether looked at her a moment with a light perhaps slightly obscured.
+“I think that must be why the hero has taken refuge in this corner.
+He’s scared at his heroism—he shrinks from his part.”
+
+“Ah but we nevertheless believe he’ll play it. That’s why,” Miss
+Barrace kindly went on, “we take such an interest in you. We feel
+you’ll come up to the scratch.” And then as he seemed perhaps not quite
+to take fire: “Don’t let him do it.”
+
+“Don’t let Chad go?”
+
+“Yes, keep hold of him. With all this”—and she indicated the general
+tribute—“he has done enough. We love him here—he’s charming.”
+
+“It’s beautiful,” said Strether, “the way you all can simplify when you
+will.”
+
+But she gave it to him back. “It’s nothing to the way _you_ will when
+you must.”
+
+He winced at it as at the very voice of prophecy, and it kept him a
+moment quiet. He detained her, however, on her appearing about to leave
+him alone in the rather cold clearance their talk had made. “There
+positively isn’t a sign of a hero to-night; the hero’s dodging and
+shirking, the hero’s ashamed. Therefore, you know, I think, what you
+must all _really_ be occupied with is the heroine.”
+
+Miss Barrace took a minute. “The heroine?”
+
+“The heroine. I’ve treated her,” said Strether, “not a bit like a hero.
+Oh,” he sighed, “I don’t do it well!”
+
+She eased him off. “You do it as you can.” And then after another
+hesitation: “I think she’s satisfied.”
+
+But he remained compunctious. “I haven’t been near her. I haven’t
+looked at her.”
+
+“Ah then you’ve lost a good deal!”
+
+He showed he knew it. “She’s more wonderful than ever?”
+
+“Than ever. With Mr. Pocock.”
+
+Strether wondered. “Madame de Vionnet—with Jim?”
+
+“Madame de Vionnet—with ‘Jim.’” Miss Barrace was historic.
+
+“And what’s she doing with him?”
+
+“Ah you must ask _him!_”
+
+Strether’s face lighted again at the prospect. “It _will_ be amusing to
+do so.” Yet he continued to wonder. “But she must have some idea.”
+
+“Of course she has—she has twenty ideas. She has in the first place,”
+said Miss Barrace, swinging a little her tortoise-shell, “that of doing
+her part. Her part is to help _you_.”
+
+It came out as nothing had come yet; links were missing and connexions
+unnamed, but it was suddenly as if they were at the heart of their
+subject. “Yes; how much more she does it,” Strether gravely reflected,
+“than I help _her!_” It all came over him as with the near presence of
+the beauty, the grace, the intense, dissimulated spirit with which he
+had, as he said, been putting off contact. “_She_ has courage.”
+
+“Ah she has courage!” Miss Barrace quite agreed; and it was as if for a
+moment they saw the quantity in each other’s face.
+
+But indeed the whole thing was present. “How much she must care!”
+
+“Ah there it is. She does care. But it isn’t, is it,” Miss Barrace
+considerately added, “as if you had ever had any doubt of that?”
+
+Strether seemed suddenly to like to feel that he really never had. “Why
+of course it’s the whole point.”
+
+“Voilà!” Miss Barrace smiled.
+
+“It’s why one came out,” Strether went on. “And it’s why one has stayed
+so long. And it’s also”—he abounded—“why one’s going home. It’s why,
+it’s why—”
+
+“It’s why everything!” she concurred. “It’s why she might be
+to-night—for all she looks and shows, and for all your friend ‘Jim’
+does—about twenty years old. That’s another of her ideas; to be for
+him, and to be quite easily and charmingly, as young as a little girl.”
+
+Strether assisted at his distance. “‘For him’? For Chad—?”
+
+“For Chad, in a manner, naturally, always. But in particular to-night
+for Mr. Pocock.” And then as her friend still stared: “Yes, it _is_ of
+a bravery! But that’s what she has: her high sense of duty.” It was
+more than sufficiently before them. “When Mr. Newsome has his hands so
+embarrassed with his sister—”
+
+“It’s quite the least”—Strether filled it out—“that she should take his
+sister’s husband? Certainly—quite the least. So she has taken him.”
+
+“She has taken him.” It was all Miss Barrace had meant.
+
+Still it remained enough. “It must be funny.”
+
+“Oh it _is_ funny.” That of course essentially went with it.
+
+But it brought them back. “How indeed then she must care!” In answer to
+which Strether’s entertainer dropped a comprehensive “Ah!” expressive
+perhaps of some impatience for the time he took to get used to it. She
+herself had got used to it long before.
+
+
+ II
+
+When one morning within the week he perceived the whole thing to be
+really at last upon him Strether’s immediate feeling was all relief. He
+had known this morning that something was about to happen—known it, in
+a moment, by Waymarsh’s manner when Waymarsh appeared before him during
+his brief consumption of coffee and a roll in the small slippery
+_salle-à-manger_ so associated with rich rumination. Strether had taken
+there of late various lonely and absent-minded meals; he communed
+there, even at the end of June, with a suspected chill, the air of old
+shivers mixed with old savours, the air in which so many of his
+impressions had perversely matured; the place meanwhile renewing its
+message to him by the very circumstance of his single state. He now sat
+there, for the most part, to sigh softly, while he vaguely tilted his
+carafe, over the vision of how much better Waymarsh was occupied. That
+was really his success by the common measure—to have led this companion
+so on and on. He remembered how at first there had been scarce a
+squatting-place he could beguile him into passing; the actual outcome
+of which at last was that there was scarce one that could arrest him in
+his rush. His rush—as Strether vividly and amusedly figured
+it—continued to be all with Sarah, and contained perhaps moreover the
+word of the whole enigma, whipping up in its fine full-flavoured froth
+the very principle, for good or for ill, of his own, of Strether’s
+destiny. It might after all, to the end, only be that they had united
+to save him, and indeed, so far as Waymarsh was concerned, that _had_
+to be the spring of action. Strether was glad at all events, in
+connexion with the case, that the saving he required was not more
+scant; so constituted a luxury was it in certain lights just to lurk
+there out of the full glare. He had moments of quite seriously
+wondering whether Waymarsh wouldn’t in fact, thanks to old friendship
+and a conceivable indulgence, make about as good terms for him as he
+might make for himself. They wouldn’t be the same terms of course; but
+they might have the advantage that he himself probably should be able
+to make none at all.
+
+He was never in the morning very late, but Waymarsh had already been
+out, and, after a peep into the dim refectory, he presented himself
+with much less than usual of his large looseness. He had made sure,
+through the expanse of glass exposed to the court, that they would be
+alone; and there was now in fact that about him that pretty well took
+up the room. He was dressed in the garments of summer; and save that
+his white waistcoat was redundant and bulging these things favoured,
+they determined, his expression. He wore a straw hat such as his friend
+hadn’t yet seen in Paris, and he showed a buttonhole freshly adorned
+with a magnificent rose. Strether read on the instant his story—how,
+astir for the previous hour, the sprinkled newness of the day, so
+pleasant at that season in Paris, he was fairly panting with the pulse
+of adventure and had been with Mrs. Pocock, unmistakeably, to the
+Marché aux Fleurs. Strether really knew in this vision of him a joy
+that was akin to envy; so reversed as he stood there did their old
+positions seem; so comparatively doleful now showed, by the sharp turn
+of the wheel, the posture of the pilgrim from Woollett. He wondered,
+this pilgrim, if he had originally looked to Waymarsh so brave and
+well, so remarkably launched, as it was at present the latter’s
+privilege to appear. He recalled that his friend had remarked to him
+even at Chester that his aspect belied his plea of prostration; but
+there certainly couldn’t have been, for an issue, an aspect less
+concerned than Waymarsh’s with the menace of decay. Strether had at any
+rate never resembled a Southern planter of the great days—which was the
+image picturesquely suggested by the happy relation between the
+fuliginous face and the wide panama of his visitor. This type, it
+further amused him to guess, had been, on Waymarsh’s part, the object
+of Sarah’s care; he was convinced that her taste had not been a
+stranger to the conception and purchase of the hat, any more than her
+fine fingers had been guiltless of the bestowal of the rose. It came to
+him in the current of thought, as things so oddly did come, that _he_
+had never risen with the lark to attend a brilliant woman to the Marché
+aux Fleurs; this could be fastened on him in connexion neither with
+Miss Gostrey nor with Madame de Vionnet; the practice of getting up
+early for adventures could indeed in no manner be fastened on him. It
+came to him in fact that just here was his usual case: he was for ever
+missing things through his general genius for missing them, while
+others were for ever picking them up through a contrary bent. And it
+was others who looked abstemious and he who looked greedy; it was he
+somehow who finally paid, and it was others who mainly partook. Yes, he
+should go to the scaffold yet for he wouldn’t know quite whom. He
+almost, for that matter, felt on the scaffold now and really quite
+enjoying it. It worked out as _because_ he was anxious there—it worked
+out as for this reason that Waymarsh was so blooming. It was _his_ trip
+for health, for a change, that proved the success—which was just what
+Strether, planning and exerting himself, had desired it should be. That
+truth already sat full-blown on his companion’s lips; benevolence
+breathed from them as with the warmth of active exercise, and also a
+little as with the bustle of haste.
+
+“Mrs. Pocock, whom I left a quarter of an hour ago at her hotel, has
+asked me to mention to you that she would like to find you at home here
+in about another hour. She wants to see you; she has something to
+say—or considers, I believe, that you may have: so that I asked her
+myself why she shouldn’t come right round. She hasn’t _been_ round
+yet—to see our place; and I took upon myself to say that I was sure
+you’d be glad to have her. The thing’s therefore, you see, to keep
+right here till she comes.”
+
+The announcement was sociably, even though, after Waymarsh’s wont,
+somewhat solemnly made; but Strether quickly felt other things in it
+than these light features. It was the first approach, from that
+quarter, to admitted consciousness; it quickened his pulse; it simply
+meant at last that he should have but himself to thank if he didn’t
+know where he was. He had finished his breakfast; he pushed it away and
+was on his feet. There were plenty of elements of surprise, but only
+one of doubt. “The thing’s for _you_ to keep here too?” Waymarsh had
+been slightly ambiguous.
+
+He wasn’t ambiguous, however, after this enquiry; and Strether’s
+understanding had probably never before opened so wide and effective a
+mouth as it was to open during the next five minutes. It was no part of
+his friend’s wish, as appeared, to help to receive Mrs. Pocock; he
+quite understood the spirit in which she was to present herself, but
+his connexion with her visit was limited to his having—well, as he
+might say—perhaps a little promoted it. He had thought, and had let her
+know it, that Strether possibly would think she might have been round
+before. At any rate, as turned out, she had been wanting herself, quite
+a while, to come. “I told her,” said Waymarsh, “that it would have been
+a bright idea if she had only carried it out before.”
+
+Strether pronounced it so bright as to be almost dazzling. “But why
+_hasn’t_ she carried it out before? She has seen me every day—she had
+only to name her hour. I’ve been waiting and waiting.”
+
+“Well, I told her you had. And she has been waiting too.” It was, in
+the oddest way in the world, on the showing of this tone, a genial new
+pressing coaxing Waymarsh; a Waymarsh conscious with a different
+consciousness from any he had yet betrayed, and actually rendered by it
+almost insinuating. He lacked only time for full persuasion, and
+Strether was to see in a moment why. Meantime, however, our friend
+perceived, he was announcing a step of some magnanimity on Mrs.
+Pocock’s part, so that he could deprecate a sharp question. It was his
+own high purpose in fact to have smoothed sharp questions to rest. He
+looked his old comrade very straight in the eyes, and he had never
+conveyed to him in so mute a manner so much kind confidence and so much
+good advice. Everything that was between them was again in his face,
+but matured and shelved and finally disposed of. “At any rate,” he
+added, “she’s coming now.”
+
+Considering how many pieces had to fit themselves, it all fell, in
+Strether’s brain, into a close rapid order. He saw on the spot what had
+happened, and what probably would yet; and it was all funny enough. It
+was perhaps just this freedom of appreciation that wound him up to his
+flare of high spirits. “What is she coming _for?_—to kill me?”
+
+“She’s coming to be very _very_ kind to you, and you must let me say
+that I greatly hope you’ll not be less so to herself.”
+
+This was spoken by Waymarsh with much gravity of admonition, and as
+Strether stood there he knew he had but to make a movement to take the
+attitude of a man gracefully receiving a present. The present was that
+of the opportunity dear old Waymarsh had flattered himself he had
+divined in him the slight soreness of not having yet thoroughly
+enjoyed; so he had brought it to him thus, as on a little silver
+breakfast-tray, familiarly though delicately—without oppressive pomp;
+and he was to bend and smile and acknowledge, was to take and use and
+be grateful. He was not—that was the beauty of it—to be asked to
+deflect too much from his dignity. No wonder the old boy bloomed in
+this bland air of his own distillation. Strether felt for a moment as
+if Sarah were actually walking up and down outside. Wasn’t she hanging
+about the _porte-cochère_ while her friend thus summarily opened a way?
+Strether would meet her but to take it, and everything would be for the
+best in the best of possible worlds. He had never so much known what
+any one meant as, in the light of this demonstration, he knew what Mrs.
+Newsome did. It had reached Waymarsh from Sarah, but it had reached
+Sarah from her mother, and there was no break in the chain by which it
+reached _him_. “Has anything particular happened,” he asked after a
+minute—“so suddenly to determine her? Has she heard anything unexpected
+from home?”
+
+Waymarsh, on this, it seemed to him, looked at him harder than ever.
+“‘Unexpected’?” He had a brief hesitation; then, however, he was firm.
+“We’re leaving Paris.”
+
+“Leaving? That _is_ sudden.”
+
+Waymarsh showed a different opinion. “Less so than it may seem. The
+purpose of Mrs. Pocock’s visit is to explain to you in fact that it’s
+_not_.”
+
+Strether didn’t at all know if he had really an advantage—anything that
+would practically count as one; but he enjoyed for the moment—as for
+the first time in his life—the sense of so carrying it off. He
+wondered—it was amusing—if he felt as the impudent feel. “I shall take
+great pleasure, I assure you, in any explanation. I shall be delighted
+to receive Sarah.”
+
+The sombre glow just darkened in his comrade’s eyes; but he was struck
+with the way it died out again. It was too mixed with another
+consciousness—it was too smothered, as might be said, in flowers. He
+really for the time regretted it—poor dear old sombre glow! Something
+straight and simple, something heavy and empty, had been eclipsed in
+its company; something by which he had best known his friend. Waymarsh
+wouldn’t _be_ his friend, somehow, without the occasional ornament of
+the sacred rage, and the right to the sacred rage—inestimably precious
+for Strether’s charity—he also seemed in a manner, and at Mrs. Pocock’s
+elbow, to have forfeited. Strether remembered the occasion early in
+their stay when on that very spot he had come out with his earnest, his
+ominous “Quit it!”—and, so remembering, felt it hang by a hair that he
+didn’t himself now utter the same note. Waymarsh was having a good
+time—this was the truth that was embarrassing for him, and he was
+having it then and there, he was having it in Europe, he was having it
+under the very protection of circumstances of which he didn’t in the
+least approve; all of which placed him in a false position, with no
+issue possible—none at least by the grand manner. It was practically in
+the manner of any one—it was all but in poor Strether’s own—that
+instead of taking anything up he merely made the most of having to be
+himself explanatory. “I’m not leaving for the United States direct. Mr.
+and Mrs. Pocock and Miss Mamie are thinking of a little trip before
+their own return, and we’ve been talking for some days past of our
+joining forces. We’ve settled it that we do join and that we sail
+together the end of next month. But we start to-morrow for Switzerland.
+Mrs. Pocock wants some scenery. She hasn’t had much yet.”
+
+He was brave in his way too, keeping nothing back, confessing all there
+was, and only leaving Strether to make certain connexions. “Is what
+Mrs. Newsome had cabled her daughter an injunction to break off short?”
+
+The grand manner indeed at this just raised its head a little. “I know
+nothing about Mrs. Newsome’s cables.”
+
+Their eyes met on it with some intensity—during the few seconds of
+which something happened quite out of proportion to the time. It
+happened that Strether, looking thus at his friend, didn’t take his
+answer for truth—and that something more again occurred in consequence
+of _that_. Yes—Waymarsh just _did_ know about Mrs. Newsome’s cables: to
+what other end than that had they dined together at Bignon’s? Strether
+almost felt for the instant that it was to Mrs. Newsome herself the
+dinner had been given; and, for that matter, quite felt how she must
+have known about it and, as he might think, protected and consecrated
+it. He had a quick blurred view of daily cables, questions, answers,
+signals: clear enough was his vision of the expense that, when so wound
+up, the lady at home was prepared to incur. Vivid not less was his
+memory of what, during his long observation of her, some of her
+attainments of that high pitch had cost her. Distinctly she was at the
+highest now, and Waymarsh, who imagined himself an independent
+performer, was really, forcing his fine old natural voice, an
+overstrained accompanist. The whole reference of his errand seemed to
+mark her for Strether as by this time consentingly familiar to him, and
+nothing yet had so despoiled her of a special shade of consideration.
+“You don’t know,” he asked, “whether Sarah has been directed from home
+to try me on the matter of my also going to Switzerland?”
+
+“I know,” said Waymarsh as manfully as possible, “nothing whatever
+about her private affairs; though I believe her to be acting in
+conformity with things that have my highest respect.” It was as manful
+as possible, but it was still the false note—as it had to be to convey
+so sorry a statement. He knew everything, Strether more and more felt,
+that he thus disclaimed, and his little punishment was just in this
+doom to a second fib. What falser position—given the man—could the most
+vindictive mind impose? He ended by squeezing through a passage in
+which three months before he would certainly have stuck fast. “Mrs
+Pocock will probably be ready herself to answer any enquiry you may put
+to her. But,” he continued, “_but_—!” He faltered on it.
+
+“But what? Don’t put her too many?”
+
+Waymarsh looked large, but the harm was done; he couldn’t, do what he
+would, help looking rosy. “Don’t do anything you’ll be sorry for.”
+
+It was an attenuation, Strether guessed, of something else that had
+been on his lips; it was a sudden drop to directness, and was thereby
+the voice of sincerity. He had fallen to the supplicating note, and
+that immediately, for our friend, made a difference and reinstated him.
+They were in communication as they had been, that first morning, in
+Sarah’s salon and in her presence and Madame de Vionnet’s; and the same
+recognition of a great good will was again, after all, possible. Only
+the amount of response Waymarsh had then taken for granted was doubled,
+decupled now. This came out when he presently said: “Of course I
+needn’t assure you _I_ hope you’ll come with us.” Then it was that his
+implications and expectations loomed up for Strether as almost
+pathetically gross.
+
+The latter patted his shoulder while he thanked him, giving the go-by
+to the question of joining the Pococks; he expressed the joy he felt at
+seeing him go forth again so brave and free, and he in fact almost took
+leave of him on the spot. “I shall see you again of course before you
+go; but I’m meanwhile much obliged to you for arranging so conveniently
+for what you’ve told me. I shall walk up and down in the court
+there—dear little old court which we’ve each bepaced so, this last
+couple of months, to the tune of our flights and our drops, our
+hesitations and our plunges: I shall hang about there, all impatience
+and excitement, please let Sarah know, till she graciously presents
+herself. Leave me with her without fear,” he laughed; “I assure you I
+shan’t hurt her. I don’t think either she’ll hurt _me_: I’m in a
+situation in which damage was some time ago discounted. Besides, _that_
+isn’t what worries you—but don’t, don’t explain! We’re all right as we
+are: which was the degree of success our adventure was pledged to for
+each of us. We weren’t, it seemed, all right as we were before; and
+we’ve got over the ground, all things considered, quickly. I hope
+you’ll have a lovely time in the Alps.”
+
+Waymarsh fairly looked up at him as from the foot of them. “I don’t
+know as I _ought_ really to go.”
+
+It was the conscience of Milrose in the very voice of Milrose, but, oh
+it was feeble and flat! Strether suddenly felt quite ashamed for him;
+he breathed a greater boldness. “_Let_ yourself, on the contrary, go—in
+all agreeable directions. These are precious hours—at our age they
+mayn’t recur. Don’t have it to say to yourself at Milrose, next winter,
+that you hadn’t courage for them.” And then as his comrade queerly
+stared: “Live up to Mrs. Pocock.”
+
+“Live up to her?”
+
+“You’re a great help to her.”
+
+Waymarsh looked at it as at one of the uncomfortable things that were
+certainly true and that it was yet ironical to say. “It’s more then
+than you are.”
+
+“That’s exactly your own chance and advantage. Besides,” said Strether,
+“I do in my way contribute. I know what I’m about.”
+
+Waymarsh had kept on his great panama, and, as he now stood nearer the
+door, his last look beneath the shade of it had turned again to
+darkness and warning. “So do I! See here, Strether.”
+
+“I know what you’re going to say. ‘Quit this’?”
+
+“Quit this!” But it lacked its old intensity; nothing of it remained;
+it went out of the room with him.
+
+
+ III
+
+Almost the first thing, strangely enough, that, about an hour later,
+Strether found himself doing in Sarah’s presence was to remark
+articulately on this failure, in their friend, of what had been
+superficially his great distinction. It was as if—he alluded of course
+to the grand manner—the dear man had sacrificed it to some other
+advantage; which would be of course only for himself to measure. It
+might be simply that he was physically so much more sound than on his
+first coming out; this was all prosaic, comparatively cheerful and
+vulgar. And fortunately, if one came to that, his improvement in health
+was really itself grander than any manner it could be conceived as
+having cost him. “You yourself alone, dear Sarah”—Strether took the
+plunge—“have done him, it strikes me, in these three weeks, as much
+good as all the rest of his time together.”
+
+It was a plunge because somehow the range of reference was, in the
+conditions, “funny,” and made funnier still by Sarah’s attitude, by the
+turn the occasion had, with her appearance, so sensibly taken. Her
+appearance was really indeed funnier than anything else—the spirit in
+which he felt her to be there as soon as she was there, the shade of
+obscurity that cleared up for him as soon as he was seated with her in
+the small _salon de lecture_ that had, for the most part, in all the
+weeks, witnessed the wane of his early vivacity of discussion with
+Waymarsh. It was an immense thing, quite a tremendous thing, for her to
+have come: this truth opened out to him in spite of his having already
+arrived for himself at a fairly vivid view of it. He had done exactly
+what he had given Waymarsh his word for—had walked and re-walked the
+court while he awaited her advent; acquiring in this exercise an amount
+of light that affected him at the time as flooding the scene. She had
+decided upon the step in order to give him the benefit of a doubt, in
+order to be able to say to her mother that she had, even to abjectness,
+smoothed the way for him. The doubt had been as to whether he mightn’t
+take her as not having smoothed it—and the admonition had possibly come
+from Waymarsh’s more detached spirit. Waymarsh had at any rate,
+certainly, thrown his weight into the scale—he had pointed to the
+importance of depriving their friend of a grievance. She had done
+justice to the plea, and it was to set herself right with a high ideal
+that she actually sat there in her state. Her calculation was sharp in
+the immobility with which she held her tall parasol-stick upright and
+at arm’s length, quite as if she had struck the place to plant her
+flag; in the separate precautions she took not to show as nervous; in
+the aggressive repose in which she did quite nothing but wait for him.
+Doubt ceased to be possible from the moment he had taken in that she
+had arrived with no proposal whatever; that her concern was simply to
+show what she had come to receive. She had come to receive his
+submission, and Waymarsh was to have made it plain to him that she
+would expect nothing less. He saw fifty things, her host, at this
+convenient stage; but one of those he most saw was that their anxious
+friend hadn’t quite had the hand required of him. Waymarsh _had_,
+however, uttered the request that she might find him mild, and while
+hanging about the court before her arrival he had turned over with zeal
+the different ways in which he could be so. The difficulty was that if
+he was mild he wasn’t, for her purpose, conscious. If she wished him
+conscious—as everything about her cried aloud that she did—she must
+accordingly be at costs to make him so. Conscious he _was_, for
+himself—but only of too many things; so she must choose the one she
+required.
+
+Practically, however, it at last got itself named, and when once that
+had happened they were quite at the centre of their situation. One
+thing had really done as well as another; when Strether had spoken of
+Waymarsh’s leaving him, and that had necessarily brought on a reference
+to Mrs. Pocock’s similar intention, the jump was but short to supreme
+lucidity. Light became indeed after that so intense that Strether would
+doubtless have but half made out, in the prodigious glare, by which of
+the two the issue had been in fact precipitated. It was, in their
+contracted quarters, as much there between them as if it had been
+something suddenly spilled with a crash and a splash on the floor. The
+form of his submission was to be an engagement to acquit himself within
+the twenty-four hours. “He’ll go in a moment if you give him the
+word—he assures me on his honour he’ll do that”: this came in its
+order, out of its order, in respect to Chad, after the crash had
+occurred. It came repeatedly during the time taken by Strether to feel
+that he was even more fixed in his rigour than he had supposed—the time
+he was not above adding to a little by telling her that such a way of
+putting it on her brother’s part left him sufficiently surprised. She
+wasn’t at all funny at last—she was really fine; and he felt easily
+where she was strong—strong for herself. It hadn’t yet so come home to
+him that she was nobly and appointedly officious. She was acting in
+interests grander and clearer than that of her poor little personal,
+poor little Parisian equilibrium, and all his consciousness of her
+mother’s moral pressure profited by this proof of its sustaining force.
+She would be held up; she would be strengthened; he needn’t in the
+least be anxious for her. What would once more have been distinct to
+him had he tried to make it so was that, as Mrs. Newsome was
+essentially all moral pressure, the presence of this element was almost
+identical with her own presence. It wasn’t perhaps that he felt he was
+dealing with her straight, but it was certainly as if she had been
+dealing straight with _him_. She was reaching him somehow by the
+lengthened arm of the spirit, and he was having to that extent to take
+her into account; but he wasn’t reaching her in turn, not making her
+take _him_; he was only reaching Sarah, who appeared to take so little
+of him. “Something has clearly passed between you and Chad,” he
+presently said, “that I think I ought to know something more about.
+Does he put it all,” he smiled, “on me?”
+
+“Did you come out,” she asked, “to put it all on _him?_”
+
+But he replied to this no further than, after an instant, by saying:
+“Oh it’s all right. Chad I mean’s all right in having said to you—well
+anything he may have said. I’ll _take_ it all—what he does put on me.
+Only I must see him before I see you again.”
+
+She hesitated, but she brought it out. “Is it absolutely necessary you
+should see me again?”
+
+“Certainly, if I’m to give you any definite word about anything.”
+
+“Is it your idea then,” she returned, “that I shall keep on meeting you
+only to be exposed to fresh humiliation?”
+
+He fixed her a longer time. “Are your instructions from Mrs. Newsome
+that you shall, even at the worst, absolutely and irretrievably break
+with me?”
+
+“My instructions from Mrs. Newsome are, if you please, my affair. You
+know perfectly what your own were, and you can judge for yourself of
+what it can do for you to have made what you have of them. You can
+perfectly see, at any rate, I’ll go so far as to say, that if I wish
+not to expose myself I must wish still less to expose _her_.” She had
+already said more than she had quite expected; but, though she had also
+pulled up, the colour in her face showed him he should from one moment
+to the other have it all. He now indeed felt the high importance of his
+having it. “What is your conduct,” she broke out as if to explain—“what
+is your conduct but an outrage to women like _us?_ I mean your acting
+as if there can be a doubt—as between us and such another—of his duty?”
+
+He thought a moment. It was rather much to deal with at once; not only
+the question itself, but the sore abysses it revealed. “Of course
+they’re totally different kinds of duty.”
+
+“And do you pretend that he has any at all—to such another?”
+
+“Do you mean to Madame de Vionnet?” He uttered the name not to affront
+her, but yet again to gain time—time that he needed for taking in
+something still other and larger than her demand of a moment before. It
+wasn’t at once that he could see all that was in her actual challenge;
+but when he did he found himself just checking a low vague sound, a
+sound which was perhaps the nearest approach his vocal chords had ever
+known to a growl. Everything Mrs. Pocock had failed to give a sign of
+recognising in Chad as a particular part of a transformation—everything
+that had lent intention to this particular failure—affected him as
+gathered into a large loose bundle and thrown, in her words, into his
+face. The missile made him to that extent catch his breath; which
+however he presently recovered. “Why when a woman’s at once so charming
+and so beneficent—”
+
+“You can sacrifice mothers and sisters to her without a blush and can
+make them cross the ocean on purpose to feel the more and take from you
+the straighter, _how_ you do it?”
+
+Yes, she had taken him up as short and as sharply as that, but he tried
+not to flounder in her grasp. “I don’t think there’s anything I’ve done
+in any such calculated way as you describe. Everything has come as a
+sort of indistinguishable part of everything else. Your coming out
+belonged closely to my having come before you, and my having come was a
+result of our general state of mind. Our general state of mind had
+proceeded, on its side, from our queer ignorance, our queer
+misconceptions and confusions—from which, since then, an inexorable
+tide of light seems to have floated us into our perhaps still queerer
+knowledge. Don’t you _like_ your brother as he is,” he went on, “and
+haven’t you given your mother an intelligible account of all that that
+comes to?”
+
+It put to her also, doubtless, his own tone, too many things, this at
+least would have been the case hadn’t his final challenge directly
+helped her. Everything, at the stage they had reached, directly helped
+her, because everything betrayed in him such a basis of intention. He
+saw—the odd way things came out!—that he would have been held less
+monstrous had he only been a little wilder. What exposed him was just
+his poor old trick of quiet inwardness, what exposed him was his
+_thinking_ such offence. He hadn’t in the least however the desire to
+irritate that Sarah imputed to him, and he could only at last
+temporise, for the moment, with her indignant view. She was altogether
+more inflamed than he had expected, and he would probably understand
+this better when he should learn what had occurred for her with Chad.
+Till then her view of his particular blackness, her clear surprise at
+his not clutching the pole she held out, must pass as extravagant. “I
+leave you to flatter yourself,” she returned, “that what you speak of
+is what _you’ve_ beautifully done. When a thing has been already
+described in such a lovely way—!” But she caught herself up, and her
+comment on his description rang out sufficiently loud. “Do you consider
+her even an apology for a decent woman?”
+
+Ah there it was at last! She put the matter more crudely than, for his
+own mixed purposes, he had yet had to do; but essentially it was all
+one matter. It was so much—so much; and she treated it, poor lady, as
+so little. He grew conscious, as he was now apt to do, of a strange
+smile, and the next moment he found himself talking like Miss Barrace.
+“She has struck me from the first as wonderful. I’ve been thinking too
+moreover that, after all, she would probably have represented even for
+yourself something rather new and rather good.”
+
+He was to have given Mrs. Pocock with this, however, but her best
+opportunity for a sound of derision. “Rather new? I hope so with all my
+heart!”
+
+“I mean,” he explained, “that she might have affected you by her
+exquisite amiability—a real revelation, it has seemed to myself; her
+high rarity, her distinction of every sort.”
+
+He had been, with these words, consciously a little “precious”; but he
+had had to be—he couldn’t give her the truth of the case without them;
+and it seemed to him moreover now that he didn’t care. He had at all
+events not served his cause, for she sprang at its exposed side. “A
+‘revelation’—to _me_: I’ve come to such a woman for a revelation? You
+talk to me about ‘distinction’—_you_, you who’ve had your
+privilege?—when the most distinguished woman we shall either of us have
+seen in this world sits there insulted, in her loneliness, by your
+incredible comparison!”
+
+Strether forbore, with an effort, from straying; but he looked all
+about him. “Does your mother herself make the point that she sits
+insulted?”
+
+Sarah’s answer came so straight, so “pat,” as might have been said,
+that he felt on the instant its origin. “She has confided to my
+judgement and my tenderness the expression of her personal sense of
+everything, and the assertion of her personal dignity.”
+
+They were the very words of the lady of Woollett—he would have known
+them in a thousand; her parting charge to her child. Mrs. Pocock
+accordingly spoke to this extent by book, and the fact immensely moved
+him. “If she does really feel as you say it’s of course very very
+dreadful. I’ve given sufficient proof, one would have thought,” he
+added, “of my deep admiration for Mrs. Newsome.”
+
+“And pray what proof would one have thought you’d _call_ sufficient?
+That of thinking this person here so far superior to her?”
+
+He wondered again; he waited. “Ah dear Sarah, you must _leave_ me this
+person here!”
+
+In his desire to avoid all vulgar retorts, to show how, even
+perversely, he clung to his rag of reason, he had softly almost wailed
+this plea. Yet he knew it to be perhaps the most positive declaration
+he had ever made in his life, and his visitor’s reception of it
+virtually gave it that importance. “That’s exactly what I’m delighted
+to do. God knows _we_ don’t want her! You take good care not to meet,”
+she observed in a still higher key, “my question about their life. If
+you do consider it a thing one can even _speak_ of, I congratulate you
+on your taste!”
+
+The life she alluded to was of course Chad’s and Madame de Vionnet’s,
+which she thus bracketed together in a way that made him wince a
+little; there being nothing for him but to take home her full
+intention. It was none the less his inconsequence that while he had
+himself been enjoying for weeks the view of the brilliant woman’s
+specific action, he just suffered from any characterisation of it by
+other lips. “I think tremendously well of her, at the same time that I
+seem to feel her ‘life’ to be really none of my business. It’s my
+business, that is, only so far as Chad’s own life is affected by it;
+and what has happened, don’t you see? is that Chad’s has been affected
+so beautifully. The proof of the pudding’s in the eating”—he tried,
+with no great success, to help it out with a touch of pleasantry, while
+she let him go on as if to sink and sink. He went on however well
+enough, as well as he could do without fresh counsel; he indeed
+shouldn’t stand quite firm, he felt, till he should have re-established
+his communications with Chad. Still, he could always speak for the
+woman he had so definitely promised to “save.” This wasn’t quite for
+her the air of salvation; but as that chill fairly deepened what did it
+become but a reminder that one might at the worst perish _with_ her?
+And it was simple enough—it was rudimentary: not, not to give her away.
+“I find in her more merits than you would probably have patience with
+my counting over. And do you know,” he enquired, “the effect you
+produce on me by alluding to her in such terms? It’s as if you had some
+motive in not recognising all she has done for your brother, and so
+shut your eyes to each side of the matter, in order, whichever side
+comes up, to get rid of the other. I don’t, you must allow me to say,
+see how you can with any pretence to candour get rid of the side
+nearest you.”
+
+“Near me—_that_ sort of thing?” And Sarah gave a jerk back of her head
+that well might have nullified any active proximity.
+
+It kept her friend himself at his distance, and he respected for a
+moment the interval. Then with a last persuasive effort he bridged it.
+“You don’t, on your honour, appreciate Chad’s fortunate development?”
+
+“Fortunate?” she echoed again. And indeed she was prepared. “I call it
+hideous.”
+
+Her departure had been for some minutes marked as imminent, and she was
+already at the door that stood open to the court, from the threshold of
+which she delivered herself of this judgement. It rang out so loud as
+to produce for the time the hush of everything else. Strether quite, as
+an effect of it, breathed less bravely; he could acknowledge it, but
+simply enough. “Oh if you think _that_—!”
+
+“Then all’s at an end? So much the better. I do think that!” She passed
+out as she spoke and took her way straight across the court, beyond
+which, separated from them by the deep arch of the _porte-cochère_ the
+low victoria that had conveyed her from her own hotel was drawn up. She
+made for it with decision, and the manner of her break, the sharp shaft
+of her rejoinder, had an intensity by which Strether was at first kept
+in arrest. She had let fly at him as from a stretched cord, and it took
+him a minute to recover from the sense of being pierced. It was not the
+penetration of surprise; it was that, much more, of certainty; his case
+being put for him as he had as yet only put it to himself. She was away
+at any rate; she had distanced him—with rather a grand spring, an
+effect of pride and ease, after all; she had got into her carriage
+before he could overtake her, and the vehicle was already in motion. He
+stopped halfway; he stood there in the court only seeing her go and
+noting that she gave him no other look. The way he had put it to
+himself was that all quite _might_ be at an end. Each of her movements,
+in this resolute rupture, reaffirmed, re-enforced that idea. Sarah
+passed out of sight in the sunny street while, planted there in the
+centre of the comparatively grey court, he continued merely to look
+before him. It probably _was_ all at an end.
+
+
+
+
+Book Eleventh
+
+
+ [Note: In the 1909 New York Edition the following two chapters were
+ placed in the reverse of the order appearing below. Since 1950, most
+ scholars have agreed, because of the internal evidence of the two
+ chapters, that an editorial error caused them to be printed in reverse
+ order. This Etext, like other editions of the past four decades,
+ corrects the apparent error.—Richard D. Hathaway, preparer of this
+ electronic text]
+
+
+ I
+
+He went late that evening to the Boulevard Malesherbes, having his
+impression that it would be vain to go early, and having also, more
+than once in the course of the day, made enquiries of the concierge.
+Chad hadn’t come in and had left no intimation; he had affairs,
+apparently, at this juncture—as it occurred to Strether he so well
+might have—that kept him long abroad. Our friend asked once for him at
+the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli, but the only contribution offered there
+was the fact that every one was out. It was with the idea that he would
+have to come home to sleep that Strether went up to his rooms, from
+which however he was still absent, though, from the balcony, a few
+moments later, his visitor heard eleven o’clock strike. Chad’s servant
+had by this time answered for his reappearance; he _had_, the visitor
+learned, come quickly in to dress for dinner and vanish again. Strether
+spent an hour in waiting for him—an hour full of strange suggestions,
+persuasions, recognitions; one of those that he was to recall, at the
+end of his adventure, as the particular handful that most had counted.
+The mellowest lamplight and the easiest chair had been placed at his
+disposal by Baptiste, subtlest of servants; the novel half-uncut, the
+novel lemon-coloured and tender, with the ivory knife athwart it like
+the dagger in a contadina’s hair, had been pushed within the soft
+circle—a circle which, for some reason, affected Strether as softer
+still after the same Baptiste had remarked that in the absence of a
+further need of anything by Monsieur he would betake himself to bed.
+The night was hot and heavy and the single lamp sufficient; the great
+flare of the lighted city, rising high, spending itself afar, played up
+from the Boulevard and, through the vague vista of the successive
+rooms, brought objects into view and added to their dignity. Strether
+found himself in possession as he never yet had been; he had been there
+alone, had turned over books and prints, had invoked, in Chad’s
+absence, the spirit of the place, but never at the witching hour and
+never with a relish quite so like a pang.
+
+He spent a long time on the balcony; he hung over it as he had seen
+little Bilham hang the day of his first approach, as he had seen Mamie
+hang over her own the day little Bilham himself might have seen her
+from below; he passed back into the rooms, the three that occupied the
+front and that communicated by wide doors; and, while he circulated and
+rested, tried to recover the impression that they had made on him three
+months before, to catch again the voice in which they had seemed then
+to speak to him. That voice, he had to note, failed audibly to sound;
+which he took as the proof of all the change in himself. He had heard,
+of old, only what he _could_ then hear; what he could do now was to
+think of three months ago as a point in the far past. All voices had
+grown thicker and meant more things; they crowded on him as he moved
+about—it was the way they sounded together that wouldn’t let him be
+still. He felt, strangely, as sad as if he had come for some wrong, and
+yet as excited as if he had come for some freedom. But the freedom was
+what was most in the place and the hour, it was the freedom that most
+brought him round again to the youth of his own that he had long ago
+missed. He could have explained little enough to-day either why he had
+missed it or why, after years and years, he should care that he had;
+the main truth of the actual appeal of everything was none the less
+that everything represented the substance of his loss put it within
+reach, within touch, made it, to a degree it had never been, an affair
+of the senses. That was what it became for him at this singular time,
+the youth he had long ago missed—a queer concrete presence, full of
+mystery, yet full of reality, which he could handle, taste, smell, the
+deep breathing of which he could positively hear. It was in the outside
+air as well as within; it was in the long watch, from the balcony, in
+the summer night, of the wide late life of Paris, the unceasing soft
+quick rumble, below, of the little lighted carriages that, in the
+press, always suggested the gamblers he had seen of old at Monte Carlo
+pushing up to the tables. This image was before him when he at last
+became aware that Chad was behind.
+
+“She tells me you put it all on _me_”—he had arrived after this
+promptly enough at that information; which expressed the case however
+quite as the young man appeared willing for the moment to leave it.
+Other things, with this advantage of their virtually having the night
+before them, came up for them, and had, as well, the odd effect of
+making the occasion, instead of hurried and feverish, one of the
+largest, loosest and easiest to which Strether’s whole adventure was to
+have treated him. He had been pursuing Chad from an early hour and had
+overtaken him only now; but now the delay was repaired by their being
+so exceptionally confronted. They had foregathered enough of course in
+all the various times; they had again and again, since that first night
+at the theatre, been face to face over their question; but they had
+never been so alone together as they were actually alone—their talk
+hadn’t yet been so supremely for themselves. And if many things
+moreover passed before them, none passed more distinctly for Strether
+than that striking truth about Chad of which he had been so often moved
+to take note: the truth that everything came happily back with him to
+his knowing how to live. It had been seated in his pleased smile—a
+smile that pleased exactly in the right degree—as his visitor turned
+round, on the balcony, to greet his advent; his visitor in fact felt on
+the spot that there was nothing their meeting would so much do as bear
+witness to that facility. He surrendered himself accordingly to so
+approved a gift; for what was the meaning of the facility but that
+others _did_ surrender themselves? He didn’t want, luckily, to prevent
+Chad from living; but he was quite aware that even if he had he would
+himself have thoroughly gone to pieces. It was in truth essentially by
+bringing down his personal life to a function all subsidiary to the
+young man’s own that he held together. And the great point, above all,
+the sign of how completely Chad possessed the knowledge in question,
+was that one thus became, not only with a proper cheerfulness, but with
+wild native impulses, the feeder of his stream. Their talk had
+accordingly not lasted three minutes without Strether’s feeling basis
+enough for the excitement in which he had waited. This overflow fairly
+deepened, wastefully abounded, as he observed the smallness of anything
+corresponding to it on the part of his friend. That was exactly this
+friend’s happy case; he “put out” his excitement, or whatever other
+emotion the matter involved, as he put out his washing; than which no
+arrangement could make more for domestic order. It was quite for
+Strether himself in short to feel a personal analogy with the laundress
+bringing home the triumphs of the mangle.
+
+When he had reported on Sarah’s visit, which he did very fully, Chad
+answered his question with perfect candour. “I positively referred her
+to you—told her she must absolutely see you. This was last night, and
+it all took place in ten minutes. It was our first free talk—really the
+first time she had tackled me. She knew I also knew what her line had
+been with yourself; knew moreover how little you had been doing to make
+anything difficult for her. So I spoke for you frankly—assured her you
+were all at her service. I assured her _I_ was too,” the young man
+continued; “and I pointed out how she could perfectly, at any time,
+have got at me. Her difficulty has been simply her not finding the
+moment she fancied.”
+
+“Her difficulty,” Strether returned, “has been simply that she finds
+she’s afraid of you. She’s not afraid of _me_, Sarah, one little scrap;
+and it was just because she has seen how I can fidget when I give my
+mind to it that she has felt her best chance, rightly enough to be in
+making me as uneasy as possible. I think she’s at bottom as pleased to
+_have_ you put it on me as you yourself can possibly be to put it.”
+
+“But what in the world, my dear man,” Chad enquired in objection to
+this luminosity, “have I done to make Sally afraid?”
+
+“You’ve been ‘wonderful, wonderful,’ as we say—we poor people who watch
+the play from the pit; and that’s what has, admirably, made her. Made
+her all the more effectually that she could see you didn’t set about it
+on purpose—I mean set about affecting her as with fear.”
+
+Chad cast a pleasant backward glance over his possibilities of motive.
+“I’ve only wanted to be kind and friendly, to be decent and
+attentive—and I still only want to be.”
+
+Strether smiled at his comfortable clearness. “Well, there can
+certainly be no way for it better than by my taking the onus. It
+reduces your personal friction and your personal offence to almost
+nothing.”
+
+Ah but Chad, with his completer conception of the friendly, wouldn’t
+quite have this! They had remained on the balcony, where, after their
+day of great and premature heat, the midnight air was delicious; and
+they leaned back in turn against the balustrade, all in harmony with
+the chairs and the flower-pots, the cigarettes and the starlight. “The
+onus isn’t _really_ yours—after our agreeing so to wait together and
+judge together. That was all my answer to Sally,” Chad pursued—“that we
+have been, that we are, just judging together.”
+
+“I’m not afraid of the burden,” Strether explained; “I haven’t come in
+the least that you should take it off me. I’ve come very much, it seems
+to me, to double up my fore legs in the manner of the camel when he
+gets down on his knees to make his back convenient. But I’ve supposed
+you all this while to have been doing a lot of special and private
+judging—about which I haven’t troubled you; and I’ve only wished to
+have your conclusion first from you. I don’t ask more than that; I’m
+quite ready to take it as it has come.”
+
+Chad turned up his face to the sky with a slow puff of his smoke.
+“Well, I’ve seen.”
+
+Strether waited a little. “I’ve left you wholly alone; haven’t, I think
+I may say, since the first hour or two—when I merely preached
+patience—so much as breathed on you.”
+
+“Oh you’ve been awfully good!”
+
+“We’ve both been good then—we’ve played the game. We’ve given them the
+most liberal conditions.”
+
+“Ah,” said Chad, “splendid conditions! It was open to them, open to
+them”—he seemed to make it out, as he smoked, with his eyes still on
+the stars. He might in quiet sport have been reading their horoscope.
+Strether wondered meanwhile what had been open to them, and he finally
+let him have it. “It was open to them simply to let me alone; to have
+made up their minds, on really seeing me for themselves, that I could
+go on well enough as I was.”
+
+Strether assented to this proposition with full lucidity, his
+companion’s plural pronoun, which stood all for Mrs. Newsome and her
+daughter, having no ambiguity for him. There was nothing, apparently,
+to stand for Mamie and Jim; and this added to our friend’s sense of
+Chad’s knowing what he thought. “But they’ve made up their minds to the
+opposite—that you _can’t_ go on as you are.”
+
+“No,” Chad continued in the same way; “they won’t have it for a
+minute.”
+
+Strether on his side also reflectively smoked. It was as if their high
+place really represented some moral elevation from which they could
+look down on their recent past. “There never was the smallest chance,
+do you know, that they _would_ have it for a moment.”
+
+“Of course not—no real chance. But if they were willing to think there
+was—!”
+
+“They weren’t willing.” Strether had worked it all out. “It wasn’t for
+you they came out, but for me. It wasn’t to see for themselves what
+you’re doing, but what I’m doing. The first branch of their curiosity
+was inevitably destined, under my culpable delay, to give way to the
+second; and it’s on the second that, if I may use the expression and
+you don’t mind my marking the invidious fact, they’ve been of late
+exclusively perched. When Sarah sailed it was me, in other words, they
+were after.”
+
+Chad took it in both with intelligence and with indulgence. “It _is_
+rather a business then—what I’ve let you in for!”
+
+Strether had again a brief pause; which ended in a reply that seemed to
+dispose once for all of this element of compunction. Chad was to treat
+it, at any rate, so far as they were again together, as having done so.
+“I was ‘in’ when you found me.”
+
+“Ah but it was you,” the young man laughed, “who found _me_.”
+
+“I only found you out. It was you who found me in. It was all in the
+day’s work for them, at all events, that they should come. And they’ve
+greatly enjoyed it,” Strether declared.
+
+“Well, I’ve tried to make them,” said Chad.
+
+His companion did himself presently the same justice. “So have I. I
+tried even this very morning—while Mrs. Pocock was with me. She enjoys
+for instance, almost as much as anything else, not being, as I’ve said,
+afraid of me; and I think I gave her help in that.”
+
+Chad took a deeper interest. “Was she very very nasty?”
+
+Strether debated. “Well, she was the most important thing—she was
+definite. She was—at last—crystalline. And I felt no remorse. I saw
+that they must have come.”
+
+“Oh I wanted to see them for myself; so that if it were only for
+_that_—!” Chad’s own remorse was as small.
+
+This appeared almost all Strether wanted. “Isn’t your having seen them
+for yourself then _the_ thing, beyond all others, that has come of
+their visit?”
+
+Chad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it so.
+“Don’t you count it as anything that you’re dished—if you _are_ dished?
+Are you, my dear man, dished?”
+
+It sounded as if he were asking if he had caught cold or hurt his foot,
+and Strether for a minute but smoked and smoked. “I want to see her
+again. I must see her.”
+
+“Of course you must.” Then Chad hesitated. “Do you mean—a—Mother
+herself?”
+
+“Oh your mother—that will depend.”
+
+It was as if Mrs. Newsome had somehow been placed by the words very far
+off. Chad however endeavoured in spite of this to reach the place.
+“What do you mean it will depend on?”
+
+Strether, for all answer, gave him a longish look. “I was speaking of
+Sarah. I must positively—though she quite cast me off—see _her_ again.
+I can’t part with her that way.”
+
+“Then she was awfully unpleasant?”
+
+Again Strether exhaled. “She was what she had to be. I mean that from
+the moment they’re not delighted they can only be—well what I admit she
+was. We gave them,” he went on, “their chance to be delighted, and
+they’ve walked up to it, and looked all round it, and not taken it.”
+
+“You can bring a horse to water—!” Chad suggested.
+
+“Precisely. And the tune to which this morning Sarah wasn’t
+delighted—the tune to which, to adopt your metaphor, she refused to
+drink—leaves us on that side nothing more to hope.”
+
+Chad had a pause, and then as if consolingly: “It was never of course
+really the least on the cards that they would be ‘delighted.’”
+
+“Well, I don’t know, after all,” Strether mused. “I’ve had to come as
+far round. However”—he shook it off—“it’s doubtless _my_ performance
+that’s absurd.”
+
+“There are certainly moments,” said Chad, “when you seem to me too good
+to be true. Yet if you are true,” he added, “that seems to be all that
+need concern me.”
+
+“I’m true, but I’m incredible. I’m fantastic and ridiculous—I don’t
+explain myself even _to_ myself. How can they then,” Strether asked,
+“understand me? So I don’t quarrel with them.”
+
+“I see. They quarrel,” said Chad rather comfortably, “with _us_.”
+Strether noted once more the comfort, but his young friend had already
+gone on. “I should feel greatly ashamed, all the same, if I didn’t put
+it before you again that you ought to think, after all, tremendously
+well. I mean before giving up beyond recall—” With which insistence, as
+from a certain delicacy, dropped.
+
+Ah but Strether wanted it. “Say it all, say it all.”
+
+“Well, at your age, and with what—when all’s said and done—Mother might
+do for you and be for you.”
+
+Chad had said it all, from his natural scruple, only to that extent; so
+that Strether after an instant himself took a hand. “My absence of an
+assured future. The little I have to show toward the power to take care
+of myself. The way, the wonderful way, she would certainly take care of
+me. Her fortune, her kindness, and the constant miracle of her having
+been disposed to go even so far. Of course, of course”—he summed it up.
+“There are those sharp facts.”
+
+Chad had meanwhile thought of another still. “And don’t you really
+care—?”
+
+His friend slowly turned round to him. “Will you go?”
+
+“I’ll go if you’ll say you now consider I should. You know,” he went
+on, “I was ready six weeks ago.”
+
+“Ah,” said Strether, “that was when you didn’t know _I_ wasn’t! You’re
+ready at present because you do know it.”
+
+“That may be,” Chad returned; “but all the same I’m sincere. You talk
+about taking the whole thing on your shoulders, but in what light do
+you regard me that you think me capable of letting you pay?” Strether
+patted his arm, as they stood together against the parapet,
+reassuringly—seeming to wish to contend that he _had_ the wherewithal;
+but it was again round this question of purchase and price that the
+young man’s sense of fairness continued to hover. “What it literally
+comes to for you, if you’ll pardon my putting it so, is that you give
+up money. Possibly a good deal of money.”
+
+“Oh,” Strether laughed, “if it were only just enough you’d still be
+justified in putting it so! But I’ve on my side to remind you too that
+_you_ give up money; and more than ‘possibly’—quite certainly, as I
+should suppose—a good deal.”
+
+“True enough; but I’ve got a certain quantity,” Chad returned after a
+moment. “Whereas you, my dear man, you—”
+
+“I can’t be at all said”—Strether took him up—“to have a ‘quantity’
+certain or uncertain? Very true. Still, I shan’t starve.”
+
+“Oh you mustn’t _starve!_” Chad pacifically emphasised; and so, in the
+pleasant conditions, they continued to talk; though there was, for that
+matter, a pause in which the younger companion might have been taken as
+weighing again the delicacy of his then and there promising the elder
+some provision against the possibility just mentioned. This, however,
+he presumably thought best not to do, for at the end of another minute
+they had moved in quite a different direction. Strether had broken in
+by returning to the subject of Chad’s passage with Sarah and enquiring
+if they had arrived, in the event, at anything in the nature of a
+“scene.” To this Chad replied that they had on the contrary kept
+tremendously polite; adding moreover that Sally was after all not the
+woman to have made the mistake of not being. “Her hands are a good deal
+tied, you see. I got so, from the first,” he sagaciously observed, “the
+start of her.”
+
+“You mean she has taken so much from you?”
+
+“Well, I couldn’t of course in common decency give less: only she
+hadn’t expected, I think, that I’d give her nearly so much. And she
+began to take it before she knew it.”
+
+“And she began to like it,” said Strether, “as soon as she began to
+take it!”
+
+“Yes, she has liked it—also more than she expected.” After which Chad
+observed: “But she doesn’t like _me_. In fact she hates me.”
+
+Strether’s interest grew. “Then why does she want you at home?”
+
+“Because when you hate you want to triumph, and if she should get me
+neatly stuck there she _would_ triumph.”
+
+Strether followed afresh, but looking as he went. “Certainly—in a
+manner. But it would scarce be a triumph worth having if, once
+entangled, feeling her dislike and possibly conscious in time of a
+certain quantity of your own, you should on the spot make yourself
+unpleasant to her.”
+
+“Ah,” said Chad, “she can bear _me_—could bear me at least at home.
+It’s my being there that would be her triumph. She hates me in Paris.”
+
+“She hates in other words—”
+
+“Yes, _that’s_ it!”—Chad had quickly understood this understanding;
+which formed on the part of each as near an approach as they had yet
+made to naming Madame de Vionnet. The limitations of their distinctness
+didn’t, however, prevent its fairly lingering in the air that it was
+this lady Mrs. Pocock hated. It added one more touch moreover to their
+established recognition of the rare intimacy of Chad’s association with
+her. He had never yet more twitched away the last light veil from this
+phenomenon than in presenting himself as confounded and submerged in
+the feeling she had created at Woollett. “And I’ll tell you who hates
+me too,” he immediately went on.
+
+Strether knew as immediately whom he meant, but with as prompt a
+protest. “Ah no! Mamie doesn’t hate—well,” he caught himself in
+time—“anybody at all. Mamie’s beautiful.”
+
+Chad shook his head. “That’s just why I mind it. She certainly doesn’t
+like me.”
+
+“How much do you mind it? What would you do for her?”
+
+“Well, I’d like her if she’d like me. Really, really,” Chad declared.
+
+It gave his companion a moment’s pause. “You asked me just now if I
+don’t, as you said, ‘care’ about a certain person. You rather tempt me
+therefore to put the question in my turn. Don’t _you_ care about a
+certain other person?”
+
+Chad looked at him hard in the lamplight of the window. “The difference
+is that I don’t want to.”
+
+Strether wondered. “‘Don’t want’ to?”
+
+“I try not to—that is I _have_ tried. I’ve done my best. You can’t be
+surprised,” the young man easily went on, “when you yourself set me on
+it. I was indeed,” he added, “already on it a little; but you set me
+harder. It was six weeks ago that I thought I had come out.”
+
+Strether took it well in. “But you haven’t come out!”
+
+“I don’t know—it’s what I _want_ to know,” said Chad. “And if I could
+have sufficiently wanted—by myself—to go back, I think I might have
+found out.”
+
+“Possibly”—Strether considered. “But all you were able to achieve was
+to want to want to! And even then,” he pursued, “only till our friends
+there came. Do you want to want to still?” As with a sound
+half-dolorous, half-droll and all vague and equivocal, Chad buried his
+face for a little in his hands, rubbing it in a whimsical way that
+amounted to an evasion, he brought it out more sharply: “_Do_ you?”
+
+Chad kept for a time his attitude, but at last he looked up, and then
+abruptly, “Jim _is_ a damned dose!” he declared.
+
+“Oh I don’t ask you to abuse or describe or in any way pronounce on
+your relatives; I simply put it to you once more whether you’re _now_
+ready. You say you’ve ‘seen.’ Is what you’ve seen that you can’t
+resist?”
+
+Chad gave him a strange smile—the nearest approach he had ever shown to
+a troubled one. “Can’t you make me _not_ resist?”
+
+“What it comes to,” Strether went on very gravely now and as if he
+hadn’t heard him, “what it comes to is that more has been done for you,
+I think, than I’ve ever seen done—attempted perhaps, but never so
+successfully done—by one human being for another.”
+
+“Oh an immense deal certainly”—Chad did it full justice. “And you
+yourself are adding to it.”
+
+It was without heeding this either that his visitor continued. “And our
+friends there won’t have it.”
+
+“No, they simply won’t.”
+
+“They demand you on the basis, as it were, of repudiation and
+ingratitude; and what has been the matter with me,” Strether went on,
+“is that I haven’t seen my way to working with you for repudiation.”
+
+Chad appreciated this. “Then as you haven’t seen yours you naturally
+haven’t seen mine. There it is.” After which he proceeded, with a
+certain abruptness, to a sharp interrogation. “_Now_ do you say she
+doesn’t hate me?”
+
+Strether hesitated. “‘She’—?”
+
+“Yes—Mother. We called it Sarah, but it comes to the same thing.”
+
+“Ah,” Strether objected, “not to the same thing as her hating _you_.”
+
+On which—though as if for an instant it had hung fire—Chad remarkably
+replied: “Well, if they hate my good friend, _that_ comes to the same
+thing.” It had a note of inevitable truth that made Strether take it as
+enough, feel he wanted nothing more. The young man spoke in it for his
+“good friend” more than he had ever yet directly spoken, confessed to
+such deep identities between them as he might play with the idea of
+working free from, but which at a given moment could still draw him
+down like a whirlpool. And meanwhile he had gone on. “Their hating you
+too moreover—that also comes to a good deal.”
+
+“Ah,” said Strether, “your mother doesn’t.”
+
+Chad, however, loyally stuck to it—loyally, that is, to Strether. “She
+will if you don’t look out.”
+
+“Well, I do look out. I am, after all, looking out. That’s just why,”
+our friend explained, “I want to see her again.”
+
+It drew from Chad again the same question. “To see Mother?”
+
+“To see—for the present—Sarah.”
+
+“Ah then there you are! And what I don’t for the life of me make out,”
+Chad pursued with resigned perplexity, “is what you _gain_ by it.”
+
+Oh it would have taken his companion too long to say! “That’s because
+you have, I verily believe, no imagination. You’ve other qualities. But
+no imagination, don’t you see? at all.”
+
+“I dare say. I do see.” It was an idea in which Chad showed interest.
+“But haven’t you yourself rather too much?”
+
+“Oh _rather_—!” So that after an instant, under this reproach and as if
+it were at last a fact really to escape from, Strether made his move
+for departure.
+
+
+ II
+
+One of the features of the restless afternoon passed by him after Mrs.
+Pocock’s visit was an hour spent, shortly before dinner, with Maria
+Gostrey, whom of late, in spite of so sustained a call on his attention
+from other quarters, he had by no means neglected. And that he was
+still not neglecting her will appear from the fact that he was with her
+again at the same hour on the very morrow—with no less fine a
+consciousness moreover of being able to hold her ear. It continued
+inveterately to occur, for that matter, that whenever he had taken one
+of his greater turns he came back to where she so faithfully awaited
+him. None of these excursions had on the whole been livelier than the
+pair of incidents—the fruit of the short interval since his previous
+visit—on which he had now to report to her. He had seen Chad Newsome
+late the night before, and he had had that morning, as a sequel to this
+conversation, a second interview with Sarah. “But they’re all off,” he
+said, “at last.”
+
+It puzzled her a moment. “All?—Mr. Newsome with them?”
+
+“Ah not yet! Sarah and Jim and Mamie. But Waymarsh with them—for Sarah.
+It’s too beautiful,” Strether continued; “I find I don’t get over
+that—it’s always a fresh joy. But it’s a fresh joy too,” he added,
+“that—well, what do you think? Little Bilham also goes. But he of
+course goes for Mamie.”
+
+Miss Gostrey wondered. “‘For’ her? Do you mean they’re already
+engaged?”
+
+“Well,” said Strether, “say then for _me_. He’ll do anything for me;
+just as I will, for that matter—anything I can—for him. Or for Mamie
+either. _She’ll_ do anything for me.”
+
+Miss Gostrey gave a comprehensive sigh. “The way you reduce people to
+subjection!”
+
+“It’s certainly, on one side, wonderful. But it’s quite equalled, on
+another, by the way I don’t. I haven’t reduced Sarah, since yesterday;
+though I’ve succeeded in seeing her again, as I’ll presently tell you.
+The others however are really all right. Mamie, by that blessed law of
+ours, absolutely must have a young man.”
+
+“But what must poor Mr. Bilham have? Do you mean they’ll _marry_ for
+you?”
+
+“I mean that, by the same blessed law, it won’t matter a grain if they
+don’t—I shan’t have in the least to worry.”
+
+She saw as usual what he meant. “And Mr. Jim?—who goes for him?”
+
+“Oh,” Strether had to admit, “I couldn’t manage _that_. He’s thrown, as
+usual, on the world; the world which, after all, by his account—for he
+has prodigious adventures—seems very good to him. He fortunately—‘over
+here,’ as he says—finds the world everywhere; and his most prodigious
+adventure of all,” he went on, “has been of course of the last few
+days.”
+
+Miss Gostrey, already knowing, instantly made the connexion. “He has
+seen Marie de Vionnet again?”
+
+“He went, all by himself, the day after Chad’s party—didn’t I tell
+you?—to tea with her. By her invitation—all alone.”
+
+“Quite like yourself!” Maria smiled.
+
+“Oh but he’s more wonderful about her than I am!” And then as his
+friend showed how she could believe it, filling it out, fitting it on
+to old memories of the wonderful woman: “What I should have liked to
+manage would have been _her_ going.”
+
+“To Switzerland with the party?”
+
+“For Jim—and for symmetry. If it had been workable moreover for a
+fortnight she’d have gone. She’s ready”—he followed up his renewed
+vision of her—“for anything.”
+
+Miss Gostrey went with him a minute. “She’s too perfect!”
+
+“She _will_, I think,” he pursued, “go to-night to the station.”
+
+“To see him off?”
+
+“With Chad—marvellously—as part of their general attention. And she
+does it”—it kept before him—“with a light, light grace, a free, free
+gaiety, that may well softly bewilder Mr. Pocock.”
+
+It kept her so before him that his companion had after an instant a
+friendly comment. “As in short it has softly bewildered a saner man.
+Are you really in love with her?” Maria threw off.
+
+“It’s of no importance I should know,” he replied. “It matters so
+little—has nothing to do, practically, with either of us.”
+
+“All the same”—Maria continued to smile—“they go, the five, as I
+understand you, and you and Madame de Vionnet stay.”
+
+“Oh and Chad.” To which Strether added: “And you.”
+
+“Ah ‘me’!”—she gave a small impatient wail again, in which something of
+the unreconciled seemed suddenly to break out. “_I_ don’t stay, it
+somehow seems to me, much to my advantage. In the presence of all you
+cause to pass before me I’ve a tremendous sense of privation.”
+
+Strether hesitated. “But your privation, your keeping out of
+everything, has been—hasn’t it?—by your own choice.”
+
+“Oh yes; it has been necessary—that is it has been better for you. What
+I mean is only that I seem to have ceased to serve you.”
+
+“How can you tell that?” he asked. “You don’t know how you serve me.
+When you cease—”
+
+“Well?” she said as he dropped.
+
+“Well, I’ll _let_ you know. Be quiet till then.”
+
+She thought a moment. “Then you positively like me to stay?”
+
+“Don’t I treat you as if I did?”
+
+“You’re certainly very kind to me. But that,” said Maria, “is for
+myself. It’s getting late, as you see, and Paris turning rather hot and
+dusty. People are scattering, and some of them, in other places want
+me. But if you want me here—!”
+
+She had spoken as resigned to his word, but he had of a sudden a still
+sharper sense than he would have expected of desiring not to lose her.
+“I want you here.”
+
+She took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they brought
+her, gave her something that was the compensation of her case. “Thank
+you,” she simply answered. And then as he looked at her a little
+harder, “Thank you very much,” she repeated.
+
+It had broken as with a slight arrest into the current of their talk,
+and it held him a moment longer. “Why, two months, or whatever the time
+was, ago, did you so suddenly dash off? The reason you afterwards gave
+me for having kept away three weeks wasn’t the real one.”
+
+She recalled. “I never supposed you believed it was. Yet,” she
+continued, “if you didn’t guess it that was just what helped you.”
+
+He looked away from her on this; he indulged, so far as space
+permitted, in one of his slow absences. “I’ve often thought of it, but
+never to feel that I could guess it. And you see the consideration with
+which I’ve treated you in never asking till now.”
+
+“Now then why _do_ you ask?”
+
+“To show you how I miss you when you’re not here, and what it does for
+me.”
+
+“It doesn’t seem to have done,” she laughed, “all it might! However,”
+she added, “if you’ve really never guessed the truth I’ll tell it you.”
+
+“I’ve never guessed it,” Strether declared.
+
+“Never?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Well then I dashed off, as you say, so as not to have the confusion of
+being there if Marie de Vionnet should tell you anything to my
+detriment.”
+
+He looked as if he considerably doubted. “You even then would have had
+to face it on your return.”
+
+“Oh if I had found reason to believe it something very bad I’d have
+left you altogether.”
+
+“So then,” he continued, “it was only on guessing she had been on the
+whole merciful that you ventured back?”
+
+Maria kept it together. “I owe her thanks. Whatever her temptation she
+didn’t separate us. That’s one of my reasons,” she went on “for
+admiring her so.”
+
+“Let it pass then,” said Strether, “for one of mine as well. But what
+would have been her temptation?”
+
+“What are ever the temptations of women?”
+
+He thought—but hadn’t, naturally, to think too long. “Men?”
+
+“She would have had you, with it, more for herself. But she saw she
+could have you without it.”
+
+“Oh ‘have’ me!” Strether a trifle ambiguously sighed. “_You_,” he
+handsomely declared, “would have had me at any rate _with_ it.”
+
+“Oh ‘have’ you!”—she echoed it as he had done. “I do have you,
+however,” she less ironically said, “from the moment you express a
+wish.”
+
+He stopped before her, full of the disposition. “I’ll express fifty.”
+
+Which indeed begot in her, with a certain inconsequence, a return of
+her small wail. “Ah there you are!”
+
+There, if it were so, he continued for the rest of the time to be, and
+it was as if to show her how she could still serve him that, coming
+back to the departure of the Pococks, he gave her the view, vivid with
+a hundred more touches than we can reproduce, of what had happened for
+him that morning. He had had ten minutes with Sarah at her hotel, ten
+minutes reconquered, by irresistible pressure, from the time over which
+he had already described her to Miss Gostrey as having, at the end of
+their interview on his own premises, passed the great sponge of the
+future. He had caught her by not announcing himself, had found her in
+her sitting-room with a dressmaker and a _lingère_ whose accounts she
+appeared to have been more or less ingenuously settling and who soon
+withdrew. Then he had explained to her how he had succeeded, late the
+night before, in keeping his promise of seeing Chad. “I told her I’d
+take it all.”
+
+“You’d ‘take’ it?”
+
+“Why if he doesn’t go.”
+
+Maria waited. “And who takes it if he does?” she enquired with a
+certain grimness of gaiety.
+
+“Well,” said Strether, “I think I take, in any event, everything.”
+
+“By which I suppose you mean,” his companion brought out after a
+moment, “that you definitely understand you now lose everything.”
+
+He stood before her again. “It does come perhaps to the same thing. But
+Chad, now that he has seen, doesn’t really want it.”
+
+She could believe that, but she made, as always, for clearness. “Still,
+what, after all, _has_ he seen?”
+
+“What they want of him. And it’s enough.”
+
+“It contrasts so unfavourably with what Madame de Vionnet wants?”
+
+“It contrasts—just so; all round, and tremendously.”
+
+“Therefore, perhaps, most of all with what _you_ want?”
+
+“Oh,” said Strether, “what I want is a thing I’ve ceased to measure or
+even to understand.”
+
+But his friend none the less went on. “Do you want Mrs. Newsome—after
+such a way of treating you?”
+
+It was a straighter mode of dealing with this lady than they had as
+yet—such was their high form—permitted themselves; but it seemed not
+wholly for this that he delayed a moment. “I dare say it has been,
+after all, the only way she could have imagined.”
+
+“And does that make you want her any more?”
+
+“I’ve tremendously disappointed her,” Strether thought it worth while
+to mention.
+
+“Of course you have. That’s rudimentary; that was plain to us long ago.
+But isn’t it almost as plain,” Maria went on, “that you’ve even yet
+your straight remedy? Really drag him away, as I believe you still can,
+and you’d cease to have to count with her disappointment.”
+
+“Ah then,” he laughed, “I should have to count with yours!”
+
+But this barely struck her now. “What, in that case, should you call
+counting? You haven’t come out where you are, I think, to please _me_.”
+
+“Oh,” he insisted, “that too, you know, has been part of it. I can’t
+separate—it’s all one; and that’s perhaps why, as I say, I don’t
+understand.” But he was ready to declare again that this didn’t in the
+least matter; all the more that, as he affirmed, he _hadn’t_ really as
+yet “come out.” “She gives me after all, on its coming to the pinch, a
+last mercy, another chance. They don’t sail, you see, for five or six
+weeks more, and they haven’t—she admits that—expected Chad would take
+part in their tour. It’s still open to him to join them, at the last,
+at Liverpool.”
+
+Miss Gostrey considered. “How in the world is it ‘open’ unless you open
+it? How can he join them at Liverpool if he but sinks deeper into his
+situation here?”
+
+“He has given her—as I explained to you that she let me know
+yesterday—his word of honour to do as I say.”
+
+Maria stared. “But if you say nothing!”
+
+Well, he as usual walked about on it. “I did say something this
+morning. I gave her my answer—the word I had promised her after hearing
+from himself what _he_ had promised. What she demanded of me yesterday,
+you’ll remember, was the engagement then and there to make him take up
+this vow.”
+
+“Well then,” Miss Gostrey enquired, “was the purpose of your visit to
+her only to decline?”
+
+“No; it was to ask, odd as that may seem to you, for another delay.”
+
+“Ah that’s weak!”
+
+“Precisely!” She had spoken with impatience, but, so far as that at
+least, he knew where he was. “If I _am_ weak I want to find it out. If
+I don’t find it out I shall have the comfort, the little glory, of
+thinking I’m strong.”
+
+“It’s all the comfort, I judge,” she returned, “that you _will_ have!”
+
+“At any rate,” he said, “it will have been a month more. Paris may
+grow, from day to day, hot and dusty, as you say; but there are other
+things that are hotter and dustier. I’m not afraid to stay on; the
+summer here must be amusing in a wild—if it isn’t a tame—way of its
+own; the place at no time more picturesque. I think I shall like it.
+And then,” he benevolently smiled for her, “there will be always you.”
+
+“Oh,” she objected, “it won’t be as a part of the picturesqueness that
+I shall stay, for I shall be the plainest thing about you. You may, you
+see, at any rate,” she pursued, “have nobody else. Madame de Vionnet
+may very well be going off, mayn’t she?—and Mr. Newsome by the same
+stroke: unless indeed you’ve had an assurance from them to the
+contrary. So that if your idea’s to stay for them”—it was her duty to
+suggest it—“you may be left in the lurch. Of course if they do
+stay”—she kept it up—“they would be part of the picturesqueness. Or
+else indeed you might join them somewhere.”
+
+Strether seemed to face it as if it were a happy thought; but the next
+moment he spoke more critically. “Do you mean that they’ll probably go
+off together?”
+
+She just considered. “I think it will be treating you quite without
+ceremony if they do; though after all,” she added, “it would be
+difficult to see now quite what degree of ceremony properly meets your
+case.”
+
+“Of course,” Strether conceded, “my attitude toward them is
+extraordinary.”
+
+“Just so; so that one may ask one’s self what style of proceeding on
+their own part can altogether match it. The attitude of their own that
+won’t pale in its light they’ve doubtless still to work out. The really
+handsome thing perhaps,” she presently threw off, “_would_ be for them
+to withdraw into more secluded conditions, offering at the same time to
+share them with you.” He looked at her, on this, as if some generous
+irritation—all in his interest—had suddenly again flickered in her; and
+what she next said indeed half-explained it. “Don’t really be afraid to
+tell me if what now holds you _is_ the pleasant prospect of the empty
+town, with plenty of seats in the shade, cool drinks, deserted museums,
+drives to the Bois in the evening, and our wonderful woman all to
+yourself.” And she kept it up still more. “The handsomest thing of
+_all_, when one makes it out, would, I dare say, be that Mr. Chad
+should for a while go off by himself. It’s a pity, from that point of
+view,” she wound up, “that he doesn’t pay his mother a visit. It would
+at least occupy your interval.” The thought in fact held her a moment.
+“Why doesn’t he pay his mother a visit? Even a week, at this good
+moment, would do.”
+
+“My dear lady,” Strether replied—and he had it even to himself
+surprisingly ready—“my dear lady, his mother has paid _him_ a visit.
+Mrs. Newsome has been with him, this month, with an intensity that I’m
+sure he has thoroughly felt; he has lavishly entertained her, and she
+has let him have her thanks. Do you suggest he shall go back for more
+of them?”
+
+Well, she succeeded after a little in shaking it off. “I see. It’s what
+you don’t suggest—what you haven’t suggested. And you know.”
+
+“So would you, my dear,” he kindly said, “if you had so much as seen
+her.”
+
+“As seen Mrs. Newsome?”
+
+“No, Sarah—which, both for Chad and for myself, has served all the
+purpose.”
+
+“And served it in a manner,” she responsively mused, “so
+extraordinary!”
+
+“Well, you see,” he partly explained, “what it comes to is that she’s
+all cold thought—which Sarah could serve to us cold without its really
+losing anything. So it is that we know what she thinks of us.”
+
+Maria had followed, but she had an arrest. “What I’ve never made out,
+if you come to that, is what you think—I mean you personally—of _her_.
+Don’t you so much, when all’s said, as care a little?”
+
+“That,” he answered with no loss of promptness, “is what even Chad
+himself asked me last night. He asked me if I don’t mind the loss—well,
+the loss of an opulent future. Which moreover,” he hastened to add,
+“was a perfectly natural question.”
+
+“I call your attention, all the same,” said Miss Gostrey, “to the fact
+that I don’t ask it. What I venture to ask is whether it’s to Mrs.
+Newsome herself that you’re indifferent.”
+
+“I haven’t been so”—he spoke with all assurance. “I’ve been the very
+opposite. I’ve been, from the first moment, preoccupied with the
+impression everything might be making on her—quite oppressed, haunted,
+tormented by it. I’ve been interested _only_ in her seeing what I’ve
+seen. And I’ve been as disappointed in her refusal to see it as she has
+been in what has appeared to her the perversity of my insistence.”
+
+“Do you mean that she has shocked you as you’ve shocked her?”
+
+Strether weighed it. “I’m probably not so shockable. But on the other
+hand I’ve gone much further to meet her. She, on her side, hasn’t
+budged an inch.”
+
+“So that you’re now at last”—Maria pointed the moral—“in the sad stage
+of recriminations.”
+
+“No—it’s only to you I speak. I’ve been like a lamb to Sarah. I’ve only
+put my back to the wall. It’s to _that_ one naturally staggers when one
+has been violently pushed there.”
+
+She watched him a moment. “Thrown over?”
+
+“Well, as I feel I’ve landed somewhere I think I must have been
+thrown.”
+
+She turned it over, but as hoping to clarify much rather than to
+harmonise. “The thing is that I suppose you’ve been disappointing—”
+
+“Quite from the very first of my arrival? I dare say. I admit I was
+surprising even to myself.”
+
+“And then of course,” Maria went on, “I had much to do with it.”
+
+“With my being surprising—?”
+
+“That will do,” she laughed, “if you’re too delicate to call it _my_
+being! Naturally,” she added, “you came over more or less for
+surprises.”
+
+“Naturally!”—he valued the reminder.
+
+“But they were to have been all for you”—she continued to piece it
+out—“and none of them for _her_.”
+
+Once more he stopped before her as if she had touched the point.
+“That’s just her difficulty—that she doesn’t admit surprises. It’s a
+fact that, I think, describes and represents her; and it falls in with
+what I tell you—that she’s all, as I’ve called it, fine cold thought.
+She had, to her own mind, worked the whole thing out in advance, and
+worked it out for me as well as for herself. Whenever she has done
+that, you see, there’s no room left; no margin, as it were, for any
+alteration. She’s filled as full, packed as tight, as she’ll hold and
+if you wish to get anything more or different either out or in—”
+
+“You’ve got to make over altogether the woman herself?”
+
+“What it comes to,” said Strether, “is that you’ve got morally and
+intellectually to get rid of her.”
+
+“Which would appear,” Maria returned, “to be practically what you’ve
+done.”
+
+But her friend threw back his head. “I haven’t touched her. She won’t
+_be_ touched. I see it now as I’ve never done; and she hangs together
+with a perfection of her own,” he went on, “that does suggest a kind of
+wrong in _any_ change of her composition. It was at any rate,” he wound
+up, “the woman herself, as you call her the whole moral and
+intellectual being or block, that Sarah brought me over to take or to
+leave.”
+
+It turned Miss Gostrey to deeper thought. “Fancy having to take at the
+point of the bayonet a whole moral and intellectual being or block!”
+
+“It was in fact,” said Strether, “what, at home, I _had_ done. But
+somehow over there I didn’t quite know it.”
+
+“One never does, I suppose,” Miss Gostrey concurred, “realise in
+advance, in such a case, the size, as you may say, of the block. Little
+by little it looms up. It has been looming for you more and more till
+at last you see it all.”
+
+“I see it all,” he absently echoed, while his eyes might have been
+fixing some particularly large iceberg in a cool blue northern sea.
+“It’s magnificent!” he then rather oddly exclaimed.
+
+But his friend, who was used to this kind of inconsequence in him, kept
+the thread. “There’s nothing so magnificent—for making others feel
+you—as to have no imagination.”
+
+It brought him straight round. “Ah there you are! It’s what I said last
+night to Chad. That he himself, I mean, has none.”
+
+“Then it would appear,” Maria suggested, “that he has, after all,
+something in common with his mother.”
+
+“He has in common that he makes one, as you say, ‘feel’ him. And yet,”
+he added, as if the question were interesting, “one feels others too,
+even when they have plenty.”
+
+Miss Gostrey continued suggestive. “Madame de Vionnet?”
+
+“_She_ has plenty.”
+
+“Certainly—she had quantities of old. But there are different ways of
+making one’s self felt.”
+
+“Yes, it comes, no doubt, to that. You now—”
+
+He was benevolently going on, but she wouldn’t have it. “Oh I _don’t_
+make myself felt; so my quantity needn’t be settled. Yours, you know,”
+she said, “is monstrous. No one has ever had so much.”
+
+It struck him for a moment. “That’s what Chad also thinks.”
+
+“There _you_ are then—though it isn’t for him to complain of it!”
+
+“Oh he doesn’t complain of it,” said Strether.
+
+“That’s all that would be wanting! But apropos of what,” Maria went on,
+“did the question come up?”
+
+“Well, of his asking me what it is I gain.”
+
+She had a pause. “Then as I’ve asked you too it settles _my_ case. Oh
+you _have_,” she repeated, “treasures of imagination.”
+
+But he had been for an instant thinking away from this, and he came up
+in another place. “And yet Mrs. Newsome—it’s a thing to remember—_has_
+imagined, did, that is, imagine, and apparently still does, horrors
+about what I should have found. I was booked, by her
+vision—extraordinarily intense, after all—to find them; and that I
+didn’t, that I couldn’t, that, as she evidently felt, I wouldn’t—this
+evidently didn’t at all, as they say, ‘suit’ her book. It was more than
+she could bear. That was her disappointment.”
+
+“You mean you were to have found Chad himself horrible?”
+
+“I was to have found the woman.”
+
+“Horrible?”
+
+“Found her as she imagined her.” And Strether paused as if for his own
+expression of it he could add no touch to that picture.
+
+His companion had meanwhile thought. “She imagined stupidly—so it comes
+to the same thing.”
+
+“Stupidly? Oh!” said Strether.
+
+But she insisted. “She imagined meanly.”
+
+He had it, however, better. “It couldn’t but be ignorantly.”
+
+“Well, intensity with ignorance—what do you want worse?”
+
+This question might have held him, but he let it pass. “Sarah isn’t
+ignorant—now; she keeps up the theory of the horrible.”
+
+“Ah but she’s intense—and that by itself will do sometimes as well. If
+it doesn’t do, in this case, at any rate, to deny that Marie’s
+charming, it will do at least to deny that she’s good.”
+
+“What I claim is that she’s good for Chad.”
+
+“You don’t claim”—she seemed to like it clear—“that she’s good for
+_you_.”
+
+But he continued without heeding. “That’s what I wanted them to come
+out for—to see for themselves if she’s bad for him.”
+
+“And now that they’ve done so they won’t admit that she’s good even for
+anything?”
+
+“They do think,” Strether presently admitted, “that she’s on the whole
+about as bad for me. But they’re consistent of course, inasmuch as
+they’ve their clear view of what’s good for both of us.”
+
+“For you, to begin with”—Maria, all responsive, confined the question
+for the moment—“to eliminate from your existence and if possible even
+from your memory the dreadful creature that _I_ must gruesomely shadow
+forth for them, even more than to eliminate the distincter evil—thereby
+a little less portentous—of the person whose confederate you’ve
+suffered yourself to become. However, that’s comparatively simple. You
+can easily, at the worst, after all, give me up.”
+
+“I can easily at the worst, after all, give you up.” The irony was so
+obvious that it needed no care. “I can easily at the worst, after all,
+even forget you.”
+
+“Call that then workable. But Mr. Newsome has much more to forget. How
+can _he_ do it?”
+
+“Ah there again we are! That’s just what I was to have made him do;
+just where I was to have worked with him and helped.”
+
+She took it in silence and without attenuation—as if perhaps from very
+familiarity with the facts; and her thought made a connexion without
+showing the links. “Do you remember how we used to talk at Chester and
+in London about my seeing you through?” She spoke as of far-off things
+and as if they had spent weeks at the places she named.
+
+“It’s just what you _are_ doing.”
+
+“Ah but the worst—since you’ve left such a margin—may be still to come.
+You may yet break down.”
+
+“Yes, I may yet break down. But will you take me—?”
+
+He had hesitated, and she waited. “Take you?”
+
+“For as long as I can bear it.”
+
+She also debated “Mr. Newsome and Madame de Vionnet may, as we were
+saying, leave town. How long do you think you can bear it without
+them?”
+
+Strether’s reply to this was at first another question. “Do you mean in
+order to get away from me?”
+
+Her answer had an abruptness. “Don’t find me rude if I say I should
+think they’d want to!”
+
+He looked at her hard again—seemed even for an instant to have an
+intensity of thought under which his colour changed. But he smiled.
+“You mean after what they’ve done to me?”
+
+“After what _she_ has.”
+
+At this, however, with a laugh, he was all right again. “Ah but she
+hasn’t done it yet!”
+
+
+ III
+
+He had taken the train a few days after this from a station—as well as
+_to_ a station—selected almost at random; such days, whatever should
+happen, were numbered, and he had gone forth under the impulse—artless
+enough, no doubt—to give the whole of one of them to that French
+ruralism, with its cool special green, into which he had hitherto
+looked only through the little oblong window of the picture-frame. It
+had been as yet for the most part but a land of fancy for him—the
+background of fiction, the medium of art, the nursery of letters;
+practically as distant as Greece, but practically also well-nigh as
+consecrated. Romance could weave itself, for Strether’s sense, out of
+elements mild enough; and even after what he had, as he felt, lately
+“been through,” he could thrill a little at the chance of seeing
+something somewhere that would remind him of a certain small Lambinet
+that had charmed him, long years before, at a Boston dealer’s and that
+he had quite absurdly never forgotten. It had been offered, he
+remembered, at a price he had been instructed to believe the lowest
+ever named for a Lambinet, a price he had never felt so poor as on
+having to recognise, all the same, as beyond a dream of possibility. He
+had dreamed—had turned and twisted possibilities for an hour: it had
+been the only adventure of his life in connexion with the purchase of a
+work of art. The adventure, it will be perceived, was modest; but the
+memory, beyond all reason and by some accident of association, was
+sweet. The little Lambinet abode with him as the picture he _would_
+have bought—the particular production that had made him for the moment
+overstep the modesty of nature. He was quite aware that if he were to
+see it again he should perhaps have a drop or a shock, and he never
+found himself wishing that the wheel of time would turn it up again,
+just as he had seen it in the maroon-coloured, sky-lighted inner shrine
+of Tremont Street. It would be a different thing, however, to see the
+remembered mixture resolved back into its elements—to assist at the
+restoration to nature of the whole far-away hour: the dusty day in
+Boston, the background of the Fitchburg Depot, of the maroon-coloured
+sanctum, the special-green vision, the ridiculous price, the poplars,
+the willows, the rushes, the river, the sunny silvery sky, the shady
+woody horizon.
+
+He observed in respect to his train almost no condition save that it
+should stop a few times after getting out of the _banlieue_; he threw
+himself on the general amiability of the day for the hint of where to
+alight. His theory of his excursion was that he could alight
+anywhere—not nearer Paris than an hour’s run—on catching a suggestion
+of the particular note required. It made its sign, the
+suggestion—weather, air, light, colour and his mood all favouring—at
+the end of some eighty minutes; the train pulled up just at the right
+spot, and he found himself getting out as securely as if to keep an
+appointment. It will be felt of him that he could amuse himself, at his
+age, with very small things if it be again noted that his appointment
+was only with a superseded Boston fashion. He hadn’t gone far without
+the quick confidence that it would be quite sufficiently kept. The
+oblong gilt frame disposed its enclosing lines; the poplars and
+willows, the reeds and river—a river of which he didn’t know, and
+didn’t want to know, the name—fell into a composition, full of
+felicity, within them; the sky was silver and turquoise and varnish;
+the village on the left was white and the church on the right was grey;
+it was all there, in short—it was what he wanted: it was Tremont
+Street, it was France, it was Lambinet. Moreover he was freely walking
+about in it. He did this last, for an hour, to his heart’s content,
+making for the shady woody horizon and boring so deep into his
+impression and his idleness that he might fairly have got through them
+again and reached the maroon-coloured wall. It was a wonder, no doubt,
+that the taste of idleness for him shouldn’t need more time to sweeten;
+but it had in fact taken the few previous days; it had been sweetening
+in truth ever since the retreat of the Pococks. He walked and walked as
+if to show himself how little he had now to do; he had nothing to do
+but turn off to some hillside where he might stretch himself and hear
+the poplars rustle, and whence—in the course of an afternoon so spent,
+an afternoon richly suffused too with the sense of a book in his
+pocket—he should sufficiently command the scene to be able to pick out
+just the right little rustic inn for an experiment in respect to
+dinner. There was a train back to Paris at 9.20, and he saw himself
+partaking, at the close of the day, with the enhancements of a coarse
+white cloth and a sanded door, of something fried and felicitous,
+washed down with authentic wine; after which he might, as he liked,
+either stroll back to his station in the gloaming or propose for the
+local _carriole_ and converse with his driver, a driver who naturally
+wouldn’t fail of a stiff clean blouse, of a knitted nightcap and of the
+genius of response—who, in fine, would sit on the shafts, tell him what
+the French people were thinking, and remind him, as indeed the whole
+episode would incidentally do, of Maupassant. Strether heard his lips,
+for the first time in French air, as this vision assumed consistency,
+emit sounds of expressive intention without fear of his company. He had
+been afraid of Chad and of Maria and of Madame de Vionnet; he had been
+most of all afraid of Waymarsh, in whose presence, so far as they had
+mixed together in the light of the town, he had never without somehow
+paying for it aired either his vocabulary or his accent. He usually
+paid for it by meeting immediately afterwards Waymarsh’s eye.
+
+Such were the liberties with which his fancy played after he had turned
+off to the hillside that did really and truly, as well as most amiably,
+await him beneath the poplars, the hillside that made him feel, for a
+murmurous couple of hours, how happy had been his thought. He had the
+sense of success, of a finer harmony in things; nothing but what had
+turned out as yet according to his plan. It most of all came home to
+him, as he lay on his back on the grass, that Sarah had really gone,
+that his tension was really relaxed; the peace diffused in these ideas
+might be delusive, but it hung about him none the less for the time. It
+fairly, for half an hour, sent him to sleep; he pulled his straw hat
+over his eyes—he had bought it the day before with a reminiscence of
+Waymarsh’s—and lost himself anew in Lambinet. It was as if he had found
+out he was tired—tired not from his walk, but from that inward exercise
+which had known, on the whole, for three months, so little
+intermission. That was it—when once they were off he had dropped; this
+moreover was what he had dropped to, and now he was touching bottom. He
+was kept luxuriously quiet, soothed and amused by the consciousness of
+what he had found at the end of his descent. It was very much what he
+had told Maria Gostrey he should like to stay on for, the
+hugely-distributed Paris of summer, alternately dazzling and dusky,
+with a weight lifted for him off its columns and cornices and with
+shade and air in the flutter of awnings as wide as avenues. It was
+present to him without attenuation that, reaching out, the day after
+making the remark, for some proof of his freedom, he had gone that very
+afternoon to see Madame de Vionnet. He had gone again the next day but
+one, and the effect of the two visits, the after-sense of the couple of
+hours spent with her, was almost that of fulness and frequency. The
+brave intention of frequency, so great with him from the moment of his
+finding himself unjustly suspected at Woollett, had remained rather
+theoretic, and one of the things he could muse about under his poplars
+was the source of the special shyness that had still made him careful.
+He had surely got rid of it now, this special shyness; what had become
+of it if it hadn’t precisely, within the week, rubbed off?
+
+It struck him now in fact as sufficiently plain that if he had still
+been careful he had been so for a reason. He had really feared, in his
+behaviour, a lapse from good faith; if there was a danger of one’s
+liking such a woman too much one’s best safety was in waiting at least
+till one had the right to do so. In the light of the last few days the
+danger was fairly vivid; so that it was proportionately fortunate that
+the right was likewise established. It seemed to our friend that he had
+on each occasion profited to the utmost by the latter: how could he
+have done so more, he at all events asked himself, than in having
+immediately let her know that, if it was all the same to her, he
+preferred not to talk about anything tiresome? He had never in his life
+so sacrificed an armful of high interests as in that remark; he had
+never so prepared the way for the comparatively frivolous as in
+addressing it to Madame de Vionnet’s intelligence. It hadn’t been till
+later that he quite recalled how in conjuring away everything but the
+pleasant he had conjured away almost all they had hitherto talked
+about; it was not till later even that he remembered how, with their
+new tone, they hadn’t so much as mentioned the name of Chad himself.
+One of the things that most lingered with him on his hillside was this
+delightful facility, with such a woman, of arriving at a new tone; he
+thought, as he lay on his back, of all the tones she might make
+possible if one were to try her, and at any rate of the probability
+that one could trust her to fit them to occasions. He had wanted her to
+feel that, as he was disinterested now, so she herself should be, and
+she had showed she felt it, and he had showed he was grateful, and it
+had been for all the world as if he were calling for the first time.
+They had had other, but irrelevant, meetings; it was quite as if, had
+they sooner known how much they _really_ had in common, there were
+quantities of comparatively dull matters they might have skipped. Well,
+they were skipping them now, even to graceful gratitude, even to
+handsome “Don’t mention it!”—and it was amazing what could still come
+up without reference to what had been going on between them. It might
+have been, on analysis, nothing more than Shakespeare and the musical
+glasses; but it had served all the purpose of his appearing to have
+said to her: “Don’t like me, if it’s a question of liking me, for
+anything obvious and clumsy that I’ve, as they call it, ‘done’ for you:
+like me—well, like me, hang it, for anything else you choose. So, by
+the same propriety, don’t be for me simply the person I’ve come to know
+through my awkward connexion with Chad—was ever anything, by the way,
+_more_ awkward? Be for me, please, with all your admirable tact and
+trust, just whatever I may show you it’s a present pleasure to me to
+think you.” It had been a large indication to meet; but if she hadn’t
+met it what _had_ she done, and how had their time together slipped
+along so smoothly, mild but not slow, and melting, liquefying, into his
+happy illusion of idleness? He could recognise on the other hand that
+he had probably not been without reason, in his prior, his restricted
+state, for keeping an eye on his liability to lapse from good faith.
+
+He really continued in the picture—that being for himself his
+situation—all the rest of this rambling day; so that the charm was
+still, was indeed more than ever upon him when, toward six o’clock he
+found himself amicably engaged with a stout white-capped deep-voiced
+woman at the door of the _auberge_ of the biggest village, a village
+that affected him as a thing of whiteness, blueness and crookedness,
+set in coppery green, and that had the river flowing behind or before
+it—one couldn’t say which; at the bottom, in particular, of the
+inn-garden. He had had other adventures before this; had kept along the
+height, after shaking off slumber; had admired, had almost coveted,
+another small old church, all steep roof and dim slate-colour without
+and all whitewash and paper flowers within; had lost his way and had
+found it again; had conversed with rustics who struck him perhaps a
+little more as men of the world than he had expected; had acquired at a
+bound a fearless facility in French; had had, as the afternoon waned, a
+watery _bock_, all pale and Parisian, in the café of the furthest
+village, which was not the biggest; and had meanwhile not once
+overstepped the oblong gilt frame. The frame had drawn itself out for
+him, as much as you please; but that was just his luck. He had finally
+come down again to the valley, to keep within touch of stations and
+trains, turning his face to the quarter from which he had started; and
+thus it was that he had at last pulled up before the hostess of the
+Cheval Blanc, who met him, with a rough readiness that was like the
+clatter of sabots over stones, on their common ground of a _côtelette
+de veau à l’oseille_ and a subsequent lift. He had walked many miles
+and didn’t know he was tired; but he still knew he was amused, and even
+that, though he had been alone all day, he had never yet so struck
+himself as engaged with others and in midstream of his drama. It might
+have passed for finished his drama, with its catastrophe all but
+reached: it had, however, none the less been vivid again for him as he
+thus gave it its fuller chance. He had only had to be at last well out
+of it to feel it, oddly enough, still going on.
+
+For this had been all day at bottom the spell of the picture—that it
+was essentially more than anything else a scene and a stage, that the
+very air of the play was in the rustle of the willows and the tone of
+the sky. The play and the characters had, without his knowing it till
+now, peopled all his space for him, and it seemed somehow quite happy
+that they should offer themselves, in the conditions so supplied, with
+a kind of inevitability. It was as if the conditions made them not only
+inevitable, but so much more nearly natural and right as that they were
+at least easier, pleasanter, to put up with. The conditions had nowhere
+so asserted their difference from those of Woollett as they appeared to
+him to assert it in the little court of the Cheval Blanc while he
+arranged with his hostess for a comfortable climax. They were few and
+simple, scant and humble, but they were _the thing_, as he would have
+called it, even to a greater degree than Madame de Vionnet’s old high
+salon where the ghost of the Empire walked. “The” thing was the thing
+that implied the greatest number of other things of the sort he had had
+to tackle; and it was queer of course, but so it was—the implication
+here was complete. Not a single one of his observations but somehow
+fell into a place in it; not a breath of the cooler evening that wasn’t
+somehow a syllable of the text. The text was simply, when condensed,
+that in _these_ places such things were, and that if it was in them one
+elected to move about one had to make one’s account with what one
+lighted on. Meanwhile at all events it was enough that they did affect
+one—so far as the village aspect was concerned—as whiteness,
+crookedness and blueness set in coppery green; there being positively,
+for that matter, an outer wall of the White Horse that was painted the
+most improbable shade. That was part of the amusement—as if to show
+that the fun was harmless; just as it was enough, further, that the
+picture and the play seemed supremely to melt together in the good
+woman’s broad sketch of what she could do for her visitor’s appetite.
+He felt in short a confidence, and it was general, and it was all he
+wanted to feel. It suffered no shock even on her mentioning that she
+had in fact just laid the cloth for two persons who, unlike Monsieur,
+had arrived by the river—in a boat of their own; who had asked her,
+half an hour before, what she could do for them, and had then paddled
+away to look at something a little further up—from which promenade they
+would presently return. Monsieur might meanwhile, if he liked, pass
+into the garden, such as it was, where she would serve him, should he
+wish it—for there were tables and benches in plenty—a “bitter” before
+his repast. Here she would also report to him on the possibility of a
+conveyance to his station, and here at any rate he would have the
+_agrément_ of the river.
+
+It may be mentioned without delay that Monsieur had the _agrément_ of
+everything, and in particular, for the next twenty minutes, of a small
+and primitive pavilion that, at the garden’s edge, almost overhung the
+water, testifying, in its somewhat battered state, to much fond
+frequentation. It consisted of little more than a platform, slightly
+raised, with a couple of benches and a table, a protecting rail and a
+projecting roof; but it raked the full grey-blue stream, which, taking
+a turn a short distance above, passed out of sight to reappear much
+higher up; and it was clearly in esteemed requisition for Sundays and
+other feasts. Strether sat there and, though hungry, felt at peace; the
+confidence that had so gathered for him deepened with the lap of the
+water, the ripple of the surface, the rustle of the reeds on the
+opposite bank, the faint diffused coolness and the slight rock of a
+couple of small boats attached to a rough landing-place hard by. The
+valley on the further side was all copper-green level and glazed pearly
+sky, a sky hatched across with screens of trimmed trees, which looked
+flat, like espaliers; and though the rest of the village straggled away
+in the near quarter the view had an emptiness that made one of the
+boats suggestive. Such a river set one afloat almost before one could
+take up the oars—the idle play of which would be moreover the aid to
+the full impression. This perception went so far as to bring him to his
+feet; but that movement, in turn, made him feel afresh that he was
+tired, and while he leaned against a post and continued to look out he
+saw something that gave him a sharper arrest.
+
+
+ IV
+
+What he saw was exactly the right thing—a boat advancing round the bend
+and containing a man who held the paddles and a lady, at the stern,
+with a pink parasol. It was suddenly as if these figures, or something
+like them, had been wanted in the picture, had been wanted more or less
+all day, and had now drifted into sight, with the slow current, on
+purpose to fill up the measure. They came slowly, floating down,
+evidently directed to the landing-place near their spectator and
+presenting themselves to him not less clearly as the two persons for
+whom his hostess was already preparing a meal. For two very happy
+persons he found himself straightway taking them—a young man in
+shirt-sleeves, a young woman easy and fair, who had pulled pleasantly
+up from some other place and, being acquainted with the neighbourhood,
+had known what this particular retreat could offer them. The air quite
+thickened, at their approach, with further intimations; the intimation
+that they were expert, familiar, frequent—that this wouldn’t at all
+events be the first time. They knew how to do it, he vaguely felt—and
+it made them but the more idyllic, though at the very moment of the
+impression, as happened, their boat seemed to have begun to drift wide,
+the oarsman letting it go. It had by this time none the less come much
+nearer—near enough for Strether to dream the lady in the stern had for
+some reason taken account of his being there to watch them. She had
+remarked on it sharply, yet her companion hadn’t turned round; it was
+in fact almost as if our friend had felt her bid him keep still. She
+had taken in something as a result of which their course had wavered,
+and it continued to waver while they just stood off. This little effect
+was sudden and rapid, so rapid that Strether’s sense of it was separate
+only for an instant from a sharp start of his own. He too had within
+the minute taken in something, taken in that he knew the lady whose
+parasol, shifting as if to hide her face, made so fine a pink point in
+the shining scene. It was too prodigious, a chance in a million, but,
+if he knew the lady, the gentleman, who still presented his back and
+kept off, the gentleman, the coatless hero of the idyll, who had
+responded to her start, was, to match the marvel, none other than Chad.
+
+Chad and Madame de Vionnet were then like himself taking a day in the
+country—though it was as queer as fiction, as farce, that their country
+could happen to be exactly his; and she had been the first at
+recognition, the first to feel, across the water, the shock—for it
+appeared to come to that—of their wonderful accident. Strether became
+aware, with this, of what was taking place—that her recognition had
+been even stranger for the pair in the boat, that her immediate impulse
+had been to control it, and that she was quickly and intensely debating
+with Chad the risk of betrayal. He saw they would show nothing if they
+could feel sure he hadn’t made them out; so that he had before him for
+a few seconds his own hesitation. It was a sharp fantastic crisis that
+had popped up as if in a dream, and it had had only to last the few
+seconds to make him feel it as quite horrible. They were thus, on
+either side, _trying_ the other side, and all for some reason that
+broke the stillness like some unprovoked harsh note. It seemed to him
+again, within the limit, that he had but one thing to do—to settle
+their common question by some sign of surprise and joy. He hereupon
+gave large play to these things, agitating his hat and his stick and
+loudly calling out—a demonstration that brought him relief as soon as
+he had seen it answered. The boat, in mid-stream, still went a little
+wild—which seemed natural, however, while Chad turned round, half
+springing up; and his good friend, after blankness and wonder, began
+gaily to wave her parasol. Chad dropped afresh to his paddles and the
+boat headed round, amazement and pleasantry filling the air meanwhile,
+and relief, as Strether continued to fancy, superseding mere violence.
+Our friend went down to the water under this odd impression as of
+violence averted—the violence of their having “cut” him, out there in
+the eye of nature, on the assumption that he wouldn’t know it. He
+awaited them with a face from which he was conscious of not being able
+quite to banish this idea that they would have gone on, not seeing and
+not knowing, missing their dinner and disappointing their hostess, had
+he himself taken a line to match. That at least was what darkened his
+vision for the moment. Afterwards, after they had bumped at the
+landing-place and he had assisted their getting ashore, everything
+found itself sponged over by the mere miracle of the encounter.
+
+They could so much better at last, on either side, treat it as a wild
+extravagance of hazard, that the situation was made elastic by the
+amount of explanation called into play. Why indeed—apart from
+oddity—the situation should have been really stiff was a question
+naturally not practical at the moment, and in fact, so far as we are
+concerned, a question tackled, later on and in private, only by
+Strether himself. He was to reflect later on and in private that it was
+mainly _he_ who had explained—as he had had moreover comparatively
+little difficulty in doing. He was to have at all events meanwhile the
+worrying thought of their perhaps secretly suspecting him of having
+plotted this coincidence, taking such pains as might be to give it the
+semblance of an accident. That possibility—as their imputation—didn’t
+of course bear looking into for an instant; yet the whole incident was
+so manifestly, arrange it as they would, an awkward one, that he could
+scarce keep disclaimers in respect to his own presence from rising to
+his lips. Disclaimers of intention would have been as tactless as his
+presence was practically gross; and the narrowest escape they either of
+them had was his lucky escape, in the event, from making any. Nothing
+of the sort, so far as surface and sound were involved, was even in
+question; surface and sound all made for their common ridiculous good
+fortune, for the general _invraisemblance_ of the occasion, for the
+charming chance that they had, the others, in passing, ordered some
+food to be ready, the charming chance that he had himself not eaten,
+the charming chance, even more, that their little plans, their hours,
+their train, in short, from _là-bas_, would all match for their return
+together to Paris. The chance that was most charming of all, the chance
+that drew from Madame de Vionnet her clearest, gayest “_Comme cela se
+trouve!_” was the announcement made to Strether after they were seated
+at table, the word given him by their hostess in respect to his
+carriage for the station, on which he might now count. It settled the
+matter for his friends as well; the conveyance—it _was_ all too
+lucky!—would serve for them; and nothing was more delightful than his
+being in a position to make the train so definite. It might have been,
+for themselves—to hear Madame de Vionnet—almost unnaturally vague, a
+detail left to be fixed; though Strether indeed was afterwards to
+remember that Chad had promptly enough intervened to forestall this
+appearance, laughing at his companion’s flightiness and making the
+point that he had after all, in spite of the bedazzlement of a day out
+with her, known what he was about.
+
+Strether was to remember afterwards further that this had had for him
+the effect of forming Chad’s almost sole intervention; and indeed he
+was to remember further still, in subsequent meditation, many things
+that, as it were, fitted together. Another of them was for instance
+that the wonderful woman’s overflow of surprise and amusement was
+wholly into French, which she struck him as speaking with an
+unprecedented command of idiomatic turns, but in which she got, as he
+might have said, somewhat away from him, taking all at once little
+brilliant jumps that he could but lamely match. The question of his own
+French had never come up for them; it was the one thing she wouldn’t
+have permitted—it belonged, for a person who had been through much, to
+mere boredom; but the present result was odd, fairly veiling her
+identity, shifting her back into a mere voluble class or race to the
+intense audibility of which he was by this time inured. When she spoke
+the charming slightly strange English he best knew her by he seemed to
+feel her as a creature, among all the millions, with a language quite
+to herself, the real monopoly of a special shade of speech, beautifully
+easy for her, yet of a colour and a cadence that were both inimitable
+and matters of accident. She came back to these things after they had
+shaken down in the inn-parlour and knew, as it were, what was to become
+of them; it was inevitable that loud ejaculation over the prodigy of
+their convergence should at last wear itself out. Then it was that his
+impression took fuller form—the impression, destined only to deepen, to
+complete itself, that they had something to put a face upon, to carry
+off and make the best of, and that it was she who, admirably on the
+whole, was doing this. It was familiar to him of course that they had
+something to put a face upon; their friendship, their connexion, took
+any amount of explaining—that would have been made familiar by his
+twenty minutes with Mrs. Pocock if it hadn’t already been so. Yet his
+theory, as we know, had bountifully been that the facts were
+specifically none of his business, and were, over and above, so far as
+one had to do with them, intrinsically beautiful; and this might have
+prepared him for anything, as well as rendered him proof against
+mystification. When he reached home that night, however, he knew he had
+been, at bottom, neither prepared nor proof; and since we have spoken
+of what he was, after his return, to recall and interpret, it may as
+well immediately be said that his real experience of these few hours
+put on, in that belated vision—for he scarce went to bed till
+morning—the aspect that is most to our purpose.
+
+He then knew more or less how he had been affected—he but half knew at
+the time. There had been plenty to affect him even after, as has been
+said, they had shaken down; for his consciousness, though muffled, had
+its sharpest moments during this passage, a marked drop into innocent
+friendly Bohemia. They then had put their elbows on the table,
+deploring the premature end of their two or three dishes; which they
+had tried to make up with another bottle while Chad joked a little
+spasmodically, perhaps even a little irrelevantly, with the hostess.
+What it all came to had been that fiction and fable _were_, inevitably,
+in the air, and not as a simple term of comparison, but as a result of
+things said; also that they were blinking it, all round, and that they
+yet needn’t, so much as that, have blinked it—though indeed if they
+hadn’t Strether didn’t quite see what else they could have done.
+Strether didn’t quite see _that_ even at an hour or two past midnight,
+even when he had, at his hotel, for a long time, without a light and
+without undressing, sat back on his bedroom sofa and stared straight
+before him. He was, at that point of vantage, in full possession, to
+make of it all what he could. He kept making of it that there had been
+simply a _lie_ in the charming affair—a lie on which one could now,
+detached and deliberate, perfectly put one’s finger. It was with the
+lie that they had eaten and drunk and talked and laughed, that they had
+waited for their _carriole_ rather impatiently, and had then got into
+the vehicle and, sensibly subsiding, driven their three or four miles
+through the darkening summer night. The eating and drinking, which had
+been a resource, had had the effect of having served its turn; the talk
+and laughter had done as much; and it was during their somewhat tedious
+progress to the station, during the waits there, the further delays,
+their submission to fatigue, their silences in the dim compartment of
+the much-stopping train, that he prepared himself for reflexions to
+come. It had been a performance, Madame de Vionnet’s manner, and though
+it had to that degree faltered toward the end, as through her ceasing
+to believe in it, as if she had asked herself, or Chad had found a
+moment surreptitiously to ask her, what after all was the use, a
+performance it had none the less quite handsomely remained, with the
+final fact about it that it was on the whole easier to keep up than to
+abandon.
+
+From the point of view of presence of mind it had been very wonderful
+indeed, wonderful for readiness, for beautiful assurance, for the way
+her decision was taken on the spot, without time to confer with Chad,
+without time for anything. Their only conference could have been the
+brief instants in the boat before they confessed to recognising the
+spectator on the bank, for they hadn’t been alone together a moment
+since and must have communicated all in silence. It was a part of the
+deep impression for Strether, and not the least of the deep interest,
+that they _could_ so communicate—that Chad in particular could let her
+know he left it to her. He habitually left things to others, as
+Strether was so well aware, and it in fact came over our friend in
+these meditations that there had been as yet no such vivid illustration
+of his famous knowing how to live. It was as if he had humoured her to
+the extent of letting her lie without correction—almost as if, really,
+he would be coming round in the morning to set the matter, as between
+Strether and himself, right. Of course he couldn’t quite come; it was a
+case in which a man was obliged to accept the woman’s version, even
+when fantastic; if she had, with more flurry than she cared to show,
+elected, as the phrase was, to represent that they had left Paris that
+morning, and with no design but of getting back within the day—if she
+had so sized-up, in the Woollett phrase, their necessity, she knew best
+her own measure. There were things, all the same, it was impossible to
+blink and which made this measure an odd one—the too evident fact for
+instance that she hadn’t started out for the day dressed and hatted and
+shod, and even, for that matter, pink parasol’d, as she had been in the
+boat. From what did the drop in her assurance proceed as the tension
+increased—from what did this slightly baffled ingenuity spring but from
+her consciousness of not presenting, as night closed in, with not so
+much as a shawl to wrap her round, an appearance that matched her
+story? She admitted that she was cold, but only to blame her imprudence
+which Chad suffered her to give such account of as she might. Her shawl
+and Chad’s overcoat and her other garments, and his, those they had
+each worn the day before, were at the place, best known to themselves—a
+quiet retreat enough, no doubt—at which they had been spending the
+twenty-four hours, to which they had fully meant to return that
+evening, from which they had so remarkably swum into Strether’s ken,
+and the tacit repudiation of which had been thus the essence of her
+comedy. Strether saw how she had perceived in a flash that they
+couldn’t quite look to going back there under his nose; though,
+honestly, as he gouged deeper into the matter, he was somewhat
+surprised, as Chad likewise had perhaps been, at the uprising of this
+scruple. He seemed even to divine that she had entertained it rather
+for Chad than for herself, and that, as the young man had lacked the
+chance to enlighten her, she had had to go on with it, he meanwhile
+mistaking her motive.
+
+He was rather glad, none the less, that they had in point of fact not
+parted at the Cheval Blanc, that he hadn’t been reduced to giving them
+his blessing for an idyllic retreat down the river. He had had in the
+actual case to make-believe more than he liked, but this was nothing,
+it struck him, to what the other event would have required. Could he,
+literally, quite have faced the other event? Would he have been capable
+of making the best of it with them? This was what he was trying to do
+now; but with the advantage of his being able to give more time to it a
+good deal counteracted by his sense of what, over and above the central
+fact itself, he had to swallow. It was the quantity of make-believe
+involved and so vividly exemplified that most disagreed with his
+spiritual stomach. He moved, however, from the consideration of that
+quantity—to say nothing of the consciousness of that organ—back to the
+other feature of the show, the deep, deep truth of the intimacy
+revealed. That was what, in his vain vigil, he oftenest reverted to:
+intimacy, at such a point, was _like_ that—and what in the world else
+would one have wished it to be like? It was all very well for him to
+feel the pity of its being so much like lying; he almost blushed, in
+the dark, for the way he had dressed the possibility in vagueness, as a
+little girl might have dressed her doll. He had made them—and by no
+fault of their own—momentarily pull it for him, the possibility, out of
+this vagueness; and must he not therefore take it now as they had had
+simply, with whatever thin attenuations, to give it to him? The very
+question, it may be added, made him feel lonely and cold. There was the
+element of the awkward all round, but Chad and Madame de Vionnet had at
+least the comfort that they could talk it over together. With whom
+could _he_ talk of such things?—unless indeed always, at almost any
+stage, with Maria? He foresaw that Miss Gostrey would come again into
+requisition on the morrow; though it wasn’t to be denied that he was
+already a little afraid of her “What on earth—that’s what I want to
+know now—had you then supposed?” He recognised at last that he had
+really been trying all along to suppose nothing. Verily, verily, his
+labour had been lost. He found himself supposing innumerable and
+wonderful things.
+
+
+
+
+Book Twelfth
+
+
+ I
+
+Strether couldn’t have said he had during the previous hours definitely
+expected it; yet when, later on, that morning—though no later indeed
+than for his coming forth at ten o’clock—he saw the concierge produce,
+on his approach, a _petit bleu_ delivered since his letters had been
+sent up, he recognised the appearance as the first symptom of a sequel.
+He then knew he had been thinking of some early sign from Chad as more
+likely, after all, than not; and this would be precisely the early
+sign. He took it so for granted that he opened the _petit bleu_ just
+where he had stopped, in the pleasant cool draught of the
+_porte-cochère_—only curious to see where the young man would, at such
+a juncture, break out. His curiosity, however, was more than gratified;
+the small missive, whose gummed edge he had detached without attention
+to the address, not being from the young man at all, but from the
+person whom the case gave him on the spot as still more worth while.
+Worth while or not, he went round to the nearest telegraph-office, the
+big one on the Boulevard, with a directness that almost confessed to a
+fear of the danger of delay. He might have been thinking that if he
+didn’t go before he could think he wouldn’t perhaps go at all. He at
+any rate kept, in the lower side-pocket of his morning coat, a very
+deliberate hand on his blue missive, crumpling it up rather tenderly
+than harshly. He wrote a reply, on the Boulevard, also in the form of a
+_petit bleu_—which was quickly done, under pressure of the place,
+inasmuch as, like Madame de Vionnet’s own communication, it consisted
+of the fewest words. She had asked him if he could do her the very
+great kindness of coming to see her that evening at half-past nine, and
+he answered, as if nothing were easier, that he would present himself
+at the hour she named. She had added a line of postscript, to the
+effect that she would come to him elsewhere and at his own hour if he
+preferred; but he took no notice of this, feeling that if he saw her at
+all half the value of it would be in seeing her where he had already
+seen her best. He mightn’t see her at all; that was one of the
+reflexions he made after writing and before he dropped his closed card
+into the box; he mightn’t see any one at all any more at all; he might
+make an end as well now as ever, leaving things as they were, since he
+was doubtless not to leave them better, and taking his way home so far
+as should appear that a home remained to him. This alternative was for
+a few minutes so sharp that if he at last did deposit his missive it
+was perhaps because the pressure of the place had an effect.
+
+There was none other, however, than the common and constant pressure,
+familiar to our friend under the rubric of _Postes et Télégraphes_—the
+something in the air of these establishments; the vibration of the vast
+strange life of the town, the influence of the types, the performers
+concocting their messages; the little prompt Paris women, arranging,
+pretexting goodness knew what, driving the dreadful needle-pointed
+public pen at the dreadful sand-strewn public table: implements that
+symbolised for Strether’s too interpretative innocence something more
+acute in manners, more sinister in morals, more fierce in the national
+life. After he had put in his paper he had ranged himself, he was
+really amused to think, on the side of the fierce, the sinister, the
+acute. He was carrying on a correspondence, across the great city,
+quite in the key of the _Postes et Télégraphes_ in general; and it was
+fairly as if the acceptance of that fact had come from something in his
+state that sorted with the occupation of his neighbours. He was mixed
+up with the typical tale of Paris, and so were they, poor things—how
+could they all together help being? They were no worse than he, in
+short, and he no worse than they—if, queerly enough, no better; and at
+all events he had settled his hash, so that he went out to begin, from
+that moment, his day of waiting. The great settlement was, as he felt,
+in his preference for seeing his correspondent in her own best
+conditions. _That_ was part of the typical tale, the part most
+significant in respect to himself. He liked the place she lived in, the
+picture that each time squared itself, large and high and clear, around
+her: every occasion of seeing it was a pleasure of a different shade.
+Yet what precisely was he doing with shades of pleasure now, and why
+hadn’t he properly and logically compelled her to commit herself to
+whatever of disadvantage and penalty the situation might throw up? He
+might have proposed, as for Sarah Pocock, the cold hospitality of his
+own _salon de lecture_, in which the chill of Sarah’s visit seemed
+still to abide and shades of pleasure were dim; he might have suggested
+a stone bench in the dusty Tuileries or a penny chair at the back part
+of the Champs Elysées. These things would have been a trifle stern, and
+sternness alone now wouldn’t be sinister. An instinct in him cast about
+for some form of discipline in which they might meet—some awkwardness
+they would suffer from, some danger, or at least some grave
+inconvenience, they would incur. This would give a sense—which the
+spirit required, rather ached and sighed in the absence of—that
+somebody was paying something somewhere and somehow, that they were at
+least not all floating together on the silver stream of impunity. Just
+instead of that to go and see her late in the evening, as if, for all
+the world—well, as if he were as much in the swim as anybody else: this
+had as little as possible in common with the penal form.
+
+Even when he had felt that objection melt away, however, the practical
+difference was small; the long stretch of his interval took the colour
+it would, and if he lived on thus with the sinister from hour to hour
+it proved an easier thing than one might have supposed in advance. He
+reverted in thought to his old tradition, the one he had been brought
+up on and which even so many years of life had but little worn away;
+the notion that the state of the wrongdoer, or at least this person’s
+happiness, presented some special difficulty. What struck him now
+rather was the ease of it—for nothing in truth appeared easier. It was
+an ease he himself fairly tasted of for the rest of the day; giving
+himself quite up; not so much as trying to dress it out, in any
+particular whatever, as a difficulty; not after all going to see
+Maria—which would have been in a manner a result of such dressing; only
+idling, lounging, smoking, sitting in the shade, drinking lemonade and
+consuming ices. The day had turned to heat and eventual thunder, and he
+now and again went back to his hotel to find that Chad hadn’t been
+there. He hadn’t yet struck himself, since leaving Woollett, so much as
+a loafer, though there had been times when he believed himself touching
+bottom. This was a deeper depth than any, and with no foresight,
+scarcely with a care, as to what he should bring up. He almost wondered
+if he didn’t _look_ demoralised and disreputable; he had the fanciful
+vision, as he sat and smoked, of some accidental, some motived, return
+of the Pococks, who would be passing along the Boulevard and would
+catch this view of him. They would have distinctly, on his appearance,
+every ground for scandal. But fate failed to administer even that
+sternness; the Pococks never passed and Chad made no sign. Strether
+meanwhile continued to hold off from Miss Gostrey, keeping her till
+to-morrow; so that by evening his irresponsibility, his impunity, his
+luxury, had become—there was no other word for them—immense.
+
+Between nine and ten, at last, in the high clear picture—he was moving
+in these days, as in a gallery, from clever canvas to clever canvas—he
+drew a long breath: it was so presented to him from the first that the
+spell of his luxury wouldn’t be broken. He wouldn’t have, that is, to
+become responsible—this was admirably in the air: she had sent for him
+precisely to let him feel it, so that he might go on with the comfort
+(comfort already established, hadn’t it been?) of regarding his ordeal,
+the ordeal of the weeks of Sarah’s stay and of their climax, as safely
+traversed and left behind him. Didn’t she just wish to assure him that
+_she_ now took it all and so kept it; that he was absolutely not to
+worry any more, was only to rest on his laurels and continue generously
+to help her? The light in her beautiful formal room was dim, though it
+would do, as everything would always do; the hot night had kept out
+lamps, but there was a pair of clusters of candles that glimmered over
+the chimney-piece like the tall tapers of an altar. The windows were
+all open, their redundant hangings swaying a little, and he heard once
+more, from the empty court, the small plash of the fountain. From
+beyond this, and as from a great distance—beyond the court, beyond the
+_corps de logis_ forming the front—came, as if excited and exciting,
+the vague voice of Paris. Strether had all along been subject to sudden
+gusts of fancy in connexion with such matters as these—odd starts of
+the historic sense, suppositions and divinations with no warrant but
+their intensity. Thus and so, on the eve of the great recorded dates,
+the days and nights of revolution, the sounds had come in, the omens,
+the beginnings broken out. They were the smell of revolution, the smell
+of the public temper—or perhaps simply the smell of blood.
+
+It was at present queer beyond words, “subtle,” he would have risked
+saying, that such suggestions should keep crossing the scene; but it
+was doubtless the effect of the thunder in the air, which had hung
+about all day without release. His hostess was dressed as for
+thunderous times, and it fell in with the kind of imagination we have
+just attributed to him that she should be in simplest coolest white, of
+a character so old-fashioned, if he were not mistaken, that Madame
+Roland must on the scaffold have worn something like it. This effect
+was enhanced by a small black fichu or scarf, of crape or gauze,
+disposed quaintly round her bosom and now completing as by a mystic
+touch the pathetic, the noble analogy. Poor Strether in fact scarce
+knew what analogy was evoked for him as the charming woman, receiving
+him and making him, as she could do such things, at once familiarly and
+gravely welcome, moved over her great room with her image almost
+repeated in its polished floor, which had been fully bared for summer.
+The associations of the place, all felt again; the gleam here and
+there, in the subdued light, of glass and gilt and parquet, with the
+quietness of her own note as the centre—these things were at first as
+delicate as if they had been ghostly, and he was sure in a moment that,
+whatever he should find he had come for, it wouldn’t be for an
+impression that had previously failed him. That conviction held him
+from the outset, and, seeming singularly to simplify, certified to him
+that the objects about would help him, would really help them both. No,
+he might never see them again—this was only too probably the last time;
+and he should certainly see nothing in the least degree like them. He
+should soon be going to where such things were not, and it would be a
+small mercy for memory, for fancy, to have, in that stress, a loaf on
+the shelf. He knew in advance he should look back on the perception
+actually sharpest with him as on the view of something old, old, old,
+the oldest thing he had ever personally touched; and he also knew, even
+while he took his companion in as the feature among features, that
+memory and fancy couldn’t help being enlisted for her. She might intend
+what she would, but this was beyond anything she could intend, with
+things from far back—tyrannies of history, facts of type, values, as
+the painters said, of expression—all working for her and giving her the
+supreme chance, the chance of the happy, the really luxurious few, the
+chance, on a great occasion, to be natural and simple. She had never,
+with him, been more so; or if it was the perfection of art it would
+never—and that came to the same thing—be proved against her.
+
+What was truly wonderful was her way of differing so from time to time
+without detriment to her simplicity. Caprices, he was sure she felt,
+were before anything else bad manners, and that judgement in her was by
+itself a thing making more for safety of intercourse than anything that
+in his various own past intercourses he had had to reckon on. If
+therefore her presence was now quite other than the one she had shown
+him the night before, there was nothing of violence in the change—it
+was all harmony and reason. It gave him a mild deep person, whereas he
+had had on the occasion to which their interview was a direct reference
+a person committed to movement and surface and abounding in them; but
+she was in either character more remarkable for nothing than for her
+bridging of intervals, and this now fell in with what he understood he
+was to leave to her. The only thing was that, if he was to leave it
+_all_ to her, why exactly had she sent for him? He had had, vaguely, in
+advance, his explanation, his view of the probability of her wishing to
+set something right, to deal in some way with the fraud so lately
+practised on his presumed credulity. Would she attempt to carry it
+further or would she blot it out? Would she throw over it some more or
+less happy colour; or would she do nothing about it at all? He
+perceived soon enough at least that, however reasonable she might be,
+she wasn’t vulgarly confused, and it herewith pressed upon him that
+their eminent “lie,” Chad’s and hers, was simply after all such an
+inevitable tribute to good taste as he couldn’t have wished them not to
+render. Away from them, during his vigil, he had seemed to wince at the
+amount of comedy involved; whereas in his present posture he could only
+ask himself how he should enjoy any attempt from her to take the comedy
+back. He shouldn’t enjoy it at all; but, once more and yet once more,
+he could trust her. That is he could trust her to make deception right.
+As she presented things the ugliness—goodness knew why—went out of
+them; none the less too that she could present them, with an art of her
+own, by not so much as touching them. She let the matter, at all
+events, lie where it was—where the previous twenty-four hours had
+placed it; appearing merely to circle about it respectfully, tenderly,
+almost piously, while she took up another question.
+
+She knew she hadn’t really thrown dust in his eyes; this, the previous
+night, before they separated, had practically passed between them; and,
+as she had sent for him to see what the difference thus made for him
+might amount to, so he was conscious at the end of five minutes that he
+had been tried and tested. She had settled with Chad after he left them
+that she would, for her satisfaction, assure herself of this quantity,
+and Chad had, as usual, let her have her way. Chad was always letting
+people have their way when he felt that it would somehow turn his wheel
+for him; it somehow always did turn his wheel. Strether felt, oddly
+enough, before these facts, freshly and consentingly passive; they
+again so rubbed it into him that the couple thus fixing his attention
+were intimate, that his intervention had absolutely aided and
+intensified their intimacy, and that in fine he must accept the
+consequence of that. He had absolutely become, himself, with his
+perceptions and his mistakes, his concessions and his reserves, the
+droll mixture, as it must seem to them, of his braveries and his fears,
+the general spectacle of his art and his innocence, almost an added
+link and certainly a common priceless ground for them to meet upon. It
+was as if he had been hearing their very tone when she brought out a
+reference that was comparatively straight. “The last twice that you’ve
+been here, you know, I never asked you,” she said with an abrupt
+transition—they had been pretending before this to talk simply of the
+charm of yesterday and of the interest of the country they had seen.
+The effort was confessedly vain; not for such talk had she invited him;
+and her impatient reminder was of their having done for it all the
+needful on his coming to her after Sarah’s flight. What she hadn’t
+asked him then was to state to her where and how he stood for her; she
+had been resting on Chad’s report of their midnight hour together in
+the Boulevard Malesherbes. The thing therefore she at present desired
+was ushered in by this recall of the two occasions on which,
+disinterested and merciful, she hadn’t worried him. To-night truly she
+_would_ worry him, and this was her appeal to him to let her risk it.
+He wasn’t to mind if she bored him a little: she had behaved, after
+all—hadn’t she?—so awfully, awfully well.
+
+
+ II
+
+“Oh, you’re all right, you’re all right,” he almost impatiently
+declared; his impatience being moreover not for her pressure, but for
+her scruple. More and more distinct to him was the tune to which she
+would have had the matter out with Chad: more and more vivid for him
+the idea that she had been nervous as to what he might be able to
+“stand.” Yes, it had been a question if he had “stood” what the scene
+on the river had given him, and, though the young man had doubtless
+opined in favour of his recuperation, her own last word must have been
+that she should feel easier in seeing for herself. That was it,
+unmistakeably; she _was_ seeing for herself. What he could stand was
+thus, in these moments, in the balance for Strether, who reflected, as
+he became fully aware of it, that he must properly brace himself. He
+wanted fully to appear to stand all he might; and there was a certain
+command of the situation for him in this very wish not to look too much
+at sea. She was ready with everything, but so, sufficiently, was he;
+that is he was at one point the more prepared of the two, inasmuch as,
+for all her cleverness, she couldn’t produce on the spot—and it was
+surprising—an account of the motive of her note. He had the advantage
+that his pronouncing her “all right” gave him for an enquiry. “May I
+ask, delighted as I’ve been to come, if you’ve wished to say something
+special?” He spoke as if she might have seen he had been waiting for
+it—not indeed with discomfort, but with natural interest. Then he saw
+that she was a little taken aback, was even surprised herself at the
+detail she had neglected—the only one ever yet; having somehow assumed
+he would know, would recognise, would leave some things not to be said.
+She looked at him, however, an instant as if to convey that if he
+wanted them _all_—!
+
+“Selfish and vulgar—that’s what I must seem to you. You’ve done
+everything for me, and here I am as if I were asking for more. But it
+isn’t,” she went on, “because I’m afraid—though I _am_ of course
+afraid, as a woman in my position always is. I mean it isn’t because
+one lives in terror—it isn’t because of that one is selfish, for I’m
+ready to give you my word to-night that I don’t care; don’t care what
+still may happen and what I may lose. I don’t ask you to raise your
+little finger for me again, nor do I wish so much as to mention to you
+what we’ve talked of before, either my danger or my safety, or his
+mother, or his sister, or the girl he may marry, or the fortune he may
+make or miss, or the right or the wrong, of any kind, he may do. If
+after the help one has had from you one can’t either take care of one’s
+self or simply hold one’s tongue, one must renounce all claim to be an
+object of interest. It’s in the name of what I _do_ care about that
+I’ve tried still to keep hold of you. How can I be indifferent,” she
+asked, “to how I appear to you?” And as he found himself unable
+immediately to say: “Why, if you’re going, _need_ you, after all? Is it
+impossible you should stay on—so that one mayn’t lose you?”
+
+“Impossible I should live with you here instead of going home?”
+
+“Not ‘with’ us, if you object to that, but near enough to us,
+somewhere, for us to see you—well,” she beautifully brought out, “when
+we feel we _must_. How shall we not sometimes feel it? I’ve wanted to
+see you often when I couldn’t,” she pursued, “all these last weeks. How
+shan’t I then miss you now, with the sense of your being gone forever?”
+Then as if the straightness of this appeal, taking him unprepared, had
+visibly left him wondering: “Where _is_ your ‘home’ moreover now—what
+has become of it? I’ve made a change in your life, I know I have; I’ve
+upset everything in your mind as well; in your sense of—what shall I
+call it?—all the decencies and possibilities. It gives me a kind of
+detestation—” She pulled up short.
+
+Oh but he wanted to hear. “Detestation of what?”
+
+“Of everything—of life.”
+
+“Ah that’s too much,” he laughed—“or too little!”
+
+“Too little, precisely”—she was eager. “What I hate is myself—when I
+think that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the lives of
+others, and that one isn’t happy even then. One does it to cheat one’s
+self and to stop one’s mouth—but that’s only at the best for a little.
+The wretched self is always there, always making one somehow a fresh
+anxiety. What it comes to is that it’s not, that it’s never, a
+happiness, any happiness at all, to _take_. The only safe thing is to
+give. It’s what plays you least false.” Interesting, touching,
+strikingly sincere as she let these things come from her, she yet
+puzzled and troubled him—so fine was the quaver of her quietness. He
+felt what he had felt before with her, that there was always more
+behind what she showed, and more and more again behind that. “You know
+so, at least,” she added, “where you are!”
+
+“_You_ ought to know it indeed then; for isn’t what you’ve been giving
+exactly what has brought us together this way? You’ve been making, as
+I’ve so fully let you know I’ve felt,” Strether said, “the most
+precious present I’ve ever seen made, and if you can’t sit down
+peacefully on that performance you _are_, no doubt, born to torment
+yourself. But you ought,” he wound up, “to be easy.”
+
+“And not trouble you any more, no doubt—not thrust on you even the
+wonder and the beauty of what I’ve done; only let you regard our
+business as over, and well over, and see you depart in a peace that
+matches my own? No doubt, no doubt, no doubt,” she nervously
+repeated—“all the more that I don’t really pretend I believe you
+couldn’t, for yourself, _not_ have done what you have. I don’t pretend
+you feel yourself victimised, for this evidently is the way you live,
+and it’s what—we’re agreed—is the best way. Yes, as you say,” she
+continued after a moment, “I ought to be easy and rest on my work. Well
+then here am I doing so. I _am_ easy. You’ll have it for your last
+impression. When is it you say you go?” she asked with a quick change.
+
+He took some time to reply—his last impression was more and more so
+mixed a one. It produced in him a vague disappointment, a drop that was
+deeper even than the fall of his elation the previous night. The good
+of what he had done, if he had done so much, wasn’t there to enliven
+him quite to the point that would have been ideal for a grand gay
+finale. Women were thus endlessly absorbent, and to deal with them was
+to walk on water. What was at bottom the matter with her, embroider as
+she might and disclaim as she might—what was at bottom the matter with
+her was simply Chad himself. It was of Chad she was after all renewedly
+afraid; the strange strength of her passion was the very strength of
+her fear; she clung to _him_, Lambert Strether, as to a source of
+safety she had tested, and, generous graceful truthful as she might try
+to be, exquisite as she was, she dreaded the term of his being within
+reach. With this sharpest perception yet, it was like a chill in the
+air to him, it was almost appalling, that a creature so fine could be,
+by mysterious forces, a creature so exploited. For at the end of all
+things they _were_ mysterious: she had but made Chad what he was—so why
+could she think she had made him infinite? She had made him better, she
+had made him best, she had made him anything one would; but it came to
+our friend with supreme queerness that he was none the less only Chad.
+Strether had the sense that _he_, a little, had made him too; his high
+appreciation had as it were, consecrated her work The work, however
+admirable, was nevertheless of the strict human order, and in short it
+was marvellous that the companion of mere earthly joys, of comforts,
+aberrations (however one classed them) within the common experience
+should be so transcendently prized. It might have made Strether hot or
+shy, as such secrets of others brought home sometimes do make us; but
+he was held there by something so hard that it was fairly grim. This
+was not the discomposure of last night; that had quite passed—such
+discomposures were a detail; the real coercion was to see a man
+ineffably adored. There it was again—it took women, it took women; if
+to deal with them was to walk on water what wonder that the water rose?
+And it had never surely risen higher than round this woman. He
+presently found himself taking a long look from her, and the next thing
+he knew he had uttered all his thought. “You’re afraid for your life!”
+
+It drew out her long look, and he soon enough saw why. A spasm came
+into her face, the tears she had already been unable to hide overflowed
+at first in silence, and then, as the sound suddenly comes from a
+child, quickened to gasps, to sobs. She sat and covered her face with
+her hands, giving up all attempt at a manner. “It’s how you see me,
+it’s how you see me”—she caught her breath with it—“and it’s as I _am_,
+and as I must take myself, and of course it’s no matter.” Her emotion
+was at first so incoherent that he could only stand there at a loss,
+stand with his sense of having upset her, though of having done it by
+the truth. He had to listen to her in a silence that he made no
+immediate effort to attenuate, feeling her doubly woeful amid all her
+dim diffused elegance; consenting to it as he had consented to the
+rest, and even conscious of some vague inward irony in the presence of
+such a fine free range of bliss and bale. He couldn’t say it was _not_
+no matter; for he was serving her to the end, he now knew, anyway—quite
+as if what he thought of her had nothing to do with it. It was actually
+moreover as if he didn’t think of her at all, as if he could think of
+nothing but the passion, mature, abysmal, pitiful, she represented, and
+the possibilities she betrayed. She was older for him to-night, visibly
+less exempt from the touch of time; but she was as much as ever the
+finest and subtlest creature, the happiest apparition, it had been
+given him, in all his years, to meet; and yet he could see her there as
+vulgarly troubled, in very truth, as a maidservant crying for her young
+man. The only thing was that she judged herself as the maidservant
+wouldn’t; the weakness of which wisdom too, the dishonour of which
+judgement, seemed but to sink her lower. Her collapse, however, no
+doubt, was briefer and she had in a manner recovered herself before he
+intervened. “Of course I’m afraid for my life. But that’s nothing. It
+isn’t that.”
+
+He was silent a little longer, as if thinking what it might be.
+“There’s something I have in mind that I can still do.”
+
+But she threw off at last, with a sharp sad headshake, drying her eyes,
+what he could still do. “I don’t care for that. Of course, as I’ve
+said, you’re acting, in your wonderful way, for yourself; and what’s
+for yourself is no more my business—though I may reach out unholy hands
+so clumsily to touch it—than if it were something in Timbuctoo. It’s
+only that you don’t snub me, as you’ve had fifty chances to do—it’s
+only your beautiful patience that makes one forget one’s manners. In
+spite of your patience, all the same,” she went on, “you’d do anything
+rather than be with us here, even if that were possible. You’d do
+everything for us but be mixed up with us—which is a statement you can
+easily answer to the advantage of your own manners. You can say ‘What’s
+the use of talking of things that at the best are impossible?’ What
+_is_ of course the use? It’s only my little madness. You’d talk if you
+were tormented. And I don’t mean now about _him_. Oh for him—!”
+Positively, strangely, bitterly, as it seemed to Strether, she gave
+“him,” for the moment, away. “You don’t care what I think of you; but I
+happen to care what you think of me. And what you _might_,” she added.
+“What you perhaps even did.”
+
+He gained time. “What I did—?”
+
+“Did think before. Before this. _Didn’t_ you think—?”
+
+But he had already stopped her. “I didn’t think anything. I never think
+a step further than I’m obliged to.”
+
+“That’s perfectly false, I believe,” she returned—“except that you may,
+no doubt, often pull up when things become _too_ ugly; or even, I’ll
+say, to save you a protest, too beautiful. At any rate, even so far as
+it’s true, we’ve thrust on you appearances that you’ve had to take in
+and that have therefore made your obligation. Ugly or beautiful—it
+doesn’t matter what we call them—you were getting on without them, and
+that’s where we’re detestable. We bore you—that’s where we are. And we
+may well—for what we’ve cost you. All you can do _now_ is not to think
+at all. And I who should have liked to seem to you—well, sublime!”
+
+He could only after a moment re-echo Miss Barrace. “You’re wonderful!”
+
+“I’m old and abject and hideous”—she went on as without hearing him.
+“Abject above all. Or old above all. It’s when one’s old that it’s
+worst. I don’t care what becomes of it—let what _will_; there it is.
+It’s a doom—I know it; you can’t see it more than I do myself. Things
+have to happen as they will.” With which she came back again to what,
+face to face with him, had so quite broken down. “Of course you
+wouldn’t, even if possible, and no matter what may happen to you, be
+near us. But think of me, think of me—!” She exhaled it into air.
+
+He took refuge in repeating something he had already said and that she
+had made nothing of. “There’s something I believe I can still do.” And
+he put his hand out for good-bye.
+
+She again made nothing of it; she went on with her insistence. “That
+won’t help you. There’s nothing to help you.”
+
+“Well, it may help _you_,” he said.
+
+She shook her head. “There’s not a grain of certainty in my future—for
+the only certainty is that I shall be the loser in the end.”
+
+She hadn’t taken his hand, but she moved with him to the door. “That’s
+cheerful,” he laughed, “for your benefactor!”
+
+“What’s cheerful for _me_,” she replied, “is that we might, you and I,
+have been friends. That’s it—that’s it. You see how, as I say, I want
+everything. I’ve wanted you too.”
+
+“Ah but you’ve _had_ me!” he declared, at the door, with an emphasis
+that made an end.
+
+
+ III
+
+His purpose had been to see Chad the next day, and he had prefigured
+seeing him by an early call; having in general never stood on ceremony
+in respect to visits at the Boulevard Malesherbes. It had been more
+often natural for him to go there than for Chad to come to the small
+hotel, the attractions of which were scant; yet it nevertheless, just
+now, at the eleventh hour, did suggest itself to Strether to begin by
+giving the young man a chance. It struck him that, in the inevitable
+course, Chad would be “round,” as Waymarsh used to say—Waymarsh who
+already, somehow, seemed long ago. He hadn’t come the day before,
+because it had been arranged between them that Madame de Vionnet should
+see their friend first; but now that this passage had taken place he
+would present himself, and their friend wouldn’t have long to wait.
+Strether assumed, he became aware, on this reasoning, that the
+interesting parties to the arrangement would have met betimes, and that
+the more interesting of the two—as she was after all—would have
+communicated to the other the issue of her appeal. Chad would know
+without delay that his mother’s messenger had been with her, and,
+though it was perhaps not quite easy to see how she could qualify what
+had occurred, he would at least have been sufficiently advised to feel
+he could go on. The day, however, brought, early or late, no word from
+him, and Strether felt, as a result of this, that a change had
+practically come over their intercourse. It was perhaps a premature
+judgement; or it only meant perhaps—how could he tell?—that the
+wonderful pair he protected had taken up again together the excursion
+he had accidentally checked. They might have gone back to the country,
+and gone back but with a long breath drawn; that indeed would best mark
+Chad’s sense that reprobation hadn’t rewarded Madame de Vionnet’s
+request for an interview. At the end of the twenty-four hours, at the
+end of the forty-eight, there was still no overture; so that Strether
+filled up the time, as he had so often filled it before, by going to
+see Miss Gostrey.
+
+He proposed amusements to her; he felt expert now in proposing
+amusements; and he had thus, for several days, an odd sense of leading
+her about Paris, of driving her in the Bois, of showing her the penny
+steamboats—those from which the breeze of the Seine was to be best
+enjoyed—that might have belonged to a kindly uncle doing the honours of
+the capital to an intelligent niece from the country. He found means
+even to take her to shops she didn’t know, or that she pretended she
+didn’t; while she, on her side, was, like the country maiden, all
+passive modest and grateful—going in fact so far as to emulate
+rusticity in occasional fatigues and bewilderments. Strether described
+these vague proceedings to himself, described them even to her, as a
+happy interlude; the sign of which was that the companions said for the
+time no further word about the matter they had talked of to satiety. He
+proclaimed satiety at the outset, and she quickly took the hint; as
+docile both in this and in everything else as the intelligent obedient
+niece. He told her as yet nothing of his late adventure—for as an
+adventure it now ranked with him; he pushed the whole business
+temporarily aside and found his interest in the fact of her beautiful
+assent. She left questions unasked—she who for so long had been all
+questions; she gave herself up to him with an understanding of which
+mere mute gentleness might have seemed the sufficient expression. She
+knew his sense of his situation had taken still another step—of that he
+was quite aware; but she conveyed that, whatever had thus happened for
+him, it was thrown into the shade by what was happening for herself.
+This—though it mightn’t to a detached spirit have seemed much—was the
+major interest, and she met it with a new directness of response,
+measuring it from hour to hour with her grave hush of acceptance.
+Touched as he had so often been by her before, he was, for his part
+too, touched afresh; all the more that though he could be duly aware of
+the principle of his own mood he couldn’t be equally so of the
+principle of hers. He knew, that is, in a manner—knew roughly and
+resignedly—what he himself was hatching; whereas he had to take the
+chance of what he called to himself Maria’s calculations. It was all he
+needed that she liked him enough for what they were doing, and even
+should they do a good deal more would still like him enough for that;
+the essential freshness of a relation so simple was a cool bath to the
+soreness produced by other relations. These others appeared to him now
+horribly complex; they bristled with fine points, points all
+unimaginable beforehand, points that pricked and drew blood; a fact
+that gave to an hour with his present friend on a _bateau-mouche_, or
+in the afternoon shade of the Champs Elysées, something of the innocent
+pleasure of handling rounded ivory. His relation with Chad
+personally—from the moment he had got his point of view—had been of the
+simplest; yet this also struck him as bristling, after a third and a
+fourth blank day had passed. It was as if at last however his care for
+such indications had dropped; there came a fifth blank day and he
+ceased to enquire or to heed.
+
+They now took on to his fancy, Miss Gostrey and he, the image of the
+Babes in the Wood; they could trust the merciful elements to let them
+continue at peace. He had been great already, as he knew, at
+postponements; but he had only to get afresh into the rhythm of one to
+feel its fine attraction. It amused him to say to himself that he might
+for all the world have been going to die—die resignedly; the scene was
+filled for him with so deep a death-bed hush, so melancholy a charm.
+That meant the postponement of everything else—which made so for the
+quiet lapse of life; and the postponement in especial of the reckoning
+to come—unless indeed the reckoning to come were to be one and the same
+thing with extinction. It faced him, the reckoning, over the shoulder
+of much interposing experience—which also faced him; and one would
+float to it doubtless duly through these caverns of Kubla Khan. It was
+really behind everything; it hadn’t merged in what he had done; his
+final appreciation of what he had done—his appreciation on the
+spot—would provide it with its main sharpness. The spot so focussed was
+of course Woollett, and he was to see, at the best, what Woollett would
+be with everything there changed for him. Wouldn’t _that_ revelation
+practically amount to the wind-up of his career? Well, the summer’s end
+would show; his suspense had meanwhile exactly the sweetness of vain
+delay; and he had with it, we should mention, other pastimes than
+Maria’s company—plenty of separate musings in which his luxury failed
+him but at one point. He was well in port, the outer sea behind him,
+and it was only a matter of getting ashore. There was a question that
+came and went for him, however, as he rested against the side of his
+ship, and it was a little to get rid of the obsession that he prolonged
+his hours with Miss Gostrey. It was a question about himself, but it
+could only be settled by seeing Chad again; it was indeed his principal
+reason for wanting to see Chad. After that it wouldn’t signify—it was a
+ghost that certain words would easily lay to rest. Only the young man
+must be there to take the words. Once they were taken he wouldn’t have
+a question left; none, that is, in connexion with this particular
+affair. It wouldn’t then matter even to himself that he might now have
+been guilty of speaking _because_ of what he had forfeited. That was
+the refinement of his supreme scruple—he wished so to leave what he had
+forfeited out of account. He wished not to do anything because he had
+missed something else, because he was sore or sorry or impoverished,
+because he was maltreated or desperate; he wished to do everything
+because he was lucid and quiet, just the same for himself on all
+essential points as he had ever been. Thus it was that while he
+virtually hung about for Chad he kept mutely putting it: “You’ve been
+chucked, old boy; but what has that to do with it?” It would have
+sickened him to feel vindictive.
+
+These tints of feeling indeed were doubtless but the iridescence of his
+idleness, and they were presently lost in a new light from Maria. She
+had a fresh fact for him before the week was out, and she practically
+met him with it on his appearing one night. He hadn’t on this day seen
+her, but had planned presenting himself in due course to ask her to
+dine with him somewhere out of doors, on one of the terraces, in one of
+the gardens, of which the Paris of summer was profuse. It had then come
+on to rain, so that, disconcerted, he changed his mind; dining alone at
+home, a little stuffily and stupidly, and waiting on her afterwards to
+make up his loss. He was sure within a minute that something had
+happened; it was so in the air of the rich little room that he had
+scarcely to name his thought. Softly lighted, the whole colour of the
+place, with its vague values, was in cool fusion—an effect that made
+the visitor stand for a little agaze. It was as if in doing so now he
+had felt a recent presence—his recognition of the passage of which his
+hostess in turn divined. She had scarcely to say it—“Yes, she has been
+here, and this time I received her.” It wasn’t till a minute later that
+she added: “There being, as I understand you, no reason _now_—!”
+
+“None for your refusing?”
+
+“No—if you’ve done what you’ve had to do.”
+
+“I’ve certainly so far done it,” Strether said, “as that you needn’t
+fear the effect, or the appearance of coming between us. There’s
+nothing between us now but what we ourselves have put there, and not an
+inch of room for anything else whatever. Therefore you’re only
+beautifully _with_ us as always—though doubtless now, if she has talked
+to you, rather more with us than less. Of course if she came,” he
+added, “it was to talk to you.”
+
+“It was to talk to me,” Maria returned; on which he was further sure
+that she was practically in possession of what he himself hadn’t yet
+told her. He was even sure she was in possession of things he himself
+couldn’t have told; for the consciousness of them was now all in her
+face and accompanied there with a shade of sadness that marked in her
+the close of all uncertainties. It came out for him more than ever yet
+that she had had from the first a knowledge she believed him not to
+have had, a knowledge the sharp acquisition of which might be destined
+to make a difference for him. The difference for him might not
+inconceivably be an arrest of his independence and a change in his
+attitude—in other words a revulsion in favour of the principles of
+Woollett. She had really prefigured the possibility of a shock that
+would send him swinging back to Mrs. Newsome. He hadn’t, it was true,
+week after week, shown signs of receiving it, but the possibility had
+been none the less in the air. What Maria accordingly had had now to
+take in was that the shock had descended and that he hadn’t, all the
+same, swung back. He had grown clear, in a flash, on a point long since
+settled for herself; but no reapproximation to Mrs. Newsome had
+occurred in consequence. Madame de Vionnet had by her visit held up the
+torch to these truths, and what now lingered in poor Maria’s face was
+the somewhat smoky light of the scene between them. If the light
+however wasn’t, as we have hinted, the glow of joy, the reasons for
+this also were perhaps discernible to Strether even through the blur
+cast over them by his natural modesty. She had held herself for months
+with a firm hand; she hadn’t interfered on any chance—and chances were
+specious enough—that she might interfere to her profit. She had turned
+her back on the dream that Mrs. Newsome’s rupture, their friend’s
+forfeiture—the engagement, the relation itself, broken beyond all
+mending—might furnish forth her advantage; and, to stay her hand from
+promoting these things, she had on private, difficult, but rigid,
+lines, played strictly fair. She couldn’t therefore but feel that,
+though, as the end of all, the facts in question had been stoutly
+confirmed, her ground for personal, for what might have been called
+interested, elation remained rather vague. Strether might easily have
+made out that she had been asking herself, in the hours she had just
+sat through, if there were still for her, or were only not, a fair
+shade of uncertainty. Let us hasten to add, however, that what he at
+first made out on this occasion he also at first kept to himself. He
+only asked what in particular Madame de Vionnet had come for, and as to
+this his companion was ready.
+
+“She wants tidings of Mr. Newsome, whom she appears not to have seen
+for some days.”
+
+“Then she hasn’t been away with him again?”
+
+“She seemed to think,” Maria answered, “that he might have gone away
+with _you_.”
+
+“And did you tell her I know nothing of him?”
+
+She had her indulgent headshake. “I’ve known nothing of what you know.
+I could only tell her I’d ask you.”
+
+“Then I’ve not seen him for a week—and of course I’ve wondered.” His
+wonderment showed at this moment as sharper, but he presently went on.
+“Still, I dare say I can put my hand on him. Did she strike you,” he
+asked, “as anxious?”
+
+“She’s always anxious.”
+
+“After all I’ve done for her?” And he had one of the last flickers of
+his occasional mild mirth. “To think that was just what I came out to
+prevent!”
+
+She took it up but to reply. “You don’t regard him then as safe?”
+
+“I was just going to ask you how in that respect you regard Madame de
+Vionnet.”
+
+She looked at him a little. “What woman was _ever_ safe? She told me,”
+she added—and it was as if at the touch of the connexion—“of your
+extraordinary meeting in the country. After that _à quoi se fier?_”
+
+“It was, as an accident, in all the possible or impossible chapter,”
+Strether conceded, “amazing enough. But still, but still—!”
+
+“But still she didn’t mind?”
+
+“She doesn’t mind anything.”
+
+“Well, then, as you don’t either, we may all sink to rest!”
+
+He appeared to agree with her, but he had his reservation. “I do mind
+Chad’s disappearance.”
+
+“Oh you’ll get him back. But now you know,” she said, “why I went to
+Mentone.” He had sufficiently let her see that he had by this time
+gathered things together, but there was nature in her wish to make them
+clearer still. “I didn’t want you to put it to me.”
+
+“To put it to you—?”
+
+“The question of what you were at last—a week ago—to see for yourself.
+I didn’t want to have to lie for her. I felt that to be too much for
+me. A man of course is always expected to do it—to do it, I mean, for a
+woman; but not a woman for another woman; unless perhaps on the
+tit-for-tat principle, as an indirect way of protecting herself. I
+don’t need protection, so that I was free to ‘funk’ you—simply to dodge
+your test. The responsibility was too much for me. I gained time, and
+when I came back the need of a test had blown over.”
+
+Strether thought of it serenely. “Yes; when you came back little Bilham
+had shown me what’s expected of a gentleman. Little Bilham had lied
+like one.”
+
+“And like what you believed him?”
+
+“Well,” said Strether, “it was but a technical lie—he classed the
+attachment as virtuous. That was a view for which there was much to be
+said—and the virtue came out for me hugely There was of course a great
+deal of it. I got it full in the face, and I haven’t, you see, done
+with it yet.”
+
+“What I see, what I saw,” Maria returned, “is that you dressed up even
+the virtue. You were wonderful—you were beautiful, as I’ve had the
+honour of telling you before; but, if you wish really to know,” she
+sadly confessed, “I never quite knew _where_ you were. There were
+moments,” she explained, “when you struck me as grandly cynical; there
+were others when you struck me as grandly vague.”
+
+Her friend considered. “I had phases. I had flights.”
+
+“Yes, but things must have a basis.”
+
+“A basis seemed to me just what her beauty supplied.”
+
+“Her beauty of person?”
+
+“Well, her beauty of everything. The impression she makes. She has such
+variety and yet such harmony.”
+
+She considered him with one of her deep returns of indulgence—returns
+out of all proportion to the irritations they flooded over. “You’re
+complete.”
+
+“You’re always too personal,” he good-humouredly said; “but that’s
+precisely how I wondered and wandered.”
+
+“If you mean,” she went on, “that she was from the first for you the
+most charming woman in the world, nothing’s more simple. Only that was
+an odd foundation.”
+
+“For what I reared on it?”
+
+“For what you didn’t!”
+
+“Well, it was all not a fixed quantity. And it had for me—it has
+still—such elements of strangeness. Her greater age than his, her
+different world, traditions, association; her other opportunities,
+liabilities, standards.”
+
+His friend listened with respect to his enumeration of these
+disparities; then she disposed of them at a stroke. “Those things are
+nothing when a woman’s hit. It’s very awful. She was hit.”
+
+Strether, on his side, did justice to that plea. “Oh of course I saw
+she was hit. That she was hit was what we were busy with; that she was
+hit was our great affair. But somehow I couldn’t think of her as down
+in the dust. And as put there by _our_ little Chad!”
+
+“Yet wasn’t ‘your’ little Chad just your miracle?”
+
+Strether admitted it. “Of course I moved among miracles. It was all
+phantasmagoric. But the great fact was that so much of it was none of
+my business—as I saw my business. It isn’t even now.”
+
+His companion turned away on this, and it might well have been yet
+again with the sharpness of a fear of how little his philosophy could
+bring her personally. “I wish _she_ could hear you!”
+
+“Mrs. Newsome?”
+
+“No—not Mrs. Newsome; since I understand you that it doesn’t matter now
+what Mrs. Newsome hears. Hasn’t she heard everything?”
+
+“Practically—yes.” He had thought a moment, but he went on. “You wish
+Madame de Vionnet could hear me?”
+
+“Madame de Vionnet.” She had come back to him. “She thinks just the
+contrary of what you say. That you distinctly judge her.”
+
+He turned over the scene as the two women thus placed together for him
+seemed to give it. “She might have known—!”
+
+“Might have known you don’t?” Miss Gostrey asked as he let it drop.
+“She was sure of it at first,” she pursued as he said nothing; “she
+took it for granted, at least, as any woman in her position would. But
+after that she changed her mind; she believed you believed—”
+
+“Well?”—he was curious.
+
+“Why in her sublimity. And that belief had remained with her, I make
+out, till the accident of the other day opened your eyes. For that it
+did,” said Maria, “open them—”
+
+“She can’t help”—he had taken it up—“being aware? No,” he mused; “I
+suppose she thinks of that even yet.”
+
+“Then they _were_ closed? There you are! However, if you see her as the
+most charming woman in the world it comes to the same thing. And if
+you’d like me to tell her that you do still so see her—!” Miss Gostrey,
+in short, offered herself for service to the end.
+
+It was an offer he could temporarily entertain; but he decided. “She
+knows perfectly how I see her.”
+
+“Not favourably enough, she mentioned to me, to wish ever to see her
+again. She told me you had taken a final leave of her. She says you’ve
+done with her.”
+
+“So I have.”
+
+Maria had a pause; then she spoke as if for conscience. “She wouldn’t
+have done with _you_. She feels she has lost you—yet that she might
+have been better for you.”
+
+“Oh she has been quite good enough!” Strether laughed.
+
+“She thinks you and she might at any rate have been friends.”
+
+“We might certainly. That’s just”—he continued to laugh—“why I’m
+going.”
+
+It was as if Maria could feel with this then at last that she had done
+her best for each. But she had still an idea. “Shall I tell her that?”
+
+“No. Tell her nothing.”
+
+“Very well then.” To which in the next breath Miss Gostrey added: “Poor
+dear thing!”
+
+Her friend wondered; then with raised eyebrows: “Me?”
+
+“Oh no. Marie de Vionnet.”
+
+He accepted the correction, but he wondered still. “Are you so sorry
+for her as that?”
+
+It made her think a moment—made her even speak with a smile. But she
+didn’t really retract. “I’m sorry for us all!”
+
+
+ IV
+
+He was to delay no longer to re-establish communication with Chad, and
+we have just seen that he had spoken to Miss Gostrey of this intention
+on hearing from her of the young man’s absence. It was not moreover
+only the assurance so given that prompted him; it was the need of
+causing his conduct to square with another profession still—the motive
+he had described to her as his sharpest for now getting away. If he was
+to get away because of some of the relations involved in staying, the
+cold attitude toward them might look pedantic in the light of lingering
+on. He must do both things; he must see Chad, but he must go. The more
+he thought of the former of these duties the more he felt himself make
+a subject of insistence of the latter. They were alike intensely
+present to him as he sat in front of a quiet little café into which he
+had dropped on quitting Maria’s entresol. The rain that had spoiled his
+evening with her was over; for it was still to him as if his evening
+_had_ been spoiled—though it mightn’t have been wholly the rain. It was
+late when he left the café, yet not too late; he couldn’t in any case
+go straight to bed, and he would walk round by the Boulevard
+Malesherbes—rather far round—on his way home. Present enough always was
+the small circumstance that had originally pressed for him the spring
+of so big a difference—the accident of little Bilham’s appearance on
+the balcony of the mystic troisième at the moment of his first visit,
+and the effect of it on his sense of what was then before him. He
+recalled his watch, his wait, and the recognition that had proceeded
+from the young stranger, that had played frankly into the air and had
+presently brought him up—things smoothing the way for his first
+straight step. He had since had occasion, a few times, to pass the
+house without going in; but he had never passed it without again
+feeling how it had then spoken to him. He stopped short to-night on
+coming to sight of it: it was as if his last day were oddly copying his
+first. The windows of Chad’s apartment were open to the balcony—a pair
+of them lighted; and a figure that had come out and taken up little
+Bilham’s attitude, a figure whose cigarette-spark he could see leaned
+on the rail and looked down at him. It denoted however no reappearance
+of his younger friend; it quickly defined itself in the tempered
+darkness as Chad’s more solid shape; so that Chad’s was the attention
+that after he had stepped forward into the street and signalled, he
+easily engaged; Chad’s was the voice that, sounding into the night with
+promptness and seemingly with joy, greeted him and called him up.
+
+That the young man had been visible there just in this position
+expressed somehow for Strether that, as Maria Gostrey had reported, he
+had been absent and silent; and our friend drew breath on each
+landing—the lift, at that hour, having ceased to work—before the
+implications of the fact. He had been for a week intensely away, away
+to a distance and alone; but he was more back than ever, and the
+attitude in which Strether had surprised him was something more than a
+return—it was clearly a conscious surrender. He had arrived but an hour
+before, from London, from Lucerne, from Homburg, from no matter
+where—though the visitor’s fancy, on the staircase, liked to fill it
+out; and after a bath, a talk with Baptiste and a supper of light cold
+clever French things, which one could see the remains of there in the
+circle of the lamp, pretty and ultra-Parisian, he had come into the air
+again for a smoke, was occupied at the moment of Strether’s approach in
+what might have been called taking up his life afresh. His life, his
+life!—Strether paused anew, on the last flight, at this final rather
+breathless sense of what Chad’s life was doing with Chad’s mother’s
+emissary. It was dragging him, at strange hours, up the staircases of
+the rich; it was keeping him out of bed at the end of long hot days; it
+was transforming beyond recognition the simple, subtle, conveniently
+uniform thing that had anciently passed with him for a life of his own.
+Why should it concern him that Chad was to be fortified in the pleasant
+practice of smoking on balconies, of supping on salads, of feeling his
+special conditions agreeably reaffirm themselves, of finding
+reassurance in comparisons and contrasts? There was no answer to such a
+question but that he was still practically committed—he had perhaps
+never yet so much known it. It made him feel old, and he would buy his
+railway-ticket—feeling, no doubt, older—the next day; but he had
+meanwhile come up four flights, counting the entresol, at midnight and
+without a lift, for Chad’s life. The young man, hearing him by this
+time, and with Baptiste sent to rest, was already at the door; so that
+Strether had before him in full visibility the cause in which he was
+labouring and even, with the troisième fairly gained, panting a little.
+
+Chad offered him, as always, a welcome in which the cordial and the
+formal—so far as the formal was the respectful—handsomely met; and
+after he had expressed a hope that he would let him put him up for the
+night Strether was in full possession of the key, as it might have been
+called, to what had lately happened. If he had just thought of himself
+as old Chad was at sight of him thinking of him as older: he wanted to
+put him up for the night just because he was ancient and weary. It
+could never be said the tenant of these quarters wasn’t nice to him; a
+tenant who, if he might indeed now keep him, was probably prepared to
+work it all still more thoroughly. Our friend had in fact the
+impression that with the minimum of encouragement Chad would propose to
+keep him indefinitely; an impression in the lap of which one of his own
+possibilities seemed to sit. Madame de Vionnet had wished him to
+stay—so why didn’t that happily fit? He could enshrine himself for the
+rest of his days in his young host’s _chambre d’ami_ and draw out these
+days at his young host’s expense: there could scarce be greater logical
+expression of the countenance he had been moved to give. There was
+literally a minute—it was strange enough—during which he grasped the
+idea that as he _was_ acting, as he could only act, he was
+inconsistent. The sign that the inward forces he had obeyed really hung
+together would be that—in default always of another career—he should
+promote the good cause by mounting guard on it. These things, during
+his first minutes, came and went; but they were after all practically
+disposed of as soon as he had mentioned his errand. He had come to say
+good-bye—yet that was only a part; so that from the moment Chad
+accepted his farewell the question of a more ideal affirmation gave way
+to something else. He proceeded with the rest of his business. “You’ll
+be a brute, you know—you’ll be guilty of the last infamy—if you ever
+forsake her.”
+
+That, uttered there at the solemn hour, uttered in the place that was
+full of her influence, was the rest of his business; and when once he
+had heard himself say it he felt that his message had never before been
+spoken. It placed his present call immediately on solid ground, and the
+effect of it was to enable him quite to play with what we have called
+the key. Chad showed no shade of embarrassment, but had none the less
+been troubled for him after their meeting in the country; had had fears
+and doubts on the subject of his comfort. He was disturbed, as it were,
+only _for_ him, and had positively gone away to ease him off, to let
+him down—if it wasn’t indeed rather to screw him up—the more gently.
+Seeing him now fairly jaded he had come, with characteristic good
+humour, all the way to meet him, and what Strether thereupon supremely
+made out was that he would abound for him to the end in conscientious
+assurances. This was what was between them while the visitor remained;
+so far from having to go over old ground he found his entertainer keen
+to agree to everything. It couldn’t be put too strongly for him that
+he’d be a brute. “Oh rather!—if I should do anything of _that_ sort. I
+hope you believe I really feel it.”
+
+“I want it,” said Strether, “to be my last word of all to you. I can’t
+say more, you know; and I don’t see how I can do more, in every way,
+than I’ve done.”
+
+Chad took this, almost artlessly, as a direct allusion. “You’ve seen
+her?”
+
+“Oh yes—to say good-bye. And if I had doubted the truth of what I tell
+you—”
+
+“She’d have cleared up your doubt?” Chad understood—“rather”—again! It
+even kept him briefly silent. But he made that up. “She must have been
+wonderful.”
+
+“She _was_,” Strether candidly admitted—all of which practically told
+as a reference to the conditions created by the accident of the
+previous week.
+
+They appeared for a little to be looking back at it; and that came out
+still more in what Chad next said. “I don’t know what you’ve really
+thought, all along; I never did know—for anything, with you, seemed to
+be possible. But of course—of course—” Without confusion, quite with
+nothing but indulgence, he broke down, he pulled up. “After all, you
+understand. I spoke to you originally only as I _had_ to speak. There’s
+only one way—isn’t there?—about such things. However,” he smiled with a
+final philosophy, “I see it’s all right.”
+
+Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts. What was it
+that made him at present, late at night and after journeys, so
+renewedly, so substantially young? Strether saw in a moment what it
+was—it was that he was younger again than Madame de Vionnet. He himself
+said immediately none of the things that he was thinking; he said
+something quite different. “You _have_ really been to a distance?”
+
+“I’ve been to England.” Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, but gave no
+further account of it than to say: “One must sometimes get off.”
+
+Strether wanted no more facts—he only wanted to justify, as it were,
+his question. “Of course you do as you’re free to do. But I hope, this
+time, that you didn’t go for _me_.”
+
+“For very shame at bothering you really too much? My dear man,” Chad
+laughed, “what _wouldn’t_ I do for you?”
+
+Strether’s easy answer for this was that it was a disposition he had
+exactly come to profit by. “Even at the risk of being in your way I’ve
+waited on, you know, for a definite reason.”
+
+Chad took it in. “Oh yes—for us to make if possible a still better
+impression.” And he stood there happily exhaling his full general
+consciousness. “I’m delighted to gather that you feel we’ve made it.”
+
+There was a pleasant irony in the words, which his guest, preoccupied
+and keeping to the point, didn’t take up. “If I had my sense of wanting
+the rest of the time—the time of their being still on this side,” he
+continued to explain—“I know now why I wanted it.”
+
+He was as grave, as distinct, as a demonstrator before a blackboard,
+and Chad continued to face him like an intelligent pupil. “You wanted
+to have been put through the whole thing.”
+
+Strether again, for a moment, said nothing; he turned his eyes away,
+and they lost themselves, through the open window, in the dusky outer
+air. “I shall learn from the Bank here where they’re now having their
+letters, and my last word, which I shall write in the morning and which
+they’re expecting as my ultimatum, will so immediately reach them.” The
+light of his plural pronoun was sufficiently reflected in his
+companion’s face as he again met it; and he completed his
+demonstration. He pursued indeed as if for himself. “Of course I’ve
+first to justify what I shall do.”
+
+“You’re justifying it beautifully!” Chad declared.
+
+“It’s not a question of advising you not to go,” Strether said, “but of
+absolutely preventing you, if possible, from so much as thinking of it.
+Let me accordingly appeal to you by all you hold sacred.”
+
+Chad showed a surprise. “What makes you think me capable—?”
+
+“You’d not only be, as I say, a brute; you’d be,” his companion went on
+in the same way, “a criminal of the deepest dye.”
+
+Chad gave a sharper look, as if to gauge a possible suspicion. “I don’t
+know what should make you think I’m tired of her.”
+
+Strether didn’t quite know either, and such impressions, for the
+imaginative mind, were always too fine, too floating, to produce on the
+spot their warrant. There was none the less for him, in the very manner
+of his host’s allusion to satiety as a thinkable motive, a slight
+breath of the ominous. “I feel how much more she can do for you. She
+hasn’t done it all yet. Stay with her at least till she has.”
+
+“And leave her _then?_”
+
+Chad had kept smiling, but its effect in Strether was a shade of
+dryness. “Don’t leave her _before_. When you’ve got all that can be
+got—I don’t say,” he added a trifle grimly. “That will be the proper
+time. But as, for you, from such a woman, there will always be
+something to be got, my remark’s not a wrong to her.” Chad let him go
+on, showing every decent deference, showing perhaps also a candid
+curiosity for this sharper accent. “I remember you, you know, as you
+were.”
+
+“An awful ass, wasn’t I?”
+
+The response was as prompt as if he had pressed a spring; it had a
+ready abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment to
+meet it. “You certainly then wouldn’t have seemed worth all you’ve let
+me in for. You’ve defined yourself better. Your value has quintupled.”
+
+“Well then, wouldn’t that be enough—?”
+
+Chad had risked it jocosely, but Strether remained blank. “Enough?”
+
+“If one _should_ wish to live on one’s accumulations?” After which,
+however, as his friend appeared cold to the joke, the young man as
+easily dropped it. “Of course I really never forget, night or day, what
+I owe her. I owe her everything. I give you my word of honour,” he
+frankly rang out, “that I’m not a bit tired of her.” Strether at this
+only gave him a stare: the way youth could express itself was again and
+again a wonder. He meant no harm, though he might after all be capable
+of much; yet he spoke of being “tired” of her almost as he might have
+spoken of being tired of roast mutton for dinner. “She has never for a
+moment yet bored me—never been wanting, as the cleverest women
+sometimes are, in tact. She has never talked about her tact—as even
+they too sometimes talk; but she has always had it. She has never had
+it more”—he handsomely made the point—“than just lately.” And he
+scrupulously went further. “She has never been anything I could call a
+burden.”
+
+Strether for a moment said nothing; then he spoke gravely, with his
+shade of dryness deepened. “Oh if you didn’t do her justice—!”
+
+“I _should_ be a beast, eh?”
+
+Strether devoted no time to saying what he would be; _that_, visibly,
+would take them far. If there was nothing for it but to repeat,
+however, repetition was no mistake. “You owe her everything—very much
+more than she can ever owe you. You’ve in other words duties to her, of
+the most positive sort; and I don’t see what other duties—as the others
+are presented to you—can be held to go before them.”
+
+Chad looked at him with a smile. “And you know of course about the
+others, eh?—since it’s you yourself who have done the presenting.”
+
+“Much of it—yes—and to the best of my ability. But not all—from the
+moment your sister took my place.”
+
+“She didn’t,” Chad returned. “Sally took a place, certainly; but it was
+never, I saw from the first moment, to be yours. No one—with us—will
+ever take yours. It wouldn’t be possible.”
+
+“Ah of course,” sighed Strether, “I knew it. I believe you’re right. No
+one in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously solemn. There I
+am,” he added with another sigh, as if weary enough, on occasion, of
+this truth. “I was made so.”
+
+Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might
+for this purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured
+the fact. “_You_ have never needed any one to make you better. There
+has never been any one good enough. They couldn’t,” the young man
+declared.
+
+His friend hesitated. “I beg your pardon. They _have_.”
+
+Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt. “Who then?”
+
+Strether—though a little dimly—smiled at him. “Women—too.”
+
+“‘Two’?”—Chad stared and laughed. “Oh I don’t believe, for such work,
+in any more than one! So you’re proving too much. And what _is_
+beastly, at all events,” he added, “is losing you.”
+
+Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he
+paused. “Are you afraid?”
+
+“Afraid—?”
+
+“Of doing wrong. I mean away from my eye.” Before Chad could speak,
+however, he had taken himself up. “I _am_, certainly,” he laughed,
+“prodigious.”
+
+“Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid—!” This might have been, on
+Chad’s part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely extravagant;
+but it was full, plainly enough, of the intention of comfort, it
+carried with it a protest against doubt and a promise, positively, of
+performance. Picking up a hat in the vestibule he came out with his
+friend, came downstairs, took his arm, affectionately, as to help and
+guide him, treating him if not exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a
+noble eccentric who appealed to tenderness, and keeping on with him,
+while they walked, to the next corner and the next. “You needn’t tell
+me, you needn’t tell me!”—this again as they proceeded, he wished to
+make Strether feel. What he needn’t tell him was now at last, in the
+geniality of separation, anything at all it concerned him to know. He
+knew, up to the hilt—that really came over Chad; he understood, felt,
+recorded his vow; and they lingered on it as they had lingered in their
+walk to Strether’s hotel the night of their first meeting. The latter
+took, at this hour, all he could get; he had given all he had had to
+give; he was as depleted as if he had spent his last sou. But there was
+just one thing for which, before they broke off, Chad seemed disposed
+slightly to bargain. His companion needn’t, as he said, tell him, but
+he might himself mention that he had been getting some news of the art
+of advertisement. He came out quite suddenly with this announcement
+while Strether wondered if his revived interest were what had taken
+him, with strange inconsequence, over to London. He appeared at all
+events to have been looking into the question and had encountered a
+revelation. Advertising scientifically worked presented itself thus as
+the great new force. “It really does the thing, you know.”
+
+They were face to face under the street-lamp as they had been the first
+night, and Strether, no doubt, looked blank. “Affects, you mean, the
+sale of the object advertised?”
+
+“Yes—but affects it extraordinarily; really beyond what one had
+supposed. I mean of course when it’s done as one makes out that in our
+roaring age, it _can_ be done. I’ve been finding out a little, though
+it doubtless doesn’t amount to much more than what you originally, so
+awfully vividly—and all, very nearly, that first night—put before me.
+It’s an art like another, and infinite like all the arts.” He went on
+as if for the joke of it—almost as if his friend’s face amused him. “In
+the hands, naturally, of a master. The right man must take hold. With
+the right man to work it _c’est un monde_.”
+
+Strether had watched him quite as if, there on the pavement without a
+pretext, he had begun to dance a fancy step. “Is what you’re thinking
+of that you yourself, in the case you have in mind, would be the right
+man?”
+
+Chad had thrown back his light coat and thrust each of his thumbs into
+an armhole of his waistcoat; in which position his fingers played up
+and down. “Why, what is he but what you yourself, as I say, took me for
+when you first came out?”
+
+Strether felt a little faint, but he coerced his attention. “Oh yes,
+and there’s no doubt that, with your natural parts, you’d have much in
+common with him. Advertising is clearly at this time of day the secret
+of trade. It’s quite possible it will be open to you—giving the whole
+of your mind to it—to make the whole place hum with you. Your mother’s
+appeal is to the whole of your mind, and that’s exactly the strength of
+her case.”
+
+Chad’s fingers continued to twiddle, but he had something of a drop.
+“Ah we’ve been through my mother’s case!”
+
+“So I thought. Why then do you speak of the matter?”
+
+“Only because it was part of our original discussion. To wind up where
+we began, my interest’s purely platonic. There at any rate the fact
+is—the fact of the possible. I mean the money in it.”
+
+“Oh damn the money in it!” said Strether. And then as the young man’s
+fixed smile seemed to shine out more strange: “Shall you give your
+friend up for the money in it?”
+
+Chad preserved his handsome grimace as well as the rest of his
+attitude. “You’re not altogether—in your so great ‘solemnity’—kind.
+Haven’t I been drinking you in—showing you all I feel you’re worth to
+me? What have I done, what am I doing, but cleave to her to the death?
+The only thing is,” he good-humouredly explained, “that one can’t but
+have it before one, in the cleaving—the point where the death comes in.
+Don’t be afraid for _that_. It’s pleasant to a fellow’s feelings,” he
+developed, “to ‘size-up’ the bribe he applies his foot to.”
+
+“Oh then if all you want’s a kickable surface the bribe’s enormous.”
+
+“Good. Then there it goes!” Chad administered his kick with fantastic
+force and sent an imaginary object flying. It was accordingly as if
+they were once more rid of the question and could come back to what
+really concerned him. “Of course I shall see you tomorrow.”
+
+But Strether scarce heeded the plan proposed for this; he had still the
+impression—not the slighter for the simulated kick—of an irrelevant
+hornpipe or jig. “You’re restless.”
+
+“Ah,” returned Chad as they parted, “you’re exciting.”
+
+
+ V
+
+He had, however, within two days, another separation to face. He had
+sent Maria Gostrey a word early, by hand, to ask if he might come to
+breakfast; in consequence of which, at noon, she awaited him in the
+cool shade of her little Dutch-looking dining-room. This retreat was at
+the back of the house, with a view of a scrap of old garden that had
+been saved from modern ravage; and though he had on more than one other
+occasion had his legs under its small and peculiarly polished table of
+hospitality, the place had never before struck him as so sacred to
+pleasant knowledge, to intimate charm, to antique order, to a neatness
+that was almost august. To sit there was, as he had told his hostess
+before, to see life reflected for the time in ideally kept pewter;
+which was somehow becoming, improving to life, so that one’s eyes were
+held and comforted. Strether’s were comforted at all events now—and the
+more that it was the last time—with the charming effect, on the board
+bare of a cloth and proud of its perfect surface, of the small old
+crockery and old silver, matched by the more substantial pieces happily
+disposed about the room. The specimens of vivid Delf, in particular had
+the dignity of family portraits; and it was in the midst of them that
+our friend resignedly expressed himself. He spoke even with a certain
+philosophic humour. “There’s nothing more to wait for; I seem to have
+done a good day’s work. I’ve let them have it all round. I’ve seen
+Chad, who has been to London and come back. He tells me I’m ‘exciting,’
+and I seem indeed pretty well to have upset every one. I’ve at any rate
+excited _him_. He’s distinctly restless.”
+
+“You’ve excited _me_,” Miss Gostrey smiled. “_I’m_ distinctly
+restless.”
+
+“Oh you were that when I found you. It seems to me I’ve rather got you
+out of it. What’s this,” he asked as he looked about him, “but a haunt
+of ancient peace?”
+
+“I wish with all my heart,” she presently replied, “I could make you
+treat it as a haven of rest.” On which they fronted each other, across
+the table, as if things unuttered were in the air.
+
+Strether seemed, in his way, when he next spoke, to take some of them
+up. “It wouldn’t give me—that would be the trouble—what it will, no
+doubt, still give you. I’m not,” he explained, leaning back in his
+chair, but with his eyes on a small ripe round melon—“in real harmony
+with what surrounds me. You _are_. I take it too hard. You _don’t_. It
+makes—that’s what it comes to in the end—a fool of me.” Then at a
+tangent, “What has he been doing in London?” he demanded.
+
+“Ah one may go to London,” Maria laughed. “You know _I_ did.”
+
+Yes—he took the reminder. “And you brought _me_ back.” He brooded there
+opposite to her, but without gloom. “Whom has Chad brought? He’s full
+of ideas. And I wrote to Sarah,” he added, “the first thing this
+morning. So I’m square. I’m ready for them.”
+
+She neglected certain parts of this speech in the interest of others.
+“Marie said to me the other day that she felt him to have the makings
+of an immense man of business.”
+
+“There it is. He’s the son of his father!”
+
+“But _such_ a father!”
+
+“Ah just the right one from that point of view! But it isn’t his father
+in him,” Strether added, “that troubles me.”
+
+“What is it then?” He came back to his breakfast; he partook presently
+of the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was only
+after this that he met her question. Then moreover it was but to remark
+that he’d answer her presently. She waited, she watched, she served him
+and amused him, and it was perhaps with this last idea that she soon
+reminded him of his having never even yet named to her the article
+produced at Woollett. “Do you remember our talking of it in London—that
+night at the play?” Before he could say yes, however, she had put it to
+him for other matters. Did he remember, did he remember—this and that
+of their first days? He remembered everything, bringing up with humour
+even things of which she professed no recollection, things she
+vehemently denied; and falling back above all on the great interest of
+their early time, the curiosity felt by both of them as to where he
+would “come out.” They had so assumed it was to be in some wonderful
+place—they had thought of it as so very _much_ out. Well, that was
+doubtless what it had been—since he had come out just there. He was
+out, in truth, as far as it was possible to be, and must now rather
+bethink himself of getting in again. He found on the spot the image of
+his recent history; he was like one of the figures of the old clock at
+Berne. _They_ came out, on one side, at their hour, jigged along their
+little course in the public eye, and went in on the other side. He too
+had jigged his little course—him too a modest retreat awaited. He
+offered now, should she really like to know, to name the great product
+of Woollett. It would be a great commentary on everything. At this she
+stopped him off; she not only had no wish to know, but she wouldn’t
+know for the world. She had done with the products of Woollett—for all
+the good she had got from them. She desired no further news of them,
+and she mentioned that Madame de Vionnet herself had, to her knowledge,
+lived exempt from the information he was ready to supply. She had never
+consented to receive it, though she would have taken it, under stress,
+from Mrs. Pocock. But it was a matter about which Mrs. Pocock appeared
+to have had little to say—never sounding the word—and it didn’t signify
+now. There was nothing clearly for Maria Gostrey that signified
+now—save one sharp point, that is, to which she came in time. “I don’t
+know whether it’s before you as a possibility that, left to himself,
+Mr. Chad may after all go back. I judge that it _is_ more or less so
+before you, from what you just now said of him.”
+
+Her guest had his eyes on her, kindly but attentively, as if foreseeing
+what was to follow this. “I don’t think it will be for the money.” And
+then as she seemed uncertain: “I mean I don’t believe it will be for
+that he’ll give her up.”
+
+“Then he _will_ give her up?”
+
+Strether waited a moment, rather slow and deliberate now, drawing out a
+little this last soft stage, pleading with her in various suggestive
+and unspoken ways for patience and understanding. “What were you just
+about to ask me?”
+
+“Is there anything he can do that would make you patch it up?”
+
+“With Mrs. Newsome?”
+
+Her assent, as if she had had a delicacy about sounding the name, was
+only in her face; but she added with it: “Or is there anything he can
+do that would make _her_ try it?”
+
+“To patch it up with me?” His answer came at last in a conclusive
+headshake. “There’s nothing any one can do. It’s over. Over for both of
+us.”
+
+Maria wondered, seemed a little to doubt. “Are you so sure for her?”
+
+“Oh yes—sure now. Too much has happened. I’m different for her.”
+
+She took it in then, drawing a deeper breath. “I see. So that as she’s
+different for _you_—”
+
+“Ah but,” he interrupted, “she’s not.” And as Miss Gostrey wondered
+again: “She’s the same. She’s more than ever the same. But I do what I
+didn’t before—I _see_ her.”
+
+He spoke gravely and as if responsibly—since he had to pronounce; and
+the effect of it was slightly solemn, so that she simply exclaimed
+“Oh!” Satisfied and grateful, however, she showed in her own next words
+an acceptance of his statement. “What then do you go home to?”
+
+He had pushed his plate a little away, occupied with another side of
+the matter; taking refuge verily in that side and feeling so moved that
+he soon found himself on his feet. He was affected in advance by what
+he believed might come from her, and he would have liked to forestall
+it and deal with it tenderly; yet in the presence of it he wished still
+more to be—though as smoothly as possible—deterrent and conclusive. He
+put her question by for the moment; he told her more about Chad. “It
+would have been impossible to meet me more than he did last night on
+the question of the infamy of not sticking to her.”
+
+“Is that what you called it for him—‘infamy’?”
+
+“Oh rather! I described to him in detail the base creature he’d be, and
+he quite agrees with me about it.”
+
+“So that it’s really as if you had nailed him?”
+
+“Quite really as if—! I told him I should curse him.”
+
+“Oh,” she smiled, “you _have_ done it.” And then having thought again:
+“You _can’t_ after that propose—!” Yet she scanned his face.
+
+“Propose again to Mrs. Newsome?”
+
+She hesitated afresh, but she brought it out. “I’ve never believed, you
+know, that you did propose. I always believed it was really she—and, so
+far as that goes, I can understand it. What I mean is,” she explained,
+“that with such a spirit—the spirit of curses!—your breach is past
+mending. She has only to know what you’ve done to him never again to
+raise a finger.”
+
+“I’ve done,” said Strether, “what I could—one can’t do more. He
+protests his devotion and his horror. But I’m not sure I’ve saved him.
+He protests too much. He asks how one can dream of his being tired. But
+he has all life before him.”
+
+Maria saw what he meant. “He’s formed to please.”
+
+“And it’s our friend who has formed him.” Strether felt in it the
+strange irony.
+
+“So it’s scarcely his fault!”
+
+“It’s at any rate his danger. I mean,” said Strether, “it’s hers. But
+she knows it.”
+
+“Yes, she knows it. And is your idea,” Miss Gostrey asked, “that there
+was some other woman in London?”
+
+“Yes. No. That is I _have_ no ideas. I’m afraid of them. I’ve done with
+them.” And he put out his hand to her. “Good-bye.”
+
+It brought her back to her unanswered question. “To what do you go
+home?”
+
+“I don’t know. There will always be something.”
+
+“To a great difference,” she said as she kept his hand.
+
+“A great difference—no doubt. Yet I shall see what I can make of it.”
+
+“Shall you make anything so good—?” But, as if remembering what Mrs.
+Newsome had done, it was as far as she went.
+
+He had sufficiently understood. “So good as this place at this moment?
+So good as what _you_ make of everything you touch?” He took a moment
+to say, for, really and truly, what stood about him there in her
+offer—which was as the offer of exquisite service, of lightened care,
+for the rest of his days—might well have tempted. It built him softly
+round, it roofed him warmly over, it rested, all so firm, on selection.
+And what ruled selection was beauty and knowledge. It was awkward, it
+was almost stupid, not to seem to prize such things; yet, none the
+less, so far as they made his opportunity they made it only for a
+moment. She’d moreover understand—she always understood.
+
+That indeed might be, but meanwhile she was going on. “There’s nothing,
+you know, I wouldn’t do for you.”
+
+“Oh yes—I know.”
+
+“There’s nothing,” she repeated, “in all the world.”
+
+“I know. I know. But all the same I must go.” He had got it at last.
+“To be right.”
+
+“To be right?”
+
+She had echoed it in vague deprecation, but he felt it already clear
+for her. “That, you see, is my only logic. Not, out of the whole
+affair, to have got anything for myself.”
+
+She thought. “But with your wonderful impressions you’ll have got a
+great deal.”
+
+“A great deal”—he agreed. “But nothing like _you_. It’s you who would
+make me wrong!”
+
+Honest and fine, she couldn’t greatly pretend she didn’t see it. Still
+she could pretend just a little. “But why should you be so dreadfully
+right?”
+
+“That’s the way that—if I must go—you yourself would be the first to
+want me. And I can’t do anything else.”
+
+So then she had to take it, though still with her defeated protest. “It
+isn’t so much your _being_ ‘right’—it’s your horrible sharp eye for
+what makes you so.”
+
+“Oh but you’re just as bad yourself. You can’t resist me when I point
+that out.”
+
+She sighed it at last all comically, all tragically, away. “I can’t
+indeed resist you.”
+
+“Then there we are!” said Strether.
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ambassadors, by Henry James</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Ambassadors</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Henry James</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February, 1996 [eBook #432]<br />
+[Most recently updated: September 17, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Richard D. Hathaway and Julia P DeRanek</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMBASSADORS ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:70%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="cover" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>The Ambassadors</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by Henry James</h2>
+
+<h4> New York Edition (1909) </h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#volume01"><b>Volume I</b></a><br/><br/></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#preface">Preface</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">Book First</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">Book Second</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">Book Third</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">Book Fourth</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">Book Fifth</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">Book Sixth</a><br/><br/></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#volume02"><b>Volume II</b></a><br/><br/></td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">Book Seventh</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">Book Eighth</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">Book Ninth</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">Book Tenth</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">Book Book Eleventh</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">Book Twelfth</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="volume01"></a>Volume I</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="preface"></a>Preface</h2>
+
+<p>
+Nothing is more easy than to state the subject of &ldquo;The
+Ambassadors,&rdquo; which first appeared in twelve numbers of <i>The North
+American Review</i> (1903) and was published as a whole the same year. The
+situation involved is gathered up betimes, that is in the second chapter of
+Book Fifth, for the reader&rsquo;s benefit, into as few words as
+possible&mdash;planted or &ldquo;sunk,&rdquo; stiffly and saliently, in the
+centre of the current, almost perhaps to the obstruction of traffic. Never can
+a composition of this sort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of
+suggestion, and never can that grain, developed, overgrown and smothered, have
+yet lurked more in the mass as an independent particle. The whole case, in
+fine, is in Lambert Strether&rsquo;s irrepressible outbreak to little Bilham on
+the Sunday afternoon in Gloriani&rsquo;s garden, the candour with which he
+yields, for his young friend&rsquo;s enlightenment, to the charming admonition
+of that crisis. The idea of the tale resides indeed in the very fact that an
+hour of such unprecedented ease should have been felt by him <i>as</i> a
+crisis, and he is at pains to express it for us as neatly as we could desire.
+The remarks to which he thus gives utterance contain the essence of &ldquo;The
+Ambassadors,&rdquo; his fingers close, before he has done, round the stem of
+the full-blown flower; which, after that fashion, he continues officiously to
+present to us. &ldquo;Live all you can; it&rsquo;s a mistake not to. It
+doesn&rsquo;t so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your
+life. If you haven&rsquo;t had that what <i>have</i> you had? I&rsquo;m too
+old&mdash;too old at any rate for what I see. What one loses one loses; make no
+mistake about that. Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore
+don&rsquo;t, like me to-day, be without the memory of that illusion. I was
+either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it, and now
+I&rsquo;m a case of reaction against the mistake. Do what you like so long as
+you don&rsquo;t make it. For it <i>was</i> a mistake. Live, live!&rdquo; Such
+is the gist of Strether&rsquo;s appeal to the impressed youth, whom he likes
+and whom he desires to befriend; the word &ldquo;mistake&rdquo; occurs several
+times, it will be seen, in the course of his remarks&mdash;which gives the
+measure of the signal warning he feels attached to his case. He has accordingly
+missed too much, though perhaps after all constitutionally qualified for a
+better part, and he wakes up to it in conditions that press the spring of a
+terrible question. <i>Would</i> there yet perhaps be time for
+reparation?&mdash;reparation, that is, for the injury done his character; for
+the affront, he is quite ready to say, so stupidly put upon it and in which he
+has even himself had so clumsy a hand? The answer to which is that he now at
+all events <i>sees</i>; so that the business of my tale and the march of my
+action, not to say the precious moral of everything, is just my demonstration
+of this process of vision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing can exceed the closeness with which the whole fits again into its germ.
+That had been given me bodily, as usual, by the spoken word, for I was to take
+the image over exactly as I happened to have met it. A friend had repeated to
+me, with great appreciation, a thing or two said to him by a man of
+distinction, much his senior, and to which a sense akin to that of
+Strether&rsquo;s melancholy eloquence might be imputed&mdash;said as chance
+would have, and so easily might, in Paris, and in a charming old garden
+attached to a house of art, and on a Sunday afternoon of summer, many persons
+of great interest being present. The observation there listened to and gathered
+up had contained part of the &ldquo;note&rdquo; that I was to recognise on the
+spot as to my purpose&mdash;had contained in fact the greater part; the rest
+was in the place and the time and the scene they sketched: these constituents
+clustered and combined to give me further support, to give me what I may call
+the note absolute. There it stands, accordingly, full in the tideway; driven
+in, with hard taps, like some strong stake for the noose of a cable, the swirl
+of the current roundabout it. What amplified the hint to more than the bulk of
+hints in general was the gift with it of the old Paris garden, for in that
+token were sealed up values infinitely precious. There was of course the seal
+to break and each item of the packet to count over and handle and estimate; but
+somehow, in the light of the hint, all the elements of a situation of the sort
+most to my taste were there. I could even remember no occasion on which, so
+confronted, I had found it of a livelier interest to take stock, in this
+fashion, of suggested wealth. For I think, verily, that there are degrees of
+merit in subjects&mdash;in spite of the fact that to treat even one of the most
+ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for the feverish and
+prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its dignity as <i>possibly</i>
+absolute. What it comes to, doubtless, is that even among the supremely
+good&mdash;since with such alone is it one&rsquo;s theory of one&rsquo;s honour
+to be concerned&mdash;there is an ideal <i>beauty</i> of goodness the invoked
+action of which is to raise the artistic faith to its maximum. Then truly, I
+hold, one&rsquo;s theme may be said to shine, and that of &ldquo;The
+Ambassadors,&rdquo; I confess, wore this glow for me from beginning to end.
+Fortunately thus I am able to estimate this as, frankly, quite the best,
+&ldquo;all round,&rdquo; of all my productions; any failure of that
+justification would have made such an extreme of complacency publicly fatuous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I recall then in this connexion no moment of subjective intermittence, never
+one of those alarms as for a suspected hollow beneath one&rsquo;s feet, a felt
+ingratitude in the scheme adopted, under which confidence fails and opportunity
+seems but to mock. If the motive of &ldquo;The Wings of the Dove,&rdquo; as I
+have noted, was to worry me at moments by a sealing-up of its face&mdash;though
+without prejudice to its again, of a sudden, fairly grimacing with
+expression&mdash;so in this other business I had absolute conviction and
+constant clearness to deal with; it had been a frank proposition, the whole
+bunch of data, installed on my premises like a monotony of fine weather. (The
+order of composition, in these things, I may mention, was reversed by the order
+of publication; the earlier written of the two books having appeared as the
+later.) Even under the weight of my hero&rsquo;s years I could feel my
+postulate firm; even under the strain of the difference between those of Madame
+de Vionnet and those of Chad Newsome, a difference liable to be denounced as
+shocking, I could still feel it serene. Nothing resisted, nothing betrayed, I
+seem to make out, in this full and sound sense of the matter; it shed from any
+side I could turn it to the same golden glow. I rejoiced in the promise of a
+hero so mature, who would give me thereby the more to bite into&mdash;since
+it&rsquo;s only into thickened motive and accumulated character, I think, that
+the painter of life bites more than a little. My poor friend should have
+accumulated character, certainly; or rather would be quite naturally and
+handsomely possessed of it, in the sense that he would have, and would always
+have felt he had, imagination galore, and that this yet wouldn&rsquo;t have
+wrecked him. It was immeasurable, the opportunity to &ldquo;do&rdquo; a man of
+imagination, for if <i>there</i> mightn&rsquo;t be a chance to
+&ldquo;bite,&rdquo; where in the world might it be? This personage of course,
+so enriched, wouldn&rsquo;t give me, for his type, imagination in
+<i>predominance</i> or as his prime faculty, nor should I, in view of other
+matters, have found that convenient. So particular a luxury&mdash;some
+occasion, that is, for study of the high gift in <i>supreme</i> command of a
+case or of a career&mdash;would still doubtless come on the day I should be
+ready to pay for it; and till then might, as from far back, remain hung up well
+in view and just out of reach. The comparative case meanwhile would
+serve&mdash;it was only on the minor scale that I had treated myself even to
+comparative cases.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was to hasten to add however that, happy stopgaps as the minor scale had thus
+yielded, the instance in hand should enjoy the advantage of the full range of
+the major; since most immediately to the point was the question of that
+<i>supplement</i> of situation logically involved in our gentleman&rsquo;s
+impulse to deliver himself in the Paris garden on the Sunday afternoon&mdash;or
+if not involved by strict logic then all ideally and enchantingly implied in
+it. (I say &ldquo;ideally,&rdquo; because I need scarce mention that for
+development, for expression of its maximum, my glimmering story was, at the
+earliest stage, to have nipped the thread of connexion with the possibilities
+of the actual reported speaker. <i>He</i> remains but the happiest of
+accidents; his actualities, all too definite, precluded any range of
+possibilities; it had only been his charming office to project upon that wide
+field of the artist&rsquo;s vision&mdash;which hangs there ever in place like
+the white sheet suspended for the figures of a child&rsquo;s
+magic-lantern&mdash;a more fantastic and more moveable shadow.) No privilege of
+the teller of tales and the handler of puppets is more delightful, or has more
+of the suspense and the thrill of a game of difficulty breathlessly played,
+than just this business of looking for the unseen and the occult, in a scheme
+half-grasped, by the light or, so to speak, by the clinging scent, of the gage
+already in hand. No dreadful old pursuit of the hidden slave with bloodhounds
+and the rag of association can ever, for &ldquo;excitement,&rdquo; I judge,
+have bettered it at its best. For the dramatist always, by the very law of his
+genius, believes not only in a possible right issue from the rightly-conceived
+tight place; he does much more than this&mdash;he believes, irresistibly, in
+the necessary, the precious &ldquo;tightness&rdquo; of the place (whatever the
+issue) on the strength of any respectable hint. It being thus the respectable
+hint that I had with such avidity picked up, what would be the story to which
+it would most inevitably form the centre? It is part of the charm attendant on
+such questions that the &ldquo;story,&rdquo; with the omens true, as I say,
+puts on from this stage the authenticity of concrete existence. It then is,
+essentially&mdash;it begins to be, though it may more or less obscurely lurk,
+so that the point is not in the least what to make of it, but only, very
+delightfully and very damnably, where to put one&rsquo;s hand on it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In which truth resides surely much of the interest of that admirable mixture
+for salutary application which we know as art. Art deals with what we see, it
+must first contribute full-handed that ingredient; it plucks its material,
+otherwise expressed, in the garden of life&mdash;which material elsewhere grown
+is stale and uneatable. But it has no sooner done this than it has to take
+account of a <i>process</i>&mdash;from which only when it&rsquo;s the basest of
+the servants of man, incurring ignominious dismissal with no
+&ldquo;character,&rdquo; does it, and whether under some muddled pretext of
+morality or on any other, pusillanimously edge away. The process, that of the
+expression, the literal squeezing-out, of value is another affair&mdash;with
+which the happy luck of mere finding has little to do. The joys of finding, at
+this stage, are pretty well over; that quest of the subject as a whole by
+&ldquo;matching,&rdquo; as the ladies say at the shops, the big piece with the
+snippet, having ended, we assume, with a capture. The subject is found, and if
+the problem is then transferred to the ground of what to do with it the field
+opens out for any amount of doing. This is precisely the infusion that, as I
+submit, completes the strong mixture. It is on the other hand the part of the
+business that can least be likened to the chase with horn and hound. It&rsquo;s
+all a sedentary part&mdash;involves as much ciphering, of sorts, as would merit
+the highest salary paid to a chief accountant. Not, however, that the chief
+accountant hasn&rsquo;t <i>his</i> gleams of bliss; for the felicity, or at
+least the equilibrium of the artist&rsquo;s state dwells less, surely, in the
+further delightful complications he can smuggle in than in those he succeeds in
+keeping out. He sows his seed at the risk of too thick a crop; wherefore yet
+again, like the gentlemen who audit ledgers, he must keep his head at any
+price. In consequence of all which, for the interest of the matter, I might
+seem here to have my choice of narrating my &ldquo;hunt&rdquo; for Lambert
+Strether, of describing the capture of the shadow projected by my
+friend&rsquo;s anecdote, or of reporting on the occurrences subsequent to that
+triumph. But I had probably best attempt a little to glance in each direction;
+since it comes to me again and again, over this licentious record, that
+one&rsquo;s bag of adventures, conceived or conceivable, has been only
+half-emptied by the mere telling of one&rsquo;s story. It depends so on what
+one means by that equivocal quantity. There is the story of one&rsquo;s hero,
+and then, thanks to the intimate connexion of things, the story of one&rsquo;s
+story itself. I blush to confess it, but if one&rsquo;s a dramatist one&rsquo;s
+a dramatist, and the latter imbroglio is liable on occasion to strike me as
+really the more objective of the two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The philosophy imputed to him in that beautiful outbreak, the hour there, amid
+such happy provision, striking for him, would have been then, on behalf of my
+man of imagination, to be logically and, as the artless craft of comedy has it,
+&ldquo;led up&rdquo; to; the probable course to such a goal, the goal of so
+conscious a predicament, would have in short to be finely calculated. Where has
+he come from and why has he come, what is he doing (as we Anglo-Saxons, and we
+only, say, in our foredoomed clutch of exotic aids to expression) in that
+<i>galère?</i> To answer these questions plausibly, to answer them as under
+cross-examination in the witness-box by counsel for the prosecution, in other
+words satisfactorily to account for Strether and for his &ldquo;peculiar
+tone,&rdquo; was to possess myself of the entire fabric. At the same time the
+clue to its whereabouts would lie in a certain principle of probability: he
+wouldn&rsquo;t have indulged in his peculiar tone without a reason; it would
+take a felt predicament or a false position to give him so ironic an accent.
+One hadn&rsquo;t been noting &ldquo;tones&rdquo; all one&rsquo;s life without
+recognising when one heard it the voice of the false position. The dear man in
+the Paris garden was then admirably and unmistakeably <i>in</i> one&mdash;which
+was no small point gained; what next accordingly concerned us was the
+determination of <i>this</i> identity. One could only go by probabilities, but
+there was the advantage that the most general of the probabilities were virtual
+certainties. Possessed of our friend&rsquo;s nationality, to start with, there
+was a general probability in his narrower localism; which, for that matter, one
+had really but to keep under the lens for an hour to see it give up its
+secrets. He would have issued, our rueful worthy, from the very heart of New
+England&mdash;at the heels of which matter of course a perfect train of secrets
+tumbled for me into the light. They had to be sifted and sorted, and I shall
+not reproduce the detail of that process; but unmistakeably they were all
+there, and it was but a question, auspiciously, of picking among them. What the
+&ldquo;position&rdquo; would infallibly be, and why, on his hands, it had
+turned &ldquo;false&rdquo;&mdash;these inductive steps could only be as rapid
+as they were distinct. I accounted for everything&mdash;and
+&ldquo;everything&rdquo; had by this time become the most promising
+quantity&mdash;by the view that he had come to Paris in some state of mind
+which was literally undergoing, as a result of new and unexpected assaults and
+infusions, a change almost from hour to hour. He had come with a view that
+might have been figured by a clear green liquid, say, in a neat glass phial;
+and the liquid, once poured into the open cup of <i>application</i>, once
+exposed to the action of another air, had begun to turn from green to red, or
+whatever, and might, for all he knew, be on its way to purple, to black, to
+yellow. At the still wilder extremes represented perhaps, for all he could say
+to the contrary, by a variability so violent, he would at first, naturally, but
+have gazed in surprise and alarm; whereby the <i>situation</i> clearly would
+spring from the play of wildness and the development of extremes. I saw in a
+moment that, should this development proceed both with force and logic, my
+&ldquo;story&rdquo; would leave nothing to be desired. There is always, of
+course, for the story-teller, the irresistible determinant and the incalculable
+advantage of his interest in the story <i>as such</i>; it is ever, obviously,
+overwhelmingly, the prime and precious thing (as other than this I have never
+been able to see it); as to which what makes for it, with whatever headlong
+energy, may be said to pale before the energy with which it simply makes for
+itself. It rejoices, none the less, at its best, to seem to offer itself in a
+light, to seem to know, and with the very last knowledge, what it&rsquo;s
+about&mdash;liable as it yet is at moments to be caught by us with its tongue
+in its cheek and absolutely no warrant but its splendid impudence. Let us grant
+then that the impudence is always there&mdash;there, so to speak, for grace and
+effect and <i>allure</i>; there, above all, because the Story is just the
+spoiled child of art, and because, as we are always disappointed when the
+pampered don&rsquo;t &ldquo;play up,&rdquo; we like it, to that extent, to look
+all its character. It probably does so, in truth, even when we most flatter
+ourselves that we negotiate with it by treaty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All of which, again, is but to say that the <i>steps</i>, for my fable, placed
+themselves with a prompt and, as it were, functional assurance&mdash;an air
+quite as of readiness to have dispensed with logic had I been in fact too
+stupid for my clue. Never, positively, none the less, as the links multiplied,
+had I felt less stupid than for the determination of poor Strether&rsquo;s
+errand and for the apprehension of his issue. These things continued to fall
+together, as by the neat action of their own weight and form, even while their
+commentator scratched his head about them; he easily sees now that they were
+always well in advance of him. As the case completed itself he had in fact,
+from a good way behind, to catch up with them, breathless and a little
+flurried, as he best could. <i>The</i> false position, for our belated man of
+the world&mdash;belated because he had endeavoured so long to escape being one,
+and now at last had really to face his doom&mdash;the false position for him, I
+say, was obviously to have presented himself at the gate of that boundless
+menagerie primed with a moral scheme of the most approved pattern which was yet
+framed to break down on any approach to vivid facts; that is to any at all
+liberal appreciation of them. There would have been of course the case of the
+Strether prepared, wherever presenting himself, only to judge and to feel
+meanly; but <i>he</i> would have moved for me, I confess, enveloped in no
+legend whatever. The actual man&rsquo;s note, from the first of our seeing it
+struck, is the note of discrimination, just as his drama is to become, under
+stress, the drama of discrimination. It would have been his blest imagination,
+we have seen, that had already helped him to discriminate; the element that was
+for so much of the pleasure of my cutting thick, as I have intimated, into his
+intellectual, into his moral substance. Yet here it was, at the same time, just
+here, that a shade for a moment fell across the scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was the dreadful little old tradition, one of the platitudes of the human
+comedy, that people&rsquo;s moral scheme <i>does</i> break down in Paris; that
+nothing is more frequently observed; that hundreds of thousands of more or less
+hypocritical or more or less cynical persons annually visit the place for the
+sake of the probable catastrophe, and that I came late in the day to work
+myself up about it. There was in fine the <i>trivial</i> association, one of
+the vulgarest in the world; but which give me pause no longer, I think, simply
+because its vulgarity is so advertised. The revolution performed by Strether
+under the influence of the most interesting of great cities was to have nothing
+to do with any <i>bêtise</i> of the imputably &ldquo;tempted&rdquo; state; he
+was to be thrown forward, rather, thrown quite with violence, upon his lifelong
+trick of intense reflexion: which friendly test indeed was to bring him out,
+through winding passages, through alternations of darkness and light, very much
+<i>in</i> Paris, but with the surrounding scene itself a minor matter, a mere
+symbol for more things than had been dreamt of in the philosophy of Woollett.
+Another surrounding scene would have done as well for our show could it have
+represented a place in which Strether&rsquo;s errand was likely to lie and his
+crisis to await him. The <i>likely</i> place had the great merit of sparing me
+preparations; there would have been too many involved&mdash;not at all
+impossibilities, only rather worrying and delaying difficulties&mdash;in
+positing elsewhere Chad Newsome&rsquo;s interesting relation, his so
+interesting complexity of relations. Strether&rsquo;s appointed stage, in fine,
+could be but Chad&rsquo;s most luckily selected one. The young man had gone in,
+as they say, for circumjacent charm; and where he would have found it, by the
+turn of his mind, most &ldquo;authentic,&rdquo; was where his earnest
+friend&rsquo;s analysis would most find <i>him</i>; as well as where, for that
+matter, the former&rsquo;s whole analytic faculty would be led such a wonderful
+dance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Ambassadors&rdquo; had been, all conveniently, &ldquo;arranged
+for&rdquo;; its first appearance was from month to month, in the <i>North
+American Review</i> during 1903, and I had been open from far back to any
+pleasant provocation for ingenuity that might reside in one&rsquo;s actively
+adopting&mdash;so as to make it, in its way, a small compositional
+law&mdash;recurrent breaks and resumptions. I had made up my mind here
+regularly to exploit and enjoy these often rather rude jolts&mdash;having
+found, as I believed an admirable way to it; yet every question of form and
+pressure, I easily remember, paled in the light of the major propriety,
+recognised as soon as really weighed; that of employing but one centre and
+keeping it all within my hero&rsquo;s compass. The thing was to be so much this
+worthy&rsquo;s intimate adventure that even the projection of his consciousness
+upon it from beginning to end without intermission or deviation would probably
+still leave a part of its value for him, and <i>a fortiori</i> for ourselves,
+unexpressed. I might, however, express every grain of it that there would be
+room for&mdash;on condition of contriving a splendid particular economy. Other
+persons in no small number were to people the scene, and each with his or her
+axe to grind, his or her situation to treat, his or her coherency not to fail
+of, his or her relation to my leading motive, in a word, to establish and carry
+on. But Strether&rsquo;s sense of these things, and Strether&rsquo;s only,
+should avail me for showing them; I should know them but through his more or
+less groping knowledge of them, since his very gropings would figure among his
+most interesting motions, and a full observance of the rich rigour I speak of
+would give me more of the effect I should be most &ldquo;after&rdquo; than all
+other possible observances together. It would give me a large unity, and that
+in turn would crown me with the grace to which the enlightened story-teller
+will at any time, for his interest, sacrifice if need be all other graces
+whatever. I refer of course to the grace of intensity, which there are ways of
+signally achieving and ways of signally missing&mdash;as we see it, all round
+us, helplessly and woefully missed. Not that it isn&rsquo;t, on the other hand,
+a virtue eminently subject to appreciation&mdash;there being no strict, no
+absolute measure of it; so that one may hear it acclaimed where it has quite
+escaped one&rsquo;s perception, and see it unnoticed where one has gratefully
+hailed it. After all of which I am not sure, either, that the immense amusement
+of the whole cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not operate, for the fond
+fabulist, when judicious not less than fond, as his best of determinants. That
+charming principle is always there, at all events, to keep interest fresh: it
+is a principle, we remember, essentially ravenous, without scruple and without
+mercy, appeased with no cheap nor easy nourishment. It enjoys the costly
+sacrifice and rejoices thereby in the very odour of difficulty&mdash;even as
+ogres, with their &ldquo;Fee-faw-fum!&rdquo; rejoice in the smell of the blood
+of Englishmen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so speedy,
+definition of my gentleman&rsquo;s job&mdash;his coming out, all solemnly
+appointed and deputed, to &ldquo;save&rdquo; Chad, and his then finding the
+young man so disobligingly and, at first, so bewilderingly not lost that a new
+issue altogether, in the connexion, prodigiously faces them, which has to be
+dealt with in a new light&mdash;promised as many calls on ingenuity and on the
+higher branches of the compositional art as one could possibly desire. Again
+and yet again, as, from book to book, I proceed with my survey, I find no
+source of interest equal to this verification after the fact, as I may call it,
+and the more in detail the better, of the scheme of consistency &ldquo;gone
+in&rdquo; for. As always&mdash;since the charm never fails&mdash;the retracing
+of the process from point to point brings back the old illusion. The old
+intentions bloom again and flower&mdash;in spite of all the blossoms they were
+to have dropped by the way. This is the charm, as I say, of adventure
+<i>transposed</i>&mdash;the thrilling ups and downs, the intricate ins and outs
+of the compositional problem, made after such a fashion admirably objective,
+becoming the question at issue and keeping the author&rsquo;s heart in his
+mouth. Such an element, for instance, as his intention that Mrs. Newsome, away
+off with her finger on the pulse of Massachusetts, should yet be no less
+intensely than circuitously present through the whole thing, should be no less
+felt as to be reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest
+portrayal at first hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good faith, I
+say, once it&rsquo;s unmistakeably there, takes on again an actuality not too
+much impaired by the comparative dimness of the particular success. Cherished
+intention too inevitably acts and operates, in the book, about fifty times as
+little as I had fondly dreamt it might; but that scarce spoils for me the
+pleasure of recognising the fifty ways in which I had sought to provide for it.
+The mere charm of seeing such an idea constituent, in its degree; the fineness
+of the measures taken&mdash;a real extension, if successful, of the very terms
+and possibilities of representation and figuration&mdash;such things alone
+were, after this fashion, inspiring, such things alone were a gage of the
+probable success of that dissimulated calculation with which the whole effort
+was to square. But oh the cares begotten, none the less, of that same
+&ldquo;judicious&rdquo; sacrifice to a particular form of interest! One&rsquo;s
+work should have composition, because composition alone is positive beauty; but
+all the while&mdash;apart from one&rsquo;s inevitable consciousness too of the
+dire paucity of readers ever recognising or ever missing positive
+beauty&mdash;how, as to the cheap and easy, at every turn, how, as to immediacy
+and facility, and even as to the commoner vivacity, positive beauty might have
+to be sweated for and paid for! Once achieved and installed it may always be
+trusted to make the poor seeker feel he would have blushed to the roots of his
+hair for failing of it; yet, how, as its virtue can be essentially but the
+virtue of the whole, the wayside traps set in the interest of muddlement and
+pleading but the cause of the moment, of the particular bit in itself, have to
+be kicked out of the path! All the sophistications in life, for example, might
+have appeared to muster on behalf of the menace&mdash;the menace to a bright
+variety&mdash;involved in Strether&rsquo;s having all the subjective
+&ldquo;say,&rdquo; as it were, to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had I, meanwhile, made him at once hero and historian, endowed him with the
+romantic privilege of the &ldquo;first person&rdquo;&mdash;the darkest abyss of
+romance this, inveterately, when enjoyed on the grand scale&mdash;variety, and
+many other queer matters as well, might have been smuggled in by a back door.
+Suffice it, to be brief, that the first person, in the long piece, is a form
+foredoomed to looseness and that looseness, never much my affair, had never
+been so little so as on this particular occasion. All of which reflexions
+flocked to the standard from the moment&mdash;a very early one&mdash;the
+question of how to keep my form amusing while sticking so close to my central
+figure and constantly taking its pattern from him had to be faced. He arrives
+(arrives at Chester) as for the dreadful purpose of giving his creator
+&ldquo;no end&rdquo; to tell about him&mdash;before which rigorous mission the
+serenest of creators might well have quailed. I was far from the serenest; I
+was more than agitated enough to reflect that, grimly deprived of one
+alternative or one substitute for &ldquo;telling,&rdquo; I must address myself
+tooth and nail to another. I couldn&rsquo;t, save by implication, make other
+persons tell <i>each other</i> about him&mdash;blest resource, blest necessity,
+of the drama, which reaches its effects of unity, all remarkably, by paths
+absolutely opposite to the paths of the novel: with other persons, save as they
+were primarily <i>his</i> persons (not he primarily but one of theirs), I had
+simply nothing to do. I had relations for him none the less, by the mercy of
+Providence, quite as much as if my exhibition was to be a muddle; if I could
+only by implication and a show of consequence make other persons tell each
+other about him, I could at least make him tell <i>them</i> whatever in the
+world he must; and could so, by the same token&mdash;which was a further luxury
+thrown in&mdash;see straight into the deep differences between what that could
+do for me, or at all events for <i>him</i>, and the large ease of
+&ldquo;autobiography.&rdquo; It may be asked why, if one so keeps to
+one&rsquo;s hero, one shouldn&rsquo;t make a single mouthful of
+&ldquo;method,&rdquo; shouldn&rsquo;t throw the reins on his neck and, letting
+them flap there as free as in &ldquo;Gil Blas&rdquo; or in &ldquo;David
+Copperfield,&rdquo; equip him with the double privilege of subject and
+object&mdash;a course that has at least the merit of brushing away questions at
+a sweep. The answer to which is, I think, that one makes that surrender only if
+one is prepared <i>not</i> to make certain precious discriminations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The &ldquo;first person&rdquo; then, so employed, is addressed by the author
+directly to ourselves, his possible readers, whom he has to reckon with, at the
+best, by our English tradition, so loosely and vaguely after all, so little
+respectfully, on so scant a presumption of exposure to criticism. Strether, on
+the other hand, encaged and provided for as &ldquo;The Ambassadors&rdquo;
+encages and provides, has to keep in view proprieties much stiffer and more
+salutary than any our straight and credulous gape are likely to bring home to
+him, has exhibitional conditions to meet, in a word, that forbid the terrible
+<i>fluidity</i> of self-revelation. I may seem not to better the case for my
+discrimination if I say that, for my first care, I had thus inevitably to set
+him up a confidant or two, to wave away with energy the custom of the seated
+mass of explanation after the fact, the inserted block of merely referential
+narrative, which flourishes so, to the shame of the modern impatience, on the
+serried page of Balzac, but which seems simply to appal our actual, our general
+weaker, digestion. &ldquo;Harking back to make up&rdquo; took at any rate more
+doing, as the phrase is, not only than the reader of to-day demands, but than
+he will tolerate at any price any call upon him either to understand or
+remotely to measure; and for the beauty of the thing when done the current
+editorial mind in particular appears wholly without sense. It is not, however,
+primarily for either of these reasons, whatever their weight, that
+Strether&rsquo;s friend Waymarsh is so keenly clutched at, on the threshold of
+the book, or that no less a pounce is made on Maria Gostrey&mdash;without even
+the pretext, either, of <i>her</i> being, in essence, Strether&rsquo;s friend.
+She is the reader&rsquo;s friend much rather&mdash;in consequence of
+dispositions that make him so eminently require one; and she acts in that
+capacity, and <i>really</i> in that capacity alone, with exemplary devotion
+from beginning to and of the book. She is an enrolled, a direct, aid to
+lucidity; she is in fine, to tear off her mask, the most unmitigated and
+abandoned of <i>ficelles</i>. Half the dramatist&rsquo;s art, as we well
+know&mdash;since if we don&rsquo;t it&rsquo;s not the fault of the proofs that
+lie scattered about us&mdash;is in the use of <i>ficelles</i>; by which I mean
+in a deep dissimulation of his dependence on them. Waymarsh only to a slighter
+degree belongs, in the whole business, less to my subject than to my treatment
+of it; the interesting proof, in these connexions, being that one has but to
+take one&rsquo;s subject for the stuff of drama to interweave with enthusiasm
+as many Gostreys as need be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The material of &ldquo;The Ambassadors,&rdquo; conforming in this respect
+exactly to that of &ldquo;The Wings of the Dove,&rdquo; published just before
+it, is taken absolutely for the stuff of drama; so that, availing myself of the
+opportunity given me by this edition for some prefatory remarks on the latter
+work, I had mainly to make on its behalf the point of its scenic consistency.
+It disguises that virtue, in the oddest way in the world, by just
+<i>looking</i>, as we turn its pages, as little scenic as possible; but it
+sharply divides itself, just as the composition before us does, into the parts
+that prepare, that tend in fact to over-prepare, for scenes, and the parts, or
+otherwise into the scenes, that justify and crown the preparation. It may
+definitely be said, I think, that everything in it that is not scene (not, I of
+course mean, complete and functional scene, treating <i>all</i> the submitted
+matter, as by logical start, logical turn, and logical finish) is discriminated
+preparation, is the fusion and synthesis of picture. These alternations propose
+themselves all recogniseably, I think, from an early stage, as the very form
+and figure of &ldquo;The Ambassadors&rdquo;; so that, to repeat, such an agent
+as Miss Gostrey pre-engaged at a high salary, but waits in the draughty wing
+with her shawl and her smelling-salts. Her function speaks at once for itself,
+and by the time she has dined with Strether in London and gone to a play with
+him her intervention as a <i>ficelle</i> is, I hold, expertly justified. Thanks
+to it we have treated scenically, and scenically alone, the whole lumpish
+question of Strether&rsquo;s &ldquo;past,&rdquo; which has seen us more happily
+on the way than anything else could have done; we have strained to a high
+lucidity and vivacity (or at least we hope we have) certain indispensable
+facts; we have seen our two or three immediate friends all conveniently and
+profitably in &ldquo;action&rdquo;; to say nothing of our beginning to descry
+others, of a remoter intensity, getting into motion, even if a bit vaguely as
+yet, for our further enrichment. Let my first point be here that the scene in
+question, that in which the whole situation at Woollett and the complex forces
+that have propelled my hero to where this lively extractor of his value and
+distiller of his essence awaits him, is normal and entire, is really an
+excellent <i>standard</i> scene; copious, comprehensive, and accordingly never
+short, but with its office as definite as that of the hammer on the gong of the
+clock, the office of expressing <i>all that is in</i> the hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The &ldquo;<i>ficelle</i>&rdquo; character of the subordinate party is as
+artfully dissimulated, throughout, as may be, and to that extent that, with the
+seams or joints of Maria Gostrey&rsquo;s ostensible connectedness taken
+particular care of, duly smoothed over, that is, and anxiously kept from
+showing as &ldquo;pieced on,&rdquo; this figure doubtless achieves, after a
+fashion, something of the dignity of a prime idea: which circumstance but shows
+us afresh how many quite incalculable but none the less clear sources of
+enjoyment for the infatuated artist, how many copious springs of our
+never-to-be-slighted &ldquo;fun&rdquo; for the reader and critic susceptible of
+contagion, may sound their incidental plash as soon as an artistic process
+begins to enjoy free development. Exquisite&mdash;in illustration of
+this&mdash;the mere interest and amusement of such at once
+&ldquo;creative&rdquo; and critical questions as how and where and why to make
+Miss Gostrey&rsquo;s false connexion carry itself, under a due high polish, as
+a real one. Nowhere is it more of an artful expedient for mere consistency of
+form, to mention a case, than in the last &ldquo;scene&rdquo; of the book,
+where its function is to give or to add nothing whatever, but only to express
+as vividly as possible certain things quite other than itself and that are of
+the already fixed and appointed measure. Since, however, all art is
+<i>expression</i>, and is thereby vividness, one was to find the door open here
+to any amount of delightful dissimulation. These verily are the refinements and
+ecstasies of method&mdash;amid which, or certainly under the influence of any
+exhilarated demonstration of which, one must keep one&rsquo;s head and not lose
+one&rsquo;s way. To cultivate an adequate intelligence for them and to make
+that sense operative is positively to find a charm in any produced ambiguity of
+appearance that is not by the same stroke, and all helplessly, an ambiguity of
+sense. To project imaginatively, for my hero, a relation that has nothing to do
+with the matter (the matter of my subject) but has everything to do with the
+manner (the manner of my presentation of the same) and yet to treat it, at
+close quarters and for fully economic expression&rsquo;s possible sake, as if
+it were important and essential&mdash;to do that sort of thing and yet muddle
+nothing may easily become, as one goes, a signally attaching proposition; even
+though it all remains but part and parcel, I hasten to recognise, of the merely
+general and related question of expressional curiosity and expressional
+decency.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am moved to add after so much insistence on the scenic side of my labour that
+I have found the steps of re-perusal almost as much waylaid here by quite
+another style of effort in the same signal interest&mdash;or have in other
+words not failed to note how, even so associated and so discriminated, the
+finest proprieties and charms of the non-scenic may, under the right hand for
+them, still keep their intelligibility and assert their office. Infinitely
+suggestive such an observation as this last on the whole delightful head, where
+representation is concerned, of possible variety, of effective expressional
+change and contrast. One would like, at such an hour as this, for critical
+licence, to go into the matter of the noted inevitable deviation (from too fond
+an original vision) that the exquisite treachery even of the straightest
+execution may ever be trusted to inflict even on the most mature plan&mdash;the
+case being that, though one&rsquo;s last reconsidered production always seems
+to bristle with that particular evidence, &ldquo;The Ambassadors&rdquo; would
+place a flood of such light at my service. I must attach to my final remark
+here a different import; noting in the other connexion I just glanced at that
+such passages as that of my hero&rsquo;s first encounter with Chad Newsome,
+absolute attestations of the non-scenic form though they be, yet lay the
+firmest hand too&mdash;so far at least as intention goes&mdash;on
+representational effect. To report at all closely and completely of what
+&ldquo;passes&rdquo; on a given occasion is inevitably to become more or less
+scenic; and yet in the instance I allude to, <i>with</i> the conveyance,
+expressional curiosity and expressional decency are sought and arrived at under
+quite another law. The true inwardness of this may be at bottom but that one of
+the suffered treacheries has consisted precisely, for Chad&rsquo;s whole figure
+and presence, of a direct presentability diminished and
+compromised&mdash;despoiled, that is, of its <i>proportional</i> advantage; so
+that, in a word, the whole economy of his author&rsquo;s relation to him has at
+important points to be redetermined. The book, however, critically viewed, is
+touchingly full of these disguised and repaired losses, these insidious
+recoveries, these intensely redemptive consistencies. The pages in which Mamie
+Pocock gives her appointed and, I can&rsquo;t but think, duly felt lift to the
+whole action by the so inscrutably-applied side-stroke or short-cut of our just
+watching and as quite at an angle of vision as yet untried, her single hour of
+suspense in the hotel salon, in our partaking of her concentrated study of the
+sense of matters bearing on her own case, all the bright warm Paris afternoon,
+from the balcony that overlooks the Tuileries garden&mdash;these are as marked
+an example of the representational virtue that insists here and there on being,
+for the charm of opposition and renewal, other than the scenic. It
+wouldn&rsquo;t take much to make me further argue that from an equal play of
+such oppositions the book gathers an intensity that fairly adds to the
+dramatic&mdash;though the latter is supposed to be the sum of all intensities;
+or that has at any rate nothing to fear from juxtaposition with it. I
+consciously fail to shrink in fact from that extravagance&mdash;I risk it
+rather, for the sake of the moral involved; which is not that the particular
+production before us exhausts the interesting questions it raises, but that the
+Novel remains still, under the right persuasion, the most independent, most
+elastic, most prodigious of literary forms.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right"> HENRY JAMES.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>Book First</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his
+friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till
+evening he was not wholly disconcerted. A telegram from him bespeaking a room
+&ldquo;only if not noisy,&rdquo; reply paid, was produced for the enquirer at
+the office, so that the understanding they should meet at Chester rather than
+at Liverpool remained to that extent sound. The same secret principle, however,
+that had prompted Strether not absolutely to desire Waymarsh&rsquo;s presence
+at the dock, that had led him thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of
+it, now operated to make him feel he could still wait without disappointment.
+They would dine together at the worst, and, with all respect to dear old
+Waymarsh&mdash;if not even, for that matter, to himself&mdash;there was little
+fear that in the sequel they shouldn&rsquo;t see enough of each other. The
+principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most newly
+disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive&mdash;the fruit of a sharp sense
+that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking, after so much
+separation, into his comrade&rsquo;s face, his business would be a trifle
+bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to present itself to the
+nearing steamer as the first &ldquo;note,&rdquo; of Europe. Mixed with
+everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether&rsquo;s part, that it
+would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in quite a sufficient
+degree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That note had been meanwhile&mdash;since the previous afternoon, thanks to this
+happier device&mdash;such a consciousness of personal freedom as he
+hadn&rsquo;t known for years; such a deep taste of change and of having above
+all for the moment nobody and nothing to consider, as promised already, if
+headlong hope were not too foolish, to colour his adventure with cool success.
+There were people on the ship with whom he had easily consorted&mdash;so far as
+ease could up to now be imputed to him&mdash;and who for the most part plunged
+straight into the current that set from the landing-stage to London; there were
+others who had invited him to a tryst at the inn and had even invoked his aid
+for a &ldquo;look round&rdquo; at the beauties of Liverpool; but he had stolen
+away from every one alike, had kept no appointment and renewed no acquaintance,
+had been indifferently aware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves
+fortunate in being, unlike himself, &ldquo;met,&rdquo; and had even
+independently, unsociably, alone, without encounter or relapse and by mere
+quiet evasion, given his afternoon and evening to the immediate and the
+sensible. They formed a qualified draught of Europe, an afternoon and an
+evening on the banks of the Mersey, but such as it was he took his potion at
+least undiluted. He winced a little, truly, at the thought that Waymarsh might
+be already at Chester; he reflected that, should he have to describe himself
+there as having &ldquo;got in&rdquo; so early, it would be difficult to make
+the interval look particularly eager; but he was like a man who, elatedly
+finding in his pocket more money than usual, handles it a while and idly and
+pleasantly chinks it before addressing himself to the business of spending.
+That he was prepared to be vague to Waymarsh about the hour of the ship&rsquo;s
+touching, and that he both wanted extremely to see him and enjoyed extremely
+the duration of delay&mdash;these things, it is to be conceived, were early
+signs in him that his relation to his actual errand might prove none of the
+simplest. He was burdened, poor Strether&mdash;it had better be confessed at
+the outset&mdash;with the oddity of a double consciousness. There was
+detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the young woman in the glass cage had held up to him across her counter
+the pale-pink leaflet bearing his friend&rsquo;s name, which she neatly
+pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall, facing a lady who met
+his eyes as with an intention suddenly determined, and whose features&mdash;not
+freshly young, not markedly fine, but on happy terms with each other&mdash;came
+back to him as from a recent vision. For a moment they stood confronted; then
+the moment placed her: he had noticed her the day before, noticed her at his
+previous inn, where&mdash;again in the hall&mdash;she had been briefly engaged
+with some people of his own ship&rsquo;s company. Nothing had actually passed
+between them, and he would as little have been able to say what had been the
+sign of her face for him on the first occasion as to name the ground of his
+present recognition. Recognition at any rate appeared to prevail on her own
+side as well&mdash;which would only have added to the mystery. All she now
+began by saying to him nevertheless was that, having chanced to catch his
+enquiry, she was moved to ask, by his leave, if it were possibly a question of
+Mr. Waymarsh of Milrose Connecticut&mdash;Mr. Waymarsh the American lawyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;my very well-known friend. He&rsquo;s
+to meet me here, coming up from Malvern, and I supposed he&rsquo;d already have
+arrived. But he doesn&rsquo;t come till later, and I&rsquo;m relieved not to
+have kept him. Do you know him?&rdquo; Strether wound up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wasn&rsquo;t till after he had spoken that he became aware of how much there
+had been in him of response; when the tone of her own rejoinder, as well as the
+play of something more in her face&mdash;something more, that is, than its
+apparently usual restless light&mdash;seemed to notify him. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+met him at Milrose&mdash;where I used sometimes, a good while ago, to stay; I
+had friends there who were friends of his, and I&rsquo;ve been at his house. I
+won&rsquo;t answer for it that he would know me,&rdquo; Strether&rsquo;s new
+acquaintance pursued; &ldquo;but I should be delighted to see him.
+Perhaps,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;I shall&mdash;for I&rsquo;m staying
+over.&rdquo; She paused while our friend took in these things, and it was as if
+a good deal of talk had already passed. They even vaguely smiled at it, and
+Strether presently observed that Mr. Waymarsh would, no doubt, be easily to be
+seen. This, however, appeared to affect the lady as if she might have advanced
+too far. She appeared to have no reserves about anything. &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she
+said, &ldquo;he won&rsquo;t care!&rdquo;&mdash;and she immediately thereupon
+remarked that she believed Strether knew the Munsters; the Munsters being the
+people he had seen her with at Liverpool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he didn&rsquo;t, it happened, know the Munsters well enough to give the
+case much of a lift; so that they were left together as if over the mere laid
+table of conversation. Her qualification of the mentioned connexion had rather
+removed than placed a dish, and there seemed nothing else to serve. Their
+attitude remained, none the less, that of not forsaking the board; and the
+effect of this in turn was to give them the appearance of having accepted each
+other with an absence of preliminaries practically complete. They moved along
+the hall together, and Strether&rsquo;s companion threw off that the hotel had
+the advantage of a garden. He was aware by this time of his strange
+inconsequence: he had shirked the intimacies of the steamer and had muffled the
+shock of Waymarsh only to find himself forsaken, in this sudden case, both of
+avoidance and of caution. He passed, under this unsought protection and before
+he had so much as gone up to his room, into the garden of the hotel, and at the
+end of ten minutes had agreed to meet there again, as soon as he should have
+made himself tidy, the dispenser of such good assurances. He wanted to look at
+the town, and they would forthwith look together. It was almost as if she had
+been in possession and received him as a guest. Her acquaintance with the place
+presented her in a manner as a hostess, and Strether had a rueful glance for
+the lady in the glass cage. It was as if this personage had seen herself
+instantly superseded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When in a quarter of an hour he came down, what his hostess saw, what she might
+have taken in with a vision kindly adjusted, was the lean, the slightly loose
+figure of a man of the middle height and something more perhaps than the middle
+age&mdash;a man of five-and-fifty, whose most immediate signs were a marked
+bloodless brownness of face, a thick dark moustache, of characteristically
+American cut, growing strong and falling low, a head of hair still abundant but
+irregularly streaked with grey, and a nose of bold free prominence, the even
+line, the high finish, as it might have been called, of which, had a certain
+effect of mitigation. A perpetual pair of glasses astride of this fine ridge,
+and a line, unusually deep and drawn, the prolonged pen-stroke of time,
+accompanying the curve of the moustache from nostril to chin, did something to
+complete the facial furniture that an attentive observer would have seen
+catalogued, on the spot, in the vision of the other party to Strether&rsquo;s
+appointment. She waited for him in the garden, the other party, drawing on a
+pair of singularly fresh soft and elastic light gloves and presenting herself
+with a superficial readiness which, as he approached her over the small smooth
+lawn and in the watery English sunshine, he might, with his rougher
+preparation, have marked as the model for such an occasion. She had, this lady,
+a perfect plain propriety, an expensive subdued suitability, that her companion
+was not free to analyse, but that struck him, so that his consciousness of it
+was instantly acute, as a quality quite new to him. Before reaching her he
+stopped on the grass and went through the form of feeling for something,
+possibly forgotten, in the light overcoat he carried on his arm; yet the
+essence of the act was no more than the impulse to gain time. Nothing could
+have been odder than Strether&rsquo;s sense of himself as at that moment
+launched in something of which the sense would be quite disconnected from the
+sense of his past and which was literally beginning there and then. It had
+begun in fact already upstairs and before the dressing glass that struck him as
+blocking further, so strangely, the dimness of the window of his dull bedroom;
+begun with a sharper survey of the elements of Appearance than he had for a
+long time been moved to make. He had during those moments felt these elements
+to be not so much to his hand as he should have liked, and then had fallen back
+on the thought that they were precisely a matter as to which help was supposed
+to come from what he was about to do. He was about to go up to London, so that
+hat and necktie might wait. What had come as straight to him as a ball in a
+well-played game&mdash;and caught moreover not less neatly&mdash;was just the
+air, in the person of his friend, of having seen and chosen, the air of
+achieved possession of those vague qualities and quantities that collectively
+figured to him as the advantage snatched from lucky chances. Without pomp or
+circumstance, certainly, as her original address to him, equally with his own
+response, had been, he would have sketched to himself his impression of her as:
+&ldquo;Well, she&rsquo;s more thoroughly civilized&mdash;!&rdquo; If
+&ldquo;More thoroughly than <i>whom?</i>&rdquo; would not have been for him a
+sequel to this remark, that was just by reason of his deep consciousness of the
+bearing of his comparison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The amusement, at all events, of a civilisation intenser was
+what&mdash;familiar compatriot as she was, with the full tone of the compatriot
+and the rattling link not with mystery but only with dear dyspeptic
+Waymarsh&mdash;she appeared distinctly to promise. His pause while he felt in
+his overcoat was positively the pause of confidence, and it enabled his eyes to
+make out as much of a case for her, in proportion, as her own made out for
+himself. She affected him as almost insolently young; but an easily carried
+five-and-thirty could still do that. She was, however, like himself marked and
+wan; only it naturally couldn&rsquo;t have been known to him how much a
+spectator looking from one to the other might have discerned that they had in
+common. It wouldn&rsquo;t for such a spectator have been altogether
+insupposable that, each so finely brown and so sharply spare, each confessing
+so to dents of surface and aids to sight, to a disproportionate nose and a head
+delicately or grossly grizzled, they might have been brother and sister. On
+this ground indeed there would have been a residuum of difference; such a
+sister having surely known in respect to such a brother the extremity of
+separation, and such a brother now feeling in respect to such a sister the
+extremity of surprise. Surprise, it was true, was not on the other hand what
+the eyes of Strether&rsquo;s friend most showed him while she gave him,
+stroking her gloves smoother, the time he appreciated. They had taken hold of
+him straightway measuring him up and down as if they knew how; as if he were
+human material they had already in some sort handled. Their possessor was in
+truth, it may be communicated, the mistress of a hundred cases or categories,
+receptacles of the mind, subdivisions for convenience, in which, from a full
+experience, she pigeon-holed her fellow mortals with a hand as free as that of
+a compositor scattering type. She was as equipped in this particular as
+Strether was the reverse, and it made an opposition between them which he might
+well have shrunk from submitting to if he had fully suspected it. So far as he
+did suspect it he was on the contrary, after a short shake of his
+consciousness, as pleasantly passive as might be. He really had a sort of sense
+of what she knew. He had quite the sense that she knew things he didn&rsquo;t,
+and though this was a concession that in general he found not easy to make to
+women, he made it now as good-humouredly as if it lifted a burden. His eyes
+were so quiet behind his eternal nippers that they might almost have been
+absent without changing his face, which took its expression mainly, and not
+least its stamp of sensibility, from other sources, surface and grain and form.
+He joined his guide in an instant, and then felt she had profited still better
+than he by his having been for the moments just mentioned, so at the disposal
+of her intelligence. She knew even intimate things about him that he
+hadn&rsquo;t yet told her and perhaps never would. He wasn&rsquo;t unaware that
+he had told her rather remarkably many for the time, but these were not the
+real ones. Some of the real ones, however, precisely, were what she knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were to pass again through the hall of the inn to get into the street, and
+it was here she presently checked him with a question. &ldquo;Have you looked
+up my name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could only stop with a laugh. &ldquo;Have you looked up mine?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh dear, yes&mdash;as soon as you left me. I went to the office and
+asked. Hadn&rsquo;t <i>you</i> better do the same?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wondered. &ldquo;Find out who you are?&mdash;after the uplifted young woman
+there has seen us thus scrape acquaintance!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed on her side now at the shade of alarm in his amusement.
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it a reason the more? If what you&rsquo;re afraid of is the
+injury for me&mdash;my being seen to walk off with a gentleman who has to ask
+who I am&mdash;I assure you I don&rsquo;t in the least mind. Here,
+however,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;is my card, and as I find there&rsquo;s
+something else again I have to say at the office, you can just study it during
+the moment I leave you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She left him after he had taken from her the small pasteboard she had extracted
+from her pocket-book, and he had extracted another from his own, to exchange
+with it, before she came back. He read thus the simple designation &ldquo;Maria
+Gostrey,&rdquo; to which was attached, in a corner of the card, with a number,
+the name of a street, presumably in Paris, without other appreciable identity
+than its foreignness. He put the card into his waistcoat pocket, keeping his
+own meanwhile in evidence; and as he leaned against the door-post he met with
+the smile of a straying thought what the expanse before the hotel offered to
+his view. It was positively droll to him that he should already have Maria
+Gostrey, whoever she was&mdash;of which he hadn&rsquo;t really the least
+idea&mdash;in a place of safe keeping. He had somehow an assurance that he
+should carefully preserve the little token he had just tucked in. He gazed with
+unseeing lingering eyes as he followed some of the implications of his act,
+asking himself if he really felt admonished to qualify it as disloyal. It was
+prompt, it was possibly even premature, and there was little doubt of the
+expression of face the sight of it would have produced in a certain person. But
+if it was &ldquo;wrong&rdquo;&mdash;why then he had better not have come out at
+all. At this, poor man, had he already&mdash;and even before meeting
+Waymarsh&mdash;arrived. He had believed he had a limit, but the limit had been
+transcended within thirty-six hours. By how long a space on the plane of
+manners or even of morals, moreover, he felt still more sharply after Maria
+Gostrey had come back to him and with a gay decisive &ldquo;So
+now&mdash;!&rdquo; led him forth into the world. This counted, it struck him as
+he walked beside her with his overcoat on an arm, his umbrella under another
+and his personal pasteboard a little stiffly retained between forefinger and
+thumb, this struck him as really, in comparison his introduction to things. It
+hadn&rsquo;t been &ldquo;Europe&rdquo; at Liverpool no&mdash;not even in the
+dreadful delightful impressive streets the night before&mdash;to the extent his
+present companion made it so. She hadn&rsquo;t yet done that so much as when,
+after their walk had lasted a few minutes and he had had time to wonder if a
+couple of sidelong glances from her meant that he had best have put on gloves
+she almost pulled him up with an amused challenge. &ldquo;But why&mdash;fondly
+as it&rsquo;s so easy to imagine your clinging to it&mdash;don&rsquo;t you put
+it away? Or if it&rsquo;s an inconvenience to you to carry it, one&rsquo;s
+often glad to have one&rsquo;s card back. The fortune one spends in
+them!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he saw both that his way of marching with his own prepared tribute had
+affected her as a deviation in one of those directions he couldn&rsquo;t yet
+measure, and that she supposed this emblem to be still the one he had received
+from her. He accordingly handed her the card as if in restitution, but as soon
+as she had it she felt the difference and, with her eyes on it, stopped short
+for apology. &ldquo;I like,&rdquo; she observed, &ldquo;your name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;you won&rsquo;t have heard of it!&rdquo;
+Yet he had his reasons for not being sure but that she perhaps might.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah it was but too visible! She read it over again as one who had never seen it.
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Mr. Lewis Lambert Strether&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;she sounded it
+almost as freely as for any stranger. She repeated however that she liked
+it&mdash;&ldquo;particularly the Lewis Lambert. It&rsquo;s the name of a novel
+of Balzac&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I know that!&rdquo; said Strether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But the novel&rsquo;s an awfully bad one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know that too,&rdquo; Strether smiled. To which he added with an
+irrelevance that was only superficial: &ldquo;I come from Woollett
+Massachusetts.&rdquo; It made her for some reason&mdash;the irrelevance or
+whatever&mdash;laugh. Balzac had described many cities, but hadn&rsquo;t
+described Woollett Massachusetts. &ldquo;You say that,&rdquo; she returned,
+&ldquo;as if you wanted one immediately to know the worst.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I think it&rsquo;s a thing,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you must
+already have made out. I feel it so that I certainly must look it, speak it,
+and, as people say there, &lsquo;act&rsquo; it. It sticks out of me, and you
+knew surely for yourself as soon as you looked at me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The worst, you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, the fact of where I come from. There at any rate it <i>is</i>; so
+that you won&rsquo;t be able, if anything happens, to say I&rsquo;ve not been
+straight with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see&rdquo;&mdash;and Miss Gostrey looked really interested in the
+point he had made. &ldquo;But what do you think of as happening?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though he wasn&rsquo;t shy&mdash;which was rather anomalous&mdash;Strether
+gazed about without meeting her eyes; a motion that was frequent with him in
+talk, yet of which his words often seemed not at all the effect. &ldquo;Why
+that you should find me too hopeless.&rdquo; With which they walked on again
+together while she answered, as they went, that the most &ldquo;hopeless&rdquo;
+of her countryfolk were in general precisely those she liked best. All sorts of
+other pleasant small things&mdash;small things that were yet large for
+him&mdash;flowered in the air of the occasion, but the bearing of the occasion
+itself on matters still remote concerns us too closely to permit us to multiply
+our illustrations. Two or three, however, in truth, we should perhaps regret to
+lose. The tortuous wall&mdash;girdle, long since snapped, of the little swollen
+city, half held in place by careful civic hands&mdash;wanders in narrow file
+between parapets smoothed by peaceful generations, pausing here and there for a
+dismantled gate or a bridged gap, with rises and drops, steps up and steps
+down, queer twists, queer contacts, peeps into homely streets and under the
+brows of gables, views of cathedral tower and waterside fields, of huddled
+English town and ordered English country. Too deep almost for words was the
+delight of these things to Strether; yet as deeply mixed with it were certain
+images of his inward picture. He had trod this walks in the far-off time, at
+twenty-five; but that, instead of spoiling it, only enriched it for present
+feeling and marked his renewal as a thing substantial enough to share. It was
+with Waymarsh he should have shared it, and he was now accordingly taking from
+him something that was his due. He looked repeatedly at his watch, and when he
+had done so for the fifth time Miss Gostrey took him up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re doing something that you think not right.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It so touched the place that he quite changed colour and his laugh grew almost
+awkward. &ldquo;Am I enjoying it as much as <i>that?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not enjoying it, I think, so much as you ought.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see&rdquo;&mdash;he appeared thoughtfully to agree. &ldquo;Great is my
+privilege.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh it&rsquo;s not your privilege! It has nothing to do with <i>me</i>.
+It has to do with yourself. Your failure&rsquo;s general.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah there you are!&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the failure of
+Woollett. <i>That&rsquo;s</i> general.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The failure to enjoy,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey explained, &ldquo;is what I
+mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely. Woollett isn&rsquo;t sure it ought to enjoy. If it were it
+would. But it hasn&rsquo;t, poor thing,&rdquo; Strether continued, &ldquo;any
+one to show it how. It&rsquo;s not like me. I have somebody.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had stopped, in the afternoon sunshine&mdash;constantly pausing, in their
+stroll, for the sharper sense of what they saw&mdash;and Strether rested on one
+of the high sides of the old stony groove of the little rampart. He leaned back
+on this support with his face to the tower of the cathedral, now admirably
+commanded by their station, the high red-brown mass, square and subordinately
+spired and crocketed, retouched and restored, but charming to his long-sealed
+eyes and with the first swallows of the year weaving their flight all round it.
+Miss Gostrey lingered near him, full of an air, to which she more and more
+justified her right, of understanding the effect of things. She quite
+concurred. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve indeed somebody.&rdquo; And she added: &ldquo;I
+wish you <i>would</i> let me show you how!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I&rsquo;m afraid of you!&rdquo; he cheerfully pleaded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She kept on him a moment, through her glasses and through his own, a certain
+pleasant pointedness. &ldquo;Ah no, you&rsquo;re not! You&rsquo;re not in the
+least, thank goodness! If you had been we shouldn&rsquo;t so soon have found
+ourselves here together. I think,&rdquo; she comfortably concluded, &ldquo;you
+trust me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I do!&mdash;but that&rsquo;s exactly what I&rsquo;m afraid of. I
+shouldn&rsquo;t mind if I didn&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s falling thus in twenty
+minutes so utterly into your hands. I dare say,&rdquo; Strether continued,
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s a sort of thing you&rsquo;re thoroughly familiar with; but
+nothing more extraordinary has ever happened to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She watched him with all her kindness. &ldquo;That means simply that
+you&rsquo;ve recognised me&mdash;which <i>is</i> rather beautiful and rare. You
+see what I am.&rdquo; As on this, however, he protested, with a good-humoured
+headshake, a resignation of any such claim, she had a moment of explanation.
+&ldquo;If you&rsquo;ll only come on further as you <i>have</i> come
+you&rsquo;ll at any rate make out. My own fate has been too many for me, and
+I&rsquo;ve succumbed to it. I&rsquo;m a general guide&mdash;to
+&lsquo;Europe,&rsquo; don&rsquo;t you know? I wait for people&mdash;I put them
+through. I pick them up&mdash;I set them down. I&rsquo;m a sort of superior
+&lsquo;courier-maid.&rsquo; I&rsquo;m a companion at large. I take people, as
+I&rsquo;ve told you, about. I never sought it&mdash;it has come to me. It has
+been my fate, and one&rsquo;s fate one accepts. It&rsquo;s a dreadful thing to
+have to say, in so wicked a world, but I verily believe that, such as you see
+me, there&rsquo;s nothing I don&rsquo;t know. I know all the shops and the
+prices&mdash;but I know worse things still. I bear on my back the huge load of
+our national consciousness, or, in other words&mdash;for it comes to
+that&mdash;of our nation itself. Of what is our nation composed but of the men
+and women individually on my shoulders? I don&rsquo;t do it, you know, for any
+particular advantage. I don&rsquo;t do it, for instance&mdash;some people do,
+you know&mdash;for money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether could only listen and wonder and weigh his chance. &ldquo;And yet,
+affected as you are then to so many of your clients, you can scarcely be said
+to do it for love.&rdquo; He waited a moment. &ldquo;How do we reward
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had her own hesitation, but &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; she finally
+returned, setting him again in motion. They went on, but in a few minutes,
+though while still thinking over what she had said, he once more took out his
+watch; mechanically, unconsciously and as if made nervous by the mere
+exhilaration of what struck him as her strange and cynical wit. He looked at
+the hour without seeing it, and then, on something again said by his companion,
+had another pause. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re really in terror of him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled a smile that he almost felt to be sickly. &ldquo;Now you can see why
+I&rsquo;m afraid of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I&rsquo;ve such illuminations? Why they&rsquo;re all for your
+help! It&rsquo;s what I told you,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;just now. You feel
+as if this were wrong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He fell back once more, settling himself against the parapet as if to hear more
+about it. &ldquo;Then get me out!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face fairly brightened for the joy of the appeal, but, as if it were a
+question of immediate action, she visibly considered. &ldquo;Out of waiting for
+him?&mdash;of seeing him at all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;not that,&rdquo; said poor Strether, looking grave.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got to wait for him&mdash;and I want very much to see him.
+But out of the terror. You did put your finger on it a few minutes ago.
+It&rsquo;s general, but it avails itself of particular occasions. That&rsquo;s
+what it&rsquo;s doing for me now. I&rsquo;m always considering something else;
+something else, I mean, than the thing of the moment. The obsession of the
+other thing is the terror. I&rsquo;m considering at present for instance
+something else than <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She listened with charming earnestness. &ldquo;Oh you oughtn&rsquo;t to do
+that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s what I admit. Make it then impossible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She continued to think. &ldquo;Is it really an &lsquo;order&rsquo; from
+you?&mdash;that I shall take the job? <i>Will</i> you give yourself up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Strether heaved his sigh. &ldquo;If I only could! But that&rsquo;s the
+deuce of it&mdash;that I never can. No&mdash;I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wasn&rsquo;t, however, discouraged. &ldquo;But you want to at least?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh unspeakably!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then, if you&rsquo;ll try!&rdquo;&mdash;and she took over the job, as
+she had called it, on the spot. &ldquo;Trust me!&rdquo; she exclaimed, and the
+action of this, as they retraced their steps, was presently to make him pass
+his hand into her arm in the manner of a benign dependent paternal old person
+who wishes to be &ldquo;nice&rdquo; to a younger one. If he drew it out again
+indeed as they approached the inn this may have been because, after more talk
+had passed between them, the relation of age, or at least of
+experience&mdash;which, for that matter, had already played to and fro with
+some freedom&mdash;affected him as incurring a readjustment. It was at all
+events perhaps lucky that they arrived in sufficiently separate fashion within
+range of the hotel-door. The young lady they had left in the glass cage watched
+as if she had come to await them on the threshold. At her side stood a person
+equally interested, by his attitude, in their return, and the effect of the
+sight of whom was instantly to determine for Strether another of those
+responsive arrests that we have had so repeatedly to note. He left it to Miss
+Gostrey to name, with the fine full bravado as it almost struck him, of her
+&ldquo;Mr. Waymarsh!&rdquo; what was to have been, what&mdash;he more than ever
+felt as his short stare of suspended welcome took things in&mdash;would have
+been, but for herself, his doom. It was already upon him even at that
+distance&mdash;Mr. Waymarsh was for <i>his</i> part joyless.
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+He had none the less to confess to this friend that evening that he knew almost
+nothing about her, and it was a deficiency that Waymarsh, even with his memory
+refreshed by contact, by her own prompt and lucid allusions and enquiries, by
+their having publicly partaken of dinner in her company, and by another stroll,
+to which she was not a stranger, out into the town to look at the cathedral by
+moonlight&mdash;it was a blank that the resident of Milrose, though admitting
+acquaintance with the Munsters, professed himself unable to fill. He had no
+recollection of Miss Gostrey, and two or three questions that she put to him
+about those members of his circle had, to Strether&rsquo;s observation, the
+same effect he himself had already more directly felt&mdash;the effect of
+appearing to place all knowledge, for the time, on this original woman&rsquo;s
+side. It interested him indeed to mark the limits of any such relation for her
+with his friend as there could possibly be a question of, and it particularly
+struck him that they were to be marked altogether in Waymarsh&rsquo;s quarter.
+This added to his own sense of having gone far with her&mdash;gave him an early
+illustration of a much shorter course. There was a certitude he immediately
+grasped&mdash;a conviction that Waymarsh would quite fail, as it were, and on
+whatever degree of acquaintances to profit by her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There had been after the first interchange among the three a talk of some five
+minutes in the hall, and then the two men had adjourned to the garden, Miss
+Gostrey for the time disappearing. Strether in due course accompanied his
+friend to the room he had bespoken and had, before going out, scrupulously
+visited; where at the end of another half-hour he had no less discreetly left
+him. On leaving him he repaired straight to his own room, but with the prompt
+effect of feeling the compass of that chamber resented by his condition. There
+he enjoyed at once the first consequence of their reunion. A place was too
+small for him after it that had seemed large enough before. He had awaited it
+with something he would have been sorry, have been almost ashamed not to
+recognise as emotion, yet with a tacit assumption at the same time that emotion
+would in the event find itself relieved. The actual oddity was that he was only
+more excited; and his excitement&mdash;to which indeed he would have found it
+difficult instantly to give a name&mdash;brought him once more downstairs and
+caused him for some minutes vaguely to wander. He went once more to the garden;
+he looked into the public room, found Miss Gostrey writing letters and backed
+out; he roamed, fidgeted and wasted time; but he was to have his more intimate
+session with his friend before the evening closed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was late&mdash;not till Strether had spent an hour upstairs with
+him&mdash;that this subject consented to betake himself to doubtful rest.
+Dinner and the subsequent stroll by moonlight&mdash;a dream, on
+Strether&rsquo;s part, of romantic effects rather prosaically merged in a mere
+missing of thicker coats&mdash;had measurably intervened, and this midnight
+conference was the result of Waymarsh&rsquo;s having (when they were free, as
+he put it, of their fashionable friend) found the smoking-room not quite what
+he wanted, and yet bed what he wanted less. His most frequent form of words was
+that he knew himself, and they were applied on this occasion to his certainty
+of not sleeping. He knew himself well enough to know that he should have a
+night of prowling unless he should succeed, as a preliminary, in getting
+prodigiously tired. If the effort directed to this end involved till a late
+hour the presence of Strether&mdash;consisted, that is, in the detention of the
+latter for full discourse&mdash;there was yet an impression of minor discipline
+involved for our friend in the picture Waymarsh made as he sat in trousers and
+shirt on the edge of his couch. With his long legs extended and his large back
+much bent, he nursed alternately, for an almost incredible time, his elbows and
+his beard. He struck his visitor as extremely, as almost wilfully
+uncomfortable; yet what had this been for Strether, from that first glimpse of
+him disconcerted in the porch of the hotel, but the predominant notes. The
+discomfort was in a manner contagious, as well as also in a manner inconsequent
+and unfounded; the visitor felt that unless he should get used to it&mdash;or
+unless Waymarsh himself should&mdash;it would constitute a menace for his own
+prepared, his own already confirmed, consciousness of the agreeable. On their
+first going up together to the room Strether had selected for him Waymarsh had
+looked it over in silence and with a sigh that represented for his companion,
+if not the habit of disapprobation, at least the despair of felicity; and this
+look had recurred to Strether as the key of much he had since observed.
+&ldquo;Europe,&rdquo; he had begun to gather from these things, had up to now
+rather failed of its message to him; he hadn&rsquo;t got into tune with it and
+had at the end of three months almost renounced any such expectation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He really appeared at present to insist on that by just perching there with the
+gas in his eyes. This of itself somehow conveyed the futility of single
+rectifications in a multiform failure. He had a large handsome head and a large
+sallow seamed face&mdash;a striking significant physiognomic total, the upper
+range of which, the great political brow, the thick loose hair, the dark
+fuliginous eyes, recalled even to a generation whose standard had dreadfully
+deviated the impressive image, familiar by engravings and busts, of some great
+national worthy of the earlier part of the mid-century. He was of the personal
+type&mdash;and it was an element in the power and promise that in their early
+time Strether had found in him&mdash;of the American statesman, the statesman
+trained in &ldquo;Congressional halls,&rdquo; of an elder day. The legend had
+been in later years that as the lower part of his face, which was weak, and
+slightly crooked, spoiled the likeness, this was the real reason for the growth
+of his beard, which might have seemed to spoil it for those not in the secret.
+He shook his mane; he fixed, with his admirable eyes, his auditor or his
+observer; he wore no glasses and had a way, partly formidable, yet also partly
+encouraging, as from a representative to a constituent, of looking very hard at
+those who approached him. He met you as if you had knocked and he had bidden
+you enter. Strether, who hadn&rsquo;t seen him for so long an interval,
+apprehended him now with a freshness of taste, and had perhaps never done him
+such ideal justice. The head was bigger, the eyes finer, than they need have
+been for the career; but that only meant, after all, that the career was itself
+expressive. What it expressed at midnight in the gas-glaring bedroom at Chester
+was that the subject of it had, at the end of years, barely escaped, by flight
+in time, a general nervous collapse. But this very proof of the full life, as
+the full life was understood at Milrose, would have made to Strether&rsquo;s
+imagination an element in which Waymarsh could have floated easily had he only
+consented to float. Alas nothing so little resembled floating as the rigour
+with which, on the edge of his bed, he hugged his posture of prolonged
+impermanence. It suggested to his comrade something that always, when kept up,
+worried him&mdash;a person established in a railway-coach with a forward
+inclination. It represented the angle at which poor Waymarsh was to sit through
+the ordeal of Europe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thanks to the stress of occupation, the strain of professions, the absorption
+and embarrassment of each, they had not, at home, during years before this
+sudden brief and almost bewildering reign of comparative ease, found so much as
+a day for a meeting; a fact that was in some degree an explanation of the
+sharpness with which most of his friend&rsquo;s features stood out to Strether.
+Those he had lost sight of since the early time came back to him; others that
+it was never possible to forget struck him now as sitting, clustered and
+expectant, like a somewhat defiant family-group, on the doorstep of their
+residence. The room was narrow for its length, and the occupant of the bed
+thrust so far a pair of slippered feet that the visitor had almost to step over
+them in his recurrent rebounds from his chair to fidget back and forth. There
+were marks the friends made on things to talk about, and on things not to, and
+one of the latter in particular fell like the tap of chalk on the blackboard.
+Married at thirty, Waymarsh had not lived with his wife for fifteen years, and
+it came up vividly between them in the glare of the gas that Strether
+wasn&rsquo;t to ask about her. He knew they were still separate and that she
+lived at hotels, travelled in Europe, painted her face and wrote her husband
+abusive letters, of not one of which, to a certainty, that sufferer spared
+himself the perusal; but he respected without difficulty the cold twilight that
+had settled on this side of his companion&rsquo;s life. It was a province in
+which mystery reigned and as to which Waymarsh had never spoken the informing
+word. Strether, who wanted to do him the highest justice wherever he
+<i>could</i> do it, singularly admired him for the dignity of this reserve, and
+even counted it as one of the grounds&mdash;grounds all handled and
+numbered&mdash;for ranking him, in the range of their acquaintance, as a
+success. He <i>was</i> a success, Waymarsh, in spite of overwork, or
+prostration, of sensible shrinkage, of his wife&rsquo;s letters and of his not
+liking Europe. Strether would have reckoned his own career less futile had he
+been able to put into it anything so handsome as so much fine silence. One
+might one&rsquo;s self easily have left Mrs. Waymarsh; and one would assuredly
+have paid one&rsquo;s tribute to the ideal in covering with that attitude the
+derision of having been left by her. Her husband had held his tongue and had
+made a large income; and these were in especial the achievements as to which
+Strether envied him. Our friend had had indeed on his side too a subject for
+silence, which he fully appreciated; but it was a matter of a different sort,
+and the figure of the income he had arrived at had never been high enough to
+look any one in the face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know as I quite see what you require it for. You
+don&rsquo;t appear sick to speak of.&rdquo; It was of Europe Waymarsh thus
+finally spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether, who fell as much as possible into step,
+&ldquo;I guess I don&rsquo;t <i>feel</i> sick now that I&rsquo;ve started. But
+I had pretty well run down before I did start.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh raised his melancholy look. &ldquo;Ain&rsquo;t you about up to your
+usual average?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not quite pointedly sceptical, but it seemed somehow a plea for the
+purest veracity, and it thereby affected our friend as the very voice of
+Milrose. He had long since made a mental distinction&mdash;though never in
+truth daring to betray it&mdash;between the voice of Milrose and the voice even
+of Woollett. It was the former he felt, that was most in the real tradition.
+There had been occasions in his past when the sound of it had reduced him to
+temporary confusion, and the present, for some reason, suddenly became such
+another. It was nevertheless no light matter that the very effect of his
+confusion should be to make him again prevaricate. &ldquo;That description
+hardly does justice to a man to whom it has done such a lot of good to see
+<i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh fixed on his washing-stand the silent detached stare with which
+Milrose in person, as it were, might have marked the unexpectedness of a
+compliment from Woollett, and Strether for his part, felt once more like
+Woollett in person. &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; his friend presently continued,
+&ldquo;that your appearance isn&rsquo;t as bad as I&rsquo;ve seen it: it
+compares favourably with what it was when I last noticed it.&rdquo; On this
+appearance Waymarsh&rsquo;s eyes yet failed to rest; it was almost as if they
+obeyed an instinct of propriety, and the effect was still stronger when, always
+considering the basin and jug, he added: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve filled out some
+since then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I have,&rdquo; Strether laughed: &ldquo;one does fill
+out some with all one takes in, and I&rsquo;ve taken in, I dare say, more than
+I&rsquo;ve natural room for. I was dog-tired when I sailed.&rdquo; It had the
+oddest sound of cheerfulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> was dog-tired,&rdquo; his companion returned, &ldquo;when I
+arrived, and it&rsquo;s this wild hunt for rest that takes all the life out of
+me. The fact is, Strether&mdash;and it&rsquo;s a comfort to have you here at
+last to say it to; though I don&rsquo;t know, after all, that I&rsquo;ve really
+waited; I&rsquo;ve told it to people I&rsquo;ve met in the cars&mdash;the fact
+is, such a country as this ain&rsquo;t my <i>kind</i> of country anyway. There
+ain&rsquo;t a country I&rsquo;ve seen over here that <i>does</i> seem my kind.
+Oh I don&rsquo;t say but what there are plenty of pretty places and remarkable
+old things; but the trouble is that I don&rsquo;t seem to feel anywhere in
+tune. That&rsquo;s one of the reasons why I suppose I&rsquo;ve gained so
+little. I haven&rsquo;t had the first sign of that lift I was led to
+expect.&rdquo; With this he broke out more earnestly. &ldquo;Look here&mdash;I
+want to go back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His eyes were all attached to Strether&rsquo;s now, for he was one of the men
+who fully face you when they talk of themselves. This enabled his friend to
+look at him hard and immediately to appear to the highest advantage in his eyes
+by doing so. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a genial thing to say to a fellow who has come
+out on purpose to meet you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing could have been finer, on this, than Waymarsh&rsquo;s sombre glow.
+&ldquo;<i>Have</i> you come out on purpose?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;very largely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought from the way you wrote there was something back of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether hesitated. &ldquo;Back of my desire to be with you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Back of your prostration.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, with a smile made more dim by a certain consciousness, shook his
+head. &ldquo;There are all the causes of it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And no particular cause that seemed most to drive you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our friend could at last conscientiously answer. &ldquo;Yes. One. There
+<i>is</i> a matter that has had much to do with my coming out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh waited a little. &ldquo;Too private to mention?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, not too private&mdash;for <i>you</i>. Only rather
+complicated.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Waymarsh, who had waited again, &ldquo;I <i>may</i>
+lose my mind over here, but I don&rsquo;t know as I&rsquo;ve done so
+yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you shall have the whole thing. But not tonight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh seemed to sit stiffer and to hold his elbows tighter. &ldquo;Why
+not&mdash;if I can&rsquo;t sleep?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because, my dear man, I <i>can!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then where&rsquo;s your prostration?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just in that&mdash;that I can put in eight hours.&rdquo; And Strether
+brought it out that if Waymarsh didn&rsquo;t &ldquo;gain&rdquo; it was because
+he didn&rsquo;t go to bed: the result of which was, in its order, that, to do
+the latter justice, he permitted his friend to insist on his really getting
+settled. Strether, with a kind coercive hand for it, assisted him to this
+consummation, and again found his own part in their relation auspiciously
+enlarged by the smaller touches of lowering the lamp and seeing to a
+sufficiency of blanket. It somehow ministered for him to indulgence to feel
+Waymarsh, who looked unnaturally big and black in bed, as much tucked in as a
+patient in a hospital and, with his covering up to his chin, as much simplified
+by it. He hovered in vague pity, to be brief, while his companion challenged
+him out of the bedclothes. &ldquo;Is she really after you? Is that what&rsquo;s
+behind?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether felt an uneasiness at the direction taken by his companion&rsquo;s
+insight, but he played a little at uncertainty. &ldquo;Behind my coming
+out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Behind your prostration or whatever. It&rsquo;s generally felt, you
+know, that she follows you up pretty close.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s candour was never very far off. &ldquo;Oh it has occurred to
+you that I&rsquo;m literally running away from Mrs. Newsome?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I haven&rsquo;t <i>known</i> but what you are. You&rsquo;re a very
+attractive man, Strether. You&rsquo;ve seen for yourself,&rdquo; said Waymarsh
+&ldquo;what that lady downstairs makes of it. Unless indeed,&rdquo; he rambled
+on with an effect between the ironic and the anxious, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s you who
+are after <i>her</i>. Is Mrs. Newsome <i>over</i> here?&rdquo; He spoke as with
+a droll dread of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made his friend&mdash;though rather dimly&mdash;smile. &ldquo;Dear no;
+she&rsquo;s safe, thank goodness&mdash;as I think I more and more feel&mdash;at
+home. She thought of coming, but she gave it up. I&rsquo;ve come in a manner
+instead of her; and come to that extent&mdash;for you&rsquo;re right in your
+inference&mdash;on her business. So you see there <i>is</i> plenty of
+connexion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh continued to see at least all there was. &ldquo;Involving accordingly
+the particular one I&rsquo;ve referred to?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether took another turn about the room, giving a twitch to his
+companion&rsquo;s blanket and finally gaining the door. His feeling was that of
+a nurse who had earned personal rest by having made everything straight.
+&ldquo;Involving more things than I can think of breaking ground on now. But
+don&rsquo;t be afraid&mdash;you shall have them from me: you&rsquo;ll probably
+find yourself having quite as much of them as you can do with. I shall&mdash;if
+we keep together&mdash;very much depend on your impression of some of
+them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh&rsquo;s acknowledgement of this tribute was characteristically
+indirect. &ldquo;You mean to say you don&rsquo;t believe we <i>will</i> keep
+together?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I only glance at the danger,&rdquo; Strether paternally said,
+&ldquo;because when I hear you wail to go back I seem to see you open up such
+possibilities of folly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh took it&mdash;silent a little&mdash;like a large snubbed child
+&ldquo;What are you going to do with me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the very question Strether himself had put to Miss Gostrey, and he
+wondered if he had sounded like that. But <i>he</i> at least could be more
+definite. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to take you right down to London.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I&rsquo;ve been down to London!&rdquo; Waymarsh more softly moaned.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no use, Strether, for anything down there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether, good-humouredly, &ldquo;I guess you&rsquo;ve
+some use for <i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I&rsquo;ve got to go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you&rsquo;ve got to go further yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Waymarsh sighed, &ldquo;do your damnedest! Only you
+<i>will</i> tell me before you lead me on all the way&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our friend had again so lost himself, both for amusement and for contrition, in
+the wonder of whether he had made, in his own challenge that afternoon, such
+another figure, that he for an instant missed the thread. &ldquo;Tell
+you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why what you&rsquo;ve got on hand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether hesitated. &ldquo;Why it&rsquo;s such a matter as that even if I
+positively wanted I shouldn&rsquo;t be able to keep it from you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh gloomily gazed. &ldquo;What does that mean then but that your trip is
+just <i>for</i> her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For Mrs. Newsome? Oh it certainly is, as I say. Very much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why do you also say it&rsquo;s for me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, in impatience, violently played with his latch. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+simple enough. It&rsquo;s for both of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh at last turned over with a groan. &ldquo;Well, <i>I</i> won&rsquo;t
+marry you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Neither, when it comes to that&mdash;!&rdquo; But the visitor had
+already laughed and escaped.
+</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>
+He had told Miss Gostrey he should probably take, for departure with Waymarsh,
+some afternoon train, and it thereupon in the morning appeared that this lady
+had made her own plan for an earlier one. She had breakfasted when Strether
+came into the coffee-room; but, Waymarsh not having yet emerged, he was in time
+to recall her to the terms of their understanding and to pronounce her
+discretion overdone. She was surely not to break away at the very moment she
+had created a want. He had met her as she rose from her little table in a
+window, where, with the morning papers beside her, she reminded him, as he let
+her know, of Major Pendennis breakfasting at his club&mdash;a compliment of
+which she professed a deep appreciation; and he detained her as pleadingly as
+if he had already&mdash;and notably under pressure of the visions of the
+night&mdash;learned to be unable to do without her. She must teach him at all
+events, before she went, to order breakfast as breakfast was ordered in Europe,
+and she must especially sustain him in the problem of ordering for Waymarsh.
+The latter had laid upon his friend, by desperate sounds through the door of
+his room, dreadful divined responsibilities in respect to beefsteak and
+oranges&mdash;responsibilities which Miss Gostrey took over with an alertness
+of action that matched her quick intelligence. She had before this weaned the
+expatriated from traditions compared with which the matutinal beefsteak was but
+the creature of an hour, and it was not for her, with some of her memories, to
+falter in the path though she freely enough declared, on reflexion, that there
+was always in such cases a choice of opposed policies. &ldquo;There are times
+when to give them their head, you know&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had gone to wait together in the garden for the dressing of the meal, and
+Strether found her more suggestive than ever &ldquo;Well, what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is to bring about for them such a complexity of relations&mdash;unless
+indeed we call it a simplicity!&mdash;that the situation <i>has</i> to wind
+itself up. They want to go back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you want them to go!&rdquo; Strether gaily concluded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I always want them to go, and I send them as fast as I can.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I know&mdash;you take them to Liverpool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Any port will serve in a storm. I&rsquo;m&mdash;with all my other
+functions&mdash;an agent for repatriation. I want to re-people our stricken
+country. What will become of it else? I want to discourage others.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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. &ldquo;Other people?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Other countries. Other people&mdash;yes. I want to encourage our
+own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wondered. &ldquo;Not to come? Why then do you &lsquo;meet&rsquo;
+them&mdash;since it doesn&rsquo;t appear to be to stop them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh that they shouldn&rsquo;t come is as yet too much to ask. What I
+attend to is that they come quickly and return still more so. I meet them to
+help it to be over as soon as possible, and though I don&rsquo;t stop them
+I&rsquo;ve my way of putting them through. That&rsquo;s my little system; and,
+if you want to know,&rdquo; said Maria Gostrey, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s my real
+secret, my innermost mission and use. I only seem, you see, to beguile and
+approve; but I&rsquo;ve thought it all out and I&rsquo;m working all the while
+underground. I can&rsquo;t perhaps quite give you my formula, but I think that
+practically I succeed. I send you back spent. So you stay back. Passed through
+my hands&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t turn up again?&rdquo; The further she went the further he
+always saw himself able to follow. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want your
+formula&mdash;I feel quite enough, as I hinted yesterday, your abysses.
+Spent!&rdquo; he echoed. &ldquo;If that&rsquo;s how you&rsquo;re arranging so
+subtly to send me I thank you for the warning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a minute, amid the pleasantness&mdash;poetry in tariffed items, but all the
+more, for guests already convicted, a challenge to consumption&mdash;they
+smiled at each other in confirmed fellowship. &ldquo;Do you call it subtly?
+It&rsquo;s a plain poor tale. Besides, you&rsquo;re a special case.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh special cases&mdash;that&rsquo;s weak!&rdquo; She was weak enough,
+further still, to defer her journey and agree to accompany the gentlemen on
+their own, might a separate carriage mark her independence; though it was in
+spite of this to befall after luncheon that she went off alone and that, with a
+tryst taken for a day of her company in London, they lingered another night.
+She had, during the morning&mdash;spent in a way that he was to remember later
+on as the very climax of his foretaste, as warm with presentiments, with what
+he would have called collapses&mdash;had all sorts of things out with Strether;
+and among them the fact that though there was never a moment of her life when
+she wasn&rsquo;t &ldquo;due&rdquo; somewhere, there was yet scarce a perfidy to
+others of which she wasn&rsquo;t capable for his sake. She explained moreover
+that wherever she happened to be she found a dropped thread to pick up, a
+ragged edge to repair, some familiar appetite in ambush, jumping out as she
+approached, yet appeasable with a temporary biscuit. It became, on her taking
+the risk of the deviation imposed on him by her insidious arrangement of his
+morning meal, a point of honour for her not to fail with Waymarsh of the larger
+success too; and her subsequent boast to Strether was that she had made their
+friend fare&mdash;and quite without his knowing what was the matter&mdash;as
+Major Pendennis would have fared at the Megatherium. She had made him breakfast
+like a gentleman, and it was nothing, she forcibly asserted, to what she would
+yet make him do. She made him participate in the slow reiterated ramble with
+which, for Strether, the new day amply filled itself; and it was by her art
+that he somehow had the air, on the ramparts and in the Rows, of carrying a
+point of his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The three strolled and stared and gossiped, or at least the two did; the case
+really yielding for their comrade, if analysed, but the element of stricken
+silence. This element indeed affected Strether as charged with audible
+rumblings, but he was conscious of the care of taking it explicitly as a sign
+of pleasant peace. He wouldn&rsquo;t appeal too much, for that provoked
+stiffness; yet he wouldn&rsquo;t be too freely tacit, for that suggested giving
+up. Waymarsh himself adhered to an ambiguous dumbness that might have
+represented either the growth of a perception or the despair of one; and at
+times and in places&mdash;where the low-browed galleries were darkest, the
+opposite gables queerest, the solicitations of every kind densest&mdash;the
+others caught him fixing hard some object of minor interest, fixing even at
+moments nothing discernible, as if he were indulging it with a truce. When he
+met Strether&rsquo;s eye on such occasions he looked guilty and furtive, fell
+the next minute into some attitude of retractation. Our friend couldn&rsquo;t
+show him the right things for fear of provoking some total renouncement, and
+was tempted even to show him the wrong in order to make him differ with
+triumph. There were moments when he himself felt shy of professing the full
+sweetness of the taste of leisure, and there were others when he found himself
+feeling as if his passages of interchange with the lady at his side might fall
+upon the third member of their party very much as Mr. Burchell, at Dr.
+Primrose&rsquo;s fireside, was influenced by the high flights of the visitors
+from London. The smallest things so arrested and amused him that he repeatedly
+almost apologised&mdash;brought up afresh in explanation his plea of a previous
+grind. He was aware at the same time that his grind had been as nothing to
+Waymarsh&rsquo;s, and he repeatedly confessed that, to cover his frivolity, he
+was doing his best for his previous virtue. Do what he might, in any case, his
+previous virtue was still there, and it seemed fairly to stare at him out of
+the windows of shops that were not as the shops of Woollett, fairly to make him
+want things that he shouldn&rsquo;t know what to do with. It was by the oddest,
+the least admissible of laws demoralising him now; and the way it boldly took
+was to make him want more wants. These first walks in Europe were in fact a
+kind of finely lurid intimation of what one might find at the end of that
+process. Had he come back after long years, in something already so like the
+evening of life, only to be exposed to it? It was at all events over the
+shop-windows that he made, with Waymarsh, most free; though it would have been
+easier had not the latter most sensibly yielded to the appeal of the merely
+useful trades. He pierced with his sombre detachment the plate-glass of
+ironmongers and saddlers, while Strether flaunted an affinity with the dealers
+in stamped letter-paper and in smart neckties. Strether was in fact recurrently
+shameless in the presence of the tailors, though it was just over the heads of
+the tailors that his countryman most loftily looked. This gave Miss Gostrey a
+grasped opportunity to back up Waymarsh at his expense. The weary
+lawyer&mdash;it was unmistakeable&mdash;had a conception of dress; but that, in
+view of some of the features of the effect produced, was just what made the
+danger of insistence on it. Strether wondered if he by this time thought Miss
+Gostrey less fashionable or Lambert Strether more so; and it appeared probable
+that most of the remarks exchanged between this latter pair about passers,
+figures, faces, personal types, exemplified in their degree the disposition to
+talk as &ldquo;society&rdquo; talked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was what was happening to himself then, was what already <i>had</i> happened,
+really that a woman of fashion was floating him into society and that an old
+friend deserted on the brink was watching the force of the current? When the
+woman of fashion permitted Strether&mdash;as she permitted him at the
+most&mdash;the purchase of a pair of gloves, the terms she made about it, the
+prohibition of neckties and other items till she should be able to guide him
+through the Burlington Arcade, were such as to fall upon a sensitive ear as a
+challenge to just imputations. Miss Gostrey was such a woman of fashion as
+could make without a symptom of vulgar blinking an appointment for the
+Burlington Arcade. Mere discriminations about a pair of gloves could thus at
+any rate represent&mdash;always for such sensitive ears as were in
+question&mdash;possibilities of something that Strether could make a mark
+against only as the peril of apparent wantonness. He had quite the
+consciousness of his new friend, for their companion, that he might have had of
+a Jesuit in petticoats, a representative of the recruiting interests of the
+Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, for Waymarsh&mdash;that was to say the
+enemy, the monster of bulging eyes and far-reaching quivering groping
+tentacles&mdash;was exactly society, exactly the multiplication of shibboleths,
+exactly the discrimination of types and tones, exactly the wicked old Rows of
+Chester, rank with feudalism; exactly in short Europe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was light for observation, however, in an incident that occurred just
+before they turned back to luncheon. Waymarsh had been for a quarter of an hour
+exceptionally mute and distant, and something, or other&mdash;Strether was
+never to make out exactly what&mdash;proved, as it were, too much for him after
+his comrades had stood for three minutes taking in, while they leaned on an old
+balustrade that guarded the edge of the Row, a particularly crooked and huddled
+street-view. &ldquo;He thinks us sophisticated, he thinks us worldly, he thinks
+us wicked, he thinks us all sorts of queer things,&rdquo; Strether reflected;
+for wondrous were the vague quantities our friend had within a couple of short
+days acquired the habit of conveniently and conclusively lumping together.
+There seemed moreover a direct connexion between some such inference and a
+sudden grim dash taken by Waymarsh to the opposite side. This movement was
+startlingly sudden, and his companions at first supposed him to have espied, to
+be pursuing, the glimpse of an acquaintance. They next made out, however, that
+an open door had instantly received him, and they then recognised him as
+engulfed in the establishment of a jeweller, behind whose glittering front he
+was lost to view. The fact had somehow the note of a demonstration, and it left
+each of the others to show a face almost of fear. But Miss Gostrey broke into a
+laugh. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;he can&rsquo;t stand it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But can&rsquo;t stand what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anything. Europe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then how will that jeweller help him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether seemed to make it out, from their position, between the interstices of
+arrayed watches, of close-hung dangling gewgaws. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll
+see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah that&rsquo;s just what&mdash;if he buys anything&mdash;I&rsquo;m
+afraid of: that I shall see something rather dreadful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether studied the finer appearances. &ldquo;He may buy everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then don&rsquo;t you think we ought to follow him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not for worlds. Besides we can&rsquo;t. We&rsquo;re paralysed. We
+exchange a long scared look, we publicly tremble. The thing is, you see, we
+&lsquo;realise.&rsquo; He has struck for freedom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered but she laughed. &ldquo;Ah what a price to pay! And I was
+preparing some for him so cheap.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; Strether went on, frankly amused now; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t
+call it that: the kind of freedom you deal in is dear.&rdquo; Then as to
+justify himself: &ldquo;Am I not in <i>my</i> way trying it? It&rsquo;s
+this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Being here, you mean, with me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, and talking to you as I do. I&rsquo;ve known you a few hours, and
+I&rsquo;ve known <i>him</i> all my life; so that if the ease I thus take with
+you about him isn&rsquo;t magnificent&rdquo;&mdash;and the thought of it held
+him a moment&mdash;&ldquo;why it&rsquo;s rather base.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s magnificent!&rdquo; said Miss Gostrey to make an end of it.
+&ldquo;And you should hear,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;the ease <i>I</i>
+take&mdash;and I above all intend to take&mdash;with Mr. Waymarsh.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether thought. &ldquo;About <i>me?</i> Ah that&rsquo;s no equivalent. The
+equivalent would be Waymarsh&rsquo;s himself serving me up&mdash;his
+remorseless analysis of me. And he&rsquo;ll never do that&rdquo;&mdash;he was
+sadly clear. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll never remorselessly analyse me.&rdquo; He quite
+held her with the authority of this. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll never say a word to you
+about me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took it in; she did it justice; yet after an instant her reason, her
+restless irony, disposed of it. &ldquo;Of course he won&rsquo;t. For what do
+you take people, that they&rsquo;re able to say words about anything, able
+remorselessly to analyse? There are not many like you and me. It will be only
+because he&rsquo;s too stupid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It stirred in her friend a sceptical echo which was at the same time the
+protest of the faith of years. &ldquo;Waymarsh stupid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Compared with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had still his eyes on the jeweller&rsquo;s front, and he waited a
+moment to answer. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a success of a kind that I haven&rsquo;t
+approached.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean he has made money?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He makes it&mdash;to my belief. And I,&rdquo; said Strether,
+&ldquo;though with a back quite as bent, have never made anything. I&rsquo;m a
+perfectly equipped failure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He feared an instant she&rsquo;d ask him if he meant he was poor; and he was
+glad she didn&rsquo;t, for he really didn&rsquo;t know to what the truth on
+this unpleasant point mightn&rsquo;t have prompted her. She only, however,
+confirmed his assertion. &ldquo;Thank goodness you&rsquo;re a
+failure&mdash;it&rsquo;s why I so distinguish you! Anything else to-day is too
+hideous. Look about you&mdash;look at the successes. Would you <i>be</i> one,
+on your honour? Look, moreover,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;at me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a little accordingly their eyes met. &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; Strether
+returned. &ldquo;You too are out of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The superiority you discern in me,&rdquo; she concurred,
+&ldquo;announces my futility. If you knew,&rdquo; she sighed, &ldquo;the dreams
+of my youth! But our realities are what has brought us together. We&rsquo;re
+beaten brothers in arms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled at her kindly enough, but he shook his head. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t
+alter the fact that you&rsquo;re expensive. You&rsquo;ve cost me
+already&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he had hung fire. &ldquo;Cost you what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, my past&mdash;in one great lump. But no matter,&rdquo; he laughed:
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll pay with my last penny.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her attention had unfortunately now been engaged by their comrade&rsquo;s
+return, for Waymarsh met their view as he came out of his shop. &ldquo;I hope
+he hasn&rsquo;t paid,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;with <i>his</i> last; though
+I&rsquo;m convinced he has been splendid, and has been so for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah no&mdash;not that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then for me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite as little.&rdquo; Waymarsh was by this time near enough to show
+signs his friend could read, though he seemed to look almost carefully at
+nothing in particular.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then for himself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For nobody. For nothing. For freedom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what has freedom to do with it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s answer was indirect. &ldquo;To be as good as you and me. But
+different.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had had time to take in their companion&rsquo;s face; and with it, as such
+things were easy for her, she took in all. &ldquo;Different&mdash;yes. But
+better!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Waymarsh was sombre he was also indeed almost sublime. He told them nothing,
+left his absence unexplained, and though they were convinced he had made some
+extraordinary purchase they were never to learn its nature. He only glowered
+grandly at the tops of the old gables. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the sacred
+rage,&rdquo; Strether had had further time to say; and this sacred rage was to
+become between them, for convenient comprehension, the description of one of
+his periodical necessities. It was Strether who eventually contended that it
+did make him better than they. But by that time Miss Gostrey was convinced that
+she didn&rsquo;t want to be better than Strether.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>Book Second</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+Those occasions on which Strether was, in association with the exile from
+Milrose, to see the sacred rage glimmer through would doubtless have their due
+periodicity; but our friend had meanwhile to find names for many other matters.
+On no evening of his life perhaps, as he reflected, had he had to supply so
+many as on the third of his short stay in London; an evening spent by Miss
+Gostrey&rsquo;s side at one of the theatres, to which he had found himself
+transported, without his own hand raised, on the mere expression of a
+conscientious wonder. She knew her theatre, she knew her play, as she had
+triumphantly known, three days running, everything else, and the moment filled
+to the brim, for her companion, that apprehension of the interesting which,
+whether or no the interesting happened to filter through his guide, strained
+now to its limits his brief opportunity. Waymarsh hadn&rsquo;t come with them;
+he had seen plays enough, he signified, before Strether had joined him&mdash;an
+affirmation that had its full force when his friend ascertained by questions
+that he had seen two and a circus. Questions as to what he had seen had on him
+indeed an effect only less favourable than questions as to what he
+hadn&rsquo;t. He liked the former to be discriminated; but how could it be
+done, Strether asked of their constant counsellor, without discriminating the
+latter?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey had dined with him at his hotel, face to face over a small table
+on which the lighted candles had rose-coloured shades; and the rose-coloured
+shades and the small table and the soft fragrance of the lady&mdash;had
+anything to his mere sense ever been so soft?&mdash;were so many touches in he
+scarce knew what positive high picture. He had been to the theatre, even to the
+opera, in Boston, with Mrs. Newsome, more than once acting as her only escort;
+but there had been no little confronted dinner, no pink lights, no whiff of
+vague sweetness, as a preliminary: one of the results of which was that at
+present, mildly rueful, though with a sharpish accent, he actually asked
+himself <i>why</i> there hadn&rsquo;t. There was much the same difference in
+his impression of the noticed state of his companion, whose dress was
+&ldquo;cut down,&rdquo; as he believed the term to be, in respect to shoulders
+and bosom, in a manner quite other than Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s, and who wore
+round her throat a broad red velvet band with an antique jewel&mdash;he was
+rather complacently sure it was antique&mdash;attached to it in front. Mrs.
+Newsome&rsquo;s dress was never in any degree &ldquo;cut down,&rdquo; and she
+never wore round her throat a broad red velvet band: if she had, moreover,
+would it ever have served so to carry on and complicate, as he now almost felt,
+his vision?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It would have been absurd of him to trace into ramifications the effect of the
+ribbon from which Miss Gostrey&rsquo;s trinket depended, had he not for the
+hour, at the best, been so given over to uncontrolled perceptions. What was it
+but an uncontrolled perception that his friend&rsquo;s velvet band somehow
+added, in her appearance, to the value of every other item&mdash;to that of her
+smile and of the way she carried her head, to that of her complexion, of her
+lips, her teeth, her eyes, her hair? What, certainly, had a man conscious of a
+man&rsquo;s work in the world to do with red velvet bands? He wouldn&rsquo;t
+for anything have so exposed himself as to tell Miss Gostrey how much he liked
+hers, yet he <i>had</i> none the less not only caught himself in the
+act&mdash;frivolous, no doubt, idiotic, and above all unexpected&mdash;of
+liking it: he had in addition taken it as a starting-point for fresh backward,
+fresh forward, fresh lateral flights. The manner in which Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s
+throat <i>was</i> encircled suddenly represented for him, in an alien order,
+almost as many things as the manner in which Miss Gostrey&rsquo;s was. Mrs.
+Newsome wore, at operatic hours, a black silk dress&mdash;very handsome, he
+knew it was &ldquo;handsome&rdquo;&mdash;and an ornament that his memory was
+able further to identify as a ruche. He had his association indeed with the
+ruche, but it was rather imperfectly romantic. He had once said to the
+wearer&mdash;and it was as &ldquo;free&rdquo; a remark as he had ever made to
+her&mdash;that she looked, with her ruff and other matters, like Queen
+Elizabeth; and it had after this in truth been his fancy that, as a consequence
+of that tenderness and an acceptance of the idea, the form of this special
+tribute to the &ldquo;frill&rdquo; had grown slightly more marked. The
+connexion, as he sat there and let his imagination roam, was to strike him as
+vaguely pathetic; but there it all was, and pathetic was doubtless in the
+conditions the best thing it could possibly be. It had assuredly existed at any
+rate; for it seemed now to come over him that no gentleman of his age at
+Woollett could ever, to a lady of Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s, which was not much less
+than his, have embarked on such a simile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All sorts of things in fact now seemed to come over him, comparatively few of
+which his chronicler can hope for space to mention. It came over him for
+instance that Miss Gostrey looked perhaps like Mary Stuart: Lambert Strether
+had a candour of fancy which could rest for an instant gratified in such an
+antithesis. It came over him that never before&mdash;no, literally
+never&mdash;had a lady dined with him at a public place before going to the
+play. The publicity of the place was just, in the matter, for Strether, the
+rare strange thing; it affected him almost as the achievement of privacy might
+have affected a man of a different experience. He had married, in the far-away
+years, so young as to have missed the time natural in Boston for taking girls
+to the Museum; and it was absolutely true of hint that&mdash;even after the
+close of the period of conscious detachment occupying the centre of his life,
+the grey middle desert of the two deaths, that of his wife and that, ten years
+later, of his boy&mdash;he had never taken any one anywhere. It came over him
+in especial&mdash;though the monition had, as happened, already sounded,
+fitfully gleamed, in other forms&mdash;that the business he had come out on
+hadn&rsquo;t yet been so brought home to him as by the sight of the people
+about him. She gave him the impression, his friend, at first, more straight
+than he got it for himself&mdash;gave it simply by saying with off-hand
+illumination: &ldquo;Oh yes, they&rsquo;re types!&rdquo;&mdash;but after he had
+taken it he made to the full his own use of it; both while he kept silence for
+the four acts and while he talked in the intervals. It was an evening, it was a
+world of types, and this was a connexion above all in which the figures and
+faces in the stalls were interchangeable with those on the stage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt as if the play itself penetrated him with the naked elbow of his
+neighbour, a great stripped handsome red-haired lady who conversed with a
+gentleman on her other side in stray dissyllables which had for his ear, in the
+oddest way in the world, so much sound that he wondered they hadn&rsquo;t more
+sense; and he recognised by the same law, beyond the footlights, what he was
+pleased to take for the very flush of English life. He had distracted drops in
+which he couldn&rsquo;t have said if it were actors or auditors who were most
+true, and the upshot of which, each time, was the consciousness of new
+contacts. However he viewed his job it was &ldquo;types&rdquo; he should have
+to tackle. Those before him and around him were not as the types of Woollett,
+where, for that matter, it had begun to seem to him that there must only have
+been the male and the female. These made two exactly, even with the individual
+varieties. Here, on the other hand, apart from the personal and the sexual
+range&mdash;which might be greater or less&mdash;a series of strong stamps had
+been applied, as it were, from without; stamps that his observation played with
+as, before a glass case on a table, it might have passed from medal to medal
+and from copper to gold. It befell that in the drama precisely there was a bad
+woman in a yellow frock who made a pleasant weak good-looking young man in
+perpetual evening dress do the most dreadful things. Strether felt himself on
+the whole not afraid of the yellow frock, but he was vaguely anxious over a
+certain kindness into which he found himself drifting for its victim. He
+hadn&rsquo;t come out, he reminded himself, to be too kind, or indeed to be
+kind at all, to Chadwick Newsome. Would Chad also be in perpetual evening
+dress? He somehow rather hoped it&mdash;it seemed so to add to <i>this</i>
+young man&rsquo;s general amenability; though he wondered too if, to fight him
+with his own weapons, he himself (a thought almost startling) would have
+likewise to be. This young man furthermore would have been much more easy to
+handle&mdash;at least for <i>him</i>&mdash;than appeared probable in respect to
+Chad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It came up for him with Miss Gostrey that there were things of which she would
+really perhaps after all have heard, and she admitted when a little pressed
+that she was never quite sure of what she heard as distinguished from things
+such as, on occasions like the present, she only extravagantly guessed.
+&ldquo;I seem with this freedom, you see, to have guessed Mr. Chad. He&rsquo;s
+a young man on whose head high hopes are placed at Woollett; a young man a
+wicked woman has got hold of and whom his family over there have sent you out
+to rescue. You&rsquo;ve accepted the mission of separating him from the wicked
+woman. Are you quite sure she&rsquo;s very bad for him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something in his manner showed it as quite pulling him up. &ldquo;Of course we
+are. Wouldn&rsquo;t <i>you</i> be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I don&rsquo;t know. One never does&mdash;does one?&mdash;beforehand.
+One can only judge on the facts. Yours are quite new to me; I&rsquo;m really
+not in the least, as you see, in possession of them: so it will be awfully
+interesting to have them from you. If you&rsquo;re satisfied, that&rsquo;s all
+that&rsquo;s required. I mean if you&rsquo;re sure you <i>are</i> sure: sure it
+won&rsquo;t do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That he should lead such a life? Rather!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but I don&rsquo;t know, you see, about his life; you&rsquo;ve not
+told me about his life. She may be charming&mdash;his life!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Charming?&rdquo;&mdash;Strether stared before him. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s
+base, venal&mdash;out of the streets.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see. And <i>he</i>&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Chad, wretched boy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of what type and temper is he?&rdquo; she went on as Strether had
+lapsed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;the obstinate.&rdquo; It was as if for a moment he had been
+going to say more and had then controlled himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was scarce what she wished. &ldquo;Do you like him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time he was prompt. &ldquo;No. How <i>can</i> I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean because of your being so saddled with him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m thinking of his mother,&rdquo; said Strether after a moment.
+&ldquo;He has darkened her admirable life.&rdquo; He spoke with austerity.
+&ldquo;He has worried her half to death.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh that&rsquo;s of course odious.&rdquo; She had a pause as if for
+renewed emphasis of this truth, but it ended on another note. &ldquo;Is her
+life very admirable?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Extraordinarily.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was so much in the tone that Miss Gostrey had to devote another pause to
+the appreciation of it. &ldquo;And has he only <i>her?</i> I don&rsquo;t mean
+the bad woman in Paris,&rdquo; she quickly added&mdash;&ldquo;for I assure you
+I shouldn&rsquo;t even at the best be disposed to allow him more than one. But
+has he only his mother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has also a sister, older than himself and married; and they&rsquo;re
+both remarkably fine women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very handsome, you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This promptitude&mdash;almost, as he might have thought, this precipitation,
+gave him a brief drop; but he came up again. &ldquo;Mrs. Newsome, I think, is
+handsome, though she&rsquo;s not of course, with a son of twenty-eight and a
+daughter of thirty, in her very first youth. She married, however, extremely
+young.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And is wonderful,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey asked, &ldquo;for her age?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether seemed to feel with a certain disquiet the pressure of it. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t say she&rsquo;s wonderful. Or rather,&rdquo; he went on the next
+moment, &ldquo;I do say it. It&rsquo;s exactly what she
+<i>is</i>&mdash;wonderful. But I wasn&rsquo;t thinking of her
+appearance,&rdquo; he explained&mdash;&ldquo;striking as that doubtless is. I
+was thinking&mdash;well, of many other things.&rdquo; He seemed to look at
+these as if to mention some of them; then took, pulling himself up, another
+turn. &ldquo;About Mrs. Pocock people may differ.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that the daughter&rsquo;s name&mdash;&lsquo;Pocock&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the daughter&rsquo;s name,&rdquo; Strether sturdily
+confessed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And people may differ, you mean, about <i>her</i> beauty?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But <i>you</i> admire her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave his friend a glance as to show how he could bear this &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+perhaps a little afraid of her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Miss Gostrey, &ldquo;I see her from here! You may say
+then I see very fast and very far, but I&rsquo;ve already shown you I do. The
+young man and the two ladies,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;are at any rate all
+the family?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite all. His father has been dead ten years, and there&rsquo;s no
+brother, nor any other sister. They&rsquo;d do,&rdquo; said Strether,
+&ldquo;anything in the world for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you&rsquo;d do anything in the world for <i>them?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shifted again; she had made it perhaps just a shade too affirmative for his
+nerves. &ldquo;Oh I don&rsquo;t know!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;d do at any rate this, and the &lsquo;anything&rsquo;
+they&rsquo;d do is represented by their <i>making</i> you do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah they couldn&rsquo;t have come&mdash;either of them. They&rsquo;re
+very busy people and Mrs. Newsome in particular has a large full life.
+She&rsquo;s moreover highly nervous&mdash;and not at all strong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean she&rsquo;s an American invalid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He carefully distinguished. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing she likes less than to
+be called one, but she would consent to be one of those things, I think,&rdquo;
+he laughed, &ldquo;if it were the only way to be the other.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Consent to be an American in order to be an invalid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;the other way round. She&rsquo;s at any
+rate delicate sensitive high-strung. She puts so much of herself into
+everything&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah Maria knew these things! &ldquo;That she has nothing left for anything else?
+Of course she hasn&rsquo;t. To whom do you say it? High-strung? Don&rsquo;t I
+spend my life, for them, jamming down the pedal? I see moreover how it has told
+on you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether took this more lightly. &ldquo;Oh I jam down the pedal too!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she lucidly returned, &ldquo;we must from this moment bear
+on it together with all our might.&rdquo; And she forged ahead. &ldquo;Have
+they money?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was as if, while her energetic image still held him, her enquiry fell
+short. &ldquo;Mrs. Newsome,&rdquo; he wished further to explain,
+&ldquo;hasn&rsquo;t moreover your courage on the question of contact. If she
+had come it would have been to see the person herself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The woman? Ah but that&rsquo;s courage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;it&rsquo;s exaltation, which is a very different thing.
+Courage,&rdquo; he, however, accommodatingly threw out, &ldquo;is what
+<i>you</i> have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head. &ldquo;You say that only to patch me up&mdash;to cover the
+nudity of my want of exaltation. I&rsquo;ve neither the one nor the other.
+I&rsquo;ve mere battered indifference. I see that what you mean,&rdquo; Miss
+Gostrey pursued, &ldquo;is that if your friend <i>had</i> come she would take
+great views, and the great views, to put it simply, would be too much for
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether looked amused at her notion of the simple, but he adopted her formula.
+&ldquo;Everything&rsquo;s too much for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then such a service as this of yours&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is more for her than anything else? Yes&mdash;far more. But so long as
+it isn&rsquo;t too much for <i>me</i>&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her condition doesn&rsquo;t matter? Surely not; we leave her condition
+out; we take it, that is, for granted. I see it, her condition, as behind and
+beneath you; yet at the same time I see it as bearing you up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh it does bear me up!&rdquo; Strether laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then as yours bears <i>me</i> nothing more&rsquo;s needed.&rdquo;
+With which she put again her question. &ldquo;Has Mrs. Newsome money?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time he heeded. &ldquo;Oh plenty. That&rsquo;s the root of the evil.
+There&rsquo;s money, to very large amounts, in the concern. Chad has had the
+free use of a great deal. But if he&rsquo;ll pull himself together and come
+home, all the same, he&rsquo;ll find his account in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had listened with all her interest. &ldquo;And I hope to goodness
+you&rsquo;ll find yours!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll take up his definite material reward,&rdquo; said Strether
+without acknowledgement of this. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s at the parting of the ways.
+He can come into the business now&mdash;he can&rsquo;t come later.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there a business?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord, yes&mdash;a big brave bouncing business. A roaring trade.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A great shop?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;a workshop; a great production, a great industry. The
+concern&rsquo;s a manufacture&mdash;and a manufacture that, if it&rsquo;s only
+properly looked after, may well be on the way to become a monopoly. It&rsquo;s
+a little thing they make&mdash;make better, it appears, than other people can,
+or than other people, at any rate, do. Mr. Newsome, being a man of ideas, at
+least in that particular line,&rdquo; Strether explained, &ldquo;put them on it
+with great effect, and gave the place altogether, in his time, an immense
+lift.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a place in itself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, quite a number of buildings; almost a little industrial colony.
+But above all it&rsquo;s a thing. The article produced.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what <i>is</i> the article produced?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether looked about him as in slight reluctance to say; then the curtain,
+which he saw about to rise, came to his aid. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you next
+time.&rdquo; But when the next time came he only said he&rsquo;d tell her later
+on&mdash;after they should have left the theatre; for she had immediately
+reverted to their topic, and even for himself the picture of the stage was now
+overlaid with another image. His postponements, however, made her
+wonder&mdash;wonder if the article referred to were anything bad. And she
+explained that she meant improper or ridiculous or wrong. But Strether, so far
+as that went, could satisfy her. &ldquo;Unmentionable? Oh no, we constantly
+talk of it; we are quite familiar and brazen about it. Only, as a small,
+trivial, rather ridiculous object of the commonest domestic use, it&rsquo;s
+just wanting in&mdash;what shall I say? Well, dignity, or the least approach to
+distinction. Right here therefore, with everything about us so
+grand&mdash;!&rdquo; In short he shrank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a false note?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sadly. It&rsquo;s vulgar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But surely not vulgarer than this.&rdquo; Then on his wondering as she
+herself had done: &ldquo;Than everything about us.&rdquo; She seemed a trifle
+irritated. &ldquo;What do you take this for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why for&mdash;comparatively&mdash;divine!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This dreadful London theatre? It&rsquo;s impossible, if you really want
+to know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh then,&rdquo; laughed Strether, &ldquo;I <i>don&rsquo;t</i> really
+want to know!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made between them a pause, which she, however, still fascinated by the
+mystery of the production at Woollett, presently broke. &ldquo;&lsquo;Rather
+ridiculous&rsquo;? Clothes-pins? Saleratus? Shoe-polish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It brought him round. &ldquo;No&mdash;you don&rsquo;t even &lsquo;burn.&rsquo;
+I don&rsquo;t think, you know, you&rsquo;ll guess it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How then can I judge how vulgar it is?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll judge when I do tell you&rdquo;&mdash;and he persuaded her
+to patience. But it may even now frankly be mentioned that he in the sequel
+never <i>was</i> to tell her. He actually never did so, and it moreover oddly
+occurred that by the law, within her, of the incalculable, her desire for the
+information dropped and her attitude to the question converted itself into a
+positive cultivation of ignorance. In ignorance she could humour her fancy, and
+that proved a useful freedom. She could treat the little nameless object as
+indeed unnameable&mdash;she could make their abstention enormously definite.
+There might indeed have been for Strether the portent of this in what she next
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it perhaps then because it&rsquo;s so bad&mdash;because your industry
+as you call it, <i>is</i> so vulgar&mdash;that Mr. Chad won&rsquo;t come back?
+Does he feel the taint? Is he staying away not to be mixed up in it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Strether laughed, &ldquo;it wouldn&rsquo;t appear&mdash;would
+it?&mdash;that he feels &lsquo;taints&rsquo;! He&rsquo;s glad enough of the
+money from it, and the money&rsquo;s his whole basis. There&rsquo;s
+appreciation in that&mdash;I mean as to the allowance his mother has hitherto
+made him. She has of course the resource of cutting this allowance off; but
+even then he has unfortunately, and on no small scale, his independent
+supply&mdash;money left him by his grandfather, her own father.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t the fact you mention then,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey asked,
+&ldquo;make it just more easy for him to be particular? Isn&rsquo;t he
+conceivable as fastidious about the source&mdash;the apparent and public
+source&mdash;of his income?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether was able quite good-humouredly to entertain the proposition.
+&ldquo;The source of his grandfather&rsquo;s wealth&mdash;and thereby of his
+own share in it&mdash;was not particularly noble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what source was it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether cast about. &ldquo;Well&mdash;practices.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In business? Infamies? He was an old swindler?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he said with more emphasis than spirit, &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t
+describe <i>him</i> nor narrate his exploits.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord, what abysses! And the late Mr. Newsome then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, what about him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was he like the grandfather?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;he was on the other side of the house. And he was
+different.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey kept it up. &ldquo;Better?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her friend for a moment hung fire. &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her comment on his hesitation was scarce the less marked for being mute.
+&ldquo;Thank you. <i>Now</i> don&rsquo;t you see,&rdquo; she went on,
+&ldquo;why the boy doesn&rsquo;t come home? He&rsquo;s drowning his
+shame.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His shame? What shame?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What shame? Comment donc? <i>The</i> shame.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But where and when,&rdquo; Strether asked, &ldquo;is &lsquo;<i>the</i>
+shame&rsquo;&mdash;where is any shame&mdash;to-day? The men I speak
+of&mdash;they did as every one does; and (besides being ancient history) it was
+all a matter of appreciation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She showed how she understood. &ldquo;Mrs. Newsome has appreciated?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah I can&rsquo;t speak for <i>her!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the midst of such doings&mdash;and, as I understand you, profiting by
+them, she at least has remained exquisite?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I can&rsquo;t talk of her!&rdquo; Strether said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought she was just what you <i>could</i> talk of. You
+<i>don&rsquo;t</i> trust me,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey after a moment declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had its effect. &ldquo;Well, her money is spent, her life conceived and
+carried on with a large beneficence&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a kind of expiation of wrongs? Gracious,&rdquo; she added
+before he could speak, &ldquo;how intensely you make me see her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you see her,&rdquo; Strether dropped, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s all
+that&rsquo;s necessary.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She really seemed to have her. &ldquo;I feel that. She <i>is</i>, in spite of
+everything, handsome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This at least enlivened him. &ldquo;What do you mean by everything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I mean <i>you</i>.&rdquo; With which she had one of her swift
+changes of ground. &ldquo;You say the concern needs looking after; but
+doesn&rsquo;t Mrs. Newsome look after it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So far as possible. She&rsquo;s wonderfully able, but it&rsquo;s not her
+affair, and her life&rsquo;s a good deal overcharged. She has many, many
+things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you also?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;I&rsquo;ve many too, if you will.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see. But what I mean is,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey amended, &ldquo;do you
+also look after the business?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, I don&rsquo;t touch the business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only everything else?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, yes&mdash;some things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As for instance&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether obligingly thought. &ldquo;Well, the Review.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Review?&mdash;you have a Review?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly. Woollett has a Review&mdash;which Mrs. Newsome, for the most
+part, magnificently pays for and which I, not at all magnificently, edit. My
+name&rsquo;s on the cover,&rdquo; Strether pursued, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;m really
+rather disappointed and hurt that you seem never to have heard of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She neglected for a moment this grievance. &ldquo;And what kind of a Review is
+it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His serenity was now completely restored. &ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s green.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean in political colour as they say here&mdash;in
+thought?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; I mean the cover&rsquo;s green&mdash;of the most lovely
+shade.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And with Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s name on it too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited a little. &ldquo;Oh as for that you must judge if she peeps out.
+She&rsquo;s behind the whole thing; but she&rsquo;s of a delicacy and a
+discretion&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey took it all. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure. She <i>would</i> be. I
+don&rsquo;t underrate her. She must be rather a swell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, she&rsquo;s rather a swell!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A Woollett swell&mdash;<i>bon!</i> I like the idea of a Woollett swell.
+And you must be rather one too, to be so mixed up with her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah no,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s not the way it
+works.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she had already taken him up. &ldquo;The way it works&mdash;you
+needn&rsquo;t tell me!&mdash;is of course that you efface yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With my name on the cover?&rdquo; he lucidly objected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but you don&rsquo;t put it on for yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon&mdash;that&rsquo;s exactly what I do put it on for.
+It&rsquo;s exactly the thing that I&rsquo;m reduced to doing for myself. It
+seems to rescue a little, you see, from the wreck of hopes and ambitions, the
+refuse-heap of disappointments and failures, my one presentable little scrap of
+an identity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this she looked at him as to say many things, but what she at last simply
+said was: &ldquo;She likes to see it there. You&rsquo;re the bigger swell of
+the two,&rdquo; she immediately continued, &ldquo;because you think
+you&rsquo;re not one. She thinks she <i>is</i> one. However,&rdquo; Miss
+Gostrey added, &ldquo;she thinks you&rsquo;re one too. You&rsquo;re at all
+events the biggest she can get hold of.&rdquo; She embroidered, she abounded.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t say it to interfere between you, but on the day she gets
+hold of a bigger one&mdash;!&rdquo; Strether had thrown back his head as in
+silent mirth over something that struck him in her audacity or felicity, and
+her flight meanwhile was already higher. &ldquo;Therefore close with
+her&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Close with her?&rdquo; he asked as she seemed to hang poised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Before you lose your chance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their eyes met over it. &ldquo;What do you mean by closing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what do I mean by your chance? I&rsquo;ll tell you when you tell me
+all the things <i>you</i> don&rsquo;t. Is it her <i>greatest</i> fad?&rdquo;
+she briskly pursued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Review?&rdquo; He seemed to wonder how he could best describe it.
+This resulted however but in a sketch. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s her tribute to the
+ideal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see. You go in for tremendous things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We go in for the unpopular side&mdash;that is so far as we dare.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how far <i>do</i> you dare?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, she very far. I much less. I don&rsquo;t begin to have her faith.
+She provides,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;three fourths of that. And she
+provides, as I&rsquo;ve confided to you, <i>all</i> the money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It evoked somehow a vision of gold that held for a little Miss Gostrey&rsquo;s
+eyes, and she looked as if she heard the bright dollars shovelled in. &ldquo;I
+hope then you make a good thing&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I <i>never</i> made a good thing!&rdquo; he at once returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She just waited. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you call it a good thing to be
+loved?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh we&rsquo;re not loved. We&rsquo;re not even hated. We&rsquo;re only
+just sweetly ignored.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had another pause. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t trust me!&rdquo; she once more
+repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t I when I lift the last veil?&mdash;tell you the very secret
+of the prison-house?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again she met his eyes, but to the result that after an instant her own turned
+away with impatience. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t sell? Oh I&rsquo;m glad of
+<i>that!</i>&rdquo; After which however, and before he could protest, she was
+off again. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s just a <i>moral</i> swell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He accepted gaily enough the definition. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I really think that
+describes her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it had for his friend the oddest connexion. &ldquo;How does she do her
+hair?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed out. &ldquo;Beautifully!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah that doesn&rsquo;t tell me. However, it doesn&rsquo;t matter&mdash;I
+know. It&rsquo;s tremendously neat&mdash;a real reproach; quite remarkably
+thick and without, as yet, a single strand of white. There!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He blushed for her realism, but gaped at her truth. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re the
+very deuce.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What else <i>should</i> I be? It was as the very deuce I pounced on you.
+But don&rsquo;t let it trouble you, for everything but the very deuce&mdash;at
+our age&mdash;is a bore and a delusion, and even he himself, after all, but
+half a joy.&rdquo; With which, on a single sweep of her wing, she resumed.
+&ldquo;You assist her to expiate&mdash;which is rather hard when you&rsquo;ve
+yourself not sinned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s she who hasn&rsquo;t sinned,&rdquo; Strether replied.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve sinned the most.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey cynically laughed, &ldquo;what a picture of
+<i>her!</i> Have you robbed the widow and the orphan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve sinned enough,&rdquo; said Strether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Enough for whom? Enough for what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, to be where I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo; They were disturbed at this moment by the passage
+between their knees and the back of the seats before them of a gentleman who
+had been absent during a part of the performance and who now returned for the
+close; but the interruption left Miss Gostrey time, before the subsequent hush,
+to express as a sharp finality her sense of the moral of all their talk.
+&ldquo;I knew you had something up your sleeve!&rdquo; This finality, however,
+left them in its turn, at the end of the play, as disposed to hang back as if
+they had still much to say; so that they easily agreed to let every one go
+before them&mdash;they found an interest in waiting. They made out from the
+lobby that the night had turned to rain; yet Miss Gostrey let her friend know
+that he wasn&rsquo;t to see her home. He was simply to put her, by herself,
+into a four-wheeler; she liked so in London, of wet nights after wild
+pleasures, thinking things over, on the return, in lonely four-wheelers. This
+was her great time, she intimated, for pulling herself together. The delays
+caused by the weather, the struggle for vehicles at the door, gave them
+occasion to subside on a divan at the back of the vestibule and just beyond the
+reach of the fresh damp gusts from the street. Here Strether&rsquo;s comrade
+resumed that free handling of the subject to which his own imagination of it
+already owed so much. &ldquo;Does your young friend in Paris like you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had almost, after the interval, startled him. &ldquo;Oh I hope not! Why
+<i>should</i> he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; Miss Gostrey asked. &ldquo;That
+you&rsquo;re coming down on him need have nothing to do with it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see more in it,&rdquo; he presently returned, &ldquo;than I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I see <i>you</i> in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then you see more in &lsquo;me&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Than you see in yourself? Very likely. That&rsquo;s always one&rsquo;s
+right. What I was thinking of,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;is the possible
+particular effect on him of his <i>milieu</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh his <i>milieu</i>&mdash;!&rdquo; Strether really felt he could
+imagine it better now than three hours before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean it can only have been so lowering?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why that&rsquo;s my very starting-point.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but you start so far back. What do his letters say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing. He practically ignores us&mdash;or spares us. He doesn&rsquo;t
+write.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see. But there are all the same,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;two quite
+distinct things that&mdash;given the wonderful place he&rsquo;s in&mdash;may
+have happened to him. One is that he may have got brutalised. The other is that
+he may have got refined.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether stared&mdash;this <i>was</i> a novelty. &ldquo;Refined?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she said quietly, &ldquo;there <i>are</i> refinements.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh.
+&ldquo;<i>You</i> have them!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As one of the signs,&rdquo; she continued in the same tone, &ldquo;they
+constitute perhaps the worst.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought it over and his gravity returned. &ldquo;Is it a refinement not to
+answer his mother&rsquo;s letters?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out. &ldquo;Oh I should say
+the greatest of all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;<i>I&rsquo;m</i> quite content to let
+it, as one of the signs, pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do
+what he likes with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This appeared to strike her. &ldquo;How do you know it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I&rsquo;m sure of it. I feel it in my bones.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Feel he <i>can</i> do it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Feel that he believes he can. It may come to the same thing!&rdquo;
+Strether laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wouldn&rsquo;t, however, have this. &ldquo;Nothing for you will ever come
+to the same thing as anything else.&rdquo; And she understood what she meant,
+it seemed, sufficiently to go straight on. &ldquo;You say that if he does break
+he&rsquo;ll come in for things at home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite positively. He&rsquo;ll come in for a particular chance&mdash;a
+chance that any properly constituted young man would jump at. The business has
+so developed that an opening scarcely apparent three years ago, but which his
+father&rsquo;s will took account of as in certain conditions possible and
+which, under that will, attaches to Chad&rsquo;s availing himself of it a large
+contingent advantage&mdash;this opening, the conditions having come about, now
+simply awaits him. His mother has kept it for him, holding out against strong
+pressure, till the last possible moment. It requires, naturally, as it carries
+with it a handsome &lsquo;part,&rsquo; a large share in profits, his being on
+the spot and making a big effort for a big result. That&rsquo;s what I mean by
+his chance. If he misses it he comes in, as you say, for nothing. And to see
+that he doesn&rsquo;t miss it is, in a word, what I&rsquo;ve come out
+for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She let it all sink in. &ldquo;What you&rsquo;ve come out for then is simply to
+render him an immense service.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, poor Strether was willing to take it so. &ldquo;Ah if you like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He stands, as they say, if you succeed with him, to gain&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh a lot of advantages.&rdquo; Strether had them clearly at his
+fingers&rsquo; ends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By which you mean of course a lot of money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, not only. I&rsquo;m acting with a sense for him of other things
+too. Consideration and comfort and security&mdash;the general safety of being
+anchored by a strong chain. He wants, as I see him, to be protected. Protected
+I mean from life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah voilà!&rdquo;&mdash;her thought fitted with a click. &ldquo;From
+life. What you <i>really</i> want to get him home for is to marry him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s about the size of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s rudimentary. But to any
+one in particular?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled at this, looking a little more conscious. &ldquo;You get everything
+out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment again their eyes met. &ldquo;You put everything in!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He acknowledged the tribute by telling her. &ldquo;To Mamie Pocock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered; then gravely, even exquisitely, as if to make the oddity also
+fit: &ldquo;His own niece?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you must yourself find a name for the relation. His
+brother-in-law&rsquo;s sister. Mrs. Jim&rsquo;s sister-in-law.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to have on Miss Gostrey a certain hardening effect. &ldquo;And who in
+the world&rsquo;s Mrs. Jim?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Chad&rsquo;s sister&mdash;who was Sarah Newsome. She&rsquo;s
+married&mdash;didn&rsquo;t I mention it?&mdash;to Jim Pocock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; she tacitly replied; but he had mentioned things&mdash;!
+Then, however, with all the sound it could have, &ldquo;Who in the
+world&rsquo;s Jim Pocock?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why Sally&rsquo;s husband. That&rsquo;s the only way we distinguish
+people at Woollett,&rdquo; he good-humoredly explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And is it a great distinction&mdash;being Sally&rsquo;s husband?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He considered. &ldquo;I think there can be scarcely a greater&mdash;unless it
+may become one, in the future, to be Chad&rsquo;s wife.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then how do they distinguish <i>you?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They <i>don&rsquo;t</i>&mdash;except, as I&rsquo;ve told you, by the
+green cover.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more their eyes met on it, and she held him an instant. &ldquo;The green
+cover won&rsquo;t&mdash;nor will <i>any</i> cover&mdash;avail you with
+<i>me</i>. You&rsquo;re of a depth of duplicity!&rdquo; Still, she could in her
+own large grasp of the real condone it. &ldquo;Is Mamie a great
+<i>parti?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh the greatest we have&mdash;our prettiest brightest girl.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey seemed to fix the poor child. &ldquo;I know what they <i>can</i>
+be. And with money?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not perhaps with a great deal of that&mdash;but with so much of
+everything else that we don&rsquo;t miss it. We <i>don&rsquo;t</i> miss money
+much, you know,&rdquo; Strether added, &ldquo;in general, in America, in pretty
+girls.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she conceded; &ldquo;but I know also what you do sometimes
+miss. And do you,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;yourself admire her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a question, he indicated, that there might be several ways of taking;
+but he decided after an instant for the humorous. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t I
+sufficiently showed you how I admire <i>any</i> pretty girl?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her interest in his problem was by this time such that it scarce left her
+freedom, and she kept close to the facts. &ldquo;I supposed that at Woollett
+you wanted them&mdash;what shall I call it?&mdash;blameless. I mean your young
+men for your pretty girls.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So did I!&rdquo; Strether confessed. &ldquo;But you strike there a
+curious fact&mdash;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 <i>should</i> 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve to take them back as they come. When they <i>do</i> come.
+<i>Bon!</i>&rdquo; Once more she embraced it all, but she had a moment of
+thought. &ldquo;Poor Chad!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Strether cheerfully &ldquo;Mamie will save him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was looking away, still in her vision, and she spoke with impatience and
+almost as if he hadn&rsquo;t understood her. &ldquo;<i>You&rsquo;ll</i> save
+him. That&rsquo;s who&rsquo;ll save him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but with Mamie&rsquo;s aid. Unless indeed you mean,&rdquo; he added,
+&ldquo;that I shall effect so much more with yours!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made her at last again look at him. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll do more&mdash;as
+you&rsquo;re so much better&mdash;than all of us put together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m only better since I&rsquo;ve known <i>you!</i>&rdquo;
+Strether bravely returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The depletion of the place, the shrinkage of the crowd and now comparatively
+quiet withdrawal of its last elements had already brought them nearer the door
+and put them in relation with a messenger of whom he bespoke Miss
+Gostrey&rsquo;s cab. But this left them a few minutes more, which she was
+clearly in no mood not to use. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve spoken to me of
+what&mdash;by your success&mdash;Mr. Chad stands to gain. But you&rsquo;ve not
+spoken to me of what you do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I&rsquo;ve nothing more to gain,&rdquo; said Strether very simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took it as even quite too simple. &ldquo;You mean you&rsquo;ve got it all
+&lsquo;down&rsquo;? You&rsquo;ve been paid in advance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah don&rsquo;t talk about payment!&rdquo; he groaned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something in the tone of it pulled her up, but as their messenger still delayed
+she had another chance and she put it in another way. &ldquo;What&mdash;by
+failure&mdash;do you stand to lose?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He still, however, wouldn&rsquo;t have it. &ldquo;Nothing!&rdquo; he exclaimed,
+and on the messenger&rsquo;s at this instant reappearing he was able to sink
+the subject in their responsive advance. When, a few steps up the street, under
+a lamp, he had put her into her four-wheeler and she had asked him if the man
+had called for him no second conveyance, he replied before the door was closed.
+&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t take me with you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not for the world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I shall walk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the rain?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like the rain,&rdquo; said Strether. &ldquo;Good-night!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She kept him a moment, while his hand was on the door, by not answering; after
+which she answered by repeating her question. &ldquo;What do you stand to
+lose?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why the question now affected him as other he couldn&rsquo;t have said; he
+could only this time meet it otherwise. &ldquo;Everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I thought. Then you shall succeed. And to that end I&rsquo;m
+yours&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, dear lady!&rdquo; he kindly breathed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Till death!&rdquo; said Maria Gostrey. &ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+Strether called, his second morning in Paris, on the bankers of the Rue Scribe
+to whom his letter of credit was addressed, and he made this visit attended by
+Waymarsh, in whose company he had crossed from London two days before. They had
+hastened to the Rue Scribe on the morrow of their arrival, but Strether had not
+then found the letters the hope of which prompted this errand. He had had as
+yet none at all; hadn&rsquo;t expected them in London, but had counted on
+several in Paris, and, disconcerted now, had presently strolled back to the
+Boulevard with a sense of injury that he felt himself taking for as good a
+start as any other. It would serve, this spur to his spirit, he reflected, as,
+pausing at the top of the street, he looked up and down the great foreign
+avenue, it would serve to begin business with. His idea was to begin business
+immediately, and it did much for him the rest of his day that the beginning of
+business awaited him. He did little else till night but ask himself what he
+should do if he hadn&rsquo;t fortunately had so much to do; but he put himself
+the question in many different situations and connexions. What carried him
+hither and yon was an admirable theory that nothing he could do wouldn&rsquo;t
+be in some manner related to what he fundamentally had on hand, or <i>would</i>
+be&mdash;should he happen to have a scruple&mdash;wasted for it. He did happen
+to have a scruple&mdash;a scruple about taking no definite step till he should
+get letters; but this reasoning carried it off. A single day to feel his
+feet&mdash;he had felt them as yet only at Chester and in London&mdash;was he
+could consider, none too much; and having, as he had often privately expressed
+it, Paris to reckon with, he threw these hours of freshness consciously into
+the reckoning. They made it continually greater, but that was what it had best
+be if it was to be anything at all, and he gave himself up till far into the
+evening, at the theatre and on the return, after the theatre, along the bright
+congested Boulevard, to feeling it grow. Waymarsh had accompanied him this time
+to the play, and the two men had walked together, as a first stage, from the
+Gymnase to the Café Riche, into the crowded &ldquo;terrace&rdquo; of which
+establishment&mdash;the night, or rather the morning, for midnight had struck,
+being bland and populous&mdash;they had wedged themselves for refreshment.
+Waymarsh, as a result of some discussion with his friend, had made a marked
+virtue of his having now let himself go; and there had been elements of
+impression in their half-hour over their watered beer-glasses that gave him his
+occasion for conveying that he held this compromise with his stiffer self to
+have become extreme. He conveyed it&mdash;for it was still, after all, his
+stiffer self who gloomed out of the glare of the terrace&mdash;in solemn
+silence; and there was indeed a great deal of critical silence, every way,
+between the companions, even till they gained the Place de l&rsquo;Opéra, as to
+the character of their nocturnal progress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This morning there <i>were</i> letters&mdash;letters which had reached London,
+apparently all together, the day of Strether&rsquo;s journey, and had taken
+their time to follow him; so that, after a controlled impulse to go into them
+in the reception-room of the bank, which, reminding him of the post-office at
+Woollett, affected him as the abutment of some transatlantic bridge, he slipped
+them into the pocket of his loose grey overcoat with a sense of the felicity of
+carrying them off. Waymarsh, who had had letters yesterday, had had them again
+to-day, and Waymarsh suggested in this particular no controlled impulses. The
+last one he was at all events likely to be observed to struggle with was
+clearly that of bringing to a premature close any visit to the Rue Scribe.
+Strether had left him there yesterday; he wanted to see the papers, and he had
+spent, by what his friend could make out, a succession of hours with the
+papers. He spoke of the establishment, with emphasis, as a post of superior
+observation; just as he spoke generally of his actual damnable doom as a device
+for hiding from him what was going on. Europe was best described, to his mind,
+as an elaborate engine for dissociating the confined American from that
+indispensable knowledge, and was accordingly only rendered bearable by these
+occasional stations of relief, traps for the arrest of wandering western airs.
+Strether, on his side, set himself to walk again&mdash;he had his relief in his
+pocket; and indeed, much as he had desired his budget, the growth of
+restlessness might have been marked in him from the moment he had assured
+himself of the superscription of most of the missives it contained. This
+restlessness became therefore his temporary law; he knew he should recognise as
+soon as see it the best place of all for settling down with his chief
+correspondent. He had for the next hour an accidental air of looking for it in
+the windows of shops; he came down the Rue de la Paix in the sun and, passing
+across the Tuileries and the river, indulged more than once&mdash;as if on
+finding himself determined&mdash;in a sudden pause before the book-stalls of
+the opposite quay. In the garden of the Tuileries he had lingered, on two or
+three spots, to look; it was as if the wonderful Paris spring had stayed him as
+he roamed. The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes&mdash;in a soft
+breeze and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the garden-floor, of
+bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong boxes, in the type of ancient
+thrifty persons basking betimes where terrace-walls were warm, in the
+blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the
+deep references of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a
+white-gaitered red-legged soldier. He watched little brisk figures, figures
+whose movement was as the tick of the great Paris clock, take their smooth
+diagonal from point to point; the air had a taste as of something mixed with
+art, something that presented nature as a white-capped master-chef. The palace
+was gone, Strether remembered the palace; and when he gazed into the
+irremediable void of its site the historic sense in him might have been freely
+at play&mdash;the play under which in Paris indeed it so often winces like a
+touched nerve. He filled out spaces with dim symbols of scenes; he caught the
+gleam of white statues at the base of which, with his letters out, he could
+tilt back a straw-bottomed chair. But his drift was, for reasons, to the other
+side, and it floated him unspent up the Rue de Seine and as far as the
+Luxembourg. In the Luxembourg Gardens he pulled up; here at last he found his
+nook, and here, on a penny chair from which terraces, alleys, vistas,
+fountains, little trees in green tubs, little women in white caps and shrill
+little girls at play all sunnily &ldquo;composed&rdquo; together, he passed an
+hour in which the cup of his impressions seemed truly to overflow. But a week
+had elapsed since he quitted the ship, and there were more things in his mind
+than so few days could account for. More than once, during the time, he had
+regarded himself as admonished; but the admonition this morning was formidably
+sharp. It took as it hadn&rsquo;t done yet the form of a question&mdash;the
+question of what he was doing with such an extraordinary sense of escape. This
+sense was sharpest after he had read his letters, but that was also precisely
+why the question pressed. Four of the letters were from Mrs. Newsome and none
+of them short; she had lost no time, had followed on his heels while he moved,
+so expressing herself that he now could measure the probable frequency with
+which he should hear. They would arrive, it would seem, her communications, at
+the rate of several a week; he should be able to count, it might even prove, on
+more than one by each mail. If he had begun yesterday with a small grievance he
+had therefore an opportunity to begin to-day with its opposite. He read the
+letters successively and slowly, putting others back into his pocket but
+keeping these for a long time afterwards gathered in his lap. He held them
+there, lost in thought, as if to prolong the presence of what they gave him; or
+as if at the least to assure them their part in the constitution of some
+lucidity. His friend wrote admirably, and her tone was even more in her style
+than in her voice&mdash;he might almost, for the hour, have had to come this
+distance to get its full carrying quality; yet the plentitude of his
+consciousness of difference consorted perfectly with the deepened intensity of
+the connexion. It was the difference, the difference of being just where he was
+and <i>as</i> he was, that formed the escape&mdash;this difference was so much
+greater than he had dreamed it would be; and what he finally sat there turning
+over was the strange logic of his finding himself so free. He felt it in a
+manner his duty to think out his state, to approve the process, and when he
+came in fact to trace the steps and add up the items they sufficiently
+accounted for the sum. He had never expected&mdash;that was the truth of
+it&mdash;again to find himself young, and all the years and other things it had
+taken to make him so were exactly his present arithmetic. He had to make sure
+of them to put his scruple to rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It all sprang at bottom from the beauty of Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s desire that he
+should be worried with nothing that was not of the essence of his task; by
+insisting that he should thoroughly intermit and break she had so provided for
+his freedom that she would, as it were, have only herself to thank. Strether
+could not at this point indeed have completed his thought by the image of what
+she might have to thank herself <i>for</i>: the image, at best, of his own
+likeness&mdash;poor Lambert Strether washed up on the sunny strand by the waves
+of a single day, poor Lambert Strether thankful for breathing-time and
+stiffening himself while he gasped. There he was, and with nothing in his
+aspect or his posture to scandalise: it was only true that if he had seen Mrs.
+Newsome coming he would instinctively have jumped up to walk away a little. He
+would have come round and back to her bravely, but he would have had first to
+pull himself together. She abounded in news of the situation at home, proved to
+him how perfectly she was arranging for his absence, told him who would take up
+this and who take up that exactly where he had left it, gave him in fact
+chapter and verse for the moral that nothing would suffer. It filled for him,
+this tone of hers, all the air; yet it struck him at the same time as the hum
+of vain things. This latter effect was what he tried to justify&mdash;and with
+the success that, grave though the appearance, he at last lighted on a form
+that was happy. He arrived at it by the inevitable recognition of his having
+been a fortnight before one of the weariest of men. If ever a man had come off
+tired Lambert Strether was that man; and hadn&rsquo;t it been distinctly on the
+ground of his fatigue that his wonderful friend at home had so felt for him and
+so contrived? It seemed to him somehow at these instants that, could he only
+maintain with sufficient firmness his grasp of that truth, it might become in a
+manner his compass and his helm. What he wanted most was some idea that would
+simplify, and nothing would do this so much as the fact that he was done for
+and finished. If it had been in such a light that he had just detected in his
+cup the dregs of youth, that was a mere flaw of the surface of his scheme. He
+was so distinctly fagged-out that it must serve precisely as his convenience,
+and if he could but consistently be good for little enough he might do
+everything he wanted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon&mdash;the common
+unattainable art of taking things as they came. He appeared to himself to have
+given his best years to an active appreciation of the way they didn&rsquo;t
+come; but perhaps&mdash;as they would seemingly here be things quite
+other&mdash;this long ache might at last drop to rest. He could easily see that
+from the moment he should accept the notion of his foredoomed collapse the last
+thing he would lack would be reasons and memories. Oh if he <i>should</i> do
+the sum no slate would hold the figures! The fact that he had failed, as he
+considered, in everything, in each relation and in half a dozen trades, as he
+liked luxuriously to put it, might have made, might still make, for an empty
+present; but it stood solidly for a crowded past. It had not been, so much
+achievement missed, a light yoke nor a short load. It was at present as if the
+backward picture had hung there, the long crooked course, grey in the shadow of
+his solitude. It had been a dreadful cheerful sociable solitude, a solitude of
+life or choice, of community; but though there had been people enough all round
+it there had been but three or four persons <i>in</i> it. Waymarsh was one of
+these, and the fact struck him just now as marking the record. Mrs. Newsome was
+another, and Miss Gostrey had of a sudden shown signs of becoming a third.
+Beyond, behind them was the pale figure of his real youth, which held against
+its breast the two presences paler than itself&mdash;the young wife he had
+early lost and the young son he had stupidly sacrificed. He had again and again
+made out for himself that he might have kept his little boy, his little dull
+boy who had died at school of rapid diphtheria, if he had not in those years so
+insanely given himself to merely missing the mother. It was the soreness of his
+remorse that the child had in all likelihood not really been dull&mdash;had
+been dull, as he had been banished and neglected, mainly because the father had
+been unwittingly selfish. This was doubtless but the secret habit of sorrow,
+which had slowly given way to time; yet there remained an ache sharp enough to
+make the spirit, at the sight now and again of some fair young man just growing
+up, wince with the thought of an opportunity lost. Had ever a man, he had
+finally fallen into the way of asking himself, lost so much and even done so
+much for so little? There had been particular reasons why all yesterday, beyond
+other days, he should have had in one ear this cold enquiry. His name on the
+green cover, where he had put it for Mrs. Newsome, expressed him doubtless just
+enough to make the world&mdash;the world as distinguished, both for more and
+for less, from Woollett&mdash;ask who he was. He had incurred the ridicule of
+having to have his explanation explained. He was Lambert Strether because he
+was on the cover, whereas it should have been, for anything like glory, that he
+was on the cover because he was Lambert Strether. He would have done anything
+for Mrs. Newsome, have been still more ridiculous&mdash;as he might, for that
+matter, have occasion to be yet; which came to saying that this acceptance of
+fate was all he had to show at fifty-five.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He judged the quantity as small because it <i>was</i> small, and all the more
+egregiously since it couldn&rsquo;t, as he saw the case, so much as thinkably
+have been larger. He hadn&rsquo;t had the gift of making the most of what he
+tried, and if he had tried and tried again&mdash;no one but himself knew how
+often&mdash;it appeared to have been that he might demonstrate what else, in
+default of that, <i>could</i> be made. Old ghosts of experiments came back to
+him, old drudgeries and delusions, and disgusts, old recoveries with their
+relapses, old fevers with their chills, broken moments of good faith, others of
+still better doubt; adventures, for the most part, of the sort qualified as
+lessons. The special spring that had constantly played for him the day before
+was the recognition&mdash;frequent enough to surprise him&mdash;of the promises
+to himself that he had after his other visit never kept. The reminiscence
+to-day most quickened for him was that of the vow taken in the course of the
+pilgrimage that, newly-married, with the War just over, and helplessly young in
+spite of it, he had recklessly made with the creature who was so much younger
+still. It had been a bold dash, for which they had taken money set apart for
+necessities, but kept sacred at the moment in a hundred ways, and in none more
+so than by this private pledge of his own to treat the occasion as a relation
+formed with the higher culture and see that, as they said at Woollett, it
+should bear a good harvest. He had believed, sailing home again, that he had
+gained something great, and his theory&mdash;with an elaborate innocent plan of
+reading, digesting, coming back even, every few years&mdash;had then been to
+preserve, cherish and extend it. As such plans as these had come to nothing,
+however, in respect to acquisitions still more precious, it was doubtless
+little enough of a marvel that he should have lost account of that handful of
+seed. Buried for long years in dark corners at any rate these few germs had
+sprouted again under forty-eight hours of Paris. The process of yesterday had
+really been the process of feeling the general stirred life of connexions long
+since individually dropped. Strether had become acquainted even on this ground
+with short gusts of speculation&mdash;sudden flights of fancy in Louvre
+galleries, hungry gazes through clear plates behind which lemon-coloured
+volumes were as fresh as fruit on the tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were instants at which he could ask whether, since there had been
+fundamentally so little question of his keeping anything, the fate after all
+decreed for him hadn&rsquo;t been only to <i>be</i> kept. Kept for something,
+in that event, that he didn&rsquo;t pretend, didn&rsquo;t possibly dare as yet
+to divine; something that made him hover and wonder and laugh and sigh, made
+him advance and retreat, feeling half ashamed of his impulse to plunge and more
+than half afraid of his impulse to wait. He remembered for instance how he had
+gone back in the sixties with lemon-coloured volumes in general on the brain as
+well as with a dozen&mdash;selected for his wife too&mdash;in his trunk; and
+nothing had at the moment shown more confidence than this invocation of the
+finer taste. They were still somewhere at home, the dozen&mdash;stale and
+soiled and never sent to the binder; but what had become of the sharp
+initiation they represented? They represented now the mere sallow paint on the
+door of the temple of taste that he had dreamed of raising up&mdash;a structure
+he had practically never carried further. Strether&rsquo;s present highest
+flights were perhaps those in which this particular lapse figured to him as a
+symbol, a symbol of his long grind and his want of odd moments, his want
+moreover of money, of opportunity, of positive dignity. That the memory of the
+vow of his youth should, in order to throb again, have had to wait for this
+last, as he felt it, of all his accidents&mdash;that was surely proof enough of
+how his conscience had been encumbered. If any further proof were needed it
+would have been to be found in the fact that, as he perfectly now saw, he had
+ceased even to measure his meagreness, a meagreness that sprawled, in this
+retrospect, vague and comprehensive, stretching back like some unmapped
+Hinterland from a rough coast-settlement. His conscience had been amusing
+itself for the forty-eight hours by forbidding him the purchase of a book; he
+held off from that, held off from everything; from the moment he didn&rsquo;t
+yet call on Chad he wouldn&rsquo;t for the world have taken any other step. On
+this evidence, however, of the way they actually affected him he glared at the
+lemon-coloured covers in confession of the subconsciousness that, all the same,
+in the great desert of the years, he must have had of them. The green covers at
+home comprised, by the law of their purpose, no tribute to letters; it was of a
+mere rich kernel of economics, politics, ethics that, glazed and, as Mrs.
+Newsome maintained rather against <i>his</i> view, pre-eminently pleasant to
+touch, they formed the specious shell. Without therefore any needed instinctive
+knowledge of what was coming out, in Paris, on the bright highway, he struck
+himself at present as having more than once flushed with a suspicion: he
+couldn&rsquo;t otherwise at present be feeling so many fears confirmed. There
+were &ldquo;movements&rdquo; he was too late for: weren&rsquo;t they, with the
+fun of them, already spent? There were sequences he had missed and great gaps
+in the procession: he might have been watching it all recede in a golden cloud
+of dust. If the playhouse wasn&rsquo;t closed his seat had at least fallen to
+somebody else. He had had an uneasy feeling the night before that if he was at
+the theatre at all&mdash;though he indeed justified the theatre, in the
+specific sense, and with a grotesqueness to which his imagination did all
+honour, as something he owed poor Waymarsh&mdash;he should have been there
+with, and as might have been said, <i>for</i> Chad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This suggested the question of whether he could properly have taken him to such
+a play, and what effect&mdash;it was a point that suddenly rose&mdash;his
+peculiar responsibility might be held in general to have on his choice of
+entertainment. It had literally been present to him at the Gymnase&mdash;where
+one was held moreover comparatively safe&mdash;that having his young friend at
+his side would have been an odd feature of the work of redemption; and this
+quite in spite of the fact that the picture presented might well, confronted
+with Chad&rsquo;s own private stage, have seemed the pattern of propriety. He
+clearly hadn&rsquo;t come out in the name of propriety but to visit unattended
+equivocal performances; yet still less had he done so to undermine his
+authority by sharing them with the graceless youth. Was he to renounce all
+amusement for the sweet sake of that authority? and <i>would</i> such
+renouncement give him for Chad a moral glamour? The little problem bristled the
+more by reason of poor Strether&rsquo;s fairly open sense of the irony of
+things. Were there then sides on which his predicament threatened to look
+rather droll to him? Should he have to pretend to believe&mdash;either to
+himself or the wretched boy&mdash;that there was anything that could make the
+latter worse? Wasn&rsquo;t some such pretence on the other hand involved in the
+assumption of possible processes that would make him better? His greatest
+uneasiness seemed to peep at him out of the imminent impression that almost any
+acceptance of Paris might give one&rsquo;s authority away. It hung before him
+this morning, the vast bright Babylon, like some huge iridescent object, a
+jewel brilliant and hard, in which parts were not to be discriminated nor
+differences comfortably marked. It twinkled and trembled and melted together,
+and what seemed all surface one moment seemed all depth the next. It was a
+place of which, unmistakeably, Chad was fond; wherefore if he, Strether, should
+like it too much, what on earth, with such a bond, would become of either of
+them? It all depended of course&mdash;which was a gleam of light&mdash;on how
+the &ldquo;too much&rdquo; was measured; though indeed our friend fairly felt,
+while he prolonged the meditation I describe, that for himself even already a
+certain measure had been reached. It will have been sufficiently seen that he
+was not a man to neglect any good chance for reflexion. Was it at all possible
+for instance to like Paris enough without liking it too much? He luckily
+however hadn&rsquo;t promised Mrs. Newsome not to like it at all. He was ready
+to recognise at this stage that such an engagement <i>would</i> have tied his
+hands. The Luxembourg Gardens were incontestably just so adorable at this hour
+by reason&mdash;in addition to their intrinsic charm&mdash;of his not having
+taken it. The only engagement he had taken, when he looked the thing in the
+face, was to do what he reasonably could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It upset him a little none the less and after a while to find himself at last
+remembering on what current of association he had been floated so far. Old
+imaginations of the Latin Quarter had played their part for him, and he had
+duly recalled its having been with this scene of rather ominous legend that,
+like so many young men in fiction as well as in fact, Chad had begun. He was
+now quite out of it, with his &ldquo;home,&rdquo; as Strether figured the
+place, in the Boulevard Malesherbes, now; which was perhaps why, repairing, not
+to fail of justice either, to the elder neighbourhood, our friend had felt he
+could allow for the element of the usual, the immemorial, without courting
+perturbation. He was not at least in danger of seeing the youth and the
+particular Person flaunt by together; and yet he was in the very air of
+which&mdash;just to feel what the early natural note must have been&mdash;he
+wished most to take counsel. It became at once vivid to him that he had
+originally had, for a few days, an almost envious vision of the boy&rsquo;s
+romantic privilege. Melancholy Mürger, with Francine and Musette and Rodolphe,
+at home, was, in the company of the tattered, one&mdash;if he not in his single
+self two or three&mdash;of the unbound, the paper-covered dozen on the shelf;
+and when Chad had written, five years ago, after a sojourn then already
+prolonged to six months, that he had decided to go in for economy and the real
+thing, Strether&rsquo;s fancy had quite fondly accompanied him in this
+migration, which was to convey him, as they somewhat confusedly learned at
+Woollett, across the bridges and up the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. This was the
+region&mdash;Chad had been quite distinct about it&mdash;in which the best
+French, and many other things, were to be learned at least cost, and in which
+all sorts of clever fellows, compatriots there for a purpose, formed an awfully
+pleasant set. The clever fellows, the friendly countrymen were mainly young
+painters, sculptors, architects, medical students; but they were, Chad sagely
+opined, a much more profitable lot to be with&mdash;even on the footing of not
+being quite one of them&mdash;than the &ldquo;terrible toughs&rdquo; (Strether
+remembered the edifying discrimination) of the American bars and banks
+roundabout the Opéra. Chad had thrown out, in the communications following this
+one&mdash;for at that time he did once in a while communicate&mdash;that
+several members of a band of earnest workers under one of the great artists had
+taken him right in, making him dine every night, almost for nothing, at their
+place, and even pressing him not to neglect the hypothesis of there being as
+much &ldquo;in him&rdquo; as in any of them. There had been literally a moment
+at which it appeared there might be something in him; there had been at any
+rate a moment at which he had written that he didn&rsquo;t know but what a
+month or two more might see him enrolled in some <i>atelier</i>. The season had
+been one at which Mrs. Newsome was moved to gratitude for small mercies; it had
+broken on them all as a blessing that their absentee <i>had</i> perhaps a
+conscience&mdash;that he was sated in fine with idleness, was ambitious of
+variety. The exhibition was doubtless as yet not brilliant, but Strether
+himself, even by that time much enlisted and immersed, had determined, on the
+part of the two ladies, a temperate approval and in fact, as he now
+recollected, a certain austere enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the very next thing that happened had been a dark drop of the curtain. The
+son and brother had not browsed long on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève&mdash;his
+effective little use of the name of which, like his allusion to the best
+French, appeared to have been but one of the notes of his rough cunning. The
+light refreshment of these vain appearances had not accordingly carried any of
+them very far. On the other hand it had gained Chad time; it had given him a
+chance, unchecked, to strike his roots, had paved the way for initiations more
+direct and more deep. It was Strether&rsquo;s belief that he had been
+comparatively innocent before this first migration, and even that the first
+effects of the migration would not have been, without some particular bad
+accident, to have been deplored. There had been three months&mdash;he had
+sufficiently figured it out&mdash;in which Chad had wanted to try. He
+<i>had</i> tried, though not very hard&mdash;he had had his little hour of good
+faith. The weakness of this principle in him was that almost any accident
+attestedly bad enough was stronger. Such had at any rate markedly been the case
+for the precipitation of a special series of impressions. They had proved,
+successively, these impressions&mdash;all of Musette and Francine, but Musette
+and Francine vulgarised by the larger evolution of the type&mdash;irresistibly
+sharp: he had &ldquo;taken up,&rdquo; by what was at the time to be shrinkingly
+gathered, as it was scantly mentioned, with one ferociously
+&ldquo;interested&rdquo; little person after another. Strether had read
+somewhere of a Latin motto, a description of the hours, observed on a clock by
+a traveller in Spain; and he had been led to apply it in thought to
+Chad&rsquo;s number one, number two, number three. <i>Omnes vulnerant, ultima
+necat</i>&mdash;they had all morally wounded, the last had morally killed. The
+last had been longest in possession&mdash;in possession, that is, of whatever
+was left of the poor boy&rsquo;s finer mortality. And it hadn&rsquo;t been she,
+it had been one of her early predecessors, who had determined the second
+migration, the expensive return and relapse, the exchange again, as was fairly
+to be presumed, of the vaunted best French for some special variety of the
+worst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pulled himself then at last together for his own progress back; not with the
+feeling that he had taken his walk in vain. He prolonged it a little, in the
+immediate neighbourhood, after he had quitted his chair; and the upshot of the
+whole morning for him was that his campaign had begun. He had wanted to put
+himself in relation, and he would be hanged if he were <i>not</i> in relation.
+He was that at no moment so much as while, under the old arches of the Odéon,
+he lingered before the charming open-air array of literature classic and
+casual. He found the effect of tone and tint, in the long charged tables and
+shelves, delicate and appetising; the impression&mdash;substituting one kind of
+low-priced <i>consommation</i> for another&mdash;might have been that of one of
+the pleasant cafés that overlapped, under an awning, to the pavement; but he
+edged along, grazing the tables, with his hands firmly behind him. He
+wasn&rsquo;t there to dip, to consume&mdash;he was there to reconstruct. He
+wasn&rsquo;t there for his own profit&mdash;not, that is, the direct; he was
+there on some chance of feeling the brush of the wing of the stray spirit of
+youth. He felt it in fact, he had it beside him; the old arcade indeed, as his
+inner sense listened, gave out the faint sound, as from far off, of the wild
+waving of wings. They were folded now over the breasts of buried generations;
+but a flutter or two lived again in the turned page of shock-headed
+slouch-hatted loiterers whose young intensity of type, in the direction of pale
+acuteness, deepened his vision, and even his appreciation, of racial
+differences, and whose manipulation of the uncut volume was too often, however,
+but a listening at closed doors. He reconstructed a possible groping Chad of
+three or four years before, a Chad who had, after all, simply&mdash;for that
+was the only way to see it&mdash;been too vulgar for his privilege. Surely it
+<i>was</i> a privilege to have been young and happy just there. Well, the best
+thing Strether knew of him was that he had had such a dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his own actual business, half an hour later, was with a third floor on the
+Boulevard Malesherbes&mdash;so much as that was definite; and the fact of the
+enjoyment by the third-floor windows of a continuous balcony, to which he was
+helped by this knowledge, had perhaps something to do with his lingering for
+five minutes on the opposite side of the street. There were points as to which
+he had quite made up his mind, and one of these bore precisely on the wisdom of
+the abruptness to which events had finally committed him, a policy that he was
+pleased to find not at all shaken as he now looked at his watch and wondered.
+He <i>had</i> announced himself&mdash;six months before; had written out at
+least that Chad wasn&rsquo;t to be surprised should he see him some day turn
+up. Chad had thereupon, in a few words of rather carefully colourless answer,
+offered him a general welcome; and Strether, ruefully reflecting that he might
+have understood the warning as a hint to hospitality, a bid for an invitation,
+had fallen back upon silence as the corrective most to his own taste. He had
+asked Mrs. Newsome moreover not to announce him again; he had so distinct an
+opinion on his attacking his job, should he attack it at all, in his own way.
+Not the least of this lady&rsquo;s high merits for him was that he could
+absolutely rest on her word. She was the only woman he had known, even at
+Woollett, as to whom his conviction was positive that to lie was beyond her
+art. Sarah Pocock, for instance, her own daughter, though with social ideals,
+as they said, in some respects different&mdash;Sarah who <i>was</i>, in her
+way, æsthetic, had never refused to human commerce that mitigation of rigour;
+there were occasions when he had distinctly seen her apply it. Since,
+accordingly, at all events, he had had it from Mrs. Newsome that she had, at
+whatever cost to her more strenuous view, conformed, in the matter of preparing
+Chad, wholly to his restrictions, he now looked up at the fine continuous
+balcony with a safe sense that if the case had been bungled the mistake was at
+least his property. Was there perhaps just a suspicion of that in his present
+pause on the edge of the Boulevard and well in the pleasant light?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many things came over him here, and one of them was that he should doubtless
+presently know whether he had been shallow or sharp. Another was that the
+balcony in question didn&rsquo;t somehow show as a convenience easy to
+surrender. Poor Strether had at this very moment to recognise the truth that
+wherever one paused in Paris the imagination reacted before one could stop it.
+This perpetual reaction put a price, if one would, on pauses; but it piled up
+consequences till there was scarce room to pick one&rsquo;s steps among them.
+What call had he, at such a juncture, for example, to like Chad&rsquo;s very
+house? High broad clear&mdash;he was expert enough to make out in a moment that
+it was admirably built&mdash;it fairly embarrassed our friend by the quality
+that, as he would have said, it &ldquo;sprang&rdquo; on him. He had struck off
+the fancy that it might, as a preliminary, be of service to him to be seen, by
+a happy accident, from the third-story windows, which took all the March sun,
+but of what service was it to find himself making out after a moment that the
+quality &ldquo;sprung,&rdquo; the quality produced by measure and balance, the
+fine relation of part to part and space to space, was probably&mdash;aided by
+the presence of ornament as positive as it was discreet, and by the complexion
+of the stone, a cold fair grey, warmed and polished a little by
+life&mdash;neither more nor less than a case of distinction, such a case as he
+could only feel unexpectedly as a sort of delivered challenge? Meanwhile,
+however, the chance he had allowed for&mdash;the chance of being seen in time
+from the balcony&mdash;had become a fact. Two or three of the windows stood
+open to the violet air; and, before Strether had cut the knot by crossing, a
+young man had come out and looked about him, had lighted a cigarette and tossed
+the match over, and then, resting on the rail, had given himself up to watching
+the life below while he smoked. His arrival contributed, in its order, to
+keeping Strether in position; the result of which in turn was that Strether
+soon felt himself noticed. The young man began to look at him as in
+acknowledgement of his being himself in observation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was interesting so far as it went, but the interest was affected by the
+young man&rsquo;s not being Chad. Strether wondered at first if he were perhaps
+Chad altered, and then saw that this was asking too much of alteration. The
+young man was light bright and alert&mdash;with an air too pleasant to have
+been arrived at by patching. Strether had conceived Chad as patched, but not
+beyond recognition. He was in presence, he felt, of amendments enough as they
+stood; it was a sufficient amendment that the gentleman up there should be
+Chad&rsquo;s friend. He was young too then, the gentleman up there&mdash;he was
+very young; young enough apparently to be amused at an elderly watcher, to be
+curious even to see what the elderly watcher would do on finding himself
+watched. There was youth in that, there was youth in the surrender to the
+balcony, there was youth for Strether at this moment in everything but his own
+business; and Chad&rsquo;s thus pronounced association with youth had given the
+next instant an extraordinary quick lift to the issue. The balcony, the
+distinguished front, testified suddenly, for Strether&rsquo;s fancy, to
+something that was up and up; they placed the whole case materially, and as by
+an admirable image, on a level that he found himself at the end of another
+moment rejoicing to think he might reach. The young man looked at him still, he
+looked at the young man; and the issue, by a rapid process, was that this
+knowledge of a perched privacy appeared to him the last of luxuries. To him too
+the perched privacy was open, and he saw it now but in one light&mdash;that of
+the only domicile, the only fireside, in the great ironic city, on which he had
+the shadow of a claim. Miss Gostrey had a fireside; she had told him of it, and
+it was something that doubtless awaited him; but Miss Gostrey hadn&rsquo;t yet
+arrived&mdash;she mightn&rsquo;t arrive for days; and the sole attenuation of
+his excluded state was his vision of the small, the admittedly secondary hotel
+in the bye-street from the Rue de la Paix, in which her solicitude for his
+purse had placed him, which affected him somehow as all indoor chill,
+glass-roofed court and slippery staircase, and which, by the same token,
+expressed the presence of Waymarsh even at times when Waymarsh might have been
+certain to be round at the bank. It came to pass before he moved that Waymarsh,
+and Waymarsh alone, Waymarsh not only undiluted but positively strengthened,
+struck him as the present alternative to the young man in the balcony. When he
+did move it was fairly to escape that alternative. Taking his way over the
+street at last and passing through the <i>porte-cochère</i> of the house was
+like consciously leaving Waymarsh out. However, he would tell him all about it.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>Book Third</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+Strether told Waymarsh all about it that very evening, on their dining together
+at the hotel; which needn&rsquo;t have happened, he was all the while aware,
+hadn&rsquo;t he chosen to sacrifice to this occasion a rarer opportunity. The
+mention to his companion of the sacrifice was moreover exactly what introduced
+his recital&mdash;or, as he would have called it with more confidence in his
+interlocutor, his confession. His confession was that he had been captured and
+that one of the features of the affair had just failed to be his engaging
+himself on the spot to dinner. As by such a freedom Waymarsh would have lost
+him he had obeyed his scruple; and he had likewise obeyed another
+scruple&mdash;which bore on the question of his himself bringing a guest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh looked gravely ardent, over the finished soup, at this array of
+scruples; Strether hadn&rsquo;t yet got quite used to being so unprepared for
+the consequences of the impression he produced. It was comparatively easy to
+explain, however, that he hadn&rsquo;t felt sure his guest would please. The
+person was a young man whose acquaintance he had made but that afternoon in the
+course of rather a hindered enquiry for another person&mdash;an enquiry his new
+friend had just prevented in fact from being vain. &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said
+Strether, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve all sorts of things to tell you!&rdquo;&mdash;and
+he put it in a way that was a virtual hint to Waymarsh to help him to enjoy the
+telling. He waited for his fish, he drank of his wine, he wiped his long
+moustache, he leaned back in his chair, he took in the two English ladies who
+had just creaked past them and whom he would even have articulately greeted if
+they hadn&rsquo;t rather chilled the impulse; so that all he could do
+was&mdash;by way of doing something&mdash;to say &ldquo;Merci, François!&rdquo;
+out quite loud when his fish was brought. Everything was there that he wanted,
+everything that could make the moment an occasion, that would do
+beautifully&mdash;everything but what Waymarsh might give. The little waxed
+salle-à-manger was sallow and sociable; François, dancing over it, all smiles,
+was a man and a brother; the high-shouldered patronne, with her high-held,
+much-rubbed hands, seemed always assenting exuberantly to something unsaid; the
+Paris evening in short was, for Strether, in the very taste of the soup, in the
+goodness, as he was innocently pleased to think it, of the wine, in the
+pleasant coarse texture of the napkin and the crunch of the thick-crusted
+bread. These all were things congruous with his confession, and his confession
+was that he <i>had</i>&mdash;it would come out properly just there if Waymarsh
+would only take it properly&mdash;agreed to breakfast out, at twelve literally,
+the next day. He didn&rsquo;t quite know where; the delicacy of the case came
+straight up in the remembrance of his new friend&rsquo;s &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll
+see; I&rsquo;ll take you somewhere!&rdquo;&mdash;for it had required little
+more than that, after all, to let him right in. He was affected after a minute,
+face to face with his actual comrade, by the impulse to overcolour. There had
+already been things in respect to which he knew himself tempted by this
+perversity. If Waymarsh thought them bad he should at least have his reason for
+his discomfort; so Strether showed them as worse. Still, he was now, in his
+way, sincerely perplexed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad had been absent from the Boulevard Malesherbes&mdash;was absent from Paris
+altogether; he had learned that from the concierge, but had nevertheless gone
+up, and gone up&mdash;there were no two ways about it&mdash;from an
+uncontrollable, a really, if one would, depraved curiosity. The concierge had
+mentioned to him that a friend of the tenant of the troisième was for the time
+in possession; and this had been Strether&rsquo;s pretext for a further
+enquiry, an experiment carried on, under Chad&rsquo;s roof, without his
+knowledge. &ldquo;I found his friend in fact there keeping the place warm, as
+he called it, for him; Chad himself being, as appears, in the south. He went a
+month ago to Cannes and though his return begins to be looked for it
+can&rsquo;t be for some days. I might, you see, perfectly have waited a week;
+might have beaten a retreat as soon as I got this essential knowledge. But I
+beat no retreat; I did the opposite; I stayed, I dawdled, I trifled; above all
+I looked round. I saw, in fine; and&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know what to call
+it&mdash;I sniffed. It&rsquo;s a detail, but it&rsquo;s as if there were
+something&mdash;something very good&mdash;<i>to</i> sniff.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh&rsquo;s face had shown his friend an attention apparently so remote
+that the latter was slightly surprised to find it at this point abreast with
+him. &ldquo;Do you mean a smell? What of?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A charming scent. But I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh gave an inferential grunt. &ldquo;Does he live there with a
+woman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh waited an instant for more, then resumed. &ldquo;Has he taken her off
+with him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And will he bring her back?&rdquo;&mdash;Strether fell into the enquiry.
+But he wound it up as before. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The way he wound it up, accompanied as this was with another drop back, another
+degustation of the Léoville, another wipe of his moustache and another good
+word for François, seemed to produce in his companion a slight irritation.
+&ldquo;Then what the devil <i>do</i> you know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether almost gaily, &ldquo;I guess I don&rsquo;t
+know anything!&rdquo; His gaiety might have been a tribute to the fact that the
+state he had been reduced to did for him again what had been done by his talk
+of the matter with Miss Gostrey at the London theatre. It was somehow
+enlarging; and the air of that amplitude was now doubtless more or
+less&mdash;and all for Waymarsh to feel&mdash;in his further response.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I found out from the young man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I thought you said you found out nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing but that&mdash;that I don&rsquo;t know anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what good does that do you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;what I&rsquo;ve come to
+you to help me to discover. I mean anything about anything over here. I
+<i>felt</i> that, up there. It regularly rose before me in its might. The young
+man moreover&mdash;Chad&rsquo;s friend&mdash;as good as told me so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As good as told you you know nothing about anything?&rdquo; Waymarsh
+appeared to look at some one who might have as good as told <i>him</i>.
+&ldquo;How old is he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I guess not thirty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet you had to take that from him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I took a good deal more&mdash;since, as I tell you, I took an
+invitation to déjeuner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And are you <i>going</i> to that unholy meal?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you&rsquo;ll come with me. He wants you too, you know. I told him
+about you. He gave me his card,&rdquo; Strether pursued, &ldquo;and his
+name&rsquo;s rather funny. It&rsquo;s John Little Bilham, and he says his two
+surnames are, on account of his being small, inevitably used together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Waymarsh asked with due detachment from these details,
+&ldquo;what&rsquo;s he doing up there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His account of himself is that he&rsquo;s &lsquo;only a little
+artist-man.&rsquo; That seemed to me perfectly to describe him. But he&rsquo;s
+yet in the phase of study; this, you know, is the great art-school&mdash;to
+pass a certain number of years in which he came over. And he&rsquo;s a great
+friend of Chad&rsquo;s, and occupying Chad&rsquo;s rooms just now because
+they&rsquo;re so pleasant. <i>He&rsquo;s</i> very pleasant and curious
+too,&rdquo; Strether added&mdash;&ldquo;though he&rsquo;s not from
+Boston.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh looked already rather sick of him. &ldquo;Where <i>is</i> he
+from?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether thought. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that, either. But he&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;notoriously,&rsquo; as he put it himself, not from Boston.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Waymarsh moralised from dry depths, &ldquo;every one
+can&rsquo;t notoriously <i>be</i> from Boston. Why,&rdquo; he continued,
+&ldquo;is he curious?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps just for <i>that</i>&mdash;for one thing! But really,&rdquo;
+Strether added, &ldquo;for everything. When you meet him you&rsquo;ll
+see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I don&rsquo;t want to meet him,&rdquo; Waymarsh impatiently growled.
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t he go home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether hesitated. &ldquo;Well, because he likes it over here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This appeared in particular more than Waymarsh could bear. &ldquo;He ought then
+to be ashamed of himself, and, as you admit that you think so too, why drag him
+in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s reply again took time. &ldquo;Perhaps I do think so
+myself&mdash;though I don&rsquo;t quite yet admit it. I&rsquo;m not a bit
+sure&mdash;it&rsquo;s again one of the things I want to find out. I liked him,
+and <i>can</i> you like people&mdash;? But no matter.&rdquo; He pulled himself
+up. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no doubt I want you to come down on me and squash
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh helped himself to the next course, which, however proving not the dish
+he had just noted as supplied to the English ladies, had the effect of causing
+his imagination temporarily to wander. But it presently broke out at a softer
+spot. &ldquo;Have they got a handsome place up there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh a charming place; full of beautiful and valuable things. I never saw
+such a place&rdquo;&mdash;and Strether&rsquo;s thought went back to it.
+&ldquo;For a little artist-man&mdash;!&rdquo; He could in fact scarce express
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his companion, who appeared now to have a view, insisted.
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, life can hold nothing better. Besides, they&rsquo;re things of
+which he&rsquo;s in charge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So that he does doorkeeper for your precious pair? Can life,&rdquo;
+Waymarsh enquired, &ldquo;hold nothing better than <i>that?</i>&rdquo; Then as
+Strether, silent, seemed even yet to wonder, &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t he know what
+<i>she</i> is?&rdquo; he went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> don&rsquo;t know. I didn&rsquo;t ask him. I couldn&rsquo;t. It
+was impossible. You wouldn&rsquo;t either. Besides I didn&rsquo;t want to. No
+more would you.&rdquo; Strether in short explained it at a stroke. &ldquo;You
+can&rsquo;t make out over here what people do know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then what did you come over for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I suppose exactly to see for myself&mdash;without their
+aid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then what do you want mine for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Strether laughed, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re not one of <i>them!</i>
+I do know what <i>you</i> know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As, however, this last assertion caused Waymarsh again to look at him
+hard&mdash;such being the latter&rsquo;s doubt of its implications&mdash;he
+felt his justification lame. Which was still more the case when Waymarsh
+presently said: &ldquo;Look here, Strether. Quit this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our friend smiled with a doubt of his own. &ldquo;Do you mean my tone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;damn your tone. I mean your nosing round. Quit the whole job.
+Let them stew in their juice. You&rsquo;re being used for a thing you
+ain&rsquo;t fit for. People don&rsquo;t take a fine-tooth comb to groom a
+horse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I a fine-tooth comb?&rdquo; Strether laughed. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+something I never called myself!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s what you are, all the same. You ain&rsquo;t so young as you
+were, but you&rsquo;ve kept your teeth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He acknowledged his friend&rsquo;s humour. &ldquo;Take care I don&rsquo;t get
+them into <i>you!</i> You&rsquo;d like them, my friends at home,
+Waymarsh,&rdquo; he declared; &ldquo;you&rsquo;d really particularly like them.
+And I know&rdquo;&mdash;it was slightly irrelevant, but he gave it sudden and
+singular force&mdash;&ldquo;I know they&rsquo;d like you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh don&rsquo;t work them off on <i>me!</i>&rdquo; Waymarsh groaned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet Strether still lingered with his hands in his pockets. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+really quite as indispensable as I say that Chad should be got back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indispensable to whom? To you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Strether presently said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because if you get him you also get Mrs. Newsome?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether faced it. &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if you don&rsquo;t get him you don&rsquo;t get her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It might be merciless, but he continued not to flinch. &ldquo;I think it might
+have some effect on our personal understanding. Chad&rsquo;s of real
+importance&mdash;or can easily become so if he will&mdash;to the
+business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the business is of real importance to his mother&rsquo;s
+husband?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I naturally want what my future wife wants. And the thing will be
+much better if we have our own man in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you have your own man in it, in other words,&rdquo; Waymarsh said,
+&ldquo;you&rsquo;ll marry&mdash;you personally&mdash;more money. She&rsquo;s
+already rich, as I understand you, but she&rsquo;ll be richer still if the
+business can be made to boom on certain lines that you&rsquo;ve laid
+down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> haven&rsquo;t laid them down,&rdquo; Strether promptly
+returned. &ldquo;Mr. Newsome&mdash;who knew extraordinarily well what he was
+about&mdash;laid them down ten years ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh well, Waymarsh seemed to indicate with a shake of his mane, <i>that</i>
+didn&rsquo;t matter! &ldquo;You&rsquo;re fierce for the boom anyway.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His friend weighed a moment in silence the justice of the charge. &ldquo;I can
+scarcely be called fierce, I think, when I so freely take my chance of the
+possibility, the danger, of being influenced in a sense counter to Mrs.
+Newsome&rsquo;s own feelings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh gave this proposition a long hard look. &ldquo;I see. You&rsquo;re
+afraid yourself of being squared. But you&rsquo;re a humbug,&rdquo; he added,
+&ldquo;all the same.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Strether quickly protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, you ask me for protection&mdash;which makes you very interesting;
+and then you won&rsquo;t take it. You say you want to be squashed&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but not so easily! Don&rsquo;t you see,&rdquo; Strether demanded
+&ldquo;where my interest, as already shown you, lies? It lies in my not being
+squared. If I&rsquo;m squared where&rsquo;s my marriage? If I miss my errand I
+miss that; and if I miss that I miss everything&mdash;I&rsquo;m nowhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh&mdash;but all relentlessly&mdash;took this in. &ldquo;What do I care
+where you are if you&rsquo;re spoiled?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their eyes met on it an instant. &ldquo;Thank you awfully,&rdquo; Strether at
+last said. &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t you think <i>her</i> judgement of
+that&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ought to content me? No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It kept them again face to face, and the end of this was that Strether again
+laughed. &ldquo;You do her injustice. You really <i>must</i> know her.
+Good-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He breakfasted with Mr. Bilham on the morrow, and, as inconsequently befell,
+with Waymarsh massively of the party. The latter announced, at the eleventh
+hour and much to his friend&rsquo;s surprise, that, damn it, he would as soon
+join him as do anything else; on which they proceeded together, strolling in a
+state of detachment practically luxurious for them to the Boulevard
+Malesherbes, a couple engaged that day with the sharp spell of Paris as
+confessedly, it might have been seen, as any couple among the daily thousands
+so compromised. They walked, wandered, wondered and, a little, lost themselves;
+Strether hadn&rsquo;t had for years so rich a consciousness of time&mdash;a bag
+of gold into which he constantly dipped for a handful. It was present to him
+that when the little business with Mr. Bilham should be over he would still
+have shining hours to use absolutely as he liked. There was no great pulse of
+haste yet in this process of saving Chad; nor was that effect a bit more marked
+as he sat, half an hour later, with his legs under Chad&rsquo;s mahogany, with
+Mr. Bilham on one side, with a friend of Mr. Bilham&rsquo;s on the other, with
+Waymarsh stupendously opposite, and with the great hum of Paris coming up in
+softness, vagueness&mdash;for Strether himself indeed already positive
+sweetness&mdash;through the sunny windows toward which, the day before, his
+curiosity had raised its wings from below. The feeling strongest with him at
+that moment had borne fruit almost faster than he could taste it, and Strether
+literally felt at the present hour that there was a precipitation in his fate.
+He had known nothing and nobody as he stood in the street; but hadn&rsquo;t his
+view now taken a bound in the direction of every one and of every thing?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s he up to, what&rsquo;s he up to?&rdquo;&mdash;something
+like that was at the back of his head all the while in respect to little
+Bilham; but meanwhile, till he should make out, every one and every thing were
+as good as represented for him by the combination of his host and the lady on
+his left. The lady on his left, the lady thus promptly and ingeniously invited
+to &ldquo;meet&rdquo; Mr. Strether and Mr. Waymarsh&mdash;it was the way she
+herself expressed her case&mdash;was a very marked person, a person who had
+much to do with our friend&rsquo;s asking himself if the occasion weren&rsquo;t
+in its essence the most baited, the most gilded of traps. Baited it could
+properly be called when the repast was of so wise a savour, and gilded
+surrounding objects seemed inevitably to need to be when Miss
+Barrace&mdash;which was the lady&rsquo;s name&mdash;looked at them with convex
+Parisian eyes and through a glass with a remarkably long tortoise-shell handle.
+Why Miss Barrace, mature meagre erect and eminently gay, highly adorned,
+perfectly familiar, freely contradictious and reminding him of some
+last-century portrait of a clever head without powder&mdash;why Miss Barrace
+should have been in particular the note of a &ldquo;trap&rdquo; Strether
+couldn&rsquo;t on the spot have explained; he blinked in the light of a
+conviction that he should know later on, and know well&mdash;as it came over
+him, for that matter, with force, that he should need to. He wondered what he
+was to think exactly of either of his new friends; since the young man,
+Chad&rsquo;s intimate and deputy, had, in thus constituting the scene,
+practised so much more subtly than he had been prepared for, and since in
+especial Miss Barrace, surrounded clearly by every consideration, hadn&rsquo;t
+scrupled to figure as a familiar object. It was interesting to him to feel that
+he was in the presence of new measures, other standards, a different scale of
+relations, and that evidently here were a happy pair who didn&rsquo;t think of
+things at all as he and Waymarsh thought. Nothing was less to have been
+calculated in the business than that it should now be for him as if he and
+Waymarsh were comparatively quite at one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The latter was magnificent&mdash;this at least was an assurance privately given
+him by Miss Barrace. &ldquo;Oh your friend&rsquo;s a type, the grand old
+American&mdash;what shall one call it? The Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel, Jeremiah,
+who used when I was a little girl in the Rue Montaigne to come to see my father
+and who was usually the American Minister to the Tuileries or some other court.
+I haven&rsquo;t seen one these ever so many years; the sight of it warms my
+poor old chilled heart; this specimen is wonderful; in the right quarter, you
+know, he&rsquo;ll have a <i>succès fou</i>.&rdquo; Strether hadn&rsquo;t failed
+to ask what the right quarter might be, much as he required his presence of
+mind to meet such a change in their scheme. &ldquo;Oh the artist-quarter and
+that kind of thing; <i>here</i> already, for instance, as you see.&rdquo; He
+had been on the point of echoing &ldquo;&lsquo;Here&rsquo;?&mdash;is
+<i>this</i> the artist-quarter?&rdquo; but she had already disposed of the
+question with a wave of all her tortoise-shell and an easy &ldquo;Bring him to
+<i>me!</i>&rdquo; He knew on the spot how little he should be able to bring
+him, for the very air was by this time, to his sense, thick and hot with poor
+Waymarsh&rsquo;s judgement of it. He was in the trap still more than his
+companion and, unlike his companion, not making the best of it; which was
+precisely what doubtless gave him his admirable sombre glow. Little did Miss
+Barrace know that what was behind it was his grave estimate of her own laxity.
+The general assumption with which our two friends had arrived had been that of
+finding Mr. Bilham ready to conduct them to one or other of those resorts of
+the earnest, the æsthetic fraternity which were shown among the sights of
+Paris. In this character it would have justified them in a proper insistence on
+discharging their score. Waymarsh&rsquo;s only proviso at the last had been
+that nobody should pay for him; but he found himself, as the occasion
+developed, paid for on a scale as to which Strether privately made out that he
+already nursed retribution. Strether was conscious across the table of what
+worked in him, conscious when they passed back to the small salon to which, the
+previous evening, he himself had made so rich a reference; conscious most of
+all as they stepped out to the balcony in which one would have had to be an
+ogre not to recognise the perfect place for easy aftertastes. These things were
+enhanced for Miss Barrace by a succession of excellent
+cigarettes&mdash;acknowledged, acclaimed, as a part of the wonderful supply
+left behind him by Chad&mdash;in an almost equal absorption of which Strether
+found himself blindly, almost wildly pushing forward. He might perish by the
+sword as well as by famine, and he knew that his having abetted the lady by an
+excess that was rare with him would count for little in the sum&mdash;as
+Waymarsh might so easily add it up&mdash;of her licence. Waymarsh had smoked of
+old, smoked hugely; but Waymarsh did nothing now, and that gave him his
+advantage over people who took things up lightly just when others had laid them
+heavily down. Strether had never smoked, and he felt as if he flaunted at his
+friend that this had been only because of a reason. The reason, it now began to
+appear even to himself, was that he had never had a lady to smoke with.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was this lady&rsquo;s being there at all, however, that was the strange free
+thing; perhaps, since she <i>was</i> there, her smoking was the least of her
+freedoms. If Strether had been sure at each juncture of what&mdash;with Bilham
+in especial&mdash;she talked about, he might have traced others and winced at
+them and felt Waymarsh wince; but he was in fact so often at sea that his sense
+of the range of reference was merely general and that he on several different
+occasions guessed and interpreted only to doubt. He wondered what they meant,
+but there were things he scarce thought they could be supposed to mean, and
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;not <i>that!</i>&rdquo; was at the end of most of his
+ventures. This was the very beginning with him of a condition as to which,
+later on, it will be seen, he found cause to pull himself up; and he was to
+remember the moment duly as the first step in a process. The central fact of
+the place was neither more nor less, when analysed&mdash;and a pressure
+superficial sufficed&mdash;than the fundamental impropriety of Chad&rsquo;s
+situation, round about which they thus seemed cynically clustered. Accordingly,
+since they took it for granted, they took for granted all that was in connexion
+with it taken for granted at Woollett&mdash;matters as to which, verily, he had
+been reduced with Mrs. Newsome to the last intensity of silence. That was the
+consequence of their being too bad to be talked about, and was the
+accompaniment, by the same token, of a deep conception of their badness. It
+befell therefore that when poor Strether put it to himself that their badness
+was ultimately, or perhaps even insolently, what such a scene as the one before
+him was, so to speak, built upon, he could scarce shirk the dilemma of reading
+a roundabout echo of them into almost anything that came up. This, he was well
+aware, was a dreadful necessity; but such was the stern logic, he could only
+gather, of a relation to the irregular life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the way the irregular life sat upon Bilham and Miss Barrace that was the
+insidious, the delicate marvel. He was eager to concede that their relation to
+it was all indirect, for anything else in him would have shown the grossness of
+bad manners; but the indirectness was none the less consonant&mdash;<i>that</i>
+was striking&mdash;with a grateful enjoyment of everything that was
+Chad&rsquo;s. They spoke of him repeatedly, invoking his good name and good
+nature, and the worst confusion of mind for Strether was that all their mention
+of him was of a kind to do him honour. They commended his munificence and
+approved his taste, and in doing so sat down, as it seemed to Strether, in the
+very soil out of which these things flowered. Our friend&rsquo;s final
+predicament was that he himself was sitting down, for the time, <i>with</i>
+them, and there was a supreme moment at which, compared with his collapse,
+Waymarsh&rsquo;s erectness affected him as really high. One thing was
+certain&mdash;he saw he must make up his mind. He must approach Chad, must wait
+for him, deal with him, master him, but he mustn&rsquo;t dispossess himself of
+the faculty of seeing things as they were. He must bring him to
+<i>him</i>&mdash;not go himself, as it were, so much of the way. He must at any
+rate be clearer as to what&mdash;should he continue to do that for
+convenience&mdash;he was still condoning. It was on the detail of this
+quantity&mdash;and what could the fact be but mystifying?&mdash;that Bilham and
+Miss Barrace threw so little light. So there they were.
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+When Miss Gostrey arrived, at the end of a week, she made him a sign; he went
+immediately to see her, and it wasn&rsquo;t till then that he could again close
+his grasp on the idea of a corrective. This idea however was luckily all before
+him again from the moment he crossed the threshold of the little entresol of
+the Quartier Marbœuf into which she had gathered, as she said, picking them up
+in a thousand flights and funny little passionate pounces, the makings of a
+final nest. He recognised in an instant that there really, there only, he
+should find the boon with the vision of which he had first mounted Chad&rsquo;s
+stairs. He might have been a little scared at the picture of how much more, in
+this place, he should know himself &ldquo;in&rdquo; hadn&rsquo;t his friend
+been on the spot to measure the amount to his appetite. Her compact and crowded
+little chambers, almost dusky, as they at first struck him, with accumulations,
+represented a supreme general adjustment to opportunities and conditions.
+Wherever he looked he saw an old ivory or an old brocade, and he scarce knew
+where to sit for fear of a misappliance. The life of the occupant struck him of
+a sudden as more charged with possession even than Chad&rsquo;s or than Miss
+Barrace&rsquo;s; wide as his glimpse had lately become of the empire of
+&ldquo;things,&rdquo; what was before him still enlarged it; the lust of the
+eyes and the pride of life had indeed thus their temple. It was the innermost
+nook of the shrine&mdash;as brown as a pirate&rsquo;s cave. In the brownness
+were glints of gold; patches of purple were in the gloom; objects all that
+caught, through the muslin, with their high rarity, the light of the low
+windows. Nothing was clear about them but that they were precious, and they
+brushed his ignorance with their contempt as a flower, in a liberty taken with
+him, might have been whisked under his nose. But after a full look at his
+hostess he knew none the less what most concerned him. The circle in which they
+stood together was warm with life, and every question between them would live
+there as nowhere else. A question came up as soon as they had spoken, for his
+answer, with a laugh, was quickly: &ldquo;Well, they&rsquo;ve got hold of
+me!&rdquo; Much of their talk on this first occasion was his development of
+that truth. He was extraordinarily glad to see her, expressing to her frankly
+what she most showed him, that one might live for years without a blessing
+unsuspected, but that to know it at last for no more than three days was to
+need it or miss it for ever. She was the blessing that had now become his need,
+and what could prove it better than that without her he had lost himself?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; she asked with an absence of alarm that,
+correcting him as if he had mistaken the &ldquo;period&rdquo; of one of her
+pieces, gave him afresh a sense of her easy movement through the maze he had
+but begun to tread. &ldquo;What in the name of all the Pococks have you managed
+to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why exactly the wrong thing. I&rsquo;ve made a frantic friend of little
+Bilham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah that sort of thing was of the essence of your case and to have been
+allowed for from the first.&rdquo; And it was only after this that, quite as a
+minor matter, she asked who in the world little Bilham might be. When she
+learned that he was a friend of Chad&rsquo;s and living for the time in
+Chad&rsquo;s rooms in Chad&rsquo;s absence, quite as if acting in Chad&rsquo;s
+spirit and serving Chad&rsquo;s cause, she showed, however, more interest.
+&ldquo;Should you mind my seeing him? Only once, you know,&rdquo; she added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh the oftener the better: he&rsquo;s amusing&mdash;he&rsquo;s
+original.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t shock you?&rdquo; Miss Gostrey threw out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never in the world! We escape that with a perfection&mdash;! I feel it
+to be largely, no doubt, because I don&rsquo;t half-understand him; but our
+<i>modus vivendi</i> isn&rsquo;t spoiled even by that. You must dine with me to
+meet him,&rdquo; Strether went on. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll see.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you giving dinners?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;there I am. That&rsquo;s what I mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All her kindness wondered. &ldquo;That you&rsquo;re spending too much
+money?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear no&mdash;they seem to cost so little. But that I do it to
+<i>them</i>. I ought to hold off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thought again&mdash;she laughed. &ldquo;The money you must be spending to
+think it cheap! But I must be out of it&mdash;to the naked eye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked for a moment as if she were really failing him. &ldquo;Then you
+won&rsquo;t meet them?&rdquo; It was almost as if she had developed an
+unexpected personal prudence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated. &ldquo;Who are they&mdash;first?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why little Bilham to begin with.&rdquo; He kept back for the moment Miss
+Barrace. &ldquo;And Chad&mdash;when he comes&mdash;you must absolutely
+see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When then does he come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When Bilham has had time to write him, and hear from him about me.
+Bilham, however,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;will report
+favourably&mdash;favourably for Chad. That will make him not afraid to come. I
+want you the more therefore, you see, for my bluff.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you&rsquo;ll do yourself for your bluff.&rdquo; She was perfectly
+easy. &ldquo;At the rate you&rsquo;ve gone I&rsquo;m quiet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but I haven&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;made one
+protest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned it over. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you been seeing what there&rsquo;s to
+protest about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He let her, with this, however ruefully, have the whole truth. &ldquo;I
+haven&rsquo;t yet found a single thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t there any one <i>with</i> him then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of the sort I came out about?&rdquo; Strether took a moment. &ldquo;How
+do I know? And what do I care?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh oh!&rdquo;&mdash;and her laughter spread. He was struck in fact by
+the effect on her of his joke. He saw now how he meant it as a joke. <i>She</i>
+saw, however, still other things, though in an instant she had hidden them.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got at no facts at all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to muster them. &ldquo;Well, he has a lovely home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah that, in Paris,&rdquo; she quickly returned, &ldquo;proves nothing.
+That is rather it <i>dis</i>proves nothing. They may very well, you see, the
+people your mission is concerned with, have done it <i>for</i> him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly. And it was on the scene of their doings then that Waymarsh and
+I sat guzzling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh if you forbore to guzzle here on scenes of doings,&rdquo; she
+replied, &ldquo;you might easily die of starvation.&rdquo; With which she
+smiled at him. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve worse before you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah I&rsquo;ve <i>everything</i> before me. But on our hypothesis, you
+know, they must be wonderful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They <i>are!</i>&rdquo; said Miss Gostrey. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not
+therefore, you see,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;wholly without facts.
+They&rsquo;ve <i>been</i>, in effect, wonderful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To have got at something comparatively definite appeared at last a little to
+help&mdash;a wave by which moreover, the next moment, recollection was washed.
+&ldquo;My young man does admit furthermore that they&rsquo;re our
+friend&rsquo;s great interest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that the expression he uses?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether more exactly recalled. &ldquo;No&mdash;not quite.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something more vivid? Less?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had bent, with neared glasses, over a group of articles on a small stand;
+and at this he came up. &ldquo;It was a mere allusion, but, on the lookout as I
+was, it struck me. &lsquo;Awful, you know, as Chad is&rsquo;&mdash;those were
+Bilham&rsquo;s words.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Awful, you know&rsquo;&mdash;? Oh!&rdquo;&mdash;and Miss Gostrey
+turned them over. She seemed, however, satisfied. &ldquo;Well, what more do you
+want?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced once more at a bibelot or two, and everything sent him back.
+&ldquo;But it <i>is</i> all the same as if they wished to let me have it
+between the eyes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered. &ldquo;Quoi donc?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why what I speak of. The amenity. They can stun you with that as well as
+with anything else.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll come round! I must see them
+each,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;for myself. I mean Mr. Bilham and Mr.
+Newsome&mdash;Mr. Bilham naturally first. Once only&mdash;once for each; that
+will do. But face to face&mdash;for half an hour. What&rsquo;s Mr. Chad,&rdquo;
+she immediately pursued, &ldquo;doing at Cannes? Decent men don&rsquo;t go to
+Cannes with the&mdash;well, with the kind of ladies you mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; Strether asked with an interest in decent men
+that amused her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, elsewhere, but not to Cannes. Cannes is different. Cannes is better.
+Cannes is best. I mean it&rsquo;s all people you know&mdash;when you do know
+them. And if <i>he</i> does, why that&rsquo;s different too. He must have gone
+alone. She can&rsquo;t be with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Strether confessed in his weakness, &ldquo;the
+least idea.&rdquo; There seemed much in what she said, but he was able after a
+little to help her to a nearer impression. The meeting with little Bilham took
+place, by easy arrangement, in the great gallery of the Louvre; and when,
+standing with his fellow visitor before one of the splendid Titians&mdash;the
+overwhelming portrait of the young man with the strangely-shaped glove and the
+blue-grey eyes&mdash;he turned to see the third member of their party advance
+from the end of the waxed and gilded vista, he had a sense of having at last
+taken hold. He had agreed with Miss Gostrey&mdash;it dated even from
+Chester&mdash;for a morning at the Louvre, and he had embraced independently
+the same idea as thrown out by little Bilham, whom he had already accompanied
+to the museum of the Luxembourg. The fusion of these schemes presented no
+difficulty, and it was to strike him again that in little Bilham&rsquo;s
+company contrarieties in general dropped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh he&rsquo;s all right&mdash;he&rsquo;s one of <i>us!</i>&rdquo; Miss
+Gostrey, after the first exchange, soon found a chance to murmur to her
+companion; and Strether, as they proceeded and paused and while a quick
+unanimity between the two appeared to have phrased itself in half a dozen
+remarks&mdash;Strether knew that he knew almost immediately what she meant, and
+took it as still another sign that he had got his job in hand. This was the
+more grateful to him that he could think of the intelligence now serving him as
+an acquisition positively new. He wouldn&rsquo;t have known even the day before
+what she meant&mdash;that is if she meant, what he assumed, that they were
+intense Americans together. He had just worked round&mdash;and with a sharper
+turn of the screw than any yet&mdash;to the conception of an American intense
+as little Bilham was intense. The young man was his first specimen; the
+specimen had profoundly perplexed him; at present however there was light. It
+was by little Bilham&rsquo;s amazing serenity that he had at first been
+affected, but he had inevitably, in his circumspection, felt it as the trail of
+the serpent, the corruption, as he might conveniently have said, of Europe;
+whereas the promptness with which it came up for Miss Gostrey but as a special
+little form of the oldest thing they knew justified it at once to his own
+vision as well. He wanted to be able to like his specimen with a clear good
+conscience, and this fully permitted it. What had muddled him was precisely the
+small artist-man&rsquo;s way&mdash;it was so complete&mdash;of being more
+American than anybody. But it now for the time put Strether vastly at his ease
+to have this view of a new way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The amiable youth then looked out, as it had first struck Strether, at a world
+in respect to which he hadn&rsquo;t a prejudice. The one our friend most
+instantly missed was the usual one in favour of an occupation accepted. Little
+Bilham had an occupation, but it was only an occupation declined; and it was by
+his general exemption from alarm, anxiety or remorse on this score that the
+impression of his serenity was made. He had come out to Paris to paint&mdash;to
+fathom, that is, at large, that mystery; but study had been fatal to him so far
+as anything <i>could</i> be fatal, and his productive power faltered in
+proportion as his knowledge grew. Strether had gathered from him that at the
+moment of his finding him in Chad&rsquo;s rooms he hadn&rsquo;t saved from his
+shipwreck a scrap of anything but his beautiful intelligence and his confirmed
+habit of Paris. He referred to these things with an equal fond familiarity, and
+it was sufficiently clear that, as an outfit, they still served him. They were
+charming to Strether through the hour spent at the Louvre, where indeed they
+figured for him as an unseparated part of the charged iridescent air, the
+glamour of the name, the splendour of the space, the colour of the masters. Yet
+they were present too wherever the young man led, and the day after the visit
+to the Louvre they hung, in a different walk, about the steps of our party. He
+had invited his companions to cross the river with him, offering to show them
+his own poor place; and his own poor place, which was very poor, gave to his
+idiosyncrasies, for Strether&mdash;the small sublime indifference and
+independences that had struck the latter as fresh&mdash;an odd and engaging
+dignity. He lived at the end of an alley that went out of an old short cobbled
+street, a street that went in turn out of a new long smooth avenue&mdash;street
+and avenue and alley having, however, in common a sort of social shabbiness;
+and he introduced them to the rather cold and blank little studio which he had
+lent to a comrade for the term of his elegant absence. The comrade was another
+ingenuous compatriot, to whom he had wired that tea was to await them
+&ldquo;regardless,&rdquo; and this reckless repast, and the second ingenuous
+compatriot, and the faraway makeshift life, with its jokes and its gaps, its
+delicate daubs and its three or four chairs, its overflow of taste and
+conviction and its lack of nearly all else&mdash;these things wove round the
+occasion a spell to which our hero unreservedly surrendered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He liked the ingenuous compatriots&mdash;for two or three others soon gathered;
+he liked the delicate daubs and the free discriminations&mdash;involving
+references indeed, involving enthusiasms and execrations that made him, as they
+said, sit up; he liked above all the legend of good-humoured poverty, of mutual
+accommodation fairly raised to the romantic, that he soon read into the scene.
+The ingenuous compatriots showed a candour, he thought, surpassing even the
+candour of Woollett; they were red-haired and long-legged, they were quaint and
+queer and dear and droll; they made the place resound with the vernacular,
+which he had never known so marked as when figuring for the chosen language, he
+must suppose, of contemporary art. They twanged with a vengeance the æsthetic
+lyre&mdash;they drew from it wonderful airs. This aspect of their life had an
+admirable innocence; and he looked on occasion at Maria Gostrey to see to what
+extent that element reached her. She gave him however for the hour, as she had
+given him the previous day, no further sign than to show how she dealt with
+boys; meeting them with the air of old Parisian practice that she had for every
+one, for everything, in turn. Wonderful about the delicate daubs, masterful
+about the way to make tea, trustful about the legs of chairs and familiarly
+reminiscent of those, in the other time, the named, the numbered or the
+caricatured, who had flourished or failed, disappeared or arrived, she had
+accepted with the best grace her second course of little Bilham, and had said
+to Strether, the previous afternoon on his leaving them, that, since her
+impression was to be renewed, she would reserve judgement till after the new
+evidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The new evidence was to come, as it proved, in a day or two. He soon had from
+Maria a message to the effect that an excellent box at the Français had been
+lent her for the following night; it seeming on such occasions not the least of
+her merits that she was subject to such approaches. The sense of how she was
+always paying for something in advance was equalled on Strether&rsquo;s part
+only by the sense of how she was always being paid; all of which made for his
+consciousness, in the larger air, of a lively bustling traffic, the exchange of
+such values as were not for him to handle. She hated, he knew, at the French
+play, anything but a box&mdash;just as she hated at the English anything but a
+stall; and a box was what he was already in this phase girding himself to press
+upon her. But she had for that matter her community with little Bilham: she too
+always, on the great issues, showed as having known in time. It made her
+constantly beforehand with him and gave him mainly the chance to ask himself
+how on the day of their settlement their account would stand. He endeavoured
+even now to keep it a little straight by arranging that if he accepted her
+invitation she should dine with him first; but the upshot of this scruple was
+that at eight o&rsquo;clock on the morrow he awaited her with Waymarsh under
+the pillared portico. She hadn&rsquo;t dined with him, and it was
+characteristic of their relation that she had made him embrace her refusal
+without in the least understanding it. She ever caused her rearrangements to
+affect him as her tenderest touches. It was on that principle for instance
+that, giving him the opportunity to be amiable again to little Bilham, she had
+suggested his offering the young man a seat in their box. Strether had
+dispatched for this purpose a small blue missive to the Boulevard Malesherbes,
+but up to the moment of their passing into the theatre he had received no
+response to his message. He held, however, even after they had been for some
+time conveniently seated, that their friend, who knew his way about, would come
+in at his own right moment. His temporary absence moreover seemed, as never
+yet, to make the right moment for Miss Gostrey. Strether had been waiting till
+tonight to get back from her in some mirrored form her impressions and
+conclusions. She had elected, as they said, to see little Bilham once; but now
+she had seen him twice and had nevertheless not said more than a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh meanwhile sat opposite him with their hostess between; and Miss
+Gostrey spoke of herself as an instructor of youth introducing her little
+charges to a work that was one of the glories of literature. The glory was
+happily unobjectionable, and the little charges were candid; for herself she
+had travelled that road and she merely waited on their innocence. But she
+referred in due time to their absent friend, whom it was clear they should have
+to give up. &ldquo;He either won&rsquo;t have got your note,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;or you won&rsquo;t have got his: he has had some kind of hindrance, and,
+of course, for that matter, you know, a man never writes about coming to a
+box.&rdquo; She spoke as if, with her look, it might have been Waymarsh who had
+written to the youth, and the latter&rsquo;s face showed a mixture of austerity
+and anguish. She went on however as if to meet this. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s far and
+away, you know, the best of them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The best of whom, ma&rsquo;am?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why of all the long procession&mdash;the boys, the girls, or the old men
+and old women as they sometimes really are; the hope, as one may say, of our
+country. They&rsquo;ve all passed, year after year; but there has been no one
+in particular I&rsquo;ve ever wanted to stop. I feel&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+<i>you?</i>&mdash;that I want to stop little Bilham; he&rsquo;s so exactly
+right as he is.&rdquo; She continued to talk to Waymarsh. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s too
+delightful. If he&rsquo;ll only not spoil it! But they always <i>will</i>; they
+always do; they always have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think Waymarsh knows,&rdquo; Strether said after a moment,
+&ldquo;quite what it&rsquo;s open to Bilham to spoil.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It can&rsquo;t be a good American,&rdquo; Waymarsh lucidly enough
+replied; &ldquo;for it didn&rsquo;t strike me the young man had developed much
+in <i>that</i> shape.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey sighed, &ldquo;the name of the good American is
+as easily given as taken away! What <i>is</i> it, to begin with, to <i>be</i>
+one, and what&rsquo;s the extraordinary hurry? Surely nothing that&rsquo;s so
+pressing was ever so little defined. It&rsquo;s such an order, really, that
+before we cook you the dish we must at least have your receipt. Besides the
+poor chicks have time! What I&rsquo;ve seen so often spoiled,&rdquo; she
+pursued, &ldquo;is the happy attitude itself, the state of faith and&mdash;what
+shall I call it?&mdash;the sense of beauty. You&rsquo;re right about
+him&rdquo;&mdash;she now took in Strether; &ldquo;little Bilham has them to a
+charm, we must keep little Bilham along.&rdquo; Then she was all again for
+Waymarsh. &ldquo;The others have all wanted so dreadfully to do something, and
+they&rsquo;ve gone and done it in too many cases indeed. It leaves them never
+the same afterwards; the charm&rsquo;s always somehow broken. Now <i>he</i>, I
+think, you know, really won&rsquo;t. He won&rsquo;t do the least dreadful
+little thing. We shall continue to enjoy him just as he is. No&mdash;he&rsquo;s
+quite beautiful. He sees everything. He isn&rsquo;t a bit ashamed. He has every
+scrap of the courage of it that one could ask. Only think what he <i>might</i>
+do. One wants really&mdash;for fear of some accident&mdash;to keep him in view.
+At this very moment perhaps what mayn&rsquo;t he be up to? I&rsquo;ve had my
+disappointments&mdash;the poor things are never really safe; or only at least
+when you have them under your eye. One can never completely trust them.
+One&rsquo;s uneasy, and I think that&rsquo;s why I most miss him now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had wound up with a laugh of enjoyment over her embroidery of her
+idea&mdash;an enjoyment that her face communicated to Strether, who almost
+wished none the less at this moment that she would let poor Waymarsh alone.
+<i>He</i> knew more or less what she meant; but the fact wasn&rsquo;t a reason
+for her not pretending to Waymarsh that he didn&rsquo;t. It was craven of him
+perhaps, but he would, for the high amenity of the occasion, have liked
+Waymarsh not to be so sure of his wit. Her recognition of it gave him away and,
+before she had done with him or with that article, would give him worse. What
+was he, all the same, to do? He looked across the box at his friend; their eyes
+met; something queer and stiff, something that bore on the situation but that
+it was better not to touch, passed in silence between them. Well, the effect of
+it for Strether was an abrupt reaction, a final impatience of his own tendency
+to temporise. Where was that taking him anyway? It was one of the quiet
+instants that sometimes settle more matters than the outbreaks dear to the
+historic muse. The only qualification of the quietness was the synthetic
+&ldquo;Oh hang it!&rdquo; into which Strether&rsquo;s share of the silence
+soundlessly flowered. It represented, this mute ejaculation, a final impulse to
+burn his ships. These ships, to the historic muse, may seem of course mere
+cockles, but when he presently spoke to Miss Gostrey it was with the sense at
+least of applying the torch. &ldquo;Is it then a conspiracy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Between the two young men? Well, I don&rsquo;t pretend to be a seer or a
+prophetess,&rdquo; she presently replied; &ldquo;but if I&rsquo;m simply a
+woman of sense he&rsquo;s working for you to-night. I don&rsquo;t quite know
+how&mdash;but it&rsquo;s in my bones.&rdquo; And she looked at him at last as
+if, little material as she yet gave him, he&rsquo;d really understand.
+&ldquo;For an opinion <i>that&rsquo;s</i> my opinion. He makes you out too well
+not to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not to work for me to-night?&rdquo; Strether wondered. &ldquo;Then I
+hope he isn&rsquo;t doing anything very bad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve got you,&rdquo; she portentously answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean he <i>is</i>&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve got you,&rdquo; she merely repeated. Though she disclaimed
+the prophetic vision she was at this instant the nearest approach he had ever
+met to the priestess of the oracle. The light was in her eyes. &ldquo;You must
+face it now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He faced it on the spot. &ldquo;They <i>had</i> arranged&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Every move in the game. And they&rsquo;ve been arranging ever since. He
+has had every day his little telegram from Cannes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made Strether open his eyes. &ldquo;Do you <i>know</i> that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do better. I see it. This was, before I met him, what I wondered
+whether I <i>was</i> to see. But as soon as I met him I ceased to wonder, and
+our second meeting made me sure. I took him all in. He was acting&mdash;he is
+still&mdash;on his daily instructions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So that Chad has done the whole thing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;not the whole. <i>We&rsquo;ve</i> done some of it. You and I
+and &lsquo;Europe.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Europe&mdash;yes,&rdquo; Strether mused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear old Paris,&rdquo; she seemed to explain. But there was more, and,
+with one of her turns, she risked it. &ldquo;And dear old Waymarsh. You,&rdquo;
+she declared, &ldquo;have been a good bit of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat massive. &ldquo;A good bit of what, ma&rsquo;am?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why of the wonderful consciousness of our friend here. You&rsquo;ve
+helped too in your way to float him to where he is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And where the devil <i>is</i> he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She passed it on with a laugh. &ldquo;Where the devil, Strether, are
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke as if he had just been thinking it out. &ldquo;Well, quite already in
+Chad&rsquo;s hands, it would seem.&rdquo; And he had had with this another
+thought. &ldquo;Will that be&mdash;just all through Bilham&mdash;the way
+he&rsquo;s going to work it? It would be, for him, you know, an idea. And Chad
+with an idea&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; she asked while the image held him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, is Chad&mdash;what shall I say?&mdash;monstrous?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh as much as you like! But the idea you speak of,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;won&rsquo;t have been his best. He&rsquo;ll have a better. It
+won&rsquo;t be all through little Bilham that he&rsquo;ll work it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This already sounded almost like a hope destroyed. &ldquo;Through whom else
+then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what we shall see!&rdquo; But quite as she spoke she
+turned, and Strether turned; for the door of the box had opened, with the click
+of the <i>ouvreuse</i>, from the lobby, and a gentleman, a stranger to them,
+had come in with a quick step. The door closed behind him, and, though their
+faces showed him his mistake, his air, which was striking, was all good
+confidence. The curtain had just again arisen, and, in the hush of the general
+attention, Strether&rsquo;s challenge was tacit, as was also the greeting, with
+a quickly deprecating hand and smile, of the unannounced visitor. He discreetly
+signed that he would wait, would stand, and these things and his face, one look
+from which she had caught, had suddenly worked for Miss Gostrey. She fitted to
+them all an answer for Strether&rsquo;s last question. The solid stranger was
+simply the answer&mdash;as she now, turning to her friend, indicated. She
+brought it straight out for him&mdash;it presented the intruder. &ldquo;Why,
+through this gentleman!&rdquo; The gentleman indeed, at the same time, though
+sounding for Strether a very short name, did practically as much to explain.
+Strether gasped the name back&mdash;then only had he seen Miss Gostrey had said
+more than she knew. They were in presence of Chad himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our friend was to go over it afterwards again and again&mdash;he was going over
+it much of the time that they were together, and they were together constantly
+for three or four days: the note had been so strongly struck during that first
+half-hour that everything happening since was comparatively a minor
+development. The fact was that his perception of the young man&rsquo;s
+identity&mdash;so absolutely checked for a minute&mdash;had been quite one of
+the sensations that count in life; he certainly had never known one that had
+acted, as he might have said, with more of a crowded rush. And the rush though
+both vague and multitudinous, had lasted a long time, protected, as it were,
+yet at the same time aggravated, by the circumstance of its coinciding with a
+stretch of decorous silence. They couldn&rsquo;t talk without disturbing the
+spectators in the part of the balcony just below them; and it, for that matter,
+came to Strether&mdash;being a thing of the sort that did come to
+him&mdash;that these were the accidents of a high civilisation; the imposed
+tribute to propriety, the frequent exposure to conditions, usually brilliant,
+in which relief has to await its time. Relief was never quite near at hand for
+kings, queens, comedians and other such people, and though you might be
+yourself not exactly one of those, you could yet, in leading the life of high
+pressure, guess a little how they sometimes felt. It was truly the life of high
+pressure that Strether had seemed to feel himself lead while he sat there,
+close to Chad, during the long tension of the act. He was in presence of a fact
+that occupied his whole mind, that occupied for the half-hour his senses
+themselves all together; but he couldn&rsquo;t without inconvenience show
+anything&mdash;which moreover might count really as luck. What he might have
+shown, had he shown at all, was exactly the kind of emotion&mdash;the emotion
+of bewilderment&mdash;that he had proposed to himself from the first, whatever
+should occur, to show least. The phenomenon that had suddenly sat down there
+with him was a phenomenon of change so complete that his imagination, which had
+worked so beforehand, felt itself, in the connexion, without margin or
+allowance. It had faced every contingency but that Chad should not <i>be</i>
+Chad, and this was what it now had to face with a mere strained smile and an
+uncomfortable flush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He asked himself if, by any chance, before he should have in some way to commit
+himself, he might feel his mind settled to the new vision, might habituate it,
+so to speak, to the remarkable truth. But oh it was too remarkable, the truth;
+for what could be more remarkable than this sharp rupture of an identity? You
+could deal with a man as himself&mdash;you couldn&rsquo;t deal with him as
+somebody else. It was a small source of peace moreover to be reduced to
+wondering how little he might know in such an event what a sum he was setting
+you. He couldn&rsquo;t absolutely not know, for you couldn&rsquo;t absolutely
+not let him. It was a <i>case</i> then simply, a strong case, as people
+nowadays called such things, a case of transformation unsurpassed, and the hope
+was but in the general law that strong cases were liable to control from
+without. Perhaps he, Strether himself, was the only person after all aware of
+it. Even Miss Gostrey, with all her science, wouldn&rsquo;t be, would
+she?&mdash;and he had never seen any one less aware of anything than Waymarsh
+as he glowered at Chad. The social sightlessness of his old friend&rsquo;s
+survey marked for him afresh, and almost in an humiliating way, the inevitable
+limits of direct aid from this source. He was not certain, however, of not
+drawing a shade of compensation from the privilege, as yet untasted, of knowing
+more about something in particular than Miss Gostrey did. His situation too was
+a case, for that matter, and he was now so interested, quite so privately agog,
+about it, that he had already an eye to the fun it would be to open up to her
+afterwards. He derived during his half-hour no assistance from her, and just
+this fact of her not meeting his eyes played a little, it must be confessed,
+into his predicament.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had introduced Chad, in the first minutes, under his breath, and there was
+never the primness in her of the person unacquainted; but she had none the less
+betrayed at first no vision but of the stage, where she occasionally found a
+pretext for an appreciative moment that she invited Waymarsh to share. The
+latter&rsquo;s faculty of participation had never had, all round, such an
+assault to meet; the pressure on him being the sharper for this chosen attitude
+in her, as Strether judged it, of isolating, for their natural intercourse,
+Chad and himself. This intercourse was meanwhile restricted to a frank friendly
+look from the young man, something markedly like a smile, but falling far short
+of a grin, and to the vivacity of Strether&rsquo;s private speculation as to
+whether <i>he</i> carried himself like a fool. He didn&rsquo;t quite see how he
+could so feel as one without somehow showing as one. The worst of that question
+moreover was that he knew it as a symptom the sense of which annoyed him.
+&ldquo;If I&rsquo;m going to be odiously conscious of how I may strike the
+fellow,&rdquo; he reflected, &ldquo;it was so little what I came out for that I
+may as well stop before I begin.&rdquo; This sage consideration too,
+distinctly, seemed to leave untouched the fact that he <i>was</i> going to be
+conscious. He was conscious of everything but of what would have served him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was to know afterwards, in the watches of the night, that nothing would have
+been more open to him than after a minute or two to propose to Chad to seek
+with him the refuge of the lobby. He hadn&rsquo;t only not proposed it, but had
+lacked even the presence of mind to see it as possible. He had stuck there like
+a schoolboy wishing not to miss a minute of the show; though for that portion
+of the show then presented he hadn&rsquo;t had an instant&rsquo;s real
+attention. He couldn&rsquo;t when the curtain fell have given the slightest
+account of what had happened. He had therefore, further, not at that moment
+acknowledged the amenity added by this acceptance of his awkwardness to
+Chad&rsquo;s general patience. Hadn&rsquo;t he none the less known at the very
+time&mdash;known it stupidly and without reaction&mdash;that the boy was
+accepting something? He was modestly benevolent, the boy&mdash;that was at
+least what he had been capable of the superiority of making out his chance to
+be; and one had one&rsquo;s self literally not had the gumption to get in ahead
+of him. If we should go into all that occupied our friend in the watches of the
+night we should have to mend our pen; but an instance or two may mark for us
+the vividness with which he could remember. He remembered the two absurdities
+that, if his presence of mind <i>had</i> failed, were the things that had had
+most to do with it. He had never in his life seen a young man come into a box
+at ten o&rsquo;clock at night, and would, if challenged on the question in
+advance, have scarce been ready to pronounce as to different ways of doing so.
+But it was in spite of this definite to him that Chad had had a way that was
+wonderful: a fact carrying with it an implication that, as one might imagine
+it, he knew, he had learned, how.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here already then were abounding results; he had on the spot and without the
+least trouble of intention taught Strether that even in so small a thing as
+that there were different ways. He had done in the same line still more than
+this; had by a mere shake or two of the head made his old friend observe that
+the change in him was perhaps more than anything else, for the eye, a matter of
+the marked streaks of grey, extraordinary at his age, in his thick black hair;
+as well as that this new feature was curiously becoming to him, did something
+for him, as characterisation, also even&mdash;of all things in the
+world&mdash;as refinement, that had been a good deal wanted. Strether felt,
+however, he would have had to confess, that it wouldn&rsquo;t have been easy
+just now, on this and other counts, in the presence of what had been supplied,
+to be quite clear as to what had been missed. A reflexion a candid critic might
+have made of old, for instance, was that it would have been happier for the son
+to look more like the mother; but this was a reflexion that at present would
+never occur. The ground had quite fallen away from it, yet no resemblance
+whatever to the mother had supervened. It would have been hard for a young
+man&rsquo;s face and air to disconnect themselves more completely than
+Chad&rsquo;s at this juncture from any discerned, from any imaginable aspect of
+a New England female parent. That of course was no more than had been on the
+cards; but it produced in Strether none the less one of those frequent
+phenomena of mental reference with which all judgement in him was actually
+beset.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again and again as the days passed he had had a sense of the pertinence of
+communicating quickly with Woollett&mdash;communicating with a quickness with
+which telegraphy alone would rhyme; the fruit really of a fine fancy in him for
+keeping things straight, for the happy forestalment of error. No one could
+explain better when needful, nor put more conscience into an account or a
+report; which burden of conscience is perhaps exactly the reason why his heart
+always sank when the clouds of explanation gathered. His highest ingenuity was
+in keeping the sky of life clear of them. Whether or no he had a grand idea of
+the lucid, he held that nothing ever was in fact&mdash;for any one
+else&mdash;explained. One went through the vain motions, but it was mostly a
+waste of life. A personal relation was a relation only so long as people either
+perfectly understood or, better still, didn&rsquo;t care if they didn&rsquo;t.
+From the moment they cared if they didn&rsquo;t it was living by the sweat of
+one&rsquo;s brow; and the sweat of one&rsquo;s brow was just what one might buy
+one&rsquo;s self off from by keeping the ground free of the wild weed of
+delusion. It easily grew too fast, and the Atlantic cable now alone could race
+with it. That agency would each day have testified for him to something that
+was not what Woollett had argued. He was not at this moment absolutely sure
+that the effect of the morrow&rsquo;s&mdash;or rather of the
+night&rsquo;s&mdash;appreciation of the crisis wouldn&rsquo;t be to determine
+some brief missive. &ldquo;Have at last seen him, but oh
+dear!&rdquo;&mdash;some temporary relief of that sort seemed to hover before
+him. It hovered somehow as preparing them all&mdash;yet preparing them for
+what? If he might do so more luminously and cheaply he would tick out in four
+words: &ldquo;Awfully old&mdash;grey hair.&rdquo; To this particular item in
+Chad&rsquo;s appearance he constantly, during their mute half-hour, reverted;
+as if so very much more than he could have said had been involved in it. The
+most he could have said would have been: &ldquo;If he&rsquo;s going to make me
+feel young&mdash;!&rdquo; which indeed, however, carried with it quite enough.
+If Strether was to feel young, that is, it would be because Chad was to feel
+old; and an aged and hoary sinner had been no part of the scheme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question of Chadwick&rsquo;s true time of life was, doubtless, what came up
+quickest after the adjournment of the two, when the play was over, to a café in
+the Avenue de l&rsquo;Opéra. Miss Gostrey had in due course been perfect for
+such a step; she had known exactly what they wanted&mdash;to go straight
+somewhere and talk; and Strether had even felt she had known what he wished to
+say and that he was arranging immediately to begin. She hadn&rsquo;t pretended
+this, as she <i>had</i> pretended on the other hand, to have divined
+Waymarsh&rsquo;s wish to extend to her an independent protection homeward; but
+Strether nevertheless found how, after he had Chad opposite to him at a small
+table in the brilliant halls that his companion straightway selected, sharply
+and easily discriminated from others, it was quite, to his mind, as if she
+heard him speak; as if, sitting up, a mile away, in the little apartment he
+knew, she would listen hard enough to catch. He found too that he liked that
+idea, and he wished that, by the same token, Mrs. Newsome might have caught as
+well. For what had above all been determined in him as a necessity of the first
+order was not to lose another hour, nor a fraction of one; was to advance, to
+overwhelm, with a rush. This was how he would anticipate&mdash;by a
+night-attack, as might be&mdash;any forced maturity that a crammed
+consciousness of Paris was likely to take upon itself to assert on behalf of
+the boy. He knew to the full, on what he had just extracted from Miss Gostrey,
+Chad&rsquo;s marks of alertness; but they were a reason the more for not
+dawdling. If he was himself moreover to be treated as young he wouldn&rsquo;t
+at all events be so treated before he should have struck out at least once. His
+arms might be pinioned afterwards, but it would have been left on record that
+he was fifty. The importance of this he had indeed begun to feel before they
+left the theatre; it had become a wild unrest, urging him to seize his chance.
+He could scarcely wait for it as they went; he was on the verge of the
+indecency of bringing up the question in the street; he fairly caught himself
+going on&mdash;so he afterwards invidiously named it&mdash;as if there would be
+for him no second chance should the present be lost. Not till, on the purple
+divan before the perfunctory <i>bock</i>, he had brought out the words
+themselves, was he sure, for that matter, that the present would be saved.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>Book Fourth</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come, you know, to make you break with everything, neither
+more nor less, and take you straight home; so you&rsquo;ll be so good as
+immediately and favourably to consider it!&rdquo;&mdash;Strether, face to face
+with Chad after the play, had sounded these words almost breathlessly, and with
+an effect at first positively disconcerting to himself alone. For Chad&rsquo;s
+receptive attitude was that of a person who had been gracefully quiet while the
+messenger at last reaching him has run a mile through the dust. During some
+seconds after he had spoken Strether felt as if <i>he</i> had made some such
+exertion; he was not even certain that the perspiration wasn&rsquo;t on his
+brow. It was the kind of consciousness for which he had to thank the look that,
+while the strain lasted, the young man&rsquo;s eyes gave him. They
+reflected&mdash;and the deuce of the thing was that they reflected really with
+a sort of shyness of kindness&mdash;his momentarily disordered state; which
+fact brought on in its turn for our friend the dawn of a fear that Chad might
+simply &ldquo;take it out&rdquo;&mdash;take everything out&mdash;in being sorry
+for him. Such a fear, any fear, was unpleasant. But everything was unpleasant;
+it was odd how everything had suddenly turned so. This however was no reason
+for letting the least thing go. Strether had the next minute proceeded as
+roundly as if with an advantage to follow up. &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;m a
+busybody, if you want to fight the case to the death; but after all mainly in
+the sense of having known you and having given you such attention as you kindly
+permitted when you were in jackets and knickerbockers. Yes&mdash;it was
+knickerbockers, I&rsquo;m busybody enough to remember that; and that you had,
+for your age&mdash;I speak of the first far-away time&mdash;tremendously stout
+legs. Well, we want you to break. Your mother&rsquo;s heart&rsquo;s
+passionately set upon it, but she has above and beyond that excellent arguments
+and reasons. I&rsquo;ve not put them into her head&mdash;I needn&rsquo;t remind
+you how little she&rsquo;s a person who needs that. But they exist&mdash;you
+must take it from me as a friend both of hers and yours&mdash;for myself as
+well. I didn&rsquo;t invent them, I didn&rsquo;t originally work them out; but
+I understand them, I think I can explain them&mdash;by which I mean make you
+actively do them justice; and that&rsquo;s why you see me here. You had better
+know the worst at once. It&rsquo;s a question of an immediate rupture and an
+immediate return. I&rsquo;ve been conceited enough to dream I can sugar that
+pill. I take at any rate the greatest interest in the question. I took it
+already before I left home, and I don&rsquo;t mind telling you that, altered as
+you are, I take it still more now that I&rsquo;ve seen you. You&rsquo;re older
+and&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know what to call it!&mdash;more of a handful; but
+you&rsquo;re by so much the more, I seem to make out, to our purpose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do I strike you as improved?&rdquo; Strether was to recall that Chad had
+at this point enquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was likewise to recall&mdash;and it had to count for some time as his
+greatest comfort&mdash;that it had been &ldquo;given&rdquo; him, as they said
+at Woollett, to reply with some presence of mind: &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the
+least idea.&rdquo; He was really for a while to like thinking he had been
+positively hard. On the point of conceding that Chad had improved in
+appearance, but that to the question of appearance the remark must be confined,
+he checked even that compromise and left his reservation bare. Not only his
+moral, but also, as it were, his æsthetic sense had a little to pay for this,
+Chad being unmistakeably&mdash;and wasn&rsquo;t it a matter of the confounded
+grey hair again?&mdash;handsomer than he had ever promised. That however fell
+in perfectly with what Strether had said. They had no desire to keep down his
+proper expansion, and he wouldn&rsquo;t be less to their purpose for not
+looking, as he had too often done of old, only bold and wild. There was indeed
+a signal particular in which he would distinctly be more so. Strether
+didn&rsquo;t, as he talked, absolutely follow himself; he only knew he was
+clutching his thread and that he held it from moment to moment a little
+tighter; his mere uninterruptedness during the few minutes helped him to do
+that. He had frequently for a month, turned over what he should say on this
+very occasion, and he seemed at last to have said nothing he had thought
+of&mdash;everything was so totally different.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in spite of all he had put the flag at the window. This was what he had
+done, and there was a minute during which he affected himself as having shaken
+it hard, flapped it with a mighty flutter, straight in front of his
+companion&rsquo;s nose. It gave him really almost the sense of having already
+acted his part. The momentary relief&mdash;as if from the knowledge that
+nothing of <i>that</i> at least could be undone&mdash;sprang from a particular
+cause, the cause that had flashed into operation, in Miss Gostrey&rsquo;s box,
+with direct apprehension, with amazed recognition, and that had been concerned
+since then in every throb of his consciousness. What it came to was that with
+an absolutely <i>new</i> quantity to deal with one simply couldn&rsquo;t know.
+The new quantity was represented by the fact that Chad had been made over. That
+was all; whatever it was it was everything. Strether had never seen the thing
+so done before&mdash;it was perhaps a speciality of Paris. If one had been
+present at the process one might little by little have mastered the result; but
+he was face to face, as matters stood, with the finished business. It had
+freely been noted for him that he might be received as a dog among skittles,
+but that was on the basis of the old quantity. He had originally thought of
+lines and tones as things to be taken, but these possibilities had now quite
+melted away. There was no computing at all what the young man before him would
+think or feel or say on any subject whatever. This intelligence Strether had
+afterwards, to account for his nervousness, reconstituted as he might, just as
+he had also reconstituted the promptness with which Chad had corrected his
+uncertainty. An extraordinarily short time had been required for the
+correction, and there had ceased to be anything negative in his
+companion&rsquo;s face and air as soon as it was made. &ldquo;Your engagement
+to my mother has become then what they call here a <i>fait
+accompli?</i>&rdquo;&mdash;it had consisted, the determinant touch, in nothing
+more than that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, that was enough, Strether had felt while his answer hung fire. He had
+felt at the same time, however, that nothing could less become him than that it
+should hang fire too long. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said brightly, &ldquo;it was
+on the happy settlement of the question that I started. You see therefore to
+what tune I&rsquo;m in your family. Moreover,&rdquo; he added,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been supposing you&rsquo;d suppose it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I&rsquo;ve been supposing it for a long time, and what you tell me
+helps me to understand that you should want to do something. To do something, I
+mean,&rdquo; said Chad, &ldquo;to commemorate an event so&mdash;what do they
+call it?&mdash;so auspicious. I see you make out, and not unnaturally,&rdquo;
+he continued, &ldquo;that bringing me home in triumph as a sort of
+wedding-present to Mother would commemorate it better than anything else. You
+want to make a bonfire in fact,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;and you pitch me on.
+Thank you, thank you!&rdquo; he laughed again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was altogether easy about it, and this made Strether now see how at bottom,
+and in spite of the shade of shyness that really cost him nothing, he had from
+the first moment been easy about everything. The shade of shyness was mere good
+taste. People with manners formed could apparently have, as one of their best
+cards, the shade of shyness too. He had leaned a little forward to speak; his
+elbows were on the table; and the inscrutable new face that he had got
+somewhere and somehow was brought by the movement nearer to his critic&rsquo;s.
+There was a fascination for that critic in its not being, this ripe
+physiognomy, the face that, under observation at least, he had originally
+carried away from Woollett. Strether found a certain freedom on his own side in
+defining it as that of a man of the world&mdash;a formula that indeed seemed to
+come now in some degree to his relief; that of a man to whom things had
+happened and were variously known. In gleams, in glances, the past did perhaps
+peep out of it; but such lights were faint and instantly merged. Chad was brown
+and thick and strong, and of old Chad had been rough. Was all the difference
+therefore that he was actually smooth? Possibly; for that he <i>was</i> smooth
+was as marked as in the taste of a sauce or in the rub of a hand. The effect of
+it was general&mdash;it had retouched his features, drawn them with a cleaner
+line. It had cleared his eyes and settled his colour and polished his fine
+square teeth&mdash;the main ornament of his face; and at the same time that it
+had given him a form and a surface, almost a design, it had toned his voice,
+established his accent, encouraged his smile to more play and his other motions
+to less. He had formerly, with a great deal of action, expressed very little;
+and he now expressed whatever was necessary with almost none at all. It was as
+if in short he had really, copious perhaps but shapeless, been put into a firm
+mould and turned successfully out. The phenomenon&mdash;Strether kept eyeing it
+as a phenomenon, an eminent case&mdash;was marked enough to be touched by the
+finger. He finally put his hand across the table and laid it on Chad&rsquo;s
+arm. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;ll promise me&mdash;here on the spot and giving me
+your word of honour&mdash;to break straight off, you&rsquo;ll make the future
+the real right thing for all of us alike. You&rsquo;ll ease off the strain of
+this decent but none the less acute suspense in which I&rsquo;ve for so many
+days been waiting for you, and let me turn in to rest. I shall leave you with
+my blessing and go to bed in peace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad again fell back at this and, his hands pocketed, settled himself a little;
+in which posture he looked, though he rather anxiously smiled, only the more
+earnest. Then Strether seemed to see that he was really nervous, and he took
+that as what he would have called a wholesome sign. The only mark of it
+hitherto had been his more than once taking off and putting on his wide-brimmed
+crush hat. He had at this moment made the motion again to remove it, then had
+only pushed it back, so that it hung informally on his strong young grizzled
+crop. It was a touch that gave the note of the familiar&mdash;the intimate and
+the belated&mdash;to their quiet colloquy; and it was indeed by some such
+trivial aid that Strether became aware at the same moment of something else.
+The observation was at any rate determined in him by some light too fine to
+distinguish from so many others, but it was none the less sharply determined.
+Chad looked unmistakeably during these instants&mdash;well, as Strether put it
+to himself, all he was worth. Our friend had a sudden apprehension of what that
+would on certain sides be. He saw him in a flash as the young man marked out by
+women; and for a concentrated minute the dignity, the comparative austerity, as
+he funnily fancied it, of this character affected him almost with awe. There
+was an experience on his interlocutor&rsquo;s part that looked out at him from
+under the displaced hat, and that looked out moreover by a force of its own,
+the deep fact of its quantity and quality, and not through Chad&rsquo;s
+intending bravado or swagger. That was then the way men marked out by women
+<i>were</i>&mdash;and also the men by whom the women were doubtless in turn
+sufficiently distinguished. It affected Strether for thirty seconds as a
+relevant truth, a truth which, however, the next minute, had fallen into its
+relation. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you imagine there being some questions,&rdquo;
+Chad asked, &ldquo;that a fellow&mdash;however much impressed by your charming
+way of stating things&mdash;would like to put to you first?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;easily. I&rsquo;m here to answer everything. I think I can
+even tell you things, of the greatest interest to you, that you won&rsquo;t
+know enough to ask me. We&rsquo;ll take as many days to it as you like. But I
+want,&rdquo; Strether wound up, &ldquo;to go to bed now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Really?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad had spoken in such surprise that he was amused. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you
+believe it?&mdash;with what you put me through?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man seemed to consider. &ldquo;Oh I haven&rsquo;t put you through
+much&mdash;yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean there&rsquo;s so much more to come?&rdquo; Strether laughed.
+&ldquo;All the more reason then that I should gird myself.&rdquo; And as if to
+mark what he felt he could by this time count on he was already on his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad, still seated, stayed him, with a hand against him, as he passed between
+their table and the next. &ldquo;Oh we shall get on!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tone was, as who should say, everything Strether could have desired; and
+quite as good the expression of face with which the speaker had looked up at
+him and kindly held him. All these things lacked was their not showing quite so
+much as the fruit of experience. Yes, experience was what Chad did play on him,
+if he didn&rsquo;t play any grossness of defiance. Of course experience was in
+a manner defiance; but it wasn&rsquo;t, at any rate&mdash;rather indeed quite
+the contrary!&mdash;grossness; which was so much gained. He fairly grew older,
+Strether thought, while he himself so reasoned. Then with his mature pat of his
+visitor&rsquo;s arm he also got up; and there had been enough of it all by this
+time to make the visitor feel that something <i>was</i> settled. Wasn&rsquo;t
+it settled that he had at least the testimony of Chad&rsquo;s own belief in a
+settlement? Strether found himself treating Chad&rsquo;s profession that they
+would get on as a sufficient basis for going to bed. He hadn&rsquo;t
+nevertheless after this gone to bed directly; for when they had again passed
+out together into the mild bright night a check had virtually sprung from
+nothing more than a small circumstance which might have acted only as
+confirming quiescence. There were people, expressive sound, projected light,
+still abroad, and after they had taken in for a moment, through everything, the
+great clear architectural street, they turned off in tacit union to the quarter
+of Strether&rsquo;s hotel. &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; Chad here abruptly began,
+&ldquo;of course Mother&rsquo;s making things out with you about me has been
+natural&mdash;and of course also you&rsquo;ve had a good deal to go upon.
+Still, you must have filled out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had stopped, leaving his friend to wonder a little what point he wished to
+make; and this it was that enabled Strether meanwhile to make one. &ldquo;Oh
+we&rsquo;ve never pretended to go into detail. We weren&rsquo;t in the least
+bound to <i>that</i>. It was &lsquo;filling out&rsquo; enough to miss you as we
+did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Chad rather oddly insisted, though under the high lamp at their corner,
+where they paused, he had at first looked as if touched by Strether&rsquo;s
+allusion to the long sense, at home, of his absence. &ldquo;What I mean is you
+must have imagined.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Imagined what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;horrors.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It affected Strether: horrors were so little&mdash;superficially at
+least&mdash;in this robust and reasoning image. But he was none the less there
+to be veracious. &ldquo;Yes, I dare say we <i>have</i> imagined horrors. But
+where&rsquo;s the harm if we haven&rsquo;t been wrong?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad raised his face to the lamp, and it was one of the moments at which he
+had, in his extraordinary way, most his air of designedly showing himself. It
+was as if at these instants he just presented himself, his identity so rounded
+off, his palpable presence and his massive young manhood, as such a link in the
+chain as might practically amount to a kind of demonstration. It was as
+if&mdash;and how but anomalously?&mdash;he couldn&rsquo;t after all help
+thinking sufficiently well of these things to let them go for what they were
+worth. What could there be in this for Strether but the hint of some
+self-respect, some sense of power, oddly perverted; something latent and beyond
+access, ominous and perhaps enviable? The intimation had the next thing, in a
+flash, taken on a name&mdash;a name on which our friend seized as he asked
+himself if he weren&rsquo;t perhaps really dealing with an irreducible young
+Pagan. This description&mdash;he quite jumped at it&mdash;had a sound that
+gratified his mental ear, so that of a sudden he had already adopted it.
+Pagan&mdash;yes, that was, wasn&rsquo;t it? what Chad <i>would</i> logically
+be. It was what he must be. It was what he was. The idea was a clue and,
+instead of darkening the prospect, projected a certain clearness. Strether made
+out in this quick ray that a Pagan was perhaps, at the pass they had come to,
+the thing most wanted at Woollett. They&rsquo;d be able to do with one&mdash;a
+good one; he&rsquo;d find an opening&mdash;yes; and Strether&rsquo;s
+imagination even now prefigured and accompanied the first appearance there of
+the rousing personage. He had only the slight discomfort of feeling, as the
+young man turned away from the lamp, that his thought had in the momentary
+silence possibly been guessed. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve no doubt,&rdquo; said
+Chad, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve come near enough. The details, as you say,
+don&rsquo;t matter. It <i>has</i> been generally the case that I&rsquo;ve let
+myself go. But I&rsquo;m coming round&mdash;I&rsquo;m not so bad now.&rdquo;
+With which they walked on again to Strether&rsquo;s hotel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean,&rdquo; the latter asked as they approached the door,
+&ldquo;that there isn&rsquo;t any woman with you now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But pray what has that to do with it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why it&rsquo;s the whole question.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of my going home?&rdquo; Chad was clearly surprised. &ldquo;Oh not much!
+Do you think that when I want to go any one will have any power&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To keep you&rdquo;&mdash;Strether took him straight up&mdash;&ldquo;from
+carrying out your wish? Well, our idea has been that somebody has
+hitherto&mdash;or a good many persons perhaps&mdash;kept you pretty well from
+&lsquo;wanting.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s what&mdash;if you&rsquo;re in
+anybody&rsquo;s hands&mdash;may again happen. You don&rsquo;t answer my
+question&rdquo;&mdash;he kept it up; &ldquo;but if you aren&rsquo;t in
+anybody&rsquo;s hands so much the better. There&rsquo;s nothing then but what
+makes for your going.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad turned this over. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t answer your question?&rdquo; He
+spoke quite without resenting it. &ldquo;Well, such questions have always a
+rather exaggerated side. One doesn&rsquo;t know quite what you mean by being in
+women&rsquo;s &lsquo;hands.&rsquo; It&rsquo;s all so vague. One is when one
+isn&rsquo;t. One isn&rsquo;t when one is. And then one can&rsquo;t quite give
+people away.&rdquo; He seemed kindly to explain. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve <i>never</i>
+got stuck&mdash;so very hard; and, as against anything at any time really
+better, I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve ever been afraid.&rdquo; There was
+something in it that held Strether to wonder, and this gave him time to go on.
+He broke out as with a more helpful thought. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know how I
+like Paris itself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The upshot was indeed to make our friend marvel. &ldquo;Oh if
+<i>that&rsquo;s</i> all that&rsquo;s the matter with you&mdash;!&rdquo; It was
+<i>he</i> who almost showed resentment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad&rsquo;s smile of a truth more than met it. &ldquo;But isn&rsquo;t that
+enough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether hesitated, but it came out. &ldquo;Not enough for your mother!&rdquo;
+Spoken, however, it sounded a trifle odd&mdash;the effect of which was that
+Chad broke into a laugh. Strether, at this, succumbed as well, though with
+extreme brevity. &ldquo;Permit us to have still our theory. But if you
+<i>are</i> so free and so strong you&rsquo;re inexcusable. I&rsquo;ll write in
+the morning,&rdquo; he added with decision. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll say I&rsquo;ve
+got you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This appeared to open for Chad a new interest. &ldquo;How often do you
+write?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh perpetually.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And at great length?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had become a little impatient. &ldquo;I hope it&rsquo;s not found too
+great.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I&rsquo;m sure not. And you hear as often?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Strether paused. &ldquo;As often as I deserve.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mother writes,&rdquo; said Chad, &ldquo;a lovely letter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, before the closed <i>porte-cochère</i>, fixed him a moment.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s more, my boy, than <i>you</i> do! But our suppositions
+don&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;if you&rsquo;re actually not
+entangled.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad&rsquo;s pride seemed none the less a little touched. &ldquo;I never
+<i>was</i> that&mdash;let me insist. I always had my own way.&rdquo; With which
+he pursued: &ldquo;And I have it at present.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then what are you here for? What has kept you,&rdquo; Strether asked,
+&ldquo;if you <i>have</i> been able to leave?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made Chad, after a stare, throw himself back. &ldquo;Do you think
+one&rsquo;s kept only by women?&rdquo; His surprise and his verbal emphasis
+rang out so clear in the still street that Strether winced till he remembered
+the safety of their English speech. &ldquo;Is that,&rdquo; the young man
+demanded, &ldquo;what they think at Woollett?&rdquo; At the good faith in the
+question Strether had changed colour, feeling that, as he would have said, he
+had put his foot in it. He had appeared stupidly to misrepresent what they
+thought at Woollett; but before he had time to rectify Chad again was upon him.
+&ldquo;I must say then you show a low mind!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It so fell in, unhappily for Strether, with that reflexion of his own prompted
+in him by the pleasant air of the Boulevard Malesherbes, that its disconcerting
+force was rather unfairly great. It was a dig that, administered by
+himself&mdash;and administered even to poor Mrs. Newsome&mdash;was no more than
+salutary; but administered by Chad&mdash;and quite logically&mdash;it came
+nearer drawing blood. They <i>hadn&rsquo;t</i> a low mind&mdash;nor any
+approach to one; yet incontestably they had worked, and with a certain
+smugness, on a basis that might be turned against them. Chad had at any rate
+pulled his visitor up; he had even pulled up his admirable mother; he had
+absolutely, by a turn of the wrist and a jerk of the far-flung noose, pulled
+up, in a bunch, Woollett browsing in its pride. There was no doubt Woollett
+<i>had</i> insisted on his coarseness; and what he at present stood there for
+in the sleeping street was, by his manner of striking the other note, to make
+of such insistence a preoccupation compromising to the insisters. It was
+exactly as if they had imputed to him a vulgarity that he had by a mere gesture
+caused to fall from him. The devil of the case was that Strether felt it, by
+the same stroke, as falling straight upon himself. He had been wondering a
+minute ago if the boy weren&rsquo;t a Pagan, and he found himself wondering now
+if he weren&rsquo;t by chance a gentleman. It didn&rsquo;t in the least, on the
+spot, spring up helpfully for him that a person couldn&rsquo;t at the same time
+be both. There was nothing at this moment in the air to challenge the
+combination; there was everything to give it on the contrary something of a
+flourish. It struck Strether into the bargain as doing something to meet the
+most difficult of the questions; though perhaps indeed only by substituting
+another. Wouldn&rsquo;t it be precisely by having learned to be a gentleman
+that he had mastered the consequent trick of looking so well that one could
+scarce speak to him straight? But what in the world was the clue to such a
+prime producing cause? There were too many clues then that Strether still
+lacked, and these clues to clues were among them. What it accordingly amounted
+to for him was that he had to take full in the face a fresh attribution of
+ignorance. He had grown used by this time to reminders, especially from his own
+lips, of what he didn&rsquo;t know; but he had borne them because in the first
+place they were private and because in the second they practically conveyed a
+tribute. He didn&rsquo;t know what was bad, and&mdash;as others didn&rsquo;t
+know how little he knew it&mdash;he could put up with his state. But if he
+didn&rsquo;t know, in so important a particular, what was good, Chad at least
+was now aware he didn&rsquo;t; and that, for some reason, affected our friend
+as curiously public. It was in fact an exposed condition that the young man
+left him in long enough for him to feel its chill&mdash;till he saw fit, in a
+word, generously again to cover him. This last was in truth what Chad quite
+gracefully did. But he did it as with a simple thought that met the whole of
+the case. &ldquo;Oh I&rsquo;m all right!&rdquo; It was what Strether had rather
+bewilderedly to go to bed on.
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+It really looked true moreover from the way Chad was to behave after this. He
+was full of attentions to his mother&rsquo;s ambassador; in spite of which, all
+the while, the latter&rsquo;s other relations rather remarkably contrived to
+assert themselves. Strether&rsquo;s sittings pen in hand with Mrs. Newsome up
+in his own room were broken, yet they were richer; and they were more than ever
+interspersed with the hours in which he reported himself, in a different
+fashion, but with scarce less earnestness and fulness, to Maria Gostrey. Now
+that, as he would have expressed it, he had really something to talk about he
+found himself, in respect to any oddity that might reside for him in the double
+connexion, at once more aware and more indifferent. He had been fine to Mrs.
+Newsome about his useful friend, but it had begun to haunt his imagination that
+Chad, taking up again for her benefit a pen too long disused, might possibly be
+finer. It wouldn&rsquo;t at all do, he saw, that anything should come up for
+him at Chad&rsquo;s hand but what specifically <i>was</i> to have come; the
+greatest divergence from which would be precisely the element of any
+lubrication of their intercourse by levity. It was accordingly to forestall
+such an accident that he frankly put before the young man the several facts,
+just as they had occurred, of his funny alliance. He spoke of these facts,
+pleasantly and obligingly, as &ldquo;the whole story,&rdquo; and felt that he
+might qualify the alliance as funny if he remained sufficiently grave about it.
+He flattered himself that he even exaggerated the wild freedom of his original
+encounter with the wonderful lady; he was scrupulously definite about the
+absurd conditions in which they had made acquaintance&mdash;their having picked
+each other up almost in the street; and he had (finest inspiration of all!) a
+conception of carrying the war into the enemy&rsquo;s country by showing
+surprise at the enemy&rsquo;s ignorance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had always had a notion that this last was the grand style of fighting; the
+greater therefore the reason for it, as he couldn&rsquo;t remember that he had
+ever before fought in the grand style. Every one, according to this, knew Miss
+Gostrey: how came it Chad didn&rsquo;t know her? The difficulty, the
+impossibility, was really to escape it; Strether put on him, by what he took
+for granted, the burden of proof of the contrary. This tone was so far
+successful as that Chad quite appeared to recognise her as a person whose fame
+had reached him, but against his acquaintance with whom much mischance had
+worked. He made the point at the same time that his social relations, such as
+they could be called, were perhaps not to the extent Strether supposed with the
+rising flood of their compatriots. He hinted at his having more and more given
+way to a different principle of selection; the moral of which seemed to be that
+he went about little in the &ldquo;colony.&rdquo; For the moment certainly he
+had quite another interest. It was deep, what he understood, and Strether, for
+himself, could only so observe it. He couldn&rsquo;t see as yet how deep. Might
+he not all too soon! For there was really too much of their question that Chad
+had already committed himself to liking. He liked, to begin with, his
+prospective stepfather; which was distinctly what had not been on the cards.
+His hating him was the untowardness for which Strether had been best prepared;
+he hadn&rsquo;t expected the boy&rsquo;s actual form to give him more to do
+than his imputed. It gave him more through suggesting that he must somehow make
+up to himself for not being sure he was sufficiently disagreeable. That had
+really been present to him as his only way to be sure he was sufficiently
+thorough. The point was that if Chad&rsquo;s tolerance of his thoroughness were
+insincere, were but the best of devices for gaining time, it none the less did
+treat everything as tacitly concluded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That seemed at the end of ten days the upshot of the abundant, the recurrent
+talk through which Strether poured into him all it concerned him to know, put
+him in full possession of facts and figures. Never cutting these colloquies
+short by a minute, Chad behaved, looked and spoke as if he were rather heavily,
+perhaps even a trifle gloomily, but none the less fundamentally and comfortably
+free. He made no crude profession of eagerness to yield, but he asked the most
+intelligent questions, probed, at moments, abruptly, even deeper than his
+friend&rsquo;s layer of information, justified by these touches the native
+estimate of his latent stuff, and had in every way the air of trying to live,
+reflectively, into the square bright picture. He walked up and down in front of
+this production, sociably took Strether&rsquo;s arm at the points at which he
+stopped, surveyed it repeatedly from the right and from the left, inclined a
+critical head to either quarter, and, while he puffed a still more critical
+cigarette, animadverted to his companion on this passage and that. Strether
+sought relief&mdash;there were hours when he required it&mdash;in repeating
+himself; it was in truth not to be blinked that Chad had a way. The main
+question as yet was of what it was a way <i>to</i>. It made vulgar questions no
+more easy; but that was unimportant when all questions save those of his own
+asking had dropped. That he was free was answer enough, and it wasn&rsquo;t
+quite ridiculous that this freedom should end by presenting itself as what was
+difficult to move. His changed state, his lovely home, his beautiful things,
+his easy talk, his very appetite for Strether, insatiable and, when all was
+said, flattering&mdash;what were such marked matters all but the notes of his
+freedom? He had the effect of making a sacrifice of it just in these handsome
+forms to his visitor; which was mainly the reason the visitor was privately,
+for the time, a little out of countenance. Strether was at this period again
+and again thrown back on a felt need to remodel somehow his plan. He fairly
+caught himself shooting rueful glances, shy looks of pursuit, toward the
+embodied influence, the definite adversary, who had by a stroke of her own
+failed him and on a fond theory of whose palpable presence he had, under Mrs.
+Newsome&rsquo;s inspiration, altogether proceeded. He had once or twice, in
+secret, literally expressed the irritated wish that <i>she</i> would come out
+and find her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He couldn&rsquo;t quite yet force it upon Woollett that such a career, such a
+perverted young life, showed after all a certain plausible side, <i>did</i> in
+the case before them flaunt something like an impunity for the social man; but
+he could at least treat himself to the statement that would prepare him for the
+sharpest echo. This echo&mdash;as distinct over there in the dry thin air as
+some shrill &ldquo;heading&rdquo; above a column of print&mdash;seemed to reach
+him even as he wrote. &ldquo;He says there&rsquo;s no woman,&rdquo; he could
+hear Mrs. Newsome report, in capitals almost of newspaper size, to Mrs. Pocock;
+and he could focus in Mrs. Pocock the response of the reader of the journal. He
+could see in the younger lady&rsquo;s face the earnestness of her attention and
+catch the full scepticism of her but slightly delayed &ldquo;What is there
+then?&rdquo; Just so he could again as little miss the mother&rsquo;s clear
+decision: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s plenty of disposition, no doubt, to pretend
+there isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo; Strether had, after posting his letter, the whole
+scene out; and it was a scene during which, coming and going, as befell, he
+kept his eye not least upon the daughter. He had his fine sense of the
+conviction Mrs. Pocock would take occasion to reaffirm&mdash;a conviction
+bearing, as he had from the first deeply divined it to bear, on Mr.
+Strether&rsquo;s essential inaptitude. She had looked him in his conscious eyes
+even before he sailed, and that she didn&rsquo;t believe <i>he</i> would find
+the woman had been written in her book. Hadn&rsquo;t she at the best but a
+scant faith in his ability to find women? It wasn&rsquo;t even as if he had
+found her mother&mdash;so much more, to her discrimination, had her mother
+performed the finding. Her mother had, in a case her private judgement of which
+remained educative of Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s critical sense, found the man. The
+man owed his unchallenged state, in general, to the fact that Mrs.
+Newsome&rsquo;s discoveries were accepted at Woollett; but he knew in his
+bones, our friend did, how almost irresistibly Mrs. Pocock would now be moved
+to show what she thought of his own. Give <i>her</i> a free hand, would be the
+moral, and the woman would soon be found.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His impression of Miss Gostrey after her introduction to Chad was meanwhile an
+impression of a person almost unnaturally on her guard. He struck himself as at
+first unable to extract from her what he wished; though indeed <i>of</i> what
+he wished at this special juncture he would doubtless have contrived to make
+but a crude statement. It sifted and settled nothing to put to her, <i>tout
+bêtement</i>, as she often said, &ldquo;Do you like him,
+eh?&rdquo;&mdash;thanks to his feeling it actually the least of his needs to
+heap up the evidence in the young man&rsquo;s favour. He repeatedly knocked at
+her door to let her have it afresh that Chad&rsquo;s case&mdash;whatever else
+of minor interest it might yield&mdash;was first and foremost a miracle almost
+monstrous. It was the alteration of the entire man, and was so signal an
+instance that nothing else, for the intelligent observer,
+could&mdash;<i>could</i> it?&mdash;signify. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a plot,&rdquo; he
+declared&mdash;&ldquo;there&rsquo;s more in it than meets the eye.&rdquo; He
+gave the rein to his fancy. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a plant!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His fancy seemed to please her. &ldquo;Whose then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, the party responsible is, I suppose, the fate that waits for one,
+the dark doom that rides. What I mean is that with such elements one
+can&rsquo;t count. I&rsquo;ve but my poor individual, my modest human means. It
+isn&rsquo;t playing the game to turn on the uncanny. All one&rsquo;s energy
+goes to facing it, to tracking it. One wants, confound it, don&rsquo;t you
+see?&rdquo; he confessed with a queer face&mdash;&ldquo;one wants to enjoy
+anything so rare. Call it then life&rdquo;&mdash;he puzzled it
+out&mdash;&ldquo;call it poor dear old life simply that springs the surprise.
+Nothing alters the fact that the surprise is paralysing, or at any rate
+engrossing&mdash;all, practically, hang it, that one sees, that one <i>can</i>
+see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her silences were never barren, nor even dull. &ldquo;Is that what you&rsquo;ve
+written home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tossed it off. &ldquo;Oh dear, yes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had another pause while, across her carpets, he had another walk. &ldquo;If
+you don&rsquo;t look out you&rsquo;ll have them straight over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but I&rsquo;ve said he&rsquo;ll go back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And <i>will</i> he?&rdquo; Miss Gostrey asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The special tone of it made him, pulling up, look at her long.
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that but just the question I&rsquo;ve spent treasures of
+patience and ingenuity in giving <i>you</i>, by the sight of him&mdash;after
+everything had led up&mdash;every facility to answer? What is it but just the
+thing I came here to-day to get out of you? Will he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;he won&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said at last. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not
+free.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The air of it held him. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve all the while
+known&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve known nothing but what I&rsquo;ve seen; and I wonder,&rdquo;
+she declared with some impatience, &ldquo;that you didn&rsquo;t see as much. It
+was enough to be with him there&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the box? Yes,&rdquo; he rather blankly urged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;to feel sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sure of what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She got up from her chair, at this, with a nearer approach than she had ever
+yet shown to dismay at his dimness. She even, fairly pausing for it, spoke with
+a shade of pity. &ldquo;Guess!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a shade, fairly, that brought a flush into his face; so that for a
+moment, as they waited together, their difference was between them. &ldquo;You
+mean that just your hour with him told you so much of his story? Very good;
+I&rsquo;m not such a fool, on my side, as that I don&rsquo;t understand you, or
+as that I didn&rsquo;t in some degree understand <i>him</i>. That he has done
+what he liked most isn&rsquo;t, among any of us, a matter the least in dispute.
+There&rsquo;s equally little question at this time of day of what it is he does
+like most. But I&rsquo;m not talking,&rdquo; he reasonably explained, &ldquo;of
+any mere wretch he may still pick up. I&rsquo;m talking of some person who in
+his present situation may have held her own, may really have counted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what <i>I</i> am!&rdquo; said Miss Gostrey. But she
+as quickly made her point. &ldquo;I thought you thought&mdash;or that they
+think at Woollett&mdash;that that&rsquo;s what mere wretches necessarily do.
+Mere wretches necessarily <i>don&rsquo;t!</i>&rdquo; she declared with spirit.
+&ldquo;There must, behind every appearance to the contrary, still be
+somebody&mdash;somebody who&rsquo;s not a mere wretch, since we accept the
+miracle. What else but such a somebody can such a miracle be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took it in. &ldquo;Because the fact itself <i>is</i> the woman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>A</i> woman. Some woman or other. It&rsquo;s one of the things that
+<i>have</i> to be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you mean then at least a good one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A good woman?&rdquo; She threw up her arms with a laugh. &ldquo;I should
+call her excellent!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why does he deny her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey thought a moment. &ldquo;Because she&rsquo;s too good to admit!
+Don&rsquo;t you see,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;how she accounts for
+him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether clearly, more and more, did see; yet it made him also see other
+things. &ldquo;But isn&rsquo;t what we want that he shall account for
+<i>her?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, he does. What you have before you is his way. You must forgive him
+if it isn&rsquo;t quite outspoken. In Paris such debts are tacit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether could imagine; but still&mdash;! &ldquo;Even when the woman&rsquo;s
+good?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again she laughed out. &ldquo;Yes, and even when the man is! There&rsquo;s
+always a caution in such cases,&rdquo; she more seriously
+explained&mdash;&ldquo;for what it may seem to show. There&rsquo;s nothing
+that&rsquo;s taken as showing so much here as sudden unnatural goodness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then you&rsquo;re speaking now,&rdquo; Strether said, &ldquo;of
+people who are <i>not</i> nice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I delight,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;in your classifications. But do
+you want me,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;to give you in the matter, on this
+ground, the wisest advice I&rsquo;m capable of? Don&rsquo;t consider her,
+don&rsquo;t judge her at all in herself. Consider her and judge her only in
+Chad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had the courage at least of his companion&rsquo;s logic. &ldquo;Because then
+I shall like her?&rdquo; He almost looked, with his quick imagination as if he
+already did, though seeing at once also the full extent of how little it would
+suit his book. &ldquo;But is that what I came out for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had to confess indeed that it wasn&rsquo;t. But there was something else.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t make up your mind. There are all sorts of things. You
+haven&rsquo;t seen him all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This on his side Strether recognised; but his acuteness none the less showed
+him the danger. &ldquo;Yes, but if the more I see the better he seems?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, she found something. &ldquo;That may be&mdash;but his disavowal of her
+isn&rsquo;t, all the same, pure consideration. There&rsquo;s a hitch.&rdquo;
+She made it out. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the effort to sink her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether winced at the image. &ldquo;To &lsquo;sink&rsquo;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I mean there&rsquo;s a struggle, and a part of it is just what he
+hides. Take time&mdash;that&rsquo;s the only way not to make some mistake that
+you&rsquo;ll regret. Then you&rsquo;ll see. He does really want to shake her
+off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our friend had by this time so got into the vision that he almost gasped.
+&ldquo;After all she has done for him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey gave him a look which broke the next moment into a wonderful
+smile. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not so good as you think!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They remained with him, these words, promising him, in their character of
+warning, considerable help; but the support he tried to draw from them found
+itself on each renewal of contact with Chad defeated by something else. What
+could it be, this disconcerting force, he asked himself, but the sense,
+constantly renewed, that Chad <i>was</i>&mdash;quite in fact insisted on
+being&mdash;as good as he thought? It seemed somehow as if he couldn&rsquo;t
+<i>but</i> be as good from the moment he wasn&rsquo;t as bad. There was a
+succession of days at all events when contact with him&mdash;and in its
+immediate effect, as if it could produce no other&mdash;elbowed out of
+Strether&rsquo;s consciousness everything but itself. Little Bilham once more
+pervaded the scene, but little Bilham became even in a higher degree than he
+had originally been one of the numerous forms of the inclusive relation; a
+consequence promoted, to our friend&rsquo;s sense, by two or three incidents
+with which we have yet to make acquaintance. Waymarsh himself, for the
+occasion, was drawn into the eddy; it absolutely, though but temporarily,
+swallowed him down, and there were days when Strether seemed to bump against
+him as a sinking swimmer might brush a submarine object. The fathomless medium
+held them&mdash;Chad&rsquo;s manner was the fathomless medium; and our friend
+felt as if they passed each other, in their deep immersion, with the round
+impersonal eye of silent fish. It was practically produced between them that
+Waymarsh was giving him then his chance; and the shade of discomfort that
+Strether drew from the allowance resembled not a little the embarrassment he
+had known at school, as a boy, when members of his family had been present at
+exhibitions. He could perform before strangers, but relatives were fatal, and
+it was now as if, comparatively, Waymarsh were a relative. He seemed to hear
+him say &ldquo;Strike up then!&rdquo; and to enjoy a foretaste of conscientious
+domestic criticism. He <i>had</i> struck up, so far as he actually could; Chad
+knew by this time in profusion what he wanted; and what vulgar violence did his
+fellow pilgrim expect of him when he had really emptied his mind? It went
+somehow to and fro that what poor Waymarsh meant was &ldquo;I told you
+so&mdash;that you&rsquo;d lose your immortal soul!&rdquo; but it was also
+fairly explicit that Strether had his own challenge and that, since they must
+go to the bottom of things, he wasted no more virtue in watching Chad than Chad
+wasted in watching him. His dip for duty&rsquo;s sake&mdash;where was it worse
+than Waymarsh&rsquo;s own? For <i>he</i> needn&rsquo;t have stopped resisting
+and refusing, needn&rsquo;t have parleyed, at that rate, with the foe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The strolls over Paris to see something or call somewhere were accordingly
+inevitable and natural, and the late sessions in the wondrous troisième, the
+lovely home, when men dropped in and the picture composed more suggestively
+through the haze of tobacco, of music more or less good and of talk more or
+less polyglot, were on a principle not to be distinguished from that of the
+mornings and the afternoons. Nothing, Strether had to recognise as he leaned
+back and smoked, could well less resemble a scene of violence than even the
+liveliest of these occasions. They were occasions of discussion, none the less,
+and Strether had never in his life heard so many opinions on so many subjects.
+There were opinions at Woollett, but only on three or four. The differences
+were there to match; if they were doubtless deep, though few, they were
+quiet&mdash;they were, as might be said, almost as shy as if people had been
+ashamed of them. People showed little diffidence about such things, on the
+other hand, in the Boulevard Malesherbes, and were so far from being ashamed of
+them&mdash;or indeed of anything else&mdash;that they often seemed to have
+invented them to avert those agreements that destroy the taste of talk. No one
+had ever done that at Woollett, though Strether could remember times when he
+himself had been tempted to it without quite knowing why. He saw why at
+present&mdash;he had but wanted to promote intercourse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These, however, were but parenthetic memories, and the turn taken by his affair
+on the whole was positively that if his nerves were on the stretch it was
+because he missed violence. When he asked himself if none would then, in
+connexion with it, ever come at all, he might almost have passed as wondering
+how to provoke it. It would be too absurd if such a vision as <i>that</i>
+should have to be invoked for relief; it was already marked enough as absurd
+that he should actually have begun with flutters and dignities on the score of
+a single accepted meal. What sort of a brute had he expected Chad to be,
+anyway?&mdash;Strether had occasion to make the enquiry but was careful to make
+it in private. He could himself, comparatively recent as it was&mdash;it was
+truly but the fact of a few days since&mdash;focus his primal crudity; but he
+would on the approach of an observer, as if handling an illicit possession,
+have slipped the reminiscence out of sight. There were echoes of it still in
+Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s letters, and there were moments when these echoes made him
+exclaim on her want of tact. He blushed of course, at once, still more for the
+explanation than for the ground of it: it came to him in time to save his
+manners that she couldn&rsquo;t at the best become tactful as quickly as he.
+Her tact had to reckon with the Atlantic Ocean, the General Post-Office and the
+extravagant curve of the globe. Chad had one day offered tea at the Boulevard
+Malesherbes to a chosen few, a group again including the unobscured Miss
+Barrace; and Strether had on coming out walked away with the acquaintance whom
+in his letters to Mrs. Newsome he always spoke of as the little artist-man. He
+had had full occasion to mention him as the other party, so oddly, to the only
+close personal alliance observation had as yet detected in Chad&rsquo;s
+existence. Little Bilham&rsquo;s way this afternoon was not Strether&rsquo;s,
+but he had none the less kindly come with him, and it was somehow a part of his
+kindness that as it had sadly begun to rain they suddenly found themselves
+seated for conversation at a café in which they had taken refuge. He had passed
+no more crowded hour in Chad&rsquo;s society than the one just ended; he had
+talked with Miss Barrace, who had reproached him with not having come to see
+her, and he had above all hit on a happy thought for causing Waymarsh&rsquo;s
+tension to relax. Something might possibly be extracted for the latter from the
+idea of his success with that lady, whose quick apprehension of what might
+amuse her had given Strether a free hand. What had she meant if not to ask
+whether she couldn&rsquo;t help him with his splendid encumbrance, and
+mightn&rsquo;t the sacred rage at any rate be kept a little in abeyance by thus
+creating for his comrade&rsquo;s mind even in a world of irrelevance the
+possibility of a relation? What was it but a relation to be regarded as so
+decorative and, in especial, on the strength of it, to be whirled away, amid
+flounces and feathers, in a coupé lined, by what Strether could make out, with
+dark blue brocade? He himself had never been whirled away&mdash;never at least
+in a coupé and behind a footman; he had driven with Miss Gostrey in cabs, with
+Mrs. Pocock, a few times, in an open buggy, with Mrs. Newsome in a four-seated
+cart and, occasionally up at the mountains, on a buckboard; but his
+friend&rsquo;s actual adventure transcended his personal experience. He now
+showed his companion soon enough indeed how inadequate, as a general monitor,
+this last queer quantity could once more feel itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What game under the sun is he playing?&rdquo; He signified the next
+moment that his allusion was not to the fat gentleman immersed in dominoes on
+whom his eyes had begun by resting, but to their host of the previous hour, as
+to whom, there on the velvet bench, with a final collapse of all consistency,
+he treated himself to the comfort of indiscretion. &ldquo;Where do you see him
+come out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham, in meditation, looked at him with a kindness almost paternal.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you like it over here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether laughed out&mdash;for the tone was indeed droll; he let himself go.
+&ldquo;What has that to do with it? The only thing I&rsquo;ve any business to
+like is to feel that I&rsquo;m moving him. That&rsquo;s why I ask you whether
+you believe I <i>am?</i> Is the creature&rdquo;&mdash;and he did his best to
+show that he simply wished to ascertain&mdash;&ldquo;honest?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion looked responsible, but looked it through a small dim smile.
+&ldquo;What creature do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was on this that they did have for a little a mute interchange. &ldquo;Is it
+untrue that he&rsquo;s free? How then,&rdquo; Strether asked wondering
+&ldquo;does he arrange his life?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is the creature you mean Chad himself?&rdquo; little Bilham said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether here, with a rising hope, just thought, &ldquo;We must take one of
+them at a time.&rdquo; But his coherence lapsed. &ldquo;<i>Is</i> there some
+woman? Of whom he&rsquo;s really afraid of course I mean&mdash;or who does with
+him what she likes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s awfully charming of you,&rdquo; Bilham presently remarked,
+&ldquo;not to have asked me that before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I&rsquo;m not fit for my job!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The exclamation had escaped our friend, but it made little Bilham more
+deliberate. &ldquo;Chad&rsquo;s a rare case!&rdquo; he luminously observed.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s awfully changed,&rdquo; he added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you see it too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The way he has improved? Oh yes&mdash;I think every one must see it. But
+I&rsquo;m not sure,&rdquo; said little Bilham, &ldquo;that I didn&rsquo;t like
+him about as well in his other state.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then this <i>is</i> really a new state altogether?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; the young man after a moment returned, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not
+sure he was really meant by nature to be quite so good. It&rsquo;s like the new
+edition of an old book that one has been fond of&mdash;revised and amended,
+brought up to date, but not quite the thing one knew and loved. However that
+may be at all events,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think, you know,
+that he&rsquo;s really playing, as you call it, any game. I believe he really
+wants to go back and take up a career. He&rsquo;s capable of one, you know,
+that will improve and enlarge him still more. He won&rsquo;t then,&rdquo;
+little Bilham continued to remark, &ldquo;be my pleasant well-rubbed
+old-fashioned volume at all. But of course I&rsquo;m beastly immoral. I&rsquo;m
+afraid it would be a funny world altogether&mdash;a world with things the way I
+like them. I ought, I dare say, to go home and go into business myself. Only
+I&rsquo;d simply rather die&mdash;simply. And I&rsquo;ve not the least
+difficulty in making up my mind not to, and in knowing exactly why, and in
+defending my ground against all comers. All the same,&rdquo; he wound up,
+&ldquo;I assure you I don&rsquo;t say a word against it&mdash;for himself, I
+mean&mdash;to Chad. I seem to see it as much the best thing for him. You see
+he&rsquo;s not happy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Do</i> I?&rdquo;&mdash;Strether stared. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been
+supposing I see just the opposite&mdash;an extraordinary case of the
+equilibrium arrived at and assured.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh there&rsquo;s a lot behind it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah there you are!&rdquo; Strether exclaimed. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just
+what I want to get at. You speak of your familiar volume altered out of
+recognition. Well, who&rsquo;s the editor?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham looked before him a minute in silence. &ldquo;He ought to get
+married. <i>That</i> would do it. And he wants to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wants to marry her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again little Bilham waited, and, with a sense that he had information, Strether
+scarce knew what was coming. &ldquo;He wants to be free. He isn&rsquo;t used,
+you see,&rdquo; the young man explained in his lucid way, &ldquo;to being so
+good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether hesitated. &ldquo;Then I may take it from you that he <i>is</i>
+good?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion matched his pause, but making it up with a quiet fulness.
+&ldquo;<i>Do</i> take it from me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then why isn&rsquo;t he free? He swears to me he is, but meanwhile
+does nothing&mdash;except of course that he&rsquo;s so kind to me&mdash;to
+prove it; and couldn&rsquo;t really act much otherwise if he weren&rsquo;t. My
+question to you just now was exactly on this queer impression of his diplomacy:
+as if instead of really giving ground his line were to keep me on here and set
+me a bad example.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the half-hour meanwhile had ebbed Strether paid his score, and the waiter
+was presently in the act of counting out change. Our friend pushed back to him
+a fraction of it, with which, after an emphatic recognition, the personage in
+question retreated. &ldquo;You give too much,&rdquo; little Bilham permitted
+himself benevolently to observe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I always give too much!&rdquo; Strether helplessly sighed. &ldquo;But
+you don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he went on as if to get quickly away from the
+contemplation of that doom, &ldquo;answer my question. Why isn&rsquo;t he
+free?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham had got up as if the transaction with the waiter had been a
+signal, and had already edged out between the table and the divan. The effect
+of this was that a minute later they had quitted the place, the gratified
+waiter alert again at the open door. Strether had found himself deferring to
+his companion&rsquo;s abruptness as to a hint that he should be answered as
+soon as they were more isolated. This happened when after a few steps in the
+outer air they had turned the next corner. There our friend had kept it up.
+&ldquo;Why isn&rsquo;t he free if he&rsquo;s good?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham looked him full in the face. &ldquo;Because it&rsquo;s a virtuous
+attachment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This had settled the question so effectually for the time&mdash;that is for the
+next few days&mdash;that it had given Strether almost a new lease of life. It
+must be added however that, thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle
+in which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste
+of the lees rising as usual into his draught. His imagination had in other
+words already dealt with his young friend&rsquo;s assertion; of which it had
+made something that sufficiently came out on the very next occasion of his
+seeing Maria Gostrey. This occasion moreover had been determined promptly by a
+new circumstance&mdash;a circumstance he was the last man to leave her for a
+day in ignorance of. &ldquo;When I said to him last night,&rdquo; he
+immediately began, &ldquo;that without some definite word from him now that
+will enable me to speak to them over there of our sailing&mdash;or at least of
+mine, giving them some sort of date&mdash;my responsibility becomes
+uncomfortable and my situation awkward; when I said that to him what do you
+think was his reply?&rdquo; And then as she this time gave it up: &ldquo;Why
+that he has two particular friends, two ladies, mother and daughter, about to
+arrive in Paris&mdash;coming back from an absence; and that he wants me so
+furiously to meet them, know them and like them, that I shall oblige him by
+kindly not bringing our business to a crisis till he has had a chance to see
+them again himself. Is that,&rdquo; Strether enquired, &ldquo;the way
+he&rsquo;s going to try to get off? These are the people,&rdquo; he explained,
+&ldquo;that he must have gone down to see before I arrived. They&rsquo;re the
+best friends he has in the world, and they take more interest than any one else
+in what concerns him. As I&rsquo;m his next best he sees a thousand reasons why
+we should comfortably meet. He hasn&rsquo;t broached the question sooner
+because their return was uncertain&mdash;seemed in fact for the present
+impossible. But he more than intimates that&mdash;if you can believe
+it&mdash;their desire to make my acquaintance has had to do with their
+surmounting difficulties.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re dying to see you?&rdquo; Miss Gostrey asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dying. Of course,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;they&rsquo;re the
+virtuous attachment.&rdquo; He had already told her about that&mdash;had seen
+her the day after his talk with little Bilham; and they had then threshed out
+together the bearing of the revelation. She had helped him to put into it the
+logic in which little Bilham had left it slightly deficient Strether
+hadn&rsquo;t pressed him as to the object of the preference so unexpectedly
+described; feeling in the presence of it, with one of his irrepressible
+scruples, a delicacy from which he had in the quest of the quite other article
+worked himself sufficiently free. He had held off, as on a small principle of
+pride, from permitting his young friend to mention a name; wishing to make with
+this the great point that Chad&rsquo;s virtuous attachments were none of his
+business. He had wanted from the first not to think too much of his dignity,
+but that was no reason for not allowing it any little benefit that might turn
+up. He had often enough wondered to what degree his interference might pass for
+interested; so that there was no want of luxury in letting it be seen whenever
+he could that he didn&rsquo;t interfere. That had of course at the same time
+not deprived him of the further luxury of much private astonishment; which
+however he had reduced to some order before communicating his knowledge. When
+he had done this at last it was with the remark that, surprised as Miss Gostrey
+might, like himself, at first be, she would probably agree with him on
+reflexion that such an account of the matter did after all fit the confirmed
+appearances. Nothing certainly, on all the indications, could have been a
+greater change for him than a virtuous attachment, and since they had been in
+search of the &ldquo;word&rdquo; as the French called it, of that change,
+little Bilham&rsquo;s announcement&mdash;though so long and so oddly
+delayed&mdash;would serve as well as another. She had assured Strether in fact
+after a pause that the more she thought of it the more it did serve; and yet
+her assurance hadn&rsquo;t so weighed with him as that before they parted he
+hadn&rsquo;t ventured to challenge her sincerity. Didn&rsquo;t she believe the
+attachment <i>was</i> virtuous?&mdash;he had made sure of her again with the
+aid of that question. The tidings he brought her on this second occasion were
+moreover such as would help him to make surer still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She showed at first none the less as only amused. &ldquo;You say there are two?
+An attachment to them both then would, I suppose, almost necessarily be
+innocent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our friend took the point, but he had his clue. &ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t he be still
+in the stage of not quite knowing which of them, mother or daughter, he likes
+best?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave it more thought. &ldquo;Oh it must be the daughter&mdash;at his
+age.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Possibly. Yet what do we know,&rdquo; Strether asked, &ldquo;about hers?
+She may be old enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old enough for what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why to marry Chad. That may be, you know, what they want. And if Chad
+wants it too, and little Bilham wants it, and even <i>we</i>, at a pinch, could
+do with it&mdash;that is if she doesn&rsquo;t prevent repatriation&mdash;why it
+may be plain sailing yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was always the case for him in these counsels that each of his remarks, as
+it came, seemed to drop into a deeper well. He had at all events to wait a
+moment to hear the slight splash of this one. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why if
+Mr. Newsome wants to marry the young lady he hasn&rsquo;t already done it or
+hasn&rsquo;t been prepared with some statement to you about it. And if he both
+wants to marry her and is on good terms with them why isn&rsquo;t he
+&lsquo;free&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, responsively, wondered indeed. &ldquo;Perhaps the girl herself
+doesn&rsquo;t like him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why does he speak of them to you as he does?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s mind echoed the question, but also again met it.
+&ldquo;Perhaps it&rsquo;s with the mother he&rsquo;s on good terms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As against the daughter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, if she&rsquo;s trying to persuade the daughter to consent to him,
+what could make him like the mother more? Only,&rdquo; Strether threw out,
+&ldquo;why shouldn&rsquo;t the daughter consent to him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Miss Gostrey, &ldquo;mayn&rsquo;t it be that every one
+else isn&rsquo;t quite so struck with him as you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t regard him you mean as such an &lsquo;eligible&rsquo;
+young man? <i>Is</i> that what I&rsquo;ve come to?&rdquo; he audibly and rather
+gravely sought to know. &ldquo;However,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;his marriage
+is what his mother most desires&mdash;that is if it will help. And
+oughtn&rsquo;t <i>any</i> marriage to help? They must want him&rdquo;&mdash;he
+had already worked it out&mdash;&ldquo;to be better off. Almost any girl he may
+marry will have a direct interest in his taking up his chances. It won&rsquo;t
+suit <i>her</i> at least that he shall miss them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey cast about. &ldquo;No&mdash;you reason well! But of course on the
+other hand there&rsquo;s always dear old Woollett itself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; he mused&mdash;&ldquo;there&rsquo;s always dear old
+Woollett itself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She waited a moment. &ldquo;The young lady mayn&rsquo;t find herself able to
+swallow <i>that</i> quantity. She may think it&rsquo;s paying too much; she may
+weigh one thing against another.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, ever restless in such debates, took a vague turn &ldquo;It will all
+depend on who she is. That of course&mdash;the proved ability to deal with dear
+old Woollett, since I&rsquo;m sure she does deal with it&mdash;is what makes so
+strongly for Mamie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mamie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped short, at her tone, before her; then, though seeing that it
+represented not vagueness, but a momentary embarrassed fulness, let his
+exclamation come. &ldquo;You surely haven&rsquo;t forgotten about Mamie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I haven&rsquo;t forgotten about Mamie,&rdquo; she smiled.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no doubt whatever that there&rsquo;s ever so much to be
+said for her. Mamie&rsquo;s <i>my</i> girl!&rdquo; she roundly declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether resumed for a minute his walk. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s really perfectly
+lovely, you know. Far prettier than any girl I&rsquo;ve seen over here
+yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s precisely on what I perhaps most build.&rdquo; And she
+mused a moment in her friend&rsquo;s way. &ldquo;I should positively like to
+take her in hand!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it. &ldquo;Oh but
+don&rsquo;t, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and can&rsquo;t, you
+know, be left.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she kept it up. &ldquo;I wish they&rsquo;d send her out to me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If they knew you,&rdquo; he returned, &ldquo;they would.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but don&rsquo;t they?&mdash;after all that, as I&rsquo;ve understood
+you you&rsquo;ve told them about me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had paused before her again, but he continued his course &ldquo;They
+<i>will</i>&mdash;before, as you say, I&rsquo;ve done.&rdquo; Then he came out
+with the point he had wished after all most to make. &ldquo;It seems to give
+away now his game. This is what he has been doing&mdash;keeping me along for.
+He has been waiting for them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey drew in her lips. &ldquo;You see a good deal in it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I doubt if I see as much as you. Do you pretend,&rdquo; he went on,
+&ldquo;that you don&rsquo;t see&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, what?&rdquo;&mdash;she pressed him as he paused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why that there must be a lot between them&mdash;and that it has been
+going on from the first; even from before I came.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took a minute to answer. &ldquo;Who are they then&mdash;if it&rsquo;s so
+grave?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It mayn&rsquo;t be grave&mdash;it may be gay. But at any rate it&rsquo;s
+marked. Only I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Strether had to confess,
+&ldquo;anything about them. Their name for instance was a thing that, after
+little Bilham&rsquo;s information, I found it a kind of refreshment not to feel
+obliged to follow up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she returned, &ldquo;if you think you&rsquo;ve got
+off&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think
+I&rsquo;ve got off. I only think I&rsquo;m breathing for about five minutes. I
+dare say I <i>shall</i> have, at the best, still to get on.&rdquo; A look, over
+it all, passed between them, and the next minute he had come back to good
+humour. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t meanwhile take the smallest interest in their
+name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor in their nationality?&mdash;American, French, English,
+Polish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care the least little &lsquo;hang,&rsquo;&rdquo; he
+smiled, &ldquo;for their nationality. It would be nice if they&rsquo;re
+Polish!&rdquo; he almost immediately added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very nice indeed.&rdquo; The transition kept up her spirits. &ldquo;So
+you see you do care.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did this contention a modified justice. &ldquo;I think I should if they
+<i>were</i> Polish. Yes,&rdquo; he thought&mdash;&ldquo;there might be joy in
+<i>that</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us then hope for it.&rdquo; But she came after this nearer to the
+question. &ldquo;If the girl&rsquo;s of the right age of course the mother
+can&rsquo;t be. I mean for the virtuous attachment. If the girl&rsquo;s
+twenty&mdash;and she can&rsquo;t be less&mdash;the mother must be at least
+forty. So it puts the mother out. <i>She&rsquo;s</i> too old for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, arrested again, considered and demurred. &ldquo;Do you think so? Do
+you think any one would be too old for him? <i>I&rsquo;m</i> eighty, and
+I&rsquo;m too young. But perhaps the girl,&rdquo; he continued,
+&ldquo;<i>isn&rsquo;t</i> twenty. Perhaps she&rsquo;s only ten&mdash;but such a
+little dear that Chad finds himself counting her in as an attraction of the
+acquaintance. Perhaps she&rsquo;s only five. Perhaps the mother&rsquo;s but
+five-and-twenty&mdash;a charming young widow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey entertained the suggestion. &ldquo;She <i>is</i> a widow
+then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the least idea!&rdquo; They once more, in spite of this
+vagueness, exchanged a look&mdash;a look that was perhaps the longest yet. It
+seemed in fact, the next thing, to require to explain itself; which it did as
+it could. &ldquo;I only feel what I&rsquo;ve told you&mdash;that he has some
+reason.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey&rsquo;s imagination had taken its own flight. &ldquo;Perhaps
+she&rsquo;s <i>not</i> a widow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether seemed to accept the possibility with reserve. Still he accepted it.
+&ldquo;Then that&rsquo;s why the attachment&mdash;if it&rsquo;s to her&mdash;is
+virtuous.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she looked as if she scarce followed. &ldquo;Why is it virtuous
+if&mdash;since she&rsquo;s free&mdash;there&rsquo;s nothing to impose on it any
+condition?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed at her question. &ldquo;Oh I perhaps don&rsquo;t mean as virtuous as
+<i>that!</i> Your idea is that it can be virtuous&mdash;in any sense worthy of
+the name&mdash;only if she&rsquo;s <i>not</i> free? But what does it become
+then,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;for <i>her?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah that&rsquo;s another matter.&rdquo; He said nothing for a moment, and
+she soon went on. &ldquo;I dare say you&rsquo;re right, at any rate, about Mr.
+Newsome&rsquo;s little plan. He <i>has</i> been trying you&mdash;has been
+reporting on you to these friends.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether meanwhile had had time to think more. &ldquo;Then where&rsquo;s his
+straightness?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, as we say, it&rsquo;s struggling up, breaking out, asserting
+itself as it can. We can be on the side, you see, of his straightness. We can
+help him. But he has made out,&rdquo; said Miss Gostrey, &ldquo;that
+you&rsquo;ll do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do for what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, for <i>them</i>&mdash;for <i>ces dames</i>. He has watched you,
+studied you, liked you&mdash;and recognised that <i>they</i> must. It&rsquo;s a
+great compliment to you, my dear man; for I&rsquo;m sure they&rsquo;re
+particular. You came out for a success. Well,&rdquo; she gaily declared,
+&ldquo;you&rsquo;re having it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took it from her with momentary patience and then turned abruptly away. It
+was always convenient to him that there were so many fine things in her room to
+look at. But the examination of two or three of them appeared soon to have
+determined a speech that had little to do with them. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t
+believe in it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the character of the attachment. In its innocence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she defended herself. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t pretend to know anything about
+it. Everything&rsquo;s possible. We must see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See?&rdquo; he echoed with a groan. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t we seen
+enough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> haven&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But do you suppose then little Bilham has lied?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must find out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made him almost turn pale. &ldquo;Find out any <i>more?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had dropped on a sofa for dismay; but she seemed, as she stood over him, to
+have the last word. &ldquo;Wasn&rsquo;t what you came out for to find out
+<i>all?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>Book Fifth</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+The Sunday of the next week was a wonderful day, and Chad Newsome had let his
+friend know in advance that he had provided for it. There had already been a
+question of his taking him to see the great Gloriani, who was at home on Sunday
+afternoons and at whose house, for the most part, fewer bores were to be met
+than elsewhere; but the project, through some accident, had not had instant
+effect, and now revived in happier conditions. Chad had made the point that the
+celebrated sculptor had a queer old garden, for which the weather&mdash;spring
+at last frank and fair&mdash;was propitious; and two or three of his other
+allusions had confirmed for Strether the expectation of something special. He
+had by this time, for all introductions and adventures, let himself recklessly
+go, cherishing the sense that whatever the young man showed him he was showing
+at least himself. He could have wished indeed, so far as this went, that Chad
+were less of a mere cicerone; for he was not without the impression&mdash;now
+that the vision of his game, his plan, his deep diplomacy, did recurrently
+assert itself&mdash;of his taking refuge from the realities of their
+intercourse in profusely dispensing, as our friend mentally phrased it,
+<i>panem et circenses</i>. Our friend continued to feel rather smothered in
+flowers, though he made in his other moments the almost angry inference that
+this was only because of his odious ascetic suspicion of any form of beauty. He
+periodically assured himself&mdash;for his reactions were sharp&mdash;that he
+shouldn&rsquo;t reach the truth of anything till he had at least got rid of
+that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had known beforehand that Madame de Vionnet and her daughter would probably
+be on view, an intimation to that effect having constituted the only reference
+again made by Chad to his good friends from the south. The effect of
+Strether&rsquo;s talk about them with Miss Gostrey had been quite to consecrate
+his reluctance to pry; something in the very air of Chad&rsquo;s
+silence&mdash;judged in the light of that talk&mdash;offered it to him as a
+reserve he could markedly match. It shrouded them about with he scarce knew
+what, a consideration, a distinction; he was in presence at any rate&mdash;so
+far as it placed him there&mdash;of ladies; and the one thing that was definite
+for him was that they themselves should be, to the extent of his
+responsibility, in presence of a gentleman. Was it because they were very
+beautiful, very clever, or even very good&mdash;was it for one of these reasons
+that Chad was, so to speak, nursing his effect? Did he wish to spring them, in
+the Woollett phrase, with a fuller force&mdash;to confound his critic, slight
+though as yet the criticism, with some form of merit exquisitely incalculable?
+The most the critic had at all events asked was whether the persons in question
+were French; and that enquiry had been but a proper comment on the sound of
+their name. &ldquo;Yes. That is no!&rdquo; had been Chad&rsquo;s reply; but he
+had immediately added that their English was the most charming in the world, so
+that if Strether were wanting an excuse for not getting on with them he
+wouldn&rsquo;t in the least find one. Never in fact had Strether&mdash;in the
+mood into which the place had quickly launched him&mdash;felt, for himself,
+less the need of an excuse. Those he might have found would have been, at the
+worst, all for the others, the people before him, in whose liberty to be as
+they were he was aware that he positively rejoiced. His fellow guests were
+multiplying, and these things, their liberty, their intensity, their variety,
+their conditions at large, were in fusion in the admirable medium of the scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The place itself was a great impression&mdash;a small pavilion, clear-faced and
+sequestered, an effect of polished parquet, of fine white panel and spare
+sallow gilt, of decoration delicate and rare, in the heart of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain and on the edge of a cluster of gardens attached to old noble
+houses. Far back from streets and unsuspected by crowds, reached by a long
+passage and a quiet court, it was as striking to the unprepared mind, he
+immediately saw, as a treasure dug up; giving him too, more than anything yet,
+the note of the range of the immeasurable town and sweeping away, as by a last
+brave brush, his usual landmarks and terms. It was in the garden, a spacious
+cherished remnant, out of which a dozen persons had already passed, that
+Chad&rsquo;s host presently met them while the tall bird-haunted trees, all of
+a twitter with the spring and the weather, and the high party-walls, on the
+other side of which grave <i>hôtels</i> stood off for privacy, spoke of
+survival, transmission, association, a strong indifferent persistent order. The
+day was so soft that the little party had practically adjourned to the open air
+but the open air was in such conditions all a chamber of state. Strether had
+presently the sense of a great convent, a convent of missions, famous for he
+scarce knew what, a nursery of young priests, of scattered shade, of straight
+alleys and chapel-bells, that spread its mass in one quarter; he had the sense
+of names in the air, of ghosts at the windows, of signs and tokens, a whole
+range of expression, all about him, too thick for prompt discrimination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This assault of images became for a moment, in the address of the distinguished
+sculptor, almost formidable: Gloriani showed him, in such perfect confidence,
+on Chad&rsquo;s introduction of him, a fine worn handsome face, a face that was
+like an open letter in a foreign tongue. With his genius in his eyes, his
+manners on his lips, his long career behind him and his honours and rewards all
+round, the great artist, in the course of a single sustained look and a few
+words of delight at receiving him, affected our friend as a dazzling prodigy of
+type. Strether had seen in museums&mdash;in the Luxembourg as well as, more
+reverently, later on, in the New York of the billionaires&mdash;the work of his
+hand; knowing too that after an earlier time in his native Rome he had
+migrated, in mid-career, to Paris, where, with a personal lustre almost
+violent, he shone in a constellation: all of which was more than enough to
+crown him, for his guest, with the light, with the romance, of glory. Strether,
+in contact with that element as he had never yet so intimately been, had the
+consciousness of opening to it, for the happy instant, all the windows of his
+mind, of letting this rather grey interior drink in for once the sun of a clime
+not marked in his old geography. He was to remember again repeatedly the
+medal-like Italian face, in which every line was an artist&rsquo;s own, in
+which time told only as tone and consecration; and he was to recall in
+especial, as the penetrating radiance, as the communication of the illustrious
+spirit itself, the manner in which, while they stood briefly, in welcome and
+response, face to face, he was held by the sculptor&rsquo;s eyes. He
+wasn&rsquo;t soon to forget them, was to think of them, all unconscious,
+unintending, preoccupied though they were, as the source of the deepest
+intellectual sounding to which he had ever been exposed. He was in fact quite
+to cherish his vision of it, to play with it in idle hours; only speaking of it
+to no one and quite aware he couldn&rsquo;t have spoken without appearing to
+talk nonsense. Was what it had told him or what it had asked him the greater of
+the mysteries? Was it the most special flare, unequalled, supreme, of the
+æsthetic torch, lighting that wondrous world for ever, or was it above all the
+long straight shaft sunk by a personal acuteness that life had seasoned to
+steel? Nothing on earth could have been stranger and no one doubtless more
+surprised than the artist himself, but it was for all the world to Strether
+just then as if in the matter of his accepted duty he had positively been on
+trial. The deep human expertness in Gloriani&rsquo;s charming smile&mdash;oh
+the terrible life behind it!&mdash;was flashed upon him as a test of his stuff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad meanwhile, after having easily named his companion, had still more easily
+turned away and was already greeting other persons present. He was as easy,
+clever Chad, with the great artist as with his obscure compatriot, and as easy
+with every one else as with either: this fell into its place for Strether and
+made almost a new light, giving him, as a concatenation, something more he
+could enjoy. He liked Gloriani, but should never see him again; of that he was
+sufficiently sure. Chad accordingly, who was wonderful with both of them, was a
+kind of link for hopeless fancy, an implication of possibilities&mdash;oh if
+everything had been different! Strether noted at all events that he was thus on
+terms with illustrious spirits, and also that&mdash;yes, distinctly&mdash;he
+hadn&rsquo;t in the least swaggered about it. Our friend hadn&rsquo;t come
+there only for this figure of Abel Newsome&rsquo;s son, but that presence
+threatened to affect the observant mind as positively central. Gloriani indeed,
+remembering something and excusing himself, pursued Chad to speak to him, and
+Strether was left musing on many things. One of them was the question of
+whether, since he had been tested, he had passed. Did the artist drop him from
+having made out that he wouldn&rsquo;t do? He really felt just to-day that he
+might do better than usual. Hadn&rsquo;t he done well enough, so far as that
+went, in being exactly so dazzled? and in not having too, as he almost
+believed, wholly hidden from his host that he felt the latter&rsquo;s plummet?
+Suddenly, across the garden, he saw little Bilham approach, and it was a part
+of the fit that was on him that as their eyes met he guessed also <i>his</i>
+knowledge. If he had said to him on the instant what was uppermost he would
+have said: &ldquo;<i>Have</i> I passed?&mdash;for of course I know one has to
+pass here.&rdquo; Little Bilham would have reassured him, have told him that he
+exaggerated, and have adduced happily enough the argument of little
+Bilham&rsquo;s own very presence; which, in truth, he could see, was as easy a
+one as Gloriani&rsquo;s own or as Chad&rsquo;s. He himself would perhaps then
+after a while cease to be frightened, would get the point of view for some of
+the faces&mdash;types tremendously alien, alien to Woollett&mdash;that he had
+already begun to take in. Who were they all, the dispersed groups and couples,
+the ladies even more unlike those of Woollett than the gentlemen?&mdash;this
+was the enquiry that, when his young friend had greeted him, he did find
+himself making.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh they&rsquo;re every one&mdash;all sorts and sizes; of course I mean
+within limits, though limits down perhaps rather more than limits up. There are
+always artists&mdash;he&rsquo;s beautiful and inimitable to the <i>cher
+confrère</i>; and then <i>gros bonnets</i> of many kinds&mdash;ambassadors,
+cabinet ministers, bankers, generals, what do I know? even Jews. Above all
+always some awfully nice women&mdash;and not too many; sometimes an actress, an
+artist, a great performer&mdash;but only when they&rsquo;re not monsters; and
+in particular the right <i>femmes du monde</i>. You can fancy his history on
+that side&mdash;I believe it&rsquo;s fabulous: they <i>never</i> give him up.
+Yet he keeps them down: no one knows how he manages; it&rsquo;s too beautiful
+and bland. Never too many&mdash;and a mighty good thing too; just a perfect
+choice. But there are not in any way many bores; it has always been so; he has
+some secret. It&rsquo;s extraordinary. And you don&rsquo;t find it out.
+He&rsquo;s the same to every one. He doesn&rsquo;t ask questions.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah doesn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; Strether laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bilham met it with all his candour. &ldquo;How then should <i>I</i> be here?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh for what you tell me. You&rsquo;re part of the perfect choice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, the young man took in the scene. &ldquo;It seems rather good
+to-day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether followed the direction of his eyes. &ldquo;Are they all, this time,
+<i>femmes du monde?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham showed his competence. &ldquo;Pretty well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a category our friend had a feeling for; a light, romantic and
+mysterious, on the feminine element, in which he enjoyed for a little watching
+it. &ldquo;Are there any Poles?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion considered. &ldquo;I think I make out a &lsquo;Portuguee.&rsquo;
+But I&rsquo;ve seen Turks.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wondered, desiring justice. &ldquo;They seem&mdash;all the
+women&mdash;very harmonious.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh in closer quarters they come out!&rdquo; And then, while Strether was
+aware of fearing closer quarters, though giving himself again to the harmonies,
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; little Bilham went on, &ldquo;it <i>is</i> at the worst
+rather good, you know. If you like it, you feel it, this way, that shows
+you&rsquo;re not in the least out. But you always know things,&rdquo; he
+handsomely added, &ldquo;immediately.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether liked it and felt it only too much; so &ldquo;I say, don&rsquo;t lay
+traps for me!&rdquo; he rather helplessly murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; his companion returned, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s wonderfully kind
+to <i>us</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To us Americans you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;he doesn&rsquo;t know anything about <i>that</i>.
+That&rsquo;s half the battle here&mdash;that you can never hear politics. We
+don&rsquo;t talk them. I mean to poor young wretches of all sorts. And yet
+it&rsquo;s always as charming as this; it&rsquo;s as if, by something in the
+air, our squalor didn&rsquo;t show. It puts us all back&mdash;into the last
+century.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid,&rdquo; Strether said, amused, &ldquo;that it puts me
+rather forward: oh ever so far!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Into the next? But isn&rsquo;t that only,&rdquo; little Bilham asked,
+&ldquo;because you&rsquo;re really of the century before?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The century before the last? Thank you!&rdquo; Strether laughed.
+&ldquo;If I ask you about some of the ladies it can&rsquo;t be then that I may
+hope, as such a specimen of the rococo, to please them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the contrary they adore&mdash;we all adore here&mdash;the rococo, and
+where is there a better setting for it than the whole thing, the pavilion and
+the garden, together? There are lots of people with collections,&rdquo; little
+Bilham smiled as he glanced round. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be secured!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made Strether for a moment give himself again to contemplation. There were
+faces he scarce knew what to make of. Were they charming or were they only
+strange? He mightn&rsquo;t talk politics, yet he suspected a Pole or two. The
+upshot was the question at the back of his head from the moment his friend had
+joined him. &ldquo;Have Madame de Vionnet and her daughter arrived?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t seen them yet, but Miss Gostrey has come. She&rsquo;s in
+the pavilion looking at objects. One can see <i>she&rsquo;s</i> a
+collector,&rdquo; little Bilham added without offence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, she&rsquo;s a collector, and I knew she was to come. Is Madame
+de Vionnet a collector?&rdquo; Strether went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather, I believe; almost celebrated.&rdquo; The young man met, on it, a
+little, his friend&rsquo;s eyes. &ldquo;I happen to know&mdash;from Chad, whom
+I saw last night&mdash;that they&rsquo;ve come back; but only yesterday. He
+wasn&rsquo;t sure&mdash;up to the last. This, accordingly,&rdquo; little Bilham
+went on, &ldquo;will be&mdash;if they <i>are</i> here&mdash;their first
+appearance after their return.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, very quickly, turned these things over. &ldquo;Chad told you last
+night? To me, on our way here, he said nothing about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But did you ask him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether did him the justice. &ldquo;I dare say not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said little Bilham, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re not a person to
+whom it&rsquo;s easy to tell things you don&rsquo;t want to know. Though it
+<i>is</i> easy, I admit&mdash;it&rsquo;s quite beautiful,&rdquo; he
+benevolently added, &ldquo;when you do want to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether looked at him with an indulgence that matched his intelligence.
+&ldquo;Is that the deep reasoning on which&mdash;about these
+ladies&mdash;you&rsquo;ve been yourself so silent?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham considered the depth of his reasoning. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t
+been silent. I spoke of them to you the other day, the day we sat together
+after Chad&rsquo;s tea-party.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether came round to it. &ldquo;They then are the virtuous attachment?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can only tell you that it&rsquo;s what they pass for. But isn&rsquo;t
+that enough? What more than a vain appearance does the wisest of us know? I
+commend you,&rdquo; the young man declared with a pleasant emphasis, &ldquo;the
+vain appearance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether looked more widely round, and what he saw, from face to face, deepened
+the effect of his young friend&rsquo;s words. &ldquo;Is it so good?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Magnificent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had a pause. &ldquo;The husband&rsquo;s dead?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear no. Alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Strether. After which, as his companion laughed:
+&ldquo;How then can it be so good?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll see for yourself. One does see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Chad&rsquo;s in love with the daughter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wondered. &ldquo;Then where&rsquo;s the difficulty?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, aren&rsquo;t you and I&mdash;with our grander bolder ideas?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh mine&mdash;!&rdquo; Strether said rather strangely. But then as if to
+attenuate: &ldquo;You mean they won&rsquo;t hear of Woollett?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham smiled. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t that just what you must see
+about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had brought them, as she caught the last words, into relation with Miss
+Barrace, whom Strether had already observed&mdash;as he had never before seen a
+lady at a party&mdash;moving about alone. Coming within sound of them she had
+already spoken, and she took again, through her long-handled glass, all her
+amused and amusing possession. &ldquo;How much, poor Mr. Strether, you seem to
+have to see about! But you can&rsquo;t say,&rdquo; she gaily declared,
+&ldquo;that I don&rsquo;t do what I can to help you. Mr. Waymarsh is placed.
+I&rsquo;ve left him in the house with Miss Gostrey.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The way,&rdquo; little Bilham exclaimed, &ldquo;Mr. Strether gets the
+ladies to work for him! He&rsquo;s just preparing to draw in another; to
+pounce&mdash;don&rsquo;t you see him?&mdash;on Madame de Vionnet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Madame de Vionnet? Oh, oh, oh!&rdquo; Miss Barrace cried in a wonderful
+crescendo. There was more in it, our friend made out, than met the ear. Was it
+after all a joke that he should be serious about anything? He envied Miss
+Barrace at any rate her power of not being. She seemed, with little cries and
+protests and quick recognitions, movements like the darts of some fine
+high-feathered free-pecking bird, to stand before life as before some full
+shop-window. You could fairly hear, as she selected and pointed, the tap of her
+tortoise-shell against the glass. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s certain that we do need
+seeing about; only I&rsquo;m glad it&rsquo;s not I who have to do it. One does,
+no doubt, begin that way; then suddenly one finds that one has given it up.
+It&rsquo;s too much, it&rsquo;s too difficult. You&rsquo;re wonderful, you
+people,&rdquo; she continued to Strether, &ldquo;for not feeling those
+things&mdash;by which I mean impossibilities. You never feel them. You face
+them with a fortitude that makes it a lesson to watch you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but&rdquo;&mdash;little Bilham put it with
+discouragement&mdash;&ldquo;what do we achieve after all? We see about you and
+report&mdash;when we even go so far as reporting. But nothing&rsquo;s
+done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you, Mr. Bilham,&rdquo; she replied as with an impatient rap on the
+glass, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re not worth sixpence! You come over to convert the
+savages&mdash;for I know you verily did, I remember you&mdash;and the savages
+simply convert <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not even!&rdquo; the young man woefully confessed: &ldquo;they
+haven&rsquo;t gone through that form. They&rsquo;ve simply&mdash;the
+cannibals!&mdash;eaten me; converted me if you like, but converted me into
+food. I&rsquo;m but the bleached bones of a Christian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then there we are! Only&rdquo;&mdash;and Miss Barrace appealed
+again to Strether&mdash;&ldquo;don&rsquo;t let it discourage you. You&rsquo;ll
+break down soon enough, but you&rsquo;ll meanwhile have had your moments. <i>Il
+faut en avoir</i>. I always like to see you while you last. And I&rsquo;ll tell
+you who <i>will</i> last.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Waymarsh?&rdquo;&mdash;he had already taken her up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed out as at the alarm of it. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll resist even Miss
+Gostrey: so grand is it not to understand. He&rsquo;s wonderful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is indeed,&rdquo; Strether conceded. &ldquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t tell me
+of this affair&mdash;only said he had an engagement; but with such a gloom, you
+must let me insist, as if it had been an engagement to be hanged. Then silently
+and secretly he turns up here with you. Do you call <i>that</i>
+&lsquo;lasting&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I hope it&rsquo;s lasting!&rdquo; Miss Barrace said. &ldquo;But he
+only, at the best, bears with me. He doesn&rsquo;t understand&mdash;not one
+little scrap. He&rsquo;s delightful. He&rsquo;s wonderful,&rdquo; she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Michelangelesque!&rdquo;&mdash;little Bilham completed her meaning.
+&ldquo;He <i>is</i> a success. Moses, on the ceiling, brought down to the
+floor; overwhelming, colossal, but somehow portable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly, if you mean by portable,&rdquo; she returned, &ldquo;looking
+so well in one&rsquo;s carriage. He&rsquo;s too funny beside me in his corner;
+he looks like somebody, somebody foreign and famous, <i>en exil</i>; so that
+people wonder&mdash;it&rsquo;s very amusing&mdash;whom I&rsquo;m taking about.
+I show him Paris, show him everything, and he never turns a hair. He&rsquo;s
+like the Indian chief one reads about, who, when he comes up to Washington to
+see the Great Father, stands wrapt in his blanket and gives no sign. <i>I</i>
+might be the Great Father&mdash;from the way he takes everything.&rdquo; She
+was delighted at this hit of her identity with that personage&mdash;it fitted
+so her character; she declared it was the title she meant henceforth to adopt.
+&ldquo;And the way he sits, too, in the corner of my room, only looking at my
+visitors very hard and as if he wanted to start something! They wonder what he
+does want to start. But he&rsquo;s wonderful,&rdquo; Miss Barrace once more
+insisted. &ldquo;He has never started anything yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It presented him none the less, in truth, to her actual friends, who looked at
+each other in intelligence, with frank amusement on Bilham&rsquo;s part and a
+shade of sadness on Strether&rsquo;s. Strether&rsquo;s sadness sprang&mdash;for
+the image had its grandeur&mdash;from his thinking how little he himself was
+wrapt in his blanket, how little, in marble halls, all too oblivious of the
+Great Father, he resembled a really majestic aboriginal. But he had also
+another reflexion. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve all of you here so much visual sense
+that you&rsquo;ve somehow all &lsquo;run&rsquo; to it. There are moments when
+it strikes one that you haven&rsquo;t any other.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Any moral,&rdquo; little Bilham explained, watching serenely, across the
+garden, the several <i>femmes du monde</i>. &ldquo;But Miss Barrace has a moral
+distinction,&rdquo; he kindly continued; speaking as if for Strether&rsquo;s
+benefit not less than for her own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Have</i> you?&rdquo; Strether, scarce knowing what he was about,
+asked of her almost eagerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh not a distinction&rdquo;&mdash;she was mightily amused at his
+tone&mdash;&ldquo;Mr. Bilham&rsquo;s too good. But I think I may say a
+sufficiency. Yes, a sufficiency. Have you supposed strange things of
+me?&rdquo;&mdash;and she fixed him again, through all her tortoise-shell, with
+the droll interest of it. &ldquo;You <i>are</i> all indeed wonderful. I should
+awfully disappoint you. I do take my stand on my sufficiency. But I know, I
+confess,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;strange people. I don&rsquo;t know how it
+happens; I don&rsquo;t do it on purpose; it seems to be my doom&mdash;as if I
+were always one of their habits: it&rsquo;s wonderful! I dare say
+moreover,&rdquo; she pursued with an interested gravity, &ldquo;that I do, that
+we all do here, run too much to mere eye. But how can it be helped? We&rsquo;re
+all looking at each other&mdash;and in the light of Paris one sees what things
+resemble. That&rsquo;s what the light of Paris seems always to show. It&rsquo;s
+the fault of the light of Paris&mdash;dear old light!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear old Paris!&rdquo; little Bilham echoed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everything, every one shows,&rdquo; Miss Barrace went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But for what they really are?&rdquo; Strether asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I like your Boston &lsquo;reallys&rsquo;! But
+sometimes&mdash;yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear old Paris then!&rdquo; Strether resignedly sighed while for a
+moment they looked at each other. Then he broke out: &ldquo;Does Madame de
+Vionnet do that? I mean really show for what she is?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her answer was prompt. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s charming. She&rsquo;s perfect.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why did you a minute ago say &lsquo;Oh, oh, oh!&rsquo; at her
+name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She easily remembered. &ldquo;Why just because&mdash;! She&rsquo;s
+wonderful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah she too?&rdquo;&mdash;Strether had almost a groan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Miss Barrace had meanwhile perceived relief. &ldquo;Why not put your
+question straight to the person who can answer it best?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said little Bilham; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t put any question;
+wait, rather&mdash;it will be much more fun&mdash;to judge for yourself. He has
+come to take you to her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+On which Strether saw that Chad was again at hand, and he afterwards scarce
+knew, absurd as it may seem, what had then quickly occurred. The moment
+concerned him, he felt, more deeply than he could have explained, and he had a
+subsequent passage of speculation as to whether, on walking off with Chad, he
+hadn&rsquo;t looked either pale or red. The only thing he was clear about was
+that, luckily, nothing indiscreet had in fact been said and that Chad himself
+was more than ever, in Miss Barrace&rsquo;s great sense, wonderful. It was one
+of the connexions&mdash;though really why it should be, after all, was none so
+apparent&mdash;in which the whole change in him came out as most striking.
+Strether recalled as they approached the house that he had impressed him that
+first night as knowing how to enter a box. Well, he impressed him scarce less
+now as knowing how to make a presentation. It did something for
+Strether&rsquo;s own quality&mdash;marked it as estimated; so that our poor
+friend, conscious and passive, really seemed to feel himself quite handed over
+and delivered; absolutely, as he would have said, made a present of, given
+away. As they reached the house a young woman, about to come forth, appeared,
+unaccompanied, on the steps; at the exchange with whom of a word on
+Chad&rsquo;s part Strether immediately perceived that, obligingly, kindly, she
+was there to meet them. Chad had left her in the house, but she had afterwards
+come halfway and then the next moment had joined them in the garden. Her air of
+youth, for Strether, was at first almost disconcerting, while his second
+impression was, not less sharply, a degree of relief at there not having just
+been, with the others, any freedom used about her. It was upon him at a touch
+that she was no subject for that, and meanwhile, on Chad&rsquo;s introducing
+him, she had spoken to him, very simply and gently, in an English clearly of
+the easiest to her, yet unlike any other he had ever heard. It wasn&rsquo;t as
+if she tried; nothing, he could see after they had been a few minutes together,
+was as if she tried; but her speech, charming correct and odd, was like a
+precaution against her passing for a Pole. There were precautions, he seemed
+indeed to see, only when there were really dangers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later on he was to feel many more of them, but by that time he was to feel
+other things besides. She was dressed in black, but in black that struck him as
+light and transparent; she was exceedingly fair, and, though she was as
+markedly slim, her face had a roundness, with eyes far apart and a little
+strange. Her smile was natural and dim; her hat not extravagant; he had only
+perhaps a sense of the clink, beneath her fine black sleeves, of more gold
+bracelets and bangles than he had ever seen a lady wear. Chad was excellently
+free and light about their encounter; it was one of the occasions on which
+Strether most wished he himself might have arrived at such ease and such
+humour: &ldquo;Here you are then, face to face at last; you&rsquo;re made for
+each other&mdash;<i>vous allez voir</i>; and I bless your union.&rdquo; It was
+indeed, after he had gone off, as if he had been partly serious too. This
+latter motion had been determined by an enquiry from him about
+&ldquo;Jeanne&rdquo;; to which her mother had replied that she was probably
+still in the house with Miss Gostrey, to whom she had lately committed her.
+&ldquo;Ah but you know,&rdquo; the young man had rejoined, &ldquo;he must see
+her&rdquo;; with which, while Strether pricked up his ears, he had started as
+if to bring her, leaving the other objects of his interest together. Strether
+wondered to find Miss Gostrey already involved, feeling that he missed a link;
+but feeling also, with small delay, how much he should like to talk with her of
+Madame de Vionnet on this basis of evidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The evidence as yet in truth was meagre; which, for that matter, was perhaps a
+little why his expectation had had a drop. There was somehow not quite a wealth
+in her; and a wealth was all that, in his simplicity, he had definitely
+prefigured. Still, it was too much to be sure already that there was but a
+poverty. They moved away from the house, and, with eyes on a bench at some
+distance, he proposed that they should sit down. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard a
+great deal about you,&rdquo; she said as they went; but he had an answer to it
+that made her stop short. &ldquo;Well, about <i>you</i>, Madame de Vionnet,
+I&rsquo;ve heard, I&rsquo;m bound to say, almost nothing&rdquo;&mdash;those
+struck him as the only words he himself could utter with any lucidity;
+conscious as he was, and as with more reason, of the determination to be in
+respect to the rest of his business perfectly plain and go perfectly straight.
+It hadn&rsquo;t at any rate been in the least his idea to spy on Chad&rsquo;s
+proper freedom. It was possibly, however, at this very instant and under the
+impression of Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s pause, that going straight began to
+announce itself as a matter for care. She had only after all to smile at him
+ever so gently in order to make him ask himself if he weren&rsquo;t already
+going crooked. It might be going crooked to find it of a sudden just only clear
+that she intended very definitely to be what he would have called nice to him.
+This was what passed between them while, for another instant, they stood still;
+he couldn&rsquo;t at least remember afterwards what else it might have been.
+The thing indeed really unmistakeable was its rolling over him as a wave that
+he had been, in conditions incalculable and unimaginable, a subject of
+discussion. He had been, on some ground that concerned her, answered for; which
+gave her an advantage he should never be able to match.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t Miss Gostrey,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;said a good word for
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What had struck him first was the way he was bracketed with that lady; and he
+wondered what account Chad would have given of their acquaintance. Something
+not as yet traceable, at all events, had obviously happened. &ldquo;I
+didn&rsquo;t even know of her knowing you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, now she&rsquo;ll tell you all. I&rsquo;m so glad you&rsquo;re in
+relation with her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was one of the things&mdash;the &ldquo;all&rdquo; Miss Gostrey would now
+tell him&mdash;that, with every deference to present preoccupation, was
+uppermost for Strether after they had taken their seat. One of the others was,
+at the end of five minutes, that she&mdash;oh incontestably,
+yes&mdash;<i>differed</i> less; differed, that is, scarcely at all&mdash;well,
+superficially speaking, from Mrs. Newsome or even from Mrs. Pocock. She was
+ever so much younger than the one and not so young as the other; but what
+<i>was</i> there in her, if anything, that would have made it impossible he
+should meet her at Woollett? And wherein was her talk during their moments on
+the bench together not the same as would have been found adequate for a
+Woollett garden-party?&mdash;unless perhaps truly in not being quite so bright.
+She observed to him that Mr. Newsome had, to her knowledge, taken extraordinary
+pleasure in his visit; but there was no good lady at Woollett who
+wouldn&rsquo;t have been at least up to that. Was there in Chad, by chance,
+after all, deep down, a principle of aboriginal loyalty that had made him, for
+sentimental ends, attach himself to elements, happily encountered, that would
+remind him most of the old air and the old soil? Why accordingly be in a
+flutter&mdash;Strether could even put it that way&mdash;about this unfamiliar
+phenomenon of the <i>femme du monde?</i> On these terms Mrs. Newsome herself
+was as much of one. Little Bilham verily had testified that they came out, the
+ladies of the type, in close quarters; but it was just in these
+quarters&mdash;now comparatively close&mdash;that he felt Madame de
+Vionnet&rsquo;s common humanity. She did come out, and certainly to his relief,
+but she came out as the usual thing. There might be motives behind, but so
+could there often be even at Woollett. The only thing was that if she showed
+him she wished to like him&mdash;as the motives behind might conceivably
+prompt&mdash;it would possibly have been more thrilling for him that she should
+have shown as more vividly alien. Ah she was neither Turk nor Pole!&mdash;which
+would be indeed flat once more for Mrs. Newsome and Mrs. Pocock. A lady and two
+gentlemen had meanwhile, however, approached their bench, and this accident
+stayed for the time further developments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They presently addressed his companion, the brilliant strangers; she rose to
+speak to them, and Strether noted how the escorted lady, though mature and by
+no means beautiful, had more of the bold high look, the range of expensive
+reference, that he had, as might have been said, made his plans for. Madame de
+Vionnet greeted her as &ldquo;Duchesse&rdquo; and was greeted in turn, while
+talk started in French, as &ldquo;Ma toute-belle&rdquo;; little facts that had
+their due, their vivid interest for Strether. Madame de Vionnet didn&rsquo;t,
+none the less, introduce him&mdash;a note he was conscious of as false to the
+Woollett scale and the Woollett humanity; though it didn&rsquo;t prevent the
+Duchess, who struck him as confident and free, very much what he had obscurely
+supposed duchesses, from looking at him as straight and as hard&mdash;for it
+<i>was</i> hard&mdash;as if she would have liked, all the same, to know him.
+&ldquo;Oh yes, my dear, it&rsquo;s all right, it&rsquo;s <i>me</i>; and who are
+<i>you</i>, with your interesting wrinkles and your most effective (is it the
+handsomest, is it the ugliest?) of noses?&rdquo;&mdash;some such loose handful
+of bright flowers she seemed, fragrantly enough, to fling at him. Strether
+almost wondered&mdash;at such a pace was he going&mdash;if some divination of
+the influence of either party were what determined Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s
+abstention. One of the gentlemen, in any case, succeeded in placing himself in
+close relation with our friend&rsquo;s companion; a gentleman rather stout and
+importantly short, in a hat with a wonderful wide curl to its brim and a frock
+coat buttoned with an effect of superlative decision. His French had quickly
+turned to equal English, and it occurred to Strether that he might well be one
+of the ambassadors. His design was evidently to assert a claim to Madame de
+Vionnet&rsquo;s undivided countenance, and he made it good in the course of a
+minute&mdash;led her away with a trick of three words; a trick played with a
+social art of which Strether, looking after them as the four, whose backs were
+now all turned, moved off, felt himself no master.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sank again upon his bench and, while his eyes followed the party, reflected,
+as he had done before, on Chad&rsquo;s strange communities. He sat there alone
+for five minutes, with plenty to think of; above all with his sense of having
+suddenly been dropped by a charming woman overlaid now by other impressions and
+in fact quite cleared and indifferent. He hadn&rsquo;t yet had so quiet a
+surrender; he didn&rsquo;t in the least care if nobody spoke to him more. He
+might have been, by his attitude, in for something of a march so broad that the
+want of ceremony with which he had just been used could fall into its place as
+but a minor incident of the procession. Besides, there would be incidents
+enough, as he felt when this term of contemplation was closed by the
+reappearance of little Bilham, who stood before him a moment with a suggestive
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; in which he saw himself reflected as disorganised, as
+possibly floored. He replied with a &ldquo;Well!&rdquo; intended to show that
+he wasn&rsquo;t floored in the least. No indeed; he gave it out, as the young
+man sat down beside him, that if, at the worst, he had been overturned at all,
+he had been overturned into the upper air, the sublimer element with which he
+had an affinity and in which he might be trusted a while to float. It
+wasn&rsquo;t a descent to earth to say after an instant and in sustained
+response to the reference: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re quite sure her husband&rsquo;s
+living?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh dear, yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had after all to think. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m sorry for them.&rdquo;
+But it didn&rsquo;t for the moment matter more than that. He assured his young
+friend he was quite content. They wouldn&rsquo;t stir; were all right as they
+were. He didn&rsquo;t want to be introduced; had been introduced already about
+as far as he could go. He had seen moreover an immensity; liked Gloriani, who,
+as Miss Barrace kept saying, was wonderful; had made out, he was sure, the
+half-dozen other men who were distinguished, the artists, the critics and oh
+the great dramatist&mdash;<i>him</i> it was easy to spot; but wanted&mdash;no,
+thanks, really&mdash;to talk with none of them; having nothing at all to say
+and finding it would do beautifully as it was; do beautifully because what it
+was&mdash;well, was just simply too late. And when after this little Bilham,
+submissive and responsive, but with an eye to the consolation nearest, easily
+threw off some &ldquo;Better late than never!&rdquo; all he got in return for
+it was a sharp &ldquo;Better early than late!&rdquo; This note indeed the next
+thing overflowed for Strether into a quiet stream of demonstration that as soon
+as he had let himself go he felt as the real relief. It had consciously
+gathered to a head, but the reservoir had filled sooner than he knew, and his
+companion&rsquo;s touch was to make the waters spread. There were some things
+that had to come in time if they were to come at all. If they didn&rsquo;t come
+in time they were lost for ever. It was the general sense of them that had
+overwhelmed him with its long slow rush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not too late for <i>you</i>, on any side, and you don&rsquo;t
+strike me as in danger of missing the train; besides which people can be in
+general pretty well trusted, of course&mdash;with the clock of their freedom
+ticking as loud as it seems to do here&mdash;to keep an eye on the fleeting
+hour. All the same don&rsquo;t forget that you&rsquo;re young&mdash;blessedly
+young; be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can;
+it&rsquo;s a mistake not to. It doesn&rsquo;t so much matter what you do in
+particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven&rsquo;t had that what
+<i>have</i> you had? This place and these impressions&mdash;mild as you may
+find them to wind a man up so; all my impressions of Chad and of people
+I&rsquo;ve seen at <i>his</i> place&mdash;well, have had their abundant message
+for me, have just dropped <i>that</i> into my mind. I see it now. I
+haven&rsquo;t done so enough before&mdash;and now I&rsquo;m old; too old at any
+rate for what I see. Oh I <i>do</i> see, at least; and more than you&rsquo;d
+believe or I can express. It&rsquo;s too late. And it&rsquo;s as if the train
+had fairly waited at the station for me without my having had the gumption to
+know it was there. Now I hear its faint receding whistle miles and miles down
+the line. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. The
+affair&mdash;I mean the affair of life&mdash;couldn&rsquo;t, no doubt, have
+been different for me; for it&rsquo;s at the best a tin mould, either fluted
+and embossed, with ornamental excrescences, or else smooth and dreadfully
+plain, into which, a helpless jelly, one&rsquo;s consciousness is
+poured&mdash;so that one &lsquo;takes&rsquo; the form as the great cook says,
+and is more or less compactly held by it: one lives in fine as one can. Still,
+one has the illusion of freedom; therefore don&rsquo;t be, like me, without the
+memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too
+intelligent to have it; I don&rsquo;t quite know which. Of course at present
+I&rsquo;m a case of reaction against the mistake; and the voice of reaction
+should, no doubt, always be taken with an allowance. But that doesn&rsquo;t
+affect the point that the right time is now yours. The right time is <i>any</i>
+time that one is still so lucky as to have. You&rsquo;ve plenty; that&rsquo;s
+the great thing; you&rsquo;re, as I say, damn you, so happily and hatefully
+young. Don&rsquo;t at any rate miss things out of stupidity. Of course I
+don&rsquo;t take you for a fool, or I shouldn&rsquo;t be addressing you thus
+awfully. Do what you like so long as you don&rsquo;t make <i>my</i> mistake.
+For it was a mistake. Live!&rdquo; ... Slowly and sociably, with full pauses
+and straight dashes, Strether had so delivered himself; holding little Bilham
+from step to step deeply and gravely attentive. The end of all was that the
+young man had turned quite solemn, and that this was a contradiction of the
+innocent gaiety the speaker had wished to promote. He watched for a moment the
+consequence of his words, and then, laying a hand on his listener&rsquo;s knee
+and as if to end with the proper joke: &ldquo;And now for the eye I shall keep
+on you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but I don&rsquo;t know that I want to be, at your age, too different
+from you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah prepare while you&rsquo;re about it,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;to
+be more amusing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham continued to think, but at last had a smile. &ldquo;Well, you
+<i>are</i> amusing&mdash;to <i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Impayable</i>, as you say, no doubt. But what am I to myself?&rdquo;
+Strether had risen with this, giving his attention now to an encounter that, in
+the middle of the garden, was in the act of taking place between their host and
+the lady at whose side Madame de Vionnet had quitted him. This lady, who
+appeared within a few minutes to have left her friends, awaited
+Gloriani&rsquo;s eager approach with words on her lips that Strether
+couldn&rsquo;t catch, but of which her interesting witty face seemed to give
+him the echo. He was sure she was prompt and fine, but also that she had met
+her match, and he liked&mdash;in the light of what he was quite sure was the
+Duchess&rsquo;s latent insolence&mdash;the good humour with which the great
+artist asserted equal resources. Were they, this pair, of the &ldquo;great
+world&rdquo;?&mdash;and was he himself, for the moment and thus related to them
+by his observation, <i>in</i> it? Then there was something in the great world
+covertly tigerish, which came to him across the lawn and in the charming air as
+a waft from the jungle. Yet it made him admire most of the two, made him envy,
+the glossy male tiger, magnificently marked. These absurdities of the stirred
+sense, fruits of suggestion ripening on the instant, were all reflected in his
+next words to little Bilham. &ldquo;I know&mdash;if we talk of that&mdash;whom
+<i>I</i> should enjoy being like!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham followed his eyes; but then as with a shade of knowing surprise:
+&ldquo;Gloriani?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our friend had in fact already hesitated, though not on the hint of his
+companion&rsquo;s doubt, in which there were depths of critical reserve. He had
+just made out, in the now full picture, something and somebody else; another
+impression had been superimposed. A young girl in a white dress and a softly
+plumed white hat had suddenly come into view, and what was presently clear was
+that her course was toward them. What was clearer still was that the handsome
+young man at her side was Chad Newsome, and what was clearest of all was that
+she was therefore Mademoiselle de Vionnet, that she was unmistakeably
+pretty&mdash;bright gentle shy happy wonderful&mdash;and that Chad now, with a
+consummate calculation of effect, was about to present her to his old
+friend&rsquo;s vision. What was clearest of all indeed was something much more
+than this, something at the single stroke of which&mdash;and wasn&rsquo;t it
+simply juxtaposition?&mdash;all vagueness vanished. It was the click of a
+spring&mdash;he saw the truth. He had by this time also met Chad&rsquo;s look;
+there was more of it in that; and the truth, accordingly, so far as
+Bilham&rsquo;s enquiry was concerned, had thrust in the answer. &ldquo;Oh
+Chad!&rdquo;&mdash;it was that rare youth he should have enjoyed being
+&ldquo;like.&rdquo; The virtuous attachment would be all there before him; the
+virtuous attachment would be in the very act of appeal for his blessing; Jeanne
+de Vionnet, this charming creature, would be exquisitely, intensely
+now&mdash;the object of it. Chad brought her straight up to him, and Chad was,
+oh yes, at this moment&mdash;for the glory of Woollett or whatever&mdash;better
+still even than Gloriani. He had plucked this blossom; he had kept it
+over-night in water; and at last as he held it up to wonder he did enjoy his
+effect. That was why Strether had felt at first the breath of
+calculation&mdash;and why moreover, as he now knew, his look at the girl would
+be, for the young man, a sign of the latter&rsquo;s success. What young man had
+ever paraded about that way, without a reason, a maiden in her flower? And
+there was nothing in his reason at present obscure. Her type sufficiently told
+of it&mdash;they wouldn&rsquo;t, they couldn&rsquo;t, want her to go to
+Woollett. Poor Woollett, and what it might miss!&mdash;though brave Chad indeed
+too, and what it might gain! Brave Chad however had just excellently spoken.
+&ldquo;This is a good little friend of mine who knows all about you and has
+moreover a message for you. And this, my dear&rdquo;&mdash;he had turned to the
+child herself&mdash;&ldquo;is the best man in the world, who has it in his
+power to do a great deal for us and whom I want you to like and revere as
+nearly as possible as much as I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood there quite pink, a little frightened, prettier and prettier and not
+a bit like her mother. There was in this last particular no resemblance but
+that of youth to youth; and here was in fact suddenly Strether&rsquo;s sharpest
+impression. It went wondering, dazed, embarrassed, back to the woman he had
+just been talking with; it was a revelation in the light of which he already
+saw she would become more interesting. So slim and fresh and fair, she had yet
+put forth this perfection; so that for really believing it of her, for seeing
+her to any such developed degree as a mother, comparison would be urgent. Well,
+what was it now but fairly thrust upon him? &ldquo;Mamma wishes me to tell you
+before we go,&rdquo; the girl said, &ldquo;that she hopes very much
+you&rsquo;ll come to see us very soon. She has something important to say to
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She quite reproaches herself,&rdquo; Chad helpfully explained:
+&ldquo;you were interesting her so much when she accidentally suffered you to
+be interrupted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah don&rsquo;t mention it!&rdquo; Strether murmured, looking kindly from
+one to the other and wondering at many things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I&rsquo;m to ask you for myself,&rdquo; Jeanne continued with her
+hands clasped together as if in some small learnt prayer&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+to ask you for myself if you won&rsquo;t positively come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave it to me, dear&mdash;I&rsquo;ll take care of it!&rdquo; Chad
+genially declared in answer to this, while Strether himself almost held his
+breath. What was in the girl was indeed too soft, too unknown for direct
+dealing; so that one could only gaze at it as at a picture, quite staying
+one&rsquo;s own hand. But with Chad he was now on ground&mdash;Chad he could
+meet; so pleasant a confidence in that and in everything did the young man
+freely exhale. There was the whole of a story in his tone to his companion, and
+he spoke indeed as if already of the family. It made Strether guess the more
+quickly what it might be about which Madame de Vionnet was so urgent. Having
+seen him then she had found him easy; she wished to have it out with him that
+some way for the young people must be discovered, some way that would not
+impose as a condition the transplantation of her daughter. He already saw
+himself discussing with this lady the attractions of Woollett as a residence
+for Chad&rsquo;s companion. Was that youth going now to trust her with the
+affair&mdash;so that it would be after all with one of his
+&ldquo;lady-friends&rdquo; that his mother&rsquo;s missionary should be
+condemned to deal? It was quite as if for an instant the two men looked at each
+other on this question. But there was no mistaking at last Chad&rsquo;s pride
+in the display of such a connexion. This was what had made him so carry himself
+while, three minutes before, he was bringing it into view; what had caused his
+friend, first catching sight of him, to be so struck with his air. It was, in a
+word, just when he thus finally felt Chad putting things straight off on him
+that he envied him, as he had mentioned to little Bilham, most. The whole
+exhibition however was but a matter of three or four minutes, and the author of
+it had soon explained that, as Madame de Vionnet was immediately going
+&ldquo;on,&rdquo; this could be for Jeanne but a snatch. They would all meet
+again soon, and Strether was meanwhile to stay and amuse
+himself&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll pick you up again in plenty of time.&rdquo; He
+took the girl off as he had brought her, and Strether, with the faint sweet
+foreignness of her &ldquo;Au revoir, monsieur!&rdquo; in his ears as a note
+almost unprecedented, watched them recede side by side and felt how, once more,
+her companion&rsquo;s relation to her got an accent from it. They disappeared
+among the others and apparently into the house; whereupon our friend turned
+round to give out to little Bilham the conviction of which he was full. But
+there was no little Bilham any more; little Bilham had within the few moments,
+for reasons of his own, proceeded further: a circumstance by which, in its
+order, Strether was also sensibly affected.
+</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>
+Chad was not in fact on this occasion to keep his promise of coming back; but
+Miss Gostrey had soon presented herself with an explanation of his failure.
+There had been reasons at the last for his going off with <i>ces dames</i>; and
+he had asked her with much instance to come out and take charge of their
+friend. 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&rsquo;s defection of his
+unexpressed thought; in respect to which however this next converser was a
+still more capacious vessel. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the child!&rdquo; 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 <i>ces dames</i> prove to be but
+persons about whom&mdash;once thus face to face with them&mdash;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&mdash;and she appeared to note it with high
+amusement&mdash;than the way, making things out already so much for himself, he
+was at last throwing precautions to the winds. They were neither more nor less,
+she and the child&rsquo;s mother, than old school-friends&mdash;friends who had
+scarcely met for years but whom this unlooked-for chance had brought together
+with a rush. It was a relief, Miss Gostrey hinted, to feel herself no longer
+groping; she was unaccustomed to grope and as a general thing, he might well
+have seen, made straight enough for her clue. With the one she had now picked
+up in her hands there need be at least no waste of wonder. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s
+coming to see me&mdash;that&rsquo;s for <i>you</i>,&rdquo; Strether&rsquo;s
+counsellor continued; &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t require it to know where I
+am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The waste of wonder might be proscribed; but Strether, characteristically, was
+even by this time in the immensity of space. &ldquo;By which you mean that you
+know where <i>she</i> is?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She just hesitated. &ldquo;I mean that if she comes to see me I shall&mdash;now
+that I&rsquo;ve pulled myself round a bit after the shock&mdash;not be at
+home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether hung poised. &ldquo;You call it&mdash;your recognition&mdash;a
+shock?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave one of her rare flickers of impatience. &ldquo;It was a surprise, an
+emotion. Don&rsquo;t be so literal. I wash my hands of her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Strether&rsquo;s face lengthened. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s
+impossible&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s even more charming than I remembered her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then what&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had to think how to put it. &ldquo;Well, <i>I&rsquo;m</i> impossible.
+It&rsquo;s impossible. Everything&rsquo;s impossible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her an instant. &ldquo;I see where you&rsquo;re coming out.
+Everything&rsquo;s possible.&rdquo; Their eyes had on it in fact an exchange of
+some duration; after which he pursued: &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it that beautiful
+child?&rdquo; Then as she still said nothing: &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you mean
+to receive her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her answer in an instant rang clear. &ldquo;Because I wish to keep out of the
+business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It provoked in him a weak wail. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re going to abandon me
+<i>now?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m only going to abandon <i>her</i>. She&rsquo;ll want me to
+help her with you. And I won&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll only help me with her? Well then&mdash;!&rdquo; Most of the
+persons previously gathered had, in the interest of tea, passed into the house,
+and they had the gardens mainly to themselves. The shadows were long, the last
+call of the birds, who had made a home of their own in the noble interspaced
+quarter, sounded from the high trees in the other gardens as well, those of the
+old convent and of the old <i>hôtels</i>; it was as if our friends had waited
+for the full charm to come out. Strether&rsquo;s impressions were still
+present; it was as if something had happened that &ldquo;nailed&rdquo; them,
+made them more intense; but he was to ask himself soon afterwards, that
+evening, what really <i>had</i> happened&mdash;conscious as he could after all
+remain that for a gentleman taken, and taken the first time, into the
+&ldquo;great world,&rdquo; the world of ambassadors and duchesses, the items
+made a meagre total. It was nothing new to him, however, as we know, that a man
+might have&mdash;at all events such a man as he&mdash;an amount of experience
+out of any proportion to his adventures; so that, though it was doubtless no
+great adventure to sit on there with Miss Gostrey and hear about Madame de
+Vionnet, the hour, the picture, the immediate, the recent, the
+possible&mdash;as well as the communication itself, not a note of which failed
+to reverberate&mdash;only gave the moments more of the taste of history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was history, to begin with, that Jeanne&rsquo;s mother had been
+three-and-twenty years before, at Geneva, schoolmate and good girlfriend to
+Maria Gostrey, who had moreover enjoyed since then, though interruptedly and
+above all with a long recent drop, other glimpses of her. Twenty-three years
+put them both on, no doubt; and Madame de Vionnet&mdash;though she had married
+straight after school&mdash;couldn&rsquo;t be today an hour less than
+thirty-eight. This made her ten years older than Chad&mdash;though ten years,
+also, if Strether liked, older than she looked; the least, at any rate, that a
+prospective mother-in-law could be expected to do with. She would be of all
+mothers-in-law the most charming; unless indeed, through some perversity as yet
+insupposeable, she should utterly belie herself in that relation. There was
+none surely in which, as Maria remembered her, she mustn&rsquo;t be charming;
+and this frankly in spite of the stigma of failure in the tie where failure
+always most showed. It was no test there&mdash;when indeed <i>was</i> it a test
+there?&mdash;for Monsieur de Vionnet had been a brute. She had lived for years
+apart from him&mdash;which was of course always a horrid position; but Miss
+Gostrey&rsquo;s impression of the matter had been that she could scarce have
+made a better thing of it had she done it on purpose to show she was amiable.
+She was so amiable that nobody had had a word to say; which was luckily not the
+case for her husband. He was so impossible that she had the advantage of all
+her merits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was still history for Strether that the Comte de Vionnet&mdash;it being also
+history that the lady in question was a Countess&mdash;should now, under Miss
+Gostrey&rsquo;s sharp touch, rise before him as a high distinguished polished
+impertinent reprobate, the product of a mysterious order; it was history,
+further, that the charming girl so freely sketched by his companion should have
+been married out of hand by a mother, another figure of striking outline, full
+of dark personal motive; it was perhaps history most of all that this company
+was, as a matter of course, governed by such considerations as put divorce out
+of the question. &ldquo;<i>Ces gens-là</i> don&rsquo;t divorce, you know, any
+more than they emigrate or abjure&mdash;they think it impious and
+vulgar&rdquo;; a fact in the light of which they seemed but the more richly
+special. It was all special; it was all, for Strether&rsquo;s imagination, more
+or less rich. The girl at the Genevese school, an isolated interesting
+attaching creature, then both sensitive and violent, audacious but always
+forgiven, was the daughter of a French father and an English mother who, early
+left a widow, had married again&mdash;tried afresh with a foreigner; in her
+career with whom she had apparently given her child no example of comfort. All
+these people&mdash;the people of the English mother&rsquo;s side&mdash;had been
+of condition more or less eminent; yet with oddities and disparities that had
+often since made Maria, thinking them over, wonder what they really quite
+rhymed to. It was in any case her belief that the mother, interested and prone
+to adventure, had been without conscience, had only thought of ridding herself
+most quickly of a possible, an actual encumbrance. The father, by her
+impression, a Frenchman with a name one knew, had been a different matter,
+leaving his child, she clearly recalled, a memory all fondness, as well as an
+assured little fortune which was unluckily to make her more or less of a prey
+later on. She had been in particular, at school, dazzlingly, though quite
+booklessly, clever; as polyglot as a little Jewess (which she wasn&rsquo;t, oh
+no!) and chattering French, English, German, Italian, anything one would, in a
+way that made a clean sweep, if not of prizes and parchments, at least of every
+&ldquo;part,&rdquo; whether memorised or improvised, in the curtained costumed
+school repertory, and in especial of all mysteries of race and vagueness of
+reference, all swagger about &ldquo;home,&rdquo; among their variegated mates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It would doubtless be difficult to-day, as between French and English, to name
+her and place her; she would certainly show, on knowledge, Miss Gostrey felt,
+as one of those convenient types who don&rsquo;t keep you
+explaining&mdash;minds with doors as numerous as the many-tongued cluster of
+confessionals at Saint Peter&rsquo;s. You might confess to her with confidence
+in Roumelian, and even Roumelian sins. Therefore&mdash;! But Strether&rsquo;s
+narrator covered her implication with a laugh; a laugh by which his betrayal of
+a sense of the lurid in the picture was also perhaps sufficiently protected. He
+had a moment of wondering, while his friend went on, what sins might be
+especially Roumelian. She went on at all events to the mention of her having
+met the young thing&mdash;again by some Swiss lake&mdash;in her first married
+state, which had appeared for the few intermediate years not at least violently
+disturbed. She had been lovely at that moment, delightful to <i>her</i>, full
+of responsive emotion, of amused recognitions and amusing reminders, and then
+once more, much later, after a long interval, equally but differently
+charming&mdash;touching and rather mystifying for the five minutes of an
+encounter at a railway-station <i>en province</i>, during which it had come out
+that her life was all changed. Miss Gostrey had understood enough to see,
+essentially, what had happened, and yet had beautifully dreamed that she was
+herself faultless. There were doubtless depths in her, but she was all right;
+Strether would see if she wasn&rsquo;t. She was another person
+however&mdash;that had been promptly marked&mdash;from the small child of
+nature at the Geneva school, a little person quite made over (as foreign women
+<i>were</i>, compared with American) by marriage. Her situation too had
+evidently cleared itself up; there would have been&mdash;all that was
+possible&mdash;a judicial separation. She had settled in Paris, brought up her
+daughter, steered her boat. It was no very pleasant boat&mdash;especially
+there&mdash;to be in; but Marie de Vionnet would have headed straight. She
+would have friends, certainly&mdash;and very good ones. There she was at all
+events&mdash;and it was very interesting. Her knowing Mr. Chad didn&rsquo;t in
+the least prove she hadn&rsquo;t friends; what it proved was what good ones
+<i>he</i> had. &ldquo;I saw that,&rdquo; said Miss Gostrey, &ldquo;that night
+at the Français; it came out for me in three minutes. I saw <i>her</i>&mdash;or
+somebody like her. And so,&rdquo; she immediately added, &ldquo;did you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;not anybody like her!&rdquo; Strether laughed. &ldquo;But
+you mean,&rdquo; he as promptly went on, &ldquo;that she has had such an
+influence on him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey was on her feet; it was time for them to go. &ldquo;She has
+brought him up for her daughter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their eyes, as so often, in candid conference, through their settled glasses,
+met over it long; after which Strether&rsquo;s again took in the whole place.
+They were quite alone there now. &ldquo;Mustn&rsquo;t she rather&mdash;in the
+time then&mdash;have rushed it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah she won&rsquo;t of course have lost an hour. But that&rsquo;s just
+the good mother&mdash;the good French one. You must remember that of
+her&mdash;that as a mother she&rsquo;s French, and that for them there&rsquo;s
+a special providence. It precisely however&mdash;that she mayn&rsquo;t have
+been able to begin as far back as she&rsquo;d have liked&mdash;makes her
+grateful for aid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether took this in as they slowly moved to the house on their way out.
+&ldquo;She counts on me then to put the thing through?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;she counts on you. Oh and first of all of course,&rdquo; Miss
+Gostrey added, &ldquo;on her&mdash;well, convincing you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; her friend returned, &ldquo;she caught Chad young!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but there are women who are for all your &lsquo;times of
+life.&rsquo; They&rsquo;re the most wonderful sort.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had laughed the words out, but they brought her companion, the next thing,
+to a stand. &ldquo;Is what you mean that she&rsquo;ll try to make a fool of
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m wondering what she <i>will</i>&mdash;with an
+opportunity&mdash;make.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you call,&rdquo; Strether asked, &ldquo;an opportunity? My going
+to see her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah you must go to see her&rdquo;&mdash;Miss Gostrey was a trifle
+evasive. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t not do that. You&rsquo;d have gone to see the
+other woman. I mean if there had been one&mdash;a different sort. It&rsquo;s
+what you came out for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It might be; but Strether distinguished. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t come out to see
+<i>this</i> sort.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had a wonderful look at him now. &ldquo;Are you disappointed she
+isn&rsquo;t worse?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He for a moment entertained the question, then found for it the frankest of
+answers. &ldquo;Yes. If she were worse she&rsquo;d be better for our purpose.
+It would be simpler.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; she admitted. &ldquo;But won&rsquo;t this be
+pleasanter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah you know,&rdquo; he promptly replied, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t come
+out&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t that just what you originally reproached me
+with?&mdash;for the pleasant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely. Therefore I say again what I said at first. You must take
+things as they come. Besides,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey added, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not
+afraid for myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For yourself&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of your seeing her. I trust her. There&rsquo;s nothing she&rsquo;ll say
+about me. In fact there&rsquo;s nothing she <i>can</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wondered&mdash;little as he had thought of this. Then he broke out.
+&ldquo;Oh you women!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something in it at which she flushed. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;there we are.
+We&rsquo;re abysses.&rdquo; At last she smiled. &ldquo;But I risk her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave himself a shake. &ldquo;Well then so do I!&rdquo; But he added as they
+passed into the house that he would see Chad the first thing in the morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the next day the more easily effected that the young man, as it
+happened, even before he was down, turned up at his hotel. Strether took his
+coffee, by habit, in the public room; but on his descending for this purpose
+Chad instantly proposed an adjournment to what he called greater privacy. He
+had himself as yet had nothing&mdash;they would sit down somewhere together;
+and when after a few steps and a turn into the Boulevard they had, for their
+greater privacy, sat down among twenty others, our friend saw in his
+companion&rsquo;s move a fear of the advent of Waymarsh. It was the first time
+Chad had to that extent given this personage &ldquo;away&rdquo;; and Strether
+found himself wondering of what it was symptomatic. He made out in a moment
+that the youth was in earnest as he hadn&rsquo;t yet seen him; which in its
+turn threw a ray perhaps a trifle startling on what they had each up to that
+time been treating as earnestness. It was sufficiently flattering however that
+the real thing&mdash;if this <i>was</i> at last the real thing&mdash;should
+have been determined, as appeared, precisely by an accretion of
+Strether&rsquo;s importance. For this was what it quickly enough came
+to&mdash;that Chad, rising with the lark, had rushed down to let him know while
+his morning consciousness was yet young that he had literally made the
+afternoon before a tremendous impression. Madame de Vionnet wouldn&rsquo;t,
+couldn&rsquo;t rest till she should have some assurance from him that he
+<i>would</i> consent again to see her. The announcement was made, across their
+marble-topped table, while the foam of the hot milk was in their cups and its
+plash still in the air, with the smile of Chad&rsquo;s easiest urbanity; and
+this expression of his face caused our friend&rsquo;s doubts to gather on the
+spot into a challenge of the lips. &ldquo;See here&rdquo;&mdash;that was all;
+he only for the moment said again &ldquo;See here.&rdquo; Chad met it with all
+his air of straight intelligence, while Strether remembered again that fancy of
+the first impression of him, the happy young Pagan, handsome and hard but oddly
+indulgent, whose mysterious measure he had under the street-lamp tried mentally
+to take. The young Pagan, while a long look passed between them, sufficiently
+understood. Strether scarce needed at last to say the rest&mdash;&ldquo;I want
+to know where I am.&rdquo; But he said it, adding before any answer something
+more. &ldquo;Are you engaged to be married&mdash;is that your secret?&mdash;to
+the young lady?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad shook his head with the slow amenity that was one of his ways of conveying
+that there was time for everything. &ldquo;I have no secret&mdash;though I may
+have secrets! I haven&rsquo;t at any rate that one. We&rsquo;re not engaged.
+No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then where&rsquo;s the hitch?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean why I haven&rsquo;t already started with you?&rdquo; Chad,
+beginning his coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to explain.
+&ldquo;Nothing would have induced me&mdash;nothing will still induce
+me&mdash;not to try to keep you here as long as you can be made to stay.
+It&rsquo;s too visibly good for you.&rdquo; Strether had himself plenty to say
+about this, but it was amusing also to measure the march of Chad&rsquo;s tone.
+He had never been more a man of the world, and it was always in his company
+present to our friend that one was seeing how in successive connexions a man of
+the world acquitted himself. Chad kept it up beautifully. &ldquo;My
+idea&mdash;<i>voyons!</i>&mdash;is simply that you should let Madame de Vionnet
+know you, simply that you should consent to know <i>her</i>. I don&rsquo;t in
+the least mind telling you that, clever and charming as she is, she&rsquo;s
+ever so much in my confidence. All I ask of you is to let her talk to you.
+You&rsquo;ve asked me about what you call my hitch, and so far as it goes
+she&rsquo;ll explain it to you. She&rsquo;s herself my hitch, hang it&mdash;if
+you must really have it all out. But in a sense,&rdquo; he hastened in the most
+wonderful manner to add, &ldquo;that you&rsquo;ll quite make out for yourself.
+She&rsquo;s too good a friend, confound her. Too good, I mean, for me to leave
+without&mdash;without&mdash;&rdquo; It was his first hesitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Without what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms of my
+sacrifice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It <i>will</i> be a sacrifice then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered. I owe her so much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was now
+confessedly&mdash;oh quite flagrantly and publicly&mdash;interesting. The
+moment really took on for Strether an intensity. Chad owed Madame de Vionnet so
+much? What <i>did</i> that do then but clear up the whole mystery? He was
+indebted for alterations, and she was thereby in a position to have sent in her
+bill for expenses incurred in reconstruction. What was this at bottom but what
+had been to be arrived at? Strether sat there arriving at it while he munched
+toast and stirred his second cup. To do this with the aid of Chad&rsquo;s
+pleasant earnest face was also to do more besides. No, never before had he been
+so ready to take him as he was. What was it that had suddenly so cleared up? It
+was just everybody&rsquo;s character; that is everybody&rsquo;s but&mdash;in a
+measure&mdash;his own. Strether felt <i>his</i> character receive for the
+instant a smutch from all the wrong things he had suspected or believed. The
+person to whom Chad owed it that he could positively turn out such a comfort to
+other persons&mdash;such a person was sufficiently raised above any
+&ldquo;breath&rdquo; by the nature of her work and the young man&rsquo;s steady
+light. All of which was vivid enough to come and go quickly; though indeed in
+the midst of it Strether could utter a question. &ldquo;Have I your word of
+honour that if I surrender myself to Madame de Vionnet you&rsquo;ll surrender
+yourself to <i>me?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad laid his hand firmly on his friend&rsquo;s. &ldquo;My dear man, you have
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was finally something in his felicity almost embarrassing and
+oppressive&mdash;Strether had begun to fidget under it for the open air and the
+erect posture. He had signed to the waiter that he wished to pay, and this
+transaction took some moments, during which he thoroughly felt, while he put
+down money and pretended&mdash;it was quite hollow&mdash;to estimate change,
+that Chad&rsquo;s higher spirit, his youth, his practice, his paganism, his
+felicity, his assurance, his impudence, whatever it might be, had consciously
+scored a success. Well, that was all right so far as it went; his sense of the
+thing in question covered our friend for a minute like a veil through
+which&mdash;as if he had been muffled&mdash;he heard his interlocutor ask him
+if he mightn&rsquo;t take him over about five. &ldquo;Over&rdquo; was over the
+river, and over the river was where Madame de Vionnet lived, and five was that
+very afternoon. They got at last out of the place&mdash;got out before he
+answered. He lighted, in the street, a cigarette, which again gave him more
+time. But it was already sharp for him that there was no use in time.
+&ldquo;What does she propose to do to me?&rdquo; he had presently demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad had no delays. &ldquo;Are you afraid of her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh immensely. Don&rsquo;t you see it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Chad, &ldquo;she won&rsquo;t do anything worse to you
+than make you like her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just of that I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s not fair to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether cast about. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s fair to your mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Chad, &ldquo;are you afraid of <i>her?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Scarcely less. Or perhaps even more. But is this lady against your
+interests at home?&rdquo; Strether went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not directly, no doubt; but she&rsquo;s greatly in favour of them
+here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what&mdash;&lsquo;here&rsquo;&mdash;does she consider them to
+be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, good relations!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With herself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With herself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what is it that makes them so good?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What? Well, that&rsquo;s exactly what you&rsquo;ll make out if
+you&rsquo;ll only go, as I&rsquo;m supplicating you, to see her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether stared at him with a little of the wanness, no doubt, that the vision
+of more to &ldquo;make out&rdquo; could scarce help producing. &ldquo;I mean
+<i>how</i> good are they?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh awfully good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Strether had faltered, but it was brief. It was all very well, but there
+was nothing now he wouldn&rsquo;t risk. &ldquo;Excuse me, but I must
+really&mdash;as I began by telling you&mdash;know where I am. Is she
+bad?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Bad&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;Chad echoed it, but without a shock.
+&ldquo;Is that what&rsquo;s implied&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When relations are good?&rdquo; Strether felt a little silly, and was
+even conscious of a foolish laugh, at having it imposed on him to have appeared
+to speak so. What indeed was he talking about? His stare had relaxed; he looked
+now all round him. But something in him brought him back, though he still
+didn&rsquo;t know quite how to turn it. The two or three ways he thought of,
+and one of them in particular, were, even with scruples dismissed, too ugly. He
+none the less at last found something. &ldquo;Is her life without
+reproach?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It struck him, directly he had found it, as pompous and priggish; so much so
+that he was thankful to Chad for taking it only in the right spirit. The young
+man spoke so immensely to the point that the effect was practically of positive
+blandness. &ldquo;Absolutely without reproach. A beautiful life. <i>Allez donc
+voir!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These last words were, in the liberality of their confidence, so imperative
+that Strether went through no form of assent; but before they separated it had
+been confirmed that he should be picked up at a quarter to five.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>Book Sixth</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+It was quite by half-past five&mdash;after the two men had been together in
+Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s drawing-room not more than a dozen minutes&mdash;that
+Chad, with a look at his watch and then another at their hostess, said
+genially, gaily: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve an engagement, and I know you won&rsquo;t
+complain if I leave him with you. He&rsquo;ll interest you immensely; and as
+for her,&rdquo; he declared to Strether, &ldquo;I assure you, if you&rsquo;re
+at all nervous, she&rsquo;s perfectly safe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had left them to be embarrassed or not by this guarantee, as they could best
+manage, and embarrassment was a thing that Strether wasn&rsquo;t at first sure
+Madame de Vionnet escaped. He escaped it himself, to his surprise; but he had
+grown used by this time to thinking of himself as brazen. She occupied, his
+hostess, in the Rue de Bellechasse, the first floor of an old house to which
+our visitors had had access from an old clean court. The court was large and
+open, full of revelations, for our friend, of the habit of privacy, the peace
+of intervals, the dignity of distances and approaches; the house, to his
+restless sense, was in the high homely style of an elder day, and the ancient
+Paris that he was always looking for&mdash;sometimes intensely felt, sometimes
+more acutely missed&mdash;was in the immemorial polish of the wide waxed
+staircase and in the fine <i>boiseries</i>, the medallions, mouldings, mirrors,
+great clear spaces, of the greyish-white salon into which he had been shown. He
+seemed at the very outset to see her in the midst of possessions not vulgarly
+numerous, but hereditary cherished charming. While his eyes turned after a
+little from those of his hostess and Chad freely talked&mdash;not in the least
+about <i>him</i>, but about other people, people he didn&rsquo;t know, and
+quite as if he did know them&mdash;he found himself making out, as a background
+of the occupant, some glory, some prosperity of the First Empire, some
+Napoleonic glamour, some dim lustre of the great legend; elements clinging
+still to all the consular chairs and mythological brasses and sphinxes&rsquo;
+heads and faded surfaces of satin striped with alternate silk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The place itself went further back&mdash;that he guessed, and how old Paris
+continued in a manner to echo there; but the post-revolutionary period, the
+world he vaguely thought of as the world of Châteaubriand, of Madame de Staël,
+even of the young Lamartine, had left its stamp of harps and urns and torches,
+a stamp impressed on sundry small objects, ornaments and relics. He had never
+before, to his knowledge, had present to him relics, of any special dignity, of
+a private order&mdash;little old miniatures, medallions, pictures, books; books
+in leather bindings, pinkish and greenish, with gilt garlands on the back,
+ranged, together with other promiscuous properties, under the glass of
+brass-mounted cabinets. His attention took them all tenderly into account. They
+were among the matters that marked Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s apartment as
+something quite different from Miss Gostrey&rsquo;s little museum of bargains
+and from Chad&rsquo;s lovely home; he recognised it as founded much more on old
+accumulations that had possibly from time to time shrunken than on any
+contemporary method of acquisition or form of curiosity. Chad and Miss Gostrey
+had rummaged and purchased and picked up and exchanged, sifting, selecting,
+comparing; whereas the mistress of the scene before him, beautifully passive
+under the spell of transmission&mdash;transmission from her father&rsquo;s
+line, he quite made up his mind&mdash;had only received, accepted and been
+quiet. When she hadn&rsquo;t been quiet she had been moved at the most to some
+occult charity for some fallen fortune. There had been objects she or her
+predecessors might even conceivably have parted with under need, but Strether
+couldn&rsquo;t suspect them of having sold old pieces to get
+&ldquo;better&rdquo; ones. They would have felt no difference as to better or
+worse. He could but imagine their having felt&mdash;perhaps in emigration, in
+proscription, for his sketch was slight and confused&mdash;the pressure of want
+or the obligation of sacrifice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pressure of want&mdash;whatever might be the case with the other
+force&mdash;was, however, presumably not active now, for the tokens of a
+chastened ease still abounded after all, many marks of a taste whose
+discriminations might perhaps have been called eccentric. He guessed at intense
+little preferences and sharp little exclusions, a deep suspicion of the vulgar
+and a personal view of the right. The general result of this was something for
+which he had no name on the spot quite ready, but something he would have come
+nearest to naming in speaking of it as the air of supreme respectability, the
+consciousness, small, still, reserved, but none the less distinct and diffused,
+of private honour. The air of supreme respectability&mdash;that was a strange
+blank wall for his adventure to have brought him to break his nose against. It
+had in fact, as he was now aware, filled all the approaches, hovered in the
+court as he passed, hung on the staircase as he mounted, sounded in the grave
+rumble of the old bell, as little electric as possible, of which Chad, at the
+door, had pulled the ancient but neatly-kept tassel; it formed in short the
+clearest medium of its particular kind that he had ever breathed. He would have
+answered for it at the end of a quarter of an hour that some of the glass cases
+contained swords and epaulettes of ancient colonels and generals; medals and
+orders once pinned over hearts that had long since ceased to beat; snuff-boxes
+bestowed on ministers and envoys; copies of works presented, with inscriptions,
+by authors now classic. At bottom of it all for him was the sense of her rare
+unlikeness to the women he had known. This sense had grown, since the day
+before, the more he recalled her, and had been above all singularly fed by his
+talk with Chad in the morning. Everything in fine made her immeasurably new,
+and nothing so new as the old house and the old objects. There were books, two
+or three, on a small table near his chair, but they hadn&rsquo;t the
+lemon-coloured covers with which his eye had begun to dally from the hour of
+his arrival and to the opportunity of a further acquaintance with which he had
+for a fortnight now altogether succumbed. On another table, across the room, he
+made out the great <i>Revue</i>; but even that familiar face, conspicuous in
+Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s parlours, scarce counted here as a modern note. He was
+sure on the spot&mdash;and he afterwards knew he was right&mdash;that this was
+a touch of Chad&rsquo;s own hand. What would Mrs. Newsome say to the
+circumstance that Chad&rsquo;s interested &ldquo;influence&rdquo; kept her
+paper-knife in the <i>Revue</i>? The interested influence at any rate had, as
+we say, gone straight to the point&mdash;had in fact soon left it quite behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was seated, near the fire, on a small stuffed and fringed chair one of the
+few modern articles in the room, and she leaned back in it with her hands
+clasped in her lap and no movement, in all her person, but the fine prompt play
+of her deep young face. The fire, under the low white marble, undraped and
+academic, had burnt down to the silver ashes of light wood, one of the windows,
+at a distance, stood open to the mildness and stillness, out of which, in the
+short pauses, came the faint sound, pleasant and homely, almost rustic, of a
+plash and a clatter of <i>sabots</i> from some coach-house on the other side of
+the court. Madame de Vionnet, while Strether sat there, wasn&rsquo;t to shift
+her posture by an inch. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you seriously believe in
+what you&rsquo;re doing,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but all the same, you know,
+I&rsquo;m going to treat you quite as if I did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By which you mean,&rdquo; Strether directly replied, &ldquo;quite as if
+you didn&rsquo;t! I assure you it won&rsquo;t make the least difference with me
+how you treat me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, taking that menace bravely and philosophically
+enough, &ldquo;the only thing that really matters is that you shall get on with
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; he immediately returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It gave her another pause; which, however, she happily enough shook off.
+&ldquo;Will you consent to go on with me a little&mdash;provisionally&mdash;as
+if you did?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was that he saw how she had decidedly come all the way; and there
+accompanied it an extraordinary sense of her raising from somewhere below him
+her beautiful suppliant eyes. He might have been perched at his door-step or at
+his window and she standing in the road. For a moment he let her stand and
+couldn&rsquo;t moreover have spoken. It had been sad, of a sudden, with a
+sadness that was like a cold breath in his face. &ldquo;What can I do,&rdquo;
+he finally asked, &ldquo;but listen to you as I promised Chadwick?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but what I&rsquo;m asking you,&rdquo; she quickly said,
+&ldquo;isn&rsquo;t what Mr. Newsome had in mind.&rdquo; She spoke at present,
+he saw, as if to take courageously <i>all</i> her risk. &ldquo;This is my own
+idea and a different thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It gave poor Strether in truth&mdash;uneasy as it made him too&mdash;something
+of the thrill of a bold perception justified. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he answered
+kindly enough, &ldquo;I was sure a moment since that some idea of your own had
+come to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She seemed still to look up at him, but now more serenely. &ldquo;I made out
+you were sure&mdash;and that helped it to come. So you see,&rdquo; she
+continued, &ldquo;we do get on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but it appears to me I don&rsquo;t at all meet your request. How can
+I when I don&rsquo;t understand it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t at all necessary you should understand; it will do quite
+well enough if you simply remember it. Only feel I trust you&mdash;and for
+nothing so tremendous after all. Just,&rdquo; she said with a wonderful smile,
+&ldquo;for common civility.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had a long pause while they sat again face to face, as they had sat,
+scarce less conscious, before the poor lady had crossed the stream. She was the
+poor lady for Strether now because clearly she had some trouble, and her appeal
+to him could only mean that her trouble was deep. He couldn&rsquo;t help it; it
+wasn&rsquo;t his fault; he had done nothing; but by a turn of the hand she had
+somehow made their encounter a relation. And the relation profited by a mass of
+things that were not strictly in it or of it; by the very air in which they
+sat, by the high cold delicate room, by the world outside and the little plash
+in the court, by the First Empire and the relics in the stiff cabinets, by
+matters as far off as those and by others as near as the unbroken clasp of her
+hands in her lap and the look her expression had of being most natural when her
+eyes were most fixed. &ldquo;You count upon me of course for something really
+much greater than it sounds.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh it sounds great enough too!&rdquo; she laughed at this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He found himself in time on the point of telling her that she was, as Miss
+Barrace called it, wonderful; but, catching himself up, he said something else
+instead. &ldquo;What was it Chad&rsquo;s idea then that you should say to
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah his idea was simply what a man&rsquo;s idea always is&mdash;to put
+every effort off on the woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The &lsquo;woman&rsquo;&mdash;?&rdquo; Strether slowly echoed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The woman he likes&mdash;and just in proportion as he likes her. In
+proportion too&mdash;for shifting the trouble&mdash;as she likes
+<i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether followed it; then with an abruptness of his own: &ldquo;How much do
+you like Chad?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just as much as <i>that</i>&mdash;to take all, with you, on
+myself.&rdquo; But she got at once again away from this. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been
+trembling as if we were to stand or fall by what you may think of me; and
+I&rsquo;m even now,&rdquo; she went on wonderfully, &ldquo;drawing a long
+breath&mdash;and, yes, truly taking a great courage&mdash;from the hope that I
+don&rsquo;t in fact strike you as impossible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s at all events, clearly,&rdquo; he observed after an
+instant, &ldquo;the way I don&rsquo;t strike <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she so far assented, &ldquo;as you haven&rsquo;t yet said
+you <i>won&rsquo;t</i> have the little patience with me I ask for&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You draw splendid conclusions? Perfectly. But I don&rsquo;t understand
+them,&rdquo; Strether pursued. &ldquo;You seem to me to ask for much more than
+you need. What, at the worst for you, what at the best for myself, can I after
+all do? I can use no pressure that I haven&rsquo;t used. You come really late
+with your request. I&rsquo;ve already done all that for myself the case admits
+of. I&rsquo;ve said my say, and here I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, here you are, fortunately!&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet laughed.
+&ldquo;Mrs. Newsome,&rdquo; she added in another tone, &ldquo;didn&rsquo;t
+think you can do so little.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had an hesitation, but he brought the words out. &ldquo;Well, she thinks so
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean by that&mdash;?&rdquo; But she also hung fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do I mean what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She still rather faltered. &ldquo;Pardon me if I touch on it, but if I&rsquo;m
+saying extraordinary things, why, perhaps, mayn&rsquo;t I? Besides,
+doesn&rsquo;t it properly concern us to know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To know what?&rdquo; he insisted as after thus beating about the bush
+she had again dropped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made the effort. &ldquo;Has she given you up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was amazed afterwards to think how simply and quietly he had met it.
+&ldquo;Not yet.&rdquo; It was almost as if he were a trifle
+disappointed&mdash;had expected still more of her freedom. But he went straight
+on. &ldquo;Is that what Chad has told you will happen to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was evidently charmed with the way he took it. &ldquo;If you mean if
+we&rsquo;ve talked of it&mdash;most certainly. And the question&rsquo;s not
+what has had least to do with my wishing to see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To judge if I&rsquo;m the sort of man a woman <i>can</i>&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely,&rdquo; she exclaimed&mdash;&ldquo;you wonderful gentleman! I
+do judge&mdash;I <i>have</i> judged. A woman can&rsquo;t. You&rsquo;re
+safe&mdash;with every right to be. You&rsquo;d be much happier if you&rsquo;d
+only believe it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether was silent a little; then he found himself speaking with a cynicism of
+confidence of which even at the moment the sources were strange to him.
+&ldquo;I try to believe it. But it&rsquo;s a marvel,&rdquo; he exclaimed,
+&ldquo;how <i>you</i> already get at it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh she was able to say. &ldquo;Remember how much I was on the way to it through
+Mr. Newsome&mdash;before I saw you. He thinks everything of your
+strength.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I can bear almost anything!&rdquo; our friend briskly interrupted.
+Deep and beautiful on this her smile came back, and with the effect of making
+him hear what he had said just as she had heard it. He easily enough felt that
+it gave him away, but what in truth had everything done but that? It had been
+all very well to think at moments that he was holding her nose down and that he
+had coerced her: what had he by this time done but let her practically see that
+he accepted their relation? What was their relation moreover&mdash;though light
+and brief enough in form as yet&mdash;but whatever she might choose to make it?
+Nothing could prevent her&mdash;certainly he couldn&rsquo;t&mdash;from making
+it pleasant. At the back of his head, behind everything, was the sense that she
+was&mdash;there, before him, close to him, in vivid imperative form&mdash;one
+of the rare women he had so often heard of, read of, thought of, but never met,
+whose very presence, look, voice, the mere contemporaneous <i>fact</i> of whom,
+from the moment it was at all presented, made a relation of mere recognition.
+That was not the kind of woman he had ever found Mrs. Newsome, a
+contemporaneous fact who had been distinctly slow to establish herself; and at
+present, confronted with Madame de Vionnet, he felt the simplicity of his
+original impression of Miss Gostrey. She certainly had been a fact of rapid
+growth; but the world was wide, each day was more and more a new lesson. There
+were at any rate even among the stranger ones relations and relations.
+&ldquo;Of course I suit Chad&rsquo;s grand way,&rdquo; he quickly added.
+&ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t had much difficulty in working me in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She seemed to deny a little, on the young man&rsquo;s behalf, by the rise of
+her eyebrows, an intention of any process at all inconsiderate. &ldquo;You must
+know how grieved he&rsquo;d be if you were to lose anything. He believes you
+can keep his mother patient.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wondered with his eyes on her. &ldquo;I see. <i>That&rsquo;s</i> then
+what you really want of me. And how am I to do it? Perhaps you&rsquo;ll tell me
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Simply tell her the truth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what do you call the truth?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, <i>any</i> truth&mdash;about us all&mdash;that you see yourself. I
+leave it to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you very much. I like,&rdquo; Strether laughed with a slight
+harshness, &ldquo;the way you leave things!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she insisted kindly, gently, as if it wasn&rsquo;t so bad. &ldquo;Be
+perfectly honest. Tell her all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All?&rdquo; he oddly echoed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell her the simple truth,&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet again pleaded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what <i>is</i> the simple truth? The simple truth is exactly what
+I&rsquo;m trying to discover.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked about a while, but presently she came back to him. &ldquo;Tell her,
+fully and clearly, about <i>us</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether meanwhile had been staring. &ldquo;You and your daughter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;little Jeanne and me. Tell her,&rdquo; she just slightly
+quavered, &ldquo;you like us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what good will that do me? Or rather&rdquo;&mdash;he caught himself
+up&mdash;&ldquo;what good will it do <i>you?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked graver. &ldquo;None, you believe, really?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether debated. &ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t send me out to &lsquo;like&rsquo;
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she charmingly contended, &ldquo;she sent you out to face the
+facts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He admitted after an instant that there was something in that. &ldquo;But how
+can I face them till I know what they are? Do you want him,&rdquo; he then
+braced himself to ask, &ldquo;to marry your daughter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave a headshake as noble as it was prompt. &ldquo;No&mdash;not
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And he really doesn&rsquo;t want to himself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She repeated the movement, but now with a strange light in her face. &ldquo;He
+likes her too much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wondered. &ldquo;To be willing to consider, you mean, the question of
+taking her to America?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To be willing to do anything with her but be immensely kind and
+nice&mdash;really tender of her. We watch over her, and you must help us. You
+must see her again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether felt awkward. &ldquo;Ah with pleasure&mdash;she&rsquo;s so remarkably
+attractive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mother&rsquo;s eagerness with which Madame de Vionnet jumped at this was to
+come back to him later as beautiful in its grace. &ldquo;The dear thing
+<i>did</i> please you?&rdquo; Then as he met it with the largest
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; of enthusiasm: &ldquo;She&rsquo;s perfect. She&rsquo;s my
+joy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m sure that&mdash;if one were near her and saw more of
+her&mdash;she&rsquo;d be mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Madame de Vionnet, &ldquo;tell Mrs. Newsome
+that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wondered the more. &ldquo;What good will that do you?&rdquo; As she appeared
+unable at once to say, however, he brought out something else. &ldquo;Is your
+daughter in love with our friend?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; she rather startlingly answered, &ldquo;I wish you&rsquo;d
+find out!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He showed his surprise. &ldquo;I? A stranger?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you won&rsquo;t be a stranger&mdash;presently. You shall see her
+quite, I assure you, as if you weren&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It remained for him none the less an extraordinary notion. &ldquo;It seems to
+me surely that if her mother can&rsquo;t&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah little girls and their mothers to-day!&rdquo; she rather
+inconsequently broke in. But she checked herself with something she seemed to
+give out as after all more to the point. &ldquo;Tell her I&rsquo;ve been good
+for him. Don&rsquo;t you think I have?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had its effect on him&mdash;more than at the moment he quite measured. Yet
+he was consciously enough touched. &ldquo;Oh if it&rsquo;s all
+<i>you</i>&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it may not be &lsquo;all,&rsquo;&rdquo; she interrupted,
+&ldquo;but it&rsquo;s to a great extent. Really and truly,&rdquo; she added in
+a tone that was to take its place with him among things remembered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s very wonderful.&rdquo; He smiled at her from a face that
+he felt as strained, and her own face for a moment kept him so. At last she
+also got up. &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t you think that for that&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I ought to save you?&rdquo; So it was that the way to meet her&mdash;and
+the way, as well, in a manner, to get off&mdash;came over him. He heard himself
+use the exorbitant word, the very sound of which helped to determine his
+flight. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll save you if I can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+In Chad&rsquo;s lovely home, however, one evening ten days later, he felt
+himself present at the collapse of the question of Jeanne de Vionnet&rsquo;s
+shy secret. He had been dining there in the company of that young lady and her
+mother, as well as of other persons, and he had gone into the <i>petit
+salon</i>, at Chad&rsquo;s request, on purpose to talk with her. The young man
+had put this to him as a favour&mdash;&ldquo;I should like so awfully to know
+what you think of her. It will really be a chance for you,&rdquo; he had said,
+&ldquo;to see the <i>jeune fille</i>&mdash;I mean the type&mdash;as she
+actually is, and I don&rsquo;t think that, as an observer of manners,
+it&rsquo;s a thing you ought to miss. It will be an impression
+that&mdash;whatever else you take&mdash;you can carry home with you, where
+you&rsquo;ll find again so much to compare it with.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether knew well enough with what Chad wished him to compare it, and though
+he entirely assented he hadn&rsquo;t yet somehow been so deeply reminded that
+he was being, as he constantly though mutely expressed it, used. He was as far
+as ever from making out exactly to what end; but he was none the less
+constantly accompanied by a sense of the service he rendered. He conceived only
+that this service was highly agreeable to those who profited by it; and he was
+indeed still waiting for the moment at which he should catch it in the act of
+proving disagreeable, proving in some degree intolerable, to himself. He failed
+quite to see how his situation could clear up at all logically except by some
+turn of events that would give him the pretext of disgust. He was building from
+day to day on the possibility of disgust, but each day brought forth meanwhile
+a new and more engaging bend of the road. That possibility was now ever so much
+further from sight than on the eve of his arrival, and he perfectly felt that,
+should it come at all, it would have to be at best inconsequent and violent. He
+struck himself as a little nearer to it only when he asked himself what
+service, in such a life of utility, he was after all rendering Mrs. Newsome.
+When he wished to help himself to believe that he was still all right he
+reflected&mdash;and in fact with wonder&mdash;on the unimpaired frequency of
+their correspondence; in relation to which what was after all more natural than
+that it should become more frequent just in proportion as their problem became
+more complicated?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certain it is at any rate that he now often brought himself balm by the
+question, with the rich consciousness of yesterday&rsquo;s letter, &ldquo;Well,
+what can I do more than that&mdash;what can I do more than tell her
+everything?&rdquo; To persuade himself that he did tell her, had told her,
+everything, he used to try to think of particular things he hadn&rsquo;t told
+her. When at rare moments and in the watches of the night he pounced on one it
+generally showed itself to be&mdash;to a deeper scrutiny&mdash;not quite truly
+of the essence. When anything new struck him as coming up, or anything already
+noted as reappearing, he always immediately wrote, as if for fear that if he
+didn&rsquo;t he would miss something; and also that he might be able to say to
+himself from time to time &ldquo;She knows it <i>now</i>&mdash;even while I
+worry.&rdquo; It was a great comfort to him in general not to have left past
+things to be dragged to light and explained; not to have to produce at so late
+a stage anything not produced, or anything even veiled and attenuated, at the
+moment. She knew it now: that was what he said to himself to-night in relation
+to the fresh fact of Chad&rsquo;s acquaintance with the two ladies&mdash;not to
+speak of the fresher one of his own. Mrs. Newsome knew in other words that very
+night at Woollett that he himself knew Madame de Vionnet and that he had
+conscientiously been to see her; also that he had found her remarkably
+attractive and that there would probably be a good deal more to tell. But she
+further knew, or would know very soon, that, again conscientiously, he
+hadn&rsquo;t repeated his visit; and that when Chad had asked him on the
+Countess&rsquo;s behalf&mdash;Strether made her out vividly, with a thought at
+the back of his head, a Countess&mdash;if he wouldn&rsquo;t name a day for
+dining with her, he had replied lucidly: &ldquo;Thank you very
+much&mdash;impossible.&rdquo; He had begged the young man would present his
+excuses and had trusted him to understand that it couldn&rsquo;t really strike
+one as quite the straight thing. He hadn&rsquo;t reported to Mrs. Newsome that
+he had promised to &ldquo;save&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet; but, so far as he was
+concerned with that reminiscence, he hadn&rsquo;t at any rate promised to haunt
+her house. What Chad had understood could only, in truth, be inferred from
+Chad&rsquo;s behaviour, which had been in this connexion as easy as in every
+other. He was easy, always, when he understood; he was easier still, if
+possible, when he didn&rsquo;t; he had replied that he would make it all right;
+and he had proceeded to do this by substituting the present occasion&mdash;as
+he was ready to substitute others&mdash;for any, for every occasion as to which
+his old friend should have a funny scruple.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but I&rsquo;m not a little foreign girl; I&rsquo;m just as English as
+I can be,&rdquo; Jeanne de Vionnet had said to him as soon as, in the <i>petit
+salon</i>, he sank, shyly enough on his own side, into the place near her
+vacated by Madame Gloriani at his approach. Madame Gloriani, who was in black
+velvet, with white lace and powdered hair, and whose somewhat massive majesty
+melted, at any contact, into the graciousness of some incomprehensible tongue,
+moved away to make room for the vague gentleman, after benevolent greetings to
+him which embodied, as he believed, in baffling accents, some recognition of
+his face from a couple of Sundays before. Then he had remarked&mdash;making the
+most of the advantage of his years&mdash;that it frightened him quite enough to
+find himself dedicated to the entertainment of a little foreign girl. There
+were girls he wasn&rsquo;t afraid of&mdash;he was quite bold with little
+Americans. Thus it was that she had defended herself to the end&mdash;&ldquo;Oh
+but I&rsquo;m almost American too. That&rsquo;s what mamma has wanted me to
+be&mdash;I mean <i>like</i> that; for she has wanted me to have lots of
+freedom. She has known such good results from it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was fairly beautiful to him&mdash;a faint pastel in an oval frame: he
+thought of her already as of some lurking image in a long gallery, the portrait
+of a small old-time princess of whom nothing was known but that she had died
+young. Little Jeanne wasn&rsquo;t, doubtless, to die young, but one
+couldn&rsquo;t, all the same, bear on her lightly enough. It was bearing hard,
+it was bearing as <i>he</i>, in any case, wouldn&rsquo;t bear, to concern
+himself, in relation to her, with the question of a young man. Odious really
+the question of a young man; one didn&rsquo;t treat such a person as a
+maid-servant suspected of a &ldquo;follower.&rdquo; And then young men, young
+men&mdash;well, the thing was their business simply, or was at all events hers.
+She was fluttered, fairly fevered&mdash;to the point of a little glitter that
+came and went in her eyes and a pair of pink spots that stayed in her
+cheeks&mdash;with the great adventure of dining out and with the greater one
+still, possibly, of finding a gentleman whom she must think of as very, very
+old, a gentleman with eye-glasses, wrinkles, a long grizzled moustache. She
+spoke the prettiest English, our friend thought, that he had ever heard spoken,
+just as he had believed her a few minutes before to be speaking the prettiest
+French. He wondered almost wistfully if such a sweep of the lyre didn&rsquo;t
+react on the spirit itself; and his fancy had in fact, before he knew it, begun
+so to stray and embroider that he finally found himself, absent and
+extravagant, sitting with the child in a friendly silence. Only by this time he
+felt her flutter to have fortunately dropped and that she was more at her ease.
+She trusted him, liked him, and it was to come back to him afterwards that she
+had told him things. She had dipped into the waiting medium at last and found
+neither surge nor chill&mdash;nothing but the small splash she could herself
+make in the pleasant warmth, nothing but the safety of dipping and dipping
+again. At the end of the ten minutes he was to spend with her his
+impression&mdash;with all it had thrown off and all it had taken in&mdash;was
+complete. She had been free, as she knew freedom, partly to show him that,
+unlike other little persons she knew, she had imbibed that ideal. She was
+delightfully quaint about herself, but the vision of what she had imbibed was
+what most held him. It really consisted, he was soon enough to feel, in just
+one great little matter, the fact that, whatever her nature, she was
+thoroughly&mdash;he had to cast about for the word, but it came&mdash;bred. He
+couldn&rsquo;t of course on so short an acquaintance speak for her nature, but
+the idea of breeding was what she had meanwhile dropped into his mind. He had
+never yet known it so sharply presented. Her mother gave it, no doubt; but her
+mother, to make that less sensible, gave so much else besides, and on neither
+of the two previous occasions, extraordinary woman, Strether felt, anything
+like what she was giving tonight. Little Jeanne was a case, an exquisite case
+of education; whereas the Countess, whom it so amused him to think of by that
+denomination, was a case, also exquisite, of&mdash;well, he didn&rsquo;t know
+what.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has wonderful taste, <i>notre jeune homme</i>&rdquo;: this was what
+Gloriani said to him on turning away from the inspection of a small picture
+suspended near the door of the room. The high celebrity in question had just
+come in, apparently in search of Mademoiselle de Vionnet, but while Strether
+had got up from beside her their fellow guest, with his eye sharply caught, had
+paused for a long look. The thing was a landscape, of no size, but of the
+French school, as our friend was glad to feel he knew, and also of a
+quality&mdash;which he liked to think he should also have guessed; its frame
+was large out of proportion to the canvas, and he had never seen a person look
+at anything, he thought, just as Gloriani, with his nose very near and quick
+movements of the head from side to side and bottom to top, examined this
+feature of Chad&rsquo;s collection. The artist used that word the next moment
+smiling courteously, wiping his nippers and looking round him
+further&mdash;paying the place in short by the very manner of his presence and
+by something Strether fancied he could make out in this particular glance, such
+a tribute as, to the latter&rsquo;s sense, settled many things once for all.
+Strether was conscious at this instant, for that matter, as he hadn&rsquo;t yet
+been, of how, round about him, quite without him, they <i>were</i> consistently
+settled. Gloriani&rsquo;s smile, deeply Italian, he considered, and finely
+inscrutable, had had for him, during dinner, at which they were not neighbours,
+an indefinite greeting; but the quality in it was gone that had appeared on the
+other occasion to turn him inside out; it was as if even the momentary link
+supplied by the doubt between them had snapped. He was conscious now of the
+final reality, which was that there wasn&rsquo;t so much a doubt as a
+difference altogether; all the more that over the difference the famous
+sculptor seemed to signal almost condolingly, yet oh how vacantly! as across
+some great flat sheet of water. He threw out the bridge of a charming hollow
+civility on which Strether wouldn&rsquo;t have trusted his own full weight a
+moment. That idea, even though but transient and perhaps belated, had performed
+the office of putting Strether more at his ease, and the blurred picture had
+already dropped&mdash;dropped with the sound of something else said and with
+his becoming aware, by another quick turn, that Gloriani was now on the sofa
+talking with Jeanne, while he himself had in his ears again the familiar
+friendliness and the elusive meaning of the &ldquo;Oh, oh, oh!&rdquo; that had
+made him, a fortnight before, challenge Miss Barrace in vain. She had always
+the air, this picturesque and original lady, who struck him, so oddly, as both
+antique and modern&mdash;she had always the air of taking up some joke that one
+had already had out with her. The point itself, no doubt, was what was antique,
+and the use she made of it what was modern. He felt just now that her
+good-natured irony did bear on something, and it troubled him a little that she
+wouldn&rsquo;t be more explicit only assuring him, with the pleasure of
+observation so visible in her, that she wouldn&rsquo;t tell him more for the
+world. He could take refuge but in asking her what she had done with Waymarsh,
+though it must be added that he felt himself a little on the way to a clue
+after she had answered that this personage was, in the other room, engaged in
+conversation with Madame de Vionnet. He stared a moment at the image of such a
+conjunction; then, for Miss Barrace&rsquo;s benefit, he wondered. &ldquo;Is she
+too then under the charm&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, not a bit&rdquo;&mdash;Miss Barrace was prompt. &ldquo;She makes
+nothing of him. She&rsquo;s bored. She won&rsquo;t help you with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Strether laughed, &ldquo;she can&rsquo;t do everything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course not&mdash;wonderful as she is. Besides, he makes nothing of
+<i>her</i>. She won&rsquo;t take him from me&mdash;though she wouldn&rsquo;t,
+no doubt, having other affairs in hand, even if she could. I&rsquo;ve
+never,&rdquo; said Miss Barrace, &ldquo;seen her fail with any one before. And
+to-night, when she&rsquo;s so magnificent, it would seem to her
+strange&mdash;if she minded. So at any rate I have him all. <i>Je suis
+tranquille!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether understood, so far as that went; but he was feeling for his clue.
+&ldquo;She strikes you to-night as particularly magnificent?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely. Almost as I&rsquo;ve never seen her. Doesn&rsquo;t she you? Why
+it&rsquo;s <i>for</i> you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He persisted in his candour. &ldquo;&lsquo;For&rsquo; me&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, oh, oh!&rdquo; cried Miss Barrace, who persisted in the opposite of
+that quality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he acutely admitted, &ldquo;she <i>is</i> different.
+She&rsquo;s gay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s gay!&rdquo; Miss Barrace laughed. &ldquo;And she has
+beautiful shoulders&mdash;though there&rsquo;s nothing different in
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;one was sure of her shoulders. It
+isn&rsquo;t her shoulders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion, with renewed mirth and the finest sense, between the puffs of
+her cigarette, of the drollery of things, appeared to find their conversation
+highly delightful. &ldquo;Yes, it isn&rsquo;t her shoulders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What then is it?&rdquo; Strether earnestly enquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, it&rsquo;s <i>she</i>&mdash;simply. It&rsquo;s her mood. It&rsquo;s
+her charm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course it&rsquo;s her charm, but we&rsquo;re speaking of the
+difference.&rdquo; &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Miss Barrace explained,
+&ldquo;she&rsquo;s just brilliant, as we used to say. That&rsquo;s all.
+She&rsquo;s various. She&rsquo;s fifty women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but only one&rdquo;&mdash;Strether kept it clear&mdash;&ldquo;at a
+time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps. But in fifty times&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh we shan&rsquo;t come to that,&rdquo; our friend declared; and the
+next moment he had moved in another direction. &ldquo;Will you answer me a
+plain question? Will she ever divorce?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Barrace looked at him through all her tortoise-shell. &ldquo;Why should
+she?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wasn&rsquo;t what he had asked for, he signified; but he met it well enough.
+&ldquo;To marry Chad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should she marry Chad?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I&rsquo;m convinced she&rsquo;s very fond of him. She has done
+wonders for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then, how could she do more? Marrying a man, or woman
+either,&rdquo; Miss Barrace sagely went on, &ldquo;is never the wonder for any
+Jack and Jill can bring <i>that</i> off. The wonder is their doing such things
+without marrying.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether considered a moment this proposition. &ldquo;You mean it&rsquo;s so
+beautiful for our friends simply to go on so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But whatever he said made her laugh. &ldquo;Beautiful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nevertheless insisted. &ldquo;And <i>that</i> because it&rsquo;s
+disinterested?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was now, however, suddenly tired of the question. &ldquo;Yes
+then&mdash;call it that. Besides, she&rsquo;ll never divorce. Don&rsquo;t,
+moreover,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;believe everything you hear about her
+husband.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not then,&rdquo; Strether asked, &ldquo;a wretch?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes. But charming.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve met him. He&rsquo;s <i>bien aimable</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To every one but his wife?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh for all I know, to her too&mdash;to any, to every woman. I hope you
+at any rate,&rdquo; she pursued with a quick change, &ldquo;appreciate the care
+I take of Mr. Waymarsh.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh immensely.&rdquo; But Strether was not yet in line. &ldquo;At all
+events,&rdquo; he roundly brought out, &ldquo;the attachment&rsquo;s an
+innocent one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mine and his? Ah,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t rob it of
+<i>all</i> interest!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean our friend&rsquo;s here&mdash;to the lady we&rsquo;ve been
+speaking of.&rdquo; That was what he had settled to as an indirect but none the
+less closely involved consequence of his impression of Jeanne. That was where
+he meant to stay. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s innocent,&rdquo; he repeated&mdash;&ldquo;I
+see the whole thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mystified by his abrupt declaration, she had glanced over at Gloriani as at the
+unnamed subject of his allusion, but the next moment she had understood; though
+indeed not before Strether had noticed her momentary mistake and wondered what
+might possibly be behind that too. He already knew that the sculptor admired
+Madame de Vionnet; but did this admiration also represent an attachment of
+which the innocence was discussable? He was moving verily in a strange air and
+on ground not of the firmest. He looked hard for an instant at Miss Barrace,
+but she had already gone on. &ldquo;All right with Mr. Newsome? Why of course
+she is!&rdquo;&mdash;and she got gaily back to the question of her own good
+friend. &ldquo;I dare say you&rsquo;re surprised that I&rsquo;m not worn out
+with all I see&mdash;it being so much!&mdash;of Sitting Bull. But I&rsquo;m
+not, you know&mdash;I don&rsquo;t mind him; I bear up, and we get on
+beautifully. I&rsquo;m very strange; I&rsquo;m like that; and often I
+can&rsquo;t explain. There are people who are supposed interesting or
+remarkable or whatever, and who bore me to death; and then there are others as
+to whom nobody can understand what anybody sees in them&mdash;in whom I see no
+end of things.&rdquo; Then after she had smoked a moment, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s
+touching, you know,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Know&rsquo;?&rdquo; Strether echoed&mdash;&ldquo;don&rsquo;t I,
+indeed? We must move you almost to tears.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but I don&rsquo;t mean <i>you!</i>&rdquo; she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ought to then, for the worst sign of all&mdash;as I must have it for
+you&mdash;is that you can&rsquo;t help me. That&rsquo;s when a woman
+pities.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but I do help you!&rdquo; she cheerfully insisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he looked at her hard, and then after a pause: &ldquo;No you
+don&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her tortoise-shell, on its long chain, rattled down. &ldquo;I help you with
+Sitting Bull. That&rsquo;s a good deal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh that, yes.&rdquo; But Strether hesitated. &ldquo;Do you mean he talks
+of me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So that I have to defend you? No, never.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; Strether mused. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too deep.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s his only fault,&rdquo; she returned&mdash;&ldquo;that
+everything, with him, is too deep. He has depths of silence&mdash;which he
+breaks only at the longest intervals by a remark. And when the remark comes
+it&rsquo;s always something he has seen or felt for himself&mdash;never a bit
+banal. <i>That</i> would be what one might have feared and what would kill me.
+But never.&rdquo; She smoked again as she thus, with amused complacency,
+appreciated her acquisition. &ldquo;And never about you. We keep clear of you.
+We&rsquo;re wonderful. But I&rsquo;ll tell you what he does do,&rdquo; she
+continued: &ldquo;he tries to make me presents.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Presents?&rdquo; poor Strether echoed, conscious with a pang that
+<i>he</i> hadn&rsquo;t yet tried that in any quarter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why you see,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s as fine as ever in
+the victoria; so that when I leave him, as I often do almost for hours&mdash;he
+likes it so&mdash;at the doors of shops, the sight of him there helps me, when
+I come out, to know my carriage away off in the rank. But sometimes, for a
+change, he goes with me into the shops, and then I&rsquo;ve all I can do to
+prevent his buying me things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He wants to &lsquo;treat&rsquo; you?&rdquo; Strether almost gasped at
+all he himself hadn&rsquo;t thought of. He had a sense of admiration. &ldquo;Oh
+he&rsquo;s much more in the real tradition than I. Yes,&rdquo; he mused,
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s the sacred rage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The sacred rage, exactly!&rdquo;&mdash;and Miss Barrace, who
+hadn&rsquo;t before heard this term applied, recognised its bearing with a clap
+of her gemmed hands. &ldquo;Now I do know why he&rsquo;s not banal. But I do
+prevent him all the same&mdash;and if you saw what he sometimes
+selects&mdash;from buying. I save him hundreds and hundreds. I only take
+flowers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Flowers?&rdquo; Strether echoed again with a rueful reflexion. How many
+nosegays had her present converser sent?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Innocent flowers,&rdquo; she pursued, &ldquo;as much as he likes. And he
+sends me splendours; he knows all the best places&mdash;he has found them for
+himself; he&rsquo;s wonderful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t told them to <i>me</i>,&rdquo; her friend smiled,
+&ldquo;he has a life of his own.&rdquo; But Strether had swung back to the
+consciousness that for himself after all it never would have done. Waymarsh
+hadn&rsquo;t Mrs. Waymarsh in the least to consider, whereas Lambert Strether
+had constantly, in the inmost honour of his thoughts, to consider Mrs. Newsome.
+He liked moreover to feel how much his friend was in the real tradition. Yet he
+had his conclusion. &ldquo;<i>What</i> a rage it is!&rdquo; He had worked it
+out. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an opposition.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She followed, but at a distance. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I feel. Yet to
+what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, he thinks, you know, that <i>I&rsquo;ve</i> a life of my own. And
+I haven&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t?&rdquo; She showed doubt, and her laugh confirmed it.
+&ldquo;Oh, oh, oh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;not for myself. I seem to have a life only for other
+people.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah for them and <i>with</i> them! Just now for instance
+with&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, with whom?&rdquo; he asked before she had had time to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His tone had the effect of making her hesitate and even, as he guessed, speak
+with a difference. &ldquo;Say with Miss Gostrey. What do you do for
+<i>her?</i>&rdquo; It really made him wonder. &ldquo;Nothing at all!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Vionnet, having meanwhile come in, was at present close to them, and
+Miss Barrace hereupon, instead of risking a rejoinder, became again with a look
+that measured her from top to toe all mere long-handled appreciative
+tortoise-shell. She had struck our friend, from the first of her appearing, as
+dressed for a great occasion, and she met still more than on either of the
+others the conception reawakened in him at their garden-party, the idea of the
+<i>femme du monde</i> in her habit as she lived. Her bare shoulders and arms
+were white and beautiful; the materials of her dress, a mixture, as he
+supposed, of silk and crape, were of a silvery grey so artfully composed as to
+give an impression of warm splendour; and round her neck she wore a collar of
+large old emeralds, the green note of which was more dimly repeated, at other
+points of her apparel, in embroidery, in enamel, in satin, in substances and
+textures vaguely rich. Her head, extremely fair and exquisitely festal, was
+like a happy fancy, a notion of the antique, on an old precious medal, some
+silver coin of the Renaissance; while her slim lightness and brightness, her
+gaiety, her expression, her decision, contributed to an effect that might have
+been felt by a poet as half mythological and half conventional. He could have
+compared her to a goddess still partly engaged in a morning cloud, or to a
+sea-nymph waist-high in the summer surge. Above all she suggested to him the
+reflexion that the <i>femme du monde</i>&mdash;in these finest developments of
+the type&mdash;was, like Cleopatra in the play, indeed various and multifold.
+She had aspects, characters, days, nights&mdash;or had them at least, showed
+them by a mysterious law of her own, when in addition to everything she
+happened also to be a woman of genius. She was an obscure person, a muffled
+person one day, and a showy person, an uncovered person the next. He thought of
+Madame de Vionnet to-night as showy and uncovered, though he felt the formula
+rough, because, thanks to one of the short-cuts of genius she had taken all his
+categories by surprise. Twice during dinner he had met Chad&rsquo;s eyes in a
+longish look; but these communications had in truth only stirred up again old
+ambiguities&mdash;so little was it clear from them whether they were an appeal
+or an admonition. &ldquo;You see how I&rsquo;m fixed,&rdquo; was what they
+appeared to convey; yet how he was fixed was exactly what Strether didn&rsquo;t
+see. However, perhaps he should see now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you capable of the very great kindness of going to relieve Newsome,
+for a few minutes, of the rather crushing responsibility of Madame Gloriani,
+while I say a word, if he&rsquo;ll allow me, to Mr. Strether, of whom
+I&rsquo;ve a question to ask? Our host ought to talk a bit to those other
+ladies, and I&rsquo;ll come back in a minute to your rescue.&rdquo; She made
+this proposal to Miss Barrace as if her consciousness of a special duty had
+just flickered-up, but that lady&rsquo;s recognition of Strether&rsquo;s little
+start at it&mdash;as at a betrayal on the speaker&rsquo;s part of a
+domesticated state&mdash;was as mute as his own comment; and after an instant,
+when their fellow guest had good-naturedly left them, he had been given
+something else to think of. &ldquo;Why has Maria so suddenly gone? Do you
+know?&rdquo; That was the question Madame de Vionnet had brought with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I&rsquo;ve no reason to give you but the simple reason
+I&rsquo;ve had from her in a note&mdash;the sudden obligation to join in the
+south a sick friend who has got worse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then she has been writing you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not since she went&mdash;I had only a brief explanatory word before she
+started. I went to see her,&rdquo; Strether explained&mdash;&ldquo;it was the
+day after I called on you&mdash;but she was already on her way, and her
+concierge told me that in case of my coming I was to be informed she had
+written to me. I found her note when I got home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Vionnet listened with interest and with her eyes on Strether&rsquo;s
+face; then her delicately decorated head had a small melancholy motion.
+&ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t write to <i>me</i>. I went to see her,&rdquo; she
+added, &ldquo;almost immediately after I had seen you, and as I assured her I
+would do when I met her at Gloriani&rsquo;s. She hadn&rsquo;t then told me she
+was to be absent, and I felt at her door as if I understood. She&rsquo;s
+absent&mdash;with all respect to her sick friend, though I know indeed she has
+plenty&mdash;so that I may not see her. She doesn&rsquo;t want to meet me
+again. Well,&rdquo; she continued with a beautiful conscious mildness, &ldquo;I
+liked and admired her beyond every one in the old time, and she knew
+it&mdash;perhaps that&rsquo;s precisely what has made her go&mdash;and I dare
+say I haven&rsquo;t lost her for ever.&rdquo; Strether still said nothing; he
+had a horror, as he now thought of himself, of being in question between
+women&mdash;was in fact already quite enough on his way to that, and there was
+moreover, as it came to him, perceptibly, something behind these allusions and
+professions that, should he take it in, would square but ill with his present
+resolve to simplify. It was as if, for him, all the same, her softness and
+sadness were sincere. He felt that not less when she soon went on:
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m extremely glad of her happiness.&rdquo; But it also left him
+mute&mdash;sharp and fine though the imputation it conveyed. What it conveyed
+was that <i>he</i> was Maria Gostrey&rsquo;s happiness, and for the least
+little instant he had the impulse to challenge the thought. He could have done
+so however only by saying &ldquo;What then do you suppose to be between
+us?&rdquo; and he was wonderfully glad a moment later not to have spoken. He
+would rather seem stupid any day than fatuous, and he drew back as well, with a
+smothered inward shudder, from the consideration of what women&mdash;of
+highly-developed type in particular&mdash;might think of each other. Whatever
+he had come out for he hadn&rsquo;t come to go into that; so that he absolutely
+took up nothing his interlocutress had now let drop. Yet, though he had kept
+away from her for days, had laid wholly on herself the burden of their meeting
+again, she hadn&rsquo;t a gleam of irritation to show him. &ldquo;Well, about
+Jeanne now?&rdquo; she smiled&mdash;it had the gaiety with which she had
+originally come in. He felt it on the instant to represent her motive and real
+errand. But he had been schooling her of a truth to say much in proportion to
+his little. &ldquo;<i>Do</i> you make out that she has a sentiment? I mean for
+Mr. Newsome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Almost resentful, Strether could at last be prompt. &ldquo;How can I make out
+such things?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She remained perfectly good-natured. &ldquo;Ah but they&rsquo;re beautiful
+little things, and you make out&mdash;don&rsquo;t pretend&mdash;everything in
+the world. Haven&rsquo;t you,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;been talking with
+her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but not about Chad. At least not much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you don&rsquo;t require &lsquo;much&rsquo;!&rdquo; she reassuringly
+declared. But she immediately changed her ground. &ldquo;I hope you remember
+your promise of the other day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To &lsquo;save&rsquo; you, as you called it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I call it so still. You <i>will?</i>&rdquo; she insisted. &ldquo;You
+haven&rsquo;t repented?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wondered. &ldquo;No&mdash;but I&rsquo;ve been thinking what I meant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She kept it up. &ldquo;And not, a little, what <i>I</i> did?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;that&rsquo;s not necessary. It will be enough if I know what I
+meant myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And don&rsquo;t you know,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;by this time?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he had a pause. &ldquo;I think you ought to leave it to me. But how
+long,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;do you give me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems to me much more a question of how long you give <i>me</i>.
+Doesn&rsquo;t our friend here himself, at any rate,&rdquo; she went on,
+&ldquo;perpetually make me present to you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not,&rdquo; Strether replied, &ldquo;by ever speaking of you to
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He never does that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She considered, and, if the fact was disconcerting to her, effectually
+concealed it. The next minute indeed she had recovered. &ldquo;No, he
+wouldn&rsquo;t. But do you <i>need</i> that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her emphasis was wonderful, and though his eyes had been wandering he looked at
+her longer now. &ldquo;I see what you mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you see what I mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her triumph was gentle, and she really had tones to make justice weep.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve before me what he owes you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Admit then that that&rsquo;s something,&rdquo; she said, yet still with
+the same discretion in her pride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took in this note but went straight on. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve made of him what
+I see, but what I don&rsquo;t see is how in the world you&rsquo;ve done
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah that&rsquo;s another question!&rdquo; she smiled. &ldquo;The point is
+of what use is your declining to know me when to know Mr. Newsome&mdash;as you
+do me the honour to find him&mdash;<i>is</i> just to know me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he mused, still with his eyes on her. &ldquo;I
+shouldn&rsquo;t have met you to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised and dropped her linked hands. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter. If I
+trust you why can&rsquo;t you a little trust me too? And why can&rsquo;t you
+also,&rdquo; she asked in another tone, &ldquo;trust yourself?&rdquo; But she
+gave him no time to reply. &ldquo;Oh I shall be so easy for you! And I&rsquo;m
+glad at any rate you&rsquo;ve seen my child.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad too,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but she does you no
+good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No good?&rdquo;&mdash;Madame de Vionnet had a clear stare. &ldquo;Why
+she&rsquo;s an angel of light.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s precisely the reason. Leave her alone. Don&rsquo;t try to
+find out. I mean,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;about what you spoke to me
+of&mdash;the way she feels.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion wondered. &ldquo;Because one really won&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to. She&rsquo;s the
+most charming creature I&rsquo;ve ever seen. Therefore don&rsquo;t touch her.
+Don&rsquo;t know&mdash;don&rsquo;t want to know. And
+moreover&mdash;yes&mdash;you <i>won&rsquo;t</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in. &ldquo;As a favour to
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;since you ask me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anything, everything you ask,&rdquo; she smiled. &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t
+know then&mdash;never. Thank you,&rdquo; she added with peculiar gentleness as
+she turned away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if he had been
+tripped up and had a fall. In the very act of arranging with her for his
+independence he had, under pressure from a particular perception,
+inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed himself, and, with her subtlety
+sensitive on the spot to an advantage, she had driven in by a single word a
+little golden nail, the sharp intention of which he signally felt. He
+hadn&rsquo;t detached, he had more closely connected himself, and his eyes, as
+he considered with some intensity this circumstance, met another pair which had
+just come within their range and which struck him as reflecting his sense of
+what he had done. He recognised them at the same moment as those of little
+Bilham, who had apparently drawn near on purpose to speak to him, and little
+Bilham wasn&rsquo;t, in the conditions, the person to whom his heart would be
+most closed. They were seated together a minute later at the angle of the room
+obliquely opposite the corner in which Gloriani was still engaged with Jeanne
+de Vionnet, to whom at first and in silence their attention had been
+benevolently given. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see for my life,&rdquo; Strether had
+then observed, &ldquo;how a young fellow of any spirit&mdash;such a one as you
+for instance&mdash;can be admitted to the sight of that young lady without
+being hard hit. Why don&rsquo;t you go in, little Bilham?&rdquo; He remembered
+the tone into which he had been betrayed on the garden-bench at the
+sculptor&rsquo;s reception, and this might make up for that by being much more
+the right sort of thing to say to a young man worthy of any advice at all.
+&ldquo;There <i>would</i> be some reason.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some reason for what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why for hanging on here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To offer my hand and fortune to Mademoiselle de Vionnet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Strether asked, &ldquo;to what lovelier apparition
+<i>could</i> you offer them? She&rsquo;s the sweetest little thing I&rsquo;ve
+ever seen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s certainly immense. I mean she&rsquo;s the real thing. I
+believe the pale pink petals are folded up there for some wondrous
+efflorescence in time; to open, that is, to some great golden sun.
+<i>I&rsquo;m</i> unfortunately but a small farthing candle. What chance in such
+a field for a poor little painter-man?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you&rsquo;re good enough,&rdquo; Strether threw out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly I&rsquo;m good enough. We&rsquo;re good enough, I consider,
+<i>nous autres</i>, for anything. But she&rsquo;s <i>too</i> good.
+There&rsquo;s the difference. They wouldn&rsquo;t look at me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, lounging on his divan and still charmed by the young girl, whose eyes
+had consciously strayed to him, he fancied, with a vague smile&mdash;Strether,
+enjoying the whole occasion as with dormant pulses at last awake and in spite
+of new material thrust upon him, thought over his companion&rsquo;s words.
+&ldquo;Whom do you mean by &lsquo;they&rsquo;? She and her mother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She and her mother. And she has a father too, who, whatever else he may
+be, certainly can&rsquo;t be indifferent to the possibilities she represents.
+Besides, there&rsquo;s Chad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether was silent a little. &ldquo;Ah but he doesn&rsquo;t care for
+her&mdash;not, I mean, it appears, after all, in the sense I&rsquo;m speaking
+of. He&rsquo;s <i>not</i> in love with her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;but he&rsquo;s her best friend; after her mother. He&rsquo;s
+very fond of her. He has his ideas about what can be done for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s very strange!&rdquo; Strether presently remarked with a
+sighing sense of fulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very strange indeed. That&rsquo;s just the beauty of it. Isn&rsquo;t it
+very much the kind of beauty you had in mind,&rdquo; little Bilham went on,
+&ldquo;when you were so wonderful and so inspiring to me the other day?
+Didn&rsquo;t you adjure me, in accents I shall never forget, to see, while
+I&rsquo;ve a chance, everything I can?&mdash;and <i>really</i> to see, for it
+must have been that only you meant. Well, you did me no end of good, and
+I&rsquo;m doing my best. I <i>do</i> make it out a situation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So do I!&rdquo; Strether went on after a moment. But he had the next
+minute an inconsequent question. &ldquo;How comes Chad so mixed up,
+anyway?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, ah, ah!&rdquo;&mdash;and little Bilham fell back on his cushions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It reminded our friend of Miss Barrace, and he felt again the brush of his
+sense of moving in a maze of mystic closed allusions. Yet he kept hold of his
+thread. &ldquo;Of course I understand really; only the general transformation
+makes me occasionally gasp. Chad with such a voice in the settlement of the
+future of a little countess&mdash;no,&rdquo; he declared, &ldquo;it takes more
+time! You say moreover,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;that we&rsquo;re inevitably,
+people like you and me, out of the running. The curious fact remains that Chad
+himself isn&rsquo;t. The situation doesn&rsquo;t make for it, but in a
+different one he could have her if he would.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but that&rsquo;s only because he&rsquo;s rich and because
+there&rsquo;s a possibility of his being richer. They won&rsquo;t think of
+anything but a great name or a great fortune.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;he&rsquo;ll have no great fortune on
+<i>these</i> lines. He must stir his stumps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that,&rdquo; little Bilham enquired, &ldquo;what you were saying to
+Madame de Vionnet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;I don&rsquo;t say much to her. Of course, however,&rdquo;
+Strether continued, &ldquo;he can make sacrifices if he likes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham had a pause. &ldquo;Oh he&rsquo;s not keen for sacrifices; or
+thinks, that is, possibly, that he has made enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it <i>is</i> virtuous,&rdquo; his companion observed with some
+decision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly,&rdquo; the young man dropped after a moment,
+&ldquo;what I mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It kept Strether himself silent a little. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve made it out for
+myself,&rdquo; he then went on; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve really, within the last
+half-hour, got hold of it. I understand it in short at last; which at
+first&mdash;when you originally spoke to me&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t. Nor when Chad
+originally spoke to me either.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said little Bilham, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think that at that
+time you believed me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;I did; and I believed Chad too. It would have been odious and
+unmannerly&mdash;as well as quite perverse&mdash;if I hadn&rsquo;t. What
+interest have you in deceiving me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man cast about. &ldquo;What interest have I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. Chad <i>might</i> have. But you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, ah, ah!&rdquo; little Bilham exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It might, on repetition, as a mystification, have irritated our friend a
+little, but he knew, once more, as we have seen, where he was, and his being
+proof against everything was only another attestation that he meant to stay
+there. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t, without my own impression, realise. She&rsquo;s
+a tremendously clever brilliant capable woman, and with an extraordinary charm
+on top of it all&mdash;the charm we surely all of us this evening know what to
+think of. It isn&rsquo;t every clever brilliant capable woman that has it. In
+fact it&rsquo;s rare with any woman. So there you are,&rdquo; Strether
+proceeded as if not for little Bilham&rsquo;s benefit alone. &ldquo;I
+understand what a relation with such a woman&mdash;what such a high fine
+friendship&mdash;may be. It can&rsquo;t be vulgar or coarse, anyway&mdash;and
+that&rsquo;s the point.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s the point,&rdquo; said little Bilham. &ldquo;It
+can&rsquo;t be vulgar or coarse. And, bless us and save us, it
+<i>isn&rsquo;t!</i> It&rsquo;s, upon my word, the very finest thing I ever saw
+in my life, and the most distinguished.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, from beside him and leaning back with him as he leaned, dropped on
+him a momentary look which filled a short interval and of which he took no
+notice. He only gazed before him with intent participation. &ldquo;Of course
+what it has done for him,&rdquo; Strether at all events presently pursued,
+&ldquo;of course what it has done for him&mdash;that is as to <i>how</i> it has
+so wonderfully worked&mdash;isn&rsquo;t a thing I pretend to understand.
+I&rsquo;ve to take it as I find it. There he is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There he is!&rdquo; little Bilham echoed. &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s really
+and truly she. I don&rsquo;t understand either, even with my longer and closer
+opportunity. But I&rsquo;m like you,&rdquo; he added; &ldquo;I can admire and
+rejoice even when I&rsquo;m a little in the dark. You see I&rsquo;ve watched it
+for some three years, and especially for this last. He wasn&rsquo;t so bad
+before it as I seem to have made out that you think&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I don&rsquo;t think anything now!&rdquo; Strether impatiently broke
+in: &ldquo;that is but what I <i>do</i> think! I mean that originally, for her
+to have cared for him&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There must have been stuff in him? Oh yes, there was stuff indeed, and
+much more of it than ever showed, I dare say, at home. Still, you know,&rdquo;
+the young man in all fairness developed, &ldquo;there was room for her, and
+that&rsquo;s where she came in. She saw her chance and took it. That&rsquo;s
+what strikes me as having been so fine. But of course,&rdquo; he wound up,
+&ldquo;he liked her first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Naturally,&rdquo; said Strether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean that they first met somehow and somewhere&mdash;I believe in some
+American house&mdash;and she, without in the least then intending it, made her
+impression. Then with time and opportunity he made his; and after <i>that</i>
+she was as bad as he.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether vaguely took it up. &ldquo;As &lsquo;bad&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She began, that is, to care&mdash;to care very much. Alone, and in her
+horrid position, she found it, when once she had started, an interest. It was,
+it is, an interest, and it did&mdash;it continues to do&mdash;a lot for herself
+as well. So she still cares. She cares in fact,&rdquo; said little Bilham
+thoughtfully &ldquo;more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s theory that it was none of his business was somehow not
+damaged by the way he took this. &ldquo;More, you mean, than he?&rdquo; On
+which his companion looked round at him, and now for an instant their eyes met.
+&ldquo;More than he?&rdquo; he repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham, for as long, hung fire. &ldquo;Will you never tell any
+one?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether thought. &ldquo;Whom should I tell?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why I supposed you reported regularly&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To people at home?&rdquo;&mdash;Strether took him up. &ldquo;Well, I
+won&rsquo;t tell them this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man at last looked away. &ldquo;Then she does now care more than
+he.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Strether oddly exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his companion immediately met it. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you after all had
+your impression of it? That&rsquo;s how you&rsquo;ve got hold of him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but I haven&rsquo;t got hold of him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I say!&rdquo; But it was all little Bilham said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s at any rate none of my business. I mean,&rdquo; Strether
+explained, &ldquo;nothing else than getting hold of him is.&rdquo; It appeared,
+however, to strike him as his business to add: &ldquo;The fact remains
+nevertheless that she has saved him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham just waited. &ldquo;I thought that was what <i>you</i> were to
+do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Strether had his answer ready. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m speaking&mdash;in connexion
+with her&mdash;of his manners and morals, his character and life. I&rsquo;m
+speaking of him as a person to deal with and talk with and live
+with&mdash;speaking of him as a social animal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And isn&rsquo;t it as a social animal that you also want him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly; so that it&rsquo;s as if she had saved him <i>for</i>
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It strikes you accordingly then,&rdquo; the young man threw out,
+&ldquo;as for you all to save <i>her?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh for us &lsquo;all&rsquo;&mdash;!&rdquo; Strether could but laugh at
+that. It brought him back, however, to the point he had really wished to make.
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve accepted their situation&mdash;hard as it is.
+They&rsquo;re not free&mdash;at least she&rsquo;s not; but they take
+what&rsquo;s left to them. It&rsquo;s a friendship, of a beautiful sort; and
+that&rsquo;s what makes them so strong. They&rsquo;re straight, they feel; and
+they keep each other up. It&rsquo;s doubtless she, however, who, as you
+yourself have hinted, feels it most.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham appeared to wonder what he had hinted. &ldquo;Feels most that
+they&rsquo;re straight?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, feels that <i>she</i> is, and the strength that comes from it. She
+keeps <i>him</i> up&mdash;she keeps the whole thing up. When people are able to
+it&rsquo;s fine. She&rsquo;s wonderful, wonderful, as Miss Barrace says; and he
+is, in his way, too; however, as a mere man, he may sometimes rebel and not
+feel that he finds his account in it. She has simply given him an immense moral
+lift, and what that can explain is prodigious. That&rsquo;s why I speak of it
+as a situation. It <i>is</i> one, if there ever was.&rdquo; And Strether, with
+his head back and his eyes on the ceiling, seemed to lose himself in the vision
+of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion attended deeply. &ldquo;You state it much better than I
+could.&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh you see it doesn&rsquo;t concern you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham considered. &ldquo;I thought you said just now that it
+doesn&rsquo;t concern you either.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it doesn&rsquo;t a bit as Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s affair. But as
+we were again saying just now, what did I come out for but to save him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;to remove him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To save him <i>by</i> removal; to win him over to <i>himself</i>
+thinking it best he shall take up business&mdash;thinking he must immediately
+do therefore what&rsquo;s necessary to that end.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said little Bilham after a moment, &ldquo;you <i>have</i>
+won him over. He does think it best. He has within a day or two again said to
+me as much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that,&rdquo; Strether asked, &ldquo;is why you consider that he
+cares less than she?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cares less for her than she for him? Yes, that&rsquo;s one of the
+reasons. But other things too have given me the impression. A man, don&rsquo;t
+you think?&rdquo; little Bilham presently pursued, &ldquo;<i>Can&rsquo;t</i>,
+in such conditions, care so much as a woman. It takes different conditions to
+make him, and then perhaps he cares more. Chad,&rdquo; he wound up, &ldquo;has
+his possible future before him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you speaking of his business future?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;on the contrary; of the other, the future of what you so justly
+call their situation. M. de Vionnet may live for ever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So that they can&rsquo;t marry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man waited a moment. &ldquo;Not being able to marry is all
+they&rsquo;ve with any confidence to look forward to. A woman&mdash;a
+particular woman&mdash;may stand that strain. But can a man?&rdquo; he
+propounded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s answer was as prompt as if he had already, for himself, worked
+it out. &ldquo;Not without a very high ideal of conduct. But that&rsquo;s just
+what we&rsquo;re attributing to Chad. And how, for that matter,&rdquo; he
+mused, &ldquo;does his going to America diminish the particular strain?
+Wouldn&rsquo;t it seem rather to add to it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Out of sight out of mind!&rdquo; his companion laughed. Then more
+bravely: &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t distance lessen the torment?&rdquo; But before
+Strether could reply, &ldquo;The thing is, you see, Chad ought to marry!&rdquo;
+he wound up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, for a little, appeared to think of it. &ldquo;If you talk of torments
+you don&rsquo;t diminish mine!&rdquo; he then broke out. The next moment he was
+on his feet with a question. &ldquo;He ought to marry whom?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham rose more slowly. &ldquo;Well, some one he <i>can</i>&mdash;some
+thoroughly nice girl.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s eyes, as they stood together, turned again to Jeanne.
+&ldquo;Do you mean <i>her?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His friend made a sudden strange face. &ldquo;After being in love with her
+mother? No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But isn&rsquo;t it exactly your idea that he <i>isn&rsquo;t</i> in love
+with her mother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His friend once more had a pause. &ldquo;Well, he isn&rsquo;t at any rate in
+love with Jeanne.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I dare say not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How <i>can</i> he be with any other woman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh that I admit. But being in love isn&rsquo;t, you know,
+here&rdquo;&mdash;little Bilham spoke in friendly reminder&mdash;&ldquo;thought
+necessary, in strictness, for marriage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what torment&mdash;to call a torment&mdash;can there ever possibly
+be with a woman like that?&rdquo; As if from the interest of his own question
+Strether had gone on without hearing. &ldquo;Is it for her to have turned a man
+out so wonderfully, too, only for somebody else?&rdquo; He appeared to make a
+point of this, and little Bilham looked at him now. &ldquo;When it&rsquo;s for
+each other that people give things up they don&rsquo;t miss them.&rdquo; Then
+he threw off as with an extravagance of which he was conscious: &ldquo;Let them
+face the future together!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham looked at him indeed. &ldquo;You mean that after all he
+shouldn&rsquo;t go back?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean that if he gives her up&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself.&rdquo; But Strether spoke with
+a sound that might have passed for a laugh.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="volume02"></a>Volume II</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>Book Seventh</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+It wasn&rsquo;t the first time Strether had sat alone in the great dim
+church&mdash;still less was it the first of his giving himself up, so far as
+conditions permitted, to its beneficent action on his nerves. He had been to
+Notre Dame with Waymarsh, he had been there with Miss Gostrey, he had been
+there with Chad Newsome, and had found the place, even in company, such a
+refuge from the obsession of his problem that, with renewed pressure from that
+source, he had not unnaturally recurred to a remedy meeting the case, for the
+moment, so indirectly, no doubt, but so relievingly. He was conscious enough
+that it was only for the moment, but good moments&mdash;if he could call them
+good&mdash;still had their value for a man who by this time struck himself as
+living almost disgracefully from hand to mouth. Having so well learnt the way,
+he had lately made the pilgrimage more than once by himself&mdash;had quite
+stolen off, taking an unnoticed chance and making no point of speaking of the
+adventure when restored to his friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His great friend, for that matter, was still absent, as well as remarkably
+silent; even at the end of three weeks Miss Gostrey hadn&rsquo;t come back. She
+wrote to him from Mentone, admitting that he must judge her grossly
+inconsequent&mdash;perhaps in fact for the time odiously faithless; but asking
+for patience, for a deferred sentence, throwing herself in short on his
+generosity. For her too, she could assure him, life was complicated&mdash;more
+complicated than he could have guessed; she had moreover made certain of
+him&mdash;certain of not wholly missing him on her return&mdash;before her
+disappearance. If furthermore she didn&rsquo;t burden him with letters it was
+frankly because of her sense of the other great commerce he had to carry on. He
+himself, at the end of a fortnight, had written twice, to show how his
+generosity could be trusted; but he reminded himself in each case of Mrs.
+Newsome&rsquo;s epistolary manner at the times when Mrs. Newsome kept off
+delicate ground. He sank his problem, he talked of Waymarsh and Miss Barrace,
+of little Bilham and the set over the river, with whom he had again had tea,
+and he was easy, for convenience, about Chad and Madame de Vionnet and Jeanne.
+He admitted that he continued to see them, he was decidedly so confirmed a
+haunter of Chad&rsquo;s premises and that young man&rsquo;s practical intimacy
+with them was so undeniably great; but he had his reason for not attempting to
+render for Miss Gostrey&rsquo;s benefit the impression of these last days. That
+would be to tell her too much about himself&mdash;it being at present just from
+himself he was trying to escape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This small struggle sprang not a little, in its way, from the same impulse that
+had now carried him across to Notre Dame; the impulse to let things be, to give
+them time to justify themselves or at least to pass. He was aware of having no
+errand in such a place but the desire not to be, for the hour, in certain other
+places; a sense of safety, of simplification, which each time he yielded to it
+he amused himself by thinking of as a private concession to cowardice. The
+great church had no altar for his worship, no direct voice for his soul; but it
+was none the less soothing even to sanctity; for he could feel while there what
+he couldn&rsquo;t elsewhere, that he was a plain tired man taking the holiday
+he had earned. He was tired, but he wasn&rsquo;t plain&mdash;that was the pity
+and the trouble of it; he was able, however, to drop his problem at the door
+very much as if it had been the copper piece that he deposited, on the
+threshold, in the receptacle of the inveterate blind beggar. He trod the long
+dim nave, sat in the splendid choir, paused before the cluttered chapels of the
+east end, and the mighty monument laid upon him its spell. He might have been a
+student under the charm of a museum&mdash;which was exactly what, in a foreign
+town, in the afternoon of life, he would have liked to be free to be. This form
+of sacrifice did at any rate for the occasion as well as another; it made him
+quite sufficiently understand how, within the precinct, for the real refugee,
+the things of the world could fall into abeyance. That was the cowardice,
+probably&mdash;to dodge them, to beg the question, not to deal with it in the
+hard outer light; but his own oblivions were too brief, too vain, to hurt any
+one but himself, and he had a vague and fanciful kindness for certain persons
+whom he met, figures of mystery and anxiety, and whom, with observation for his
+pastime, he ranked as those who were fleeing from justice. Justice was outside,
+in the hard light, and injustice too; but one was as absent as the other from
+the air of the long aisles and the brightness of the many altars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus it was at all events that, one morning some dozen days after the dinner in
+the Boulevard Malesherbes at which Madame de Vionnet had been present with her
+daughter, he was called upon to play his part in an encounter that deeply
+stirred his imagination. He had the habit, in these contemplations, of watching
+a fellow visitant, here and there, from a respectable distance, remarking some
+note of behaviour, of penitence, of prostration, of the absolved, relieved
+state; this was the manner in which his vague tenderness took its course, the
+degree of demonstration to which it naturally had to confine itself. It
+hadn&rsquo;t indeed so felt its responsibility as when on this occasion he
+suddenly measured the suggestive effect of a lady whose supreme stillness, in
+the shade of one of the chapels, he had two or three times noticed as he made,
+and made once more, his slow circuit. She wasn&rsquo;t prostrate&mdash;not in
+any degree bowed, but she was strangely fixed, and her prolonged immobility
+showed her, while he passed and paused, as wholly given up to the need,
+whatever it was, that had brought her there. She only sat and gazed before her,
+as he himself often sat; but she had placed herself, as he never did, within
+the focus of the shrine, and she had lost herself, he could easily see, as he
+would only have liked to do. She was not a wandering alien, keeping back more
+than she gave, but one of the familiar, the intimate, the fortunate, for whom
+these dealings had a method and a meaning. She reminded our friend&mdash;since
+it was the way of nine tenths of his current impressions to act as recalls of
+things imagined&mdash;of some fine firm concentrated heroine of an old story,
+something he had heard, read, something that, had he had a hand for drama, he
+might himself have written, renewing her courage, renewing her clearness, in
+splendidly-protected meditation. Her back, as she sat, was turned to him, but
+his impression absolutely required that she should be young and interesting,
+and she carried her head moreover, even in the sacred shade, with a discernible
+faith in herself, a kind of implied conviction of consistency, security,
+impunity. But what had such a woman come for if she hadn&rsquo;t come to pray?
+Strether&rsquo;s reading of such matters was, it must be owned, confused; but
+he wondered if her attitude were some congruous fruit of absolution, of
+&ldquo;indulgence.&rdquo; He knew but dimly what indulgence, in such a place,
+might mean; yet he had, as with a soft sweep, a vision of how it might indeed
+add to the zest of active rites. All this was a good deal to have been denoted
+by a mere lurking figure who was nothing to him; but, the last thing before
+leaving the church, he had the surprise of a still deeper quickening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had dropped upon a seat halfway down the nave and, again in the museum mood,
+was trying with head thrown back and eyes aloft, to reconstitute a past, to
+reduce it in fact to the convenient terms of Victor Hugo, whom, a few days
+before, giving the rein for once in a way to the joy of life, he had purchased
+in seventy bound volumes, a miracle of cheapness, parted with, he was assured
+by the shopman, at the price of the red-and-gold alone. He looked, doubtless,
+while he played his eternal nippers over Gothic glooms, sufficiently rapt in
+reverence; but what his thought had finally bumped against was the question of
+where, among packed accumulations, so multiform a wedge would be able to enter.
+Were seventy volumes in red-and-gold to be perhaps what he should most
+substantially have to show at Woollett as the fruit of his mission? It was a
+possibility that held him a minute&mdash;held him till he happened to feel that
+some one, unnoticed, had approached him and paused. Turning, he saw that a lady
+stood there as for a greeting, and he sprang up as he next took her, securely,
+for Madame de Vionnet, who appeared to have recognised him as she passed near
+him on her way to the door. She checked, quickly and gaily, a certain confusion
+in him, came to meet it, turned it back, by an art of her own; the confusion
+having threatened him as he knew her for the person he had lately been
+observing. She was the lurking figure of the dim chapel; she had occupied him
+more than she guessed; but it came to him in time, luckily, that he
+needn&rsquo;t tell her and that no harm, after all, had been done. She herself,
+for that matter, straightway showing she felt their encounter as the happiest
+of accidents, had for him a &ldquo;You come here too?&rdquo; that despoiled
+surprise of every awkwardness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I come often,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I love this place, but I&rsquo;m
+terrible, in general, for churches. The old women who live in them all know me;
+in fact I&rsquo;m already myself one of the old women. It&rsquo;s like that, at
+all events, that I foresee I shall end.&rdquo; Looking about for a chair, so
+that he instantly pulled one nearer, she sat down with him again to the sound
+of an &ldquo;Oh, I like so much your also being fond&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He confessed the extent of his feeling, though she left the object vague; and
+he was struck with the tact, the taste of her vagueness, which simply took for
+granted in him a sense of beautiful things. He was conscious of how much it was
+affected, this sense, by something subdued and discreet in the way she had
+arranged herself for her special object and her morning walk&mdash;he believed
+her to have come on foot; the way her slightly thicker veil was drawn&mdash;a
+mere touch, but everything; the composed gravity of her dress, in which, here
+and there, a dull wine-colour seemed to gleam faintly through black; the
+charming discretion of her small compact head; the quiet note, as she sat, of
+her folded, grey-gloved hands. It was, to Strether&rsquo;s mind, as if she sat
+on her own ground, the light honours of which, at an open gate, she thus easily
+did him, while all the vastness and mystery of the domain stretched off behind.
+When people were so completely in possession they could be extraordinarily
+civil; and our friend had indeed at this hour a kind of revelation of her
+heritage. She was romantic for him far beyond what she could have guessed, and
+again he found his small comfort in the conviction that, subtle though she was,
+his impression must remain a secret from her. The thing that, once more, made
+him uneasy for secrets in general was this particular patience she could have
+with his own want of colour; albeit that on the other hand his uneasiness
+pretty well dropped after he had been for ten minutes as colourless as possible
+and at the same time as responsive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moments had already, for that matter, drawn their deepest tinge from the
+special interest excited in him by his vision of his companion&rsquo;s identity
+with the person whose attitude before the glimmering altar had so impressed
+him. This attitude fitted admirably into the stand he had privately taken about
+her connexion with Chad on the last occasion of his seeing them together. It
+helped him to stick fast at the point he had then reached; it was there he had
+resolved that he <i>would</i> stick, and at no moment since had it seemed as
+easy to do so. Unassailably innocent was a relation that could make one of the
+parties to it so carry herself. If it wasn&rsquo;t innocent why did she haunt
+the churches?&mdash;into which, given the woman he could believe he made out,
+she would never have come to flaunt an insolence of guilt. She haunted them for
+continued help, for strength, for peace&mdash;sublime support which, if one
+were able to look at it so, she found from day to day. They talked, in low easy
+tones and with lifted lingering looks, about the great monument and its history
+and its beauty&mdash;all of which, Madame de Vionnet professed, came to her
+most in the other, the outer view. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll presently, after we
+go,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;walk round it again if you like. I&rsquo;m not in a
+particular hurry, and it will be pleasant to look at it well with you.&rdquo;
+He had spoken of the great romancer and the great romance, and of what, to his
+imagination, they had done for the whole, mentioning to her moreover the
+exorbitance of his purchase, the seventy blazing volumes that were so out of
+proportion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Out of proportion to what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, to any other plunge.&rdquo; Yet he felt even as he spoke how at
+that instant he was plunging. He had made up his mind and was impatient to get
+into the air; for his purpose was a purpose to be uttered outside, and he had a
+fear that it might with delay still slip away from him. She however took her
+time; she drew out their quiet gossip as if she had wished to profit by their
+meeting, and this confirmed precisely an interpretation of her manner, of her
+mystery. While she rose, as he would have called it, to the question of Victor
+Hugo, her voice itself, the light low quaver of her deference to the solemnity
+about them, seemed to make her words mean something that they didn&rsquo;t mean
+openly. Help, strength, peace, a sublime support&mdash;she hadn&rsquo;t found
+so much of these things as that the amount wouldn&rsquo;t be sensibly greater
+for any scrap his appearance of faith in her might enable her to feel in her
+hand. Every little, in a long strain, helped, and if he happened to affect her
+as a firm object she could hold on by, he wouldn&rsquo;t jerk himself out of
+her reach. People in difficulties held on by what was nearest, and he was
+perhaps after all not further off than sources of comfort more abstract. It was
+as to this he had made up his mind; he had made it up, that is, to give her a
+sign. The sign would be that&mdash;though it was her own affair&mdash;he
+understood; the sign would be that&mdash;though it was her own affair&mdash;she
+was free to clutch. Since she took him for a firm object&mdash;much as he might
+to his own sense appear at times to rock&mdash;he would do his best to
+<i>be</i> one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The end of it was that half an hour later they were seated together for an
+early luncheon at a wonderful, a delightful house of entertainment on the left
+bank&mdash;a place of pilgrimage for the knowing, they were both aware, the
+knowing who came, for its great renown, the homage of restless days, from the
+other end of the town. Strether had already been there three times&mdash;first
+with Miss Gostrey, then with Chad, then with Chad again and with Waymarsh and
+little Bilham, all of whom he had himself sagaciously entertained; and his
+pleasure was deep now on learning that Madame de Vionnet hadn&rsquo;t yet been
+initiated. When he had said as they strolled round the church, by the river,
+acting at last on what, within, he had made up his mind to, &ldquo;Will you, if
+you have time, come to déjeuner with me somewhere? For instance, if you know
+it, over there on the other side, which is so easy a walk&rdquo;&mdash;and then
+had named the place; when he had done this she stopped short as for quick
+intensity, and yet deep difficulty, of response. She took in the proposal as if
+it were almost too charming to be true; and there had perhaps never yet been
+for her companion so unexpected a moment of pride&mdash;so fine, so odd a case,
+at any rate, as his finding himself thus able to offer to a person in such
+universal possession a new, a rare amusement. She had heard of the happy spot,
+but she asked him in reply to a further question how in the world he could
+suppose her to have been there. He supposed himself to have supposed that Chad
+might have taken her, and she guessed this the next moment to his no small
+discomfort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, let me explain,&rdquo; she smiled, &ldquo;that I don&rsquo;t go
+about with him in public; I never have such chances&mdash;not having them
+otherwise&mdash;and it&rsquo;s just the sort of thing that, as a quiet creature
+living in my hole, I adore.&rdquo; It was more than kind of him to have thought
+of it&mdash;though, frankly, if he asked whether she had time she hadn&rsquo;t
+a single minute. That however made no difference&mdash;she&rsquo;d throw
+everything over. Every duty at home, domestic, maternal, social, awaited her;
+but it was a case for a high line. Her affairs would go to smash, but
+hadn&rsquo;t one a right to one&rsquo;s snatch of scandal when one was prepared
+to pay? It was on this pleasant basis of costly disorder, consequently, that
+they eventually seated themselves, on either side of a small table, at a window
+adjusted to the busy quay and the shining barge-burdened Seine; where, for an
+hour, in the matter of letting himself go, of diving deep, Strether was to feel
+he had touched bottom. He was to feel many things on this occasion, and one of
+the first of them was that he had travelled far since that evening in London,
+before the theatre, when his dinner with Maria Gostrey, between the pink-shaded
+candles, had struck him as requiring so many explanations. He had at that time
+gathered them in, the explanations&mdash;he had stored them up; but it was at
+present as if he had either soared above or sunk below them&mdash;he
+couldn&rsquo;t tell which; he could somehow think of none that didn&rsquo;t
+seem to leave the appearance of collapse and cynicism easier for him than
+lucidity. How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one, that he,
+for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright clean ordered
+water-side life came in at the open window?&mdash;the mere way Madame de
+Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their <i>omelette
+aux tomates</i>, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, thanked him for
+everything almost with the smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and
+out of their talk, back to the quarter of the warm spring air, in which early
+summer had already begun to throb, and then back again to his face and their
+human questions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their human questions became many before they had done&mdash;many more, as one
+after the other came up, than our friend&rsquo;s free fancy had at all
+foreseen. The sense he had had before, the sense he had had repeatedly, the
+sense that the situation was running away with him, had never been so sharp as
+now; and all the more that he could perfectly put his finger on the moment it
+had taken the bit in its teeth. That accident had definitely occurred, the
+other evening, after Chad&rsquo;s dinner; it had occurred, as he fully knew, at
+the moment when he interposed between this lady and her child, when he suffered
+himself so to discuss with her a matter closely concerning them that her own
+subtlety, marked by its significant &ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo; instantly sealed
+the occasion in her favour. Again he had held off for ten days, but the
+situation had continued out of hand in spite of that; the fact that it was
+running so fast being indeed just <i>why</i> he had held off. What had come
+over him as he recognised her in the nave of the church was that holding off
+could be but a losing game from the instant she was worked for not only by her
+subtlety, but by the hand of fate itself. If all the accidents were to fight on
+her side&mdash;and by the actual showing they loomed large&mdash;he could only
+give himself up. This was what he had done in privately deciding then and there
+to propose she should breakfast with him. What did the success of his proposal
+in fact resemble but the smash in which a regular runaway properly ends? The
+smash was their walk, their déjeuner, their omelette, the Chablis, the place,
+the view, their present talk and his present pleasure in it&mdash;to say
+nothing, wonder of wonders, of her own. To this tune and nothing less,
+accordingly, was his surrender made good. It sufficiently lighted up at least
+the folly of holding off. Ancient proverbs sounded, for his memory, in the tone
+of their words and the clink of their glasses, in the hum of the town and the
+plash of the river. It <i>was</i> clearly better to suffer as a sheep than as a
+lamb. One might as well perish by the sword as by famine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Maria&rsquo;s still away?&rdquo;&mdash;that was the first thing she had
+asked him; and when he had found the frankness to be cheerful about it in spite
+of the meaning he knew her to attach to Miss Gostrey&rsquo;s absence, she had
+gone on to enquire if he didn&rsquo;t tremendously miss her. There were reasons
+that made him by no means sure, yet he nevertheless answered
+&ldquo;Tremendously&rdquo;; which she took in as if it were all she had wished
+to prove. Then, &ldquo;A man in trouble <i>must</i> be possessed somehow of a
+woman,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;if she doesn&rsquo;t come in one way she comes
+in another.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you call me a man in trouble?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah because that&rsquo;s the way you strike me.&rdquo; She spoke ever so
+gently and as if with all fear of wounding him while she sat partaking of his
+bounty. &ldquo;<i>Aren&rsquo;t</i> you in trouble?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt himself colour at the question, and then hated that&mdash;hated to pass
+for anything so idiotic as woundable. Woundable by Chad&rsquo;s lady, in
+respect to whom he had come out with such a fund of indifference&mdash;was he
+already at that point? Perversely, none the less, his pause gave a strange air
+of truth to her supposition; and what was he in fact but disconcerted at having
+struck her just in the way he had most dreamed of not doing? &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+not in trouble yet,&rdquo; he at last smiled. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not in trouble
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m always so. But that you sufficiently know.&rdquo; She
+was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the
+table. It was a posture unknown to Mrs. Newsome, but it was easy for a <i>femme
+du monde</i>. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I am &lsquo;now&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There was a question you put to me,&rdquo; he presently returned,
+&ldquo;the night of Chad&rsquo;s dinner. I didn&rsquo;t answer it then, and it
+has been very handsome of you not to have sought an occasion for pressing me
+about it since.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was instantly all there. &ldquo;Of course I know what you allude to. I
+asked you what you had meant by saying, the day you came to see me, just before
+you left me, that you&rsquo;d save me. And you then said&mdash;at our
+friend&rsquo;s&mdash;that you&rsquo;d have really to wait to see, for yourself,
+what you did mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I asked for time,&rdquo; said Strether. &ldquo;And it sounds now,
+as you put it, like a very ridiculous speech.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she murmured&mdash;she was full of attenuation. But she had
+another thought. &ldquo;If it does sound ridiculous why do you deny that
+you&rsquo;re in trouble?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah if I were,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;it wouldn&rsquo;t be the trouble
+of fearing ridicule. I don&rsquo;t fear it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What then do you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing&mdash;now.&rdquo; And he leaned back in his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like your &lsquo;now&rsquo;!&rdquo; she laughed across at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s precisely that it fully comes to me at present that
+I&rsquo;ve kept you long enough. I know by this time, at any rate, what I meant
+by my speech; and I really knew it the night of Chad&rsquo;s dinner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why didn&rsquo;t you tell me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because it was difficult at the moment. I had already at that moment
+done something for you, in the sense of what I had said the day I went to see
+you; but I wasn&rsquo;t then sure of the importance I might represent this as
+having.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was all eagerness. &ldquo;And you&rsquo;re sure now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; I see that, practically, I&rsquo;ve done for you&mdash;had done for
+you when you put me your question&mdash;all that it&rsquo;s as yet possible to
+me to do. I feel now,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;that it may go further than I
+thought. What I did after my visit to you,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;was to
+write straight off to Mrs. Newsome about you, and I&rsquo;m at last, from one
+day to the other, expecting her answer. It&rsquo;s this answer that will
+represent, as I believe, the consequences.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patient and beautiful was her interest. &ldquo;I see&mdash;the consequences of
+your speaking for me.&rdquo; And she waited as if not to hustle him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He acknowledged it by immediately going on. &ldquo;The question, you
+understand, was <i>how</i> I should save you. Well, I&rsquo;m trying it by thus
+letting her know that I consider you worth saving.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see&mdash;I see.&rdquo; Her eagerness broke through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How can I thank you enough?&rdquo; He couldn&rsquo;t tell her that,
+however, and she quickly pursued. &ldquo;You do really, for yourself, consider
+it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His only answer at first was to help her to the dish that had been freshly put
+before them. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve written to her again since then&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+left her in no doubt of what I think. I&rsquo;ve told her all about you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thanks&mdash;not so much. &lsquo;All about&rsquo; me,&rdquo; she went
+on&mdash;&ldquo;yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All it seems to me you&rsquo;ve done for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah and you might have added all it seems to <i>me!</i>&rdquo; She
+laughed again, while she took up her knife and fork, as in the cheer of these
+assurances. &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re not sure how she&rsquo;ll take it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;ll not pretend I&rsquo;m sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Voilà.&rdquo; And she waited a moment. &ldquo;I wish you&rsquo;d tell me
+about her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Strether with a slightly strained smile, &ldquo;all that
+need concern you about her is that she&rsquo;s really a grand person.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Vionnet seemed to demur. &ldquo;Is that all that need concern me
+about her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Strether neglected the question. &ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t Chad talked to
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of his mother? Yes, a great deal&mdash;immensely. But not from your
+point of view.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; our friend returned, &ldquo;have said any ill of
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not the least bit. He has given me, like you, the assurance that
+she&rsquo;s really grand. But her being really grand is somehow just what
+hasn&rsquo;t seemed to simplify our case. Nothing,&rdquo; she continued,
+&ldquo;is further from me than to wish to say a word against her; but of course
+I feel how little she can like being told of her owing me anything. No woman
+ever enjoys such an obligation to another woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a proposition Strether couldn&rsquo;t contradict. &ldquo;And yet what
+other way could I have expressed to her what I felt? It&rsquo;s what there was
+most to say about you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean then that she <i>will</i> be good to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m waiting to see. But I&rsquo;ve little doubt
+she would,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;if she could comfortably see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to strike her as a happy, a beneficent thought. &ldquo;Oh then
+couldn&rsquo;t that be managed? Wouldn&rsquo;t she come out? Wouldn&rsquo;t she
+if you so put it to her? <i>Did</i> you by any possibility?&rdquo; she faintly
+quavered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&rdquo;&mdash;he was prompt. &ldquo;Not that. It would be, much
+more, to give an account of you that&mdash;since there&rsquo;s no question of
+<i>your</i> paying the visit&mdash;I should go home first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It instantly made her graver. &ldquo;And are you thinking of that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh all the while, naturally.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stay with us&mdash;stay with us!&rdquo; she exclaimed on this.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s your only way to make sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To make sure of what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why that he doesn&rsquo;t break up. You didn&rsquo;t come out to do that
+to him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t it depend,&rdquo; Strether returned after a moment,
+&ldquo;on what you mean by breaking up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you know well enough what I mean!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His silence seemed again for a little to denote an understanding. &ldquo;You
+take for granted remarkable things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I do&mdash;to the extent that I don&rsquo;t take for granted vulgar
+ones. You&rsquo;re perfectly capable of seeing that what you came out for
+wasn&rsquo;t really at all to do what you&rsquo;d now have to do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah it&rsquo;s perfectly simple,&rdquo; Strether good-humouredly pleaded.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had but one thing to do&mdash;to put our case before him. To
+put it as it could only be put here on the spot&mdash;by personal pressure. My
+dear lady,&rdquo; he lucidly pursued, &ldquo;my work, you see, is really done,
+and my reasons for staying on even another day are none of the best.
+Chad&rsquo;s in possession of our case and professes to do it full justice.
+What remains is with himself. I&rsquo;ve had my rest, my amusement and
+refreshment; I&rsquo;ve had, as we say at Woollett, a lovely time. Nothing in
+it has been more lovely than this happy meeting with you&mdash;in these
+fantastic conditions to which you&rsquo;ve so delightfully consented.
+I&rsquo;ve a sense of success. It&rsquo;s what I wanted. My getting all this
+good is what Chad has waited for, and I gather that if I&rsquo;m ready to go
+he&rsquo;s the same.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head with a finer deeper wisdom. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not ready.
+If you&rsquo;re ready why did you write to Mrs. Newsome in the sense
+you&rsquo;ve mentioned to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether considered. &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t go before I hear from her.
+You&rsquo;re too much afraid of her,&rdquo; he added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It produced between them a long look from which neither shrank. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t think you believe that&mdash;believe I&rsquo;ve not really reason
+to fear her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s capable of great generosity,&rdquo; Strether presently
+stated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then let her trust me a little. That&rsquo;s all I ask. Let her
+recognise in spite of everything what I&rsquo;ve done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah remember,&rdquo; our friend replied, &ldquo;that she can&rsquo;t
+effectually recognise it without seeing it for herself. Let Chad go over and
+show her what you&rsquo;ve done, and let him plead with her there for it and,
+as it were, for <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She measured the depth of this suggestion. &ldquo;Do you give me your word of
+honour that if she once has him there she won&rsquo;t do her best to marry
+him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made her companion, this enquiry, look again a while out at the view; after
+which he spoke without sharpness. &ldquo;When she sees for herself what he
+is&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she had already broken in. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s when she sees for herself what
+he is that she&rsquo;ll want to marry him most.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s attitude, that of due deference to what she said, permitted
+him to attend for a minute to his luncheon. &ldquo;I doubt if that will come
+off. It won&rsquo;t be easy to make it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be easy if he remains there&mdash;and he&rsquo;ll remain for the
+money. The money appears to be, as a probability, so hideously much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Strether presently concluded, &ldquo;nothing <i>could</i>
+really hurt you but his marrying.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave a strange light laugh. &ldquo;Putting aside what may really hurt
+<i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her friend looked at her as if he had thought of that too. &ldquo;The
+question will come up, of course, of the future that you yourself offer
+him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was leaning back now, but she fully faced him. &ldquo;Well, let it come
+up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The point is that it&rsquo;s for Chad to make of it what he can. His
+being proof against marriage will show what he does make.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he <i>is</i> proof, yes&rdquo;&mdash;she accepted the proposition.
+&ldquo;But for myself,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;the question is what <i>you</i>
+make.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah I make nothing. It&rsquo;s not my affair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon. It&rsquo;s just there that, since you&rsquo;ve taken
+it up and are committed to it, it most intensely becomes yours. You&rsquo;re
+not saving me, I take it, for your interest in myself, but for your interest in
+our friend. The one&rsquo;s at any rate wholly dependent on the other. You
+can&rsquo;t in honour not see me through,&rdquo; she wound up, &ldquo;because
+you can&rsquo;t in honour not see <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strange and beautiful to him was her quiet soft acuteness. The thing that most
+moved him was really that she was so deeply serious. She had none of the
+portentous forms of it, but he had never come in contact, it struck him, with a
+force brought to so fine a head. Mrs. Newsome, goodness knew, was serious; but
+it was nothing to this. He took it all in, he saw it all together.
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he mused, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t in honour not see him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face affected him as with an exquisite light. &ldquo;You <i>will</i>
+then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this she pushed back her chair and was the next moment on her feet.
+&ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo; she said with her hand held out to him across the
+table and with no less a meaning in the words than her lips had so particularly
+given them after Chad&rsquo;s dinner. The golden nail she had then driven in
+pierced a good inch deeper. Yet he reflected that he himself had only meanwhile
+done what he had made up his mind to on the same occasion. So far as the
+essence of the matter went he had simply stood fast on the spot on which he had
+then planted his feet.
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+He received three days after this a communication from America, in the form of
+a scrap of blue paper folded and gummed, not reaching him through his bankers,
+but delivered at his hotel by a small boy in uniform, who, under instructions
+from the concierge, approached him as he slowly paced the little court. It was
+the evening hour, but daylight was long now and Paris more than ever
+penetrating. The scent of flowers was in the streets, he had the whiff of
+violets perpetually in his nose; and he had attached himself to sounds and
+suggestions, vibrations of the air, human and dramatic, he imagined, as they
+were not in other places, that came out for him more and more as the mild
+afternoons deepened&mdash;a far-off hum, a sharp near click on the asphalt, a
+voice calling, replying, somewhere and as full of tone as an actor&rsquo;s in a
+play. He was to dine at home, as usual, with Waymarsh&mdash;they had settled to
+that for thrift and simplicity; and he now hung about before his friend came
+down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He read his telegram in the court, standing still a long time where he had
+opened it and giving five minutes afterwards to the renewed study of it. At
+last, quickly, he crumpled it up as if to get it out of the way; in spite of
+which, however, he kept it there&mdash;still kept it when, at the end of
+another turn, he had dropped into a chair placed near a small table. Here, with
+his scrap of paper compressed in his fist and further concealed by his folding
+his arms tight, he sat for some time in thought, gazed before him so straight
+that Waymarsh appeared and approached him without catching his eye. The latter
+in fact, struck with his appearance, looked at him hard for a single instant
+and then, as if determined to that course by some special vividness in it,
+dropped back into the <i>salon de lecture</i> without addressing him. But the
+pilgrim from Milrose permitted himself still to observe the scene from behind
+the clear glass plate of that retreat. Strether ended, as he sat, by a fresh
+scrutiny of his compressed missive, which he smoothed out carefully again as he
+placed it on his table. There it remained for some minutes, until, at last
+looking up, he saw Waymarsh watching him from within. It was on this that their
+eyes met&mdash;met for a moment during which neither moved. But Strether then
+got up, folding his telegram more carefully and putting it into his waistcoat
+pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few minutes later the friends were seated together at dinner; but Strether
+had meanwhile said nothing about it, and they eventually parted, after coffee
+in the court, with nothing said on either side. Our friend had moreover the
+consciousness that even less than usual was on this occasion said between them,
+so that it was almost as if each had been waiting for something from the other.
+Waymarsh had always more or less the air of sitting at the door of his tent,
+and silence, after so many weeks, had come to play its part in their concert.
+This note indeed, to Strether&rsquo;s sense, had lately taken a fuller tone,
+and it was his fancy to-night that they had never quite so drawn it out. Yet it
+befell, none the less that he closed the door to confidence when his companion
+finally asked him if there were anything particular the matter with him.
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;more than usual.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the morrow, however, at an early hour, he found occasion to give an answer
+more in consonance with the facts. What was the matter had continued to be so
+all the previous evening, the first hours of which, after dinner, in his room,
+he had devoted to the copious composition of a letter. He had quitted Waymarsh
+for this purpose, leaving him to his own resources with less ceremony than
+their wont, but finally coming down again with his letter unconcluded and going
+forth into the streets without enquiry for his comrade. He had taken a long
+vague walk, and one o&rsquo;clock had struck before his return and his
+re-ascent to his room by the aid of the glimmering candle-end left for him on
+the shelf outside the porter&rsquo;s lodge. He had possessed himself, on
+closing his door, of the numerous loose sheets of his unfinished composition,
+and then, without reading them over, had torn them into small pieces. He had
+thereupon slept&mdash;as if it had been in some measure thanks to that
+sacrifice&mdash;the sleep of the just, and had prolonged his rest considerably
+beyond his custom. Thus it was that when, between nine and ten, the tap of the
+knob of a walking-stick sounded on his door, he had not yet made himself
+altogether presentable. Chad Newsome&rsquo;s bright deep voice determined
+quickly enough none the less the admission of the visitor. The little blue
+paper of the evening before, plainly an object the more precious for its escape
+from premature destruction, now lay on the sill of the open window, smoothed
+out afresh and kept from blowing away by the superincumbent weight of his
+watch. Chad, looking about with careless and competent criticism, as he looked
+wherever he went immediately espied it and permitted himself to fix it for a
+moment rather hard. After which he turned his eyes to his host. &ldquo;It has
+come then at last?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether paused in the act of pinning his necktie. &ldquo;Then you know&mdash;?
+You&rsquo;ve had one too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;ve had nothing, and I only know what I see. I see that thing
+and I guess. Well,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;it comes as pat as in a play, for
+I&rsquo;ve precisely turned up this morning&mdash;as I would have done
+yesterday, but it was impossible&mdash;to take you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To take me?&rdquo; Strether had turned again to his glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Back, at last, as I promised. I&rsquo;m ready&mdash;I&rsquo;ve really
+been ready this month. I&rsquo;ve only been waiting for you&mdash;as was
+perfectly right. But you&rsquo;re better now; you&rsquo;re safe&mdash;I see
+that for myself; you&rsquo;ve got all your good. You&rsquo;re looking, this
+morning, as fit as a flea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, at his glass, finished dressing; consulting that witness moreover on
+this last opinion. <i>Was</i> he looking preternaturally fit? There was
+something in it perhaps for Chad&rsquo;s wonderful eye, but he had felt himself
+for hours rather in pieces. Such a judgement, however, was after all but a
+contribution to his resolve; it testified unwittingly to his wisdom. He was
+still firmer, apparently&mdash;since it shone in him as a light&mdash;than he
+had flattered himself. His firmness indeed was slightly compromised, as he
+faced about to his friend, by the way this very personage looked&mdash;though
+the case would of course have been worse hadn&rsquo;t the secret of personal
+magnificence been at every hour Chad&rsquo;s unfailing possession. There he was
+in all the pleasant morning freshness of it&mdash;strong and sleek and gay,
+easy and fragrant and fathomless, with happy health in his colour, and pleasant
+silver in his thick young hair, and the right word for everything on the lips
+that his clear brownness caused to show as red. He had never struck Strether as
+personally such a success; it was as if now, for his definite surrender, he had
+gathered himself vividly together. This, sharply and rather strangely, was the
+form in which he was to be presented to Woollett. Our friend took him in
+again&mdash;he was always taking him in and yet finding that parts of him still
+remained out; though even thus his image showed through a mist of other things.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had a cable,&rdquo; Strether said, &ldquo;from your
+mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I dare say, my dear man. I hope she&rsquo;s well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether hesitated. &ldquo;No&mdash;she&rsquo;s not well, I&rsquo;m sorry to
+have to tell you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Chad, &ldquo;I must have had the instinct of it. All the
+more reason then that we should start straight off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had now got together hat, gloves and stick, but Chad had dropped on
+the sofa as if to show where he wished to make his point. He kept observing his
+companion&rsquo;s things; he might have been judging how quickly they could be
+packed. He might even have wished to hint that he&rsquo;d send his own servant
+to assist. &ldquo;What do you mean,&rdquo; Strether enquired, &ldquo;by
+&lsquo;straight off&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh by one of next week&rsquo;s boats. Everything at this season goes out
+so light that berths will be easy anywhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had in his hand his telegram, which he had kept there after attaching
+his watch, and he now offered it to Chad, who, however, with an odd movement,
+declined to take it. &ldquo;Thanks, I&rsquo;d rather not. Your correspondence
+with Mother&rsquo;s your own affair. I&rsquo;m only <i>with</i> you both on it,
+whatever it is.&rdquo; Strether, at this, while their eyes met, slowly folded
+the missive and put it in his pocket; after which, before he had spoken again,
+Chad broke fresh ground. &ldquo;Has Miss Gostrey come back?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when Strether presently spoke it wasn&rsquo;t in answer. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+not, I gather, that your mother&rsquo;s physically ill; her health, on the
+whole, this spring, seems to have been better than usual. But she&rsquo;s
+worried, she&rsquo;s anxious, and it appears to have risen within the last few
+days to a climax. We&rsquo;ve tired out, between us, her patience.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh it isn&rsquo;t <i>you!</i>&rdquo; Chad generously protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon&mdash;it <i>is</i> me.&rdquo; Strether was mild and
+melancholy, but firm. He saw it far away and over his companion&rsquo;s head.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s very particularly me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then all the more reason. <i>Marchons, marchons!</i>&rdquo; said
+the young man gaily. His host, however, at this, but continued to stand agaze;
+and he had the next thing repeated his question of a moment before. &ldquo;Has
+Miss Gostrey come back?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, two days ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve seen her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;I&rsquo;m to see her to-day.&rdquo; But Strether wouldn&rsquo;t
+linger now on Miss Gostrey. &ldquo;Your mother sends me an ultimatum. If I
+can&rsquo;t bring you I&rsquo;m to leave you; I&rsquo;m to come at any rate
+myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but you <i>can</i> bring me now,&rdquo; Chad, from his sofa,
+reassuringly replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had a pause. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I understand you. Why was it
+that, more than a month ago, you put it to me so urgently to let Madame de
+Vionnet speak for you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Why&rsquo;?&rdquo; Chad considered, but he had it at his
+fingers&rsquo; ends. &ldquo;Why but because I knew how well she&rsquo;d do it?
+It was the way to keep you quiet and, to that extent, do you good.
+Besides,&rdquo; he happily and comfortably explained, &ldquo;I wanted you
+really to know her and to get the impression of her&mdash;and you see the good
+that <i>has</i> done you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;the way she has spoken for you, all
+the same&mdash;so far as I&rsquo;ve given her a chance&mdash;has only made me
+feel how much she wishes to keep you. If you make nothing of that I don&rsquo;t
+see why you wanted me to listen to her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why my dear man,&rdquo; Chad exclaimed, &ldquo;I make everything of it!
+How can you doubt&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I doubt only because you come to me this morning with your signal to
+start.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad stared, then gave a laugh. &ldquo;And isn&rsquo;t my signal to start just
+what you&rsquo;ve been waiting for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether debated; he took another turn. &ldquo;This last month I&rsquo;ve been
+awaiting, I think, more than anything else, the message I have here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean you&rsquo;ve been afraid of it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I was doing my business in my own way. And I suppose your present
+announcement,&rdquo; Strether went on, &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t merely the result of
+your sense of what I&rsquo;ve expected. Otherwise you wouldn&rsquo;t have put
+me in relation&mdash;&rdquo; But he paused, pulling up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this Chad rose. &ldquo;Ah <i>her</i> wanting me not to go has nothing to do
+with it! It&rsquo;s only because she&rsquo;s afraid&mdash;afraid of the way
+that, over there, I may get caught. But her fear&rsquo;s groundless.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had met again his companion&rsquo;s sufficiently searching look. &ldquo;Are
+you tired of her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad gave him in reply to this, with a movement of the head, the strangest slow
+smile he had ever had from him. &ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had immediately, on Strether&rsquo;s imagination, so deep and soft an effect
+that our friend could only for the moment keep it before him.
+&ldquo;Never?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never,&rdquo; Chad obligingly and serenely repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made his companion take several more steps. &ldquo;Then <i>you&rsquo;re</i>
+not afraid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Afraid to go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether pulled up again. &ldquo;Afraid to stay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man looked brightly amazed. &ldquo;You want me now to
+&lsquo;stay&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I don&rsquo;t immediately sail the Pococks will immediately come out.
+That&rsquo;s what I mean,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;by your mother&rsquo;s
+ultimatum.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad showed a still livelier, but not an alarmed interest. &ldquo;She has
+turned on Sarah and Jim?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether joined him for an instant in the vision. &ldquo;Oh and you may be sure
+Mamie. <i>That&rsquo;s</i> whom she&rsquo;s turning on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This also Chad saw&mdash;he laughed out. &ldquo;Mamie&mdash;to corrupt
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;she&rsquo;s very charming.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you&rsquo;ve already more than once told me. I should like to see
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something happy and easy, something above all unconscious, in the way he said
+this, brought home again to his companion the facility of his attitude and the
+enviability of his state. &ldquo;See her then by all means. And consider
+too,&rdquo; Strether went on, &ldquo;that you really give your sister a lift in
+letting her come to you. You give her a couple of months of Paris, which she
+hasn&rsquo;t seen, if I&rsquo;m not mistaken, since just after she was married,
+and which I&rsquo;m sure she wants but the pretext to visit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad listened, but with all his own knowledge of the world. &ldquo;She has had
+it, the pretext, these several years, yet she has never taken it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean <i>you?</i>&rdquo; Strether after an instant enquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly&mdash;the lone exile. And whom do you mean?&rdquo; said Chad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I mean <i>me</i>. I&rsquo;m her pretext. That is&mdash;for it comes
+to the same thing&mdash;I&rsquo;m your mother&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why,&rdquo; Chad asked, &ldquo;doesn&rsquo;t Mother come
+herself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His friend gave him a long look. &ldquo;Should you like her to?&rdquo; And as
+he for the moment said nothing: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s perfectly open to you to
+cable for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad continued to think. &ldquo;Will she come if I do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite possibly. But try, and you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t <i>you</i> try?&rdquo; Chad after a moment asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I don&rsquo;t want to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad thought. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t desire her presence here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether faced the question, and his answer was the more emphatic.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t put it off, my dear boy, on <i>me!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;I see what you mean. I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;d behave
+beautifully but you <i>don&rsquo;t</i> want to see her. So I won&rsquo;t play
+you that trick.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Strether declared, &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t call it a trick.
+You&rsquo;ve a perfect right, and it would be perfectly straight of you.&rdquo;
+Then he added in a different tone: &ldquo;You&rsquo;d have moreover, in the
+person of Madame de Vionnet, a very interesting relation prepared for
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their eyes, on this proposition, continued to meet, but Chad&rsquo;s pleasant
+and bold, never flinched for a moment. He got up at last and he said something
+with which Strether was struck. &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t understand her, but
+that makes no difference. Madame de Vionnet would like to see her. She&rsquo;d
+like to be charming to her. She believes she could work it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether thought a moment, affected by this, but finally turning away.
+&ldquo;She couldn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re quite sure?&rdquo; Chad asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, risk it if you like!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, who uttered this with serenity, had urged a plea for their now
+getting into the air; but the young man still waited. &ldquo;Have you sent your
+answer?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;ve done nothing yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Were you waiting to see me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, not that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only waiting&rdquo;&mdash;and Chad, with this, had a smile for
+him&mdash;&ldquo;to see Miss Gostrey?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;not even Miss Gostrey. I wasn&rsquo;t waiting to see any one. I
+had only waited, till now, to make up my mind&mdash;in complete solitude; and,
+since I of course absolutely owe you the information, was on the point of going
+out with it quite made up. Have therefore a little more patience with me.
+Remember,&rdquo; Strether went on, &ldquo;that that&rsquo;s what you originally
+asked <i>me</i> to have. I&rsquo;ve had it, you see, and you see what has come
+of it. Stay on with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad looked grave. &ldquo;How much longer?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, till I make you a sign. I can&rsquo;t myself, you know, at the
+best, or at the worst, stay for ever. Let the Pococks come,&rdquo; Strether
+repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because it gains you time?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;it gains me time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad, as if it still puzzled him, waited a minute. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t want
+to get back to Mother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not just yet. I&rsquo;m not ready.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You feel,&rdquo; Chad asked in a tone of his own, &ldquo;the charm of
+life over here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Immensely.&rdquo; Strether faced it. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve helped me so to
+feel it that that surely needn&rsquo;t surprise you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, it doesn&rsquo;t surprise me, and I&rsquo;m delighted. But what, my
+dear man,&rdquo; Chad went on with conscious queerness, &ldquo;does it all lead
+to for you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The change of position and of relation, for each, was so oddly betrayed in the
+question that Chad laughed out as soon as he had uttered it&mdash;which made
+Strether also laugh. &ldquo;Well, to my having a certitude that has been
+tested&mdash;that has passed through the fire. But oh,&rdquo; he couldn&rsquo;t
+help breaking out, &ldquo;if within my first month here you had been willing to
+move with me&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Chad, while he broke down as for weight of thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we should have been over there by now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but you wouldn&rsquo;t have had your fun!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should have had a month of it; and I&rsquo;m having now, if you want
+to know,&rdquo; Strether continued, &ldquo;enough to last me for the rest of my
+days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad looked amused and interested, yet still somewhat in the dark; partly
+perhaps because Strether&rsquo;s estimate of fun had required of him from the
+first a good deal of elucidation. &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t do if I left
+you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Left me?&rdquo;&mdash;Strether remained blank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only for a month or two&mdash;time to go and come. Madame de
+Vionnet,&rdquo; Chad smiled, &ldquo;would look after you in the
+interval.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To go back by yourself, I remaining here?&rdquo; Again for an instant
+their eyes had the question out; after which Strether said:
+&ldquo;Grotesque!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I want to see Mother,&rdquo; Chad presently returned.
+&ldquo;Remember how long it is since I&rsquo;ve seen Mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Long indeed; and that&rsquo;s exactly why I was originally so keen for
+moving you. Hadn&rsquo;t you shown us enough how beautifully you could do
+without it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but,&rdquo; said Chad wonderfully, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m better
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was an easy triumph in it that made his friend laugh out again. &ldquo;Oh
+if you were worse I <i>should</i> know what to do with you. In that case I
+believe I&rsquo;d have you gagged and strapped down, carried on board
+resisting, kicking. How <i>much</i>,&rdquo; Strether asked, &ldquo;do you want
+to see Mother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much?&rdquo;&mdash;Chad seemed to find it in fact difficult to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why as much as you&rsquo;ve made me. I&rsquo;d give anything to see her.
+And you&rsquo;ve left me,&rdquo; Chad went on, &ldquo;in little enough doubt as
+to how much <i>she</i> wants it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether thought a minute. &ldquo;Well then if those things are really your
+motive catch the French steamer and sail to-morrow. Of course, when it comes to
+that, you&rsquo;re absolutely free to do as you choose. From the moment you
+can&rsquo;t hold yourself I can only accept your flight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll fly in a minute then,&rdquo; said Chad, &ldquo;if
+you&rsquo;ll stay here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll stay here till the next steamer&mdash;then I&rsquo;ll follow
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And do you call that,&rdquo; Chad asked, &ldquo;accepting my
+flight?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly&mdash;it&rsquo;s the only thing to call it. The only way to
+keep me here, accordingly,&rdquo; Strether explained, &ldquo;is by staying
+yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad took it in. &ldquo;All the more that I&rsquo;ve really dished you,
+eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dished me?&rdquo; Strether echoed as inexpressively as possible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why if she sends out the Pococks it will be that she doesn&rsquo;t trust
+you, and if she doesn&rsquo;t trust you, that bears upon&mdash;well, you know
+what.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether decided after a moment that he did know what, and in consonance with
+this he spoke. &ldquo;You see then all the more what you owe me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, if I do see, how can I pay?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By not deserting me. By standing by me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I say&mdash;!&rdquo; But Chad, as they went downstairs, clapped a
+firm hand, in the manner of a pledge, upon his shoulder. They descended slowly
+together and had, in the court of the hotel, some further talk, of which the
+upshot was that they presently separated. Chad Newsome departed, and Strether,
+left alone, looked about, superficially, for Waymarsh. But Waymarsh
+hadn&rsquo;t yet, it appeared, come down, and our friend finally went forth
+without sight of him.
+</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>
+At four o&rsquo;clock that afternoon he had still not seen him, but he was
+then, as to make up for this, engaged in talk about him with Miss Gostrey.
+Strether had kept away from home all day, given himself up to the town and to
+his thoughts, wandered and mused, been at once restless and absorbed&mdash;and
+all with the present climax of a rich little welcome in the Quartier Marbœuf.
+&ldquo;Waymarsh has been, &lsquo;unbeknown&rsquo; to me, I&rsquo;m
+convinced&rdquo;&mdash;for Miss Gostrey had enquired&mdash;&ldquo;in
+communication with Woollett: the consequence of which was, last night, the
+loudest possible call for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean a letter to bring you home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;a cable, which I have at this moment in my pocket: a
+&lsquo;Come back by the first ship.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s hostess, it might have been made out, just escaped changing
+colour. Reflexion arrived but in time and established a provisional serenity.
+It was perhaps exactly this that enabled her to say with duplicity: &ldquo;And
+you&rsquo;re going&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You almost deserve it when you abandon me so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head as if this were not worth taking up. &ldquo;My absence has
+helped you&mdash;as I&rsquo;ve only to look at you to see. It was my
+calculation, and I&rsquo;m justified. You&rsquo;re not where you were. And the
+thing,&rdquo; she smiled, &ldquo;was for me not to be there either. You can go
+of yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but I feel to-day,&rdquo; he comfortably declared, &ldquo;that I
+shall want you yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took him all in again. &ldquo;Well, I promise you not again to leave you,
+but it will only be to follow you. You&rsquo;ve got your momentum and can
+toddle alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He intelligently accepted it. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I suppose I can toddle.
+It&rsquo;s the sight of that in fact that has upset Waymarsh. He can bear
+it&mdash;the way I strike him as going&mdash;no longer. That&rsquo;s only the
+climax of his original feeling. He wants me to quit; and he must have written
+to Woollett that I&rsquo;m in peril of perdition.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah good!&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;But is it only your
+supposition?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I make it out&mdash;it explains.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then he denies?&mdash;or you haven&rsquo;t asked him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not had time,&rdquo; Strether said; &ldquo;I made it out but
+last night, putting various things together, and I&rsquo;ve not been since then
+face to face with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered. &ldquo;Because you&rsquo;re too disgusted? You can&rsquo;t trust
+yourself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He settled his glasses on his nose. &ldquo;Do I look in a great rage?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You look divine!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;to be angry about. He
+has done me on the contrary a service.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made it out. &ldquo;By bringing things to a head?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How well you understand!&rdquo; he almost groaned. &ldquo;Waymarsh
+won&rsquo;t in the least, at any rate, when I have it out with him, deny or
+extenuate. He has acted from the deepest conviction, with the best conscience
+and after wakeful nights. He&rsquo;ll recognise that he&rsquo;s fully
+responsible, and will consider that he has been highly successful; so that any
+discussion we may have will bring us quite together again&mdash;bridge the dark
+stream that has kept us so thoroughly apart. We shall have at last, in the
+consequences of his act, something we can definitely talk about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was silent a little. &ldquo;How wonderfully you take it! But you&rsquo;re
+always wonderful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had a pause that matched her own; then he had, with an adequate spirit, a
+complete admission. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s quite true. I&rsquo;m extremely wonderful
+just now. I dare say in fact I&rsquo;m quite fantastic, and I shouldn&rsquo;t
+be at all surprised if I were mad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then tell me!&rdquo; she earnestly pressed. As he, however, for the time
+answered nothing, only returning the look with which she watched him, she
+presented herself where it was easier to meet her. &ldquo;What will Mr.
+Waymarsh exactly have done?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Simply have written a letter. One will have been quite enough. He has
+told them I want looking after.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And <i>do</i> you?&rdquo;&mdash;she was all interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Immensely. And I shall get it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By which you mean you don&rsquo;t budge?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t budge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve cabled?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;I&rsquo;ve made Chad do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That you decline to come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That <i>he</i> declines. We had it out this morning and I brought him
+round. He had come in, before I was down, to tell me he was ready&mdash;ready,
+I mean, to return. And he went off, after ten minutes with me, to say he
+wouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey followed with intensity. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve <i>stopped</i>
+him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether settled himself afresh in his chair. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve stopped him.
+That is for the time. That&rdquo;&mdash;he gave it to her more
+vividly&mdash;&ldquo;is where I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see, I see. But where&rsquo;s Mr. Newsome? He was ready,&rdquo; she
+asked, &ldquo;to go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All ready.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And sincerely&mdash;believing <i>you&rsquo;d</i> be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perfectly, I think; so that he was amazed to find the hand I had laid on
+him to pull him over suddenly converted into an engine for keeping him
+still.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was an account of the matter Miss Gostrey could weigh. &ldquo;Does he think
+the conversion sudden?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not altogether sure what he
+thinks. I&rsquo;m not sure of anything that concerns him, except that the more
+I&rsquo;ve seen of him the less I&rsquo;ve found him what I originally
+expected. He&rsquo;s obscure, and that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m waiting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered. &ldquo;But for what in particular?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For the answer to his cable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what was his cable?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Strether replied; &ldquo;it was to be, when
+he left me, according to his own taste. I simply said to him: &lsquo;I want to
+stay, and the only way for me to do so is for <i>you</i> to.&rsquo; That I
+wanted to stay seemed to interest him, and he acted on that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey turned it over. &ldquo;He wants then himself to stay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He half wants it. That is he half wants to go. My original appeal has to
+that extent worked in him. Nevertheless,&rdquo; Strether pursued, &ldquo;he
+won&rsquo;t go. Not, at least, so long as I&rsquo;m here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; his companion suggested, &ldquo;stay here
+always. I wish you could.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By no means. Still, I want to see him a little further. He&rsquo;s not
+in the least the case I supposed, he&rsquo;s quite another case. And it&rsquo;s
+as such that he interests me.&rdquo; It was almost as if for his own
+intelligence that, deliberate and lucid, our friend thus expressed the matter.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to give him up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey but desired to help his lucidity. She had however to be light and
+tactful. &ldquo;Up, you mean&mdash;a&mdash;to his mother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m not thinking of his mother now. I&rsquo;m thinking of
+the plan of which I was the mouthpiece, which, as soon as we met, I put before
+him as persuasively as I knew how, and which was drawn up, as it were, in
+complete ignorance of all that, in this last long period, has been happening to
+him. It took no account whatever of the impression I was here on the spot
+immediately to begin to receive from him&mdash;impressions of which I feel sure
+I&rsquo;m far from having had the last.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey had a smile of the most genial criticism. &ldquo;So your idea
+is&mdash;more or less&mdash;to stay out of curiosity?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Call it what you like! I don&rsquo;t care what it&rsquo;s
+called&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So long as you do stay? Certainly not then. I call it, all the same,
+immense fun,&rdquo; Maria Gostrey declared; &ldquo;and to see you work it out
+will be one of the sensations of my life. It <i>is</i> clear you can toddle
+alone!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He received this tribute without elation. &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t be alone when
+the Pococks have come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyebrows went up. &ldquo;The Pococks are coming?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That, I mean, is what will happen&mdash;and happen as quickly as
+possible&mdash;in consequence of Chad&rsquo;s cable. They&rsquo;ll simply
+embark. Sarah will come to speak for her mother&mdash;with an effect different
+from <i>my</i> muddle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey more gravely wondered. &ldquo;<i>She</i> then will take him
+back?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very possibly&mdash;and we shall see. She must at any rate have the
+chance, and she may be trusted to do all she can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And do you <i>want</i> that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;I want it. I want to play
+fair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she had lost for a moment the thread. &ldquo;If it devolves on the Pococks
+why do you stay?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just to see that I <i>do</i> play fair&mdash;and a little also, no
+doubt, that they do.&rdquo; Strether was luminous as he had never been.
+&ldquo;I came out to find myself in presence of new facts&mdash;facts that have
+kept striking me as less and less met by our old reasons. The matter&rsquo;s
+perfectly simple. New reasons&mdash;reasons as new as the facts
+themselves&mdash;are wanted; and of this our friends at
+Woollett&mdash;Chad&rsquo;s and mine&mdash;were at the earliest moment
+definitely notified. If any are producible Mrs. Pocock will produce them;
+she&rsquo;ll bring over the whole collection. They&rsquo;ll be,&rdquo; he added
+with a pensive smile &ldquo;a part of the &lsquo;fun&rsquo; you speak
+of.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was quite in the current now and floating by his side. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+Mamie&mdash;so far as I&rsquo;ve had it from you&mdash;who&rsquo;ll be their
+great card.&rdquo; And then as his contemplative silence wasn&rsquo;t a denial
+she significantly added: &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m sorry for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think <i>I</i> am!&rdquo;&mdash;and Strether sprang up, moving about a
+little as her eyes followed him. &ldquo;But it can&rsquo;t be helped.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean her coming out can&rsquo;t be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He explained after another turn what he meant. &ldquo;The only way for her not
+to come is for me to go home&mdash;as I believe that on the spot I could
+prevent it. But the difficulty as to that is that if I do go home&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see, I see&rdquo;&mdash;she had easily understood. &ldquo;Mr. Newsome
+will do the same, and that&rsquo;s not&rdquo;&mdash;she laughed out
+now&mdash;&ldquo;to be thought of.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had no laugh; he had only a quiet comparatively placid look that might
+have shown him as proof against ridicule. &ldquo;Strange, isn&rsquo;t
+it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had, in the matter that so much interested them, come so far as this
+without sounding another name&mdash;to which however their present momentary
+silence was full of a conscious reference. Strether&rsquo;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. Yet he was answered still better when she said in a
+moment: &ldquo;Will Mr. Newsome introduce his sister&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To Madame de Vionnet?&rdquo; Strether spoke the name at last. &ldquo;I
+shall be greatly surprised if he doesn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She seemed to gaze at the possibility. &ldquo;You mean you&rsquo;ve thought of
+it and you&rsquo;re prepared.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve thought of it and I&rsquo;m prepared.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was to her visitor now that she applied her consideration. &ldquo;Bon! You
+<i>are</i> magnificent!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he answered after a pause and a little wearily, but still
+standing there before her&mdash;&ldquo;well, that&rsquo;s what, just once in
+all my dull days, I think I shall like to have been!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two days later he had news from Chad of a communication from Woollett in
+response to their determinant telegram, this missive being addressed to Chad
+himself and announcing the immediate departure for France of Sarah and Jim and
+Mamie. Strether had meanwhile on his own side cabled; he had but delayed that
+act till after his visit to Miss Gostrey, an interview by which, as so often
+before, he felt his sense of things cleared up and settled. His message to Mrs.
+Newsome, in answer to her own, had consisted of the words: &ldquo;Judge best to
+take another month, but with full appreciation of all re-enforcements.&rdquo;
+He had added that he was writing, but he was of course always writing; it was a
+practice that continued, oddly enough, to relieve him, to make him come nearer
+than anything else to the consciousness of doing something: so that he often
+wondered if he hadn&rsquo;t really, under his recent stress, acquired some
+hollow trick, one of the specious arts of make-believe. Wouldn&rsquo;t the
+pages he still so freely dispatched by the American post have been worthy of a
+showy journalist, some master of the great new science of beating the sense out
+of words? Wasn&rsquo;t he writing against time, and mainly to show he was
+kind?&mdash;since it had become quite his habit not to like to read himself
+over. On those lines he could still be liberal, yet it was at best a sort of
+whistling in the dark. It was unmistakeable moreover that the sense of being in
+the dark now pressed on him more sharply&mdash;creating thereby the need for a
+louder and livelier whistle. He whistled long and hard after sending his
+message; he whistled again and again in celebration of Chad&rsquo;s news; there
+was an interval of a fortnight in which this exercise helped him. He had no
+great notion of what, on the spot, Sarah Pocock would have to say, though he
+had indeed confused premonitions; but it shouldn&rsquo;t be in her power to
+say&mdash;it shouldn&rsquo;t be in any one&rsquo;s anywhere to say&mdash;that
+he was neglecting her mother. He might have written before more freely, but he
+had never written more copiously; and he frankly gave for a reason at Woollett
+that he wished to fill the void created there by Sarah&rsquo;s departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The increase of his darkness, however, and the quickening, as I have called it,
+of his tune, resided in the fact that he was hearing almost nothing. He had for
+some time been aware that he was hearing less than before, and he was now
+clearly following a process by which Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s letters could but
+logically stop. He hadn&rsquo;t had a line for many days, and he needed no
+proof&mdash;though he was, in time, to have plenty&mdash;that she
+wouldn&rsquo;t have put pen to paper after receiving the hint that had
+determined her telegram. She wouldn&rsquo;t write till Sarah should have seen
+him and reported on him. It was strange, though it might well be less so than
+his own behaviour appeared at Woollett. It was at any rate significant, and
+what <i>was</i> remarkable was the way his friend&rsquo;s nature and manner put
+on for him, through this very drop of demonstration, a greater intensity. It
+struck him really that he had never so lived with her as during this period of
+her silence; the silence was a sacred hush, a finer clearer medium, in which
+her idiosyncrasies showed. He walked about with her, sat with her, drove with
+her and dined face-to-face with her&mdash;a rare treat &ldquo;in his
+life,&rdquo; as he could perhaps have scarce escaped phrasing it; and if he had
+never seen her so soundless he had never, on the other hand, felt her so
+highly, so almost austerely, herself: pure and by the vulgar estimate
+&ldquo;cold,&rdquo; but deep devoted delicate sensitive noble. Her vividness in
+these respects became for him, in the special conditions, almost an obsession;
+and though the obsession sharpened his pulses, adding really to the excitement
+of life, there were hours at which, to be less on the stretch, he directly
+sought forgetfulness. He knew it for the queerest of adventures&mdash;a
+circumstance capable of playing such a part only for Lambert
+Strether&mdash;that in Paris itself, of all places, he should find this ghost
+of the lady of Woollett more importunate than any other presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he went back to Maria Gostrey it was for the change to something else. And
+yet after all the change scarcely operated for he talked to her of Mrs. Newsome
+in these days as he had never talked before. He had hitherto observed in that
+particular a discretion and a law; considerations that at present broke down
+quite as if relations had altered. They hadn&rsquo;t <i>really</i> altered, he
+said to himself, so much as that came to; for if what had occurred was of
+course that Mrs. Newsome had ceased to trust him, there was nothing on the
+other hand to prove that he shouldn&rsquo;t win back her confidence. It was
+quite his present theory that he would leave no stone unturned to do so; and in
+fact if he now told Maria things about her that he had never told before this
+was largely because it kept before him the idea of the honour of such a
+woman&rsquo;s esteem. His relation with Maria as well was, strangely enough, no
+longer quite the same; this truth&mdash;though not too
+disconcertingly&mdash;had come up between them on the renewal of their
+meetings. It was all contained in what she had then almost immediately said to
+him; it was represented by the remark she had needed but ten minutes to make
+and that he hadn&rsquo;t been disposed to gainsay. He could toddle alone, and
+the difference that showed was extraordinary. The turn taken by their talk had
+promptly confirmed this difference; his larger confidence on the score of Mrs.
+Newsome did the rest; and the time seemed already far off when he had held out
+his small thirsty cup to the spout of her pail. Her pail was scarce touched
+now, and other fountains had flowed for him; she fell into her place as but one
+of his tributaries; and there was a strange sweetness&mdash;a melancholy
+mildness that touched him&mdash;in her acceptance of the altered order.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It marked for himself the flight of time, or at any rate what he was pleased to
+think of with irony and pity as the rush of experience; it having been but the
+day before yesterday that he sat at her feet and held on by her garment and was
+fed by her hand. It was the proportions that were changed, and the proportions
+were at all times, he philosophised, the very conditions of perception, the
+terms of thought. It was as if, with her effective little <i>entresol</i> and
+and her wide acquaintance, her activities, varieties, promiscuities, the duties
+and devotions that took up nine tenths of her time and of which he got,
+guardedly, but the side-wind&mdash;it was as if she had shrunk to a secondary
+element and had consented to the shrinkage with the perfection of tact. This
+perfection had never failed her; it had originally been greater than his prime
+measure for it; it had kept him quite apart, kept him out of the shop, as she
+called her huge general acquaintance, made their commerce as quiet, as much a
+thing of the home alone&mdash;the opposite of the shop&mdash;as if she had
+never another customer. She had been wonderful to him at first, with the memory
+of her little <i>entresol</i>, the image to which, on most mornings at that
+time, his eyes directly opened; but now she mainly figured for him as but part
+of the bristling total&mdash;though of course always as a person to whom he
+should never cease to be indebted. It would never be given to him certainly to
+inspire a greater kindness. She had decked him out for others, and he saw at
+this point at least nothing she would ever ask for. She only wondered and
+questioned and listened, rendering him the homage of a wistful speculation. She
+expressed it repeatedly; he was already far beyond her, and she must prepare
+herself to lose him. There was but one little chance for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Often as she had said it he met it&mdash;for it was a touch he liked&mdash;each
+time the same way. &ldquo;My coming to grief?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;then I might patch you up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh for my real smash, if it takes place, there will be no
+patching.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you surely don&rsquo;t mean it will kill you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;worse. It will make me old.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah nothing can do that! The wonderful and special thing about you is
+that you <i>are</i>, at this time of day, youth.&rdquo; Then she always made,
+further, one of those remarks that she had completely ceased to adorn with
+hesitations or apologies, and that had, by the same token, in spite of their
+extreme straightness, ceased to produce in Strether the least embarrassment.
+She made him believe them, and they became thereby as impersonal as truth
+itself. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just your particular charm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His answer too was always the same. &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;m
+youth&mdash;youth for the trip to Europe. I began to be young, or at least to
+get the benefit of it, the moment I met you at Chester, and that&rsquo;s what
+has been taking place ever since. I never had the benefit at the proper
+time&mdash;which comes to saying that I never had the thing itself. I&rsquo;m
+having the benefit at this moment; I had it the other day when I said to Chad
+&lsquo;Wait&rsquo;; I shall have it still again when Sarah Pocock arrives.
+It&rsquo;s a benefit that would make a poor show for many people; and I
+don&rsquo;t know who else but you and I, frankly, could begin to see in it what
+I feel. I don&rsquo;t get drunk; I don&rsquo;t pursue the ladies; I don&rsquo;t
+spend money; I don&rsquo;t even write sonnets. But nevertheless I&rsquo;m
+making up late for what I didn&rsquo;t have early. I cultivate my little
+benefit in my own little way. It amuses me more than anything that has happened
+to me in all my life. They may say what they like&mdash;it&rsquo;s my
+surrender, it&rsquo;s my tribute, to youth. One puts that in where one
+can&mdash;it has to come in somewhere, if only out of the lives, the
+conditions, the feelings of other persons. Chad gives me the sense of it, for
+all his grey hairs, which merely make it solid in him and safe and serene; and
+<i>she</i> does the same, for all her being older than he, for all her
+marriageable daughter, her separated husband, her agitated history. Though
+they&rsquo;re young enough, my pair, I don&rsquo;t say they&rsquo;re, in the
+freshest way, their <i>own</i> absolutely prime adolescence; for that has
+nothing to do with it. The point is that they&rsquo;re mine. Yes, they&rsquo;re
+my youth; since somehow at the right time nothing else ever was. What I meant
+just now therefore is that it would all go&mdash;go before doing its
+work&mdash;if they were to fail me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On which, just here, Miss Gostrey inveterately questioned. &ldquo;What do you,
+in particular, call its work?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, to see me through.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But through what?&rdquo;&mdash;she liked to get it all out of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why through this experience.&rdquo; That was all that would come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It regularly gave her none the less the last word. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you
+remember how in those first days of our meeting it was <i>I</i> who was to see
+you through?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Remember? Tenderly, deeply&rdquo;&mdash;he always rose to it.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re just doing your part in letting me maunder to you
+thus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah don&rsquo;t speak as if my part were small; since whatever else fails
+you&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>You</i> won&rsquo;t, ever, ever, ever?&rdquo;&mdash;he thus took her
+up. &ldquo;Oh I beg your pardon; you necessarily, you inevitably <i>will</i>.
+Your conditions&mdash;that&rsquo;s what I mean&mdash;won&rsquo;t allow me
+anything to do for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let alone&mdash;I see what you mean&mdash;that I&rsquo;m drearily
+dreadfully old. I <i>am</i>, but there&rsquo;s a service&mdash;possible for you
+to render&mdash;that I know, all the same, I shall think of.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what will it be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This, in fine, however, she would never tell him. &ldquo;You shall hear only if
+your smash takes place. As that&rsquo;s really out of the question, I
+won&rsquo;t expose myself&rdquo;&mdash;a point at which, for reasons of his
+own, Strether ceased to press.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came round, for publicity&mdash;it was the easiest thing&mdash;to the idea
+that his smash <i>was</i> out of the question, and this rendered idle the
+discussion of what might follow it. He attached an added importance, as the
+days elapsed, to the arrival of the Pococks; he had even a shameful sense of
+waiting for it insincerely and incorrectly. He accused himself of making
+believe to his own mind that Sarah&rsquo;s presence, her impression, her
+judgement would simplify and harmonise, he accused himself of being so afraid
+of what they <i>might</i> do that he sought refuge, to beg the whole question,
+in a vain fury. He had abundantly seen at home what they were in the habit of
+doing, and he had not at present the smallest ground. His clearest vision was
+when he made out that what he most desired was an account more full and free of
+Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s state of mind than any he felt he could now expect from
+herself; that calculation at least went hand in hand with the sharp
+consciousness of wishing to prove to himself that he was not afraid to look his
+behaviour in the face. If he was by an inexorable logic to pay for it he was
+literally impatient to know the cost, and he held himself ready to pay in
+instalments. The first instalment would be precisely this entertainment of
+Sarah; as a consequence of which moreover, he should know vastly better how he
+stood.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>Book Eighth</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+Strether rambled alone during these few days, the effect of the incident of the
+previous week having been to simplify in a marked fashion his mixed relations
+with Waymarsh. Nothing had passed between them in reference to Mrs.
+Newsome&rsquo;s summons but that our friend had mentioned to his own the
+departure of the deputation actually at sea&mdash;giving him thus an
+opportunity to confess to the occult intervention he imputed to him. Waymarsh
+however in the event confessed to nothing; and though this falsified in some
+degree Strether&rsquo;s forecast the latter amusedly saw in it the same depth
+of good conscience out of which the dear man&rsquo;s impertinence had
+originally sprung. He was patient with the dear man now and delighted to
+observe how unmistakeably he had put on flesh; he felt his own holiday so
+successfully large and free that he was full of allowances and charities in
+respect to those cabined and confined: his instinct toward a spirit so strapped
+down as Waymarsh&rsquo;s was to walk round it on tiptoe for fear of waking it
+up to a sense of losses by this time irretrievable. It was all very funny he
+knew, and but the difference, as he often said to himself, of tweedledum and
+tweedledee&mdash;an emancipation so purely comparative that it was like the
+advance of the door-mat on the scraper; yet the present crisis was happily to
+profit by it and the pilgrim from Milrose to know himself more than ever in the
+right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether felt that when he heard of the approach of the Pococks the impulse of
+pity quite sprang up in him beside the impulse of triumph. That was exactly why
+Waymarsh had looked at him with eyes in which the heat of justice was measured
+and shaded. He had looked very hard, as if affectionately sorry for the
+friend&mdash;the friend of fifty-five&mdash;whose frivolity had had thus to be
+recorded; becoming, however, but obscurely sententious and leaving his
+companion to formulate a charge. It was in this general attitude that he had of
+late altogether taken refuge; with the drop of discussion they were solemnly
+sadly superficial; Strether recognised in him the mere portentous rumination to
+which Miss Barrace had so good-humouredly described herself as assigning a
+corner of her salon. It was quite as if he knew his surreptitious step had been
+divined, and it was also as if he missed the chance to explain the purity of
+his motive; but this privation of relief should be precisely his small penance:
+it was not amiss for Strether that he should find himself to that degree
+uneasy. If he had been challenged or accused, rebuked for meddling or otherwise
+pulled up, he would probably have shown, on his own system, all the height of
+his consistency, all the depth of his good faith. Explicit resentment of his
+course would have made him take the floor, and the thump of his fist on the
+table would have affirmed him as consciously incorruptible. Had what now really
+prevailed with Strether been but a dread of that thump&mdash;a dread of wincing
+a little painfully at what it might invidiously demonstrate? However this might
+be, at any rate, one of the marks of the crisis was a visible, a studied lapse,
+in Waymarsh, of betrayed concern. As if to make up to his comrade for the
+stroke by which he had played providence he now conspicuously ignored his
+movements, withdrew himself from the pretension to share them, stiffened up his
+sensibility to neglect, and, clasping his large empty hands and swinging his
+large restless foot, clearly looked to another quarter for justice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This made for independence on Strether&rsquo;s part, and he had in truth at no
+moment of his stay been so free to go and come. The early summer brushed the
+picture over and blurred everything but the near; it made a vast warm fragrant
+medium in which the elements floated together on the best of terms, in which
+rewards were immediate and reckonings postponed. Chad was out of town again,
+for the first time since his visitor&rsquo;s first view of him; he had
+explained this necessity&mdash;without detail, yet also without embarrassment,
+the circumstance was one of those which, in the young man&rsquo;s life,
+testified to the variety of his ties. Strether wasn&rsquo;t otherwise concerned
+with it than for its so testifying&mdash;a pleasant multitudinous image in
+which he took comfort. He took comfort, by the same stroke, in the swing of
+Chad&rsquo;s pendulum back from that other swing, the sharp jerk towards
+Woollett, so stayed by his own hand. He had the entertainment of thinking that
+if he had for that moment stopped the clock it was to promote the next minute
+this still livelier motion. He himself did what he hadn&rsquo;t done before; he
+took two or three times whole days off&mdash;irrespective of others, of two or
+three taken with Miss Gostrey, two or three taken with little Bilham: he went
+to Chartres and cultivated, before the front of the cathedral, a general easy
+beatitude; he went to Fontainebleau and imagined himself on the way to Italy;
+he went to Rouen with a little handbag and inordinately spent the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One afternoon he did something quite different; finding himself in the
+neighbourhood of a fine old house across the river, he passed under the great
+arch of its doorway and asked at the porter&rsquo;s lodge for Madame de
+Vionnet. He had already hovered more than once about that possibility, been
+aware of it, in the course of ostensible strolls, as lurking but round the
+corner. Only it had perversely happened, after his morning at Notre Dame, that
+his consistency, as he considered and intended it, had come back to him;
+whereby he had reflected that the encounter in question had been none of his
+making; clinging again intensely to the strength of his position, which was
+precisely that there was nothing in it for himself. From the moment he actively
+pursued the charming associate of his adventure, from that moment his position
+weakened, for he was then acting in an interested way. It was only within a few
+days that he had fixed himself a limit: he promised himself his consistency
+should end with Sarah&rsquo;s arrival. It was arguing correctly to feel the
+title to a free hand conferred on him by this event. If he wasn&rsquo;t to be
+let alone he should be merely a dupe to act with delicacy. If he wasn&rsquo;t
+to be trusted he could at least take his ease. If he was to be placed under
+control he gained leave to try what his position <i>might</i> agreeably give
+him. An ideal rigour would perhaps postpone the trial till after the Pococks
+had shown their spirit; and it was to an ideal rigour that he had quite
+promised himself to conform.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly, however, on this particular day, he felt a particular fear under
+which everything collapsed. He knew abruptly that he was afraid of
+himself&mdash;and yet not in relation to the effect on his sensibilities of
+another hour of Madame de Vionnet. What he dreaded was the effect of a single
+hour of Sarah Pocock, as to whom he was visited, in troubled nights, with
+fantastic waking dreams. She loomed at him larger than life; she increased in
+volume as she drew nearer; she so met his eyes that, his imagination taking,
+after the first step, all, and more than all, the strides, he already felt her
+come down on him, already burned, under her reprobation, with the blush of
+guilt, already consented, by way of penance, to the instant forfeiture of
+everything. He saw himself, under her direction, recommitted to Woollett as
+juvenile offenders are committed to reformatories. It wasn&rsquo;t of course
+that Woollett was really a place of discipline; but he knew in advance that
+Sarah&rsquo;s salon at the hotel would be. His danger, at any rate, in such
+moods of alarm, was some concession, on this ground, that would involve a sharp
+rupture with the actual; therefore if he waited to take leave of that actual he
+might wholly miss his chance. It was represented with supreme vividness by
+Madame de Vionnet, and that is why, in a word, he waited no longer. He had seen
+in a flash that he must anticipate Mrs. Pocock. He was accordingly much
+disappointed on now learning from the portress that the lady of his quest was
+not in Paris. She had gone for some days to the country. There was nothing in
+this accident but what was natural; yet it produced for poor Strether a drop of
+all confidence. It was suddenly as if he should never see her again, and as if
+moreover he had brought it on himself by not having been quite kind to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the advantage of his having let his fancy lose itself for a little in
+the gloom that, as by reaction, the prospect began really to brighten from the
+moment the deputation from Woollett alighted on the platform of the station.
+They had come straight from Havre, having sailed from New York to that port,
+and having also, thanks to a happy voyage, made land with a promptitude that
+left Chad Newsome, who had meant to meet them at the dock, belated. He had
+received their telegram, with the announcement of their immediate further
+advance, just as he was taking the train for Havre, so that nothing had
+remained for him but to await them in Paris. He hastily picked up Strether, at
+the hotel, for this purpose, and he even, with easy pleasantry, suggested the
+attendance of Waymarsh as well&mdash;Waymarsh, at the moment his cab rattled
+up, being engaged, under Strether&rsquo;s contemplative range, in a grave
+perambulation of the familiar court. Waymarsh had learned from his companion,
+who had already had a note, delivered by hand, from Chad, that the Pococks were
+due, and had ambiguously, though, as always, impressively, glowered at him over
+the circumstance; carrying himself in a manner in which Strether was now expert
+enough to recognise his uncertainty, in the premises, as to the best tone. The
+only tone he aimed at with confidence was a full tone&mdash;which was
+necessarily difficult in the absence of a full knowledge. The Pococks were a
+quantity as yet unmeasured, and, as he had practically brought them over, so
+this witness had to that extent exposed himself. He wanted to feel right about
+it, but could only, at the best, for the time, feel vague. &ldquo;I shall look
+to you, you know, immensely,&rdquo; our friend had said, &ldquo;to help me with
+them,&rdquo; and he had been quite conscious of the effect of the remark, and
+of others of the same sort, on his comrade&rsquo;s sombre sensibility. He had
+insisted on the fact that Waymarsh would quite like Mrs. Pocock&mdash;one could
+be certain he would: he would be with her about everything, and she would also
+be with <i>him</i>, and Miss Barrace&rsquo;s nose, in short, would find itself
+out of joint.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in the court for
+Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself quiet while, caged and
+leonine, his fellow traveller paced and turned before him. Chad Newsome was
+doubtless to be struck, when he arrived, with the sharpness of their opposition
+at this particular hour; he was to remember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came
+with him and with Strether to the street and stood there with a face
+half-wistful and half-rueful. They talked of him, the two others, as they
+drove, and Strether put Chad in possession of much of his own strained sense of
+things. He had already, a few days before, named to him the wire he was
+convinced their friend had pulled&mdash;a confidence that had made on the young
+man&rsquo;s part quite hugely for curiosity and diversion. The action of the
+matter, moreover, Strether could see, was to penetrate; he saw that is, how
+Chad judged a system of influence in which Waymarsh had served as a
+determinant&mdash;an impression just now quickened again; with the whole
+bearing of such a fact on the youth&rsquo;s view of his relatives. As it came
+up between them that they might now take their friend for a feature of the
+control of these latter now sought to be exerted from Woollett, Strether felt
+indeed how it would be stamped all over him, half an hour later for Sarah
+Pocock&rsquo;s eyes, that he was as much on Chad&rsquo;s &ldquo;side&rdquo; as
+Waymarsh had probably described him. He was letting himself at present, go;
+there was no denying it; it might be desperation, it might be confidence; he
+should offer himself to the arriving travellers bristling with all the lucidity
+he had cultivated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He repeated to Chad what he had been saying in the court to Waymarsh; how there
+was no doubt whatever that his sister would find the latter a kindred spirit,
+no doubt of the alliance, based on an exchange of views, that the pair would
+successfully strike up. They would become as thick as thieves&mdash;which
+moreover was but a development of what Strether remembered to have said in one
+of his first discussions with his mate, struck as he had then already been with
+the elements of affinity between that personage and Mrs. Newsome herself.
+&ldquo;I told him, one day, when he had questioned me on your mother, that she
+was a person who, when he should know her, would rouse in him, I was sure, a
+special enthusiasm; and that hangs together with the conviction we now
+feel&mdash;this certitude that Mrs. Pocock will take him into her boat. For
+it&rsquo;s your mother&rsquo;s own boat that she&rsquo;s pulling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Chad, &ldquo;Mother&rsquo;s worth fifty of Sally!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same you&rsquo;ll
+be meeting your mother&rsquo;s representative&mdash;just as I shall. I feel
+like the outgoing ambassador,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;doing honour to his
+appointed successor.&rdquo; A moment after speaking as he had just done he felt
+he had inadvertently rather cheapened Mrs. Newsome to her son; an impression
+audibly reflected, as at first seen, in Chad&rsquo;s prompt protest. He had
+recently rather failed of apprehension of the young man&rsquo;s attitude and
+temper&mdash;remaining principally conscious of how little worry, at the worst,
+he wasted, and he studied him at this critical hour with renewed interest. Chad
+had done exactly what he had promised him a fortnight previous&mdash;had
+accepted without another question his plea for delay. He was waiting cheerfully
+and handsomely, but also inscrutably and with a slight increase perhaps of the
+hardness originally involved in his acquired high polish. He was neither
+excited nor depressed; was easy and acute and deliberate&mdash;unhurried
+unflurried unworried, only at most a little less amused than usual. Strether
+felt him more than ever a justification of the extraordinary process of which
+his own absurd spirit had been the arena; he knew as their cab rolled along,
+knew as he hadn&rsquo;t even yet known, that nothing else than what Chad had
+done and had been would have led to his present showing. They had made him,
+these things, what he was, and the business hadn&rsquo;t been easy; it had
+taken time and trouble, it had cost, above all, a price. The result at any rate
+was now to be offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that was concerned,
+was glad to be there to witness. Would she in the least make it out or take it
+in, the result, or would she in the least care for it if she did? He scratched
+his chin as he asked himself by what name, when challenged&mdash;as he was sure
+he should be&mdash;he could call it for her. Oh those were determinations she
+must herself arrive at; since she wanted so much to see, let her see then and
+welcome. She had come out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in
+Strether&rsquo;s inner sense that she practically wouldn&rsquo;t see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a word that
+next dropped from him. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re children; they play at
+life!&rdquo;&mdash;and the exclamation was significant and reassuring. It
+implied that he hadn&rsquo;t then, for his companion&rsquo;s sensibility,
+appeared to give Mrs. Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend&rsquo;s
+presently asking him if it were his idea that Mrs. Pocock and Madame de Vionnet
+should become acquainted. Strether was still more sharply struck, hereupon,
+with Chad&rsquo;s lucidity. &ldquo;Why, isn&rsquo;t that exactly&mdash;to get a
+sight of the company I keep&mdash;what she has come out for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;I&rsquo;m afraid it is,&rdquo; Strether unguardedly replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad&rsquo;s quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation. &ldquo;Why do you say
+you&rsquo;re afraid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, because I feel a certain responsibility. It&rsquo;s my testimony,
+I imagine, that will have been at the bottom of Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s curiosity.
+My letters, as I&rsquo;ve supposed you to understand from the beginning, have
+spoken freely. I&rsquo;ve certainly said my little say about Madame de
+Vionnet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All that, for Chad, was beautifully obvious. &ldquo;Yes, but you&rsquo;ve only
+spoken handsomely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never more handsomely of any woman. But it&rsquo;s just that
+tone&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That tone,&rdquo; said Chad, &ldquo;that has fetched her? I dare say;
+but I&rsquo;ve no quarrel with you about it. And no more has Madame de Vionnet.
+Don&rsquo;t you know by this time how she likes you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;&mdash;and Strether had, with his groan, a real pang of
+melancholy. &ldquo;For all I&rsquo;ve done for her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah you&rsquo;ve done a great deal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad&rsquo;s urbanity fairly shamed him, and he was at this moment absolutely
+impatient to see the face Sarah Pocock would present to a sort of thing, as he
+synthetically phrased it to himself, with no adequate forecast of which,
+despite his admonitions, she would certainly arrive. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done
+<i>this!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, this is all right. She likes,&rdquo; Chad comfortably remarked,
+&ldquo;to be liked.&rdquo;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It gave his companion a moment&rsquo;s thought. &ldquo;And she&rsquo;s sure
+Mrs. Pocock <i>will</i>&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I say that for you. She likes your liking her; it&rsquo;s so much,
+as it were,&rdquo; Chad laughed, &ldquo;to the good. However, she doesn&rsquo;t
+despair of Sarah either, and is prepared, on her own side, to go all
+lengths.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the way of appreciation?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, and of everything else. In the way of general amiability,
+hospitality and welcome. She&rsquo;s under arms,&rdquo; Chad laughed again;
+&ldquo;she&rsquo;s prepared.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether took it in; then as if an echo of Miss Barrace were in the air:
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s wonderful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t begin to know <i>how</i> wonderful!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a depth in it, to Strether&rsquo;s ear, of confirmed
+luxury&mdash;almost a kind of unconscious insolence of proprietorship; but the
+effect of the glimpse was not at this moment to foster speculation: there was
+something so conclusive in so much graceful and generous assurance. It was in
+fact a fresh evocation; and the evocation had before many minutes another
+consequence. &ldquo;Well, I shall see her oftener now. I shall see her as much
+as I like&mdash;by your leave; which is what I hitherto haven&rsquo;t
+done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has been,&rdquo; said Chad, but without reproach, &ldquo;only your
+own fault. I tried to bring you together, and <i>she</i>, my dear
+fellow&mdash;I never saw her more charming to any man. But you&rsquo;ve got
+your extraordinary ideas.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I <i>did</i> have,&rdquo; Strether murmured, while he felt both
+how they had possessed him and how they had now lost their authority. He
+couldn&rsquo;t have traced the sequence to the end, but it was all because of
+Mrs. Pocock. Mrs. Pocock might be because of Mrs. Newsome, but that was still
+to be proved. What came over him was the sense of having stupidly failed to
+profit where profit would have been precious. It had been open to him to see so
+much more of her, and he had but let the good days pass. Fierce in him almost
+was the resolve to lose no more of them, and he whimsically reflected, while at
+Chad&rsquo;s side he drew nearer to his destination, that it was after all
+Sarah who would have quickened his chance. What her visit of inquisition might
+achieve in other directions was as yet all obscure&mdash;only not obscure that
+it would do supremely much to bring two earnest persons together. He had but to
+listen to Chad at this moment to feel it; for Chad was in the act of remarking
+to him that they of course both counted on him&mdash;he himself and the other
+earnest person&mdash;for cheer and support. It was brave to Strether to hear
+him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out was to make things
+ravishing to the Pococks. No, if Madame de Vionnet compassed <i>that</i>,
+compassed the ravishment of the Pococks, Madame de Vionnet would be prodigious.
+It would be a beautiful plan if it succeeded, and it all came to the question
+of Sarah&rsquo;s being really bribeable. The precedent of his own case helped
+Strether perhaps but little to consider she might prove so; it being distinct
+that her character would rather make for every possible difference. This idea
+of his own bribeability set him apart for himself; with the further mark in
+fact that his case was absolutely proved. He liked always, where Lambert
+Strether was concerned, to know the worst, and what he now seemed to know was
+not only that he was bribeable, but that he had been effectually bribed. The
+only difficulty was that he couldn&rsquo;t quite have said with what. It was as
+if he had sold himself, but hadn&rsquo;t somehow got the cash. That, however,
+was what, characteristically, <i>would</i> happen to him. It would naturally be
+his kind of traffic. While he thought of these things he reminded Chad of the
+truth they mustn&rsquo;t lose sight of&mdash;the truth that, with all deference
+to her susceptibility to new interests, Sarah would have come out with a high
+firm definite purpose. &ldquo;She hasn&rsquo;t come out, you know, to be
+bamboozled. We may all be ravishing&mdash;nothing perhaps can be more easy for
+us; but she hasn&rsquo;t come out to be ravished. She has come out just simply
+to take you home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh well, with <i>her</i> I&rsquo;ll go,&rdquo; said Chad
+good-humouredly. &ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;ll allow <i>that</i>.&rdquo; And
+then as for a minute Strether said nothing: &ldquo;Or is your idea that when
+I&rsquo;ve seen her I shan&rsquo;t want to go?&rdquo; As this question,
+however, again left his friend silent he presently went on: &ldquo;My own idea
+at any rate is that they shall have while they&rsquo;re here the best sort of
+time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was at this that Strether spoke. &ldquo;Ah there you are! I think if you
+really wanted to go&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Chad to bring it out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you wouldn&rsquo;t trouble about our good time. You wouldn&rsquo;t
+care what sort of a time we have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad could always take in the easiest way in the world any ingenious
+suggestion. &ldquo;I see. But can I help it? I&rsquo;m too decent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, you&rsquo;re too decent!&rdquo; Strether heavily sighed. And he
+felt for the moment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made no
+rejoinder. But he spoke again as they came in sight of the station. &ldquo;Do
+you mean to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As to this Strether was ready. &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But haven&rsquo;t you told me they know about her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I&rsquo;ve told you your mother knows.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And won&rsquo;t she have told Sally?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s one of the things I want to see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if you find she <i>has</i>&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will I then, you mean, bring them together?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Chad with his pleasant promptness: &ldquo;to show her
+there&rsquo;s nothing in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether hesitated. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that I care very much what she
+may think there&rsquo;s in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not if it represents what Mother thinks?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah what <i>does</i> your mother think?&rdquo; There was in this some
+sound of bewilderment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But they were just driving up, and help, of a sort, might after all be quite at
+hand. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t that, my dear man, what we&rsquo;re both just going to
+make out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+Strether quitted the station half an hour later in different company. Chad had
+taken charge, for the journey to the hotel, of Sarah, Mamie, the maid and the
+luggage, all spaciously installed and conveyed; and it was only after the four
+had rolled away that his companion got into a cab with Jim. A strange new
+feeling had come over Strether, in consequence of which his spirits had risen;
+it was as if what had occurred on the alighting of his critics had been
+something other than his fear, though his fear had yet not been of an instant
+scene of violence. His impression had been nothing but what was
+inevitable&mdash;he said that to himself; yet relief and reassurance had softly
+dropped upon him. Nothing could be so odd as to be indebted for these things to
+the look of faces and the sound of voices that had been with him to satiety, as
+he might have said, for years; but he now knew, all the same, how uneasy he had
+felt; that was brought home to him by his present sense of a respite. It had
+come moreover in the flash of an eye, it had come in the smile with which
+Sarah, whom, at the window of her compartment, they had effusively greeted from
+the platform, rustled down to them a moment later, fresh and handsome from her
+cool June progress through the charming land. It was only a sign, but enough:
+she was going to be gracious and unallusive, she was going to play the larger
+game&mdash;which was still more apparent, after she had emerged from
+Chad&rsquo;s arms, in her direct greeting to the valued friend of her family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether <i>was</i> then as much as ever the valued friend of her family, it
+was something he could at all events go on with; and the manner of his response
+to it expressed even for himself how little he had enjoyed the prospect of
+ceasing to figure in that likeness. He had always seen Sarah gracious&mdash;had
+in fact rarely seen her shy or dry, her marked thin-lipped smile, intense
+without brightness and as prompt to act as the scrape of a safety-match; the
+protrusion of her rather remarkably long chin, which in her case represented
+invitation and urbanity, and not, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance;
+the penetration of her voice to a distance, the general encouragement and
+approval of her manner, were all elements with which intercourse had made him
+familiar, but which he noted today almost as if she had been a new
+acquaintance. This first glimpse of her had given a brief but vivid accent to
+her resemblance to her mother; he could have taken her for Mrs. Newsome while
+she met his eyes as the train rolled into the station. It was an impression
+that quickly dropped; Mrs. Newsome was much handsomer, and while Sarah inclined
+to the massive her mother had, at an age, still the girdle of a maid; also the
+latter&rsquo;s chin was rather short, than long, and her smile, by good
+fortune, much more, oh ever so much more, mercifully vague. Strether had seen
+Mrs. Newsome reserved; he had literally heard her silent, though he had never
+known her unpleasant. It was the case with Mrs. Pocock that he had known
+<i>her</i> unpleasant, even though he had never known her not affable. She had
+forms of affability that were in a high degree assertive; nothing for instance
+had ever been more striking than that she was affable to Jim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What had told in any case at the window of the train was her high clear
+forehead, that forehead which her friends, for some reason, always thought of
+as a &ldquo;brow&rdquo;; the long reach of her eyes&mdash;it came out at this
+juncture in such a manner as to remind him, oddly enough, also of that of
+Waymarsh&rsquo;s; and the unusual gloss of her dark hair, dressed and hatted,
+after her mother&rsquo;s refined example, with such an avoidance of extremes
+that it was always spoken of at Woollett as &ldquo;their own.&rdquo; Though
+this analogy dropped as soon as she was on the platform it had lasted long
+enough to make him feel all the advantage, as it were, of his relief. The woman
+at home, the woman to whom he was attached, was before him just long enough to
+give him again the measure of the wretchedness, in fact really of the shame, of
+their having to recognise the formation, between them, of a
+&ldquo;split.&rdquo; He had taken this measure in solitude and meditation: but
+the catastrophe, as Sarah steamed up, looked for its seconds unprecedentedly
+dreadful&mdash;or proved, more exactly, altogether unthinkable; so that his
+finding something free and familiar to respond to brought with it an instant
+renewal of his loyalty. He had suddenly sounded the whole depth, had gasped at
+what he might have lost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, he could now, for the quarter of an hour of their detention hover about
+the travellers as soothingly as if their direct message to him was that he had
+lost nothing. He wasn&rsquo;t going to have Sarah write to her mother that
+night that he was in any way altered or strange. There had been times enough
+for a month when it had seemed to him that he was strange, that he was altered,
+in every way; but that was a matter for himself; he knew at least whose
+business it was <i>not</i>; it was not at all events such a circumstance as
+Sarah&rsquo;s own unaided lights would help her to. Even if she had come out to
+flash those lights more than yet appeared she wouldn&rsquo;t make much headway
+against mere pleasantness. He counted on being able to be merely pleasant to
+the end, and if only from incapacity moreover to formulate anything different.
+He couldn&rsquo;t even formulate to himself his being changed and queer; it had
+taken place, the process, somewhere deep down; Maria Gostrey had caught
+glimpses of it; but how was he to fish it up, even if he desired, for Mrs.
+Pocock? This was then the spirit in which he hovered, and with the easier throb
+in it much indebted furthermore to the impression of high and established
+adequacy as a pretty girl promptly produced in him by Mamie. He had wondered
+vaguely&mdash;turning over many things in the fidget of his thoughts&mdash;if
+Mamie <i>were</i> as pretty as Woollett published her; as to which issue seeing
+her now again was to be so swept away by Woollett&rsquo;s opinion that this
+consequence really let loose for the imagination an avalanche of others. There
+were positively five minutes in which the last word seemed of necessity to
+abide with a Woollett represented by a Mamie. This was the sort of truth the
+place itself would feel; it would send her forth in confidence; it would point
+to her with triumph; it would take its stand on her with assurance; it would be
+conscious of no requirements she didn&rsquo;t meet, of no question she
+couldn&rsquo;t answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, it was right, Strether slipped smoothly enough into the cheerfulness of
+saying: granted that a community <i>might</i> be best represented by a young
+lady of twenty-two, Mamie perfectly played the part, played it as if she were
+used to it, and looked and spoke and dressed the character. He wondered if she
+mightn&rsquo;t, in the high light of Paris, a cool full studio-light, becoming
+yet treacherous, show as too conscious of these matters; but the next moment he
+felt satisfied that her consciousness was after all empty for its size, rather
+too simple than too mixed, and that the kind way with her would be not to take
+many things out of it, but to put as many as possible in. She was robust and
+conveniently tall; just a trifle too bloodlessly fair perhaps, but with a
+pleasant public familiar radiance that affirmed her vitality. She might have
+been &ldquo;receiving&rdquo; for Woollett, wherever she found herself, and
+there was something in her manner, her tone, her motion, her pretty blue eyes,
+her pretty perfect teeth and her very small, too small, nose, that immediately
+placed her, to the fancy, between the windows of a hot bright room in which
+voices were high&mdash;up at that end to which people were brought to be
+&ldquo;presented.&rdquo; They were there to congratulate, these images, and
+Strether&rsquo;s renewed vision, on this hint, completed the idea. What Mamie
+was like was the happy bride, the bride after the church and just before going
+away. She wasn&rsquo;t the mere maiden, and yet was only as much married as
+that quantity came to. She was in the brilliant acclaimed festal stage. Well,
+might it last her long!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether rejoiced in these things for Chad, who was all genial attention to the
+needs of his friends, besides having arranged that his servant should reinforce
+him; the ladies were certainly pleasant to see, and Mamie would be at any time
+and anywhere pleasant to exhibit. She would look extraordinarily like his young
+wife&mdash;the wife of a honeymoon, should he go about with her; but that was
+his own affair&mdash;or perhaps it was hers; it was at any rate something she
+couldn&rsquo;t help. Strether remembered how he had seen him come up with
+Jeanne de Vionnet in Gloriani&rsquo;s garden, and the fancy he had had about
+that&mdash;the fancy obscured now, thickly overlaid with others; the
+recollection was during these minutes his only note of trouble. He had often,
+in spite of himself, wondered if Chad but too probably were not with Jeanne the
+object of a still and shaded flame. It was on the cards that the child
+<i>might</i> be tremulously in love, and this conviction now flickered up not a
+bit the less for his disliking to think of it, for its being, in a complicated
+situation, a complication the more, and for something indescribable in Mamie,
+something at all events straightway lent her by his own mind, something that
+gave her value, gave her intensity and purpose, as the symbol of an opposition.
+Little Jeanne wasn&rsquo;t really at all in question&mdash;how <i>could</i> she
+be?&mdash;yet from the moment Miss Pocock had shaken her skirts on the
+platform, touched up the immense bows of her hat and settled properly over her
+shoulder the strap of her morocco-and-gilt travelling-satchel, from that moment
+little Jeanne was opposed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was in the cab with Jim that impressions really crowded on Strether, giving
+him the strangest sense of length of absence from people among whom he had
+lived for years. Having them thus come out to him was as if he had returned to
+find them: and the droll promptitude of Jim&rsquo;s mental reaction threw his
+own initiation far back into the past. Whoever might or mightn&rsquo;t be
+suited by what was going on among them, Jim, for one, would certainly be: his
+instant recognition&mdash;frank and whimsical&mdash;of what the affair was for
+<i>him</i> gave Strether a glow of pleasure. &ldquo;I say, you know, this
+<i>is</i> about my shape, and if it hadn&rsquo;t been for
+<i>you</i>&mdash;!&rdquo; so he broke out as the charming streets met his
+healthy appetite; and he wound up, after an expressive nudge, with a clap of
+his companion&rsquo;s knee and an &ldquo;Oh you, you&mdash;you <i>are</i> doing
+it!&rdquo; that was charged with rich meaning. Strether felt in it the
+intention of homage, but, with a curiosity otherwise occupied, postponed taking
+it up. What he was asking himself for the time was how Sarah Pocock, in the
+opportunity already given her, had judged her brother&mdash;from whom he
+himself, as they finally, at the station, separated for their different
+conveyances, had had a look into which he could read more than one message.
+However Sarah was judging her brother, Chad&rsquo;s conclusion about his
+sister, and about her husband and her husband&rsquo;s sister, was at the least
+on the way not to fail of confidence. Strether felt the confidence, and that,
+as the look between them was an exchange, what he himself gave back was
+relatively vague. This comparison of notes however could wait; everything
+struck him as depending on the effect produced by Chad. Neither Sarah nor Mamie
+had in any way, at the station&mdash;where they had had after all ample
+time&mdash;broken out about it; which, to make up for this, was what our friend
+had expected of Jim as soon as they should find themselves together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was queer to him that he had that noiseless brush with Chad; an ironic
+intelligence with this youth on the subject of his relatives, an intelligence
+carried on under their nose and, as might be said, at their expense&mdash;such
+a matter marked again for him strongly the number of stages he had come; albeit
+that if the number seemed great the time taken for the final one was but the
+turn of a hand. He had before this had many moments of wondering if he himself
+weren&rsquo;t perhaps changed even as Chad was changed. Only what in Chad was
+conspicuous improvement&mdash;well, he had no name ready for the working, in
+his own organism, of his own more timid dose. He should have to see first what
+this action would amount to. And for his occult passage with the young man,
+after all, the directness of it had no greater oddity than the fact that the
+young man&rsquo;s way with the three travellers should have been so happy a
+manifestation. Strether liked him for it, on the spot, as he hadn&rsquo;t yet
+liked him; it affected him while it lasted as he might have been affected by
+some light pleasant perfect work of art: to that degree that he wondered if
+they were really worthy of it, took it in and did it justice; to that degree
+that it would have been scarce a miracle if, there in the luggage-room, while
+they waited for their things, Sarah had pulled his sleeve and drawn him aside.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re right; we haven&rsquo;t quite known what you mean, Mother
+and I, but now we see. Chad&rsquo;s magnificent; what can one want more? If
+<i>this</i> is the kind of thing&mdash;!&rdquo; On which they might, as it
+were, have embraced and begun to work together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah how much, as it was, for all her bridling brightness&mdash;which was merely
+general and noticed nothing&mdash;<i>would</i> they work together? Strether
+knew he was unreasonable; he set it down to his being nervous: people
+couldn&rsquo;t notice everything and speak of everything in a quarter of an
+hour. Possibly, no doubt, also, he made too much of Chad&rsquo;s display. Yet,
+none the less, when, at the end of five minutes, in the cab, Jim Pocock had
+said nothing either&mdash;hadn&rsquo;t said, that is, what Strether wanted,
+though he had said much else&mdash;it all suddenly bounced back to their being
+either stupid or wilful. It was more probably on the whole the former; so that
+that would be the drawback of the bridling brightness. Yes, they would bridle
+and be bright; they would make the best of what was before them, but their
+observation would fail; it would be beyond them; they simply wouldn&rsquo;t
+understand. Of what use would it be then that they had come?&mdash;if they
+weren&rsquo;t to be intelligent up to <i>that</i> point: unless indeed he
+himself were utterly deluded and extravagant? Was he, on this question of
+Chad&rsquo;s improvement, fantastic and away from the truth? Did he live in a
+false world, a world that had grown simply to suit him, and was his present
+slight irritation&mdash;in the face now of Jim&rsquo;s silence in
+particular&mdash;but the alarm of the vain thing menaced by the touch of the
+real? Was this contribution of the real possibly the mission of the
+Pococks?&mdash;had they come to make the work of observation, as <i>he</i> had
+practised observation, crack and crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms
+in which honest minds could deal with him? Had they come in short to be sane
+where Strether was destined to feel that he himself had only been silly?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced at such a contingency, but it failed to hold him long when once he
+had reflected that he would have been silly, in this case, with Maria Gostrey
+and little Bilham, with Madame de Vionnet and little Jeanne, with Lambert
+Strether, in fine, and above all with Chad Newsome himself. Wouldn&rsquo;t it
+be found to have made more for reality to be silly with these persons than sane
+with Sarah and Jim? Jim in fact, he presently made up his mind, was
+individually out of it; Jim didn&rsquo;t care; Jim hadn&rsquo;t come out either
+for Chad or for him; Jim in short left the moral side to Sally and indeed
+simply availed himself now, for the sense of recreation, of the fact that he
+left almost everything to Sally. He was nothing compared to Sally, and not so
+much by reason of Sally&rsquo;s temper and will as by that of her more
+developed type and greater acquaintance with the world. He quite frankly and
+serenely confessed, as he sat there with Strether, that he felt his type hang
+far in the rear of his wife&rsquo;s and still further, if possible, in the rear
+of his sister&rsquo;s. Their types, he well knew, were recognised and
+acclaimed; whereas the most a leading Woollett business-man could hope to
+achieve socially, and for that matter industrially, was a certain freedom to
+play into this general glamour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The impression he made on our friend was another of the things that marked our
+friend&rsquo;s road. It was a strange impression, especially as so soon
+produced; Strether had received it, he judged, all in the twenty minutes; it
+struck him at least as but in a minor degree the work of the long Woollett
+years. Pocock was normally and consentingly though not quite wittingly out of
+the question. It was despite his being normal; it was despite his being
+cheerful; it was despite his being a leading Woollett business-man; and the
+determination of his fate left him thus perfectly usual&mdash;as everything
+else about it was clearly, to his sense, not less so. He seemed to say that
+there was a whole side of life on which the perfectly usual <i>was</i> for
+leading Woollett business-men to be out of the question. He made no more of it
+than that, and Strether, so far as Jim was concerned, desired to make no more.
+Only Strether&rsquo;s imagination, as always, worked, and he asked himself if
+this side of life were not somehow connected, for those who figured on it with
+the fact of marriage. Would <i>his</i> relation to it, had he married ten years
+before, have become now the same as Pocock&rsquo;s? Might it even become the
+same should he marry in a few months? Should he ever know himself as much out
+of the question for Mrs. Newsome as Jim knew himself&mdash;in a dim
+way&mdash;for Mrs. Jim?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To turn his eyes in that direction was to be personally reassured; he was
+different from Pocock; he had affirmed himself differently and was held after
+all in higher esteem. What none the less came home to him, however, at this
+hour, was that the society over there, that of which Sarah and Mamie&mdash;and,
+in a more eminent way, Mrs. Newsome herself&mdash;were specimens, was
+essentially a society of women, and that poor Jim wasn&rsquo;t in it. He
+himself Lambert Strether, <i>was</i> as yet in some degree&mdash;which was an
+odd situation for a man; but it kept coming back to him in a whimsical way that
+he should perhaps find his marriage had cost him his place. This occasion
+indeed, whatever that fancy represented, was not a time of sensible exclusion
+for Jim, who was in a state of manifest response to the charm of his adventure.
+Small and fat and constantly facetious, straw-coloured and destitute of marks,
+he would have been practically indistinguishable hadn&rsquo;t his constant
+preference for light-grey clothes, for white hats, for very big cigars and very
+little stories, done what it could for his identity. There were signs in him,
+though none of them plaintive, of always paying for others; and the principal
+one perhaps was just this failure of type. It was with this that he paid,
+rather than with fatigue or waste; and also doubtless a little with the effort
+of humour&mdash;never irrelevant to the conditions, to the relations, with
+which he was acquainted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gurgled his joy as they rolled through the happy streets; he declared that
+his trip was a regular windfall, and that he wasn&rsquo;t there, he was eager
+to remark, to hang back from anything: he didn&rsquo;t know quite what Sally
+had come for, but <i>he</i> had come for a good time. Strether indulged him
+even while wondering if what Sally wanted her brother to go back for was to
+become like her husband. He trusted that a good time was to be, out and out,
+the programme for all of them; and he assented liberally to Jim&rsquo;s
+proposal that, disencumbered and irresponsible&mdash;his things were in the
+omnibus with those of the others&mdash;they should take a further turn round
+before going to the hotel. It wasn&rsquo;t for <i>him</i> to tackle
+Chad&mdash;it was Sally&rsquo;s job; and as it would be like her, he felt, to
+open fire on the spot, it wouldn&rsquo;t be amiss of them to hold off and give
+her time. Strether, on his side, only asked to give her time; so he jogged with
+his companion along boulevards and avenues, trying to extract from meagre
+material some forecast of his catastrophe. He was quick enough to see that Jim
+Pocock declined judgement, had hovered quite round the outer edge of discussion
+and anxiety, leaving all analysis of their question to the ladies alone and now
+only feeling his way toward some small droll cynicism. It broke out afresh, the
+cynicism&mdash;it had already shown a flicker&mdash;in a but slightly deferred:
+&ldquo;Well, hanged if I would if <i>I</i> were he!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean you wouldn&rsquo;t in Chad&rsquo;s place&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give up this to go back and boss the advertising!&rdquo; Poor Jim, with
+his arms folded and his little legs out in the open fiacre, drank in the
+sparkling Paris noon and carried his eyes from one side of their vista to the
+other. &ldquo;Why I want to come right out and live here myself. And I want to
+live while I <i>am</i> here too. I feel with <i>you</i>&mdash;oh you&rsquo;ve
+been grand, old man, and I&rsquo;ve twigged&mdash;that it ain&rsquo;t right to
+worry Chad. <i>I</i> don&rsquo;t mean to persecute him; I couldn&rsquo;t in
+conscience. It&rsquo;s thanks to you at any rate that I&rsquo;m here, and
+I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;m much obliged. You&rsquo;re a lovely pair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were things in this speech that Strether let pass for the time.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you then think it important the advertising should be
+thoroughly taken in hand? Chad <i>will</i> be, so far as capacity is
+concerned,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;the man to do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where did he get his capacity,&rdquo; Jim asked, &ldquo;over
+here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t get it over here, and the wonderful thing is that over
+here he hasn&rsquo;t inevitably lost it. He has a natural turn for business, an
+extraordinary head. He comes by that,&rdquo; Strether explained,
+&ldquo;honestly enough. He&rsquo;s in that respect his father&rsquo;s son, and
+also&mdash;for she&rsquo;s wonderful in her way too&mdash;his mother&rsquo;s.
+He has other tastes and other tendencies; but Mrs. Newsome and your wife are
+quite right about his having that. He&rsquo;s very remarkable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I guess he is!&rdquo; Jim Pocock comfortably sighed. &ldquo;But if
+you&rsquo;ve believed so in his making us hum, why have you so prolonged the
+discussion? Don&rsquo;t you know we&rsquo;ve been quite anxious about
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These questions were not informed with earnestness, but Strether saw he must
+none the less make a choice and take a line. &ldquo;Because, you see,
+I&rsquo;ve greatly liked it. I&rsquo;ve liked my Paris, I dare say I&rsquo;ve
+liked it too much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you old wretch!&rdquo; Jim gaily exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But nothing&rsquo;s concluded,&rdquo; Strether went on. &ldquo;The case
+is more complex than it looks from Woollett.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh well, it looks bad enough from Woollett!&rdquo; Jim declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even after all I&rsquo;ve written?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jim bethought himself. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it what you&rsquo;ve written that has
+made Mrs. Newsome pack us off? That at least and Chad&rsquo;s not turning
+up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether made a reflexion of his own. &ldquo;I see. That she should do
+something was, no doubt, inevitable, and your wife has therefore of course come
+out to act.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; Jim concurred&mdash;&ldquo;to act. But Sally comes out to
+act, you know,&rdquo; he lucidly added, &ldquo;every time she leaves the house.
+She never comes out but she <i>does</i> act. She&rsquo;s acting moreover now
+for her mother, and that fixes the scale.&rdquo; Then he wound up, opening all
+his senses to it, with a renewed embrace of pleasant Paris. &ldquo;We
+haven&rsquo;t all the same at Woollett got anything like this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether continued to consider. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m bound to say for you all that
+you strike me as having arrived in a very mild and reasonable frame of mind.
+You don&rsquo;t show your claws. I felt just now in Mrs. Pocock no symptom of
+that. She isn&rsquo;t fierce,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m such a
+nervous idiot that I thought she might be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh don&rsquo;t you know her well enough,&rdquo; Pocock asked, &ldquo;to
+have noticed that she never gives herself away, any more than her mother ever
+does? They ain&rsquo;t fierce, either of &lsquo;em; they let you come quite
+close. They wear their fur the smooth side out&mdash;the warm side in. Do you
+know what they are?&rdquo; Jim pursued as he looked about him, giving the
+question, as Strether felt, but half his care&mdash;&ldquo;do you know what
+they are? They&rsquo;re about as intense as they can live.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&rdquo;&mdash;and Strether&rsquo;s concurrence had a positive
+precipitation; &ldquo;they&rsquo;re about as intense as they can live.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t lash about and shake the cage,&rdquo; said Jim, who
+seemed pleased with his analogy; &ldquo;and it&rsquo;s at feeding-time that
+they&rsquo;re quietest. But they always get there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They do indeed&mdash;they always get there!&rdquo; Strether replied with
+a laugh that justified his confession of nervousness. He disliked to be talking
+sincerely of Mrs. Newsome with Pocock; he could have talked insincerely. But
+there was something he wanted to know, a need created in him by her recent
+intermission, by his having given from the first so much, as now more than ever
+appeared to him, and got so little. It was as if a queer truth in his
+companion&rsquo;s metaphor had rolled over him with a rush. She <i>had</i> been
+quiet at feeding-time; she had fed, and Sarah had fed with her, out of the big
+bowl of all his recent free communication, his vividness and pleasantness, his
+ingenuity and even his eloquence, while the current of her response had
+steadily run thin. Jim meanwhile however, it was true, slipped
+characteristically into shallowness from the moment he ceased to speak out of
+the experience of a husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But of course Chad has now the advantage of being there before her. If
+he doesn&rsquo;t work that for all it&rsquo;s worth&mdash;!&rdquo; He sighed
+with contingent pity at his brother-in-law&rsquo;s possible want of resource.
+&ldquo;He has worked it on <i>you</i>, pretty well, eh?&rdquo; and he asked the
+next moment if there were anything new at the Varieties, which he pronounced in
+the American manner. They talked about the Varieties&mdash;Strether confessing
+to a knowledge which produced again on Pocock&rsquo;s part a play of innuendo
+as vague as a nursery-rhyme, yet as aggressive as an elbow in his side; and
+they finished their drive under the protection of easy themes. Strether waited
+to the end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim had seen Chad as
+different; and he could scarce have explained the discouragement he drew from
+the absence of this testimony. It was what he had taken his own stand on, so
+far as he had taken a stand; and if they were all only going to see nothing he
+had only wasted his time. He gave his friend till the very last moment, till
+they had come into sight of the hotel; and when poor Pocock only continued
+cheerful and envious and funny he fairly grew to dislike him, to feel him
+extravagantly common. If they were <i>all</i> going to see
+nothing!&mdash;Strether knew, as this came back to him, that he was also
+letting Pocock represent for him what Mrs. Newsome wouldn&rsquo;t see. He went
+on disliking, in the light of Jim&rsquo;s commonness, to talk to him about that
+lady; yet just before the cab pulled up he knew the extent of his desire for
+the real word from Woollett.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has Mrs. Newsome at all given way&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Given way&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;Jim echoed it with the practical
+derision of his sense of a long past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Under the strain, I mean, of hope deferred, of disappointment repeated
+and thereby intensified.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh is she prostrate, you mean?&rdquo;&mdash;he had his categories in
+hand. &ldquo;Why yes, she&rsquo;s prostrate&mdash;just as Sally is. But
+they&rsquo;re never so lively, you know, as when they&rsquo;re
+prostrate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah Sarah&rsquo;s prostrate?&rdquo; Strether vaguely murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s when they&rsquo;re prostrate that they most sit up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s sitting up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All night, my boy&mdash;for <i>you!</i>&rdquo; And Jim fetched him, with
+a vulgar little guffaw, a thrust that gave relief to the picture. But he had
+got what he wanted. He felt on the spot that this <i>was</i> the real word from
+Woollett. &ldquo;So don&rsquo;t you go home!&rdquo; Jim added while he alighted
+and while his friend, letting him profusely pay the cabman, sat on in a
+momentary muse. Strether wondered if that were the real word too.
+</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>
+As the door of Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s salon was pushed open for him, the next day,
+well before noon, he was reached by a voice with a charming sound that made him
+just falter before crossing the threshold. Madame de Vionnet was already on the
+field, and this gave the drama a quicker pace than he felt it as
+yet&mdash;though his suspense had increased&mdash;in the power of any act of
+his own to do. He had spent the previous evening with all his old friends
+together yet he would still have described himself as quite in the dark in
+respect to a forecast of their influence on his situation. It was strange now,
+none the less, that in the light of this unexpected note of her presence he
+felt Madame de Vionnet a part of that situation as she hadn&rsquo;t even yet
+been. She was alone, he found himself assuming, with Sarah, and there was a
+bearing in that&mdash;somehow beyond his control&mdash;on his personal fate.
+Yet she was only saying something quite easy and independent&mdash;the thing
+she had come, as a good friend of Chad&rsquo;s, on purpose to say. &ldquo;There
+isn&rsquo;t anything at all&mdash;? I should be so delighted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was clear enough, when they were there before him, how she had been
+received. He saw this, as Sarah got up to greet him, from something fairly
+hectic in Sarah&rsquo;s face. He saw furthermore that they weren&rsquo;t, as
+had first come to him, alone together; he was at no loss as to the identity of
+the broad high back presented to him in the embrasure of the window furthest
+from the door. Waymarsh, whom he had to-day not yet seen, whom he only knew to
+have left the hotel before him, and who had taken part, the night previous, on
+Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s kind invitation, conveyed by Chad, in the entertainment,
+informal but cordial, promptly offered by that lady&mdash;Waymarsh had
+anticipated him even as Madame de Vionnet had done, and, with his hands in his
+pockets and his attitude unaffected by Strether&rsquo;s entrance, was looking
+out, in marked detachment, at the Rue de Rivoli. The latter felt it in the
+air&mdash;it was immense how Waymarsh could mark things&mdash;-that he had
+remained deeply dissociated from the overture to their hostess that we have
+recorded on Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s side. He had, conspicuously, tact,
+besides a stiff general view; and this was why he had left Mrs. Pocock to
+struggle alone. He would outstay the visitor; he would unmistakeably wait; to
+what had he been doomed for months past but waiting? Therefore she was to feel
+that she had him in reserve. What support she drew from this was still to be
+seen, for, although Sarah was vividly bright, she had given herself up for the
+moment to an ambiguous flushed formalism. She had had to reckon more quickly
+than she expected; but it concerned her first of all to signify that she was
+not to be taken unawares. Strether arrived precisely in time for her showing
+it. &ldquo;Oh you&rsquo;re too good; but I don&rsquo;t think I feel quite
+helpless. I have my brother&mdash;and these American friends. And then you know
+I&rsquo;ve been to Paris. I <i>know</i> Paris,&rdquo; said Sally Pocock in a
+tone that breathed a certain chill on Strether&rsquo;s heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but a woman, in this tiresome place where everything&rsquo;s always
+changing, a woman of good will,&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet threw off, &ldquo;can
+always help a woman. I&rsquo;m sure you &lsquo;know&rsquo;&mdash;but we know
+perhaps different things.&rdquo; She too, visibly, wished to make no mistake;
+but it was a fear of a different order and more kept out of sight. She smiled
+in welcome at Strether; she greeted him more familiarly than Mrs. Pocock; she
+put out her hand to him without moving from her place; and it came to him in
+the course of a minute and in the oddest way that&mdash;yes,
+positively&mdash;she was giving him over to ruin. She was all kindness and
+ease, but she couldn&rsquo;t help so giving him; she was exquisite, and her
+being just as she was poured for Sarah a sudden rush of meaning into his own
+equivocations. How could she know how she was hurting him? She wanted to show
+as simple and humble&mdash;in the degree compatible with operative charm; but
+it was just this that seemed to put him on her side. She struck him as dressed,
+as arranged, as prepared infinitely to conciliate&mdash;with the very poetry of
+good taste in her view of the conditions of her early call. She was ready to
+advise about dressmakers and shops; she held herself wholly at the disposition
+of Chad&rsquo;s family. Strether noticed her card on the table&mdash;her
+coronet and her &ldquo;Comtesse&rdquo;&mdash;and the imagination was sharp in
+him of certain private adjustments in Sarah&rsquo;s mind. She had never, he was
+sure, sat with a &ldquo;Comtesse&rdquo; before, and such was the specimen of
+that class he had been keeping to play on her. She had crossed the sea very
+particularly for a look at her; but he read in Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s own
+eyes that this curiosity hadn&rsquo;t been so successfully met as that she
+herself wouldn&rsquo;t now have more than ever need of him. She looked much as
+she had looked to him that morning at Notre Dame; he noted in fact the
+suggestive sameness of her discreet and delicate dress. It seemed to
+speak&mdash;perhaps a little prematurely or too finely&mdash;of the sense in
+which she would help Mrs. Pocock with the shops. The way that lady took her in,
+moreover, added depth to his impression of what Miss Gostrey, by their common
+wisdom, had escaped. He winced as he saw himself but for that timely prudence
+ushering in Maria as a guide and an example. There was however a touch of
+relief for him in his glimpse, so far as he had got it, of Sarah&rsquo;s line.
+She &ldquo;knew Paris.&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet had, for that matter, lightly
+taken this up. &ldquo;Ah then you&rsquo;ve a turn for that, an affinity that
+belongs to your family. Your brother, though his long experience makes a
+difference, I admit, has become one of us in a marvellous way.&rdquo; And she
+appealed to Strether in the manner of a woman who could always glide off with
+smoothness into another subject. Wasn&rsquo;t <i>he</i> struck with the way Mr.
+Newsome had made the place his own, and hadn&rsquo;t he been in a position to
+profit by his friend&rsquo;s wondrous expertness?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether felt the bravery, at the least, of her presenting herself so promptly
+to sound that note, and yet asked himself what other note, after all, she
+<i>could</i> strike from the moment she presented herself at all. She could
+meet Mrs. Pocock only on the ground of the obvious, and what feature of
+Chad&rsquo;s situation was more eminent than the fact that he had created for
+himself a new set of circumstances? Unless she hid herself altogether she could
+show but as one of these, an illustration of his domiciled and indeed of his
+confirmed condition. And the consciousness of all this in her charming eyes was
+so clear and fine that as she thus publicly drew him into her boat she produced
+in him such a silent agitation as he was not to fail afterwards to denounce as
+pusillanimous. &ldquo;Ah don&rsquo;t be so charming to me!&mdash;for it makes
+us intimate, and after all what <i>is</i> between us when I&rsquo;ve been so
+tremendously on my guard and have seen you but half a dozen times?&rdquo; He
+recognised once more the perverse law that so inveterately governed his poor
+personal aspects: it would be exactly <i>like</i> the way things always turned
+out for him that he should affect Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh as launched in a
+relation in which he had really never been launched at all. They were at this
+very moment&mdash;they could only be&mdash;attributing to him the full licence
+of it, and all by the operation of her own tone with him; whereas his sole
+licence had been to cling with intensity to the brink, not to dip so much as a
+toe into the flood. But the flicker of his fear on this occasion was not, as
+may be added, to repeat itself; it sprang up, for its moment, only to die down
+and then go out for ever. To meet his fellow visitor&rsquo;s invocation and,
+with Sarah&rsquo;s brilliant eyes on him, answer, <i>was</i> quite sufficiently
+to step into her boat. During the rest of the time her visit lasted he felt
+himself proceed to each of the proper offices, successively, for helping to
+keep the adventurous skiff afloat. It rocked beneath him, but he settled
+himself in his place. He took up an oar and, since he was to have the credit of
+pulling, pulled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will make it all the pleasanter if it so happens that we <i>do</i>
+meet,&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet had further observed in reference to Mrs.
+Pocock&rsquo;s mention of her initiated state; and she had immediately added
+that, after all, her hostess couldn&rsquo;t be in need with the good offices of
+Mr. Strether so close at hand. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s he, I gather, who has learnt
+to know his Paris, and to love it, better than any one ever before in so short
+a time; so that between him and your brother, when it comes to the point, how
+can you possibly want for good guidance? The great thing, Mr. Strether will
+show you,&rdquo; she smiled, &ldquo;is just to let one&rsquo;s self go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I&rsquo;ve not let myself go very far,&rdquo; Strether answered,
+feeling quite as if he had been called upon to hint to Mrs. Pocock how
+Parisians could talk. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m only afraid of showing I haven&rsquo;t
+let myself go far enough. I&rsquo;ve taken a good deal of time, but I must
+quite have had the air of not budging from one spot.&rdquo; He looked at Sarah
+in a manner that he thought she might take as engaging, and he made, under
+Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s protection, as it were, his first personal point.
+&ldquo;What has really happened has been that, all the while, I&rsquo;ve done
+what I came out for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet it only at first gave Madame de Vionnet a chance immediately to take him
+up. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve renewed acquaintance with your
+friend&mdash;you&rsquo;ve learnt to know him again.&rdquo; She spoke with such
+cheerful helpfulness that they might, in a common cause, have been calling
+together and pledged to mutual aid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh, at this, as if he had been in question, straightway turned from the
+window. &ldquo;Oh yes, Countess&mdash;he has renewed acquaintance with
+<i>me</i>, and he <i>has</i>, I guess, learnt something about me, though I
+don&rsquo;t know how much he has liked it. It&rsquo;s for Strether himself to
+say whether he has felt it justifies his course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but <i>you</i>,&rdquo; said the Countess gaily, &ldquo;are not in the
+least what he came out for&mdash;is he really, Strether? and I hadn&rsquo;t you
+at all in my mind. I was thinking of Mr. Newsome, of whom we think so much and
+with whom, precisely, Mrs. Pocock has given herself the opportunity to take up
+threads. What a pleasure for you both!&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet, with her eyes
+on Sarah, bravely continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Pocock met her handsomely, but Strether quickly saw she meant to accept no
+version of her movements or plans from any other lips. She required no
+patronage and no support, which were but other names for a false position; she
+would show in her own way what she chose to show, and this she expressed with a
+dry glitter that recalled to him a fine Woollett winter morning.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never wanted for opportunities to see my brother. We&rsquo;ve
+many things to think of at home, and great responsibilities and occupations,
+and our home&rsquo;s not an impossible place. We&rsquo;ve plenty of
+reasons,&rdquo; Sarah continued a little piercingly, &ldquo;for everything we
+do&rdquo;&mdash;and in short she wouldn&rsquo;t give herself the least little
+scrap away. But she added as one who was always bland and who could afford a
+concession: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come because&mdash;well, because we do
+come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then fortunately!&rdquo;&mdash;Madame de Vionnet breathed it to the
+air. Five minutes later they were on their feet for her to take leave, standing
+together in an affability that had succeeded in surviving a further exchange of
+remarks; only with the emphasised appearance on Waymarsh&rsquo;s part of a
+tendency to revert, in a ruminating manner and as with an instinctive or a
+precautionary lightening of his tread, to an open window and his point of
+vantage. The glazed and gilded room, all red damask, ormolu, mirrors, clocks,
+looked south, and the shutters were bowed upon the summer morning; but the
+Tuileries garden and what was beyond it, over which the whole place hung, were
+things visible through gaps; so that the far-spreading presence of Paris came
+up in coolness, dimness and invitation, in the twinkle of gilt-tipped palings,
+the crunch of gravel, the click of hoofs, the crack of whips, things that
+suggested some parade of the circus. &ldquo;I think it probable,&rdquo; said
+Mrs. Pocock, &ldquo;that I shall have the opportunity of going to my
+brother&rsquo;s. I&rsquo;ve no doubt it&rsquo;s very pleasant indeed.&rdquo;
+She spoke as to Strether, but her face was turned with an intensity of
+brightness to Madame de Vionnet, and there was a moment during which, while she
+thus fronted her, our friend expected to hear her add: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m much
+obliged to you, I&rsquo;m sure, for inviting me there.&rdquo; He guessed that
+for five seconds these words were on the point of coming; he heard them as
+clearly as if they had been spoken; but he presently knew they had just
+failed&mdash;knew it by a glance, quick and fine, from Madame de Vionnet, which
+told him that she too had felt them in the air, but that the point had luckily
+not been made in any manner requiring notice. This left her free to reply only
+to what had been said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That the Boulevard Malesherbes may be common ground for us offers me the
+best prospect I see for the pleasure of meeting you again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I shall come to see you, since you&rsquo;ve been so good&rdquo;: and
+Mrs. Pocock looked her invader well in the eyes. The flush in Sarah&rsquo;s
+cheeks had by this time settled to a small definite crimson spot that was not
+without its own bravery; she held her head a good deal up, and it came to
+Strether that of the two, at this moment, she was the one who most carried out
+the idea of a Countess. He quite took in, however, that she would really return
+her visitor&rsquo;s civility: she wouldn&rsquo;t report again at Woollett
+without at least so much producible history as that in her pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want extremely to be able to show you my little daughter.&rdquo;
+Madame de Vionnet went on; &ldquo;and I should have brought her with me if I
+hadn&rsquo;t wished first to ask your leave. I was in hopes I should perhaps
+find Miss Pocock, of whose being with you I&rsquo;ve heard from Mr. Newsome and
+whose acquaintance I should so much like my child to make. If I have the
+pleasure of seeing her and you do permit it I shall venture to ask her to be
+kind to Jeanne. Mr. Strether will tell you&rdquo;&mdash;she beautifully kept it
+up&mdash;&ldquo;that my poor girl is gentle and good and rather lonely.
+They&rsquo;ve made friends, he and she, ever so happily, and he doesn&rsquo;t,
+I believe, think ill of her. As for Jeanne herself he has had the same success
+with her that I know he has had here wherever he has turned.&rdquo; She seemed
+to ask him for permission to say these things, or seemed rather to take it,
+softly and happily, with the ease of intimacy, for granted, and he had quite
+the consciousness now that not to meet her at any point more than halfway would
+be odiously, basely to abandon her. Yes, he was <i>with</i> her, and, opposed
+even in this covert, this semi-safe fashion to those who were not, he felt,
+strangely and confusedly, but excitedly, inspiringly, how much and how far. It
+was as if he had positively waited in suspense for something from her that
+would let him in deeper, so that he might show her how he could take it. And
+what did in fact come as she drew out a little her farewell served sufficiently
+the purpose. &ldquo;As his success is a matter that I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;ll
+never mention for himself, I feel, you see, the less scruple; which it&rsquo;s
+very good of me to say, you know, by the way,&rdquo; she added as she addressed
+herself to him; &ldquo;considering how little direct advantage I&rsquo;ve
+gained from your triumphs with <i>me</i>. When does one ever see you? I wait at
+home and I languish. You&rsquo;ll have rendered me the service, Mrs. Pocock, at
+least,&rdquo; she wound up, &ldquo;of giving me one of my much-too-rare
+glimpses of this gentleman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I certainly should be sorry to deprive you of anything that seems so
+much, as you describe it, your natural due. Mr. Strether and I are very old
+friends,&rdquo; Sarah allowed, &ldquo;but the privilege of his society
+isn&rsquo;t a thing I shall quarrel about with any one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And yet, dear Sarah,&rdquo; he freely broke in, &ldquo;I feel, when I
+hear you say that, that you don&rsquo;t quite do justice to the important truth
+of the extent to which&mdash;as you&rsquo;re also mine&mdash;I&rsquo;m
+<i>your</i> natural due. I should like much better,&rdquo; he laughed,
+&ldquo;to see you fight for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She met him, Mrs. Pocock, on this, with an arrest of speech&mdash;with a
+certain breathlessness, as he immediately fancied, on the score of a freedom
+for which she wasn&rsquo;t quite prepared. It had flared up&mdash;for all the
+harm he had intended by it&mdash;because, confoundedly, he didn&rsquo;t want
+any more to be afraid about her than he wanted to be afraid about Madame de
+Vionnet. He had never, naturally, called her anything but Sarah at home, and
+though he had perhaps never quite so markedly invoked her as his
+&ldquo;dear,&rdquo; that was somehow partly because no occasion had hitherto
+laid so effective a trap for it. But something admonished him now that it was
+too late&mdash;unless indeed it were possibly too early; and that he at any
+rate shouldn&rsquo;t have pleased Mrs. Pocock the more by it. &ldquo;Well, Mr.
+Strether&mdash;!&rdquo; she murmured with vagueness, yet with sharpness, while
+her crimson spot burned a trifle brighter and he was aware that this must be
+for the present the limit of her response. Madame de Vionnet had already,
+however, come to his aid, and Waymarsh, as if for further participation, moved
+again back to them. It was true that the aid rendered by Madame de Vionnet was
+questionable; it was a sign that, for all one might confess to with her, and
+for all she might complain of not enjoying, she could still insidiously show
+how much of the material of conversation had accumulated between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The real truth is, you know, that you sacrifice one without mercy to
+dear old Maria. She leaves no room in your life for anybody else. Do you
+know,&rdquo; she enquired of Mrs. Pocock, &ldquo;about dear old Maria? The
+worst is that Miss Gostrey is really a wonderful woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes indeed,&rdquo; Strether answered for her, &ldquo;Mrs. Pocock
+knows about Miss Gostrey. Your mother, Sarah, must have told you about her;
+your mother knows everything,&rdquo; he sturdily pursued. &ldquo;And I
+cordially admit,&rdquo; he added with his conscious gaiety of courage,
+&ldquo;that she&rsquo;s as wonderful a woman as you like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah it isn&rsquo;t <i>I</i> who &lsquo;like,&rsquo; dear Mr. Strether,
+anything to do with the matter!&rdquo; Sarah Pocock promptly protested;
+&ldquo;and I&rsquo;m by no means sure I have&mdash;from my mother or from any
+one else&mdash;a notion of whom you&rsquo;re talking about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, he won&rsquo;t let you see her, you know,&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet
+sympathetically threw in. &ldquo;He never lets <i>me</i>&mdash;old friends as
+we are: I mean as I am with Maria. He reserves her for his best hours; keeps
+her consummately to himself; only gives us others the crumbs of the
+feast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Countess, <i>I&rsquo;ve</i> had some of the crumbs,&rdquo;
+Waymarsh observed with weight and covering her with his large look; which led
+her to break in before he could go on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Comment donc</i>, he shares her with <i>you?</i>&rdquo; she exclaimed
+in droll stupefaction. &ldquo;Take care you don&rsquo;t have, before you go
+much further, rather more of all <i>ces dames</i> than you may know what to do
+with!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he only continued in his massive way. &ldquo;I can post you about the lady,
+Mrs. Pocock, so far as you may care to hear. I&rsquo;ve seen her quite a number
+of times, and I was practically present when they made acquaintance. I&rsquo;ve
+kept my eye on her right along, but I don&rsquo;t know as there&rsquo;s any
+real harm in her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Harm&rsquo;?&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet quickly echoed. &ldquo;Why
+she&rsquo;s the dearest and cleverest of all the clever and dear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you run her pretty close, Countess,&rdquo; Waymarsh returned with
+spirit; &ldquo;though there&rsquo;s no doubt she&rsquo;s pretty well up in
+things. She knows her way round Europe. Above all there&rsquo;s no doubt she
+does love Strether.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but we all do that&mdash;we all love Strether: it isn&rsquo;t a
+merit!&rdquo; their fellow visitor laughed, keeping to her idea with a good
+conscience at which our friend was aware that he marvelled, though he trusted
+also for it, as he met her exquisitely expressive eyes, to some later light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The prime effect of her tone, however&mdash;and it was a truth which his own
+eyes gave back to her in sad ironic play&mdash;could only be to make him feel
+that, to say such things to a man in public, a woman must practically think of
+him as ninety years old. He had turned awkwardly, responsively red, he knew, at
+her mention of Maria Gostrey; Sarah Pocock&rsquo;s presence&mdash;the
+particular quality of it&mdash;had made this inevitable; and then he had grown
+still redder in proportion as he hated to have shown anything at all. He felt
+indeed that he was showing much, as, uncomfortably and almost in pain, he
+offered up his redness to Waymarsh, who, strangely enough, seemed now to be
+looking at him with a certain explanatory yearning. Something
+deep&mdash;something built on their old old relation&mdash;passed, in this
+complexity, between them; he got the side-wind of a loyalty that stood behind
+all actual queer questions. Waymarsh&rsquo;s dry bare humour&mdash;as it gave
+itself to be taken&mdash;gloomed out to demand justice. &ldquo;Well, if you
+talk of Miss Barrace I&rsquo;ve <i>my</i> chance too,&rdquo; it appeared
+stiffly to nod, and it granted that it was giving him away, but struggled to
+add that it did so only to save him. The sombre glow stared it at him till it
+fairly sounded out&mdash;&ldquo;to save you, poor old man, to save you; to save
+you in spite of yourself.&rdquo; Yet it was somehow just this communication
+that showed him to himself as more than ever lost. Still another result of it
+was to put before him as never yet that between his comrade and the interest
+represented by Sarah there was already a basis. Beyond all question now, yes:
+Waymarsh had been in occult relation with Mrs. Newsome&mdash;out, out it all
+came in the very effort of his face. &ldquo;Yes, you&rsquo;re feeling my
+hand&rdquo;&mdash;he as good as proclaimed it; &ldquo;but only because this at
+least I <i>shall</i> have got out of the damned Old World: that I shall have
+picked up the pieces into which it has caused you to crumble.&rdquo; It was as
+if in short, after an instant, Strether had not only had it from him, but had
+recognised that so far as this went the instant had cleared the air. Our friend
+understood and approved; he had the sense that they wouldn&rsquo;t otherwise
+speak of it. This would be all, and it would mark in himself a kind of
+intelligent generosity. It was with grim Sarah then&mdash;Sarah grim for all
+her grace&mdash;that Waymarsh had begun at ten o&rsquo;clock in the morning to
+save him. Well&mdash;if he <i>could</i>, poor dear man, with his big bleak
+kindness! The upshot of which crowded perception was that Strether, on his own
+side, still showed no more than he absolutely had to. He showed the least
+possible by saying to Mrs. Pocock after an interval much briefer than our
+glance at the picture reflected in him: &ldquo;Oh it&rsquo;s as true as they
+please!&mdash;There&rsquo;s no Miss Gostrey for any one but me&mdash;not the
+least little peep. I keep her to myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s very good of you to notify me,&rdquo; Sarah replied
+without looking at him and thrown for a moment by this discrimination, as the
+direction of her eyes showed, upon a dimly desperate little community with
+Madame de Vionnet. &ldquo;But I hope I shan&rsquo;t miss her too much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Vionnet instantly rallied. &ldquo;And you know&mdash;though it might
+occur to one&mdash;it isn&rsquo;t in the least that he&rsquo;s ashamed of her.
+She&rsquo;s really&mdash;in a way&mdash;extremely good-looking.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but extremely!&rdquo; Strether laughed while he wondered at the odd
+part he found thus imposed on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It continued to be so by every touch from Madame de Vionnet. &ldquo;Well, as I
+say, you know, I wish you would keep <i>me</i> a little more to yourself.
+Couldn&rsquo;t you name some day for me, some hour&mdash;and better soon than
+late? I&rsquo;ll be at home whenever it best suits you. There&mdash;I
+can&rsquo;t say fairer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether thought a moment while Waymarsh and Mrs. Pocock affected him as
+standing attentive. &ldquo;I did lately call on you. Last week&mdash;while Chad
+was out of town.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;and I was away, as it happened, too. You choose your moments
+well. But don&rsquo;t wait for my next absence, for I shan&rsquo;t make
+another,&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet declared, &ldquo;while Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s
+here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That vow needn&rsquo;t keep you long, fortunately,&rdquo; Sarah observed
+with reasserted suavity. &ldquo;I shall be at present but a short time in
+Paris. I have my plans for other countries. I meet a number of charming
+friends&rdquo;&mdash;and her voice seemed to caress that description of these
+persons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then,&rdquo; her visitor cheerfully replied, &ldquo;all the more
+reason! To-morrow, for instance, or next day?&rdquo; she continued to Strether.
+&ldquo;Tuesday would do for me beautifully.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tuesday then with pleasure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And at half-past five?&mdash;or at six?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was ridiculous, but Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh struck him as fairly waiting
+for his answer. It was indeed as if they were arranged, gathered for a
+performance, the performance of &ldquo;Europe&rdquo; by his confederate and
+himself. Well, the performance could only go on. &ldquo;Say five
+forty-five.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Five forty-five&mdash;good.&rdquo; And now at last Madame de Vionnet
+must leave them, though it carried, for herself, the performance a little
+further. &ldquo;I <i>did</i> hope so much also to see Miss Pocock. Mayn&rsquo;t
+I still?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sarah hesitated, but she rose equal. &ldquo;She&rsquo;ll return your visit with
+me. She&rsquo;s at present out with Mr. Pocock and my brother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see&mdash;of course Mr. Newsome has everything to show them. He has
+told me so much about her. My great desire&rsquo;s to give my daughter the
+opportunity of making her acquaintance. I&rsquo;m always on the lookout for
+such chances for her. If I didn&rsquo;t bring her to-day it was only to make
+sure first that you&rsquo;d let me.&rdquo; After which the charming woman
+risked a more intense appeal. &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t suit <i>you</i> also to
+mention some near time, so that we shall be sure not to lose you?&rdquo;
+Strether on his side waited, for Sarah likewise had, after all, to perform; and
+it occupied him to have been thus reminded that she had stayed at
+home&mdash;and on her first morning of Paris&mdash;while Chad led the others
+forth. Oh she was up to her eyes; if she had stayed at home she had stayed by
+an understanding, arrived at the evening before, that Waymarsh would come and
+find her alone. This was beginning well&mdash;for a first day in Paris; and the
+thing might be amusing yet. But Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s earnestness was
+meanwhile beautiful. &ldquo;You may think me indiscreet, but I&rsquo;ve
+<i>such</i> a desire my Jeanne shall know an American girl of the really
+delightful kind. You see I throw myself for it on your charity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The manner of this speech gave Strether such a sense of depths below it and
+behind it as he hadn&rsquo;t yet had&mdash;ministered in a way that almost
+frightened him to his dim divinations of reasons; but if Sarah still, in spite
+of it, faltered, this was why he had time for a sign of sympathy with her
+petitioner. &ldquo;Let me say then, dear lady, to back your plea, that Miss
+Mamie is of the most delightful kind of all&mdash;is charming among the
+charming.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even Waymarsh, though with more to produce on the subject, could get into
+motion in time. &ldquo;Yes, Countess, the American girl&rsquo;s a thing that
+your country must at least allow ours the privilege to say we <i>can</i> show
+you. But her full beauty is only for those who know how to make use of
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then,&rdquo; smiled Madame de Vionnet, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s exactly
+what I want to do. I&rsquo;m sure she has much to teach us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was wonderful, but what was scarce less so was that Strether found himself,
+by the quick effect of it, moved another way. &ldquo;Oh that may be! But
+don&rsquo;t speak of your own exquisite daughter, you know, as if she
+weren&rsquo;t pure perfection. <i>I</i> at least won&rsquo;t take that from
+you. Mademoiselle de Vionnet,&rdquo; he explained, in considerable form, to
+Mrs. Pocock, &ldquo;<i>is</i> pure perfection. Mademoiselle de Vionnet
+<i>is</i> exquisite.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had been perhaps a little portentous, but &ldquo;Ah?&rdquo; Sarah simply
+glittered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh himself, for that matter, apparently recognised, in respect to the
+facts, the need of a larger justice, and he had with it an inclination to
+Sarah. &ldquo;Miss Jane&rsquo;s strikingly handsome&mdash;in the regular French
+style.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It somehow made both Strether and Madame de Vionnet laugh out, though at the
+very moment he caught in Sarah&rsquo;s eyes, as glancing at the speaker, a
+vague but unmistakeable &ldquo;You too?&rdquo; It made Waymarsh in fact look
+consciously over her head. Madame de Vionnet meanwhile, however, made her point
+in her own way. &ldquo;I wish indeed I could offer you my poor child as a
+dazzling attraction: it would make one&rsquo;s position simple enough!
+She&rsquo;s as good as she can be, but of course she&rsquo;s different, and the
+question is now&mdash;in the light of the way things seem to go&mdash;if she
+isn&rsquo;t after all <i>too</i> different: too different I mean from the
+splendid type every one is so agreed that your wonderful country produces. On
+the other hand of course Mr. Newsome, who knows it so well, has, as a good
+friend, dear kind man that he is, done everything he can&mdash;to keep us from
+fatal benightedness&mdash;for my small shy creature. Well,&rdquo; she wound up
+after Mrs. Pocock had signified, in a murmur still a little stiff, that she
+would speak to her own young charge on the question&mdash;&ldquo;well, we shall
+sit, my child and I, and wait and wait and wait for you.&rdquo; But her last
+fine turn was for Strether. &ldquo;Do speak of us in such a way&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As that something can&rsquo;t but come of it? Oh something <i>shall</i>
+come of it! I take a great interest!&rdquo; he further declared; and in proof
+of it, the next moment, he had gone with her down to her carriage.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>Book Ninth</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The difficulty is,&rdquo; Strether said to Madame de Vionnet a couple of
+days later, &ldquo;that I can&rsquo;t surprise them into the smallest sign of
+his not being the same old Chad they&rsquo;ve been for the last three years
+glowering at across the sea. They simply won&rsquo;t give any, and as a policy,
+you know&mdash;what you call a <i>parti pris</i>, a deep
+game&mdash;that&rsquo;s positively remarkable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was so remarkable that our friend had pulled up before his hostess with the
+vision of it; he had risen from his chair at the end of ten minutes and begun,
+as a help not to worry, to move about before her quite as he moved before
+Maria. He had kept his appointment with her to the minute and had been
+intensely impatient, though divided in truth between the sense of having
+everything to tell her and the sense of having nothing at all. The short
+interval had, in the face of their complication, multiplied his
+impressions&mdash;it being meanwhile to be noted, moreover, that he already
+frankly, already almost publicly, viewed the complication as common to them. If
+Madame de Vionnet, under Sarah&rsquo;s eyes, had pulled him into her boat,
+there was by this time no doubt whatever that he had remained in it and that
+what he had really most been conscious of for many hours together was the
+movement of the vessel itself. They were in it together this moment as they
+hadn&rsquo;t yet been, and he hadn&rsquo;t at present uttered the least of the
+words of alarm or remonstrance that had died on his lips at the hotel. He had
+other things to say to her than that she had put him in a position; so quickly
+had his position grown to affect him as quite excitingly, altogether richly,
+inevitable. That the outlook, however&mdash;given the point of
+exposure&mdash;hadn&rsquo;t cleared up half so much as he had reckoned was the
+first warning she received from him on his arrival. She had replied with
+indulgence that he was in too great a hurry, and had remarked soothingly that
+if she knew how to be patient surely <i>he</i> might be. He felt her presence,
+on the spot, he felt her tone and everything about her, as an aid to that
+effort; and it was perhaps one of the proofs of her success with him that he
+seemed so much to take his ease while they talked. By the time he had explained
+to her why his impressions, though multiplied, still baffled him, it was as if
+he had been familiarly talking for hours. They baffled him because
+Sarah&mdash;well, Sarah was deep, deeper than she had ever yet had a chance to
+show herself. He didn&rsquo;t say that this was partly the effect of her
+opening so straight down, as it were, into her mother, and that, given Mrs.
+Newsome&rsquo;s profundity, the shaft thus sunk might well have a reach; but he
+wasn&rsquo;t without a resigned apprehension that, at such a rate of confidence
+between the two women, he was likely soon to be moved to show how already, at
+moments, it had been for him as if he were dealing directly with Mrs. Newsome.
+Sarah, to a certainty, would have begun herself to feel it in him&mdash;and
+this naturally put it in her power to torment him the more. From the moment she
+knew he <i>could</i> be tormented&mdash;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But <i>why</i> can you be?&rdquo;&mdash;his companion was surprised at
+his use of the word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I&rsquo;m made so&mdash;I think of everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah one must never do that,&rdquo; she smiled. &ldquo;One must think of
+as few things as possible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;one must pick them out right. But all I
+mean is&mdash;for I express myself with violence&mdash;that she&rsquo;s in a
+position to watch me. There&rsquo;s an element of suspense for me, and she can
+see me wriggle. But my wriggling doesn&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; he pursued.
+&ldquo;I can bear it. Besides, I shall wriggle out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The picture at any rate stirred in her an appreciation that he felt to be
+sincere. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how a man can be kinder to a woman than you
+are to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, kind was what he wanted to be; yet even while her charming eyes rested on
+him with the truth of this he none the less had his humour of honesty.
+&ldquo;When I say suspense I mean, you know,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;suspense
+about my own case too!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;about your own case too!&rdquo; It diminished his
+magnanimity, but she only looked at him the more tenderly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not, however,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;that I want to talk to you about
+that. It&rsquo;s my own little affair, and I mentioned it simply as part of
+Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s advantage.&rdquo; No, no; though there was a queer present
+temptation in it, and his suspense was so real that to fidget was a relief, he
+wouldn&rsquo;t talk to her about Mrs. Newsome, wouldn&rsquo;t work off on her
+the anxiety produced in him by Sarah&rsquo;s calculated omissions of reference.
+The effect she produced of representing her mother had been produced&mdash;and
+that was just the immense, the uncanny part of it&mdash;without her having so
+much as mentioned that lady. She had brought no message, had alluded to no
+question, had only answered his enquiries with hopeless limited propriety. She
+had invented a way of meeting them&mdash;as if he had been a polite perfunctory
+poor relation, of distant degree&mdash;that made them almost ridiculous in him.
+He couldn&rsquo;t moreover on his own side ask much without appearing to
+publish how he had lately lacked news; a circumstance of which it was
+Sarah&rsquo;s profound policy not to betray a suspicion. These things, all the
+same, he wouldn&rsquo;t breathe to Madame de Vionnet&mdash;much as they might
+make him walk up and down. And what he didn&rsquo;t say&mdash;as well as what
+<i>she</i> didn&rsquo;t, for she had also her high decencies&mdash;enhanced the
+effect of his being there with her at the end of ten minutes more intimately on
+the basis of saving her than he had yet had occasion to be. It ended in fact by
+being quite beautiful between them, the number of things they had a manifest
+consciousness of not saying. He would have liked to turn her, critically, to
+the subject of Mrs. Pocock, but he so stuck to the line he felt to be the point
+of honour and of delicacy that he scarce even asked her what her personal
+impression had been. He knew it, for that matter, without putting her to
+trouble: that she wondered how, with such elements, Sarah could still have no
+charm, was one of the principal things she held her tongue about. Strether
+would have been interested in her estimate of the elements&mdash;indubitably
+there, some of them, and to be appraised according to taste&mdash;but he denied
+himself even the luxury of this diversion. The way Madame de Vionnet affected
+him to-day was in itself a kind of demonstration of the happy employment of
+gifts. How could a woman think Sarah had charm who struck one as having arrived
+at it herself by such different roads? On the other hand of course Sarah
+wasn&rsquo;t obliged to have it. He felt as if somehow Madame de Vionnet
+<i>was</i>. The great question meanwhile was what Chad thought of his sister;
+which was naturally ushered in by that of Sarah&rsquo;s apprehension of Chad.
+<i>That</i> they could talk of, and with a freedom purchased by their
+discretion in other senses. The difficulty however was that they were reduced
+as yet to conjecture. He had given them in the day or two as little of a lead
+as Sarah, and Madame de Vionnet mentioned that she hadn&rsquo;t seen him since
+his sister&rsquo;s arrival.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And does that strike you as such an age?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She met it in all honesty. &ldquo;Oh I won&rsquo;t pretend I don&rsquo;t miss
+him. Sometimes I see him every day. Our friendship&rsquo;s like that. Make what
+you will of it!&rdquo; she whimsically smiled; a little flicker of the kind,
+occasional in her, that had more than once moved him to wonder what he might
+best make of <i>her</i>. &ldquo;But he&rsquo;s perfectly right,&rdquo; she
+hastened to add, &ldquo;and I wouldn&rsquo;t have him fail in any way at
+present for the world. I&rsquo;d sooner not see him for three months. I begged
+him to be beautiful to them, and he fully feels it for himself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether turned away under his quick perception; she was so odd a mixture of
+lucidity and mystery. She fell in at moments with the theory about her he most
+cherished, and she seemed at others to blow it into air. She spoke now as if
+her art were all an innocence, and then again as if her innocence were all an
+art. &ldquo;Oh he&rsquo;s giving himself up, and he&rsquo;ll do so to the end.
+How can he but want, now that it&rsquo;s within reach, his full
+impression?&mdash;which is much more important, you know, than either yours or
+mine. But he&rsquo;s just soaking,&rdquo; Strether said as he came back;
+&ldquo;he&rsquo;s going in conscientiously for a saturation. I&rsquo;m bound to
+say he <i>is</i> very good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; she quietly replied, &ldquo;to whom do you say it?&rdquo; And
+then more quietly still: &ldquo;He&rsquo;s capable of anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether more than reaffirmed&mdash;&ldquo;Oh he&rsquo;s excellent. I more and
+more like,&rdquo; he insisted, &ldquo;to see him with them;&rdquo; though the
+oddity of this tone between them grew sharper for him even while they spoke. It
+placed the young man so before them as the result of her interest and the
+product of her genius, acknowledged so her part in the phenomenon and made the
+phenomenon so rare, that more than ever yet he might have been on the very
+point of asking her for some more detailed account of the whole business than
+he had yet received from her. The occasion almost forced upon him some question
+as to how she had managed and as to the appearance such miracles presented from
+her own singularly close place of survey. The moment in fact however passed,
+giving way to more present history, and he continued simply to mark his
+appreciation of the happy truth. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a tremendous comfort to feel
+how one can trust him.&rdquo; And then again while for a little she said
+nothing&mdash;as if after all to <i>her</i> trust there might be a special
+limit: &ldquo;I mean for making a good show to them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she thoughtfully returned&mdash;&ldquo;but if they shut
+their eyes to it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether for an instant had his own thought. &ldquo;Well perhaps that
+won&rsquo;t matter!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean because he probably&mdash;do what they will&mdash;won&rsquo;t
+like them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh &lsquo;do what they will&rsquo;&mdash;! They won&rsquo;t do much;
+especially if Sarah hasn&rsquo;t more&mdash;well, more than one has yet made
+out&mdash;to give.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Vionnet weighed it. &ldquo;Ah she has all her grace!&rdquo; It was a
+statement over which, for a little, they could look at each other sufficiently
+straight, and though it produced no protest from Strether the effect was
+somehow as if he had treated it as a joke. &ldquo;She may be persuasive and
+caressing with him; she may be eloquent beyond words. She may get hold of
+him,&rdquo; she wound up&mdash;&ldquo;well, as neither you nor I have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, she <i>may</i>&rdquo;&mdash;and now Strether smiled. &ldquo;But he
+has spent all his time each day with Jim. He&rsquo;s still showing Jim
+round.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She visibly wondered. &ldquo;Then how about Jim?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether took a turn before he answered. &ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t he given you Jim?
+Hasn&rsquo;t he before this &lsquo;done&rsquo; him for you?&rdquo; He was a
+little at a loss. &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t he tell you things?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated. &ldquo;No&rdquo;&mdash;and their eyes once more gave and took.
+&ldquo;Not as you do. You somehow make me see them&mdash;or at least feel them.
+And I haven&rsquo;t asked too much,&rdquo; she added; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve of late
+wanted so not to worry him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah for that, so have I,&rdquo; he said with encouraging assent; so
+that&mdash;as if she had answered everything&mdash;they were briefly sociable
+on it. It threw him back on his other thought, with which he took another turn;
+stopping again, however, presently with something of a glow. &ldquo;You see
+Jim&rsquo;s really immense. I think it will be Jim who&rsquo;ll do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered. &ldquo;Get hold of him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;just the other thing. Counteract Sarah&rsquo;s spell.&rdquo;
+And he showed now, our friend, how far he had worked it out. &ldquo;Jim&rsquo;s
+intensely cynical.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh dear Jim!&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet vaguely smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, literally&mdash;dear Jim! He&rsquo;s awful. What <i>he</i> wants,
+heaven forgive him, is to help us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean&rdquo;&mdash;she was eager&mdash;&ldquo;help <i>me?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Chad and me in the first place. But he throws you in too, though
+without as yet seeing you much. Only, so far as he does see you&mdash;if you
+don&rsquo;t mind&mdash;he sees you as awful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Awful&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;she wanted it all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A regular bad one&mdash;though of course of a tremendously superior
+kind. Dreadful, delightful, irresistible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah dear Jim! I should like to know him. I <i>must</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, naturally. But will it do? You may, you know,&rdquo; Strether
+suggested, &ldquo;disappoint him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was droll and humble about it. &ldquo;I can but try. But my wickedness
+then,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;is my recommendation for him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your wickedness and the charms with which, in such a degree as yours, he
+associates it. He understands, you see, that Chad and I have above all wanted
+to have a good time, and his view is simple and sharp. Nothing will persuade
+him&mdash;in the light, that is, of my behaviour&mdash;that I really
+didn&rsquo;t, quite as much as Chad, come over to have one before it was too
+late. He wouldn&rsquo;t have expected it of me; but men of my age, at
+Woollett&mdash;and especially the least likely ones&mdash;have been noted as
+liable to strange outbreaks, belated uncanny clutches at the unusual, the
+ideal. It&rsquo;s an effect that a lifetime of Woollett has quite been observed
+as having; and I thus give it to you, in Jim&rsquo;s view, for what it&rsquo;s
+worth. Now his wife and his mother-in-law,&rdquo; Strether continued to
+explain, &ldquo;have, as in honour bound, no patience with such phenomena, late
+or early&mdash;which puts Jim, as against his relatives, on the other side.
+Besides,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think he really wants Chad back.
+If Chad doesn&rsquo;t come&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll have&rdquo;&mdash;Madame de Vionnet quite
+apprehended&mdash;&ldquo;more of the free hand?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Chad&rsquo;s the bigger man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So he&rsquo;ll work now, <i>en dessous</i>, to keep him quiet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;he won&rsquo;t &lsquo;work&rsquo; at all, and he won&rsquo;t do
+anything <i>en dessous</i>. He&rsquo;s very decent and won&rsquo;t be a traitor
+in the camp. But he&rsquo;ll be amused with his own little view of our
+duplicity, he&rsquo;ll sniff up what he supposes to be Paris from morning till
+night, and he&rsquo;ll be, as to the rest, for Chad&mdash;well, just what he
+is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thought it over. &ldquo;A warning?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He met it almost with glee. &ldquo;You <i>are</i> as wonderful as everybody
+says!&rdquo; And then to explain all he meant: &ldquo;I drove him about for his
+first hour, and do you know what&mdash;all beautifully unconscious&mdash;he
+most put before me? Why that something like <i>that</i> is at bottom, as an
+improvement to his present state, as in fact the real redemption of it, what
+they think it may not be too late to make of our friend.&rdquo; With which, as,
+taking it in, she seemed, in her recurrent alarm, bravely to gaze at the
+possibility, he completed his statement. &ldquo;But it <i>is</i> too late.
+Thanks to you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It drew from her again one of her indefinite reflexions. &ldquo;Oh
+&lsquo;me&rsquo;&mdash;after all!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood before her so exhilarated by his demonstration that he could fairly be
+jocular. &ldquo;Everything&rsquo;s comparative. You&rsquo;re better than
+<i>that</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rdquo;&mdash;she could but answer him&mdash;&ldquo;are better than
+anything.&rdquo; But she had another thought. &ldquo;<i>Will</i> Mrs. Pocock
+come to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;she&rsquo;ll do that. As soon, that is, as my friend
+Waymarsh&mdash;<i>her</i> friend now&mdash;leaves her leisure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She showed an interest. &ldquo;Is he so much her friend as that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, didn&rsquo;t you see it all at the hotel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh&rdquo;&mdash;she was amused&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;all&rsquo; is a good
+deal to say. I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;I forget. I lost myself in
+<i>her</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You were splendid,&rdquo; Strether returned&mdash;&ldquo;but
+&lsquo;all&rsquo; isn&rsquo;t a good deal to say: it&rsquo;s only a little. Yet
+it&rsquo;s charming so far as it goes. She wants a man to herself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And hasn&rsquo;t she got <i>you?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think she looked at me&mdash;or even at you&mdash;as if she
+had?&rdquo; Strether easily dismissed that irony. &ldquo;Every one, you see,
+must strike her as having somebody. You&rsquo;ve got Chad&mdash;and Chad has
+got you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see&rdquo;&mdash;she made of it what she could. &ldquo;And
+you&rsquo;ve got Maria.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, he on his side accepted that. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got Maria. And Maria has
+got me. So it goes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But Mr. Jim&mdash;whom has he got?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh he has got&mdash;or it&rsquo;s as <i>if</i> he had&mdash;the whole
+place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But for Mr. Waymarsh&rdquo;&mdash;she recalled&mdash;&ldquo;isn&rsquo;t
+Miss Barrace before any one else?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head. &ldquo;Miss Barrace is a <i>raffinée</i>, and her amusement
+won&rsquo;t lose by Mrs. Pocock. It will gain rather&mdash;especially if Sarah
+triumphs and she comes in for a view of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How well you know us!&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet, at this, frankly sighed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;it seems to me it&rsquo;s we that I know. I know
+Sarah&mdash;it&rsquo;s perhaps on that ground only that my feet are firm.
+Waymarsh will take her round while Chad takes Jim&mdash;and I shall be, I
+assure you, delighted for both of them. Sarah will have had what she
+requires&mdash;she will have paid her tribute to the ideal; and he will have
+done about the same. In Paris it&rsquo;s in the air&mdash;so what can one do
+less? If there&rsquo;s a point that, beyond any other, Sarah wants to make,
+it&rsquo;s that she didn&rsquo;t come out to be narrow. We shall feel at least
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she sighed, &ldquo;the quantity we seem likely to
+&lsquo;feel&rsquo;! But what becomes, in these conditions, of the girl?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of Mamie&mdash;if we&rsquo;re all provided? Ah for that,&rdquo; said
+Strether, &ldquo;you can trust Chad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To be, you mean, all right to her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To pay her every attention as soon as he has polished off Jim. He wants
+what Jim can give him&mdash;and what Jim really won&rsquo;t&mdash;though he has
+had it all, and more than all, from me. He wants in short his own personal
+impression, and he&rsquo;ll get it&mdash;strong. But as soon as he has got it
+Mamie won&rsquo;t suffer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh Mamie mustn&rsquo;t <i>suffer!</i>&rdquo; Madame de Vionnet
+soothingly emphasised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Strether could reassure her. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t fear. As soon as he has
+done with Jim, Jim will fall to me. And then you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as if in a moment she saw already; yet she still waited. Then &ldquo;Is
+she really quite charming?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had got up with his last words and gathered in his hat and gloves. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t know; I&rsquo;m watching. I&rsquo;m studying the case, as it
+were&mdash;and I dare say I shall be able to tell you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered. &ldquo;Is it a case?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;I think so. At any rate I shall see.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But haven&rsquo;t you known her before?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he smiled&mdash;&ldquo;but somehow at home she wasn&rsquo;t
+a case. She has become one since.&rdquo; It was as if he made it out for
+himself. &ldquo;She has become one here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So very very soon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He measured it, laughing. &ldquo;Not sooner than I did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you became one&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very very soon. The day I arrived.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her intelligent eyes showed her thought of it. &ldquo;Ah but the day you
+arrived you met Maria. Whom has Miss Pocock met?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He paused again, but he brought it out. &ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t she met
+Chad?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly&mdash;but not for the first time. He&rsquo;s an old
+friend.&rdquo; At which Strether had a slow amused significant headshake that
+made her go on: &ldquo;You mean that for <i>her</i> at least he&rsquo;s a new
+person&mdash;that she sees him as different?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She sees him as different.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how does she see him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether gave it up. &ldquo;How can one tell how a deep little girl sees a deep
+young man?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is every one so deep? Is she too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So it strikes me deeper than I thought. But wait a little&mdash;between
+us we&rsquo;ll make it out. You&rsquo;ll judge for that matter yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame de Vionnet looked for the moment fairly bent on the chance. &ldquo;Then
+she <i>will</i> come with her?&mdash;I mean Mamie with Mrs. Pocock?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly. Her curiosity, if nothing else, will in any case work that.
+But leave it all to Chad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; wailed Madame de Vionnet, turning away a little wearily,
+&ldquo;the things I leave to Chad!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tone of it made him look at her with a kindness that showed his vision of
+her suspense. But he fell back on his confidence. &ldquo;Oh well&mdash;trust
+him. Trust him all the way.&rdquo; He had indeed no sooner so spoken than the
+queer displacement of his point of view appeared again to come up for him in
+the very sound, which drew from him a short laugh, immediately checked. He
+became still more advisory. &ldquo;When they do come give them plenty of Miss
+Jeanne. Let Mamie see her well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked for a moment as if she placed them face to face. &ldquo;For Mamie to
+hate her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had another of his corrective headshakes. &ldquo;Mamie won&rsquo;t. Trust
+<i>them</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him hard, and then as if it were what she must always come back
+to: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s <i>you</i> I trust. But I was sincere,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;at the hotel. I did, I do, want my child&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;&mdash;Strether waited with deference while she appeared to
+hesitate as to how to put it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, to do what she can for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether for a little met her eyes on it; after which something that might have
+been unexpected to her came from him. &ldquo;Poor little duck!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not more expected for himself indeed might well have been her echo of it.
+&ldquo;Poor little duck! But she immensely wants herself,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;to see our friend&rsquo;s cousin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that what she thinks her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s what we call the young lady.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought again; then with a laugh: &ldquo;Well, your daughter will help
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now at last he took leave of her, as he had been intending for five
+minutes. But she went part of the way with him, accompanying him out of the
+room and into the next and the next. Her noble old apartment offered a
+succession of three, the first two of which indeed, on entering, smaller than
+the last, but each with its faded and formal air, enlarged the office of the
+antechamber and enriched the sense of approach. Strether fancied them, liked
+them, and, passing through them with her more slowly now, met a sharp renewal
+of his original impression. He stopped, he looked back; the whole thing made a
+vista, which he found high melancholy and sweet&mdash;full, once more, of dim
+historic shades, of the faint faraway cannon-roar of the great Empire. It was
+doubtless half the projection of his mind, but his mind was a thing that, among
+old waxed parquets, pale shades of pink and green, pseudo-classic candelabra,
+he had always needfully to reckon with. They could easily make him irrelevant.
+The oddity, the originality, the poetry&mdash;he didn&rsquo;t know what to call
+it&mdash;of Chad&rsquo;s connexion reaffirmed for him its romantic side.
+&ldquo;They ought to see this, you know. They <i>must</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Pococks?&rdquo;&mdash;she looked about in deprecation; she seemed to
+see gaps he didn&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mamie and Sarah&mdash;Mamie in particular.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My shabby old place? But <i>their</i> things&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh their things! You were talking of what will do something for
+you&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So that it strikes you,&rdquo; she broke in, &ldquo;that my poor place
+may? Oh,&rdquo; she ruefully mused, &ldquo;that <i>would</i> be
+desperate!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know what I wish?&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;I wish Mrs. Newsome
+herself could have a look.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stared, missing a little his logic. &ldquo;It would make a
+difference?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her tone was so earnest that as he continued to look about he laughed.
+&ldquo;It might!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you&rsquo;ve told her, you tell me&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All about you? Yes, a wonderful story. But there&rsquo;s all the
+indescribable&mdash;what one gets only on the spot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo; she charmingly and sadly smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all about me here,&rdquo; he freely continued. &ldquo;Mrs.
+Newsome feels things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she seemed doomed always to come back to doubt. &ldquo;No one feels so much
+as <i>you</i>. No&mdash;not any one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So much the worse then for every one. It&rsquo;s very easy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were by this time in the antechamber, still alone together, as she
+hadn&rsquo;t rung for a servant. The antechamber was high and square, grave and
+suggestive too, a little cold and slippery even in summer, and with a few old
+prints that were precious, Strether divined, on the walls. He stood in the
+middle, slightly lingering, vaguely directing his glasses, while, leaning
+against the door-post of the room, she gently pressed her cheek to the side of
+the recess. &ldquo;<i>You</i> would have been a friend.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I?&rdquo;&mdash;it startled him a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For the reason you say. You&rsquo;re not stupid.&rdquo; And then
+abruptly, as if bringing it out were somehow founded on that fact:
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re marrying Jeanne.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It affected him on the spot as a move in a game, and he was even then not
+without the sense that that wasn&rsquo;t the way Jeanne should be married. But
+he quickly showed his interest, though&mdash;as quickly afterwards struck
+him&mdash;with an absurd confusion of mind. &ldquo;&lsquo;You&rsquo;? You
+and&mdash;a&mdash;not Chad?&rdquo; Of course it was the child&rsquo;s father
+who made the &lsquo;we,&rsquo; but to the child&rsquo;s father it would have
+cost him an effort to allude. Yet didn&rsquo;t it seem the next minute that
+Monsieur de Vionnet was after all not in question?&mdash;since she had gone on
+to say that it was indeed to Chad she referred and that he had been in the
+whole matter kindness itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I must tell you all, it is he himself who has put us in the way. I
+mean in the way of an opportunity that, so far as I can yet see, is all I could
+possibly have dreamed of. For all the trouble Monsieur de Vionnet will ever
+take!&rdquo; It was the first time she had spoken to him of her husband, and he
+couldn&rsquo;t have expressed how much more intimate with her it suddenly made
+him feel. It wasn&rsquo;t much, in truth&mdash;there were other things in what
+she was saying that were far more; but it was as if, while they stood there
+together so easily in these cold chambers of the past, the single touch had
+shown the reach of her confidence. &ldquo;But our friend,&rdquo; she asked,
+&ldquo;hasn&rsquo;t then told you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has told me nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it has come with rather a rush&mdash;all in a very few days; and
+hasn&rsquo;t moreover yet taken a form that permits an announcement. It&rsquo;s
+only for you&mdash;absolutely you alone&mdash;that I speak; I so want you to
+know.&rdquo; The sense he had so often had, since the first hour of his
+disembarkment, of being further and further &ldquo;in,&rdquo; treated him again
+at this moment to another twinge; but in this wonderful way of her putting him
+in there continued to be something exquisitely remorseless. &ldquo;Monsieur de
+Vionnet will accept what he <i>must</i> accept. He has proposed half a dozen
+things&mdash;each one more impossible than the other; and he wouldn&rsquo;t
+have found this if he lives to a hundred. Chad found it,&rdquo; she continued
+with her lighted, faintly flushed, her conscious confidential face, &ldquo;in
+the quietest way in the world. Or rather it found <i>him</i>&mdash;for
+everything finds him; I mean finds him right. You&rsquo;ll think we do such
+things strangely&mdash;but at my age,&rdquo; she smiled, &ldquo;one has to
+accept one&rsquo;s conditions. Our young man&rsquo;s people had seen her; one
+of his sisters, a charming woman&mdash;we know all about them&mdash;had
+observed her somewhere with me. She had spoken to her brother&mdash;turned him
+on; and we were again observed, poor Jeanne and I, without our in the least
+knowing it. It was at the beginning of the winter; it went on for some time; it
+outlasted our absence; it began again on our return; and it luckily seems all
+right. The young man had met Chad, and he got a friend to approach him&mdash;as
+having a decent interest in us. Mr. Newsome looked well before he leaped; he
+kept beautifully quiet and satisfied himself fully; then only he spoke.
+It&rsquo;s what has for some time past occupied us. It seems as if it were what
+would do; really, really all one could wish. There are only two or three points
+to be settled&mdash;they depend on her father. But this time I think
+we&rsquo;re safe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, consciously gaping a little, had fairly hung upon her lips. &ldquo;I
+hope so with all my heart.&rdquo; And then he permitted himself: &ldquo;Does
+nothing depend on <i>her?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah naturally; everything did. But she&rsquo;s pleased <i>comme tout</i>.
+She has been perfectly free; and he&mdash;our young friend&mdash;is really a
+combination. I quite adore him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether just made sure. &ldquo;You mean your future son-in-law?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Future if we all bring it off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah well,&rdquo; said Strether decorously, &ldquo;I heartily hope you
+may.&rdquo; There seemed little else for him to say, though her communication
+had the oddest effect on him. Vaguely and confusedly he was troubled by it;
+feeling as if he had even himself been concerned in something deep and dim. He
+had allowed for depths, but these were greater: and it was as if,
+oppressively&mdash;indeed absurdly&mdash;he was responsible for what they had
+now thrown up to the surface. It was&mdash;through something ancient and cold
+in it&mdash;what he would have called the real thing. In short his
+hostess&rsquo;s news, though he couldn&rsquo;t have explained why, was a
+sensible shock, and his oppression a weight he felt he must somehow or other
+immediately get rid of. There were too many connexions missing to make it
+tolerable he should do anything else. He was prepared to suffer&mdash;before
+his own inner tribunal&mdash;for Chad; he was prepared to suffer even for
+Madame de Vionnet. But he wasn&rsquo;t prepared to suffer for the little girl.
+So now having said the proper thing, he wanted to get away. She held him an
+instant, however, with another appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do I seem to you very awful?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Awful? Why so?&rdquo; But he called it to himself, even as he spoke, his
+biggest insincerity yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our arrangements are so different from yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mine?&rdquo; Oh he could dismiss that too! &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t any
+arrangements.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you must accept mine; all the more that they&rsquo;re excellent.
+They&rsquo;re founded on a <i>vieille sagesse</i>. There will be much more, if
+all goes well, for you to hear and to know, and everything, believe me, for you
+to like. Don&rsquo;t be afraid; you&rsquo;ll be satisfied.&rdquo; Thus she
+could talk to him of what, of her innermost life&mdash;for that was what it
+came to&mdash;he must &ldquo;accept&rdquo;; thus she could extraordinarily
+speak as if in such an affair his being satisfied had an importance. It was all
+a wonder and made the whole case larger. He had struck himself at the hotel,
+before Sarah and Waymarsh, as being in her boat; but where on earth was he now?
+This question was in the air till her own lips quenched it with another.
+&ldquo;And do you suppose <i>he</i>&mdash;who loves her so&mdash;would do
+anything reckless or cruel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wondered what he supposed. &ldquo;Do you mean your young man&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean yours. I mean Mr. Newsome.&rdquo; It flashed for Strether the
+next moment a finer light, and the light deepened as she went on. &ldquo;He
+takes, thank God, the truest tenderest interest in her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It deepened indeed. &ldquo;Oh I&rsquo;m sure of that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You were talking,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;about one&rsquo;s trusting
+him. You see then how I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited a moment&mdash;it all came. &ldquo;I see&mdash;I see.&rdquo; He felt
+he really did see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t hurt her for the world, nor&mdash;assuming she marries
+at all&mdash;risk anything that might make against her happiness.
+And&mdash;willingly, at least&mdash;he would never hurt <i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face, with what he had by this time grasped, told him more than her words;
+whether something had come into it, or whether he only read clearer, her whole
+story&mdash;what at least he then took for such&mdash;reached out to him from
+it. With the initiative she now attributed to Chad it all made a sense, and
+this sense&mdash;a light, a lead, was what had abruptly risen before him. He
+wanted, once more, to get off with these things; which was at last made easy, a
+servant having, for his assistance, on hearing voices in the hall, just come
+forward. All that Strether had made out was, while the man opened the door and
+impersonally waited, summed up in his last word. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think,
+you know, Chad will tell me anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;perhaps not yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I won&rsquo;t as yet speak to him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah that&rsquo;s as you&rsquo;ll think best. You must judge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had finally given him her hand, which he held a moment. &ldquo;How
+<i>much</i> I have to judge!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everything,&rdquo; said Madame de Vionnet: a remark that was
+indeed&mdash;with the refined disguised suppressed passion of her
+face&mdash;what he most carried away.
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+So far as a direct approach was concerned Sarah had neglected him, for the week
+now about to end, with a civil consistency of chill that, giving him a higher
+idea of her social resource, threw him back on the general reflexion that a
+woman could always be amazing. It indeed helped a little to console him that he
+felt sure she had for the same period also left Chad&rsquo;s curiosity hanging;
+though on the other hand, for his personal relief, Chad could at least go
+through the various motions&mdash;and he made them extraordinarily
+numerous&mdash;of seeing she had a good time. There wasn&rsquo;t a motion on
+which, in her presence, poor Strether could so much as venture, and all he
+could do when he was out of it was to walk over for a talk with Maria. He
+walked over of course much less than usual, but he found a special compensation
+in a certain half-hour during which, toward the close of a crowded empty
+expensive day, his several companions seemed to him so disposed of as to give
+his forms and usages a rest. He had been with them in the morning and had
+nevertheless called on the Pococks in the afternoon; but their whole group, he
+then found, had dispersed after a fashion of which it would amuse Miss Gostrey
+to hear. He was sorry again, gratefully sorry she was so out of it&mdash;she
+who had really put him in; but she had fortunately always her appetite for
+news. The pure flame of the disinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a
+lamp in a Byzantine vault. It was just now, as happened, that for so fine a
+sense as hers a near view would have begun to pay. Within three days,
+precisely, the situation on which he was to report had shown signs of an
+equilibrium; the effect of his look in at the hotel was to confirm this
+appearance. If the equilibrium might only prevail! Sarah was out with Waymarsh,
+Mamie was out with Chad, and Jim was out alone. Later on indeed he himself was
+booked to Jim, was to take him that evening to the Varieties&mdash;which
+Strether was careful to pronounce as Jim pronounced them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey drank it in. &ldquo;What then to-night do the others do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it has been arranged. Waymarsh takes Sarah to dine at
+Bignon&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered. &ldquo;And what do they do after? They can&rsquo;t come straight
+home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, they can&rsquo;t come straight home&mdash;at least Sarah
+can&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s their secret, but I think I&rsquo;ve guessed it.&rdquo;
+Then as she waited: &ldquo;The circus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made her stare a moment longer, then laugh almost to extravagance.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no one like you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Like <i>me?</i>&rdquo;&mdash;he only wanted to understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Like all of you together&mdash;like all of us: Woollett, Milrose and
+their products. We&rsquo;re abysmal&mdash;but may we never be less so! Mr.
+Newsome,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;meanwhile takes Miss
+Pocock&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely&mdash;to the Français: to see what <i>you</i> took Waymarsh
+and me to, a family-bill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then may Mr. Chad enjoy it as <i>I</i> did!&rdquo; But she saw so
+much in things. &ldquo;Do they spend their evenings, your young people, like
+that, alone together?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, they&rsquo;re young people&mdash;but they&rsquo;re old
+friends.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see, I see. And do <i>they</i> dine&mdash;for a difference&mdash;at
+Brébant&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh where they dine is their secret too. But I&rsquo;ve my idea that it
+will be, very quietly, at Chad&rsquo;s own place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;ll come to him there alone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They looked at each other a moment. &ldquo;He has known her from a child.
+Besides,&rdquo; said Strether with emphasis, &ldquo;Mamie&rsquo;s remarkable.
+She&rsquo;s splendid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered. &ldquo;Do you mean she expects to bring it off?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Getting hold of him? No&mdash;I think not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t want him enough?&mdash;or doesn&rsquo;t believe in her
+power?&rdquo; On which as he said nothing she continued: &ldquo;She finds she
+doesn&rsquo;t care for him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;I think she finds she does. But that&rsquo;s what I mean by so
+describing her. It&rsquo;s <i>if</i> she does that she&rsquo;s splendid. But
+we&rsquo;ll see,&rdquo; he wound up, &ldquo;where she comes out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You seem to show me sufficiently,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey laughed,
+&ldquo;where she goes in! But is her childhood&rsquo;s friend,&rdquo; she
+asked, &ldquo;permitting himself recklessly to flirt with her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;not that. Chad&rsquo;s also splendid. They&rsquo;re <i>all</i>
+splendid!&rdquo; he declared with a sudden strange sound of wistfulness and
+envy. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re at least <i>happy</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Happy?&rdquo;&mdash;it appeared, with their various difficulties, to
+surprise her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;I seem to myself among them the only one who
+isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She demurred. &ldquo;With your constant tribute to the ideal?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had a laugh at his tribute to the ideal, but he explained after a moment his
+impression. &ldquo;I mean they&rsquo;re living. They&rsquo;re rushing about.
+I&rsquo;ve already had my rushing. I&rsquo;m waiting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But aren&rsquo;t you,&rdquo; she asked by way of cheer, &ldquo;waiting
+with <i>me?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her in all kindness. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;if it weren&rsquo;t for
+that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you help me to wait,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;However,&rdquo; she
+went on, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve really something for you that will help you to wait
+and which you shall have in a minute. Only there&rsquo;s something more I want
+from you first. I revel in Sarah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So do I. If it weren&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he again amusedly sighed,
+&ldquo;for <i>that</i>&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you owe more to women than any man I ever saw. We do seem to keep
+you going. Yet Sarah, as I see her, must be great.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She <i>is</i>&rdquo; Strether fully assented: &ldquo;great! Whatever
+happens, she won&rsquo;t, with these unforgettable days, have lived in
+vain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey had a pause. &ldquo;You mean she has fallen in love?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean she wonders if she hasn&rsquo;t&mdash;and it serves all her
+purpose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has indeed,&rdquo; Maria laughed, &ldquo;served women&rsquo;s
+purposes before!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;for giving in. But I doubt if the idea&mdash;as an
+idea&mdash;has ever up to now answered so well for holding out. That&rsquo;s
+<i>her</i> tribute to the ideal&mdash;we each have our own. It&rsquo;s her
+romance&mdash;and it seems to me better on the whole than mine. To have it in
+Paris too,&rdquo; he explained&mdash;&ldquo;on this classic ground, in this
+charged infectious air, with so sudden an intensity: well, it&rsquo;s more than
+she expected. She has had in short to recognise the breaking out for her of a
+real affinity&mdash;and with everything to enhance the drama.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey followed. &ldquo;Jim for instance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jim. Jim hugely enhances. Jim was made to enhance. And then Mr.
+Waymarsh. It&rsquo;s the crowning touch&mdash;it supplies the colour.
+He&rsquo;s positively separated.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she herself unfortunately isn&rsquo;t&mdash;that supplies the colour
+too.&rdquo; Miss Gostrey was all there. But somehow&mdash;! &ldquo;Is <i>he</i>
+in love?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether looked at her a long time; then looked all about the room; then came a
+little nearer. &ldquo;Will you never tell any one in the world as long as ever
+you live?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never.&rdquo; It was charming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He thinks Sarah really is. But he has no fear,&rdquo; Strether hastened
+to add.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of her being affected by it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of <i>his</i> being. He likes it, but he knows she can hold out.
+He&rsquo;s helping her, he&rsquo;s floating her over, by kindness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria rather funnily considered it. &ldquo;Floating her over in champagne? The
+kindness of dining her, nose to nose, at the hour when all Paris is crowding to
+profane delights, and in the&mdash;well, in the great temple, as one hears of
+it, of pleasure?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s just <i>it</i>, for both of them,&rdquo; Strether
+insisted&mdash;&ldquo;and all of a supreme innocence. The Parisian place, the
+feverish hour, the putting before her of a hundred francs&rsquo; worth of food
+and drink, which they&rsquo;ll scarcely touch&mdash;all that&rsquo;s the dear
+man&rsquo;s own romance; the expensive kind, expensive in francs and centimes,
+in which he abounds. And the circus afterwards&mdash;which is cheaper, but
+which he&rsquo;ll find some means of making as dear as
+possible&mdash;that&rsquo;s also <i>his</i> tribute to the ideal. It does for
+him. He&rsquo;ll see her through. They won&rsquo;t talk of anything worse than
+you and me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;re bad enough perhaps, thank heaven,&rdquo; she laughed,
+&ldquo;to upset them! Mr. Waymarsh at any rate is a hideous old
+coquette.&rdquo; And the next moment she had dropped everything for a different
+pursuit. &ldquo;What you don&rsquo;t appear to know is that Jeanne de Vionnet
+has become engaged. She&rsquo;s to marry&mdash;it has been definitely
+arranged&mdash;young Monsieur de Montbron.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He fairly blushed. &ldquo;Then&mdash;if you know it&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;out&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t I often know things that are <i>not</i> out? However,&rdquo;
+she said, &ldquo;this will be out to-morrow. But I see I&rsquo;ve counted too
+much on your possible ignorance. You&rsquo;ve been before me, and I don&rsquo;t
+make you jump as I hoped.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a gasp at her insight. &ldquo;You never fail! I&rsquo;ve <i>had</i> my
+jump. I had it when I first heard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then if you knew why didn&rsquo;t you tell me as soon as you came
+in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I had it from her as a thing not yet to be spoken of.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey wondered. &ldquo;From Madame de Vionnet herself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As a probability&mdash;not quite a certainty: a good cause in which Chad
+has been working. So I&rsquo;ve waited.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You need wait no longer,&rdquo; she returned. &ldquo;It reached me
+yesterday&mdash;roundabout and accidental, but by a person who had had it from
+one of the young man&rsquo;s own people&mdash;as a thing quite settled. I was
+only keeping it for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You thought Chad wouldn&rsquo;t have told me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated. &ldquo;Well, if he hasn&rsquo;t&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t. And yet the thing appears to have been practically his
+doing. So there we are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There we are!&rdquo; Maria candidly echoed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I jumped. I jumped,&rdquo; he continued to explain,
+&ldquo;because it means, this disposition of the daughter, that there&rsquo;s
+now nothing else: nothing else but him and the mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Still&mdash;it simplifies.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It simplifies&rdquo;&mdash;he fully concurred. &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s
+precisely where we are. It marks a stage in his relation. The act is his answer
+to Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s demonstration.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It tells,&rdquo; Maria asked, &ldquo;the worst?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The worst.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But is the worst what he wants Sarah to know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t care for Sarah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At which Miss Gostrey&rsquo;s eyebrows went up. &ldquo;You mean she has already
+dished herself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether took a turn about; he had thought it out again and again before this,
+to the end; but the vista seemed each time longer. &ldquo;He wants his good
+friend to know the best. I mean the measure of his attachment. She asked for a
+sign, and he thought of that one. There it is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A concession to her jealousy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether pulled up. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;call it that. Make it lurid&mdash;for that
+makes my problem richer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly, let us have it lurid&mdash;for I quite agree with you that we
+want none of our problems poor. But let us also have it clear. Can he, in the
+midst of such a preoccupation, or on the heels of it, have seriously cared for
+Jeanne?&mdash;cared, I mean, as a young man at liberty would have cared?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Strether had mastered it. &ldquo;I think he can have thought it would be
+charming if he <i>could</i> care. It would be nicer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nicer than being tied up to Marie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;than the discomfort of an attachment to a person he can never
+hope, short of a catastrophe, to marry. And he was quite right,&rdquo; said
+Strether. &ldquo;It would certainly have been nicer. Even when a thing&rsquo;s
+already nice there mostly <i>is</i> some other thing that would have been
+nicer&mdash;or as to which we wonder if it wouldn&rsquo;t. But his question was
+all the same a dream. He <i>couldn&rsquo;t</i> care in that way. He <i>is</i>
+tied up to Marie. The relation is too special and has gone too far. It&rsquo;s
+the very basis, and his recent lively contribution toward establishing Jeanne
+in life has been his definite and final acknowledgement to Madame de Vionnet
+that he has ceased squirming. I doubt meanwhile,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;if
+Sarah has at all directly attacked him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion brooded. &ldquo;But won&rsquo;t he wish for his own satisfaction
+to make his ground good to her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;he&rsquo;ll leave it to me, he&rsquo;ll leave everything to me.
+I &lsquo;sort of&rsquo; feel&rdquo;&mdash;he worked it out&mdash;&ldquo;that
+the whole thing will come upon me. Yes, I shall have every inch and every ounce
+of it. I shall be <i>used</i> for it&mdash;!&rdquo; And Strether lost himself
+in the prospect. Then he fancifully expressed the issue. &ldquo;To the last
+drop of my blood.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria, however, roundly protested. &ldquo;Ah you&rsquo;ll please keep a drop
+for <i>me</i>. I shall have a use for it!&rdquo;&mdash;which she didn&rsquo;t
+however follow up. She had come back the next moment to another matter.
+&ldquo;Mrs. Pocock, with her brother, is trusting only to her general
+charm?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So it would seem.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the charm&rsquo;s not working?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Strether put it otherwise, &ldquo;She&rsquo;s sounding the note of
+home&mdash;which is the very best thing she can do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The best for Madame de Vionnet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The best for home itself. The natural one; the right one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Right,&rdquo; Maria asked, &ldquo;when it fails?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had a pause. &ldquo;The difficulty&rsquo;s Jim. Jim&rsquo;s the note
+of home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She debated. &ldquo;Ah surely not the note of Mrs. Newsome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he had it all. &ldquo;The note of the home for which Mrs. Newsome wants
+him&mdash;the home of the business. Jim stands, with his little legs apart, at
+the door of <i>that</i> tent; and Jim <i>is</i>, frankly speaking, extremely
+awful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria stared. &ldquo;And you in, you poor thing, for your evening with
+him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh he&rsquo;s all right for <i>me!</i>&rdquo; Strether laughed.
+&ldquo;Any one&rsquo;s good enough for <i>me</i>. But Sarah shouldn&rsquo;t,
+all the same, have brought him. She doesn&rsquo;t appreciate him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His friend was amused with this statement of it. &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t know, you
+mean, how bad he is?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether shook his head with decision. &ldquo;Not really.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered. &ldquo;Then doesn&rsquo;t Mrs. Newsome?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made him frankly do the same. &ldquo;Well, no&mdash;since you ask me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria rubbed it in. &ldquo;Not really either?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not at all. She rates him rather high.&rdquo; With which indeed,
+immediately, he took himself up. &ldquo;Well, he <i>is</i> good too, in his
+way. It depends on what you want him for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey, however, wouldn&rsquo;t let it depend on
+anything&mdash;wouldn&rsquo;t have it, and wouldn&rsquo;t want him, at any
+price. &ldquo;It suits my book,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that he should be
+impossible; and it suits it still better,&rdquo; she more imaginatively added,
+&ldquo;that Mrs. Newsome doesn&rsquo;t know he is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, in consequence, had to take it from her, but he fell back on
+something else. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you who does really know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Waymarsh? Never!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never indeed. I&rsquo;m not <i>always</i> thinking of Mr. Waymarsh; in
+fact I find now I never am.&rdquo; Then he mentioned the person as if there
+were a good deal in it. &ldquo;Mamie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His own sister?&rdquo; Oddly enough it but let her down. &ldquo;What
+good will that do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None perhaps. But there&mdash;as usual&mdash;we are!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>
+There they were yet again, accordingly, for two days more; when Strether, on
+being, at Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s hotel, ushered into that lady&rsquo;s salon,
+found himself at first assuming a mistake on the part of the servant who had
+introduced him and retired. The occupants hadn&rsquo;t come in, for the room
+looked empty as only a room can look in Paris, of a fine afternoon when the
+faint murmur of the huge collective life, carried on out of doors, strays among
+scattered objects even as a summer air idles in a lonely garden. Our friend
+looked about and hesitated; observed, on the evidence of a table charged with
+purchases and other matters, that Sarah had become possessed&mdash;by no aid
+from <i>him</i>&mdash;of the last number of the salmon-coloured Revue; noted
+further that Mamie appeared to have received a present of Fromentin&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Maîtres d&rsquo;Autrefois&rdquo; from Chad, who had written her name on
+the cover; and pulled up at the sight of a heavy letter addressed in a hand he
+knew. This letter, forwarded by a banker and arriving in Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s
+absence, had been placed in evidence, and it drew from the fact of its being
+unopened a sudden queer power to intensify the reach of its author. It brought
+home to him the scale on which Mrs. Newsome&mdash;for she had been copious
+indeed this time&mdash;was writing to her daughter while she kept <i>him</i> in
+durance; and it had altogether such an effect upon him as made him for a few
+minutes stand still and breathe low. In his own room, at his own hotel, he had
+dozens of well-filled envelopes superscribed in that character; and there was
+actually something in the renewal of his interrupted vision of the character
+that played straight into the so frequent question of whether he weren&rsquo;t
+already disinherited beyond appeal. It was such an assurance as the sharp
+downstrokes of her pen hadn&rsquo;t yet had occasion to give him; but they
+somehow at the present crisis stood for a probable absoluteness in any decree
+of the writer. He looked at Sarah&rsquo;s name and address, in short, as if he
+had been looking hard into her mother&rsquo;s face, and then turned from it as
+if the face had declined to relax. But since it was in a manner as if Mrs.
+Newsome were thereby all the more, instead of the less, in the room, and were
+conscious, sharply and sorely conscious, of himself, so he felt both held and
+hushed, summoned to stay at least and take his punishment. By staying,
+accordingly, he took it&mdash;creeping softly and vaguely about and waiting for
+Sarah to come in. She <i>would</i> come in if he stayed long enough, and he had
+now more than ever the sense of her success in leaving him a prey to anxiety.
+It wasn&rsquo;t to be denied that she had had a happy instinct, from the point
+of view of Woollett, in placing him thus at the mercy of her own initiative. It
+was very well to try to say he didn&rsquo;t care&mdash;that she might break
+ground when she would, might never break it at all if she wouldn&rsquo;t, and
+that he had no confession whatever to wait upon her with: he breathed from day
+to day an air that damnably required clearing, and there were moments when he
+quite ached to precipitate that process. He couldn&rsquo;t doubt that, should
+she only oblige him by surprising him just as he then was, a clarifying scene
+of some sort would result from the concussion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He humbly circulated in this spirit till he suddenly had a fresh arrest. Both
+the windows of the room stood open to the balcony, but it was only now that, in
+the glass of the leaf of one of them, folded back, he caught a reflexion
+quickly recognised as the colour of a lady&rsquo;s dress. Somebody had been
+then all the while on the balcony, and the person, whoever it might be, was so
+placed between the windows as to be hidden from him; while on the other hand
+the many sounds of the street had covered his own entrance and movements. If
+the person were Sarah he might on the spot therefore be served to his taste. He
+might lead her by a move or two up to the remedy for his vain tension; as to
+which, should he get nothing else from it, he would at least have the relief of
+pulling down the roof on their heads. There was fortunately no one at hand to
+observe&mdash;in respect to his valour&mdash;that even on this completed
+reasoning he still hung fire. He had been waiting for Mrs. Pocock and the sound
+of the oracle; but he had to gird himself afresh&mdash;which he did in the
+embrasure of the window, neither advancing nor retreating&mdash;before
+provoking the revelation. It was apparently for Sarah to come more into view;
+he was in that case there at her service. She did however, as meanwhile
+happened, come more into view; only she luckily came at the last minute as a
+contradiction of Sarah. The occupant of the balcony was after all quite another
+person, a person presented, on a second look, by a charming back and a slight
+shift of her position, as beautiful brilliant unconscious Mamie&mdash;Mamie
+alone at home, Mamie passing her time in her own innocent way, Mamie in short
+rather shabbily used, but Mamie absorbed interested and interesting. With her
+arms on the balustrade and her attention dropped to the street she allowed
+Strether to watch her, to consider several things, without her turning round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the oddity was that when he <i>had</i> so watched and considered he simply
+stepped back into the room without following up his advantage. He revolved
+there again for several minutes, quite as with something new to think of and as
+if the bearings of the possibility of Sarah had been superseded. For frankly,
+yes, it <i>had</i> bearings thus to find the girl in solitary possession. There
+was something in it that touched him to a point not to have been reckoned
+beforehand, something that softly but quite pressingly spoke to him, and that
+spoke the more each time he paused again at the edge of the balcony and saw her
+still unaware. Her companions were plainly scattered; Sarah would be off
+somewhere with Waymarsh and Chad off somewhere with Jim. Strether didn&rsquo;t
+at all mentally impute to Chad that he was with his &ldquo;good friend&rdquo;;
+he gave him the benefit of supposing him involved in appearances that, had he
+had to describe them&mdash;for instance to Maria&mdash;he would have
+conveniently qualified as more subtle. It came to him indeed the next thing
+that there was perhaps almost an excess of refinement in having left Mamie in
+such weather up there alone; however she might in fact have extemporised, under
+the charm of the Rue de Rivoli, a little makeshift Paris of wonder and fancy.
+Our friend in any case now recognised&mdash;and it was as if at the recognition
+Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s fixed intensity had suddenly, with a deep audible gasp,
+grown thin and vague&mdash;that day after day he had been conscious in respect
+to his young lady of something odd and ambiguous, yet something into which he
+could at last read a meaning. It had been at the most, this mystery, an
+obsession&mdash;oh an obsession agreeable; and it had just now fallen into its
+place as at the touch of a spring. It had represented the possibility between
+them of some communication baffled by accident and delay&mdash;the possibility
+even of some relation as yet unacknowledged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was always their old relation, the fruit of the Woollett years; but
+that&mdash;and it was what was strangest&mdash;had nothing whatever in common
+with what was now in the air. As a child, as a &ldquo;bud,&rdquo; and then
+again as a flower of expansion, Mamie had bloomed for him, freely, in the
+almost incessantly open doorways of home; where he remembered her as first very
+forward, as then very backward&mdash;for he had carried on at one period, in
+Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s parlours (oh Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s phases and his own!) a
+course of English Literature re-enforced by exams and teas&mdash;and once more,
+finally, as very much in advance. But he had kept no great sense of points of
+contact; it not being in the nature of things at Woollett that the freshest of
+the buds should find herself in the same basket with the most withered of the
+winter apples. The child had given sharpness, above all, to his sense of the
+flight of time; it was but the day before yesterday that he had tripped up on
+her hoop, yet his experience of remarkable women&mdash;destined, it would seem,
+remarkably to grow&mdash;felt itself ready this afternoon, quite braced itself,
+to include her. She had in fine more to say to him than he had ever dreamed the
+pretty girl of the moment <i>could</i> have; and the proof of the circumstance
+was that, visibly, unmistakeably, she had been able to say it to no one else.
+It was something she could mention neither to her brother, to her sister-in-law
+nor to Chad; though he could just imagine that had she still been at home she
+might have brought it out, as a supreme tribute to age, authority and attitude,
+for Mrs. Newsome. It was moreover something in which they all took an interest;
+the strength of their interest was in truth just the reason of her prudence.
+All this then, for five minutes, was vivid to Strether, and it put before him
+that, poor child, she had now but her prudence to amuse her. That, for a pretty
+girl in Paris, struck him, with a rush, as a sorry state; so that under the
+impression he went out to her with a step as hypocritically alert, he was well
+aware, as if he had just come into the room. She turned with a start at his
+voice; preoccupied with him though she might be, she was just a scrap
+disappointed. &ldquo;Oh I thought you were Mr. Bilham!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The remark had been at first surprising and our friend&rsquo;s private thought,
+under the influence of it, temporarily blighted; yet we are able to add that he
+presently recovered his inward tone and that many a fresh flower of fancy was
+to bloom in the same air. Little Bilham&mdash;since little Bilham was, somewhat
+incongruously, expected&mdash;appeared behindhand; a circumstance by which
+Strether was to profit. They came back into the room together after a little,
+the couple on the balcony, and amid its crimson-and-gold elegance, with the
+others still absent, Strether passed forty minutes that he appraised even at
+the time as far, in the whole queer connexion, from his idlest. Yes indeed,
+since he had the other day so agreed with Maria about the inspiration of the
+lurid, here was something for his problem that surely didn&rsquo;t make it
+shrink and that was floated in upon him as part of a sudden flood. He was
+doubtless not to know till afterwards, on turning them over in thought, of how
+many elements his impression was composed; but he none the less felt, as he sat
+with the charming girl, the signal growth of a confidence. For she <i>was</i>
+charming, when all was said&mdash;and none the less so for the visible habit
+and practice of freedom and fluency. She was charming, he was aware, in spite
+of the fact that if he hadn&rsquo;t found her so he would have found her
+something he should have been in peril of expressing as &ldquo;funny.&rdquo;
+Yes, she was funny, wonderful Mamie, and without dreaming it; she was bland,
+she was bridal&mdash;with never, that he could make out as yet, a bridegroom to
+support it; she was handsome and portly and easy and chatty, soft and sweet and
+almost disconcertingly reassuring. She was dressed, if we might so far
+discriminate, less as a young lady than as an old one&mdash;had an old one been
+supposable to Strether as so committed to vanity; the complexities of her hair
+missed moreover also the looseness of youth; and she had a mature manner of
+bending a little, as to encourage and reward, while she held neatly together in
+front of her a pair of strikingly polished hands: the combination of all of
+which kept up about her the glamour of her &ldquo;receiving,&rdquo; placed her
+again perpetually between the windows and within sound of the ice-cream plates,
+suggested the enumeration of all the names, all the Mr. Brookses and Mr.
+Snookses, gregarious specimens of a single type, she was happy to
+&ldquo;meet.&rdquo; But if all this was where she was funny, and if what was
+funnier than the rest was the contrast between her beautiful benevolent
+patronage&mdash;such a hint of the polysyllabic as might make her something of
+a bore toward middle age&mdash;and her rather flat little voice, the voice,
+naturally, unaffectedly yet, of a girl of fifteen; so Strether, none the less,
+at the end of ten minutes, felt in her a quiet dignity that pulled things
+bravely together. If quiet dignity, almost more than matronly, with voluminous,
+too voluminous clothes, was the effect she proposed to produce, that was an
+ideal one could like in her when once one had got into relation. The great
+thing now for her visitor was that this was exactly what he had done; it made
+so extraordinary a mixture of the brief and crowded hour. It was the mark of a
+relation that he had begun so quickly to find himself sure she was, of all
+people, as might have been said, on the side and of the party of Mrs.
+Newsome&rsquo;s original ambassador. She was in <i>his</i> interest and not in
+Sarah&rsquo;s, and some sign of that was precisely what he had been feeling in
+her, these last days, as imminent. Finally placed, in Paris, in immediate
+presence of the situation and of the hero of it&mdash;by whom Strether was
+incapable of meaning any one but Chad&mdash;she had accomplished, and really in
+a manner all unexpected to herself, a change of base; deep still things had
+come to pass within her, and by the time she had grown sure of them Strether
+had become aware of the little drama. When she knew where she was, in short, he
+had made it out; and he made it out at present still better; though with never
+a direct word passing between them all the while on the subject of his own
+predicament. There had been at first, as he sat there with her, a moment during
+which he wondered if she meant to break ground in respect to his prime
+undertaking. That door stood so strangely ajar that he was half-prepared to be
+conscious, at any juncture, of her having, of any one&rsquo;s having, quite
+bounced in. But, friendly, familiar, light of touch and happy of tact, she
+exquisitely stayed out; so that it was for all the world as if to show she
+could deal with him without being reduced to&mdash;well, scarcely anything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It fully came up for them then, by means of their talking of everything
+<i>but</i> Chad, that Mamie, unlike Sarah, unlike Jim, knew perfectly what had
+become of him. It fully came up that she had taken to the last fraction of an
+inch the measure of the change in him, and that she wanted Strether to know
+what a secret she proposed to make of it. They talked most
+conveniently&mdash;as if they had had no chance yet&mdash;about Woollett; and
+that had virtually the effect of their keeping the secret more close. The hour
+took on for Strether, little by little, a queer sad sweetness of quality, he
+had such a revulsion in Mamie&rsquo;s favour and on behalf of her social value
+as might have come from remorse at some early injustice. She made him, as under
+the breath of some vague western whiff, homesick and freshly restless; he could
+really for the time have fancied himself stranded with her on a far shore,
+during an ominous calm, in a quaint community of shipwreck. Their little
+interview was like a picnic on a coral strand; they passed each other, with
+melancholy smiles and looks sufficiently allusive, such cupfuls of water as
+they had saved. Especially sharp in Strether meanwhile was the conviction that
+his companion really knew, as we have hinted, where she had come out. It was at
+a very particular place&mdash;only <i>that</i> she would never tell him; it
+would be above all what he should have to puzzle for himself. This was what he
+hoped for, because his interest in the girl wouldn&rsquo;t be complete without
+it. No more would the appreciation to which she was entitled&mdash;so assured
+was he that the more he saw of her process the more he should see of her pride.
+She saw, herself, everything; but she knew what she didn&rsquo;t want, and that
+it was that had helped her. What didn&rsquo;t she want?&mdash;there was a
+pleasure lost for her old friend in not yet knowing, as there would doubtless
+be a thrill in getting a glimpse. Gently and sociably she kept that dark to
+him, and it was as if she soothed and beguiled him in other ways to make up for
+it. She came out with her impression of Madame de Vionnet&mdash;of whom she had
+&ldquo;heard so much&rdquo;; she came out with her impression of Jeanne, whom
+she had been &ldquo;dying to see&rdquo;: she brought it out with a blandness by
+which her auditor was really stirred that she had been with Sarah early that
+very afternoon, and after dreadful delays caused by all sorts of things,
+mainly, eternally, by the purchase of clothes&mdash;clothes that unfortunately
+wouldn&rsquo;t be themselves eternal&mdash;to call in the Rue de Bellechasse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the sound of these names Strether almost blushed to feel that he
+couldn&rsquo;t have sounded them first&mdash;and yet couldn&rsquo;t either have
+justified his squeamishness. Mamie made them easy as he couldn&rsquo;t have
+begun to do, and yet it could only have cost her more than he should ever have
+had to spend. It was as friends of Chad&rsquo;s, friends special,
+distinguished, desirable, enviable, that she spoke of them, and she beautifully
+carried it off that much as she had heard of them&mdash;though she didn&rsquo;t
+say how or where, which was a touch of her own&mdash;she had found them beyond
+her supposition. She abounded in praise of them, and after the manner of
+Woollett&mdash;which made the manner of Woollett a loveable thing again to
+Strether. He had never so felt the true inwardness of it as when his blooming
+companion pronounced the elder of the ladies of the Rue de Bellechasse too
+fascinating for words and declared of the younger that she was perfectly ideal,
+a real little monster of charm. &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; she said of Jeanne,
+&ldquo;ought ever to happen to her&mdash;she&rsquo;s so awfully right as she
+is. Another touch will spoil her&mdash;so she oughtn&rsquo;t to <i>be</i>
+touched.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but things, here in Paris,&rdquo; Strether observed, &ldquo;do happen
+to little girls.&rdquo; And then for the joke&rsquo;s and the occasion&rsquo;s
+sake: &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you found that yourself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That things happen&mdash;? Oh I&rsquo;m not a little girl. I&rsquo;m a
+big battered blowsy one. <i>I</i> don&rsquo;t care,&rdquo; Mamie laughed,
+&ldquo;<i>what</i> happens.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn&rsquo;t happen that he
+should give her the pleasure of learning that he found her nicer than he had
+really dreamed&mdash;a pause that ended when he had said to himself that, so
+far as it at all mattered for her, she had in fact perhaps already made this
+out. He risked accordingly a different question&mdash;though conscious, as soon
+as he had spoken, that he seemed to place it in relation to her last speech.
+&ldquo;But that Mademoiselle de Vionnet is to be married&mdash;I suppose
+you&rsquo;ve heard of <i>that</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For all, he then found, he need fear! &ldquo;Dear, yes; the gentleman was
+there: Monsieur de Montbron, whom Madame de Vionnet presented to us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And was he nice?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner. &ldquo;Any
+man&rsquo;s nice when he&rsquo;s in love.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made Strether laugh. &ldquo;But is Monsieur de Montbron in
+love&mdash;already&mdash;with <i>you?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh that&rsquo;s not necessary&mdash;it&rsquo;s so much better he should
+be so with <i>her</i>: which, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for
+myself. He&rsquo;s perfectly gone&mdash;and I couldn&rsquo;t have borne it for
+her if he hadn&rsquo;t been. She&rsquo;s just too sweet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether hesitated. &ldquo;And through being in love too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On which with a smile that struck him as wonderful Mamie had a wonderful
+answer. &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t know if she is or not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made him again laugh out. &ldquo;Oh but <i>you</i> do!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was willing to take it that way. &ldquo;Oh yes, I know everything.&rdquo;
+And as she sat there rubbing her polished hands and making the best of
+it&mdash;only holding her elbows perhaps a little too much out&mdash;the
+momentary effect for Strether was that every one else, in all their affair,
+seemed stupid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Know that poor little Jeanne doesn&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s the matter
+with her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as near as they came to saying that she was probably in love with Chad;
+but it was quite near enough for what Strether wanted; which was to be
+confirmed in his certitude that, whether in love or not, she appealed to
+something large and easy in the girl before him. Mamie would be fat, too fat,
+at thirty; but she would always be the person who, at the present sharp hour,
+had been disinterestedly tender. &ldquo;If I see a little more of her, as I
+hope I shall, I think she&rsquo;ll like me enough&mdash;for she seemed to like
+me to-day&mdash;to want me to tell her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And <i>shall</i> you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perfectly. I shall tell her the matter with her is that she wants only
+too much to do right. To do right for her, naturally,&rdquo; said Mamie,
+&ldquo;is to please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her mother, do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her mother first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether waited. &ldquo;And then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, &lsquo;then&rsquo;&mdash;Mr. Newsome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something really grand for him in the serenity of this reference.
+&ldquo;And last only Monsieur de Montbron?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Last only&rdquo;&mdash;she good-humouredly kept it up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether considered. &ldquo;So that every one after all then will be
+suited?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had one of her few hesitations, but it was a question only of a moment; and
+it was her nearest approach to being explicit with him about what was between
+them. &ldquo;I think I can speak for myself. <i>I</i> shall be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It said indeed so much, told such a story of her being ready to help him, so
+committed to him that truth, in short, for such use as he might make of it
+toward those ends of his own with which, patiently and trustfully, she had
+nothing to do&mdash;it so fully achieved all this that he appeared to himself
+simply to meet it in its own spirit by the last frankness of admiration.
+Admiration was of itself almost accusatory, but nothing less would serve to
+show her how nearly he understood. He put out his hand for good-bye with a
+&ldquo;Splendid, splendid, splendid!&rdquo; And he left her, in her splendour,
+still waiting for little Bilham.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>Book Tenth</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+Strether occupied beside little Bilham, three evenings after his interview with
+Mamie Pocock, the same deep divan they had enjoyed together on the first
+occasion of our friend&rsquo;s meeting Madame de Vionnet and her daughter in
+the apartment of the Boulevard Malesherbes, where his position affirmed itself
+again as ministering to an easy exchange of impressions. The present evening
+had a different stamp; if the company was much more numerous, so, inevitably,
+were the ideas set in motion. It was on the other hand, however, now strongly
+marked that the talkers moved, in respect to such matters, round an inner, a
+protected circle. They knew at any rate what really concerned them to-night,
+and Strether had begun by keeping his companion close to it. Only a few of
+Chad&rsquo;s guests had dined&mdash;that is fifteen or twenty, a few compared
+with the large concourse offered to sight by eleven o&rsquo;clock; but number
+and mass, quantity and quality, light, fragrance, sound, the overflow of
+hospitality meeting the high tide of response, had all from the first pressed
+upon Strether&rsquo;s consciousness, and he felt himself somehow part and
+parcel of the most festive scene, as the term was, in which he had ever in his
+life been engaged. He had perhaps seen, on Fourths of July and on dear old
+domestic Commencements, more people assembled, but he had never seen so many in
+proportion to the space, or had at all events never known so great a
+promiscuity to show so markedly as picked. Numerous as was the company, it had
+still been made so by selection, and what was above all rare for Strether was
+that, by no fault of his own, he was in the secret of the principle that had
+worked. He hadn&rsquo;t enquired, he had averted his head, but Chad had put him
+a pair of questions that themselves smoothed the ground. He hadn&rsquo;t
+answered the questions, he had replied that they were the young man&rsquo;s own
+affair; and he had then seen perfectly that the latter&rsquo;s direction was
+already settled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad had applied for counsel only by way of intimating that he knew what to do;
+and he had clearly never known it better than in now presenting to his sister
+the whole circle of his society. This was all in the sense and the spirit of
+the note struck by him on that lady&rsquo;s arrival; he had taken at the
+station itself a line that led him without a break, and that enabled him to
+lead the Pococks&mdash;though dazed a little, no doubt, breathless, no doubt,
+and bewildered&mdash;to the uttermost end of the passage accepted by them
+perforce as pleasant. He had made it for them violently pleasant and
+mercilessly full; the upshot of which was, to Strether&rsquo;s vision, that
+they had come all the way without discovering it to be really no passage at
+all. It was a brave blind alley, where to pass was impossible and where, unless
+they stuck fast, they would have&mdash;which was always awkward&mdash;publicly
+to back out. They were touching bottom assuredly tonight; the whole scene
+represented the terminus of the <i>cul-de-sac</i>. So could things go when
+there was a hand to keep them consistent&mdash;a hand that pulled the wire with
+a skill at which the elder man more and more marvelled. The elder man felt
+responsible, but he also felt successful, since what had taken place was simply
+the issue of his own contention, six weeks before, that they properly should
+wait to see what their friends would have really to say. He had determined Chad
+to wait, he had determined him to see; he was therefore not to quarrel with the
+time given up to the business. As much as ever, accordingly, now that a
+fortnight had elapsed, the situation created for Sarah, and against which she
+had raised no protest, was that of her having accommodated herself to her
+adventure as to a pleasure-party surrendered perhaps even somewhat in excess to
+bustle and to &ldquo;pace.&rdquo; If her brother had been at any point the
+least bit open to criticism it might have been on the ground of his spicing the
+draught too highly and pouring the cup too full. Frankly treating the whole
+occasion of the presence of his relatives as an opportunity for amusement, he
+left it, no doubt, but scant margin as an opportunity for anything else. He
+suggested, invented, abounded&mdash;yet all the while with the loosest easiest
+rein. Strether, during his own weeks, had gained a sense of knowing Paris; but
+he saw it afresh, and with fresh emotion, in the form of the knowledge offered
+to his colleague.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A thousand unuttered thoughts hummed for him in the air of these observations;
+not the least frequent of which was that Sarah might well of a truth not quite
+know whither she was drifting. She was in no position not to appear to expect
+that Chad should treat her handsomely; yet she struck our friend as privately
+stiffening a little each time she missed the chance of marking the great
+<i>nuance</i>. The great <i>nuance</i> was in brief that of course her brother
+must treat her handsomely&mdash;she should like to see him not; but that
+treating her handsomely, none the less, wasn&rsquo;t all in all&mdash;treating
+her handsomely buttered no parsnips; and that in fine there were moments when
+she felt the fixed eyes of their admirable absent mother fairly screw into the
+flat of her back. Strether, watching, after his habit, and overscoring with
+thought, positively had moments of his own in which he found himself sorry for
+her&mdash;occasions on which she affected him as a person seated in a runaway
+vehicle and turning over the question of a possible jump. <i>Would</i> she
+jump, could she, would <i>that</i> be a safe place?&mdash;this question, at
+such instants, sat for him in her lapse into pallor, her tight lips, her
+conscious eyes. It came back to the main point at issue: would she be, after
+all, to be squared? He believed on the whole she would jump; yet his
+alternations on this subject were the more especial stuff of his suspense. One
+thing remained well before him&mdash;a conviction that was in fact to gain
+sharpness from the impressions of this evening: that if she <i>should</i>
+gather in her skirts, close her eyes and quit the carriage while in motion, he
+would promptly enough become aware. She would alight from her headlong course
+more or less directly upon him; it would be appointed to him, unquestionably,
+to receive her entire weight. Signs and portents of the experience thus in
+reserve for him had as it happened, multiplied even through the dazzle of
+Chad&rsquo;s party. It was partly under the nervous consciousness of such a
+prospect that, leaving almost every one in the two other rooms, leaving those
+of the guests already known to him as well as a mass of brilliant strangers of
+both sexes and of several varieties of speech, he had desired five quiet
+minutes with little Bilham, whom he always found soothing and even a little
+inspiring, and to whom he had actually moreover something distinct and
+important to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had felt of old&mdash;for it already seemed long ago&mdash;rather humiliated
+at discovering he could learn in talk with a personage so much his junior the
+lesson of a certain moral ease; but he had now got used to that&mdash;whether
+or no the mixture of the fact with other humiliations had made it indistinct,
+whether or no directly from little Bilham&rsquo;s example, the example of his
+being contentedly just the obscure and acute little Bilham he was. It worked so
+for him, Strether seemed to see; and our friend had at private hours a wan
+smile over the fact that he himself, after so many more years, was still in
+search of something that would work. However, as we have said, it worked just
+now for them equally to have found a corner a little apart. What particularly
+kept it apart was the circumstance that the music in the salon was admirable,
+with two or three such singers as it was a privilege to hear in private. Their
+presence gave a distinction to Chad&rsquo;s entertainment, and the interest of
+calculating their effect on Sarah was actually so sharp as to be almost
+painful. Unmistakeably, in her single person, the motive of the composition and
+dressed in a splendour of crimson which affected Strether as the sound of a
+fall through a skylight, she would now be in the forefront of the listening
+circle and committed by it up to her eyes. Those eyes during the wonderful
+dinner itself he hadn&rsquo;t once met; having confessedly&mdash;perhaps a
+little pusillanimously&mdash;arranged with Chad that he should be on the same
+side of the table. But there was no use in having arrived now with little
+Bilham at an unprecedented point of intimacy unless he could pitch everything
+into the pot. &ldquo;You who sat where you could see her, what does she make of
+it all? By which I mean on what terms does she take it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh she takes it, I judge, as proving that the claim of his family is
+more than ever justified.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She isn&rsquo;t then pleased with what he has to show?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the contrary; she&rsquo;s pleased with it as with his capacity to do
+this kind of thing&mdash;more than she has been pleased with anything for a
+long time. But she wants him to show it <i>there</i>. He has no right to waste
+it on the likes of us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wondered. &ldquo;She wants him to move the whole thing over?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The whole thing&mdash;with an important exception. Everything he has
+&lsquo;picked up&rsquo;&mdash;and the way he knows how. She sees no difficulty
+in that. She&rsquo;d run the show herself, and she&rsquo;ll make the handsome
+concession that Woollett would be on the whole in some ways the better for it.
+Not that it wouldn&rsquo;t be also in some ways the better for Woollett. The
+people there are just as good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just as good as you and these others? Ah that may be. But such an
+occasion as this, whether or no,&rdquo; Strether said, &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t the
+people. It&rsquo;s what has made the people possible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then,&rdquo; his friend replied, &ldquo;there you are; I give you
+my impression for what it&rsquo;s worth. Mrs. Pocock has <i>seen</i>, and
+that&rsquo;s to-night how she sits there. If you were to have a glimpse of her
+face you&rsquo;d understand me. She has made up her mind&mdash;to the sound of
+expensive music.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether took it freely in. &ldquo;Ah then I shall have news of her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to frighten you, but I think that likely.
+However,&rdquo; little Bilham continued, &ldquo;if I&rsquo;m of the least use
+to you to hold on by&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not of the least!&rdquo;&mdash;and Strether laid an
+appreciative hand on him to say it. &ldquo;No one&rsquo;s of the least.&rdquo;
+With which, to mark how gaily he could take it, he patted his companion&rsquo;s
+knee. &ldquo;I must meet my fate alone, and I <i>shall</i>&mdash;oh
+you&rsquo;ll see! And yet,&rdquo; he pursued the next moment, &ldquo;you
+<i>can</i> help me too. You once said to me&rdquo;&mdash;he followed this
+further&mdash;&ldquo;that you held Chad should marry. I didn&rsquo;t see then
+so well as I know now that you meant he should marry Miss Pocock. Do you still
+consider that he should? Because if you do&rdquo;&mdash;he kept it
+up&mdash;&ldquo;I want you immediately to change your mind. You can help me
+that way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Help you by thinking he should <i>not</i> marry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not marry at all events Mamie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And who then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Strether returned, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;m not obliged to say.
+But Madame de Vionnet&mdash;I suggest&mdash;when he can.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said little Bilham with some sharpness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh precisely! But he needn&rsquo;t marry at all&mdash;I&rsquo;m at any
+rate not obliged to provide for it. Whereas in your case I rather feel that I
+<i>am</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham was amused. &ldquo;Obliged to provide for my marrying?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;after all I&rsquo;ve done to you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man weighed it. &ldquo;Have you done as much as that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether, thus challenged, &ldquo;of course I must
+remember what you&rsquo;ve also done to <i>me</i>. We may perhaps call it
+square. But all the same,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;I wish awfully you&rsquo;d
+marry Mamie Pocock yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham laughed out. &ldquo;Why it was only the other night, in this very
+place, that you were proposing to me a different union altogether.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mademoiselle de Vionnet?&rdquo; Well, Strether easily confessed it.
+&ldquo;That, I admit, was a vain image. <i>This</i> is practical politics. I
+want to do something good for both of you&mdash;I wish you each so well; and
+you can see in a moment the trouble it will save me to polish you off by the
+same stroke. She likes you, you know. You console her. And she&rsquo;s
+splendid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham stared as a delicate appetite stares at an overheaped plate.
+&ldquo;What do I console her for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It just made his friend impatient. &ldquo;Oh come, you know!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what proves for you that she likes me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why the fact that I found her three days ago stopping at home alone all
+the golden afternoon on the mere chance that you&rsquo;d come to her, and
+hanging over her balcony on that of seeing your cab drive up. I don&rsquo;t
+know what you want more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham after a moment found it. &ldquo;Only just to know what proves to
+you that I like <i>her</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh if what I&rsquo;ve just mentioned isn&rsquo;t enough to make you do
+it, you&rsquo;re a stony-hearted little fiend. Besides&rdquo;&mdash;Strether
+encouraged his fancy&rsquo;s flight&mdash;&ldquo;you showed your inclination in
+the way you kept her waiting, kept her on purpose to see if she cared enough
+for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion paid his ingenuity the deference of a pause. &ldquo;I
+didn&rsquo;t keep her waiting. I came at the hour. I wouldn&rsquo;t have kept
+her waiting for the world,&rdquo; the young man honourably declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better still&mdash;then there you are!&rdquo; And Strether, charmed,
+held him the faster. &ldquo;Even if you didn&rsquo;t do her justice,
+moreover,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;I should insist on your immediately
+coming round to it. I want awfully to have worked it. I want&rdquo;&mdash;and
+our friend spoke now with a yearning that was really earnest&mdash;&ldquo;at
+least to have done <i>that</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To have married me off&mdash;without a penny?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I shan&rsquo;t live long; and I give you my word, now and here,
+that I&rsquo;ll leave you every penny of my own. I haven&rsquo;t many,
+unfortunately, but you shall have them all. And Miss Pocock, I think, has a
+few. I want,&rdquo; Strether went on, &ldquo;to have been at least to that
+extent constructive even expiatory. I&rsquo;ve been sacrificing so to strange
+gods that I feel I want to put on record, somehow, my
+fidelity&mdash;fundamentally unchanged after all&mdash;to our own. I feel as if
+my hands were embrued with the blood of monstrous alien altars&mdash;of another
+faith altogether. There it is&mdash;it&rsquo;s done.&rdquo; And then he further
+explained. &ldquo;It took hold of me because the idea of getting her quite out
+of the way for Chad helps to clear my ground.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man, at this, bounced about, and it brought them face to face in
+admitted amusement. &ldquo;You want me to marry as a convenience to
+Chad?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; Strether debated&mdash;&ldquo;<i>he</i> doesn&rsquo;t care
+whether you marry or not. It&rsquo;s as a convenience simply to my own plan
+<i>for</i> him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Simply&rsquo;!&rdquo;&mdash;and little Bilham&rsquo;s concurrence
+was in itself a lively comment. &ldquo;Thank you. But I thought,&rdquo; he
+continued, &ldquo;you had exactly <i>no</i> plan &lsquo;for&rsquo; him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then call it my plan for myself&mdash;which may be well, as you
+say, to have none. His situation, don&rsquo;t you see? is reduced now to the
+bare facts one has to recognise. Mamie doesn&rsquo;t want him, and he
+doesn&rsquo;t want Mamie: so much as that these days have made clear.
+It&rsquo;s a thread we can wind up and tuck in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But little Bilham still questioned. &ldquo;<i>You</i> can&mdash;since you seem
+so much to want to. But why should I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Strether thought it over, but was obliged of course to admit that his
+demonstration did superficially fail. &ldquo;Seriously, there <i>is</i> no
+reason. It&rsquo;s my affair&mdash;I must do it alone. I&rsquo;ve only my
+fantastic need of making my dose stiff.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham wondered. &ldquo;What do you call your dose?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why what I have to swallow. I want my conditions unmitigated.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had spoken in the tone of talk for talk&rsquo;s sake, and yet with an
+obscure truth lurking in the loose folds; a circumstance presently not without
+its effect on his young friend. Little Bilham&rsquo;s eyes rested on him a
+moment with some intensity; then suddenly, as if everything had cleared up, he
+gave a happy laugh. It seemed to say that if pretending, or even trying, or
+still even hoping, to be able to care for Mamie would be of use, he was all
+there for the job. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do anything in the world for you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Strether smiled, &ldquo;anything in the world is all I
+want. I don&rsquo;t know anything that pleased me in her more,&rdquo; he went
+on, &ldquo;than the way that, on my finding her up there all alone, coming on
+her unawares and feeling greatly for her being so out of it, she knocked down
+my tall house of cards with her instant and cheerful allusion to the next young
+man. It was somehow so the note I needed&mdash;her staying at home to receive
+him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was Chad of course,&rdquo; said little Bilham, &ldquo;who asked the
+next young man&mdash;I like your name for me!&mdash;to call.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I supposed&mdash;all of which, thank God, is in our innocent and
+natural manners. But do you know,&rdquo; Strether asked, &ldquo;if Chad
+knows&mdash;?&rdquo; And then as this interlocutor seemed at a loss: &ldquo;Why
+where she has come out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham, at this, met his face with a conscious look&mdash;it was as if,
+more than anything yet, the allusion had penetrated. &ldquo;Do you know
+yourself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether lightly shook his head. &ldquo;There I stop. Oh, odd as it may appear
+to you, there <i>are</i> things I don&rsquo;t know. I only got the sense from
+her of something very sharp, and yet very deep down, that she was keeping all
+to herself. That is I had begun with the belief that she <i>had</i> kept it to
+herself; but face to face with her there I soon made out that there was a
+person with whom she would have shared it. I had thought she possibly might
+with <i>me</i>&mdash;but I saw then that I was only half in her confidence.
+When, turning to me to greet me&mdash;for she was on the balcony and I had come
+in without her knowing it&mdash;she showed me she had been expecting <i>you</i>
+and was proportionately disappointed, I got hold of the tail of my conviction.
+Half an hour later I was in possession of all the rest of it. You know what has
+happened.&rdquo; He looked at his young friend hard&mdash;then he felt sure.
+&ldquo;For all you say, you&rsquo;re up to your eyes. So there you are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham after an instant pulled half round. &ldquo;I assure you she
+hasn&rsquo;t told me anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course she hasn&rsquo;t. For what do you suggest that I suppose her
+to take you? But you&rsquo;ve been with her every day, you&rsquo;ve seen her
+freely, you&rsquo;ve liked her greatly&mdash;I stick to that&mdash;and
+you&rsquo;ve made your profit of it. You know what she has been through as well
+as you know that she has dined here to-night&mdash;which must have put her, by
+the way, through a good deal more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man faced this blast; after which he pulled round the rest of the
+way. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t in the least said she hasn&rsquo;t been nice to me.
+But she&rsquo;s proud.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And quite properly. But not too proud for that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just her pride that has made her. Chad,&rdquo; little Bilham
+loyally went on, &ldquo;has really been as kind to her as possible. It&rsquo;s
+awkward for a man when a girl&rsquo;s in love with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but she isn&rsquo;t&mdash;now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham sat staring before him; then he sprang up as if his
+friend&rsquo;s penetration, recurrent and insistent, made him really after all
+too nervous. &ldquo;No&mdash;she isn&rsquo;t now. It isn&rsquo;t in the
+least,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;Chad&rsquo;s fault. He&rsquo;s really all
+right. I mean he would have been willing. But she came over with ideas. Those
+she had got at home. They had been her motive and support in joining her
+brother and his wife. She was to <i>save</i> our friend.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah like me, poor thing?&rdquo; Strether also got to his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly&mdash;she had a bad moment. It was very soon distinct to her, to
+pull her up, to let her down, that, alas, he was, he <i>is</i>, saved.
+There&rsquo;s nothing left for her to do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not even to love him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She would have loved him better as she originally believed him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wondered. &ldquo;Of course one asks one&rsquo;s self what notion a
+little girl forms, where a young man&rsquo;s in question, of such a history and
+such a state.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, this little girl saw them, no doubt, as obscure, but she saw them
+practically as wrong. The wrong for her <i>was</i> the obscure. Chad turns out
+at any rate right and good and disconcerting, while what she was all prepared
+for, primed and girded and wound up for, was to deal with him as the general
+opposite.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet wasn&rsquo;t her whole point&rdquo;&mdash;Strether weighed
+it&mdash;&ldquo;that he was to be, that he <i>could</i> be, made better,
+redeemed?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham fixed it all a moment, and then with a small headshake that
+diffused a tenderness: &ldquo;She&rsquo;s too late. Too late for the
+miracle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&rdquo;&mdash;his companion saw enough. &ldquo;Still, if the worst
+fault of his condition is that it may be all there for her to profit
+by&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh she doesn&rsquo;t want to &lsquo;profit,&rsquo; in that flat way. She
+doesn&rsquo;t want to profit by another woman&rsquo;s work&mdash;she wants the
+miracle to have been her own miracle. <i>That&rsquo;s</i> what she&rsquo;s too
+late for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether quite felt how it all fitted, yet there seemed one loose piece.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m bound to say, you know, that she strikes one, on these lines,
+as fastidious&mdash;what you call here <i>difficile</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Bilham tossed up his chin. &ldquo;Of course she&rsquo;s
+<i>difficile</i>&mdash;on any lines! What else in the world <i>are</i> our
+Mamies&mdash;the real, the right ones?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see, I see,&rdquo; our friend repeated, charmed by the responsive
+wisdom he had ended by so richly extracting. &ldquo;Mamie is one of the real
+and the right.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The very thing itself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what it comes to then,&rdquo; Strether went on, &ldquo;is that poor
+awful Chad is simply too good for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah too good was what he was after all to be; but it was she herself, and
+she herself only, who was to have made him so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It hung beautifully together, but with still a loose end. &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t
+he do for her even if he should after all break&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With his actual influence?&rdquo; Oh little Bilham had for this enquiry
+the sharpest of all his controls. &ldquo;How can he &lsquo;do&rsquo;&mdash;on
+any terms whatever&mdash;when he&rsquo;s flagrantly spoiled?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether could only meet the question with his passive, his receptive pleasure.
+&ldquo;Well, thank goodness, <i>you&rsquo;re</i> not! <i>You</i> remain for her
+to save, and I come back, on so beautiful and full a demonstration, to my
+contention of just now&mdash;that of your showing distinct signs of her having
+already begun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most he could further say to himself&mdash;as his young friend turned
+away&mdash;was that the charge encountered for the moment no renewed denial.
+Little Bilham, taking his course back to the music, only shook his good-natured
+ears an instant, in the manner of a terrier who has got wet; while Strether
+relapsed into the sense&mdash;which had for him in these days most of
+comfort&mdash;that he was free to believe in anything that from hour to hour
+kept him going. He had positively motions and flutters of this conscious
+hour-to-hour kind, temporary surrenders to irony, to fancy, frequent
+instinctive snatches at the growing rose of observation, constantly stronger
+for him, as he felt, in scent and colour, and in which he could bury his nose
+even to wantonness. This last resource was offered him, for that matter, in the
+very form of his next clear perception&mdash;the vision of a prompt meeting, in
+the doorway of the room, between little Bilham and brilliant Miss Barrace, who
+was entering as Bilham withdrew. She had apparently put him a question, to
+which he had replied by turning to indicate his late interlocutor; toward whom,
+after an interrogation further aided by a resort to that optical machinery
+which seemed, like her other ornaments, curious and archaic, the genial lady,
+suggesting more than ever for her fellow guest the old French print, the
+historic portrait, directed herself with an intention that Strether instantly
+met. He knew in advance the first note she would sound, and took in as she
+approached all her need of sounding it. Nothing yet had been so
+&ldquo;wonderful&rdquo; between them as the present occasion; and it was her
+special sense of this quality in occasions that she was there, as she was in
+most places, to feed. That sense had already been so well fed by the situation
+about them that she had quitted the other room, forsaken the music, dropped out
+of the play, abandoned, in a word, the stage itself, that she might stand a
+minute behind the scenes with Strether and so perhaps figure as one of the
+famous augurs replying, behind the oracle, to the wink of the other. Seated
+near him presently where little Bilham had sat, she replied in truth to many
+things; beginning as soon as he had said to her&mdash;what he hoped he said
+without fatuity&mdash;&ldquo;All you ladies are extraordinarily kind to
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She played her long handle, which shifted her observation; she saw in an
+instant all the absences that left them free. &ldquo;How can we be anything
+else? But isn&rsquo;t that exactly your plight? &lsquo;We
+ladies&rsquo;&mdash;oh we&rsquo;re nice, and you must be having enough of us!
+As one of us, you know, I don&rsquo;t pretend I&rsquo;m crazy about us. But
+Miss Gostrey at least to-night has left you alone, hasn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo;
+With which she again looked about as if Maria might still lurk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Strether; &ldquo;she&rsquo;s only sitting up for me
+at home.&rdquo; And then as this elicited from his companion her gay &ldquo;Oh,
+oh, oh!&rdquo; he explained that he meant sitting up in suspense and prayer.
+&ldquo;We thought it on the whole better she shouldn&rsquo;t be present; and
+either way of course it&rsquo;s a terrible worry for her.&rdquo; He abounded in
+the sense of his appeal to the ladies, and they might take their choice of his
+doing so from humility or from pride. &ldquo;Yet she inclines to believe I
+shall come out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I incline to believe too you&rsquo;ll come out!&rdquo;&mdash;Miss
+Barrace, with her laugh, was not to be behind. &ldquo;Only the question&rsquo;s
+about <i>where</i>, isn&rsquo;t it? However,&rdquo; she happily continued,
+&ldquo;if it&rsquo;s anywhere at all it must be very far on, mustn&rsquo;t it?
+To do us justice, I think, you know,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;we do, among us
+all, want you rather far on. Yes, yes,&rdquo; she repeated in her quick droll
+way; &ldquo;we want you very, <i>very</i> far on!&rdquo; After which she wished
+to know why he had thought it better Maria shouldn&rsquo;t be present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;it was really her own idea. I should have
+wished it. But she dreads responsibility.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And isn&rsquo;t that a new thing for her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To dread it? No doubt&mdash;no doubt. But her nerve has given
+way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Barrace looked at him a moment. &ldquo;She has too much at stake.&rdquo;
+Then less gravely: &ldquo;Mine, luckily for me, holds out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Luckily for me too&rdquo;&mdash;Strether came back to that. &ldquo;My
+own isn&rsquo;t so firm, <i>my</i> appetite for responsibility isn&rsquo;t so
+sharp, as that I haven&rsquo;t felt the very principle of this occasion to be
+&lsquo;the more the merrier.&rsquo; If we <i>are</i> so merry it&rsquo;s
+because Chad has understood so well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has understood amazingly,&rdquo; said Miss Barrace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s wonderful&mdash;Strether anticipated for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s wonderful!&rdquo; she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face
+to face over it, they largely and recklessly laughed. But she presently added:
+&ldquo;Oh I see the principle. If one didn&rsquo;t one would be lost. But when
+once one has got hold of it&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s as simple as twice two! From the moment he had to do
+something&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A crowd&rdquo;&mdash;she took him straight up&mdash;&ldquo;was the only
+thing? Rather, rather: a rumpus of sound,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;or
+nothing. Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s built in, or built out&mdash;whichever you call
+it; she&rsquo;s packed so tight she can&rsquo;t move. She&rsquo;s in splendid
+isolation&rdquo;&mdash;Miss Barrace embroidered the theme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether followed, but scrupulous of justice. &ldquo;Yet with every one in the
+place successively introduced to her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wonderfully&mdash;but just so that it does build her out. She&rsquo;s
+bricked up, she&rsquo;s buried alive!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him to a sigh.
+&ldquo;Oh but she&rsquo;s not dead! It will take more than this to kill
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion had a pause that might have been for pity. &ldquo;No, I
+can&rsquo;t pretend I think she&rsquo;s finished&mdash;or that it&rsquo;s for
+more than to-night.&rdquo; She remained pensive as if with the same
+compunction. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s only up to her chin.&rdquo; Then again for the
+fun of it: &ldquo;She can breathe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She can breathe!&rdquo;&mdash;he echoed it in the same spirit.
+&ldquo;And do you know,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s really all this
+time happening to me?&mdash;through the beauty of music, the gaiety of voices,
+the uproar in short of our revel and the felicity of your wit? The sound of
+Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s respiration drowns for me, I assure you, every other.
+It&rsquo;s literally all I hear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She focussed him with her clink of chains. &ldquo;Well&mdash;!&rdquo; she
+breathed ever so kindly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She <i>is</i> free from her chin up,&rdquo; she mused; &ldquo;and that
+<i>will</i> be enough for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be enough for me!&rdquo; Strether ruefully laughed.
+&ldquo;Waymarsh has really,&rdquo; he then asked, &ldquo;brought her to see
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;but that&rsquo;s the worst of it. I could do you no good. And
+yet I tried hard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wondered. &ldquo;And how did you try?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why I didn&rsquo;t speak of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see. That was better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then what would have been worse? For speaking or silent,&rdquo; she
+lightly wailed, &ldquo;I somehow &lsquo;compromise.&rsquo; And it has never
+been any one but you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That shows&rdquo;&mdash;he was magnanimous&mdash;&ldquo;that it&rsquo;s
+something not in you, but in one&rsquo;s self. It&rsquo;s <i>my</i>
+fault.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was silent a little. &ldquo;No, it&rsquo;s Mr. Waymarsh&rsquo;s. It&rsquo;s
+the fault of his having brought her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then,&rdquo; said Strether good-naturedly, &ldquo;why <i>did</i> he
+bring her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He couldn&rsquo;t afford not to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you were a trophy&mdash;one of the spoils of conquest? But why in
+that case, since you do &lsquo;compromise&rsquo;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t I compromise <i>him</i> as well? I do compromise him as
+well,&rdquo; Miss Barrace smiled. &ldquo;I compromise him as hard as I can. But
+for Mr. Waymarsh it isn&rsquo;t fatal. It&rsquo;s&mdash;so far as his wonderful
+relation with Mrs. Pocock is concerned&mdash;favourable.&rdquo; And then, as he
+still seemed slightly at sea: &ldquo;The man who had succeeded with <i>me</i>,
+don&rsquo;t you see? For her to get him from me was such an added
+incentive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether saw, but as if his path was still strewn with surprises.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s &lsquo;from&rsquo; you then that she has got him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was amused at his momentary muddle. &ldquo;You can fancy my fight! She
+believes in her triumph. I think it has been part of her joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh her joy!&rdquo; Strether sceptically murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, she thinks she has had her own way. And what&rsquo;s to-night for
+her but a kind of apotheosis? Her frock&rsquo;s really good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good enough to go to heaven in? For after a real apotheosis,&rdquo;
+Strether went on, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s nothing <i>but</i> heaven. For Sarah
+there&rsquo;s only to-morrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you mean that she won&rsquo;t find to-morrow heavenly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I mean that I somehow feel to-night&mdash;on her behalf&mdash;too
+good to be true. She has had her cake; that is she&rsquo;s in the act now of
+having it, of swallowing the largest and sweetest piece. There won&rsquo;t be
+another left for her. Certainly <i>I</i> haven&rsquo;t one. It can only, at the
+best, be Chad.&rdquo; He continued to make it out as for their common
+entertainment. &ldquo;He may have one, as it were, up his sleeve; yet
+it&rsquo;s borne in upon me that if he had&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t&rdquo;&mdash;she quite understood&mdash;&ldquo;have
+taken all <i>this</i> trouble? I dare say not, and, if I may be quite free and
+dreadful, I very much hope he won&rsquo;t take any more. Of course I
+won&rsquo;t pretend now,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;not to know what it&rsquo;s a
+question of.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh every one must know now,&rdquo; poor Strether thoughtfully admitted;
+&ldquo;and it&rsquo;s strange enough and funny enough that one should feel
+everybody here at this very moment to be knowing and watching and
+waiting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;isn&rsquo;t it indeed funny?&rdquo; Miss Barrace quite rose to
+it. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the way we <i>are</i> in Paris.&rdquo; She was always
+pleased with a new contribution to that queerness. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s wonderful!
+But, you know,&rdquo; she declared, &ldquo;it all depends on you. I don&rsquo;t
+want to turn the knife in your vitals, but that&rsquo;s naturally what you just
+now meant by our all being on top of you. We know you as the hero of the drama,
+and we&rsquo;re gathered to see what you&rsquo;ll do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether looked at her a moment with a light perhaps slightly obscured.
+&ldquo;I think that must be why the hero has taken refuge in this corner.
+He&rsquo;s scared at his heroism&mdash;he shrinks from his part.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but we nevertheless believe he&rsquo;ll play it. That&rsquo;s
+why,&rdquo; Miss Barrace kindly went on, &ldquo;we take such an interest in
+you. We feel you&rsquo;ll come up to the scratch.&rdquo; And then as he seemed
+perhaps not quite to take fire: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let him do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let Chad go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, keep hold of him. With all this&rdquo;&mdash;and she indicated the
+general tribute&mdash;&ldquo;he has done enough. We love him
+here&mdash;he&rsquo;s charming.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s beautiful,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;the way you all can
+simplify when you will.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she gave it to him back. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing to the way <i>you</i>
+will when you must.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He winced at it as at the very voice of prophecy, and it kept him a moment
+quiet. He detained her, however, on her appearing about to leave him alone in
+the rather cold clearance their talk had made. &ldquo;There positively
+isn&rsquo;t a sign of a hero to-night; the hero&rsquo;s dodging and shirking,
+the hero&rsquo;s ashamed. Therefore, you know, I think, what you must all
+<i>really</i> be occupied with is the heroine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Barrace took a minute. &ldquo;The heroine?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The heroine. I&rsquo;ve treated her,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;not a
+bit like a hero. Oh,&rdquo; he sighed, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t do it well!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She eased him off. &ldquo;You do it as you can.&rdquo; And then after another
+hesitation: &ldquo;I think she&rsquo;s satisfied.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he remained compunctious. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t been near her. I
+haven&rsquo;t looked at her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then you&rsquo;ve lost a good deal!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He showed he knew it. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s more wonderful than ever?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Than ever. With Mr. Pocock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wondered. &ldquo;Madame de Vionnet&mdash;with Jim?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Madame de Vionnet&mdash;with &lsquo;Jim.&rsquo;&rdquo; Miss Barrace was
+historic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what&rsquo;s she doing with him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah you must ask <i>him!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s face lighted again at the prospect. &ldquo;It <i>will</i> be
+amusing to do so.&rdquo; Yet he continued to wonder. &ldquo;But she must have
+some idea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course she has&mdash;she has twenty ideas. She has in the first
+place,&rdquo; said Miss Barrace, swinging a little her tortoise-shell,
+&ldquo;that of doing her part. Her part is to help <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It came out as nothing had come yet; links were missing and connexions unnamed,
+but it was suddenly as if they were at the heart of their subject. &ldquo;Yes;
+how much more she does it,&rdquo; Strether gravely reflected, &ldquo;than I
+help <i>her!</i>&rdquo; It all came over him as with the near presence of the
+beauty, the grace, the intense, dissimulated spirit with which he had, as he
+said, been putting off contact. &ldquo;<i>She</i> has courage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah she has courage!&rdquo; Miss Barrace quite agreed; and it was as if
+for a moment they saw the quantity in each other&rsquo;s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But indeed the whole thing was present. &ldquo;How much she must care!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah there it is. She does care. But it isn&rsquo;t, is it,&rdquo; Miss
+Barrace considerately added, &ldquo;as if you had ever had any doubt of
+that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether seemed suddenly to like to feel that he really never had. &ldquo;Why
+of course it&rsquo;s the whole point.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Voilà!&rdquo; Miss Barrace smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s why one came out,&rdquo; Strether went on. &ldquo;And
+it&rsquo;s why one has stayed so long. And it&rsquo;s also&rdquo;&mdash;he
+abounded&mdash;&ldquo;why one&rsquo;s going home. It&rsquo;s why, it&rsquo;s
+why&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s why everything!&rdquo; she concurred. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s why
+she might be to-night&mdash;for all she looks and shows, and for all your
+friend &lsquo;Jim&rsquo; does&mdash;about twenty years old. That&rsquo;s
+another of her ideas; to be for him, and to be quite easily and charmingly, as
+young as a little girl.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether assisted at his distance. &ldquo;&lsquo;For him&rsquo;? For
+Chad&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For Chad, in a manner, naturally, always. But in particular to-night for
+Mr. Pocock.&rdquo; And then as her friend still stared: &ldquo;Yes, it
+<i>is</i> of a bravery! But that&rsquo;s what she has: her high sense of
+duty.&rdquo; It was more than sufficiently before them. &ldquo;When Mr. Newsome
+has his hands so embarrassed with his sister&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s quite the least&rdquo;&mdash;Strether filled it
+out&mdash;&ldquo;that she should take his sister&rsquo;s husband?
+Certainly&mdash;quite the least. So she has taken him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has taken him.&rdquo; It was all Miss Barrace had meant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still it remained enough. &ldquo;It must be funny.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh it <i>is</i> funny.&rdquo; That of course essentially went with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it brought them back. &ldquo;How indeed then she must care!&rdquo; In
+answer to which Strether&rsquo;s entertainer dropped a comprehensive
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; expressive perhaps of some impatience for the time he took to
+get used to it. She herself had got used to it long before.
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+When one morning within the week he perceived the whole thing to be really at
+last upon him Strether&rsquo;s immediate feeling was all relief. He had known
+this morning that something was about to happen&mdash;known it, in a moment, by
+Waymarsh&rsquo;s manner when Waymarsh appeared before him during his brief
+consumption of coffee and a roll in the small slippery <i>salle-à-manger</i> so
+associated with rich rumination. Strether had taken there of late various
+lonely and absent-minded meals; he communed there, even at the end of June,
+with a suspected chill, the air of old shivers mixed with old savours, the air
+in which so many of his impressions had perversely matured; the place meanwhile
+renewing its message to him by the very circumstance of his single state. He
+now sat there, for the most part, to sigh softly, while he vaguely tilted his
+carafe, over the vision of how much better Waymarsh was occupied. That was
+really his success by the common measure&mdash;to have led this companion so on
+and on. He remembered how at first there had been scarce a squatting-place he
+could beguile him into passing; the actual outcome of which at last was that
+there was scarce one that could arrest him in his rush. His rush&mdash;as
+Strether vividly and amusedly figured it&mdash;continued to be all with Sarah,
+and contained perhaps moreover the word of the whole enigma, whipping up in its
+fine full-flavoured froth the very principle, for good or for ill, of his own,
+of Strether&rsquo;s destiny. It might after all, to the end, only be that they
+had united to save him, and indeed, so far as Waymarsh was concerned, that
+<i>had</i> to be the spring of action. Strether was glad at all events, in
+connexion with the case, that the saving he required was not more scant; so
+constituted a luxury was it in certain lights just to lurk there out of the
+full glare. He had moments of quite seriously wondering whether Waymarsh
+wouldn&rsquo;t in fact, thanks to old friendship and a conceivable indulgence,
+make about as good terms for him as he might make for himself. They
+wouldn&rsquo;t be the same terms of course; but they might have the advantage
+that he himself probably should be able to make none at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was never in the morning very late, but Waymarsh had already been out, and,
+after a peep into the dim refectory, he presented himself with much less than
+usual of his large looseness. He had made sure, through the expanse of glass
+exposed to the court, that they would be alone; and there was now in fact that
+about him that pretty well took up the room. He was dressed in the garments of
+summer; and save that his white waistcoat was redundant and bulging these
+things favoured, they determined, his expression. He wore a straw hat such as
+his friend hadn&rsquo;t yet seen in Paris, and he showed a buttonhole freshly
+adorned with a magnificent rose. Strether read on the instant his
+story&mdash;how, astir for the previous hour, the sprinkled newness of the day,
+so pleasant at that season in Paris, he was fairly panting with the pulse of
+adventure and had been with Mrs. Pocock, unmistakeably, to the Marché aux
+Fleurs. Strether really knew in this vision of him a joy that was akin to envy;
+so reversed as he stood there did their old positions seem; so comparatively
+doleful now showed, by the sharp turn of the wheel, the posture of the pilgrim
+from Woollett. He wondered, this pilgrim, if he had originally looked to
+Waymarsh so brave and well, so remarkably launched, as it was at present the
+latter&rsquo;s privilege to appear. He recalled that his friend had remarked to
+him even at Chester that his aspect belied his plea of prostration; but there
+certainly couldn&rsquo;t have been, for an issue, an aspect less concerned than
+Waymarsh&rsquo;s with the menace of decay. Strether had at any rate never
+resembled a Southern planter of the great days&mdash;which was the image
+picturesquely suggested by the happy relation between the fuliginous face and
+the wide panama of his visitor. This type, it further amused him to guess, had
+been, on Waymarsh&rsquo;s part, the object of Sarah&rsquo;s care; he was
+convinced that her taste had not been a stranger to the conception and purchase
+of the hat, any more than her fine fingers had been guiltless of the bestowal
+of the rose. It came to him in the current of thought, as things so oddly did
+come, that <i>he</i> had never risen with the lark to attend a brilliant woman
+to the Marché aux Fleurs; this could be fastened on him in connexion neither
+with Miss Gostrey nor with Madame de Vionnet; the practice of getting up early
+for adventures could indeed in no manner be fastened on him. It came to him in
+fact that just here was his usual case: he was for ever missing things through
+his general genius for missing them, while others were for ever picking them up
+through a contrary bent. And it was others who looked abstemious and he who
+looked greedy; it was he somehow who finally paid, and it was others who mainly
+partook. Yes, he should go to the scaffold yet for he wouldn&rsquo;t know quite
+whom. He almost, for that matter, felt on the scaffold now and really quite
+enjoying it. It worked out as <i>because</i> he was anxious there&mdash;it
+worked out as for this reason that Waymarsh was so blooming. It was <i>his</i>
+trip for health, for a change, that proved the success&mdash;which was just
+what Strether, planning and exerting himself, had desired it should be. That
+truth already sat full-blown on his companion&rsquo;s lips; benevolence
+breathed from them as with the warmth of active exercise, and also a little as
+with the bustle of haste.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Pocock, whom I left a quarter of an hour ago at her hotel, has
+asked me to mention to you that she would like to find you at home here in
+about another hour. She wants to see you; she has something to say&mdash;or
+considers, I believe, that you may have: so that I asked her myself why she
+shouldn&rsquo;t come right round. She hasn&rsquo;t <i>been</i> round
+yet&mdash;to see our place; and I took upon myself to say that I was sure
+you&rsquo;d be glad to have her. The thing&rsquo;s therefore, you see, to keep
+right here till she comes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The announcement was sociably, even though, after Waymarsh&rsquo;s wont,
+somewhat solemnly made; but Strether quickly felt other things in it than these
+light features. It was the first approach, from that quarter, to admitted
+consciousness; it quickened his pulse; it simply meant at last that he should
+have but himself to thank if he didn&rsquo;t know where he was. He had finished
+his breakfast; he pushed it away and was on his feet. There were plenty of
+elements of surprise, but only one of doubt. &ldquo;The thing&rsquo;s for
+<i>you</i> to keep here too?&rdquo; Waymarsh had been slightly ambiguous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wasn&rsquo;t ambiguous, however, after this enquiry; and Strether&rsquo;s
+understanding had probably never before opened so wide and effective a mouth as
+it was to open during the next five minutes. It was no part of his
+friend&rsquo;s wish, as appeared, to help to receive Mrs. Pocock; he quite
+understood the spirit in which she was to present herself, but his connexion
+with her visit was limited to his having&mdash;well, as he might
+say&mdash;perhaps a little promoted it. He had thought, and had let her know
+it, that Strether possibly would think she might have been round before. At any
+rate, as turned out, she had been wanting herself, quite a while, to come.
+&ldquo;I told her,&rdquo; said Waymarsh, &ldquo;that it would have been a
+bright idea if she had only carried it out before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether pronounced it so bright as to be almost dazzling. &ldquo;But why
+<i>hasn&rsquo;t</i> she carried it out before? She has seen me every
+day&mdash;she had only to name her hour. I&rsquo;ve been waiting and
+waiting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I told her you had. And she has been waiting too.&rdquo; It was,
+in the oddest way in the world, on the showing of this tone, a genial new
+pressing coaxing Waymarsh; a Waymarsh conscious with a different consciousness
+from any he had yet betrayed, and actually rendered by it almost insinuating.
+He lacked only time for full persuasion, and Strether was to see in a moment
+why. Meantime, however, our friend perceived, he was announcing a step of some
+magnanimity on Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s part, so that he could deprecate a sharp
+question. It was his own high purpose in fact to have smoothed sharp questions
+to rest. He looked his old comrade very straight in the eyes, and he had never
+conveyed to him in so mute a manner so much kind confidence and so much good
+advice. Everything that was between them was again in his face, but matured and
+shelved and finally disposed of. &ldquo;At any rate,&rdquo; he added,
+&ldquo;she&rsquo;s coming now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Considering how many pieces had to fit themselves, it all fell, in
+Strether&rsquo;s brain, into a close rapid order. He saw on the spot what had
+happened, and what probably would yet; and it was all funny enough. It was
+perhaps just this freedom of appreciation that wound him up to his flare of
+high spirits. &ldquo;What is she coming <i>for?</i>&mdash;to kill me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s coming to be very <i>very</i> kind to you, and you must let
+me say that I greatly hope you&rsquo;ll not be less so to herself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was spoken by Waymarsh with much gravity of admonition, and as Strether
+stood there he knew he had but to make a movement to take the attitude of a man
+gracefully receiving a present. The present was that of the opportunity dear
+old Waymarsh had flattered himself he had divined in him the slight soreness of
+not having yet thoroughly enjoyed; so he had brought it to him thus, as on a
+little silver breakfast-tray, familiarly though delicately&mdash;without
+oppressive pomp; and he was to bend and smile and acknowledge, was to take and
+use and be grateful. He was not&mdash;that was the beauty of it&mdash;to be
+asked to deflect too much from his dignity. No wonder the old boy bloomed in
+this bland air of his own distillation. Strether felt for a moment as if Sarah
+were actually walking up and down outside. Wasn&rsquo;t she hanging about the
+<i>porte-cochère</i> while her friend thus summarily opened a way? Strether
+would meet her but to take it, and everything would be for the best in the best
+of possible worlds. He had never so much known what any one meant as, in the
+light of this demonstration, he knew what Mrs. Newsome did. It had reached
+Waymarsh from Sarah, but it had reached Sarah from her mother, and there was no
+break in the chain by which it reached <i>him</i>. &ldquo;Has anything
+particular happened,&rdquo; he asked after a minute&mdash;&ldquo;so suddenly to
+determine her? Has she heard anything unexpected from home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh, on this, it seemed to him, looked at him harder than ever.
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Unexpected&rsquo;?&rdquo; He had a brief hesitation; then,
+however, he was firm. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re leaving Paris.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leaving? That <i>is</i> sudden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh showed a different opinion. &ldquo;Less so than it may seem. The
+purpose of Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s visit is to explain to you in fact that
+it&rsquo;s <i>not</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether didn&rsquo;t at all know if he had really an advantage&mdash;anything
+that would practically count as one; but he enjoyed for the moment&mdash;as for
+the first time in his life&mdash;the sense of so carrying it off. He
+wondered&mdash;it was amusing&mdash;if he felt as the impudent feel. &ldquo;I
+shall take great pleasure, I assure you, in any explanation. I shall be
+delighted to receive Sarah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sombre glow just darkened in his comrade&rsquo;s eyes; but he was struck
+with the way it died out again. It was too mixed with another
+consciousness&mdash;it was too smothered, as might be said, in flowers. He
+really for the time regretted it&mdash;poor dear old sombre glow! Something
+straight and simple, something heavy and empty, had been eclipsed in its
+company; something by which he had best known his friend. Waymarsh
+wouldn&rsquo;t <i>be</i> his friend, somehow, without the occasional ornament
+of the sacred rage, and the right to the sacred rage&mdash;inestimably precious
+for Strether&rsquo;s charity&mdash;he also seemed in a manner, and at Mrs.
+Pocock&rsquo;s elbow, to have forfeited. Strether remembered the occasion early
+in their stay when on that very spot he had come out with his earnest, his
+ominous &ldquo;Quit it!&rdquo;&mdash;and, so remembering, felt it hang by a
+hair that he didn&rsquo;t himself now utter the same note. Waymarsh was having
+a good time&mdash;this was the truth that was embarrassing for him, and he was
+having it then and there, he was having it in Europe, he was having it under
+the very protection of circumstances of which he didn&rsquo;t in the least
+approve; all of which placed him in a false position, with no issue
+possible&mdash;none at least by the grand manner. It was practically in the
+manner of any one&mdash;it was all but in poor Strether&rsquo;s own&mdash;that
+instead of taking anything up he merely made the most of having to be himself
+explanatory. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not leaving for the United States direct. Mr. and
+Mrs. Pocock and Miss Mamie are thinking of a little trip before their own
+return, and we&rsquo;ve been talking for some days past of our joining forces.
+We&rsquo;ve settled it that we do join and that we sail together the end of
+next month. But we start to-morrow for Switzerland. Mrs. Pocock wants some
+scenery. She hasn&rsquo;t had much yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was brave in his way too, keeping nothing back, confessing all there was,
+and only leaving Strether to make certain connexions. &ldquo;Is what Mrs.
+Newsome had cabled her daughter an injunction to break off short?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The grand manner indeed at this just raised its head a little. &ldquo;I know
+nothing about Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s cables.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their eyes met on it with some intensity&mdash;during the few seconds of which
+something happened quite out of proportion to the time. It happened that
+Strether, looking thus at his friend, didn&rsquo;t take his answer for
+truth&mdash;and that something more again occurred in consequence of
+<i>that</i>. Yes&mdash;Waymarsh just <i>did</i> know about Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s
+cables: to what other end than that had they dined together at Bignon&rsquo;s?
+Strether almost felt for the instant that it was to Mrs. Newsome herself the
+dinner had been given; and, for that matter, quite felt how she must have known
+about it and, as he might think, protected and consecrated it. He had a quick
+blurred view of daily cables, questions, answers, signals: clear enough was his
+vision of the expense that, when so wound up, the lady at home was prepared to
+incur. Vivid not less was his memory of what, during his long observation of
+her, some of her attainments of that high pitch had cost her. Distinctly she
+was at the highest now, and Waymarsh, who imagined himself an independent
+performer, was really, forcing his fine old natural voice, an overstrained
+accompanist. The whole reference of his errand seemed to mark her for Strether
+as by this time consentingly familiar to him, and nothing yet had so despoiled
+her of a special shade of consideration. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he
+asked, &ldquo;whether Sarah has been directed from home to try me on the matter
+of my also going to Switzerland?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Waymarsh as manfully as possible, &ldquo;nothing
+whatever about her private affairs; though I believe her to be acting in
+conformity with things that have my highest respect.&rdquo; It was as manful as
+possible, but it was still the false note&mdash;as it had to be to convey so
+sorry a statement. He knew everything, Strether more and more felt, that he
+thus disclaimed, and his little punishment was just in this doom to a second
+fib. What falser position&mdash;given the man&mdash;could the most vindictive
+mind impose? He ended by squeezing through a passage in which three months
+before he would certainly have stuck fast. &ldquo;Mrs Pocock will probably be
+ready herself to answer any enquiry you may put to her. But,&rdquo; he
+continued, &ldquo;<i>but</i>&mdash;!&rdquo; He faltered on it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what? Don&rsquo;t put her too many?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh looked large, but the harm was done; he couldn&rsquo;t, do what he
+would, help looking rosy. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t do anything you&rsquo;ll be sorry
+for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was an attenuation, Strether guessed, of something else that had been on his
+lips; it was a sudden drop to directness, and was thereby the voice of
+sincerity. He had fallen to the supplicating note, and that immediately, for
+our friend, made a difference and reinstated him. They were in communication as
+they had been, that first morning, in Sarah&rsquo;s salon and in her presence
+and Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s; and the same recognition of a great good will
+was again, after all, possible. Only the amount of response Waymarsh had then
+taken for granted was doubled, decupled now. This came out when he presently
+said: &ldquo;Of course I needn&rsquo;t assure you <i>I</i> hope you&rsquo;ll
+come with us.&rdquo; Then it was that his implications and expectations loomed
+up for Strether as almost pathetically gross.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The latter patted his shoulder while he thanked him, giving the go-by to the
+question of joining the Pococks; he expressed the joy he felt at seeing him go
+forth again so brave and free, and he in fact almost took leave of him on the
+spot. &ldquo;I shall see you again of course before you go; but I&rsquo;m
+meanwhile much obliged to you for arranging so conveniently for what
+you&rsquo;ve told me. I shall walk up and down in the court there&mdash;dear
+little old court which we&rsquo;ve each bepaced so, this last couple of months,
+to the tune of our flights and our drops, our hesitations and our plunges: I
+shall hang about there, all impatience and excitement, please let Sarah know,
+till she graciously presents herself. Leave me with her without fear,&rdquo; he
+laughed; &ldquo;I assure you I shan&rsquo;t hurt her. I don&rsquo;t think
+either she&rsquo;ll hurt <i>me</i>: I&rsquo;m in a situation in which damage
+was some time ago discounted. Besides, <i>that</i> isn&rsquo;t what worries
+you&mdash;but don&rsquo;t, don&rsquo;t explain! We&rsquo;re all right as we
+are: which was the degree of success our adventure was pledged to for each of
+us. We weren&rsquo;t, it seemed, all right as we were before; and we&rsquo;ve
+got over the ground, all things considered, quickly. I hope you&rsquo;ll have a
+lovely time in the Alps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh fairly looked up at him as from the foot of them. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+know as I <i>ought</i> really to go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the conscience of Milrose in the very voice of Milrose, but, oh it was
+feeble and flat! Strether suddenly felt quite ashamed for him; he breathed a
+greater boldness. &ldquo;<i>Let</i> yourself, on the contrary, go&mdash;in all
+agreeable directions. These are precious hours&mdash;at our age they
+mayn&rsquo;t recur. Don&rsquo;t have it to say to yourself at Milrose, next
+winter, that you hadn&rsquo;t courage for them.&rdquo; And then as his comrade
+queerly stared: &ldquo;Live up to Mrs. Pocock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Live up to her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a great help to her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh looked at it as at one of the uncomfortable things that were certainly
+true and that it was yet ironical to say. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s more then than you
+are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly your own chance and advantage. Besides,&rdquo; said
+Strether, &ldquo;I do in my way contribute. I know what I&rsquo;m about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waymarsh had kept on his great panama, and, as he now stood nearer the door,
+his last look beneath the shade of it had turned again to darkness and warning.
+&ldquo;So do I! See here, Strether.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know what you&rsquo;re going to say. &lsquo;Quit this&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quit this!&rdquo; But it lacked its old intensity; nothing of it
+remained; it went out of the room with him.
+</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>
+Almost the first thing, strangely enough, that, about an hour later, Strether
+found himself doing in Sarah&rsquo;s presence was to remark articulately on
+this failure, in their friend, of what had been superficially his great
+distinction. It was as if&mdash;he alluded of course to the grand
+manner&mdash;the dear man had sacrificed it to some other advantage; which
+would be of course only for himself to measure. It might be simply that he was
+physically so much more sound than on his first coming out; this was all
+prosaic, comparatively cheerful and vulgar. And fortunately, if one came to
+that, his improvement in health was really itself grander than any manner it
+could be conceived as having cost him. &ldquo;You yourself alone, dear
+Sarah&rdquo;&mdash;Strether took the plunge&mdash;&ldquo;have done him, it
+strikes me, in these three weeks, as much good as all the rest of his time
+together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a plunge because somehow the range of reference was, in the conditions,
+&ldquo;funny,&rdquo; and made funnier still by Sarah&rsquo;s attitude, by the
+turn the occasion had, with her appearance, so sensibly taken. Her appearance
+was really indeed funnier than anything else&mdash;the spirit in which he felt
+her to be there as soon as she was there, the shade of obscurity that cleared
+up for him as soon as he was seated with her in the small <i>salon de
+lecture</i> that had, for the most part, in all the weeks, witnessed the wane
+of his early vivacity of discussion with Waymarsh. It was an immense thing,
+quite a tremendous thing, for her to have come: this truth opened out to him in
+spite of his having already arrived for himself at a fairly vivid view of it.
+He had done exactly what he had given Waymarsh his word for&mdash;had walked
+and re-walked the court while he awaited her advent; acquiring in this exercise
+an amount of light that affected him at the time as flooding the scene. She had
+decided upon the step in order to give him the benefit of a doubt, in order to
+be able to say to her mother that she had, even to abjectness, smoothed the way
+for him. The doubt had been as to whether he mightn&rsquo;t take her as not
+having smoothed it&mdash;and the admonition had possibly come from
+Waymarsh&rsquo;s more detached spirit. Waymarsh had at any rate, certainly,
+thrown his weight into the scale&mdash;he had pointed to the importance of
+depriving their friend of a grievance. She had done justice to the plea, and it
+was to set herself right with a high ideal that she actually sat there in her
+state. Her calculation was sharp in the immobility with which she held her tall
+parasol-stick upright and at arm&rsquo;s length, quite as if she had struck the
+place to plant her flag; in the separate precautions she took not to show as
+nervous; in the aggressive repose in which she did quite nothing but wait for
+him. Doubt ceased to be possible from the moment he had taken in that she had
+arrived with no proposal whatever; that her concern was simply to show what she
+had come to receive. She had come to receive his submission, and Waymarsh was
+to have made it plain to him that she would expect nothing less. He saw fifty
+things, her host, at this convenient stage; but one of those he most saw was
+that their anxious friend hadn&rsquo;t quite had the hand required of him.
+Waymarsh <i>had</i>, however, uttered the request that she might find him mild,
+and while hanging about the court before her arrival he had turned over with
+zeal the different ways in which he could be so. The difficulty was that if he
+was mild he wasn&rsquo;t, for her purpose, conscious. If she wished him
+conscious&mdash;as everything about her cried aloud that she did&mdash;she must
+accordingly be at costs to make him so. Conscious he <i>was</i>, for
+himself&mdash;but only of too many things; so she must choose the one she
+required.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Practically, however, it at last got itself named, and when once that had
+happened they were quite at the centre of their situation. One thing had really
+done as well as another; when Strether had spoken of Waymarsh&rsquo;s leaving
+him, and that had necessarily brought on a reference to Mrs. Pocock&rsquo;s
+similar intention, the jump was but short to supreme lucidity. Light became
+indeed after that so intense that Strether would doubtless have but half made
+out, in the prodigious glare, by which of the two the issue had been in fact
+precipitated. It was, in their contracted quarters, as much there between them
+as if it had been something suddenly spilled with a crash and a splash on the
+floor. The form of his submission was to be an engagement to acquit himself
+within the twenty-four hours. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll go in a moment if you give him
+the word&mdash;he assures me on his honour he&rsquo;ll do that&rdquo;: this
+came in its order, out of its order, in respect to Chad, after the crash had
+occurred. It came repeatedly during the time taken by Strether to feel that he
+was even more fixed in his rigour than he had supposed&mdash;the time he was
+not above adding to a little by telling her that such a way of putting it on
+her brother&rsquo;s part left him sufficiently surprised. She wasn&rsquo;t at
+all funny at last&mdash;she was really fine; and he felt easily where she was
+strong&mdash;strong for herself. It hadn&rsquo;t yet so come home to him that
+she was nobly and appointedly officious. She was acting in interests grander
+and clearer than that of her poor little personal, poor little Parisian
+equilibrium, and all his consciousness of her mother&rsquo;s moral pressure
+profited by this proof of its sustaining force. She would be held up; she would
+be strengthened; he needn&rsquo;t in the least be anxious for her. What would
+once more have been distinct to him had he tried to make it so was that, as
+Mrs. Newsome was essentially all moral pressure, the presence of this element
+was almost identical with her own presence. It wasn&rsquo;t perhaps that he
+felt he was dealing with her straight, but it was certainly as if she had been
+dealing straight with <i>him</i>. She was reaching him somehow by the
+lengthened arm of the spirit, and he was having to that extent to take her into
+account; but he wasn&rsquo;t reaching her in turn, not making her take
+<i>him</i>; he was only reaching Sarah, who appeared to take so little of him.
+&ldquo;Something has clearly passed between you and Chad,&rdquo; he presently
+said, &ldquo;that I think I ought to know something more about. Does he put it
+all,&rdquo; he smiled, &ldquo;on me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you come out,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;to put it all on
+<i>him?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he replied to this no further than, after an instant, by saying: &ldquo;Oh
+it&rsquo;s all right. Chad I mean&rsquo;s all right in having said to
+you&mdash;well anything he may have said. I&rsquo;ll <i>take</i> it
+all&mdash;what he does put on me. Only I must see him before I see you
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated, but she brought it out. &ldquo;Is it absolutely necessary you
+should see me again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly, if I&rsquo;m to give you any definite word about
+anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it your idea then,&rdquo; she returned, &ldquo;that I shall keep on
+meeting you only to be exposed to fresh humiliation?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He fixed her a longer time. &ldquo;Are your instructions from Mrs. Newsome that
+you shall, even at the worst, absolutely and irretrievably break with
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My instructions from Mrs. Newsome are, if you please, my affair. You
+know perfectly what your own were, and you can judge for yourself of what it
+can do for you to have made what you have of them. You can perfectly see, at
+any rate, I&rsquo;ll go so far as to say, that if I wish not to expose myself I
+must wish still less to expose <i>her</i>.&rdquo; She had already said more
+than she had quite expected; but, though she had also pulled up, the colour in
+her face showed him he should from one moment to the other have it all. He now
+indeed felt the high importance of his having it. &ldquo;What is your
+conduct,&rdquo; she broke out as if to explain&mdash;&ldquo;what is your
+conduct but an outrage to women like <i>us?</i> I mean your acting as if there
+can be a doubt&mdash;as between us and such another&mdash;of his duty?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought a moment. It was rather much to deal with at once; not only the
+question itself, but the sore abysses it revealed. &ldquo;Of course
+they&rsquo;re totally different kinds of duty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And do you pretend that he has any at all&mdash;to such another?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to Madame de Vionnet?&rdquo; He uttered the name not to
+affront her, but yet again to gain time&mdash;time that he needed for taking in
+something still other and larger than her demand of a moment before. It
+wasn&rsquo;t at once that he could see all that was in her actual challenge;
+but when he did he found himself just checking a low vague sound, a sound which
+was perhaps the nearest approach his vocal chords had ever known to a growl.
+Everything Mrs. Pocock had failed to give a sign of recognising in Chad as a
+particular part of a transformation&mdash;everything that had lent intention to
+this particular failure&mdash;affected him as gathered into a large loose
+bundle and thrown, in her words, into his face. The missile made him to that
+extent catch his breath; which however he presently recovered. &ldquo;Why when
+a woman&rsquo;s at once so charming and so beneficent&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can sacrifice mothers and sisters to her without a blush and can
+make them cross the ocean on purpose to feel the more and take from you the
+straighter, <i>how</i> you do it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, she had taken him up as short and as sharply as that, but he tried not to
+flounder in her grasp. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s anything
+I&rsquo;ve done in any such calculated way as you describe. Everything has come
+as a sort of indistinguishable part of everything else. Your coming out
+belonged closely to my having come before you, and my having come was a result
+of our general state of mind. Our general state of mind had proceeded, on its
+side, from our queer ignorance, our queer misconceptions and
+confusions&mdash;from which, since then, an inexorable tide of light seems to
+have floated us into our perhaps still queerer knowledge. Don&rsquo;t you
+<i>like</i> your brother as he is,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;and haven&rsquo;t
+you given your mother an intelligible account of all that that comes to?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It put to her also, doubtless, his own tone, too many things, this at least
+would have been the case hadn&rsquo;t his final challenge directly helped her.
+Everything, at the stage they had reached, directly helped her, because
+everything betrayed in him such a basis of intention. He saw&mdash;the odd way
+things came out!&mdash;that he would have been held less monstrous had he only
+been a little wilder. What exposed him was just his poor old trick of quiet
+inwardness, what exposed him was his <i>thinking</i> such offence. He
+hadn&rsquo;t in the least however the desire to irritate that Sarah imputed to
+him, and he could only at last temporise, for the moment, with her indignant
+view. She was altogether more inflamed than he had expected, and he would
+probably understand this better when he should learn what had occurred for her
+with Chad. Till then her view of his particular blackness, her clear surprise
+at his not clutching the pole she held out, must pass as extravagant. &ldquo;I
+leave you to flatter yourself,&rdquo; she returned, &ldquo;that what you speak
+of is what <i>you&rsquo;ve</i> beautifully done. When a thing has been already
+described in such a lovely way&mdash;!&rdquo; But she caught herself up, and
+her comment on his description rang out sufficiently loud. &ldquo;Do you
+consider her even an apology for a decent woman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah there it was at last! She put the matter more crudely than, for his own
+mixed purposes, he had yet had to do; but essentially it was all one matter. It
+was so much&mdash;so much; and she treated it, poor lady, as so little. He grew
+conscious, as he was now apt to do, of a strange smile, and the next moment he
+found himself talking like Miss Barrace. &ldquo;She has struck me from the
+first as wonderful. I&rsquo;ve been thinking too moreover that, after all, she
+would probably have represented even for yourself something rather new and
+rather good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was to have given Mrs. Pocock with this, however, but her best opportunity
+for a sound of derision. &ldquo;Rather new? I hope so with all my heart!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;that she might have affected you by
+her exquisite amiability&mdash;a real revelation, it has seemed to myself; her
+high rarity, her distinction of every sort.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had been, with these words, consciously a little &ldquo;precious&rdquo;; but
+he had had to be&mdash;he couldn&rsquo;t give her the truth of the case without
+them; and it seemed to him moreover now that he didn&rsquo;t care. He had at
+all events not served his cause, for she sprang at its exposed side. &ldquo;A
+&lsquo;revelation&rsquo;&mdash;to <i>me</i>: I&rsquo;ve come to such a woman
+for a revelation? You talk to me about
+&lsquo;distinction&rsquo;&mdash;<i>you</i>, you who&rsquo;ve had your
+privilege?&mdash;when the most distinguished woman we shall either of us have
+seen in this world sits there insulted, in her loneliness, by your incredible
+comparison!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether forbore, with an effort, from straying; but he looked all about him.
+&ldquo;Does your mother herself make the point that she sits insulted?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sarah&rsquo;s answer came so straight, so &ldquo;pat,&rdquo; as might have been
+said, that he felt on the instant its origin. &ldquo;She has confided to my
+judgement and my tenderness the expression of her personal sense of everything,
+and the assertion of her personal dignity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were the very words of the lady of Woollett&mdash;he would have known them
+in a thousand; her parting charge to her child. Mrs. Pocock accordingly spoke
+to this extent by book, and the fact immensely moved him. &ldquo;If she does
+really feel as you say it&rsquo;s of course very very dreadful. I&rsquo;ve
+given sufficient proof, one would have thought,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;of my
+deep admiration for Mrs. Newsome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And pray what proof would one have thought you&rsquo;d <i>call</i>
+sufficient? That of thinking this person here so far superior to her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wondered again; he waited. &ldquo;Ah dear Sarah, you must <i>leave</i> me
+this person here!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his desire to avoid all vulgar retorts, to show how, even perversely, he
+clung to his rag of reason, he had softly almost wailed this plea. Yet he knew
+it to be perhaps the most positive declaration he had ever made in his life,
+and his visitor&rsquo;s reception of it virtually gave it that importance.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what I&rsquo;m delighted to do. God knows <i>we</i>
+don&rsquo;t want her! You take good care not to meet,&rdquo; she observed in a
+still higher key, &ldquo;my question about their life. If you do consider it a
+thing one can even <i>speak</i> of, I congratulate you on your taste!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The life she alluded to was of course Chad&rsquo;s and Madame de
+Vionnet&rsquo;s, which she thus bracketed together in a way that made him wince
+a little; there being nothing for him but to take home her full intention. It
+was none the less his inconsequence that while he had himself been enjoying for
+weeks the view of the brilliant woman&rsquo;s specific action, he just suffered
+from any characterisation of it by other lips. &ldquo;I think tremendously well
+of her, at the same time that I seem to feel her &lsquo;life&rsquo; to be
+really none of my business. It&rsquo;s my business, that is, only so far as
+Chad&rsquo;s own life is affected by it; and what has happened, don&rsquo;t you
+see? is that Chad&rsquo;s has been affected so beautifully. The proof of the
+pudding&rsquo;s in the eating&rdquo;&mdash;he tried, with no great success, to
+help it out with a touch of pleasantry, while she let him go on as if to sink
+and sink. He went on however well enough, as well as he could do without fresh
+counsel; he indeed shouldn&rsquo;t stand quite firm, he felt, till he should
+have re-established his communications with Chad. Still, he could always speak
+for the woman he had so definitely promised to &ldquo;save.&rdquo; This
+wasn&rsquo;t quite for her the air of salvation; but as that chill fairly
+deepened what did it become but a reminder that one might at the worst perish
+<i>with</i> her? And it was simple enough&mdash;it was rudimentary: not, not to
+give her away. &ldquo;I find in her more merits than you would probably have
+patience with my counting over. And do you know,&rdquo; he enquired, &ldquo;the
+effect you produce on me by alluding to her in such terms? It&rsquo;s as if you
+had some motive in not recognising all she has done for your brother, and so
+shut your eyes to each side of the matter, in order, whichever side comes up,
+to get rid of the other. I don&rsquo;t, you must allow me to say, see how you
+can with any pretence to candour get rid of the side nearest you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Near me&mdash;<i>that</i> sort of thing?&rdquo; And Sarah gave a jerk
+back of her head that well might have nullified any active proximity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It kept her friend himself at his distance, and he respected for a moment the
+interval. Then with a last persuasive effort he bridged it. &ldquo;You
+don&rsquo;t, on your honour, appreciate Chad&rsquo;s fortunate
+development?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fortunate?&rdquo; she echoed again. And indeed she was prepared.
+&ldquo;I call it hideous.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her departure had been for some minutes marked as imminent, and she was already
+at the door that stood open to the court, from the threshold of which she
+delivered herself of this judgement. It rang out so loud as to produce for the
+time the hush of everything else. Strether quite, as an effect of it, breathed
+less bravely; he could acknowledge it, but simply enough. &ldquo;Oh if you
+think <i>that</i>&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then all&rsquo;s at an end? So much the better. I do think that!&rdquo;
+She passed out as she spoke and took her way straight across the court, beyond
+which, separated from them by the deep arch of the <i>porte-cochère</i> the low
+victoria that had conveyed her from her own hotel was drawn up. She made for it
+with decision, and the manner of her break, the sharp shaft of her rejoinder,
+had an intensity by which Strether was at first kept in arrest. She had let fly
+at him as from a stretched cord, and it took him a minute to recover from the
+sense of being pierced. It was not the penetration of surprise; it was that,
+much more, of certainty; his case being put for him as he had as yet only put
+it to himself. She was away at any rate; she had distanced him&mdash;with
+rather a grand spring, an effect of pride and ease, after all; she had got into
+her carriage before he could overtake her, and the vehicle was already in
+motion. He stopped halfway; he stood there in the court only seeing her go and
+noting that she gave him no other look. The way he had put it to himself was
+that all quite <i>might</i> be at an end. Each of her movements, in this
+resolute rupture, reaffirmed, re-enforced that idea. Sarah passed out of sight
+in the sunny street while, planted there in the centre of the comparatively
+grey court, he continued merely to look before him. It probably <i>was</i> all
+at an end.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>Book Eleventh</h2>
+
+<p class="footnote"> [Note: In the 1909 New York Edition the following two
+chapters were placed in the reverse of the order appearing below. Since 1950,
+most scholars have agreed, because of the internal evidence of the two
+chapters, that an editorial error caused them to be printed in reverse order.
+This Etext, like other editions of the past four decades, corrects the apparent
+error.&mdash;Richard D. Hathaway, preparer of this electronic text]
+</p>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+He went late that evening to the Boulevard Malesherbes, having his impression
+that it would be vain to go early, and having also, more than once in the
+course of the day, made enquiries of the concierge. Chad hadn&rsquo;t come in
+and had left no intimation; he had affairs, apparently, at this
+juncture&mdash;as it occurred to Strether he so well might have&mdash;that kept
+him long abroad. Our friend asked once for him at the hotel in the Rue de
+Rivoli, but the only contribution offered there was the fact that every one was
+out. It was with the idea that he would have to come home to sleep that
+Strether went up to his rooms, from which however he was still absent, though,
+from the balcony, a few moments later, his visitor heard eleven o&rsquo;clock
+strike. Chad&rsquo;s servant had by this time answered for his reappearance; he
+<i>had</i>, the visitor learned, come quickly in to dress for dinner and vanish
+again. Strether spent an hour in waiting for him&mdash;an hour full of strange
+suggestions, persuasions, recognitions; one of those that he was to recall, at
+the end of his adventure, as the particular handful that most had counted. The
+mellowest lamplight and the easiest chair had been placed at his disposal by
+Baptiste, subtlest of servants; the novel half-uncut, the novel lemon-coloured
+and tender, with the ivory knife athwart it like the dagger in a
+contadina&rsquo;s hair, had been pushed within the soft circle&mdash;a circle
+which, for some reason, affected Strether as softer still after the same
+Baptiste had remarked that in the absence of a further need of anything by
+Monsieur he would betake himself to bed. The night was hot and heavy and the
+single lamp sufficient; the great flare of the lighted city, rising high,
+spending itself afar, played up from the Boulevard and, through the vague vista
+of the successive rooms, brought objects into view and added to their dignity.
+Strether found himself in possession as he never yet had been; he had been
+there alone, had turned over books and prints, had invoked, in Chad&rsquo;s
+absence, the spirit of the place, but never at the witching hour and never with
+a relish quite so like a pang.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spent a long time on the balcony; he hung over it as he had seen little
+Bilham hang the day of his first approach, as he had seen Mamie hang over her
+own the day little Bilham himself might have seen her from below; he passed
+back into the rooms, the three that occupied the front and that communicated by
+wide doors; and, while he circulated and rested, tried to recover the
+impression that they had made on him three months before, to catch again the
+voice in which they had seemed then to speak to him. That voice, he had to
+note, failed audibly to sound; which he took as the proof of all the change in
+himself. He had heard, of old, only what he <i>could</i> then hear; what he
+could do now was to think of three months ago as a point in the far past. All
+voices had grown thicker and meant more things; they crowded on him as he moved
+about&mdash;it was the way they sounded together that wouldn&rsquo;t let him be
+still. He felt, strangely, as sad as if he had come for some wrong, and yet as
+excited as if he had come for some freedom. But the freedom was what was most
+in the place and the hour, it was the freedom that most brought him round again
+to the youth of his own that he had long ago missed. He could have explained
+little enough to-day either why he had missed it or why, after years and years,
+he should care that he had; the main truth of the actual appeal of everything
+was none the less that everything represented the substance of his loss put it
+within reach, within touch, made it, to a degree it had never been, an affair
+of the senses. That was what it became for him at this singular time, the youth
+he had long ago missed&mdash;a queer concrete presence, full of mystery, yet
+full of reality, which he could handle, taste, smell, the deep breathing of
+which he could positively hear. It was in the outside air as well as within; it
+was in the long watch, from the balcony, in the summer night, of the wide late
+life of Paris, the unceasing soft quick rumble, below, of the little lighted
+carriages that, in the press, always suggested the gamblers he had seen of old
+at Monte Carlo pushing up to the tables. This image was before him when he at
+last became aware that Chad was behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She tells me you put it all on <i>me</i>&rdquo;&mdash;he had arrived
+after this promptly enough at that information; which expressed the case
+however quite as the young man appeared willing for the moment to leave it.
+Other things, with this advantage of their virtually having the night before
+them, came up for them, and had, as well, the odd effect of making the
+occasion, instead of hurried and feverish, one of the largest, loosest and
+easiest to which Strether&rsquo;s whole adventure was to have treated him. He
+had been pursuing Chad from an early hour and had overtaken him only now; but
+now the delay was repaired by their being so exceptionally confronted. They had
+foregathered enough of course in all the various times; they had again and
+again, since that first night at the theatre, been face to face over their
+question; but they had never been so alone together as they were actually
+alone&mdash;their talk hadn&rsquo;t yet been so supremely for themselves. And
+if many things moreover passed before them, none passed more distinctly for
+Strether than that striking truth about Chad of which he had been so often
+moved to take note: the truth that everything came happily back with him to his
+knowing how to live. It had been seated in his pleased smile&mdash;a smile that
+pleased exactly in the right degree&mdash;as his visitor turned round, on the
+balcony, to greet his advent; his visitor in fact felt on the spot that there
+was nothing their meeting would so much do as bear witness to that facility. He
+surrendered himself accordingly to so approved a gift; for what was the meaning
+of the facility but that others <i>did</i> surrender themselves? He
+didn&rsquo;t want, luckily, to prevent Chad from living; but he was quite aware
+that even if he had he would himself have thoroughly gone to pieces. It was in
+truth essentially by bringing down his personal life to a function all
+subsidiary to the young man&rsquo;s own that he held together. And the great
+point, above all, the sign of how completely Chad possessed the knowledge in
+question, was that one thus became, not only with a proper cheerfulness, but
+with wild native impulses, the feeder of his stream. Their talk had accordingly
+not lasted three minutes without Strether&rsquo;s feeling basis enough for the
+excitement in which he had waited. This overflow fairly deepened, wastefully
+abounded, as he observed the smallness of anything corresponding to it on the
+part of his friend. That was exactly this friend&rsquo;s happy case; he
+&ldquo;put out&rdquo; his excitement, or whatever other emotion the matter
+involved, as he put out his washing; than which no arrangement could make more
+for domestic order. It was quite for Strether himself in short to feel a
+personal analogy with the laundress bringing home the triumphs of the mangle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he had reported on Sarah&rsquo;s visit, which he did very fully, Chad
+answered his question with perfect candour. &ldquo;I positively referred her to
+you&mdash;told her she must absolutely see you. This was last night, and it all
+took place in ten minutes. It was our first free talk&mdash;really the first
+time she had tackled me. She knew I also knew what her line had been with
+yourself; knew moreover how little you had been doing to make anything
+difficult for her. So I spoke for you frankly&mdash;assured her you were all at
+her service. I assured her <i>I</i> was too,&rdquo; the young man continued;
+&ldquo;and I pointed out how she could perfectly, at any time, have got at me.
+Her difficulty has been simply her not finding the moment she fancied.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her difficulty,&rdquo; Strether returned, &ldquo;has been simply that
+she finds she&rsquo;s afraid of you. She&rsquo;s not afraid of <i>me</i>,
+Sarah, one little scrap; and it was just because she has seen how I can fidget
+when I give my mind to it that she has felt her best chance, rightly enough to
+be in making me as uneasy as possible. I think she&rsquo;s at bottom as pleased
+to <i>have</i> you put it on me as you yourself can possibly be to put
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what in the world, my dear man,&rdquo; Chad enquired in objection to
+this luminosity, &ldquo;have I done to make Sally afraid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been &lsquo;wonderful, wonderful,&rsquo; as we say&mdash;we
+poor people who watch the play from the pit; and that&rsquo;s what has,
+admirably, made her. Made her all the more effectually that she could see you
+didn&rsquo;t set about it on purpose&mdash;I mean set about affecting her as
+with fear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad cast a pleasant backward glance over his possibilities of motive.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve only wanted to be kind and friendly, to be decent and
+attentive&mdash;and I still only want to be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether smiled at his comfortable clearness. &ldquo;Well, there can certainly
+be no way for it better than by my taking the onus. It reduces your personal
+friction and your personal offence to almost nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah but Chad, with his completer conception of the friendly, wouldn&rsquo;t
+quite have this! They had remained on the balcony, where, after their day of
+great and premature heat, the midnight air was delicious; and they leaned back
+in turn against the balustrade, all in harmony with the chairs and the
+flower-pots, the cigarettes and the starlight. &ldquo;The onus isn&rsquo;t
+<i>really</i> yours&mdash;after our agreeing so to wait together and judge
+together. That was all my answer to Sally,&rdquo; Chad
+pursued&mdash;&ldquo;that we have been, that we are, just judging
+together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not afraid of the burden,&rdquo; Strether explained; &ldquo;I
+haven&rsquo;t come in the least that you should take it off me. I&rsquo;ve come
+very much, it seems to me, to double up my fore legs in the manner of the camel
+when he gets down on his knees to make his back convenient. But I&rsquo;ve
+supposed you all this while to have been doing a lot of special and private
+judging&mdash;about which I haven&rsquo;t troubled you; and I&rsquo;ve only
+wished to have your conclusion first from you. I don&rsquo;t ask more than
+that; I&rsquo;m quite ready to take it as it has come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad turned up his face to the sky with a slow puff of his smoke. &ldquo;Well,
+I&rsquo;ve seen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether waited a little. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve left you wholly alone;
+haven&rsquo;t, I think I may say, since the first hour or two&mdash;when I
+merely preached patience&mdash;so much as breathed on you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you&rsquo;ve been awfully good!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve both been good then&mdash;we&rsquo;ve played the game.
+We&rsquo;ve given them the most liberal conditions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Chad, &ldquo;splendid conditions! It was open to them,
+open to them&rdquo;&mdash;he seemed to make it out, as he smoked, with his eyes
+still on the stars. He might in quiet sport have been reading their horoscope.
+Strether wondered meanwhile what had been open to them, and he finally let him
+have it. &ldquo;It was open to them simply to let me alone; to have made up
+their minds, on really seeing me for themselves, that I could go on well enough
+as I was.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether assented to this proposition with full lucidity, his companion&rsquo;s
+plural pronoun, which stood all for Mrs. Newsome and her daughter, having no
+ambiguity for him. There was nothing, apparently, to stand for Mamie and Jim;
+and this added to our friend&rsquo;s sense of Chad&rsquo;s knowing what he
+thought. &ldquo;But they&rsquo;ve made up their minds to the
+opposite&mdash;that you <i>can&rsquo;t</i> go on as you are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; Chad continued in the same way; &ldquo;they won&rsquo;t have
+it for a minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether on his side also reflectively smoked. It was as if their high place
+really represented some moral elevation from which they could look down on
+their recent past. &ldquo;There never was the smallest chance, do you know,
+that they <i>would</i> have it for a moment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course not&mdash;no real chance. But if they were willing to think
+there was&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They weren&rsquo;t willing.&rdquo; Strether had worked it all out.
+&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t for you they came out, but for me. It wasn&rsquo;t to
+see for themselves what you&rsquo;re doing, but what I&rsquo;m doing. The first
+branch of their curiosity was inevitably destined, under my culpable delay, to
+give way to the second; and it&rsquo;s on the second that, if I may use the
+expression and you don&rsquo;t mind my marking the invidious fact,
+they&rsquo;ve been of late exclusively perched. When Sarah sailed it was me, in
+other words, they were after.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad took it in both with intelligence and with indulgence. &ldquo;It <i>is</i>
+rather a business then&mdash;what I&rsquo;ve let you in for!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had again a brief pause; which ended in a reply that seemed to dispose
+once for all of this element of compunction. Chad was to treat it, at any rate,
+so far as they were again together, as having done so. &ldquo;I was
+&lsquo;in&rsquo; when you found me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but it was you,&rdquo; the young man laughed, &ldquo;who found
+<i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I only found you out. It was you who found me in. It was all in the
+day&rsquo;s work for them, at all events, that they should come. And
+they&rsquo;ve greatly enjoyed it,&rdquo; Strether declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve tried to make them,&rdquo; said Chad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion did himself presently the same justice. &ldquo;So have I. I tried
+even this very morning&mdash;while Mrs. Pocock was with me. She enjoys for
+instance, almost as much as anything else, not being, as I&rsquo;ve said,
+afraid of me; and I think I gave her help in that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad took a deeper interest. &ldquo;Was she very very nasty?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether debated. &ldquo;Well, she was the most important thing&mdash;she was
+definite. She was&mdash;at last&mdash;crystalline. And I felt no remorse. I saw
+that they must have come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I wanted to see them for myself; so that if it were only for
+<i>that</i>&mdash;!&rdquo; Chad&rsquo;s own remorse was as small.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This appeared almost all Strether wanted. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t your having seen
+them for yourself then <i>the</i> thing, beyond all others, that has come of
+their visit?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it so.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you count it as anything that you&rsquo;re dished&mdash;if
+you <i>are</i> dished? Are you, my dear man, dished?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It sounded as if he were asking if he had caught cold or hurt his foot, and
+Strether for a minute but smoked and smoked. &ldquo;I want to see her again. I
+must see her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you must.&rdquo; Then Chad hesitated. &ldquo;Do you
+mean&mdash;a&mdash;Mother herself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh your mother&mdash;that will depend.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as if Mrs. Newsome had somehow been placed by the words very far off.
+Chad however endeavoured in spite of this to reach the place. &ldquo;What do
+you mean it will depend on?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, for all answer, gave him a longish look. &ldquo;I was speaking of
+Sarah. I must positively&mdash;though she quite cast me off&mdash;see
+<i>her</i> again. I can&rsquo;t part with her that way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then she was awfully unpleasant?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Strether exhaled. &ldquo;She was what she had to be. I mean that from the
+moment they&rsquo;re not delighted they can only be&mdash;well what I admit she
+was. We gave them,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;their chance to be delighted, and
+they&rsquo;ve walked up to it, and looked all round it, and not taken
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can bring a horse to water&mdash;!&rdquo; Chad suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely. And the tune to which this morning Sarah wasn&rsquo;t
+delighted&mdash;the tune to which, to adopt your metaphor, she refused to
+drink&mdash;leaves us on that side nothing more to hope.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad had a pause, and then as if consolingly: &ldquo;It was never of course
+really the least on the cards that they would be
+&lsquo;delighted.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know, after all,&rdquo; Strether mused.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had to come as far round. However&rdquo;&mdash;he shook it
+off&mdash;&ldquo;it&rsquo;s doubtless <i>my</i> performance that&rsquo;s
+absurd.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are certainly moments,&rdquo; said Chad, &ldquo;when you seem to
+me too good to be true. Yet if you are true,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;that seems
+to be all that need concern me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m true, but I&rsquo;m incredible. I&rsquo;m fantastic and
+ridiculous&mdash;I don&rsquo;t explain myself even <i>to</i> myself. How can
+they then,&rdquo; Strether asked, &ldquo;understand me? So I don&rsquo;t
+quarrel with them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see. They quarrel,&rdquo; said Chad rather comfortably, &ldquo;with
+<i>us</i>.&rdquo; Strether noted once more the comfort, but his young friend
+had already gone on. &ldquo;I should feel greatly ashamed, all the same, if I
+didn&rsquo;t put it before you again that you ought to think, after all,
+tremendously well. I mean before giving up beyond recall&mdash;&rdquo; With
+which insistence, as from a certain delicacy, dropped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah but Strether wanted it. &ldquo;Say it all, say it all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, at your age, and with what&mdash;when all&rsquo;s said and
+done&mdash;Mother might do for you and be for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad had said it all, from his natural scruple, only to that extent; so that
+Strether after an instant himself took a hand. &ldquo;My absence of an assured
+future. The little I have to show toward the power to take care of myself. The
+way, the wonderful way, she would certainly take care of me. Her fortune, her
+kindness, and the constant miracle of her having been disposed to go even so
+far. Of course, of course&rdquo;&mdash;he summed it up. &ldquo;There are those
+sharp facts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad had meanwhile thought of another still. &ldquo;And don&rsquo;t you really
+care&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His friend slowly turned round to him. &ldquo;Will you go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go if you&rsquo;ll say you now consider I should. You
+know,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;I was ready six weeks ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;that was when you didn&rsquo;t know
+<i>I</i> wasn&rsquo;t! You&rsquo;re ready at present because you do know
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That may be,&rdquo; Chad returned; &ldquo;but all the same I&rsquo;m
+sincere. You talk about taking the whole thing on your shoulders, but in what
+light do you regard me that you think me capable of letting you pay?&rdquo;
+Strether patted his arm, as they stood together against the parapet,
+reassuringly&mdash;seeming to wish to contend that he <i>had</i> the
+wherewithal; but it was again round this question of purchase and price that
+the young man&rsquo;s sense of fairness continued to hover. &ldquo;What it
+literally comes to for you, if you&rsquo;ll pardon my putting it so, is that
+you give up money. Possibly a good deal of money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Strether laughed, &ldquo;if it were only just enough
+you&rsquo;d still be justified in putting it so! But I&rsquo;ve on my side to
+remind you too that <i>you</i> give up money; and more than
+&lsquo;possibly&rsquo;&mdash;quite certainly, as I should suppose&mdash;a good
+deal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True enough; but I&rsquo;ve got a certain quantity,&rdquo; Chad returned
+after a moment. &ldquo;Whereas you, my dear man, you&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t be at all said&rdquo;&mdash;Strether took him
+up&mdash;&ldquo;to have a &lsquo;quantity&rsquo; certain or uncertain? Very
+true. Still, I shan&rsquo;t starve.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you mustn&rsquo;t <i>starve!</i>&rdquo; Chad pacifically emphasised;
+and so, in the pleasant conditions, they continued to talk; though there was,
+for that matter, a pause in which the younger companion might have been taken
+as weighing again the delicacy of his then and there promising the elder some
+provision against the possibility just mentioned. This, however, he presumably
+thought best not to do, for at the end of another minute they had moved in
+quite a different direction. Strether had broken in by returning to the subject
+of Chad&rsquo;s passage with Sarah and enquiring if they had arrived, in the
+event, at anything in the nature of a &ldquo;scene.&rdquo; To this Chad replied
+that they had on the contrary kept tremendously polite; adding moreover that
+Sally was after all not the woman to have made the mistake of not being.
+&ldquo;Her hands are a good deal tied, you see. I got so, from the
+first,&rdquo; he sagaciously observed, &ldquo;the start of her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean she has taken so much from you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I couldn&rsquo;t of course in common decency give less: only she
+hadn&rsquo;t expected, I think, that I&rsquo;d give her nearly so much. And she
+began to take it before she knew it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she began to like it,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;as soon as she
+began to take it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, she has liked it&mdash;also more than she expected.&rdquo; After
+which Chad observed: &ldquo;But she doesn&rsquo;t like <i>me</i>. In fact she
+hates me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s interest grew. &ldquo;Then why does she want you at
+home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because when you hate you want to triumph, and if she should get me
+neatly stuck there she <i>would</i> triumph.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether followed afresh, but looking as he went. &ldquo;Certainly&mdash;in a
+manner. But it would scarce be a triumph worth having if, once entangled,
+feeling her dislike and possibly conscious in time of a certain quantity of
+your own, you should on the spot make yourself unpleasant to her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Chad, &ldquo;she can bear <i>me</i>&mdash;could bear me
+at least at home. It&rsquo;s my being there that would be her triumph. She
+hates me in Paris.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She hates in other words&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, <i>that&rsquo;s</i> it!&rdquo;&mdash;Chad had quickly understood
+this understanding; which formed on the part of each as near an approach as
+they had yet made to naming Madame de Vionnet. The limitations of their
+distinctness didn&rsquo;t, however, prevent its fairly lingering in the air
+that it was this lady Mrs. Pocock hated. It added one more touch moreover to
+their established recognition of the rare intimacy of Chad&rsquo;s association
+with her. He had never yet more twitched away the last light veil from this
+phenomenon than in presenting himself as confounded and submerged in the
+feeling she had created at Woollett. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ll tell you who hates
+me too,&rdquo; he immediately went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether knew as immediately whom he meant, but with as prompt a protest.
+&ldquo;Ah no! Mamie doesn&rsquo;t hate&mdash;well,&rdquo; he caught himself in
+time&mdash;&ldquo;anybody at all. Mamie&rsquo;s beautiful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad shook his head. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just why I mind it. She certainly
+doesn&rsquo;t like me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much do you mind it? What would you do for her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;d like her if she&rsquo;d like me. Really, really,&rdquo;
+Chad declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It gave his companion a moment&rsquo;s pause. &ldquo;You asked me just now if I
+don&rsquo;t, as you said, &lsquo;care&rsquo; about a certain person. You rather
+tempt me therefore to put the question in my turn. Don&rsquo;t <i>you</i> care
+about a certain other person?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad looked at him hard in the lamplight of the window. &ldquo;The difference
+is that I don&rsquo;t want to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wondered. &ldquo;&lsquo;Don&rsquo;t want&rsquo; to?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I try not to&mdash;that is I <i>have</i> tried. I&rsquo;ve done my best.
+You can&rsquo;t be surprised,&rdquo; the young man easily went on, &ldquo;when
+you yourself set me on it. I was indeed,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;already on it
+a little; but you set me harder. It was six weeks ago that I thought I had come
+out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether took it well in. &ldquo;But you haven&rsquo;t come out!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;it&rsquo;s what I <i>want</i> to know,&rdquo;
+said Chad. &ldquo;And if I could have sufficiently wanted&mdash;by
+myself&mdash;to go back, I think I might have found out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Possibly&rdquo;&mdash;Strether considered. &ldquo;But all you were able
+to achieve was to want to want to! And even then,&rdquo; he pursued,
+&ldquo;only till our friends there came. Do you want to want to still?&rdquo;
+As with a sound half-dolorous, half-droll and all vague and equivocal, Chad
+buried his face for a little in his hands, rubbing it in a whimsical way that
+amounted to an evasion, he brought it out more sharply: &ldquo;<i>Do</i>
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad kept for a time his attitude, but at last he looked up, and then abruptly,
+&ldquo;Jim <i>is</i> a damned dose!&rdquo; he declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh I don&rsquo;t ask you to abuse or describe or in any way pronounce on
+your relatives; I simply put it to you once more whether you&rsquo;re
+<i>now</i> ready. You say you&rsquo;ve &lsquo;seen.&rsquo; Is what you&rsquo;ve
+seen that you can&rsquo;t resist?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad gave him a strange smile&mdash;the nearest approach he had ever shown to a
+troubled one. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you make me <i>not</i> resist?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What it comes to,&rdquo; Strether went on very gravely now and as if he
+hadn&rsquo;t heard him, &ldquo;what it comes to is that more has been done for
+you, I think, than I&rsquo;ve ever seen done&mdash;attempted perhaps, but never
+so successfully done&mdash;by one human being for another.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh an immense deal certainly&rdquo;&mdash;Chad did it full justice.
+&ldquo;And you yourself are adding to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was without heeding this either that his visitor continued. &ldquo;And our
+friends there won&rsquo;t have it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, they simply won&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They demand you on the basis, as it were, of repudiation and
+ingratitude; and what has been the matter with me,&rdquo; Strether went on,
+&ldquo;is that I haven&rsquo;t seen my way to working with you for
+repudiation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad appreciated this. &ldquo;Then as you haven&rsquo;t seen yours you
+naturally haven&rsquo;t seen mine. There it is.&rdquo; After which he
+proceeded, with a certain abruptness, to a sharp interrogation.
+&ldquo;<i>Now</i> do you say she doesn&rsquo;t hate me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether hesitated. &ldquo;&lsquo;She&rsquo;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;Mother. We called it Sarah, but it comes to the same
+thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Strether objected, &ldquo;not to the same thing as her hating
+<i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On which&mdash;though as if for an instant it had hung fire&mdash;Chad
+remarkably replied: &ldquo;Well, if they hate my good friend, <i>that</i> comes
+to the same thing.&rdquo; It had a note of inevitable truth that made Strether
+take it as enough, feel he wanted nothing more. The young man spoke in it for
+his &ldquo;good friend&rdquo; more than he had ever yet directly spoken,
+confessed to such deep identities between them as he might play with the idea
+of working free from, but which at a given moment could still draw him down
+like a whirlpool. And meanwhile he had gone on. &ldquo;Their hating you too
+moreover&mdash;that also comes to a good deal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;your mother doesn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad, however, loyally stuck to it&mdash;loyally, that is, to Strether.
+&ldquo;She will if you don&rsquo;t look out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I do look out. I am, after all, looking out. That&rsquo;s just
+why,&rdquo; our friend explained, &ldquo;I want to see her again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It drew from Chad again the same question. &ldquo;To see Mother?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To see&mdash;for the present&mdash;Sarah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then there you are! And what I don&rsquo;t for the life of me make
+out,&rdquo; Chad pursued with resigned perplexity, &ldquo;is what you
+<i>gain</i> by it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh it would have taken his companion too long to say! &ldquo;That&rsquo;s
+because you have, I verily believe, no imagination. You&rsquo;ve other
+qualities. But no imagination, don&rsquo;t you see? at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I dare say. I do see.&rdquo; It was an idea in which Chad showed
+interest. &ldquo;But haven&rsquo;t you yourself rather too much?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh <i>rather</i>&mdash;!&rdquo; So that after an instant, under this
+reproach and as if it were at last a fact really to escape from, Strether made
+his move for departure.
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+One of the features of the restless afternoon passed by him after Mrs.
+Pocock&rsquo;s visit was an hour spent, shortly before dinner, with Maria
+Gostrey, whom of late, in spite of so sustained a call on his attention from
+other quarters, he had by no means neglected. And that he was still not
+neglecting her will appear from the fact that he was with her again at the same
+hour on the very morrow&mdash;with no less fine a consciousness moreover of
+being able to hold her ear. It continued inveterately to occur, for that
+matter, that whenever he had taken one of his greater turns he came back to
+where she so faithfully awaited him. None of these excursions had on the whole
+been livelier than the pair of incidents&mdash;the fruit of the short interval
+since his previous visit&mdash;on which he had now to report to her. He had
+seen Chad Newsome late the night before, and he had had that morning, as a
+sequel to this conversation, a second interview with Sarah. &ldquo;But
+they&rsquo;re all off,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;at last.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It puzzled her a moment. &ldquo;All?&mdash;Mr. Newsome with them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah not yet! Sarah and Jim and Mamie. But Waymarsh with them&mdash;for
+Sarah. It&rsquo;s too beautiful,&rdquo; Strether continued; &ldquo;I find I
+don&rsquo;t get over that&mdash;it&rsquo;s always a fresh joy. But it&rsquo;s a
+fresh joy too,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;that&mdash;well, what do you think?
+Little Bilham also goes. But he of course goes for Mamie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey wondered. &ldquo;&lsquo;For&rsquo; her? Do you mean they&rsquo;re
+already engaged?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;say then for <i>me</i>. He&rsquo;ll
+do anything for me; just as I will, for that matter&mdash;anything I
+can&mdash;for him. Or for Mamie either. <i>She&rsquo;ll</i> do anything for
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey gave a comprehensive sigh. &ldquo;The way you reduce people to
+subjection!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s certainly, on one side, wonderful. But it&rsquo;s quite
+equalled, on another, by the way I don&rsquo;t. I haven&rsquo;t reduced Sarah,
+since yesterday; though I&rsquo;ve succeeded in seeing her again, as I&rsquo;ll
+presently tell you. The others however are really all right. Mamie, by that
+blessed law of ours, absolutely must have a young man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what must poor Mr. Bilham have? Do you mean they&rsquo;ll
+<i>marry</i> for you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean that, by the same blessed law, it won&rsquo;t matter a grain if
+they don&rsquo;t&mdash;I shan&rsquo;t have in the least to worry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She saw as usual what he meant. &ldquo;And Mr. Jim?&mdash;who goes for
+him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Strether had to admit, &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t manage
+<i>that</i>. He&rsquo;s thrown, as usual, on the world; the world which, after
+all, by his account&mdash;for he has prodigious adventures&mdash;seems very
+good to him. He fortunately&mdash;&lsquo;over here,&rsquo; as he
+says&mdash;finds the world everywhere; and his most prodigious adventure of
+all,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;has been of course of the last few days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey, already knowing, instantly made the connexion. &ldquo;He has seen
+Marie de Vionnet again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He went, all by himself, the day after Chad&rsquo;s
+party&mdash;didn&rsquo;t I tell you?&mdash;to tea with her. By her
+invitation&mdash;all alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite like yourself!&rdquo; Maria smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but he&rsquo;s more wonderful about her than I am!&rdquo; And then as
+his friend showed how she could believe it, filling it out, fitting it on to
+old memories of the wonderful woman: &ldquo;What I should have liked to manage
+would have been <i>her</i> going.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To Switzerland with the party?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For Jim&mdash;and for symmetry. If it had been workable moreover for a
+fortnight she&rsquo;d have gone. She&rsquo;s ready&rdquo;&mdash;he followed up
+his renewed vision of her&mdash;&ldquo;for anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey went with him a minute. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s too perfect!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She <i>will</i>, I think,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;go to-night to the
+station.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To see him off?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With Chad&mdash;marvellously&mdash;as part of their general attention.
+And she does it&rdquo;&mdash;it kept before him&mdash;&ldquo;with a light,
+light grace, a free, free gaiety, that may well softly bewilder Mr.
+Pocock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It kept her so before him that his companion had after an instant a friendly
+comment. &ldquo;As in short it has softly bewildered a saner man. Are you
+really in love with her?&rdquo; Maria threw off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s of no importance I should know,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;It
+matters so little&mdash;has nothing to do, practically, with either of
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All the same&rdquo;&mdash;Maria continued to smile&mdash;&ldquo;they go,
+the five, as I understand you, and you and Madame de Vionnet stay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh and Chad.&rdquo; To which Strether added: &ldquo;And you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah &lsquo;me&rsquo;!&rdquo;&mdash;she gave a small impatient wail again,
+in which something of the unreconciled seemed suddenly to break out.
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> don&rsquo;t stay, it somehow seems to me, much to my advantage.
+In the presence of all you cause to pass before me I&rsquo;ve a tremendous
+sense of privation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether hesitated. &ldquo;But your privation, your keeping out of everything,
+has been&mdash;hasn&rsquo;t it?&mdash;by your own choice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes; it has been necessary&mdash;that is it has been better for you.
+What I mean is only that I seem to have ceased to serve you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How can you tell that?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know how
+you serve me. When you cease&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; she said as he dropped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll <i>let</i> you know. Be quiet till then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thought a moment. &ldquo;Then you positively like me to stay?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t I treat you as if I did?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re certainly very kind to me. But that,&rdquo; said Maria,
+&ldquo;is for myself. It&rsquo;s getting late, as you see, and Paris turning
+rather hot and dusty. People are scattering, and some of them, in other places
+want me. But if you want me here&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had spoken as resigned to his word, but he had of a sudden a still sharper
+sense than he would have expected of desiring not to lose her. &ldquo;I want
+you here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they brought her,
+gave her something that was the compensation of her case. &ldquo;Thank
+you,&rdquo; she simply answered. And then as he looked at her a little harder,
+&ldquo;Thank you very much,&rdquo; she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had broken as with a slight arrest into the current of their talk, and it
+held him a moment longer. &ldquo;Why, two months, or whatever the time was,
+ago, did you so suddenly dash off? The reason you afterwards gave me for having
+kept away three weeks wasn&rsquo;t the real one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She recalled. &ldquo;I never supposed you believed it was. Yet,&rdquo; she
+continued, &ldquo;if you didn&rsquo;t guess it that was just what helped
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked away from her on this; he indulged, so far as space permitted, in one
+of his slow absences. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve often thought of it, but never to feel
+that I could guess it. And you see the consideration with which I&rsquo;ve
+treated you in never asking till now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now then why <i>do</i> you ask?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To show you how I miss you when you&rsquo;re not here, and what it does
+for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t seem to have done,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;all it
+might! However,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;if you&rsquo;ve really never guessed
+the truth I&rsquo;ll tell it you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never guessed it,&rdquo; Strether declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then I dashed off, as you say, so as not to have the confusion of
+being there if Marie de Vionnet should tell you anything to my
+detriment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked as if he considerably doubted. &ldquo;You even then would have had to
+face it on your return.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh if I had found reason to believe it something very bad I&rsquo;d have
+left you altogether.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So then,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;it was only on guessing she had
+been on the whole merciful that you ventured back?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria kept it together. &ldquo;I owe her thanks. Whatever her temptation she
+didn&rsquo;t separate us. That&rsquo;s one of my reasons,&rdquo; she went on
+&ldquo;for admiring her so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let it pass then,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;for one of mine as well.
+But what would have been her temptation?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are ever the temptations of women?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought&mdash;but hadn&rsquo;t, naturally, to think too long.
+&ldquo;Men?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She would have had you, with it, more for herself. But she saw she could
+have you without it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh &lsquo;have&rsquo; me!&rdquo; Strether a trifle ambiguously sighed.
+&ldquo;<i>You</i>,&rdquo; he handsomely declared, &ldquo;would have had me at
+any rate <i>with</i> it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh &lsquo;have&rsquo; you!&rdquo;&mdash;she echoed it as he had done.
+&ldquo;I do have you, however,&rdquo; she less ironically said, &ldquo;from the
+moment you express a wish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped before her, full of the disposition. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll express
+fifty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which indeed begot in her, with a certain inconsequence, a return of her small
+wail. &ldquo;Ah there you are!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, if it were so, he continued for the rest of the time to be, and it was
+as if to show her how she could still serve him that, coming back to the
+departure of the Pococks, he gave her the view, vivid with a hundred more
+touches than we can reproduce, of what had happened for him that morning. He
+had had ten minutes with Sarah at her hotel, ten minutes reconquered, by
+irresistible pressure, from the time over which he had already described her to
+Miss Gostrey as having, at the end of their interview on his own premises,
+passed the great sponge of the future. He had caught her by not announcing
+himself, had found her in her sitting-room with a dressmaker and a
+<i>lingère</i> whose accounts she appeared to have been more or less
+ingenuously settling and who soon withdrew. Then he had explained to her how he
+had succeeded, late the night before, in keeping his promise of seeing Chad.
+&ldquo;I told her I&rsquo;d take it all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;d &lsquo;take&rsquo; it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why if he doesn&rsquo;t go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria waited. &ldquo;And who takes it if he does?&rdquo; she enquired with a
+certain grimness of gaiety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;I think I take, in any event,
+everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By which I suppose you mean,&rdquo; his companion brought out after a
+moment, &ldquo;that you definitely understand you now lose everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood before her again. &ldquo;It does come perhaps to the same thing. But
+Chad, now that he has seen, doesn&rsquo;t really want it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She could believe that, but she made, as always, for clearness. &ldquo;Still,
+what, after all, <i>has</i> he seen?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What they want of him. And it&rsquo;s enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It contrasts so unfavourably with what Madame de Vionnet wants?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It contrasts&mdash;just so; all round, and tremendously.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Therefore, perhaps, most of all with what <i>you</i> want?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;what I want is a thing I&rsquo;ve
+ceased to measure or even to understand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his friend none the less went on. &ldquo;Do you want Mrs.
+Newsome&mdash;after such a way of treating you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a straighter mode of dealing with this lady than they had as
+yet&mdash;such was their high form&mdash;permitted themselves; but it seemed
+not wholly for this that he delayed a moment. &ldquo;I dare say it has been,
+after all, the only way she could have imagined.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And does that make you want her any more?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve tremendously disappointed her,&rdquo; Strether thought it
+worth while to mention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you have. That&rsquo;s rudimentary; that was plain to us long
+ago. But isn&rsquo;t it almost as plain,&rdquo; Maria went on, &ldquo;that
+you&rsquo;ve even yet your straight remedy? Really drag him away, as I believe
+you still can, and you&rsquo;d cease to have to count with her
+disappointment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah then,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;I should have to count with
+yours!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this barely struck her now. &ldquo;What, in that case, should you call
+counting? You haven&rsquo;t come out where you are, I think, to please
+<i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he insisted, &ldquo;that too, you know, has been part of it.
+I can&rsquo;t separate&mdash;it&rsquo;s all one; and that&rsquo;s perhaps why,
+as I say, I don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo; But he was ready to declare again
+that this didn&rsquo;t in the least matter; all the more that, as he affirmed,
+he <i>hadn&rsquo;t</i> really as yet &ldquo;come out.&rdquo; &ldquo;She gives
+me after all, on its coming to the pinch, a last mercy, another chance. They
+don&rsquo;t sail, you see, for five or six weeks more, and they
+haven&rsquo;t&mdash;she admits that&mdash;expected Chad would take part in
+their tour. It&rsquo;s still open to him to join them, at the last, at
+Liverpool.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey considered. &ldquo;How in the world is it &lsquo;open&rsquo;
+unless you open it? How can he join them at Liverpool if he but sinks deeper
+into his situation here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has given her&mdash;as I explained to you that she let me know
+yesterday&mdash;his word of honour to do as I say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria stared. &ldquo;But if you say nothing!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, he as usual walked about on it. &ldquo;I did say something this morning.
+I gave her my answer&mdash;the word I had promised her after hearing from
+himself what <i>he</i> had promised. What she demanded of me yesterday,
+you&rsquo;ll remember, was the engagement then and there to make him take up
+this vow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey enquired, &ldquo;was the purpose of your
+visit to her only to decline?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; it was to ask, odd as that may seem to you, for another
+delay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah that&rsquo;s weak!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely!&rdquo; She had spoken with impatience, but, so far as that at
+least, he knew where he was. &ldquo;If I <i>am</i> weak I want to find it out.
+If I don&rsquo;t find it out I shall have the comfort, the little glory, of
+thinking I&rsquo;m strong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all the comfort, I judge,&rdquo; she returned, &ldquo;that
+you <i>will</i> have!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At any rate,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it will have been a month more.
+Paris may grow, from day to day, hot and dusty, as you say; but there are other
+things that are hotter and dustier. I&rsquo;m not afraid to stay on; the summer
+here must be amusing in a wild&mdash;if it isn&rsquo;t a tame&mdash;way of its
+own; the place at no time more picturesque. I think I shall like it. And
+then,&rdquo; he benevolently smiled for her, &ldquo;there will be always
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she objected, &ldquo;it won&rsquo;t be as a part of the
+picturesqueness that I shall stay, for I shall be the plainest thing about you.
+You may, you see, at any rate,&rdquo; she pursued, &ldquo;have nobody else.
+Madame de Vionnet may very well be going off, mayn&rsquo;t she?&mdash;and Mr.
+Newsome by the same stroke: unless indeed you&rsquo;ve had an assurance from
+them to the contrary. So that if your idea&rsquo;s to stay for
+them&rdquo;&mdash;it was her duty to suggest it&mdash;&ldquo;you may be left in
+the lurch. Of course if they do stay&rdquo;&mdash;she kept it
+up&mdash;&ldquo;they would be part of the picturesqueness. Or else indeed you
+might join them somewhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether seemed to face it as if it were a happy thought; but the next moment
+he spoke more critically. &ldquo;Do you mean that they&rsquo;ll probably go off
+together?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She just considered. &ldquo;I think it will be treating you quite without
+ceremony if they do; though after all,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;it would be
+difficult to see now quite what degree of ceremony properly meets your
+case.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; Strether conceded, &ldquo;my attitude toward them is
+extraordinary.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just so; so that one may ask one&rsquo;s self what style of proceeding
+on their own part can altogether match it. The attitude of their own that
+won&rsquo;t pale in its light they&rsquo;ve doubtless still to work out. The
+really handsome thing perhaps,&rdquo; she presently threw off,
+&ldquo;<i>would</i> be for them to withdraw into more secluded conditions,
+offering at the same time to share them with you.&rdquo; He looked at her, on
+this, as if some generous irritation&mdash;all in his interest&mdash;had
+suddenly again flickered in her; and what she next said indeed half-explained
+it. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t really be afraid to tell me if what now holds you
+<i>is</i> the pleasant prospect of the empty town, with plenty of seats in the
+shade, cool drinks, deserted museums, drives to the Bois in the evening, and
+our wonderful woman all to yourself.&rdquo; And she kept it up still more.
+&ldquo;The handsomest thing of <i>all</i>, when one makes it out, would, I dare
+say, be that Mr. Chad should for a while go off by himself. It&rsquo;s a pity,
+from that point of view,&rdquo; she wound up, &ldquo;that he doesn&rsquo;t pay
+his mother a visit. It would at least occupy your interval.&rdquo; The thought
+in fact held her a moment. &ldquo;Why doesn&rsquo;t he pay his mother a visit?
+Even a week, at this good moment, would do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear lady,&rdquo; Strether replied&mdash;and he had it even to
+himself surprisingly ready&mdash;&ldquo;my dear lady, his mother has paid
+<i>him</i> a visit. Mrs. Newsome has been with him, this month, with an
+intensity that I&rsquo;m sure he has thoroughly felt; he has lavishly
+entertained her, and she has let him have her thanks. Do you suggest he shall
+go back for more of them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, she succeeded after a little in shaking it off. &ldquo;I see. It&rsquo;s
+what you don&rsquo;t suggest&mdash;what you haven&rsquo;t suggested. And you
+know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So would you, my dear,&rdquo; he kindly said, &ldquo;if you had so much
+as seen her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As seen Mrs. Newsome?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, Sarah&mdash;which, both for Chad and for myself, has served all the
+purpose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And served it in a manner,&rdquo; she responsively mused, &ldquo;so
+extraordinary!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you see,&rdquo; he partly explained, &ldquo;what it comes to is
+that she&rsquo;s all cold thought&mdash;which Sarah could serve to us cold
+without its really losing anything. So it is that we know what she thinks of
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria had followed, but she had an arrest. &ldquo;What I&rsquo;ve never made
+out, if you come to that, is what you think&mdash;I mean you
+personally&mdash;of <i>her</i>. Don&rsquo;t you so much, when all&rsquo;s said,
+as care a little?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That,&rdquo; he answered with no loss of promptness, &ldquo;is what even
+Chad himself asked me last night. He asked me if I don&rsquo;t mind the
+loss&mdash;well, the loss of an opulent future. Which moreover,&rdquo; he
+hastened to add, &ldquo;was a perfectly natural question.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I call your attention, all the same,&rdquo; said Miss Gostrey, &ldquo;to
+the fact that I don&rsquo;t ask it. What I venture to ask is whether it&rsquo;s
+to Mrs. Newsome herself that you&rsquo;re indifferent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t been so&rdquo;&mdash;he spoke with all assurance.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been the very opposite. I&rsquo;ve been, from the first
+moment, preoccupied with the impression everything might be making on
+her&mdash;quite oppressed, haunted, tormented by it. I&rsquo;ve been interested
+<i>only</i> in her seeing what I&rsquo;ve seen. And I&rsquo;ve been as
+disappointed in her refusal to see it as she has been in what has appeared to
+her the perversity of my insistence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean that she has shocked you as you&rsquo;ve shocked her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether weighed it. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m probably not so shockable. But on the
+other hand I&rsquo;ve gone much further to meet her. She, on her side,
+hasn&rsquo;t budged an inch.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So that you&rsquo;re now at last&rdquo;&mdash;Maria pointed the
+moral&mdash;&ldquo;in the sad stage of recriminations.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;it&rsquo;s only to you I speak. I&rsquo;ve been like a lamb to
+Sarah. I&rsquo;ve only put my back to the wall. It&rsquo;s to <i>that</i> one
+naturally staggers when one has been violently pushed there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She watched him a moment. &ldquo;Thrown over?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, as I feel I&rsquo;ve landed somewhere I think I must have been
+thrown.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned it over, but as hoping to clarify much rather than to harmonise.
+&ldquo;The thing is that I suppose you&rsquo;ve been
+disappointing&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite from the very first of my arrival? I dare say. I admit I was
+surprising even to myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then of course,&rdquo; Maria went on, &ldquo;I had much to do with
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With my being surprising&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will do,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;if you&rsquo;re too delicate to
+call it <i>my</i> being! Naturally,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;you came over more
+or less for surprises.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Naturally!&rdquo;&mdash;he valued the reminder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But they were to have been all for you&rdquo;&mdash;she continued to
+piece it out&mdash;&ldquo;and none of them for <i>her</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once more he stopped before her as if she had touched the point.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s just her difficulty&mdash;that she doesn&rsquo;t admit
+surprises. It&rsquo;s a fact that, I think, describes and represents her; and
+it falls in with what I tell you&mdash;that she&rsquo;s all, as I&rsquo;ve
+called it, fine cold thought. She had, to her own mind, worked the whole thing
+out in advance, and worked it out for me as well as for herself. Whenever she
+has done that, you see, there&rsquo;s no room left; no margin, as it were, for
+any alteration. She&rsquo;s filled as full, packed as tight, as she&rsquo;ll
+hold and if you wish to get anything more or different either out or
+in&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to make over altogether the woman herself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What it comes to,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;is that you&rsquo;ve got
+morally and intellectually to get rid of her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Which would appear,&rdquo; Maria returned, &ldquo;to be practically what
+you&rsquo;ve done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her friend threw back his head. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t touched her. She
+won&rsquo;t <i>be</i> touched. I see it now as I&rsquo;ve never done; and she
+hangs together with a perfection of her own,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;that
+does suggest a kind of wrong in <i>any</i> change of her composition. It was at
+any rate,&rdquo; he wound up, &ldquo;the woman herself, as you call her the
+whole moral and intellectual being or block, that Sarah brought me over to take
+or to leave.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It turned Miss Gostrey to deeper thought. &ldquo;Fancy having to take at the
+point of the bayonet a whole moral and intellectual being or block!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was in fact,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;what, at home, I <i>had</i>
+done. But somehow over there I didn&rsquo;t quite know it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One never does, I suppose,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey concurred, &ldquo;realise
+in advance, in such a case, the size, as you may say, of the block. Little by
+little it looms up. It has been looming for you more and more till at last you
+see it all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see it all,&rdquo; he absently echoed, while his eyes might have been
+fixing some particularly large iceberg in a cool blue northern sea.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s magnificent!&rdquo; he then rather oddly exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his friend, who was used to this kind of inconsequence in him, kept the
+thread. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing so magnificent&mdash;for making others
+feel you&mdash;as to have no imagination.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It brought him straight round. &ldquo;Ah there you are! It&rsquo;s what I said
+last night to Chad. That he himself, I mean, has none.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then it would appear,&rdquo; Maria suggested, &ldquo;that he has, after
+all, something in common with his mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has in common that he makes one, as you say, &lsquo;feel&rsquo; him.
+And yet,&rdquo; he added, as if the question were interesting, &ldquo;one feels
+others too, even when they have plenty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gostrey continued suggestive. &ldquo;Madame de Vionnet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>She</i> has plenty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly&mdash;she had quantities of old. But there are different ways
+of making one&rsquo;s self felt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, it comes, no doubt, to that. You now&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was benevolently going on, but she wouldn&rsquo;t have it. &ldquo;Oh I
+<i>don&rsquo;t</i> make myself felt; so my quantity needn&rsquo;t be settled.
+Yours, you know,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;is monstrous. No one has ever had so
+much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It struck him for a moment. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what Chad also thinks.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There <i>you</i> are then&mdash;though it isn&rsquo;t for him to
+complain of it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh he doesn&rsquo;t complain of it,&rdquo; said Strether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all that would be wanting! But apropos of what,&rdquo;
+Maria went on, &ldquo;did the question come up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, of his asking me what it is I gain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had a pause. &ldquo;Then as I&rsquo;ve asked you too it settles <i>my</i>
+case. Oh you <i>have</i>,&rdquo; she repeated, &ldquo;treasures of
+imagination.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he had been for an instant thinking away from this, and he came up in
+another place. &ldquo;And yet Mrs. Newsome&mdash;it&rsquo;s a thing to
+remember&mdash;<i>has</i> imagined, did, that is, imagine, and apparently still
+does, horrors about what I should have found. I was booked, by her
+vision&mdash;extraordinarily intense, after all&mdash;to find them; and that I
+didn&rsquo;t, that I couldn&rsquo;t, that, as she evidently felt, I
+wouldn&rsquo;t&mdash;this evidently didn&rsquo;t at all, as they say,
+&lsquo;suit&rsquo; her book. It was more than she could bear. That was her
+disappointment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean you were to have found Chad himself horrible?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was to have found the woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Horrible?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Found her as she imagined her.&rdquo; And Strether paused as if for his
+own expression of it he could add no touch to that picture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion had meanwhile thought. &ldquo;She imagined stupidly&mdash;so it
+comes to the same thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stupidly? Oh!&rdquo; said Strether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she insisted. &ldquo;She imagined meanly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had it, however, better. &ldquo;It couldn&rsquo;t but be ignorantly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, intensity with ignorance&mdash;what do you want worse?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This question might have held him, but he let it pass. &ldquo;Sarah isn&rsquo;t
+ignorant&mdash;now; she keeps up the theory of the horrible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but she&rsquo;s intense&mdash;and that by itself will do sometimes as
+well. If it doesn&rsquo;t do, in this case, at any rate, to deny that
+Marie&rsquo;s charming, it will do at least to deny that she&rsquo;s
+good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What I claim is that she&rsquo;s good for Chad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t claim&rdquo;&mdash;she seemed to like it
+clear&mdash;&ldquo;that she&rsquo;s good for <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he continued without heeding. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I wanted them to
+come out for&mdash;to see for themselves if she&rsquo;s bad for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now that they&rsquo;ve done so they won&rsquo;t admit that
+she&rsquo;s good even for anything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They do think,&rdquo; Strether presently admitted, &ldquo;that
+she&rsquo;s on the whole about as bad for me. But they&rsquo;re consistent of
+course, inasmuch as they&rsquo;ve their clear view of what&rsquo;s good for
+both of us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For you, to begin with&rdquo;&mdash;Maria, all responsive, confined the
+question for the moment&mdash;&ldquo;to eliminate from your existence and if
+possible even from your memory the dreadful creature that <i>I</i> must
+gruesomely shadow forth for them, even more than to eliminate the distincter
+evil&mdash;thereby a little less portentous&mdash;of the person whose
+confederate you&rsquo;ve suffered yourself to become. However, that&rsquo;s
+comparatively simple. You can easily, at the worst, after all, give me
+up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can easily at the worst, after all, give you up.&rdquo; The irony was
+so obvious that it needed no care. &ldquo;I can easily at the worst, after all,
+even forget you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Call that then workable. But Mr. Newsome has much more to forget. How
+can <i>he</i> do it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah there again we are! That&rsquo;s just what I was to have made him do;
+just where I was to have worked with him and helped.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took it in silence and without attenuation&mdash;as if perhaps from very
+familiarity with the facts; and her thought made a connexion without showing
+the links. &ldquo;Do you remember how we used to talk at Chester and in London
+about my seeing you through?&rdquo; She spoke as of far-off things and as if
+they had spent weeks at the places she named.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just what you <i>are</i> doing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but the worst&mdash;since you&rsquo;ve left such a margin&mdash;may
+be still to come. You may yet break down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I may yet break down. But will you take me&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had hesitated, and she waited. &ldquo;Take you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For as long as I can bear it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She also debated &ldquo;Mr. Newsome and Madame de Vionnet may, as we were
+saying, leave town. How long do you think you can bear it without them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s reply to this was at first another question. &ldquo;Do you
+mean in order to get away from me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her answer had an abruptness. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t find me rude if I say I should
+think they&rsquo;d want to!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her hard again&mdash;seemed even for an instant to have an
+intensity of thought under which his colour changed. But he smiled. &ldquo;You
+mean after what they&rsquo;ve done to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After what <i>she</i> has.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this, however, with a laugh, he was all right again. &ldquo;Ah but she
+hasn&rsquo;t done it yet!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>
+He had taken the train a few days after this from a station&mdash;as well as
+<i>to</i> a station&mdash;selected almost at random; such days, whatever should
+happen, were numbered, and he had gone forth under the impulse&mdash;artless
+enough, no doubt&mdash;to give the whole of one of them to that French
+ruralism, with its cool special green, into which he had hitherto looked only
+through the little oblong window of the picture-frame. It had been as yet for
+the most part but a land of fancy for him&mdash;the background of fiction, the
+medium of art, the nursery of letters; practically as distant as Greece, but
+practically also well-nigh as consecrated. Romance could weave itself, for
+Strether&rsquo;s sense, out of elements mild enough; and even after what he
+had, as he felt, lately &ldquo;been through,&rdquo; he could thrill a little at
+the chance of seeing something somewhere that would remind him of a certain
+small Lambinet that had charmed him, long years before, at a Boston
+dealer&rsquo;s and that he had quite absurdly never forgotten. It had been
+offered, he remembered, at a price he had been instructed to believe the lowest
+ever named for a Lambinet, a price he had never felt so poor as on having to
+recognise, all the same, as beyond a dream of possibility. He had
+dreamed&mdash;had turned and twisted possibilities for an hour: it had been the
+only adventure of his life in connexion with the purchase of a work of art. The
+adventure, it will be perceived, was modest; but the memory, beyond all reason
+and by some accident of association, was sweet. The little Lambinet abode with
+him as the picture he <i>would</i> have bought&mdash;the particular production
+that had made him for the moment overstep the modesty of nature. He was quite
+aware that if he were to see it again he should perhaps have a drop or a shock,
+and he never found himself wishing that the wheel of time would turn it up
+again, just as he had seen it in the maroon-coloured, sky-lighted inner shrine
+of Tremont Street. It would be a different thing, however, to see the
+remembered mixture resolved back into its elements&mdash;to assist at the
+restoration to nature of the whole far-away hour: the dusty day in Boston, the
+background of the Fitchburg Depot, of the maroon-coloured sanctum, the
+special-green vision, the ridiculous price, the poplars, the willows, the
+rushes, the river, the sunny silvery sky, the shady woody horizon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He observed in respect to his train almost no condition save that it should
+stop a few times after getting out of the <i>banlieue</i>; he threw himself on
+the general amiability of the day for the hint of where to alight. His theory
+of his excursion was that he could alight anywhere&mdash;not nearer Paris than
+an hour&rsquo;s run&mdash;on catching a suggestion of the particular note
+required. It made its sign, the suggestion&mdash;weather, air, light, colour
+and his mood all favouring&mdash;at the end of some eighty minutes; the train
+pulled up just at the right spot, and he found himself getting out as securely
+as if to keep an appointment. It will be felt of him that he could amuse
+himself, at his age, with very small things if it be again noted that his
+appointment was only with a superseded Boston fashion. He hadn&rsquo;t gone far
+without the quick confidence that it would be quite sufficiently kept. The
+oblong gilt frame disposed its enclosing lines; the poplars and willows, the
+reeds and river&mdash;a river of which he didn&rsquo;t know, and didn&rsquo;t
+want to know, the name&mdash;fell into a composition, full of felicity, within
+them; the sky was silver and turquoise and varnish; the village on the left was
+white and the church on the right was grey; it was all there, in short&mdash;it
+was what he wanted: it was Tremont Street, it was France, it was Lambinet.
+Moreover he was freely walking about in it. He did this last, for an hour, to
+his heart&rsquo;s content, making for the shady woody horizon and boring so
+deep into his impression and his idleness that he might fairly have got through
+them again and reached the maroon-coloured wall. It was a wonder, no doubt,
+that the taste of idleness for him shouldn&rsquo;t need more time to sweeten;
+but it had in fact taken the few previous days; it had been sweetening in truth
+ever since the retreat of the Pococks. He walked and walked as if to show
+himself how little he had now to do; he had nothing to do but turn off to some
+hillside where he might stretch himself and hear the poplars rustle, and
+whence&mdash;in the course of an afternoon so spent, an afternoon richly
+suffused too with the sense of a book in his pocket&mdash;he should
+sufficiently command the scene to be able to pick out just the right little
+rustic inn for an experiment in respect to dinner. There was a train back to
+Paris at 9.20, and he saw himself partaking, at the close of the day, with the
+enhancements of a coarse white cloth and a sanded door, of something fried and
+felicitous, washed down with authentic wine; after which he might, as he liked,
+either stroll back to his station in the gloaming or propose for the local
+<i>carriole</i> and converse with his driver, a driver who naturally
+wouldn&rsquo;t fail of a stiff clean blouse, of a knitted nightcap and of the
+genius of response&mdash;who, in fine, would sit on the shafts, tell him what
+the French people were thinking, and remind him, as indeed the whole episode
+would incidentally do, of Maupassant. Strether heard his lips, for the first
+time in French air, as this vision assumed consistency, emit sounds of
+expressive intention without fear of his company. He had been afraid of Chad
+and of Maria and of Madame de Vionnet; he had been most of all afraid of
+Waymarsh, in whose presence, so far as they had mixed together in the light of
+the town, he had never without somehow paying for it aired either his
+vocabulary or his accent. He usually paid for it by meeting immediately
+afterwards Waymarsh&rsquo;s eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such were the liberties with which his fancy played after he had turned off to
+the hillside that did really and truly, as well as most amiably, await him
+beneath the poplars, the hillside that made him feel, for a murmurous couple of
+hours, how happy had been his thought. He had the sense of success, of a finer
+harmony in things; nothing but what had turned out as yet according to his
+plan. It most of all came home to him, as he lay on his back on the grass, that
+Sarah had really gone, that his tension was really relaxed; the peace diffused
+in these ideas might be delusive, but it hung about him none the less for the
+time. It fairly, for half an hour, sent him to sleep; he pulled his straw hat
+over his eyes&mdash;he had bought it the day before with a reminiscence of
+Waymarsh&rsquo;s&mdash;and lost himself anew in Lambinet. It was as if he had
+found out he was tired&mdash;tired not from his walk, but from that inward
+exercise which had known, on the whole, for three months, so little
+intermission. That was it&mdash;when once they were off he had dropped; this
+moreover was what he had dropped to, and now he was touching bottom. He was
+kept luxuriously quiet, soothed and amused by the consciousness of what he had
+found at the end of his descent. It was very much what he had told Maria
+Gostrey he should like to stay on for, the hugely-distributed Paris of summer,
+alternately dazzling and dusky, with a weight lifted for him off its columns
+and cornices and with shade and air in the flutter of awnings as wide as
+avenues. It was present to him without attenuation that, reaching out, the day
+after making the remark, for some proof of his freedom, he had gone that very
+afternoon to see Madame de Vionnet. He had gone again the next day but one, and
+the effect of the two visits, the after-sense of the couple of hours spent with
+her, was almost that of fulness and frequency. The brave intention of
+frequency, so great with him from the moment of his finding himself unjustly
+suspected at Woollett, had remained rather theoretic, and one of the things he
+could muse about under his poplars was the source of the special shyness that
+had still made him careful. He had surely got rid of it now, this special
+shyness; what had become of it if it hadn&rsquo;t precisely, within the week,
+rubbed off?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It struck him now in fact as sufficiently plain that if he had still been
+careful he had been so for a reason. He had really feared, in his behaviour, a
+lapse from good faith; if there was a danger of one&rsquo;s liking such a woman
+too much one&rsquo;s best safety was in waiting at least till one had the right
+to do so. In the light of the last few days the danger was fairly vivid; so
+that it was proportionately fortunate that the right was likewise established.
+It seemed to our friend that he had on each occasion profited to the utmost by
+the latter: how could he have done so more, he at all events asked himself,
+than in having immediately let her know that, if it was all the same to her, he
+preferred not to talk about anything tiresome? He had never in his life so
+sacrificed an armful of high interests as in that remark; he had never so
+prepared the way for the comparatively frivolous as in addressing it to Madame
+de Vionnet&rsquo;s intelligence. It hadn&rsquo;t been till later that he quite
+recalled how in conjuring away everything but the pleasant he had conjured away
+almost all they had hitherto talked about; it was not till later even that he
+remembered how, with their new tone, they hadn&rsquo;t so much as mentioned the
+name of Chad himself. One of the things that most lingered with him on his
+hillside was this delightful facility, with such a woman, of arriving at a new
+tone; he thought, as he lay on his back, of all the tones she might make
+possible if one were to try her, and at any rate of the probability that one
+could trust her to fit them to occasions. He had wanted her to feel that, as he
+was disinterested now, so she herself should be, and she had showed she felt
+it, and he had showed he was grateful, and it had been for all the world as if
+he were calling for the first time. They had had other, but irrelevant,
+meetings; it was quite as if, had they sooner known how much they <i>really</i>
+had in common, there were quantities of comparatively dull matters they might
+have skipped. Well, they were skipping them now, even to graceful gratitude,
+even to handsome &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mention it!&rdquo;&mdash;and it was amazing
+what could still come up without reference to what had been going on between
+them. It might have been, on analysis, nothing more than Shakespeare and the
+musical glasses; but it had served all the purpose of his appearing to have
+said to her: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t like me, if it&rsquo;s a question of liking me,
+for anything obvious and clumsy that I&rsquo;ve, as they call it,
+&lsquo;done&rsquo; for you: like me&mdash;well, like me, hang it, for anything
+else you choose. So, by the same propriety, don&rsquo;t be for me simply the
+person I&rsquo;ve come to know through my awkward connexion with Chad&mdash;was
+ever anything, by the way, <i>more</i> awkward? Be for me, please, with all
+your admirable tact and trust, just whatever I may show you it&rsquo;s a
+present pleasure to me to think you.&rdquo; It had been a large indication to
+meet; but if she hadn&rsquo;t met it what <i>had</i> she done, and how had
+their time together slipped along so smoothly, mild but not slow, and melting,
+liquefying, into his happy illusion of idleness? He could recognise on the
+other hand that he had probably not been without reason, in his prior, his
+restricted state, for keeping an eye on his liability to lapse from good faith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He really continued in the picture&mdash;that being for himself his
+situation&mdash;all the rest of this rambling day; so that the charm was still,
+was indeed more than ever upon him when, toward six o&rsquo;clock he found
+himself amicably engaged with a stout white-capped deep-voiced woman at the
+door of the <i>auberge</i> of the biggest village, a village that affected him
+as a thing of whiteness, blueness and crookedness, set in coppery green, and
+that had the river flowing behind or before it&mdash;one couldn&rsquo;t say
+which; at the bottom, in particular, of the inn-garden. He had had other
+adventures before this; had kept along the height, after shaking off slumber;
+had admired, had almost coveted, another small old church, all steep roof and
+dim slate-colour without and all whitewash and paper flowers within; had lost
+his way and had found it again; had conversed with rustics who struck him
+perhaps a little more as men of the world than he had expected; had acquired at
+a bound a fearless facility in French; had had, as the afternoon waned, a
+watery <i>bock</i>, all pale and Parisian, in the café of the furthest village,
+which was not the biggest; and had meanwhile not once overstepped the oblong
+gilt frame. The frame had drawn itself out for him, as much as you please; but
+that was just his luck. He had finally come down again to the valley, to keep
+within touch of stations and trains, turning his face to the quarter from which
+he had started; and thus it was that he had at last pulled up before the
+hostess of the Cheval Blanc, who met him, with a rough readiness that was like
+the clatter of sabots over stones, on their common ground of a <i>côtelette de
+veau à l&rsquo;oseille</i> and a subsequent lift. He had walked many miles and
+didn&rsquo;t know he was tired; but he still knew he was amused, and even that,
+though he had been alone all day, he had never yet so struck himself as engaged
+with others and in midstream of his drama. It might have passed for finished
+his drama, with its catastrophe all but reached: it had, however, none the less
+been vivid again for him as he thus gave it its fuller chance. He had only had
+to be at last well out of it to feel it, oddly enough, still going on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For this had been all day at bottom the spell of the picture&mdash;that it was
+essentially more than anything else a scene and a stage, that the very air of
+the play was in the rustle of the willows and the tone of the sky. The play and
+the characters had, without his knowing it till now, peopled all his space for
+him, and it seemed somehow quite happy that they should offer themselves, in
+the conditions so supplied, with a kind of inevitability. It was as if the
+conditions made them not only inevitable, but so much more nearly natural and
+right as that they were at least easier, pleasanter, to put up with. The
+conditions had nowhere so asserted their difference from those of Woollett as
+they appeared to him to assert it in the little court of the Cheval Blanc while
+he arranged with his hostess for a comfortable climax. They were few and
+simple, scant and humble, but they were <i>the thing</i>, as he would have
+called it, even to a greater degree than Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s old high
+salon where the ghost of the Empire walked. &ldquo;The&rdquo; thing was the
+thing that implied the greatest number of other things of the sort he had had
+to tackle; and it was queer of course, but so it was&mdash;the implication here
+was complete. Not a single one of his observations but somehow fell into a
+place in it; not a breath of the cooler evening that wasn&rsquo;t somehow a
+syllable of the text. The text was simply, when condensed, that in <i>these</i>
+places such things were, and that if it was in them one elected to move about
+one had to make one&rsquo;s account with what one lighted on. Meanwhile at all
+events it was enough that they did affect one&mdash;so far as the village
+aspect was concerned&mdash;as whiteness, crookedness and blueness set in
+coppery green; there being positively, for that matter, an outer wall of the
+White Horse that was painted the most improbable shade. That was part of the
+amusement&mdash;as if to show that the fun was harmless; just as it was enough,
+further, that the picture and the play seemed supremely to melt together in the
+good woman&rsquo;s broad sketch of what she could do for her visitor&rsquo;s
+appetite. He felt in short a confidence, and it was general, and it was all he
+wanted to feel. It suffered no shock even on her mentioning that she had in
+fact just laid the cloth for two persons who, unlike Monsieur, had arrived by
+the river&mdash;in a boat of their own; who had asked her, half an hour before,
+what she could do for them, and had then paddled away to look at something a
+little further up&mdash;from which promenade they would presently return.
+Monsieur might meanwhile, if he liked, pass into the garden, such as it was,
+where she would serve him, should he wish it&mdash;for there were tables and
+benches in plenty&mdash;a &ldquo;bitter&rdquo; before his repast. Here she
+would also report to him on the possibility of a conveyance to his station, and
+here at any rate he would have the <i>agrément</i> of the river.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It may be mentioned without delay that Monsieur had the <i>agrément</i> of
+everything, and in particular, for the next twenty minutes, of a small and
+primitive pavilion that, at the garden&rsquo;s edge, almost overhung the water,
+testifying, in its somewhat battered state, to much fond frequentation. It
+consisted of little more than a platform, slightly raised, with a couple of
+benches and a table, a protecting rail and a projecting roof; but it raked the
+full grey-blue stream, which, taking a turn a short distance above, passed out
+of sight to reappear much higher up; and it was clearly in esteemed requisition
+for Sundays and other feasts. Strether sat there and, though hungry, felt at
+peace; the confidence that had so gathered for him deepened with the lap of the
+water, the ripple of the surface, the rustle of the reeds on the opposite bank,
+the faint diffused coolness and the slight rock of a couple of small boats
+attached to a rough landing-place hard by. The valley on the further side was
+all copper-green level and glazed pearly sky, a sky hatched across with screens
+of trimmed trees, which looked flat, like espaliers; and though the rest of the
+village straggled away in the near quarter the view had an emptiness that made
+one of the boats suggestive. Such a river set one afloat almost before one
+could take up the oars&mdash;the idle play of which would be moreover the aid
+to the full impression. This perception went so far as to bring him to his
+feet; but that movement, in turn, made him feel afresh that he was tired, and
+while he leaned against a post and continued to look out he saw something that
+gave him a sharper arrest.
+</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>
+What he saw was exactly the right thing&mdash;a boat advancing round the bend
+and containing a man who held the paddles and a lady, at the stern, with a pink
+parasol. It was suddenly as if these figures, or something like them, had been
+wanted in the picture, had been wanted more or less all day, and had now
+drifted into sight, with the slow current, on purpose to fill up the measure.
+They came slowly, floating down, evidently directed to the landing-place near
+their spectator and presenting themselves to him not less clearly as the two
+persons for whom his hostess was already preparing a meal. For two very happy
+persons he found himself straightway taking them&mdash;a young man in
+shirt-sleeves, a young woman easy and fair, who had pulled pleasantly up from
+some other place and, being acquainted with the neighbourhood, had known what
+this particular retreat could offer them. The air quite thickened, at their
+approach, with further intimations; the intimation that they were expert,
+familiar, frequent&mdash;that this wouldn&rsquo;t at all events be the first
+time. They knew how to do it, he vaguely felt&mdash;and it made them but the
+more idyllic, though at the very moment of the impression, as happened, their
+boat seemed to have begun to drift wide, the oarsman letting it go. It had by
+this time none the less come much nearer&mdash;near enough for Strether to
+dream the lady in the stern had for some reason taken account of his being
+there to watch them. She had remarked on it sharply, yet her companion
+hadn&rsquo;t turned round; it was in fact almost as if our friend had felt her
+bid him keep still. She had taken in something as a result of which their
+course had wavered, and it continued to waver while they just stood off. This
+little effect was sudden and rapid, so rapid that Strether&rsquo;s sense of it
+was separate only for an instant from a sharp start of his own. He too had
+within the minute taken in something, taken in that he knew the lady whose
+parasol, shifting as if to hide her face, made so fine a pink point in the
+shining scene. It was too prodigious, a chance in a million, but, if he knew
+the lady, the gentleman, who still presented his back and kept off, the
+gentleman, the coatless hero of the idyll, who had responded to her start, was,
+to match the marvel, none other than Chad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad and Madame de Vionnet were then like himself taking a day in the
+country&mdash;though it was as queer as fiction, as farce, that their country
+could happen to be exactly his; and she had been the first at recognition, the
+first to feel, across the water, the shock&mdash;for it appeared to come to
+that&mdash;of their wonderful accident. Strether became aware, with this, of
+what was taking place&mdash;that her recognition had been even stranger for the
+pair in the boat, that her immediate impulse had been to control it, and that
+she was quickly and intensely debating with Chad the risk of betrayal. He saw
+they would show nothing if they could feel sure he hadn&rsquo;t made them out;
+so that he had before him for a few seconds his own hesitation. It was a sharp
+fantastic crisis that had popped up as if in a dream, and it had had only to
+last the few seconds to make him feel it as quite horrible. They were thus, on
+either side, <i>trying</i> the other side, and all for some reason that broke
+the stillness like some unprovoked harsh note. It seemed to him again, within
+the limit, that he had but one thing to do&mdash;to settle their common
+question by some sign of surprise and joy. He hereupon gave large play to these
+things, agitating his hat and his stick and loudly calling out&mdash;a
+demonstration that brought him relief as soon as he had seen it answered. The
+boat, in mid-stream, still went a little wild&mdash;which seemed natural,
+however, while Chad turned round, half springing up; and his good friend, after
+blankness and wonder, began gaily to wave her parasol. Chad dropped afresh to
+his paddles and the boat headed round, amazement and pleasantry filling the air
+meanwhile, and relief, as Strether continued to fancy, superseding mere
+violence. Our friend went down to the water under this odd impression as of
+violence averted&mdash;the violence of their having &ldquo;cut&rdquo; him, out
+there in the eye of nature, on the assumption that he wouldn&rsquo;t know it.
+He awaited them with a face from which he was conscious of not being able quite
+to banish this idea that they would have gone on, not seeing and not knowing,
+missing their dinner and disappointing their hostess, had he himself taken a
+line to match. That at least was what darkened his vision for the moment.
+Afterwards, after they had bumped at the landing-place and he had assisted
+their getting ashore, everything found itself sponged over by the mere miracle
+of the encounter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They could so much better at last, on either side, treat it as a wild
+extravagance of hazard, that the situation was made elastic by the amount of
+explanation called into play. Why indeed&mdash;apart from oddity&mdash;the
+situation should have been really stiff was a question naturally not practical
+at the moment, and in fact, so far as we are concerned, a question tackled,
+later on and in private, only by Strether himself. He was to reflect later on
+and in private that it was mainly <i>he</i> who had explained&mdash;as he had
+had moreover comparatively little difficulty in doing. He was to have at all
+events meanwhile the worrying thought of their perhaps secretly suspecting him
+of having plotted this coincidence, taking such pains as might be to give it
+the semblance of an accident. That possibility&mdash;as their
+imputation&mdash;didn&rsquo;t of course bear looking into for an instant; yet
+the whole incident was so manifestly, arrange it as they would, an awkward one,
+that he could scarce keep disclaimers in respect to his own presence from
+rising to his lips. Disclaimers of intention would have been as tactless as his
+presence was practically gross; and the narrowest escape they either of them
+had was his lucky escape, in the event, from making any. Nothing of the sort,
+so far as surface and sound were involved, was even in question; surface and
+sound all made for their common ridiculous good fortune, for the general
+<i>invraisemblance</i> of the occasion, for the charming chance that they had,
+the others, in passing, ordered some food to be ready, the charming chance that
+he had himself not eaten, the charming chance, even more, that their little
+plans, their hours, their train, in short, from <i>là-bas</i>, would all match
+for their return together to Paris. The chance that was most charming of all,
+the chance that drew from Madame de Vionnet her clearest, gayest
+&ldquo;<i>Comme cela se trouve!</i>&rdquo; was the announcement made to
+Strether after they were seated at table, the word given him by their hostess
+in respect to his carriage for the station, on which he might now count. It
+settled the matter for his friends as well; the conveyance&mdash;it <i>was</i>
+all too lucky!&mdash;would serve for them; and nothing was more delightful than
+his being in a position to make the train so definite. It might have been, for
+themselves&mdash;to hear Madame de Vionnet&mdash;almost unnaturally vague, a
+detail left to be fixed; though Strether indeed was afterwards to remember that
+Chad had promptly enough intervened to forestall this appearance, laughing at
+his companion&rsquo;s flightiness and making the point that he had after all,
+in spite of the bedazzlement of a day out with her, known what he was about.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether was to remember afterwards further that this had had for him the
+effect of forming Chad&rsquo;s almost sole intervention; and indeed he was to
+remember further still, in subsequent meditation, many things that, as it were,
+fitted together. Another of them was for instance that the wonderful
+woman&rsquo;s overflow of surprise and amusement was wholly into French, which
+she struck him as speaking with an unprecedented command of idiomatic turns,
+but in which she got, as he might have said, somewhat away from him, taking all
+at once little brilliant jumps that he could but lamely match. The question of
+his own French had never come up for them; it was the one thing she
+wouldn&rsquo;t have permitted&mdash;it belonged, for a person who had been
+through much, to mere boredom; but the present result was odd, fairly veiling
+her identity, shifting her back into a mere voluble class or race to the
+intense audibility of which he was by this time inured. When she spoke the
+charming slightly strange English he best knew her by he seemed to feel her as
+a creature, among all the millions, with a language quite to herself, the real
+monopoly of a special shade of speech, beautifully easy for her, yet of a
+colour and a cadence that were both inimitable and matters of accident. She
+came back to these things after they had shaken down in the inn-parlour and
+knew, as it were, what was to become of them; it was inevitable that loud
+ejaculation over the prodigy of their convergence should at last wear itself
+out. Then it was that his impression took fuller form&mdash;the impression,
+destined only to deepen, to complete itself, that they had something to put a
+face upon, to carry off and make the best of, and that it was she who,
+admirably on the whole, was doing this. It was familiar to him of course that
+they had something to put a face upon; their friendship, their connexion, took
+any amount of explaining&mdash;that would have been made familiar by his twenty
+minutes with Mrs. Pocock if it hadn&rsquo;t already been so. Yet his theory, as
+we know, had bountifully been that the facts were specifically none of his
+business, and were, over and above, so far as one had to do with them,
+intrinsically beautiful; and this might have prepared him for anything, as well
+as rendered him proof against mystification. When he reached home that night,
+however, he knew he had been, at bottom, neither prepared nor proof; and since
+we have spoken of what he was, after his return, to recall and interpret, it
+may as well immediately be said that his real experience of these few hours put
+on, in that belated vision&mdash;for he scarce went to bed till
+morning&mdash;the aspect that is most to our purpose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He then knew more or less how he had been affected&mdash;he but half knew at
+the time. There had been plenty to affect him even after, as has been said,
+they had shaken down; for his consciousness, though muffled, had its sharpest
+moments during this passage, a marked drop into innocent friendly Bohemia. They
+then had put their elbows on the table, deploring the premature end of their
+two or three dishes; which they had tried to make up with another bottle while
+Chad joked a little spasmodically, perhaps even a little irrelevantly, with the
+hostess. What it all came to had been that fiction and fable <i>were</i>,
+inevitably, in the air, and not as a simple term of comparison, but as a result
+of things said; also that they were blinking it, all round, and that they yet
+needn&rsquo;t, so much as that, have blinked it&mdash;though indeed if they
+hadn&rsquo;t Strether didn&rsquo;t quite see what else they could have done.
+Strether didn&rsquo;t quite see <i>that</i> even at an hour or two past
+midnight, even when he had, at his hotel, for a long time, without a light and
+without undressing, sat back on his bedroom sofa and stared straight before
+him. He was, at that point of vantage, in full possession, to make of it all
+what he could. He kept making of it that there had been simply a <i>lie</i> in
+the charming affair&mdash;a lie on which one could now, detached and
+deliberate, perfectly put one&rsquo;s finger. It was with the lie that they had
+eaten and drunk and talked and laughed, that they had waited for their
+<i>carriole</i> rather impatiently, and had then got into the vehicle and,
+sensibly subsiding, driven their three or four miles through the darkening
+summer night. The eating and drinking, which had been a resource, had had the
+effect of having served its turn; the talk and laughter had done as much; and
+it was during their somewhat tedious progress to the station, during the waits
+there, the further delays, their submission to fatigue, their silences in the
+dim compartment of the much-stopping train, that he prepared himself for
+reflexions to come. It had been a performance, Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s
+manner, and though it had to that degree faltered toward the end, as through
+her ceasing to believe in it, as if she had asked herself, or Chad had found a
+moment surreptitiously to ask her, what after all was the use, a performance it
+had none the less quite handsomely remained, with the final fact about it that
+it was on the whole easier to keep up than to abandon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the point of view of presence of mind it had been very wonderful indeed,
+wonderful for readiness, for beautiful assurance, for the way her decision was
+taken on the spot, without time to confer with Chad, without time for anything.
+Their only conference could have been the brief instants in the boat before
+they confessed to recognising the spectator on the bank, for they hadn&rsquo;t
+been alone together a moment since and must have communicated all in silence.
+It was a part of the deep impression for Strether, and not the least of the
+deep interest, that they <i>could</i> so communicate&mdash;that Chad in
+particular could let her know he left it to her. He habitually left things to
+others, as Strether was so well aware, and it in fact came over our friend in
+these meditations that there had been as yet no such vivid illustration of his
+famous knowing how to live. It was as if he had humoured her to the extent of
+letting her lie without correction&mdash;almost as if, really, he would be
+coming round in the morning to set the matter, as between Strether and himself,
+right. Of course he couldn&rsquo;t quite come; it was a case in which a man was
+obliged to accept the woman&rsquo;s version, even when fantastic; if she had,
+with more flurry than she cared to show, elected, as the phrase was, to
+represent that they had left Paris that morning, and with no design but of
+getting back within the day&mdash;if she had so sized-up, in the Woollett
+phrase, their necessity, she knew best her own measure. There were things, all
+the same, it was impossible to blink and which made this measure an odd
+one&mdash;the too evident fact for instance that she hadn&rsquo;t started out
+for the day dressed and hatted and shod, and even, for that matter, pink
+parasol&rsquo;d, as she had been in the boat. From what did the drop in her
+assurance proceed as the tension increased&mdash;from what did this slightly
+baffled ingenuity spring but from her consciousness of not presenting, as night
+closed in, with not so much as a shawl to wrap her round, an appearance that
+matched her story? She admitted that she was cold, but only to blame her
+imprudence which Chad suffered her to give such account of as she might. Her
+shawl and Chad&rsquo;s overcoat and her other garments, and his, those they had
+each worn the day before, were at the place, best known to themselves&mdash;a
+quiet retreat enough, no doubt&mdash;at which they had been spending the
+twenty-four hours, to which they had fully meant to return that evening, from
+which they had so remarkably swum into Strether&rsquo;s ken, and the tacit
+repudiation of which had been thus the essence of her comedy. Strether saw how
+she had perceived in a flash that they couldn&rsquo;t quite look to going back
+there under his nose; though, honestly, as he gouged deeper into the matter, he
+was somewhat surprised, as Chad likewise had perhaps been, at the uprising of
+this scruple. He seemed even to divine that she had entertained it rather for
+Chad than for herself, and that, as the young man had lacked the chance to
+enlighten her, she had had to go on with it, he meanwhile mistaking her motive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was rather glad, none the less, that they had in point of fact not parted at
+the Cheval Blanc, that he hadn&rsquo;t been reduced to giving them his blessing
+for an idyllic retreat down the river. He had had in the actual case to
+make-believe more than he liked, but this was nothing, it struck him, to what
+the other event would have required. Could he, literally, quite have faced the
+other event? Would he have been capable of making the best of it with them?
+This was what he was trying to do now; but with the advantage of his being able
+to give more time to it a good deal counteracted by his sense of what, over and
+above the central fact itself, he had to swallow. It was the quantity of
+make-believe involved and so vividly exemplified that most disagreed with his
+spiritual stomach. He moved, however, from the consideration of that
+quantity&mdash;to say nothing of the consciousness of that organ&mdash;back to
+the other feature of the show, the deep, deep truth of the intimacy revealed.
+That was what, in his vain vigil, he oftenest reverted to: intimacy, at such a
+point, was <i>like</i> that&mdash;and what in the world else would one have
+wished it to be like? It was all very well for him to feel the pity of its
+being so much like lying; he almost blushed, in the dark, for the way he had
+dressed the possibility in vagueness, as a little girl might have dressed her
+doll. He had made them&mdash;and by no fault of their own&mdash;momentarily
+pull it for him, the possibility, out of this vagueness; and must he not
+therefore take it now as they had had simply, with whatever thin attenuations,
+to give it to him? The very question, it may be added, made him feel lonely and
+cold. There was the element of the awkward all round, but Chad and Madame de
+Vionnet had at least the comfort that they could talk it over together. With
+whom could <i>he</i> talk of such things?&mdash;unless indeed always, at almost
+any stage, with Maria? He foresaw that Miss Gostrey would come again into
+requisition on the morrow; though it wasn&rsquo;t to be denied that he was
+already a little afraid of her &ldquo;What on earth&mdash;that&rsquo;s what I
+want to know now&mdash;had you then supposed?&rdquo; He recognised at last that
+he had really been trying all along to suppose nothing. Verily, verily, his
+labour had been lost. He found himself supposing innumerable and wonderful
+things.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>Book Twelfth</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p>
+Strether couldn&rsquo;t have said he had during the previous hours definitely
+expected it; yet when, later on, that morning&mdash;though no later indeed than
+for his coming forth at ten o&rsquo;clock&mdash;he saw the concierge produce,
+on his approach, a <i>petit bleu</i> delivered since his letters had been sent
+up, he recognised the appearance as the first symptom of a sequel. He then knew
+he had been thinking of some early sign from Chad as more likely, after all,
+than not; and this would be precisely the early sign. He took it so for granted
+that he opened the <i>petit bleu</i> just where he had stopped, in the pleasant
+cool draught of the <i>porte-cochère</i>&mdash;only curious to see where the
+young man would, at such a juncture, break out. His curiosity, however, was
+more than gratified; the small missive, whose gummed edge he had detached
+without attention to the address, not being from the young man at all, but from
+the person whom the case gave him on the spot as still more worth while. Worth
+while or not, he went round to the nearest telegraph-office, the big one on the
+Boulevard, with a directness that almost confessed to a fear of the danger of
+delay. He might have been thinking that if he didn&rsquo;t go before he could
+think he wouldn&rsquo;t perhaps go at all. He at any rate kept, in the lower
+side-pocket of his morning coat, a very deliberate hand on his blue missive,
+crumpling it up rather tenderly than harshly. He wrote a reply, on the
+Boulevard, also in the form of a <i>petit bleu</i>&mdash;which was quickly
+done, under pressure of the place, inasmuch as, like Madame de Vionnet&rsquo;s
+own communication, it consisted of the fewest words. She had asked him if he
+could do her the very great kindness of coming to see her that evening at
+half-past nine, and he answered, as if nothing were easier, that he would
+present himself at the hour she named. She had added a line of postscript, to
+the effect that she would come to him elsewhere and at his own hour if he
+preferred; but he took no notice of this, feeling that if he saw her at all
+half the value of it would be in seeing her where he had already seen her best.
+He mightn&rsquo;t see her at all; that was one of the reflexions he made after
+writing and before he dropped his closed card into the box; he mightn&rsquo;t
+see any one at all any more at all; he might make an end as well now as ever,
+leaving things as they were, since he was doubtless not to leave them better,
+and taking his way home so far as should appear that a home remained to him.
+This alternative was for a few minutes so sharp that if he at last did deposit
+his missive it was perhaps because the pressure of the place had an effect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was none other, however, than the common and constant pressure, familiar
+to our friend under the rubric of <i>Postes et Télégraphes</i>&mdash;the
+something in the air of these establishments; the vibration of the vast strange
+life of the town, the influence of the types, the performers concocting their
+messages; the little prompt Paris women, arranging, pretexting goodness knew
+what, driving the dreadful needle-pointed public pen at the dreadful
+sand-strewn public table: implements that symbolised for Strether&rsquo;s too
+interpretative innocence something more acute in manners, more sinister in
+morals, more fierce in the national life. After he had put in his paper he had
+ranged himself, he was really amused to think, on the side of the fierce, the
+sinister, the acute. He was carrying on a correspondence, across the great
+city, quite in the key of the <i>Postes et Télégraphes</i> in general; and it
+was fairly as if the acceptance of that fact had come from something in his
+state that sorted with the occupation of his neighbours. He was mixed up with
+the typical tale of Paris, and so were they, poor things&mdash;how could they
+all together help being? They were no worse than he, in short, and he no worse
+than they&mdash;if, queerly enough, no better; and at all events he had settled
+his hash, so that he went out to begin, from that moment, his day of waiting.
+The great settlement was, as he felt, in his preference for seeing his
+correspondent in her own best conditions. <i>That</i> was part of the typical
+tale, the part most significant in respect to himself. He liked the place she
+lived in, the picture that each time squared itself, large and high and clear,
+around her: every occasion of seeing it was a pleasure of a different shade.
+Yet what precisely was he doing with shades of pleasure now, and why
+hadn&rsquo;t he properly and logically compelled her to commit herself to
+whatever of disadvantage and penalty the situation might throw up? He might
+have proposed, as for Sarah Pocock, the cold hospitality of his own <i>salon de
+lecture</i>, in which the chill of Sarah&rsquo;s visit seemed still to abide
+and shades of pleasure were dim; he might have suggested a stone bench in the
+dusty Tuileries or a penny chair at the back part of the Champs Elysées. These
+things would have been a trifle stern, and sternness alone now wouldn&rsquo;t
+be sinister. An instinct in him cast about for some form of discipline in which
+they might meet&mdash;some awkwardness they would suffer from, some danger, or
+at least some grave inconvenience, they would incur. This would give a
+sense&mdash;which the spirit required, rather ached and sighed in the absence
+of&mdash;that somebody was paying something somewhere and somehow, that they
+were at least not all floating together on the silver stream of impunity. Just
+instead of that to go and see her late in the evening, as if, for all the
+world&mdash;well, as if he were as much in the swim as anybody else: this had
+as little as possible in common with the penal form.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even when he had felt that objection melt away, however, the practical
+difference was small; the long stretch of his interval took the colour it
+would, and if he lived on thus with the sinister from hour to hour it proved an
+easier thing than one might have supposed in advance. He reverted in thought to
+his old tradition, the one he had been brought up on and which even so many
+years of life had but little worn away; the notion that the state of the
+wrongdoer, or at least this person&rsquo;s happiness, presented some special
+difficulty. What struck him now rather was the ease of it&mdash;for nothing in
+truth appeared easier. It was an ease he himself fairly tasted of for the rest
+of the day; giving himself quite up; not so much as trying to dress it out, in
+any particular whatever, as a difficulty; not after all going to see
+Maria&mdash;which would have been in a manner a result of such dressing; only
+idling, lounging, smoking, sitting in the shade, drinking lemonade and
+consuming ices. The day had turned to heat and eventual thunder, and he now and
+again went back to his hotel to find that Chad hadn&rsquo;t been there. He
+hadn&rsquo;t yet struck himself, since leaving Woollett, so much as a loafer,
+though there had been times when he believed himself touching bottom. This was
+a deeper depth than any, and with no foresight, scarcely with a care, as to
+what he should bring up. He almost wondered if he didn&rsquo;t <i>look</i>
+demoralised and disreputable; he had the fanciful vision, as he sat and smoked,
+of some accidental, some motived, return of the Pococks, who would be passing
+along the Boulevard and would catch this view of him. They would have
+distinctly, on his appearance, every ground for scandal. But fate failed to
+administer even that sternness; the Pococks never passed and Chad made no sign.
+Strether meanwhile continued to hold off from Miss Gostrey, keeping her till
+to-morrow; so that by evening his irresponsibility, his impunity, his luxury,
+had become&mdash;there was no other word for them&mdash;immense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Between nine and ten, at last, in the high clear picture&mdash;he was moving in
+these days, as in a gallery, from clever canvas to clever canvas&mdash;he drew
+a long breath: it was so presented to him from the first that the spell of his
+luxury wouldn&rsquo;t be broken. He wouldn&rsquo;t have, that is, to become
+responsible&mdash;this was admirably in the air: she had sent for him precisely
+to let him feel it, so that he might go on with the comfort (comfort already
+established, hadn&rsquo;t it been?) of regarding his ordeal, the ordeal of the
+weeks of Sarah&rsquo;s stay and of their climax, as safely traversed and left
+behind him. Didn&rsquo;t she just wish to assure him that <i>she</i> now took
+it all and so kept it; that he was absolutely not to worry any more, was only
+to rest on his laurels and continue generously to help her? The light in her
+beautiful formal room was dim, though it would do, as everything would always
+do; the hot night had kept out lamps, but there was a pair of clusters of
+candles that glimmered over the chimney-piece like the tall tapers of an altar.
+The windows were all open, their redundant hangings swaying a little, and he
+heard once more, from the empty court, the small plash of the fountain. From
+beyond this, and as from a great distance&mdash;beyond the court, beyond the
+<i>corps de logis</i> forming the front&mdash;came, as if excited and exciting,
+the vague voice of Paris. Strether had all along been subject to sudden gusts
+of fancy in connexion with such matters as these&mdash;odd starts of the
+historic sense, suppositions and divinations with no warrant but their
+intensity. Thus and so, on the eve of the great recorded dates, the days and
+nights of revolution, the sounds had come in, the omens, the beginnings broken
+out. They were the smell of revolution, the smell of the public temper&mdash;or
+perhaps simply the smell of blood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was at present queer beyond words, &ldquo;subtle,&rdquo; he would have
+risked saying, that such suggestions should keep crossing the scene; but it was
+doubtless the effect of the thunder in the air, which had hung about all day
+without release. His hostess was dressed as for thunderous times, and it fell
+in with the kind of imagination we have just attributed to him that she should
+be in simplest coolest white, of a character so old-fashioned, if he were not
+mistaken, that Madame Roland must on the scaffold have worn something like it.
+This effect was enhanced by a small black fichu or scarf, of crape or gauze,
+disposed quaintly round her bosom and now completing as by a mystic touch the
+pathetic, the noble analogy. Poor Strether in fact scarce knew what analogy was
+evoked for him as the charming woman, receiving him and making him, as she
+could do such things, at once familiarly and gravely welcome, moved over her
+great room with her image almost repeated in its polished floor, which had been
+fully bared for summer. The associations of the place, all felt again; the
+gleam here and there, in the subdued light, of glass and gilt and parquet, with
+the quietness of her own note as the centre&mdash;these things were at first as
+delicate as if they had been ghostly, and he was sure in a moment that,
+whatever he should find he had come for, it wouldn&rsquo;t be for an impression
+that had previously failed him. That conviction held him from the outset, and,
+seeming singularly to simplify, certified to him that the objects about would
+help him, would really help them both. No, he might never see them
+again&mdash;this was only too probably the last time; and he should certainly
+see nothing in the least degree like them. He should soon be going to where
+such things were not, and it would be a small mercy for memory, for fancy, to
+have, in that stress, a loaf on the shelf. He knew in advance he should look
+back on the perception actually sharpest with him as on the view of something
+old, old, old, the oldest thing he had ever personally touched; and he also
+knew, even while he took his companion in as the feature among features, that
+memory and fancy couldn&rsquo;t help being enlisted for her. She might intend
+what she would, but this was beyond anything she could intend, with things from
+far back&mdash;tyrannies of history, facts of type, values, as the painters
+said, of expression&mdash;all working for her and giving her the supreme
+chance, the chance of the happy, the really luxurious few, the chance, on a
+great occasion, to be natural and simple. She had never, with him, been more
+so; or if it was the perfection of art it would never&mdash;and that came to
+the same thing&mdash;be proved against her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What was truly wonderful was her way of differing so from time to time without
+detriment to her simplicity. Caprices, he was sure she felt, were before
+anything else bad manners, and that judgement in her was by itself a thing
+making more for safety of intercourse than anything that in his various own
+past intercourses he had had to reckon on. If therefore her presence was now
+quite other than the one she had shown him the night before, there was nothing
+of violence in the change&mdash;it was all harmony and reason. It gave him a
+mild deep person, whereas he had had on the occasion to which their interview
+was a direct reference a person committed to movement and surface and abounding
+in them; but she was in either character more remarkable for nothing than for
+her bridging of intervals, and this now fell in with what he understood he was
+to leave to her. The only thing was that, if he was to leave it <i>all</i> to
+her, why exactly had she sent for him? He had had, vaguely, in advance, his
+explanation, his view of the probability of her wishing to set something right,
+to deal in some way with the fraud so lately practised on his presumed
+credulity. Would she attempt to carry it further or would she blot it out?
+Would she throw over it some more or less happy colour; or would she do nothing
+about it at all? He perceived soon enough at least that, however reasonable she
+might be, she wasn&rsquo;t vulgarly confused, and it herewith pressed upon him
+that their eminent &ldquo;lie,&rdquo; Chad&rsquo;s and hers, was simply after
+all such an inevitable tribute to good taste as he couldn&rsquo;t have wished
+them not to render. Away from them, during his vigil, he had seemed to wince at
+the amount of comedy involved; whereas in his present posture he could only ask
+himself how he should enjoy any attempt from her to take the comedy back. He
+shouldn&rsquo;t enjoy it at all; but, once more and yet once more, he could
+trust her. That is he could trust her to make deception right. As she presented
+things the ugliness&mdash;goodness knew why&mdash;went out of them; none the
+less too that she could present them, with an art of her own, by not so much as
+touching them. She let the matter, at all events, lie where it was&mdash;where
+the previous twenty-four hours had placed it; appearing merely to circle about
+it respectfully, tenderly, almost piously, while she took up another question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knew she hadn&rsquo;t really thrown dust in his eyes; this, the previous
+night, before they separated, had practically passed between them; and, as she
+had sent for him to see what the difference thus made for him might amount to,
+so he was conscious at the end of five minutes that he had been tried and
+tested. She had settled with Chad after he left them that she would, for her
+satisfaction, assure herself of this quantity, and Chad had, as usual, let her
+have her way. Chad was always letting people have their way when he felt that
+it would somehow turn his wheel for him; it somehow always did turn his wheel.
+Strether felt, oddly enough, before these facts, freshly and consentingly
+passive; they again so rubbed it into him that the couple thus fixing his
+attention were intimate, that his intervention had absolutely aided and
+intensified their intimacy, and that in fine he must accept the consequence of
+that. He had absolutely become, himself, with his perceptions and his mistakes,
+his concessions and his reserves, the droll mixture, as it must seem to them,
+of his braveries and his fears, the general spectacle of his art and his
+innocence, almost an added link and certainly a common priceless ground for
+them to meet upon. It was as if he had been hearing their very tone when she
+brought out a reference that was comparatively straight. &ldquo;The last twice
+that you&rsquo;ve been here, you know, I never asked you,&rdquo; she said with
+an abrupt transition&mdash;they had been pretending before this to talk simply
+of the charm of yesterday and of the interest of the country they had seen. The
+effort was confessedly vain; not for such talk had she invited him; and her
+impatient reminder was of their having done for it all the needful on his
+coming to her after Sarah&rsquo;s flight. What she hadn&rsquo;t asked him then
+was to state to her where and how he stood for her; she had been resting on
+Chad&rsquo;s report of their midnight hour together in the Boulevard
+Malesherbes. The thing therefore she at present desired was ushered in by this
+recall of the two occasions on which, disinterested and merciful, she
+hadn&rsquo;t worried him. To-night truly she <i>would</i> worry him, and this
+was her appeal to him to let her risk it. He wasn&rsquo;t to mind if she bored
+him a little: she had behaved, after all&mdash;hadn&rsquo;t she?&mdash;so
+awfully, awfully well.
+</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re all right, you&rsquo;re all right,&rdquo; he almost
+impatiently declared; his impatience being moreover not for her pressure, but
+for her scruple. More and more distinct to him was the tune to which she would
+have had the matter out with Chad: more and more vivid for him the idea that
+she had been nervous as to what he might be able to &ldquo;stand.&rdquo; Yes,
+it had been a question if he had &ldquo;stood&rdquo; what the scene on the
+river had given him, and, though the young man had doubtless opined in favour
+of his recuperation, her own last word must have been that she should feel
+easier in seeing for herself. That was it, unmistakeably; she <i>was</i> seeing
+for herself. What he could stand was thus, in these moments, in the balance for
+Strether, who reflected, as he became fully aware of it, that he must properly
+brace himself. He wanted fully to appear to stand all he might; and there was a
+certain command of the situation for him in this very wish not to look too much
+at sea. She was ready with everything, but so, sufficiently, was he; that is he
+was at one point the more prepared of the two, inasmuch as, for all her
+cleverness, she couldn&rsquo;t produce on the spot&mdash;and it was
+surprising&mdash;an account of the motive of her note. He had the advantage
+that his pronouncing her &ldquo;all right&rdquo; gave him for an enquiry.
+&ldquo;May I ask, delighted as I&rsquo;ve been to come, if you&rsquo;ve wished
+to say something special?&rdquo; He spoke as if she might have seen he had been
+waiting for it&mdash;not indeed with discomfort, but with natural interest.
+Then he saw that she was a little taken aback, was even surprised herself at
+the detail she had neglected&mdash;the only one ever yet; having somehow
+assumed he would know, would recognise, would leave some things not to be said.
+She looked at him, however, an instant as if to convey that if he wanted them
+<i>all</i>&mdash;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Selfish and vulgar&mdash;that&rsquo;s what I must seem to you.
+You&rsquo;ve done everything for me, and here I am as if I were asking for
+more. But it isn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;because I&rsquo;m
+afraid&mdash;though I <i>am</i> of course afraid, as a woman in my position
+always is. I mean it isn&rsquo;t because one lives in terror&mdash;it
+isn&rsquo;t because of that one is selfish, for I&rsquo;m ready to give you my
+word to-night that I don&rsquo;t care; don&rsquo;t care what still may happen
+and what I may lose. I don&rsquo;t ask you to raise your little finger for me
+again, nor do I wish so much as to mention to you what we&rsquo;ve talked of
+before, either my danger or my safety, or his mother, or his sister, or the
+girl he may marry, or the fortune he may make or miss, or the right or the
+wrong, of any kind, he may do. If after the help one has had from you one
+can&rsquo;t either take care of one&rsquo;s self or simply hold one&rsquo;s
+tongue, one must renounce all claim to be an object of interest. It&rsquo;s in
+the name of what I <i>do</i> care about that I&rsquo;ve tried still to keep
+hold of you. How can I be indifferent,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;to how I appear
+to you?&rdquo; And as he found himself unable immediately to say: &ldquo;Why,
+if you&rsquo;re going, <i>need</i> you, after all? Is it impossible you should
+stay on&mdash;so that one mayn&rsquo;t lose you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Impossible I should live with you here instead of going home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not &lsquo;with&rsquo; us, if you object to that, but near enough to us,
+somewhere, for us to see you&mdash;well,&rdquo; she beautifully brought out,
+&ldquo;when we feel we <i>must</i>. How shall we not sometimes feel it?
+I&rsquo;ve wanted to see you often when I couldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she pursued,
+&ldquo;all these last weeks. How shan&rsquo;t I then miss you now, with the
+sense of your being gone forever?&rdquo; Then as if the straightness of this
+appeal, taking him unprepared, had visibly left him wondering: &ldquo;Where
+<i>is</i> your &lsquo;home&rsquo; moreover now&mdash;what has become of it?
+I&rsquo;ve made a change in your life, I know I have; I&rsquo;ve upset
+everything in your mind as well; in your sense of&mdash;what shall I call
+it?&mdash;all the decencies and possibilities. It gives me a kind of
+detestation&mdash;&rdquo; She pulled up short.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh but he wanted to hear. &ldquo;Detestation of what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of everything&mdash;of life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah that&rsquo;s too much,&rdquo; he laughed&mdash;&ldquo;or too
+little!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Too little, precisely&rdquo;&mdash;she was eager. &ldquo;What I hate is
+myself&mdash;when I think that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the
+lives of others, and that one isn&rsquo;t happy even then. One does it to cheat
+one&rsquo;s self and to stop one&rsquo;s mouth&mdash;but that&rsquo;s only at
+the best for a little. The wretched self is always there, always making one
+somehow a fresh anxiety. What it comes to is that it&rsquo;s not, that
+it&rsquo;s never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to <i>take</i>. The only
+safe thing is to give. It&rsquo;s what plays you least false.&rdquo;
+Interesting, touching, strikingly sincere as she let these things come from
+her, she yet puzzled and troubled him&mdash;so fine was the quaver of her
+quietness. He felt what he had felt before with her, that there was always more
+behind what she showed, and more and more again behind that. &ldquo;You know
+so, at least,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;where you are!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>You</i> ought to know it indeed then; for isn&rsquo;t what
+you&rsquo;ve been giving exactly what has brought us together this way?
+You&rsquo;ve been making, as I&rsquo;ve so fully let you know I&rsquo;ve
+felt,&rdquo; Strether said, &ldquo;the most precious present I&rsquo;ve ever
+seen made, and if you can&rsquo;t sit down peacefully on that performance you
+<i>are</i>, no doubt, born to torment yourself. But you ought,&rdquo; he wound
+up, &ldquo;to be easy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And not trouble you any more, no doubt&mdash;not thrust on you even the
+wonder and the beauty of what I&rsquo;ve done; only let you regard our business
+as over, and well over, and see you depart in a peace that matches my own? No
+doubt, no doubt, no doubt,&rdquo; she nervously repeated&mdash;&ldquo;all the
+more that I don&rsquo;t really pretend I believe you couldn&rsquo;t, for
+yourself, <i>not</i> have done what you have. I don&rsquo;t pretend you feel
+yourself victimised, for this evidently is the way you live, and it&rsquo;s
+what&mdash;we&rsquo;re agreed&mdash;is the best way. Yes, as you say,&rdquo;
+she continued after a moment, &ldquo;I ought to be easy and rest on my work.
+Well then here am I doing so. I <i>am</i> easy. You&rsquo;ll have it for your
+last impression. When is it you say you go?&rdquo; she asked with a quick
+change.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took some time to reply&mdash;his last impression was more and more so mixed
+a one. It produced in him a vague disappointment, a drop that was deeper even
+than the fall of his elation the previous night. The good of what he had done,
+if he had done so much, wasn&rsquo;t there to enliven him quite to the point
+that would have been ideal for a grand gay finale. Women were thus endlessly
+absorbent, and to deal with them was to walk on water. What was at bottom the
+matter with her, embroider as she might and disclaim as she might&mdash;what
+was at bottom the matter with her was simply Chad himself. It was of Chad she
+was after all renewedly afraid; the strange strength of her passion was the
+very strength of her fear; she clung to <i>him</i>, Lambert Strether, as to a
+source of safety she had tested, and, generous graceful truthful as she might
+try to be, exquisite as she was, she dreaded the term of his being within
+reach. With this sharpest perception yet, it was like a chill in the air to
+him, it was almost appalling, that a creature so fine could be, by mysterious
+forces, a creature so exploited. For at the end of all things they <i>were</i>
+mysterious: she had but made Chad what he was&mdash;so why could she think she
+had made him infinite? She had made him better, she had made him best, she had
+made him anything one would; but it came to our friend with supreme queerness
+that he was none the less only Chad. Strether had the sense that <i>he</i>, a
+little, had made him too; his high appreciation had as it were, consecrated her
+work The work, however admirable, was nevertheless of the strict human order,
+and in short it was marvellous that the companion of mere earthly joys, of
+comforts, aberrations (however one classed them) within the common experience
+should be so transcendently prized. It might have made Strether hot or shy, as
+such secrets of others brought home sometimes do make us; but he was held there
+by something so hard that it was fairly grim. This was not the discomposure of
+last night; that had quite passed&mdash;such discomposures were a detail; the
+real coercion was to see a man ineffably adored. There it was again&mdash;it
+took women, it took women; if to deal with them was to walk on water what
+wonder that the water rose? And it had never surely risen higher than round
+this woman. He presently found himself taking a long look from her, and the
+next thing he knew he had uttered all his thought. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re afraid
+for your life!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It drew out her long look, and he soon enough saw why. A spasm came into her
+face, the tears she had already been unable to hide overflowed at first in
+silence, and then, as the sound suddenly comes from a child, quickened to
+gasps, to sobs. She sat and covered her face with her hands, giving up all
+attempt at a manner. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s how you see me, it&rsquo;s how you see
+me&rdquo;&mdash;she caught her breath with it&mdash;&ldquo;and it&rsquo;s as I
+<i>am</i>, and as I must take myself, and of course it&rsquo;s no
+matter.&rdquo; Her emotion was at first so incoherent that he could only stand
+there at a loss, stand with his sense of having upset her, though of having
+done it by the truth. He had to listen to her in a silence that he made no
+immediate effort to attenuate, feeling her doubly woeful amid all her dim
+diffused elegance; consenting to it as he had consented to the rest, and even
+conscious of some vague inward irony in the presence of such a fine free range
+of bliss and bale. He couldn&rsquo;t say it was <i>not</i> no matter; for he
+was serving her to the end, he now knew, anyway&mdash;quite as if what he
+thought of her had nothing to do with it. It was actually moreover as if he
+didn&rsquo;t think of her at all, as if he could think of nothing but the
+passion, mature, abysmal, pitiful, she represented, and the possibilities she
+betrayed. She was older for him to-night, visibly less exempt from the touch of
+time; but she was as much as ever the finest and subtlest creature, the
+happiest apparition, it had been given him, in all his years, to meet; and yet
+he could see her there as vulgarly troubled, in very truth, as a maidservant
+crying for her young man. The only thing was that she judged herself as the
+maidservant wouldn&rsquo;t; the weakness of which wisdom too, the dishonour of
+which judgement, seemed but to sink her lower. Her collapse, however, no doubt,
+was briefer and she had in a manner recovered herself before he intervened.
+&ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;m afraid for my life. But that&rsquo;s nothing. It
+isn&rsquo;t that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was silent a little longer, as if thinking what it might be.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s something I have in mind that I can still do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she threw off at last, with a sharp sad headshake, drying her eyes, what he
+could still do. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care for that. Of course, as I&rsquo;ve
+said, you&rsquo;re acting, in your wonderful way, for yourself; and
+what&rsquo;s for yourself is no more my business&mdash;though I may reach out
+unholy hands so clumsily to touch it&mdash;than if it were something in
+Timbuctoo. It&rsquo;s only that you don&rsquo;t snub me, as you&rsquo;ve had
+fifty chances to do&mdash;it&rsquo;s only your beautiful patience that makes
+one forget one&rsquo;s manners. In spite of your patience, all the same,&rdquo;
+she went on, &ldquo;you&rsquo;d do anything rather than be with us here, even
+if that were possible. You&rsquo;d do everything for us but be mixed up with
+us&mdash;which is a statement you can easily answer to the advantage of your
+own manners. You can say &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the use of talking of things that
+at the best are impossible?&rsquo; What <i>is</i> of course the use? It&rsquo;s
+only my little madness. You&rsquo;d talk if you were tormented. And I
+don&rsquo;t mean now about <i>him</i>. Oh for him&mdash;!&rdquo; Positively,
+strangely, bitterly, as it seemed to Strether, she gave &ldquo;him,&rdquo; for
+the moment, away. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t care what I think of you; but I happen
+to care what you think of me. And what you <i>might</i>,&rdquo; she added.
+&ldquo;What you perhaps even did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gained time. &ldquo;What I did&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did think before. Before this. <i>Didn&rsquo;t</i> you
+think&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he had already stopped her. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think anything. I never
+think a step further than I&rsquo;m obliged to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s perfectly false, I believe,&rdquo; she
+returned&mdash;&ldquo;except that you may, no doubt, often pull up when things
+become <i>too</i> ugly; or even, I&rsquo;ll say, to save you a protest, too
+beautiful. At any rate, even so far as it&rsquo;s true, we&rsquo;ve thrust on
+you appearances that you&rsquo;ve had to take in and that have therefore made
+your obligation. Ugly or beautiful&mdash;it doesn&rsquo;t matter what we call
+them&mdash;you were getting on without them, and that&rsquo;s where we&rsquo;re
+detestable. We bore you&mdash;that&rsquo;s where we are. And we may
+well&mdash;for what we&rsquo;ve cost you. All you can do <i>now</i> is not to
+think at all. And I who should have liked to seem to you&mdash;well,
+sublime!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could only after a moment re-echo Miss Barrace. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re
+wonderful!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m old and abject and hideous&rdquo;&mdash;she went on as without
+hearing him. &ldquo;Abject above all. Or old above all. It&rsquo;s when
+one&rsquo;s old that it&rsquo;s worst. I don&rsquo;t care what becomes of
+it&mdash;let what <i>will</i>; there it is. It&rsquo;s a doom&mdash;I know it;
+you can&rsquo;t see it more than I do myself. Things have to happen as they
+will.&rdquo; With which she came back again to what, face to face with him, had
+so quite broken down. &ldquo;Of course you wouldn&rsquo;t, even if possible,
+and no matter what may happen to you, be near us. But think of me, think of
+me&mdash;!&rdquo; She exhaled it into air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took refuge in repeating something he had already said and that she had made
+nothing of. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s something I believe I can still do.&rdquo; And
+he put his hand out for good-bye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She again made nothing of it; she went on with her insistence. &ldquo;That
+won&rsquo;t help you. There&rsquo;s nothing to help you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it may help <i>you</i>,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s not a grain of certainty in my
+future&mdash;for the only certainty is that I shall be the loser in the
+end.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hadn&rsquo;t taken his hand, but she moved with him to the door.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s cheerful,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;for your
+benefactor!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s cheerful for <i>me</i>,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;is that
+we might, you and I, have been friends. That&rsquo;s it&mdash;that&rsquo;s it.
+You see how, as I say, I want everything. I&rsquo;ve wanted you too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but you&rsquo;ve <i>had</i> me!&rdquo; he declared, at the door, with
+an emphasis that made an end.
+</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>
+His purpose had been to see Chad the next day, and he had prefigured seeing him
+by an early call; having in general never stood on ceremony in respect to
+visits at the Boulevard Malesherbes. It had been more often natural for him to
+go there than for Chad to come to the small hotel, the attractions of which
+were scant; yet it nevertheless, just now, at the eleventh hour, did suggest
+itself to Strether to begin by giving the young man a chance. It struck him
+that, in the inevitable course, Chad would be &ldquo;round,&rdquo; as Waymarsh
+used to say&mdash;Waymarsh who already, somehow, seemed long ago. He
+hadn&rsquo;t come the day before, because it had been arranged between them
+that Madame de Vionnet should see their friend first; but now that this passage
+had taken place he would present himself, and their friend wouldn&rsquo;t have
+long to wait. Strether assumed, he became aware, on this reasoning, that the
+interesting parties to the arrangement would have met betimes, and that the
+more interesting of the two&mdash;as she was after all&mdash;would have
+communicated to the other the issue of her appeal. Chad would know without
+delay that his mother&rsquo;s messenger had been with her, and, though it was
+perhaps not quite easy to see how she could qualify what had occurred, he would
+at least have been sufficiently advised to feel he could go on. The day,
+however, brought, early or late, no word from him, and Strether felt, as a
+result of this, that a change had practically come over their intercourse. It
+was perhaps a premature judgement; or it only meant perhaps&mdash;how could he
+tell?&mdash;that the wonderful pair he protected had taken up again together
+the excursion he had accidentally checked. They might have gone back to the
+country, and gone back but with a long breath drawn; that indeed would best
+mark Chad&rsquo;s sense that reprobation hadn&rsquo;t rewarded Madame de
+Vionnet&rsquo;s request for an interview. At the end of the twenty-four hours,
+at the end of the forty-eight, there was still no overture; so that Strether
+filled up the time, as he had so often filled it before, by going to see Miss
+Gostrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He proposed amusements to her; he felt expert now in proposing amusements; and
+he had thus, for several days, an odd sense of leading her about Paris, of
+driving her in the Bois, of showing her the penny steamboats&mdash;those from
+which the breeze of the Seine was to be best enjoyed&mdash;that might have
+belonged to a kindly uncle doing the honours of the capital to an intelligent
+niece from the country. He found means even to take her to shops she
+didn&rsquo;t know, or that she pretended she didn&rsquo;t; while she, on her
+side, was, like the country maiden, all passive modest and grateful&mdash;going
+in fact so far as to emulate rusticity in occasional fatigues and
+bewilderments. Strether described these vague proceedings to himself, described
+them even to her, as a happy interlude; the sign of which was that the
+companions said for the time no further word about the matter they had talked
+of to satiety. He proclaimed satiety at the outset, and she quickly took the
+hint; as docile both in this and in everything else as the intelligent obedient
+niece. He told her as yet nothing of his late adventure&mdash;for as an
+adventure it now ranked with him; he pushed the whole business temporarily
+aside and found his interest in the fact of her beautiful assent. She left
+questions unasked&mdash;she who for so long had been all questions; she gave
+herself up to him with an understanding of which mere mute gentleness might
+have seemed the sufficient expression. She knew his sense of his situation had
+taken still another step&mdash;of that he was quite aware; but she conveyed
+that, whatever had thus happened for him, it was thrown into the shade by what
+was happening for herself. This&mdash;though it mightn&rsquo;t to a detached
+spirit have seemed much&mdash;was the major interest, and she met it with a new
+directness of response, measuring it from hour to hour with her grave hush of
+acceptance. Touched as he had so often been by her before, he was, for his part
+too, touched afresh; all the more that though he could be duly aware of the
+principle of his own mood he couldn&rsquo;t be equally so of the principle of
+hers. He knew, that is, in a manner&mdash;knew roughly and
+resignedly&mdash;what he himself was hatching; whereas he had to take the
+chance of what he called to himself Maria&rsquo;s calculations. It was all he
+needed that she liked him enough for what they were doing, and even should they
+do a good deal more would still like him enough for that; the essential
+freshness of a relation so simple was a cool bath to the soreness produced by
+other relations. These others appeared to him now horribly complex; they
+bristled with fine points, points all unimaginable beforehand, points that
+pricked and drew blood; a fact that gave to an hour with his present friend on
+a <i>bateau-mouche</i>, or in the afternoon shade of the Champs Elysées,
+something of the innocent pleasure of handling rounded ivory. His relation with
+Chad personally&mdash;from the moment he had got his point of view&mdash;had
+been of the simplest; yet this also struck him as bristling, after a third and
+a fourth blank day had passed. It was as if at last however his care for such
+indications had dropped; there came a fifth blank day and he ceased to enquire
+or to heed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They now took on to his fancy, Miss Gostrey and he, the image of the Babes in
+the Wood; they could trust the merciful elements to let them continue at peace.
+He had been great already, as he knew, at postponements; but he had only to get
+afresh into the rhythm of one to feel its fine attraction. It amused him to say
+to himself that he might for all the world have been going to die&mdash;die
+resignedly; the scene was filled for him with so deep a death-bed hush, so
+melancholy a charm. That meant the postponement of everything else&mdash;which
+made so for the quiet lapse of life; and the postponement in especial of the
+reckoning to come&mdash;unless indeed the reckoning to come were to be one and
+the same thing with extinction. It faced him, the reckoning, over the shoulder
+of much interposing experience&mdash;which also faced him; and one would float
+to it doubtless duly through these caverns of Kubla Khan. It was really behind
+everything; it hadn&rsquo;t merged in what he had done; his final appreciation
+of what he had done&mdash;his appreciation on the spot&mdash;would provide it
+with its main sharpness. The spot so focussed was of course Woollett, and he
+was to see, at the best, what Woollett would be with everything there changed
+for him. Wouldn&rsquo;t <i>that</i> revelation practically amount to the
+wind-up of his career? Well, the summer&rsquo;s end would show; his suspense
+had meanwhile exactly the sweetness of vain delay; and he had with it, we
+should mention, other pastimes than Maria&rsquo;s company&mdash;plenty of
+separate musings in which his luxury failed him but at one point. He was well
+in port, the outer sea behind him, and it was only a matter of getting ashore.
+There was a question that came and went for him, however, as he rested against
+the side of his ship, and it was a little to get rid of the obsession that he
+prolonged his hours with Miss Gostrey. It was a question about himself, but it
+could only be settled by seeing Chad again; it was indeed his principal reason
+for wanting to see Chad. After that it wouldn&rsquo;t signify&mdash;it was a
+ghost that certain words would easily lay to rest. Only the young man must be
+there to take the words. Once they were taken he wouldn&rsquo;t have a question
+left; none, that is, in connexion with this particular affair. It
+wouldn&rsquo;t then matter even to himself that he might now have been guilty
+of speaking <i>because</i> of what he had forfeited. That was the refinement of
+his supreme scruple&mdash;he wished so to leave what he had forfeited out of
+account. He wished not to do anything because he had missed something else,
+because he was sore or sorry or impoverished, because he was maltreated or
+desperate; he wished to do everything because he was lucid and quiet, just the
+same for himself on all essential points as he had ever been. Thus it was that
+while he virtually hung about for Chad he kept mutely putting it:
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been chucked, old boy; but what has that to do with
+it?&rdquo; It would have sickened him to feel vindictive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These tints of feeling indeed were doubtless but the iridescence of his
+idleness, and they were presently lost in a new light from Maria. She had a
+fresh fact for him before the week was out, and she practically met him with it
+on his appearing one night. He hadn&rsquo;t on this day seen her, but had
+planned presenting himself in due course to ask her to dine with him somewhere
+out of doors, on one of the terraces, in one of the gardens, of which the Paris
+of summer was profuse. It had then come on to rain, so that, disconcerted, he
+changed his mind; dining alone at home, a little stuffily and stupidly, and
+waiting on her afterwards to make up his loss. He was sure within a minute that
+something had happened; it was so in the air of the rich little room that he
+had scarcely to name his thought. Softly lighted, the whole colour of the
+place, with its vague values, was in cool fusion&mdash;an effect that made the
+visitor stand for a little agaze. It was as if in doing so now he had felt a
+recent presence&mdash;his recognition of the passage of which his hostess in
+turn divined. She had scarcely to say it&mdash;&ldquo;Yes, she has been here,
+and this time I received her.&rdquo; It wasn&rsquo;t till a minute later that
+she added: &ldquo;There being, as I understand you, no reason
+<i>now</i>&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None for your refusing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;if you&rsquo;ve done what you&rsquo;ve had to do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve certainly so far done it,&rdquo; Strether said, &ldquo;as
+that you needn&rsquo;t fear the effect, or the appearance of coming between us.
+There&rsquo;s nothing between us now but what we ourselves have put there, and
+not an inch of room for anything else whatever. Therefore you&rsquo;re only
+beautifully <i>with</i> us as always&mdash;though doubtless now, if she has
+talked to you, rather more with us than less. Of course if she came,&rdquo; he
+added, &ldquo;it was to talk to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was to talk to me,&rdquo; Maria returned; on which he was further
+sure that she was practically in possession of what he himself hadn&rsquo;t yet
+told her. He was even sure she was in possession of things he himself
+couldn&rsquo;t have told; for the consciousness of them was now all in her face
+and accompanied there with a shade of sadness that marked in her the close of
+all uncertainties. It came out for him more than ever yet that she had had from
+the first a knowledge she believed him not to have had, a knowledge the sharp
+acquisition of which might be destined to make a difference for him. The
+difference for him might not inconceivably be an arrest of his independence and
+a change in his attitude&mdash;in other words a revulsion in favour of the
+principles of Woollett. She had really prefigured the possibility of a shock
+that would send him swinging back to Mrs. Newsome. He hadn&rsquo;t, it was
+true, week after week, shown signs of receiving it, but the possibility had
+been none the less in the air. What Maria accordingly had had now to take in
+was that the shock had descended and that he hadn&rsquo;t, all the same, swung
+back. He had grown clear, in a flash, on a point long since settled for
+herself; but no reapproximation to Mrs. Newsome had occurred in consequence.
+Madame de Vionnet had by her visit held up the torch to these truths, and what
+now lingered in poor Maria&rsquo;s face was the somewhat smoky light of the
+scene between them. If the light however wasn&rsquo;t, as we have hinted, the
+glow of joy, the reasons for this also were perhaps discernible to Strether
+even through the blur cast over them by his natural modesty. She had held
+herself for months with a firm hand; she hadn&rsquo;t interfered on any
+chance&mdash;and chances were specious enough&mdash;that she might interfere to
+her profit. She had turned her back on the dream that Mrs. Newsome&rsquo;s
+rupture, their friend&rsquo;s forfeiture&mdash;the engagement, the relation
+itself, broken beyond all mending&mdash;might furnish forth her advantage; and,
+to stay her hand from promoting these things, she had on private, difficult,
+but rigid, lines, played strictly fair. She couldn&rsquo;t therefore but feel
+that, though, as the end of all, the facts in question had been stoutly
+confirmed, her ground for personal, for what might have been called interested,
+elation remained rather vague. Strether might easily have made out that she had
+been asking herself, in the hours she had just sat through, if there were still
+for her, or were only not, a fair shade of uncertainty. Let us hasten to add,
+however, that what he at first made out on this occasion he also at first kept
+to himself. He only asked what in particular Madame de Vionnet had come for,
+and as to this his companion was ready.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She wants tidings of Mr. Newsome, whom she appears not to have seen for
+some days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then she hasn&rsquo;t been away with him again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She seemed to think,&rdquo; Maria answered, &ldquo;that he might have
+gone away with <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And did you tell her I know nothing of him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had her indulgent headshake. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve known nothing of what you
+know. I could only tell her I&rsquo;d ask you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ve not seen him for a week&mdash;and of course I&rsquo;ve
+wondered.&rdquo; His wonderment showed at this moment as sharper, but he
+presently went on. &ldquo;Still, I dare say I can put my hand on him. Did she
+strike you,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;as anxious?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s always anxious.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After all I&rsquo;ve done for her?&rdquo; And he had one of the last
+flickers of his occasional mild mirth. &ldquo;To think that was just what I
+came out to prevent!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took it up but to reply. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t regard him then as
+safe?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was just going to ask you how in that respect you regard Madame de
+Vionnet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him a little. &ldquo;What woman was <i>ever</i> safe? She told
+me,&rdquo; she added&mdash;and it was as if at the touch of the
+connexion&mdash;&ldquo;of your extraordinary meeting in the country. After that
+<i>à quoi se fier?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was, as an accident, in all the possible or impossible
+chapter,&rdquo; Strether conceded, &ldquo;amazing enough. But still, but
+still&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But still she didn&rsquo;t mind?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t mind anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, as you don&rsquo;t either, we may all sink to rest!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He appeared to agree with her, but he had his reservation. &ldquo;I do mind
+Chad&rsquo;s disappearance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you&rsquo;ll get him back. But now you know,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;why I went to Mentone.&rdquo; He had sufficiently let her see that he
+had by this time gathered things together, but there was nature in her wish to
+make them clearer still. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want you to put it to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To put it to you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The question of what you were at last&mdash;a week ago&mdash;to see for
+yourself. I didn&rsquo;t want to have to lie for her. I felt that to be too
+much for me. A man of course is always expected to do it&mdash;to do it, I
+mean, for a woman; but not a woman for another woman; unless perhaps on the
+tit-for-tat principle, as an indirect way of protecting herself. I don&rsquo;t
+need protection, so that I was free to &lsquo;funk&rsquo; you&mdash;simply to
+dodge your test. The responsibility was too much for me. I gained time, and
+when I came back the need of a test had blown over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether thought of it serenely. &ldquo;Yes; when you came back little Bilham
+had shown me what&rsquo;s expected of a gentleman. Little Bilham had lied like
+one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And like what you believed him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;it was but a technical lie&mdash;he
+classed the attachment as virtuous. That was a view for which there was much to
+be said&mdash;and the virtue came out for me hugely There was of course a great
+deal of it. I got it full in the face, and I haven&rsquo;t, you see, done with
+it yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What I see, what I saw,&rdquo; Maria returned, &ldquo;is that you
+dressed up even the virtue. You were wonderful&mdash;you were beautiful, as
+I&rsquo;ve had the honour of telling you before; but, if you wish really to
+know,&rdquo; she sadly confessed, &ldquo;I never quite knew <i>where</i> you
+were. There were moments,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;when you struck me as
+grandly cynical; there were others when you struck me as grandly vague.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her friend considered. &ldquo;I had phases. I had flights.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but things must have a basis.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A basis seemed to me just what her beauty supplied.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her beauty of person?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, her beauty of everything. The impression she makes. She has such
+variety and yet such harmony.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She considered him with one of her deep returns of indulgence&mdash;returns out
+of all proportion to the irritations they flooded over. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re
+complete.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re always too personal,&rdquo; he good-humouredly said;
+&ldquo;but that&rsquo;s precisely how I wondered and wandered.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you mean,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;that she was from the first for
+you the most charming woman in the world, nothing&rsquo;s more simple. Only
+that was an odd foundation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For what I reared on it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For what you didn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it was all not a fixed quantity. And it had for me&mdash;it has
+still&mdash;such elements of strangeness. Her greater age than his, her
+different world, traditions, association; her other opportunities, liabilities,
+standards.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His friend listened with respect to his enumeration of these disparities; then
+she disposed of them at a stroke. &ldquo;Those things are nothing when a
+woman&rsquo;s hit. It&rsquo;s very awful. She was hit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether, on his side, did justice to that plea. &ldquo;Oh of course I saw she
+was hit. That she was hit was what we were busy with; that she was hit was our
+great affair. But somehow I couldn&rsquo;t think of her as down in the dust.
+And as put there by <i>our</i> little Chad!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet wasn&rsquo;t &lsquo;your&rsquo; little Chad just your
+miracle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether admitted it. &ldquo;Of course I moved among miracles. It was all
+phantasmagoric. But the great fact was that so much of it was none of my
+business&mdash;as I saw my business. It isn&rsquo;t even now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion turned away on this, and it might well have been yet again with
+the sharpness of a fear of how little his philosophy could bring her
+personally. &ldquo;I wish <i>she</i> could hear you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Newsome?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;not Mrs. Newsome; since I understand you that it doesn&rsquo;t
+matter now what Mrs. Newsome hears. Hasn&rsquo;t she heard everything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Practically&mdash;yes.&rdquo; He had thought a moment, but he went on.
+&ldquo;You wish Madame de Vionnet could hear me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Madame de Vionnet.&rdquo; She had come back to him. &ldquo;She thinks
+just the contrary of what you say. That you distinctly judge her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned over the scene as the two women thus placed together for him seemed
+to give it. &ldquo;She might have known&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Might have known you don&rsquo;t?&rdquo; Miss Gostrey asked as he let it
+drop. &ldquo;She was sure of it at first,&rdquo; she pursued as he said
+nothing; &ldquo;she took it for granted, at least, as any woman in her position
+would. But after that she changed her mind; she believed you
+believed&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;&mdash;he was curious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why in her sublimity. And that belief had remained with her, I make out,
+till the accident of the other day opened your eyes. For that it did,&rdquo;
+said Maria, &ldquo;open them&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She can&rsquo;t help&rdquo;&mdash;he had taken it up&mdash;&ldquo;being
+aware? No,&rdquo; he mused; &ldquo;I suppose she thinks of that even
+yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then they <i>were</i> closed? There you are! However, if you see her as
+the most charming woman in the world it comes to the same thing. And if
+you&rsquo;d like me to tell her that you do still so see her&mdash;!&rdquo;
+Miss Gostrey, in short, offered herself for service to the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was an offer he could temporarily entertain; but he decided. &ldquo;She
+knows perfectly how I see her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not favourably enough, she mentioned to me, to wish ever to see her
+again. She told me you had taken a final leave of her. She says you&rsquo;ve
+done with her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria had a pause; then she spoke as if for conscience. &ldquo;She
+wouldn&rsquo;t have done with <i>you</i>. She feels she has lost you&mdash;yet
+that she might have been better for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh she has been quite good enough!&rdquo; Strether laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She thinks you and she might at any rate have been friends.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We might certainly. That&rsquo;s just&rdquo;&mdash;he continued to
+laugh&mdash;&ldquo;why I&rsquo;m going.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as if Maria could feel with this then at last that she had done her best
+for each. But she had still an idea. &ldquo;Shall I tell her that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. Tell her nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well then.&rdquo; To which in the next breath Miss Gostrey added:
+&ldquo;Poor dear thing!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her friend wondered; then with raised eyebrows: &ldquo;Me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no. Marie de Vionnet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He accepted the correction, but he wondered still. &ldquo;Are you so sorry for
+her as that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It made her think a moment&mdash;made her even speak with a smile. But she
+didn&rsquo;t really retract. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for us all!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>
+He was to delay no longer to re-establish communication with Chad, and we have
+just seen that he had spoken to Miss Gostrey of this intention on hearing from
+her of the young man&rsquo;s absence. It was not moreover only the assurance so
+given that prompted him; it was the need of causing his conduct to square with
+another profession still&mdash;the motive he had described to her as his
+sharpest for now getting away. If he was to get away because of some of the
+relations involved in staying, the cold attitude toward them might look
+pedantic in the light of lingering on. He must do both things; he must see
+Chad, but he must go. The more he thought of the former of these duties the
+more he felt himself make a subject of insistence of the latter. They were
+alike intensely present to him as he sat in front of a quiet little café into
+which he had dropped on quitting Maria&rsquo;s entresol. The rain that had
+spoiled his evening with her was over; for it was still to him as if his
+evening <i>had</i> been spoiled&mdash;though it mightn&rsquo;t have been wholly
+the rain. It was late when he left the café, yet not too late; he
+couldn&rsquo;t in any case go straight to bed, and he would walk round by the
+Boulevard Malesherbes&mdash;rather far round&mdash;on his way home. Present
+enough always was the small circumstance that had originally pressed for him
+the spring of so big a difference&mdash;the accident of little Bilham&rsquo;s
+appearance on the balcony of the mystic troisième at the moment of his first
+visit, and the effect of it on his sense of what was then before him. He
+recalled his watch, his wait, and the recognition that had proceeded from the
+young stranger, that had played frankly into the air and had presently brought
+him up&mdash;things smoothing the way for his first straight step. He had since
+had occasion, a few times, to pass the house without going in; but he had never
+passed it without again feeling how it had then spoken to him. He stopped short
+to-night on coming to sight of it: it was as if his last day were oddly copying
+his first. The windows of Chad&rsquo;s apartment were open to the
+balcony&mdash;a pair of them lighted; and a figure that had come out and taken
+up little Bilham&rsquo;s attitude, a figure whose cigarette-spark he could see
+leaned on the rail and looked down at him. It denoted however no reappearance
+of his younger friend; it quickly defined itself in the tempered darkness as
+Chad&rsquo;s more solid shape; so that Chad&rsquo;s was the attention that
+after he had stepped forward into the street and signalled, he easily engaged;
+Chad&rsquo;s was the voice that, sounding into the night with promptness and
+seemingly with joy, greeted him and called him up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That the young man had been visible there just in this position expressed
+somehow for Strether that, as Maria Gostrey had reported, he had been absent
+and silent; and our friend drew breath on each landing&mdash;the lift, at that
+hour, having ceased to work&mdash;before the implications of the fact. He had
+been for a week intensely away, away to a distance and alone; but he was more
+back than ever, and the attitude in which Strether had surprised him was
+something more than a return&mdash;it was clearly a conscious surrender. He had
+arrived but an hour before, from London, from Lucerne, from Homburg, from no
+matter where&mdash;though the visitor&rsquo;s fancy, on the staircase, liked to
+fill it out; and after a bath, a talk with Baptiste and a supper of light cold
+clever French things, which one could see the remains of there in the circle of
+the lamp, pretty and ultra-Parisian, he had come into the air again for a
+smoke, was occupied at the moment of Strether&rsquo;s approach in what might
+have been called taking up his life afresh. His life, his life!&mdash;Strether
+paused anew, on the last flight, at this final rather breathless sense of what
+Chad&rsquo;s life was doing with Chad&rsquo;s mother&rsquo;s emissary. It was
+dragging him, at strange hours, up the staircases of the rich; it was keeping
+him out of bed at the end of long hot days; it was transforming beyond
+recognition the simple, subtle, conveniently uniform thing that had anciently
+passed with him for a life of his own. Why should it concern him that Chad was
+to be fortified in the pleasant practice of smoking on balconies, of supping on
+salads, of feeling his special conditions agreeably reaffirm themselves, of
+finding reassurance in comparisons and contrasts? There was no answer to such a
+question but that he was still practically committed&mdash;he had perhaps never
+yet so much known it. It made him feel old, and he would buy his
+railway-ticket&mdash;feeling, no doubt, older&mdash;the next day; but he had
+meanwhile come up four flights, counting the entresol, at midnight and without
+a lift, for Chad&rsquo;s life. The young man, hearing him by this time, and
+with Baptiste sent to rest, was already at the door; so that Strether had
+before him in full visibility the cause in which he was labouring and even,
+with the troisième fairly gained, panting a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad offered him, as always, a welcome in which the cordial and the
+formal&mdash;so far as the formal was the respectful&mdash;handsomely met; and
+after he had expressed a hope that he would let him put him up for the night
+Strether was in full possession of the key, as it might have been called, to
+what had lately happened. If he had just thought of himself as old Chad was at
+sight of him thinking of him as older: he wanted to put him up for the night
+just because he was ancient and weary. It could never be said the tenant of
+these quarters wasn&rsquo;t nice to him; a tenant who, if he might indeed now
+keep him, was probably prepared to work it all still more thoroughly. Our
+friend had in fact the impression that with the minimum of encouragement Chad
+would propose to keep him indefinitely; an impression in the lap of which one
+of his own possibilities seemed to sit. Madame de Vionnet had wished him to
+stay&mdash;so why didn&rsquo;t that happily fit? He could enshrine himself for
+the rest of his days in his young host&rsquo;s <i>chambre d&rsquo;ami</i> and
+draw out these days at his young host&rsquo;s expense: there could scarce be
+greater logical expression of the countenance he had been moved to give. There
+was literally a minute&mdash;it was strange enough&mdash;during which he
+grasped the idea that as he <i>was</i> acting, as he could only act, he was
+inconsistent. The sign that the inward forces he had obeyed really hung
+together would be that&mdash;in default always of another career&mdash;he
+should promote the good cause by mounting guard on it. These things, during his
+first minutes, came and went; but they were after all practically disposed of
+as soon as he had mentioned his errand. He had come to say good-bye&mdash;yet
+that was only a part; so that from the moment Chad accepted his farewell the
+question of a more ideal affirmation gave way to something else. He proceeded
+with the rest of his business. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be a brute, you
+know&mdash;you&rsquo;ll be guilty of the last infamy&mdash;if you ever forsake
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That, uttered there at the solemn hour, uttered in the place that was full of
+her influence, was the rest of his business; and when once he had heard himself
+say it he felt that his message had never before been spoken. It placed his
+present call immediately on solid ground, and the effect of it was to enable
+him quite to play with what we have called the key. Chad showed no shade of
+embarrassment, but had none the less been troubled for him after their meeting
+in the country; had had fears and doubts on the subject of his comfort. He was
+disturbed, as it were, only <i>for</i> him, and had positively gone away to
+ease him off, to let him down&mdash;if it wasn&rsquo;t indeed rather to screw
+him up&mdash;the more gently. Seeing him now fairly jaded he had come, with
+characteristic good humour, all the way to meet him, and what Strether
+thereupon supremely made out was that he would abound for him to the end in
+conscientious assurances. This was what was between them while the visitor
+remained; so far from having to go over old ground he found his entertainer
+keen to agree to everything. It couldn&rsquo;t be put too strongly for him that
+he&rsquo;d be a brute. &ldquo;Oh rather!&mdash;if I should do anything of
+<i>that</i> sort. I hope you believe I really feel it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want it,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;to be my last word of all to
+you. I can&rsquo;t say more, you know; and I don&rsquo;t see how I can do more,
+in every way, than I&rsquo;ve done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad took this, almost artlessly, as a direct allusion. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve
+seen her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;to say good-bye. And if I had doubted the truth of what I
+tell you&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;d have cleared up your doubt?&rdquo; Chad
+understood&mdash;&ldquo;rather&rdquo;&mdash;again! It even kept him briefly
+silent. But he made that up. &ldquo;She must have been wonderful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She <i>was</i>,&rdquo; Strether candidly admitted&mdash;all of which
+practically told as a reference to the conditions created by the accident of
+the previous week.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They appeared for a little to be looking back at it; and that came out still
+more in what Chad next said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;ve really
+thought, all along; I never did know&mdash;for anything, with you, seemed to be
+possible. But of course&mdash;of course&mdash;&rdquo; Without confusion, quite
+with nothing but indulgence, he broke down, he pulled up. &ldquo;After all, you
+understand. I spoke to you originally only as I <i>had</i> to speak.
+There&rsquo;s only one way&mdash;isn&rsquo;t there?&mdash;about such things.
+However,&rdquo; he smiled with a final philosophy, &ldquo;I see it&rsquo;s all
+right.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts. What was it that
+made him at present, late at night and after journeys, so renewedly, so
+substantially young? Strether saw in a moment what it was&mdash;it was that he
+was younger again than Madame de Vionnet. He himself said immediately none of
+the things that he was thinking; he said something quite different. &ldquo;You
+<i>have</i> really been to a distance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been to England.&rdquo; Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly,
+but gave no further account of it than to say: &ldquo;One must sometimes get
+off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether wanted no more facts&mdash;he only wanted to justify, as it were, his
+question. &ldquo;Of course you do as you&rsquo;re free to do. But I hope, this
+time, that you didn&rsquo;t go for <i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For very shame at bothering you really too much? My dear man,&rdquo;
+Chad laughed, &ldquo;what <i>wouldn&rsquo;t</i> I do for you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&rsquo;s easy answer for this was that it was a disposition he had
+exactly come to profit by. &ldquo;Even at the risk of being in your way
+I&rsquo;ve waited on, you know, for a definite reason.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad took it in. &ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;for us to make if possible a still better
+impression.&rdquo; And he stood there happily exhaling his full general
+consciousness. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m delighted to gather that you feel we&rsquo;ve
+made it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pleasant irony in the words, which his guest, preoccupied and
+keeping to the point, didn&rsquo;t take up. &ldquo;If I had my sense of wanting
+the rest of the time&mdash;the time of their being still on this side,&rdquo;
+he continued to explain&mdash;&ldquo;I know now why I wanted it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was as grave, as distinct, as a demonstrator before a blackboard, and Chad
+continued to face him like an intelligent pupil. &ldquo;You wanted to have been
+put through the whole thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether again, for a moment, said nothing; he turned his eyes away, and they
+lost themselves, through the open window, in the dusky outer air. &ldquo;I
+shall learn from the Bank here where they&rsquo;re now having their letters,
+and my last word, which I shall write in the morning and which they&rsquo;re
+expecting as my ultimatum, will so immediately reach them.&rdquo; The light of
+his plural pronoun was sufficiently reflected in his companion&rsquo;s face as
+he again met it; and he completed his demonstration. He pursued indeed as if
+for himself. &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ve first to justify what I shall
+do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re justifying it beautifully!&rdquo; Chad declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a question of advising you not to go,&rdquo; Strether
+said, &ldquo;but of absolutely preventing you, if possible, from so much as
+thinking of it. Let me accordingly appeal to you by all you hold sacred.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad showed a surprise. &ldquo;What makes you think me capable&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;d not only be, as I say, a brute; you&rsquo;d be,&rdquo; his
+companion went on in the same way, &ldquo;a criminal of the deepest dye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad gave a sharper look, as if to gauge a possible suspicion. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t know what should make you think I&rsquo;m tired of her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether didn&rsquo;t quite know either, and such impressions, for the
+imaginative mind, were always too fine, too floating, to produce on the spot
+their warrant. There was none the less for him, in the very manner of his
+host&rsquo;s allusion to satiety as a thinkable motive, a slight breath of the
+ominous. &ldquo;I feel how much more she can do for you. She hasn&rsquo;t done
+it all yet. Stay with her at least till she has.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And leave her <i>then?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad had kept smiling, but its effect in Strether was a shade of dryness.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t leave her <i>before</i>. When you&rsquo;ve got all that can
+be got&mdash;I don&rsquo;t say,&rdquo; he added a trifle grimly. &ldquo;That
+will be the proper time. But as, for you, from such a woman, there will always
+be something to be got, my remark&rsquo;s not a wrong to her.&rdquo; Chad let
+him go on, showing every decent deference, showing perhaps also a candid
+curiosity for this sharper accent. &ldquo;I remember you, you know, as you
+were.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An awful ass, wasn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The response was as prompt as if he had pressed a spring; it had a ready
+abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment to meet it.
+&ldquo;You certainly then wouldn&rsquo;t have seemed worth all you&rsquo;ve let
+me in for. You&rsquo;ve defined yourself better. Your value has
+quintupled.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well then, wouldn&rsquo;t that be enough&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad had risked it jocosely, but Strether remained blank. &ldquo;Enough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If one <i>should</i> wish to live on one&rsquo;s accumulations?&rdquo;
+After which, however, as his friend appeared cold to the joke, the young man as
+easily dropped it. &ldquo;Of course I really never forget, night or day, what I
+owe her. I owe her everything. I give you my word of honour,&rdquo; he frankly
+rang out, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;m not a bit tired of her.&rdquo; Strether at this
+only gave him a stare: the way youth could express itself was again and again a
+wonder. He meant no harm, though he might after all be capable of much; yet he
+spoke of being &ldquo;tired&rdquo; of her almost as he might have spoken of
+being tired of roast mutton for dinner. &ldquo;She has never for a moment yet
+bored me&mdash;never been wanting, as the cleverest women sometimes are, in
+tact. She has never talked about her tact&mdash;as even they too sometimes
+talk; but she has always had it. She has never had it more&rdquo;&mdash;he
+handsomely made the point&mdash;&ldquo;than just lately.&rdquo; And he
+scrupulously went further. &ldquo;She has never been anything I could call a
+burden.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether for a moment said nothing; then he spoke gravely, with his shade of
+dryness deepened. &ldquo;Oh if you didn&rsquo;t do her justice&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I <i>should</i> be a beast, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether devoted no time to saying what he would be; <i>that</i>, visibly,
+would take them far. If there was nothing for it but to repeat, however,
+repetition was no mistake. &ldquo;You owe her everything&mdash;very much more
+than she can ever owe you. You&rsquo;ve in other words duties to her, of the
+most positive sort; and I don&rsquo;t see what other duties&mdash;as the others
+are presented to you&mdash;can be held to go before them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad looked at him with a smile. &ldquo;And you know of course about the
+others, eh?&mdash;since it&rsquo;s you yourself who have done the
+presenting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Much of it&mdash;yes&mdash;and to the best of my ability. But not
+all&mdash;from the moment your sister took my place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Chad returned. &ldquo;Sally took a place,
+certainly; but it was never, I saw from the first moment, to be yours. No
+one&mdash;with us&mdash;will ever take yours. It wouldn&rsquo;t be
+possible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah of course,&rdquo; sighed Strether, &ldquo;I knew it. I believe
+you&rsquo;re right. No one in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously
+solemn. There I am,&rdquo; he added with another sigh, as if weary enough, on
+occasion, of this truth. &ldquo;I was made so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might for this
+purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured the fact.
+&ldquo;<i>You</i> have never needed any one to make you better. There has never
+been any one good enough. They couldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; the young man declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His friend hesitated. &ldquo;I beg your pardon. They <i>have</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt. &ldquo;Who then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether&mdash;though a little dimly&mdash;smiled at him.
+&ldquo;Women&mdash;too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Two&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;Chad stared and laughed. &ldquo;Oh I
+don&rsquo;t believe, for such work, in any more than one! So you&rsquo;re
+proving too much. And what <i>is</i> beastly, at all events,&rdquo; he added,
+&ldquo;is losing you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he paused.
+&ldquo;Are you afraid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Afraid&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of doing wrong. I mean away from my eye.&rdquo; Before Chad could speak,
+however, he had taken himself up. &ldquo;I <i>am</i>, certainly,&rdquo; he
+laughed, &ldquo;prodigious.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid&mdash;!&rdquo; This might have
+been, on Chad&rsquo;s part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely
+extravagant; but it was full, plainly enough, of the intention of comfort, it
+carried with it a protest against doubt and a promise, positively, of
+performance. Picking up a hat in the vestibule he came out with his friend,
+came downstairs, took his arm, affectionately, as to help and guide him,
+treating him if not exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a noble eccentric who
+appealed to tenderness, and keeping on with him, while they walked, to the next
+corner and the next. &ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t tell me, you needn&rsquo;t tell
+me!&rdquo;&mdash;this again as they proceeded, he wished to make Strether feel.
+What he needn&rsquo;t tell him was now at last, in the geniality of separation,
+anything at all it concerned him to know. He knew, up to the hilt&mdash;that
+really came over Chad; he understood, felt, recorded his vow; and they lingered
+on it as they had lingered in their walk to Strether&rsquo;s hotel the night of
+their first meeting. The latter took, at this hour, all he could get; he had
+given all he had had to give; he was as depleted as if he had spent his last
+sou. But there was just one thing for which, before they broke off, Chad seemed
+disposed slightly to bargain. His companion needn&rsquo;t, as he said, tell
+him, but he might himself mention that he had been getting some news of the art
+of advertisement. He came out quite suddenly with this announcement while
+Strether wondered if his revived interest were what had taken him, with strange
+inconsequence, over to London. He appeared at all events to have been looking
+into the question and had encountered a revelation. Advertising scientifically
+worked presented itself thus as the great new force. &ldquo;It really does the
+thing, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were face to face under the street-lamp as they had been the first night,
+and Strether, no doubt, looked blank. &ldquo;Affects, you mean, the sale of the
+object advertised?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;but affects it extraordinarily; really beyond what one had
+supposed. I mean of course when it&rsquo;s done as one makes out that in our
+roaring age, it <i>can</i> be done. I&rsquo;ve been finding out a little,
+though it doubtless doesn&rsquo;t amount to much more than what you originally,
+so awfully vividly&mdash;and all, very nearly, that first night&mdash;put
+before me. It&rsquo;s an art like another, and infinite like all the
+arts.&rdquo; He went on as if for the joke of it&mdash;almost as if his
+friend&rsquo;s face amused him. &ldquo;In the hands, naturally, of a master.
+The right man must take hold. With the right man to work it <i>c&rsquo;est un
+monde</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether had watched him quite as if, there on the pavement without a pretext,
+he had begun to dance a fancy step. &ldquo;Is what you&rsquo;re thinking of
+that you yourself, in the case you have in mind, would be the right man?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad had thrown back his light coat and thrust each of his thumbs into an
+armhole of his waistcoat; in which position his fingers played up and down.
+&ldquo;Why, what is he but what you yourself, as I say, took me for when you
+first came out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether felt a little faint, but he coerced his attention. &ldquo;Oh yes, and
+there&rsquo;s no doubt that, with your natural parts, you&rsquo;d have much in
+common with him. Advertising is clearly at this time of day the secret of
+trade. It&rsquo;s quite possible it will be open to you&mdash;giving the whole
+of your mind to it&mdash;to make the whole place hum with you. Your
+mother&rsquo;s appeal is to the whole of your mind, and that&rsquo;s exactly
+the strength of her case.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad&rsquo;s fingers continued to twiddle, but he had something of a drop.
+&ldquo;Ah we&rsquo;ve been through my mother&rsquo;s case!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I thought. Why then do you speak of the matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only because it was part of our original discussion. To wind up where we
+began, my interest&rsquo;s purely platonic. There at any rate the fact
+is&mdash;the fact of the possible. I mean the money in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh damn the money in it!&rdquo; said Strether. And then as the young
+man&rsquo;s fixed smile seemed to shine out more strange: &ldquo;Shall you give
+your friend up for the money in it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chad preserved his handsome grimace as well as the rest of his attitude.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not altogether&mdash;in your so great
+&lsquo;solemnity&rsquo;&mdash;kind. Haven&rsquo;t I been drinking you
+in&mdash;showing you all I feel you&rsquo;re worth to me? What have I done,
+what am I doing, but cleave to her to the death? The only thing is,&rdquo; he
+good-humouredly explained, &ldquo;that one can&rsquo;t but have it before one,
+in the cleaving&mdash;the point where the death comes in. Don&rsquo;t be afraid
+for <i>that</i>. It&rsquo;s pleasant to a fellow&rsquo;s feelings,&rdquo; he
+developed, &ldquo;to &lsquo;size-up&rsquo; the bribe he applies his foot
+to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh then if all you want&rsquo;s a kickable surface the bribe&rsquo;s
+enormous.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good. Then there it goes!&rdquo; Chad administered his kick with
+fantastic force and sent an imaginary object flying. It was accordingly as if
+they were once more rid of the question and could come back to what really
+concerned him. &ldquo;Of course I shall see you tomorrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Strether scarce heeded the plan proposed for this; he had still the
+impression&mdash;not the slighter for the simulated kick&mdash;of an irrelevant
+hornpipe or jig. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re restless.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; returned Chad as they parted, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re
+exciting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>
+He had, however, within two days, another separation to face. He had sent Maria
+Gostrey a word early, by hand, to ask if he might come to breakfast; in
+consequence of which, at noon, she awaited him in the cool shade of her little
+Dutch-looking dining-room. This retreat was at the back of the house, with a
+view of a scrap of old garden that had been saved from modern ravage; and
+though he had on more than one other occasion had his legs under its small and
+peculiarly polished table of hospitality, the place had never before struck him
+as so sacred to pleasant knowledge, to intimate charm, to antique order, to a
+neatness that was almost august. To sit there was, as he had told his hostess
+before, to see life reflected for the time in ideally kept pewter; which was
+somehow becoming, improving to life, so that one&rsquo;s eyes were held and
+comforted. Strether&rsquo;s were comforted at all events now&mdash;and the more
+that it was the last time&mdash;with the charming effect, on the board bare of
+a cloth and proud of its perfect surface, of the small old crockery and old
+silver, matched by the more substantial pieces happily disposed about the room.
+The specimens of vivid Delf, in particular had the dignity of family portraits;
+and it was in the midst of them that our friend resignedly expressed himself.
+He spoke even with a certain philosophic humour. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing
+more to wait for; I seem to have done a good day&rsquo;s work. I&rsquo;ve let
+them have it all round. I&rsquo;ve seen Chad, who has been to London and come
+back. He tells me I&rsquo;m &lsquo;exciting,&rsquo; and I seem indeed pretty
+well to have upset every one. I&rsquo;ve at any rate excited <i>him</i>.
+He&rsquo;s distinctly restless.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve excited <i>me</i>,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey smiled.
+&ldquo;<i>I&rsquo;m</i> distinctly restless.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh you were that when I found you. It seems to me I&rsquo;ve rather got
+you out of it. What&rsquo;s this,&rdquo; he asked as he looked about him,
+&ldquo;but a haunt of ancient peace?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish with all my heart,&rdquo; she presently replied, &ldquo;I could
+make you treat it as a haven of rest.&rdquo; On which they fronted each other,
+across the table, as if things unuttered were in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether seemed, in his way, when he next spoke, to take some of them up.
+&ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t give me&mdash;that would be the trouble&mdash;what it
+will, no doubt, still give you. I&rsquo;m not,&rdquo; he explained, leaning
+back in his chair, but with his eyes on a small ripe round
+melon&mdash;&ldquo;in real harmony with what surrounds me. You <i>are</i>. I
+take it too hard. You <i>don&rsquo;t</i>. It makes&mdash;that&rsquo;s what it
+comes to in the end&mdash;a fool of me.&rdquo; Then at a tangent, &ldquo;What
+has he been doing in London?&rdquo; he demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah one may go to London,&rdquo; Maria laughed. &ldquo;You know <i>I</i>
+did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes&mdash;he took the reminder. &ldquo;And you brought <i>me</i> back.&rdquo;
+He brooded there opposite to her, but without gloom. &ldquo;Whom has Chad
+brought? He&rsquo;s full of ideas. And I wrote to Sarah,&rdquo; he added,
+&ldquo;the first thing this morning. So I&rsquo;m square. I&rsquo;m ready for
+them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She neglected certain parts of this speech in the interest of others.
+&ldquo;Marie said to me the other day that she felt him to have the makings of
+an immense man of business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There it is. He&rsquo;s the son of his father!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But <i>such</i> a father!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah just the right one from that point of view! But it isn&rsquo;t his
+father in him,&rdquo; Strether added, &ldquo;that troubles me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it then?&rdquo; He came back to his breakfast; he partook
+presently of the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was
+only after this that he met her question. Then moreover it was but to remark
+that he&rsquo;d answer her presently. She waited, she watched, she served him
+and amused him, and it was perhaps with this last idea that she soon reminded
+him of his having never even yet named to her the article produced at Woollett.
+&ldquo;Do you remember our talking of it in London&mdash;that night at the
+play?&rdquo; Before he could say yes, however, she had put it to him for other
+matters. Did he remember, did he remember&mdash;this and that of their first
+days? He remembered everything, bringing up with humour even things of which
+she professed no recollection, things she vehemently denied; and falling back
+above all on the great interest of their early time, the curiosity felt by both
+of them as to where he would &ldquo;come out.&rdquo; They had so assumed it was
+to be in some wonderful place&mdash;they had thought of it as so very
+<i>much</i> out. Well, that was doubtless what it had been&mdash;since he had
+come out just there. He was out, in truth, as far as it was possible to be, and
+must now rather bethink himself of getting in again. He found on the spot the
+image of his recent history; he was like one of the figures of the old clock at
+Berne. <i>They</i> came out, on one side, at their hour, jigged along their
+little course in the public eye, and went in on the other side. He too had
+jigged his little course&mdash;him too a modest retreat awaited. He offered
+now, should she really like to know, to name the great product of Woollett. It
+would be a great commentary on everything. At this she stopped him off; she not
+only had no wish to know, but she wouldn&rsquo;t know for the world. She had
+done with the products of Woollett&mdash;for all the good she had got from
+them. She desired no further news of them, and she mentioned that Madame de
+Vionnet herself had, to her knowledge, lived exempt from the information he was
+ready to supply. She had never consented to receive it, though she would have
+taken it, under stress, from Mrs. Pocock. But it was a matter about which Mrs.
+Pocock appeared to have had little to say&mdash;never sounding the
+word&mdash;and it didn&rsquo;t signify now. There was nothing clearly for Maria
+Gostrey that signified now&mdash;save one sharp point, that is, to which she
+came in time. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether it&rsquo;s before you as a
+possibility that, left to himself, Mr. Chad may after all go back. I judge that
+it <i>is</i> more or less so before you, from what you just now said of
+him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her guest had his eyes on her, kindly but attentively, as if foreseeing what
+was to follow this. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it will be for the money.&rdquo;
+And then as she seemed uncertain: &ldquo;I mean I don&rsquo;t believe it will
+be for that he&rsquo;ll give her up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then he <i>will</i> give her up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strether waited a moment, rather slow and deliberate now, drawing out a little
+this last soft stage, pleading with her in various suggestive and unspoken ways
+for patience and understanding. &ldquo;What were you just about to ask
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there anything he can do that would make you patch it up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With Mrs. Newsome?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her assent, as if she had had a delicacy about sounding the name, was only in
+her face; but she added with it: &ldquo;Or is there anything he can do that
+would make <i>her</i> try it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To patch it up with me?&rdquo; His answer came at last in a conclusive
+headshake. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing any one can do. It&rsquo;s over. Over
+for both of us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria wondered, seemed a little to doubt. &ldquo;Are you so sure for
+her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;sure now. Too much has happened. I&rsquo;m different for
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took it in then, drawing a deeper breath. &ldquo;I see. So that as
+she&rsquo;s different for <i>you</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah but,&rdquo; he interrupted, &ldquo;she&rsquo;s not.&rdquo; And as
+Miss Gostrey wondered again: &ldquo;She&rsquo;s the same. She&rsquo;s more than
+ever the same. But I do what I didn&rsquo;t before&mdash;I <i>see</i>
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke gravely and as if responsibly&mdash;since he had to pronounce; and the
+effect of it was slightly solemn, so that she simply exclaimed
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Satisfied and grateful, however, she showed in her own next
+words an acceptance of his statement. &ldquo;What then do you go home
+to?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had pushed his plate a little away, occupied with another side of the
+matter; taking refuge verily in that side and feeling so moved that he soon
+found himself on his feet. He was affected in advance by what he believed might
+come from her, and he would have liked to forestall it and deal with it
+tenderly; yet in the presence of it he wished still more to be&mdash;though as
+smoothly as possible&mdash;deterrent and conclusive. He put her question by for
+the moment; he told her more about Chad. &ldquo;It would have been impossible
+to meet me more than he did last night on the question of the infamy of not
+sticking to her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that what you called it for him&mdash;&lsquo;infamy&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh rather! I described to him in detail the base creature he&rsquo;d be,
+and he quite agrees with me about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So that it&rsquo;s really as if you had nailed him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite really as if&mdash;! I told him I should curse him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she smiled, &ldquo;you <i>have</i> done it.&rdquo; And then
+having thought again: &ldquo;You <i>can&rsquo;t</i> after that
+propose&mdash;!&rdquo; Yet she scanned his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Propose again to Mrs. Newsome?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated afresh, but she brought it out. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never believed,
+you know, that you did propose. I always believed it was really she&mdash;and,
+so far as that goes, I can understand it. What I mean is,&rdquo; she explained,
+&ldquo;that with such a spirit&mdash;the spirit of curses!&mdash;your breach is
+past mending. She has only to know what you&rsquo;ve done to him never again to
+raise a finger.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done,&rdquo; said Strether, &ldquo;what I could&mdash;one
+can&rsquo;t do more. He protests his devotion and his horror. But I&rsquo;m not
+sure I&rsquo;ve saved him. He protests too much. He asks how one can dream of
+his being tired. But he has all life before him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria saw what he meant. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s formed to please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And it&rsquo;s our friend who has formed him.&rdquo; Strether felt in it
+the strange irony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So it&rsquo;s scarcely his fault!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s at any rate his danger. I mean,&rdquo; said Strether,
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s hers. But she knows it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, she knows it. And is your idea,&rdquo; Miss Gostrey asked,
+&ldquo;that there was some other woman in London?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. No. That is I <i>have</i> no ideas. I&rsquo;m afraid of them.
+I&rsquo;ve done with them.&rdquo; And he put out his hand to her.
+&ldquo;Good-bye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It brought her back to her unanswered question. &ldquo;To what do you go
+home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. There will always be something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To a great difference,&rdquo; she said as she kept his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A great difference&mdash;no doubt. Yet I shall see what I can make of
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shall you make anything so good&mdash;?&rdquo; But, as if remembering
+what Mrs. Newsome had done, it was as far as she went.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had sufficiently understood. &ldquo;So good as this place at this moment? So
+good as what <i>you</i> make of everything you touch?&rdquo; He took a moment
+to say, for, really and truly, what stood about him there in her
+offer&mdash;which was as the offer of exquisite service, of lightened care, for
+the rest of his days&mdash;might well have tempted. It built him softly round,
+it roofed him warmly over, it rested, all so firm, on selection. And what ruled
+selection was beauty and knowledge. It was awkward, it was almost stupid, not
+to seem to prize such things; yet, none the less, so far as they made his
+opportunity they made it only for a moment. She&rsquo;d moreover
+understand&mdash;she always understood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That indeed might be, but meanwhile she was going on. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+nothing, you know, I wouldn&rsquo;t do for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;I know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing,&rdquo; she repeated, &ldquo;in all the
+world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know. I know. But all the same I must go.&rdquo; He had got it at
+last. &ldquo;To be right.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To be right?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had echoed it in vague deprecation, but he felt it already clear for her.
+&ldquo;That, you see, is my only logic. Not, out of the whole affair, to have
+got anything for myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thought. &ldquo;But with your wonderful impressions you&rsquo;ll have got a
+great deal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A great deal&rdquo;&mdash;he agreed. &ldquo;But nothing like <i>you</i>.
+It&rsquo;s you who would make me wrong!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Honest and fine, she couldn&rsquo;t greatly pretend she didn&rsquo;t see it.
+Still she could pretend just a little. &ldquo;But why should you be so
+dreadfully right?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the way that&mdash;if I must go&mdash;you yourself would be
+the first to want me. And I can&rsquo;t do anything else.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So then she had to take it, though still with her defeated protest. &ldquo;It
+isn&rsquo;t so much your <i>being</i> &lsquo;right&rsquo;&mdash;it&rsquo;s your
+horrible sharp eye for what makes you so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh but you&rsquo;re just as bad yourself. You can&rsquo;t resist me when
+I point that out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sighed it at last all comically, all tragically, away. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t
+indeed resist you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then there we are!&rdquo; said Strether.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMBASSADORS ***</div>
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diff --git a/432-h/images/cover.jpg b/432-h/images/cover.jpg
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+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
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diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #432 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/432)
diff --git a/old/1996-02-432-h.zip b/old/1996-02-432-h.zip
new file mode 100644
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diff --git a/old/1996-02-432.zip b/old/1996-02-432.zip
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/432.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,17646 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ambassadors, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ambassadors
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #432]
+Release Date: February, 1996
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMBASSADORS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Richard D. Hathaway and Julia P DeRanek
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Ambassadors,
+
+
+by
+
+Henry James.
+
+
+
+New York Edition (1909).
+
+
+
+
+Volume I
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+Nothing is more easy than to state the subject of "The Ambassadors,"
+which first appeared in twelve numbers of _The North American Review_
+(1903) and was published as a whole the same year. The situation
+involved is gathered up betimes, that is in the second chapter of Book
+Fifth, for the reader's benefit, into as few words as possible--planted
+or "sunk," stiffly and saliently, in the centre of the current, almost
+perhaps to the obstruction of traffic.  Never can a composition of this
+sort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of suggestion, and
+never can that grain, developed, overgrown and smothered, have yet
+lurked more in the mass as an independent particle.  The whole case, in
+fine, is in Lambert Strether's irrepressible outbreak to little Bilham
+on the Sunday afternoon in Gloriani's garden, the candour with which he
+yields, for his young friend's enlightenment, to the charming
+admonition of that crisis.  The idea of the tale resides indeed in the
+very fact that an hour of such unprecedented ease should have been felt
+by him AS a crisis, and he is at pains to express it for us as neatly
+as we could desire.  The remarks to which he thus gives utterance
+contain the essence of "The Ambassadors," his fingers close, before he
+has done, round the stem of the full-blown flower; which, after that
+fashion, he continues officiously to present to us.  "Live all you can;
+it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in
+particular so long as you have your life.  If you haven't had that what
+HAVE you had?  I'm too old--too old at any rate for what I see.  What
+one loses one loses; make no mistake about that.  Still, we have the
+illusion of freedom; therefore don't, like me to-day, be without the
+memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or
+too intelligent to have it, and now I'm a case of reaction against the
+mistake.  Do what you like so long as you don't make it.  For it WAS a
+mistake.  Live, live!" Such is the gist of Strether's appeal to the
+impressed youth, whom he likes and whom he desires to befriend; the
+word "mistake" occurs several times, it will be seen, in the course of
+his remarks--which gives the measure of the signal warning he feels
+attached to his case.  He has accordingly missed too much, though
+perhaps after all constitutionally qualified for a better part, and he
+wakes up to it in conditions that press the spring of a terrible
+question. WOULD there yet perhaps be time for reparation?--reparation,
+that is, for the injury done his character; for the affront, he is
+quite ready to say, so stupidly put upon it and in which he has even
+himself had so clumsy a hand?  The answer to which is that he now at
+all events SEES; so that the business of my tale and the march of my
+action, not to say the precious moral of everything, is just my
+demonstration of this process of vision.
+
+Nothing can exceed the closeness with which the whole fits again into
+its germ.  That had been given me bodily, as usual, by the spoken word,
+for I was to take the image over exactly as I happened to have met it.
+A friend had repeated to me, with great appreciation, a thing or two
+said to him by a man of distinction, much his senior, and to which a
+sense akin to that of Strether's melancholy eloquence might be
+imputed--said as chance would have, and so easily might, in Paris, and
+in a charming old garden attached to a house of art, and on a Sunday
+afternoon of summer, many persons of great interest being present.  The
+observation there listened to and gathered up had contained part of the
+"note" that I was to recognise on the spot as to my purpose--had
+contained in fact the greater part; the rest was in the place and the
+time and the scene they sketched: these constituents clustered and
+combined to give me further support, to give me what I may call the
+note absolute.  There it stands, accordingly, full in the tideway;
+driven in, with hard taps, like some strong stake for the noose of a
+cable, the swirl of the current roundabout it.  What amplified the hint
+to more than the bulk of hints in general was the gift with it of the
+old Paris garden, for in that token were sealed up values infinitely
+precious.  There was of course the seal to break and each item of the
+packet to count over and handle and estimate; but somehow, in the light
+of the hint, all the elements of a situation of the sort most to my
+taste were there.  I could even remember no occasion on which, so
+confronted, I had found it of a livelier interest to take stock, in
+this fashion, of suggested wealth.  For I think, verily, that there are
+degrees of merit in subjects--in spite of the fact that to treat even
+one of the most ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for
+the feverish and prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its
+dignity as POSSIBLY absolute.  What it comes to, doubtless, is that
+even among the supremely good--since with such alone is it one's theory
+of one's honour to be concerned--there is an ideal BEAUTY of goodness
+the invoked action of which is to raise the artistic faith to its
+maximum.  Then truly, I hold, one's theme may be said to shine, and
+that of "The Ambassadors," I confess, wore this glow for me from
+beginning to end.  Fortunately thus I am able to estimate this as,
+frankly, quite the best, "all round," of all my productions; any
+failure of that justification would have made such an extreme of
+complacency publicly fatuous.
+
+I recall then in this connexion no moment of subjective intermittence,
+never one of those alarms as for a suspected hollow beneath one's feet,
+a felt ingratitude in the scheme adopted, under which confidence fails
+and opportunity seems but to mock. If the motive of "The Wings of the
+Dove," as I have noted, was to worry me at moments by a sealing-up of
+its face--though without prejudice to its again, of a sudden, fairly
+grimacing with expression--so in this other business I had absolute
+conviction and constant clearness to deal with; it had been a frank
+proposition, the whole bunch of data, installed on my premises like a
+monotony of fine weather.  (The order of composition, in these things,
+I may mention, was reversed by the order of publication; the earlier
+written of the two books having appeared as the later.) Even under the
+weight of my hero's years I could feel my postulate firm; even under
+the strain of the difference between those of Madame de Vionnet and
+those of Chad Newsome, a difference liable to be denounced as shocking,
+I could still feel it serene.  Nothing resisted, nothing betrayed, I
+seem to make out, in this full and sound sense of the matter; it shed
+from any side I could turn it to the same golden glow.  I rejoiced in
+the promise of a hero so mature, who would give me thereby the more to
+bite into--since it's only into thickened motive and accumulated
+character, I think, that the painter of life bites more than a little.
+My poor friend should have accumulated character, certainly; or rather
+would be quite naturally and handsomely possessed of it, in the sense
+that he would have, and would always have felt he had, imagination
+galore, and that this yet wouldn't have wrecked him.  It was
+immeasurable, the opportunity to "do" a man of imagination, for if
+THERE mightn't be a chance to "bite," where in the world might it be?
+This personage of course, so enriched, wouldn't give me, for his type,
+imagination in PREDOMINANCE or as his prime faculty, nor should I, in
+view of other matters, have found that convenient.  So particular a
+luxury--some occasion, that is, for study of the high gift in SUPREME
+command of a case or of a career--would still doubtless come on the day
+I should be ready to pay for it; and till then might, as from far back,
+remain hung up well in view and just out of reach. The comparative case
+meanwhile would serve--it was only on the minor scale that I had
+treated myself even to comparative cases.
+
+I was to hasten to add however that, happy stopgaps as the minor scale
+had thus yielded, the instance in hand should enjoy the advantage of
+the full range of the major; since most immediately to the point was
+the question of that SUPPLEMENT of situation logically involved in our
+gentleman's impulse to deliver himself in the Paris garden on the
+Sunday afternoon--or if not involved by strict logic then all ideally
+and enchantingly implied in it.  (I say "ideally," because I need
+scarce mention that for development, for expression of its maximum, my
+glimmering story was, at the earliest stage, to have nipped the thread
+of connexion with the possibilities of the actual reported speaker.  HE
+remains but the happiest of accidents; his actualities, all too
+definite, precluded any range of possibilities; it had only been his
+charming office to project upon that wide field of the artist's
+vision--which hangs there ever in place like the white sheet suspended
+for the figures of a child's magic-lantern--a more fantastic and more
+moveable shadow.)  No privilege of the teller of tales and the handler
+of puppets is more delightful, or has more of the suspense and the
+thrill of a game of difficulty breathlessly played, than just this
+business of looking for the unseen and the occult, in a scheme
+half-grasped, by the light or, so to speak, by the clinging scent, of
+the gage already in hand. No dreadful old pursuit of the hidden slave
+with bloodhounds and the rag of association can ever, for "excitement,"
+I judge, have bettered it at its best.  For the dramatist always, by
+the very law of his genius, believes not only in a possible right issue
+from the rightly-conceived tight place; he does much more than this--he
+believes, irresistibly, in the necessary, the precious "tightness" of
+the place (whatever the issue) on the strength of any respectable hint.
+It being thus the respectable hint that I had with such avidity picked
+up, what would be the story to which it would most inevitably form the
+centre?  It is part of the charm attendant on such questions that the
+"story," with the omens true, as I say, puts on from this stage the
+authenticity of concrete existence.  It then is, essentially--it begins
+to be, though it may more or less obscurely lurk, so that the point is
+not in the least what to make of it, but only, very delightfully and
+very damnably, where to put one's hand on it.
+
+In which truth resides surely much of the interest of that admirable
+mixture for salutary application which we know as art. Art deals with
+what we see, it must first contribute full-handed that ingredient; it
+plucks its material, otherwise expressed, in the garden of life--which
+material elsewhere grown is stale and uneatable.  But it has no sooner
+done this than it has to take account of a PROCESS--from which only
+when it's the basest of the servants of man, incurring ignominious
+dismissal with no "character," does it, and whether under some muddled
+pretext of morality or on any other, pusillanimously edge away.  The
+process, that of the expression, the literal squeezing-out, of value is
+another affair--with which the happy luck of mere finding has little to
+do.  The joys of finding, at this stage, are pretty well over; that
+quest of the subject as a whole by "matching," as the ladies say at the
+shops, the big piece with the snippet, having ended, we assume, with a
+capture.  The subject is found, and if the problem is then transferred
+to the ground of what to do with it the field opens out for any amount
+of doing.  This is precisely the infusion that, as I submit, completes
+the strong mixture.  It is on the other hand the part of the business
+that can least be likened to the chase with horn and hound.  It's all a
+sedentary part--involves as much ciphering, of sorts, as would merit
+the highest salary paid to a chief accountant.  Not, however, that the
+chief accountant hasn't HIS gleams of bliss; for the felicity, or at
+least the equilibrium of the artist's state dwells less, surely, in the
+further delightful complications he can smuggle in than in those he
+succeeds in keeping out.  He sows his seed at the risk of too thick a
+crop; wherefore yet again, like the gentlemen who audit ledgers, he
+must keep his head at any price.  In consequence of all which, for the
+interest of the matter, I might seem here to have my choice of
+narrating my "hunt" for Lambert Strether, of describing the capture of
+the shadow projected by my friend's anecdote, or of reporting on the
+occurrences subsequent to that triumph.  But I had probably best
+attempt a little to glance in each direction; since it comes to me
+again and again, over this licentious record, that one's bag of
+adventures, conceived or conceivable, has been only half-emptied by the
+mere telling of one's story.  It depends so on what one means by that
+equivocal quantity.  There is the story of one's hero, and then, thanks
+to the intimate connexion of things, the story of one's story itself. I
+blush to confess it, but if one's a dramatist one's a dramatist, and
+the latter imbroglio is liable on occasion to strike me as really the
+more objective of the two.
+
+The philosophy imputed to him in that beautiful outbreak, the hour
+there, amid such happy provision, striking for him, would have been
+then, on behalf of my man of imagination, to be logically and, as the
+artless craft of comedy has it, "led up" to; the probable course to
+such a goal, the goal of so conscious a predicament, would have in
+short to be finely calculated.  Where has he come from and why has he
+come, what is he doing (as we Anglo-Saxons, and we only, say, in our
+foredoomed clutch of exotic aids to expression) in that galere?  To
+answer these questions plausibly, to answer them as under
+cross-examination in the witness-box by counsel for the prosecution, in
+other words satisfactorily to account for Strether and for his
+"peculiar tone," was to possess myself of the entire fabric.  At the
+same time the clue to its whereabouts would lie in a certain principle
+of probability: he wouldn't have indulged in his peculiar tone without
+a reason; it would take a felt predicament or a false position to give
+him so ironic an accent.  One hadn't been noting "tones" all one's life
+without recognising when one heard it the voice of the false position.
+The dear man in the Paris garden was then admirably and unmistakeably
+IN one--which was no small point gained; what next accordingly
+concerned us was the determination of THIS identity.  One could only go
+by probabilities, but there was the advantage that the most general of
+the probabilities were virtual certainties.  Possessed of our friend's
+nationality, to start with, there was a general probability in his
+narrower localism; which, for that matter, one had really but to keep
+under the lens for an hour to see it give up its secrets.  He would
+have issued, our rueful worthy, from the very heart of New England--at
+the heels of which matter of course a perfect train of secrets tumbled
+for me into the light.  They had to be sifted and sorted, and I shall
+not reproduce the detail of that process; but unmistakeably they were
+all there, and it was but a question, auspiciously, of picking among
+them.  What the "position" would infallibly be, and why, on his hands,
+it had turned "false"--these inductive steps could only be as rapid as
+they were distinct.  I accounted for everything--and "everything" had
+by this time become the most promising quantity--by the view that he
+had come to Paris in some state of mind which was literally undergoing,
+as a result of new and unexpected assaults and infusions, a change
+almost from hour to hour.  He had come with a view that might have been
+figured by a clear green liquid, say, in a neat glass phial; and the
+liquid, once poured into the open cup of APPLICATION, once exposed to
+the action of another air, had begun to turn from green to red, or
+whatever, and might, for all he knew, be on its way to purple, to
+black, to yellow.  At the still wilder extremes represented perhaps,
+for all he could say to the contrary, by a variability so violent, he
+would at first, naturally, but have gazed in surprise and alarm;
+whereby the SITUATION clearly would spring from the play of wildness
+and the development of extremes.  I saw in a moment that, should this
+development proceed both with force and logic, my "story" would leave
+nothing to be desired.  There is always, of course, for the
+story-teller, the irresistible determinant and the incalculable
+advantage of his interest in the story AS SUCH; it is ever, obviously,
+overwhelmingly, the prime and precious thing (as other than this I have
+never been able to see it); as to which what makes for it, with
+whatever headlong energy, may be said to pale before the energy with
+which it simply makes for itself.  It rejoices, none the less, at its
+best, to seem to offer itself in a light, to seem to know, and with the
+very last knowledge, what it's about--liable as it yet is at moments to
+be caught by us with its tongue in its cheek and absolutely no warrant
+but its splendid impudence.  Let us grant then that the impudence is
+always there--there, so to speak, for grace and effect and ALLURE;
+there, above all, because the Story is just the spoiled child of art,
+and because, as we are always disappointed when the pampered don't
+"play up," we like it, to that extent, to look all its character.  It
+probably does so, in truth, even when we most flatter ourselves that we
+negotiate with it by treaty.
+
+All of which, again, is but to say that the STEPS, for my fable, placed
+themselves with a prompt and, as it were, functional assurance--an air
+quite as of readiness to have dispensed with logic had I been in fact
+too stupid for my clue.  Never, positively, none the less, as the links
+multiplied, had I felt less stupid than for the determination of poor
+Strether's errand and for the apprehension of his issue.  These things
+continued to fall together, as by the neat action of their own weight
+and form, even while their commentator scratched his head about them;
+he easily sees now that they were always well in advance of him.  As
+the case completed itself he had in fact, from a good way behind, to
+catch up with them, breathless and a little flurried, as he best could.
+THE false position, for our belated man of the world--belated because
+he had endeavoured so long to escape being one, and now at last had
+really to face his doom--the false position for him, I say, was
+obviously to have presented himself at the gate of that boundless
+menagerie primed with a moral scheme of the most approved pattern which
+was yet framed to break down on any approach to vivid facts; that is to
+any at all liberal appreciation of them.  There would have been of
+course the case of the Strether prepared, wherever presenting himself,
+only to judge and to feel meanly; but HE would have moved for me, I
+confess, enveloped in no legend whatever.  The actual man's note, from
+the first of our seeing it struck, is the note of discrimination, just
+as his drama is to become, under stress, the drama of discrimination.
+It would have been his blest imagination, we have seen, that had
+already helped him to discriminate; the element that was for so much of
+the pleasure of my cutting thick, as I have intimated, into his
+intellectual, into his moral substance. Yet here it was, at the same
+time, just here, that a shade for a moment fell across the scene.
+
+There was the dreadful little old tradition, one of the platitudes of
+the human comedy, that people's moral scheme DOES break down in Paris;
+that nothing is more frequently observed; that hundreds of thousands of
+more or less hypocritical or more or less cynical persons annually
+visit the place for the sake of the probable catastrophe, and that I
+came late in the day to work myself up about it.  There was in fine the
+TRIVIAL association, one of the vulgarest in the world; but which give
+me pause no longer, I think, simply because its vulgarity is so
+advertised.  The revolution performed by Strether under the influence
+of the most interesting of great cities was to have nothing to do with
+any betise of the imputably "tempted" state; he was to be thrown
+forward, rather, thrown quite with violence, upon his lifelong trick of
+intense reflexion: which friendly test indeed was to bring him out,
+through winding passages, through alternations of darkness and light,
+very much IN Paris, but with the surrounding scene itself a minor
+matter, a mere symbol for more things than had been dreamt of in the
+philosophy of Woollett.  Another surrounding scene would have done as
+well for our show could it have represented a place in which Strether's
+errand was likely to lie and his crisis to await him.  The LIKELY place
+had the great merit of sparing me preparations; there would have been
+too many involved--not at all impossibilities, only rather worrying and
+delaying difficulties--in positing elsewhere Chad Newsome's interesting
+relation, his so interesting complexity of relations. Strether's
+appointed stage, in fine, could be but Chad's most luckily selected
+one.  The young man had gone in, as they say, for circumjacent charm;
+and where he would have found it, by the turn of his mind, most
+"authentic," was where his earnest friend's analysis would most find
+HIM; as well as where, for that matter, the former's whole analytic
+faculty would be led such a wonderful dance.
+
+"The Ambassadors" had been, all conveniently, "arranged for"; its first
+appearance was from month to month, in the _North American Review_
+during 1903, and I had been open from far back to any pleasant
+provocation for ingenuity that might reside in one's actively
+adopting--so as to make it, in its way, a small compositional
+law--recurrent breaks and resumptions.  I had made up my mind here
+regularly to exploit and enjoy these often rather rude jolts--having
+found, as I believed an admirable way to it; yet every question of form
+and pressure, I easily remember, paled in the light of the major
+propriety, recognised as soon as really weighed; that of employing but
+one centre and keeping it all within my hero's compass. The thing was
+to be so much this worthy's intimate adventure that even the projection
+of his consciousness upon it from beginning to end without intermission
+or deviation would probably still leave a part of its value for him,
+and a fortiori for ourselves, unexpressed. I might, however, express
+every grain of it that there would be room for--on condition of
+contriving a splendid particular economy. Other persons in no small
+number were to people the scene, and each with his or her axe to grind,
+his or her situation to treat, his or her coherency not to fail of, his
+or her relation to my leading motive, in a word, to establish and carry
+on.  But Strether's sense of these things, and Strether's only, should
+avail me for showing them; I should know them but through his more or
+less groping knowledge of them, since his very gropings would figure
+among his most interesting motions, and a full observance of the rich
+rigour I speak of would give me more of the effect I should be most
+"after" than all other possible observances together.  It would give me
+a large unity, and that in turn would crown me with the grace to which
+the enlightened story-teller will at any time, for his interest,
+sacrifice if need be all other graces whatever.  I refer of course to
+the grace of intensity, which there are ways of signally achieving and
+ways of signally missing--as we see it, all round us, helplessly and
+woefully missed.  Not that it isn't, on the other hand, a virtue
+eminently subject to appreciation--there being no strict, no absolute
+measure of it; so that one may hear it acclaimed where it has quite
+escaped one's perception, and see it unnoticed where one has gratefully
+hailed it.  After all of which I am not sure, either, that the immense
+amusement of the whole cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not
+operate, for the fond fabulist, when judicious not less than fond, as
+his best of determinants.  That charming principle is always there, at
+all events, to keep interest fresh: it is a principle, we remember,
+essentially ravenous, without scruple and without mercy, appeased with
+no cheap nor easy nourishment.  It enjoys the costly sacrifice and
+rejoices thereby in the very odour of difficulty--even as ogres, with
+their "Fee-faw-fum!" rejoice in the smell of the blood of Englishmen.
+
+Thus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so
+speedy, definition of my gentleman's job--his coming out, all solemnly
+appointed and deputed, to "save" Chad, and his then finding the young
+man so disobligingly and, at first, so bewilderingly not lost that a
+new issue altogether, in the connexion, prodigiously faces them, which
+has to be dealt with in a new light--promised as many calls on
+ingenuity and on the higher branches of the compositional art as one
+could possibly desire. Again and yet again, as, from book to book, I
+proceed with my survey, I find no source of interest equal to this
+verification after the fact, as I may call it, and the more in detail
+the better, of the scheme of consistency "gone in" for.  As
+always--since the charm never fails--the retracing of the process from
+point to point brings back the old illusion.  The old intentions bloom
+again and flower--in spite of all the blossoms they were to have
+dropped by the way.  This is the charm, as I say, of adventure
+TRANSPOSED--the thrilling ups and downs, the intricate ins and outs of
+the compositional problem, made after such a fashion admirably
+objective, becoming the question at issue and keeping the author's
+heart in his mouth.  Such an element, for instance, as his intention
+that Mrs. Newsome, away off with her finger on the pulse of
+Massachusetts, should yet be no less intensely than circuitously
+present through the whole thing, should be no less felt as to be
+reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest portrayal at
+first hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good faith, I say,
+once it's unmistakeably there, takes on again an actuality not too much
+impaired by the comparative dimness of the particular success.
+Cherished intention too inevitably acts and operates, in the book,
+about fifty times as little as I had fondly dreamt it might; but that
+scarce spoils for me the pleasure of recognising the fifty ways in
+which I had sought to provide for it.  The mere charm of seeing such an
+idea constituent, in its degree; the fineness of the measures taken--a
+real extension, if successful, of the very terms and possibilities of
+representation and figuration--such things alone were, after this
+fashion, inspiring, such things alone were a gage of the probable
+success of that dissimulated calculation with which the whole effort
+was to square.  But oh the cares begotten, none the less, of that same
+"judicious" sacrifice to a particular form of interest!  One's work
+should have composition, because composition alone is positive beauty;
+but all the while--apart from one's inevitable consciousness too of the
+dire paucity of readers ever recognising or ever missing positive
+beauty--how, as to the cheap and easy, at every turn, how, as to
+immediacy and facility, and even as to the commoner vivacity, positive
+beauty might have to be sweated for and paid for!  Once achieved and
+installed it may always be trusted to make the poor seeker feel he
+would have blushed to the roots of his hair for failing of it; yet,
+how, as its virtue can be essentially but the virtue of the whole, the
+wayside traps set in the interest of muddlement and pleading but the
+cause of the moment, of the particular bit in itself, have to be kicked
+out of the path!  All the sophistications in life, for example, might
+have appeared to muster on behalf of the menace--the menace to a bright
+variety--involved in Strether's having all the subjective "say," as it
+were, to himself.
+
+Had I, meanwhile, made him at once hero and historian, endowed him with
+the romantic privilege of the "first person"--the darkest abyss of
+romance this, inveterately, when enjoyed on the grand scale--variety,
+and many other queer matters as well, might have been smuggled in by a
+back door.  Suffice it, to be brief, that the first person, in the long
+piece, is a form foredoomed to looseness and that looseness, never much
+my affair, had never been so little so as on this particular occasion.
+All of which reflexions flocked to the standard from the moment--a very
+early one--the question of how to keep my form amusing while sticking
+so close to my central figure and constantly taking its pattern from
+him had to be faced. He arrives (arrives at Chester) as for the
+dreadful purpose of giving his creator "no end" to tell about
+him--before which rigorous mission the serenest of creators might well
+have quailed. I was far from the serenest; I was more than agitated
+enough to reflect that, grimly deprived of one alternative or one
+substitute for "telling," I must address myself tooth and nail to
+another.  I couldn't, save by implication, make other persons tell EACH
+OTHER about him--blest resource, blest necessity, of the drama, which
+reaches its effects of unity, all remarkably, by paths absolutely
+opposite to the paths of the novel: with other persons, save as they
+were primarily HIS persons (not he primarily but one of theirs), I had
+simply nothing to do.  I had relations for him none the less, by the
+mercy of Providence, quite as much as if my exhibition was to be a
+muddle; if I could only by implication and a show of consequence make
+other persons tell each other about him, I could at least make him tell
+THEM whatever in the world he must; and could so, by the same
+token--which was a further luxury thrown in--see straight into the deep
+differences between what that could do for me, or at all events for
+HIM, and the large ease of "autobiography."  It may be asked why, if
+one so keeps to one's hero, one shouldn't make a single mouthful of
+"method," shouldn't throw the reins on his neck and, letting them flap
+there as free as in "Gil Blas" or in "David Copperfield," equip him
+with the double privilege of subject and object--a course that has at
+least the merit of brushing away questions at a sweep.  The answer to
+which is, I think, that one makes that surrender only if one is
+prepared NOT to make certain precious discriminations.
+
+The "first person" then, so employed, is addressed by the author
+directly to ourselves, his possible readers, whom he has to reckon
+with, at the best, by our English tradition, so loosely and vaguely
+after all, so little respectfully, on so scant a presumption of
+exposure to criticism.  Strether, on the other hand, encaged and
+provided for as "The Ambassadors" encages and provides, has to keep in
+view proprieties much stiffer and more salutary than any our straight
+and credulous gape are likely to bring home to him, has exhibitional
+conditions to meet, in a word, that forbid the terrible FLUIDITY of
+self-revelation.  I may seem not to better the case for my
+discrimination if I say that, for my first care, I had thus inevitably
+to set him up a confidant or two, to wave away with energy the custom
+of the seated mass of explanation after the fact, the inserted block of
+merely referential narrative, which flourishes so, to the shame of the
+modern impatience, on the serried page of Balzac, but which seems
+simply to appal our actual, our general weaker, digestion. "Harking
+back to make up" took at any rate more doing, as the phrase is, not
+only than the reader of to-day demands, but than he will tolerate at
+any price any call upon him either to understand or remotely to
+measure; and for the beauty of the thing when done the current
+editorial mind in particular appears wholly without sense.  It is not,
+however, primarily for either of these reasons, whatever their weight,
+that Strether's friend Waymarsh is so keenly clutched at, on the
+threshold of the book, or that no less a pounce is made on Maria
+Gostrey--without even the pretext, either, of HER being, in essence,
+Strether's friend.  She is the reader's friend much rather--in
+consequence of dispositions that make him so eminently require one; and
+she acts in that capacity, and REALLY in that capacity alone, with
+exemplary devotion from beginning to and of the book.  She is an
+enrolled, a direct, aid to lucidity; she is in fine, to tear off her
+mask, the most unmitigated and abandoned of ficelles.  Half the
+dramatist's art, as we well know--since if we don't it's not the fault
+of the proofs that lie scattered about us--is in the use of ficelles;
+by which I mean in a deep dissimulation of his dependence on them.
+Waymarsh only to a slighter degree belongs, in the whole business, less
+to my subject than to my treatment of it; the interesting proof, in
+these connexions, being that one has but to take one's subject for the
+stuff of drama to interweave with enthusiasm as many Gostreys as need
+be.
+
+The material of "The Ambassadors," conforming in this respect exactly
+to that of "The Wings of the Dove," published just before it, is taken
+absolutely for the stuff of drama; so that, availing myself of the
+opportunity given me by this edition for some prefatory remarks on the
+latter work, I had mainly to make on its behalf the point of its scenic
+consistency.  It disguises that virtue, in the oddest way in the world,
+by just LOOKING, as we turn its pages, as little scenic as possible;
+but it sharply divides itself, just as the composition before us does,
+into the parts that prepare, that tend in fact to over-prepare, for
+scenes, and the parts, or otherwise into the scenes, that justify and
+crown the preparation.  It may definitely be said, I think, that
+everything in it that is not scene (not, I of course mean, complete and
+functional scene, treating ALL the submitted matter, as by logical
+start, logical turn, and logical finish) is discriminated preparation,
+is the fusion and synthesis of picture. These alternations propose
+themselves all recogniseably, I think, from an early stage, as the very
+form and figure of "The Ambassadors"; so that, to repeat, such an agent
+as Miss Gostrey pre-engaged at a high salary, but waits in the draughty
+wing with her shawl and her smelling-salts.  Her function speaks at
+once for itself, and by the time she has dined with Strether in London
+and gone to a play with him her intervention as a ficelle is, I hold,
+expertly justified.  Thanks to it we have treated scenically, and
+scenically alone, the whole lumpish question of Strether's "past,"
+which has seen us more happily on the way than anything else could have
+done; we have strained to a high lucidity and vivacity (or at least we
+hope we have) certain indispensable facts; we have seen our two or
+three immediate friends all conveniently and profitably in "action"; to
+say nothing of our beginning to descry others, of a remoter intensity,
+getting into motion, even if a bit vaguely as yet, for our further
+enrichment.  Let my first point be here that the scene in question,
+that in which the whole situation at Woollett and the complex forces
+that have propelled my hero to where this lively extractor of his value
+and distiller of his essence awaits him, is normal and entire, is
+really an excellent STANDARD scene; copious, comprehensive, and
+accordingly never short, but with its office as definite as that of the
+hammer on the gong of the clock, the office of expressing ALL THAT IS
+IN the hour.
+
+The "ficelle" character of the subordinate party is as artfully
+dissimulated, throughout, as may be, and to that extent that, with the
+seams or joints of Maria Gostrey's ostensible connectedness taken
+particular care of, duly smoothed over, that is, and anxiously kept
+from showing as "pieced on;" this figure doubtless achieves, after a
+fashion, something of the dignity of a prime idea: which circumstance
+but shows us afresh how many quite incalculable but none the less clear
+sources of enjoyment for the infatuated artist, how many copious
+springs of our never-to-be-slighted "fun" for the reader and critic
+susceptible of contagion, may sound their incidental plash as soon as
+an artistic process begins to enjoy free development.  Exquisite--in
+illustration of this--the mere interest and amusement of such at once
+"creative" and critical questions as how and where and why to make Miss
+Gostrey's false connexion carry itself, under a due high polish, as a
+real one. Nowhere is it more of an artful expedient for mere
+consistency of form, to mention a case, than in the last "scene" of the
+book, where its function is to give or to add nothing whatever, but
+only to express as vividly as possible certain things quite other than
+itself and that are of the already fixed and appointed measure.  Since,
+however, all art is EXPRESSION, and is thereby vividness, one was to
+find the door open here to any amount of delightful dissimulation.
+These verily are the refinements and ecstasies of method--amid which,
+or certainly under the influence of any exhilarated demonstration of
+which, one must keep one's head and not lose one's way.  To cultivate
+an adequate intelligence for them and to make that sense operative is
+positively to find a charm in any produced ambiguity of appearance that
+is not by the same stroke, and all helplessly, an ambiguity of sense.
+To project imaginatively, for my hero, a relation that has nothing to
+do with the matter (the matter of my subject) but has everything to do
+with the manner (the manner of my presentation of the same) and yet to
+treat it, at close quarters and for fully economic expression's
+possible sake, as if it were important and essential--to do that sort
+of thing and yet muddle nothing may easily become, as one goes, a
+signally attaching proposition; even though it all remains but part and
+parcel, I hasten to recognise, of the merely general and related
+question of expressional curiosity and expressional decency.
+
+I am moved to add after so much insistence on the scenic side of my
+labour that I have found the steps of re-perusal almost as much waylaid
+here by quite another style of effort in the same signal interest--or
+have in other words not failed to note how, even so associated and so
+discriminated, the finest proprieties and charms of the non-scenic may,
+under the right hand for them, still keep their intelligibility and
+assert their office.  Infinitely suggestive such an observation as this
+last on the whole delightful head, where representation is concerned,
+of possible variety, of effective expressional change and contrast. One
+would like, at such an hour as this, for critical licence, to go into
+the matter of the noted inevitable deviation (from too fond an original
+vision) that the exquisite treachery even of the straightest execution
+may ever be trusted to inflict even on the most mature plan--the case
+being that, though one's last reconsidered production always seems to
+bristle with that particular evidence, "The Ambassadors" would place a
+flood of such light at my service.  I must attach to my final remark
+here a different import; noting in the other connexion I just glanced
+at that such passages as that of my hero's first encounter with Chad
+Newsome, absolute attestations of the non-scenic form though they be,
+yet lay the firmest hand too--so far at least as intention goes--on
+representational effect.  To report at all closely and completely of
+what "passes" on a given occasion is inevitably to become more or less
+scenic; and yet in the instance I allude to, WITH the conveyance,
+expressional curiosity and expressional decency are sought and arrived
+at under quite another law.  The true inwardness of this may be at
+bottom but that one of the suffered treacheries has consisted
+precisely, for Chad's whole figure and presence, of a direct
+presentability diminished and compromised--despoiled, that is, of its
+PROPORTIONAL advantage; so that, in a word, the whole economy of his
+author's relation to him has at important points to be redetermined.
+The book, however, critically viewed, is touchingly full of these
+disguised and repaired losses, these insidious recoveries, these
+intensely redemptive consistencies. The pages in which Mamie Pocock
+gives her appointed and, I can't but think, duly felt lift to the whole
+action by the so inscrutably-applied side-stroke or short-cut of our
+just watching and as quite at an angle of vision as yet untried, her
+single hour of suspense in the hotel salon, in our partaking of her
+concentrated study of the sense of matters bearing on her own case, all
+the bright warm Paris afternoon, from the balcony that overlooks the
+Tuileries garden--these are as marked an example of the
+representational virtue that insists here and there on being, for the
+charm of opposition and renewal, other than the scenic.  It wouldn't
+take much to make me further argue that from an equal play of such
+oppositions the book gathers an intensity that fairly adds to the
+dramatic--though the latter is supposed to be the sum of all
+intensities; or that has at any rate nothing to fear from juxtaposition
+with it.  I consciously fail to shrink in fact from that
+extravagance--I risk it rather, for the sake of the moral involved;
+which is not that the particular production before us exhausts the
+interesting questions it raises, but that the Novel remains still,
+under the right persuasion, the most independent, most elastic, most
+prodigious of literary forms.
+
+
+HENRY JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book First
+
+
+
+I
+
+Strether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his
+friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive
+till evening he was not wholly disconcerted.  A telegram from him
+bespeaking a room "only if not noisy," reply paid, was produced for the
+enquirer at the office, so that the understanding they should meet at
+Chester rather than at Liverpool remained to that extent sound.  The
+same secret principle, however, that had prompted Strether not
+absolutely to desire Waymarsh's presence at the dock, that had led him
+thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of it, now operated to
+make him feel he could still wait without disappointment.  They would
+dine together at the worst, and, with all respect to dear old
+Waymarsh--if not even, for that matter, to himself--there was little
+fear that in the sequel they shouldn't see enough of each other.  The
+principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most
+newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive--the fruit of a
+sharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking,
+after so much separation, into his comrade's face, his business would
+be a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to
+present itself to the nearing steamer as the first "note," of Europe.
+Mixed with everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether's
+part, that it would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in
+quite a sufficient degree.
+
+That note had been meanwhile--since the previous afternoon, thanks to
+this happier device--such a consciousness of personal freedom as he
+hadn't known for years; such a deep taste of change and of having above
+all for the moment nobody and nothing to consider, as promised already,
+if headlong hope were not too foolish, to colour his adventure with
+cool success.  There were people on the ship with whom he had easily
+consorted--so far as ease could up to now be imputed to him--and who
+for the most part plunged straight into the current that set from the
+landing-stage to London; there were others who had invited him to a
+tryst at the inn and had even invoked his aid for a "look round" at the
+beauties of Liverpool; but he had stolen away from every one alike, had
+kept no appointment and renewed no acquaintance, had been indifferently
+aware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves fortunate in
+being, unlike himself, "met," and had even independently, unsociably,
+alone, without encounter or relapse and by mere quiet evasion, given
+his afternoon and evening to the immediate and the sensible.  They
+formed a qualified draught of Europe, an afternoon and an evening on
+the banks of the Mersey, but such as it was he took his potion at least
+undiluted.  He winced a little, truly, at the thought that Waymarsh
+might be already at Chester; he reflected that, should he have to
+describe himself there as having "got in" so early, it would be
+difficult to make the interval look particularly eager; but he was like
+a man who, elatedly finding in his pocket more money than usual,
+handles it a while and idly and pleasantly chinks it before addressing
+himself to the business of spending.  That he was prepared to be vague
+to Waymarsh about the hour of the ship's touching, and that he both
+wanted extremely to see him and enjoyed extremely the duration of
+delay--these things, it is to be conceived, were early signs in him
+that his relation to his actual errand might prove none of the
+simplest.  He was burdened, poor Strether--it had better be confessed
+at the outset--with the oddity of a double consciousness.  There was
+detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference.
+
+After the young woman in the glass cage had held up to him across her
+counter the pale-pink leaflet bearing his friend's name, which she
+neatly pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall, facing
+a lady who met his eyes as with an intention suddenly determined, and
+whose features--not freshly young, not markedly fine, but on happy
+terms with each other--came back to him as from a recent vision.  For a
+moment they stood confronted; then the moment placed her:  he had
+noticed her the day before, noticed her at his previous inn,
+where--again in the hall--she had been briefly engaged with some people
+of his own ship's company.  Nothing had actually passed between them,
+and he would as little have been able to say what had been the sign of
+her face for him on the first occasion as to name the ground of his
+present recognition. Recognition at any rate appeared to prevail on her
+own side as well--which would only have added to the mystery.  All she
+now began by saying to him nevertheless was that, having chanced to
+catch his enquiry, she was moved to ask, by his leave, if it were
+possibly a question of Mr. Waymarsh of Milrose Connecticut--Mr.
+Waymarsh the American lawyer.
+
+"Oh yes," he replied, "my very well-known friend.  He's to meet me
+here, coming up from Malvern, and I supposed he'd already have arrived.
+But he doesn't come till later, and I'm relieved not to have kept him.
+Do you know him?" Strether wound up.
+
+It wasn't till after he had spoken that he became aware of how much
+there had been in him of response; when the tone of her own rejoinder,
+as well as the play of something more in her face--something more, that
+is, than its apparently usual restless light--seemed to notify him.
+"I've met him at Milrose--where I used sometimes, a good while ago, to
+stay; I had friends there who were friends of his, and I've been at his
+house.  I won't answer for it that he would know me," Strether's new
+acquaintance pursued; "but I should be delighted to see him.  Perhaps,"
+she added, "I shall--for I'm staying over."  She paused while our
+friend took in these things, and it was as if a good deal of talk had
+already passed. They even vaguely smiled at it, and Strether presently
+observed that Mr. Waymarsh would, no doubt, be easily to be seen. This,
+however, appeared to affect the lady as if she might have advanced too
+far.  She appeared to have no reserves about anything. "Oh," she said,
+"he won't care!"--and she immediately thereupon remarked that she
+believed Strether knew the Munsters; the Munsters being the people he
+had seen her with at Liverpool.
+
+But he didn't, it happened, know the Munsters well enough to give the
+case much of a lift; so that they were left together as if over the
+mere laid table of conversation.  Her qualification of the mentioned
+connexion had rather removed than placed a dish, and there seemed
+nothing else to serve.  Their attitude remained, none the less, that of
+not forsaking the board; and the effect of this in turn was to give
+them the appearance of having accepted each other with an absence of
+preliminaries practically complete.  They moved along the hall
+together, and Strether's companion threw off that the hotel had the
+advantage of a garden.  He was aware by this time of his strange
+inconsequence:  he had shirked the intimacies of the steamer and had
+muffled the shock of Waymarsh only to find himself forsaken, in this
+sudden case, both of avoidance and of caution.  He passed, under this
+unsought protection and before he had so much as gone up to his room,
+into the garden of the hotel, and at the end of ten minutes had agreed
+to meet there again, as soon as he should have made himself tidy, the
+dispenser of such good assurances.  He wanted to look at the town, and
+they would forthwith look together.  It was almost as if she had been
+in possession and received him as a guest.  Her acquaintance with the
+place presented her in a manner as a hostess, and Strether had a rueful
+glance for the lady in the glass cage.  It was as if this personage had
+seen herself instantly superseded.
+
+When in a quarter of an hour he came down, what his hostess saw, what
+she might have taken in with a vision kindly adjusted, was the lean,
+the slightly loose figure of a man of the middle height and something
+more perhaps than the middle age--a man of five-and-fifty, whose most
+immediate signs were a marked bloodless brownness of face, a thick dark
+moustache, of characteristically American cut, growing strong and
+falling low, a head of hair still abundant but irregularly streaked
+with grey, and a nose of bold free prominence, the even line, the high
+finish, as it might have been called, of which, had a certain effect of
+mitigation.  A perpetual pair of glasses astride of this fine ridge,
+and a line, unusually deep and drawn, the prolonged pen-stroke of time,
+accompanying the curve of the moustache from nostril to chin, did
+something to complete the facial furniture that an attentive observer
+would have seen catalogued, on the spot, in the vision of the other
+party to Strether's appointment.  She waited for him in the garden, the
+other party, drawing on a pair of singularly fresh soft and elastic
+light gloves and presenting herself with a superficial readiness which,
+as he approached her over the small smooth lawn and in the watery
+English sunshine, he might, with his rougher preparation, have marked
+as the model for such an occasion.  She had, this lady, a perfect plain
+propriety, an expensive subdued suitability, that her companion was not
+free to analyse, but that struck him, so that his consciousness of it
+was instantly acute, as a quality quite new to him.  Before reaching
+her he stopped on the grass and went through the form of feeling for
+something, possibly forgotten, in the light overcoat he carried on his
+arm; yet the essence of the act was no more than the impulse to gain
+time.  Nothing could have been odder than Strether's sense of himself
+as at that moment launched in something of which the sense would be
+quite disconnected from the sense of his past and which was literally
+beginning there and then. It had begun in fact already upstairs and
+before the dressing glass that struck him as blocking further, so
+strangely, the dimness of the window of his dull bedroom; begun with a
+sharper survey of the elements of Appearance than he had for a long
+time been moved to make.  He had during those moments felt these
+elements to be not so much to his hand as he should have liked, and
+then had fallen back on the thought that they were precisely a matter
+as to which help was supposed to come from what he was about to do.  He
+was about to go up to London, so that hat and necktie might wait.  What
+had come as straight to him as a ball in a well-played game--and caught
+moreover not less neatly--was just the air, in the person of his
+friend, of having seen and chosen, the air of achieved possession of
+those vague qualities and quantities that collectively figured to him
+as the advantage snatched from lucky chances.  Without pomp or
+circumstance, certainly, as her original address to him, equally with
+his own response, had been, he would have sketched to himself his
+impression of her as:  "Well, she's more thoroughly civilized--!" If
+"More thoroughly than WHOM?" would not have been for him a sequel to
+this remark, that was just by reason of his deep consciousness of the
+bearing of his comparison.
+
+The amusement, at all events, of a civilisation intenser was
+what--familiar compatriot as she was, with the full tone of the
+compatriot and the rattling link not with mystery but only with dear
+dyspeptic Waymarsh--she appeared distinctly to promise.  His pause
+while he felt in his overcoat was positively the pause of confidence,
+and it enabled his eyes to make out as much of a case for her, in
+proportion, as her own made out for himself.  She affected him as
+almost insolently young; but an easily carried five-and-thirty could
+still do that.  She was, however, like himself marked and wan; only it
+naturally couldn't have been known to him how much a spectator looking
+from one to the other might have discerned that they had in common.  It
+wouldn't for such a spectator have been altogether insupposable that,
+each so finely brown and so sharply spare, each confessing so to dents
+of surface and aids to sight, to a disproportionate nose and a head
+delicately or grossly grizzled, they might have been brother and
+sister.  On this ground indeed there would have been a residuum of
+difference; such a sister having surely known in respect to such a
+brother the extremity of separation, and such a brother now feeling in
+respect to such a sister the extremity of surprise.  Surprise, it was
+true, was not on the other hand what the eyes of Strether's friend most
+showed him while she gave him, stroking her gloves smoother, the time
+he appreciated.  They had taken hold of him straightway measuring him
+up and down as if they knew how; as if he were human material they had
+already in some sort handled.  Their possessor was in truth, it may be
+communicated, the mistress of a hundred cases or categories,
+receptacles of the mind, subdivisions for convenience, in which, from a
+full experience, she pigeon-holed her fellow mortals with a hand as
+free as that of a compositor scattering type.  She was as equipped in
+this particular as Strether was the reverse, and it made an opposition
+between them which he might well have shrunk from submitting to if he
+had fully suspected it.  So far as he did suspect it he was on the
+contrary, after a short shake of his consciousness, as pleasantly
+passive as might be.  He really had a sort of sense of what she knew.
+He had quite the sense that she knew things he didn't, and though this
+was a concession that in general he found not easy to make to women, he
+made it now as good-humouredly as if it lifted a burden.  His eyes were
+so quiet behind his eternal nippers that they might almost have been
+absent without changing his face, which took its expression mainly, and
+not least its stamp of sensibility, from other sources, surface and
+grain and form.  He joined his guide in an instant, and then felt she
+had profited still better than he by his having been for the moments
+just mentioned, so at the disposal of her intelligence.  She knew even
+intimate things about him that he hadn't yet told her and perhaps never
+would.  He wasn't unaware that he had told her rather remarkably many
+for the time, but these were not the real ones.  Some of the real ones,
+however, precisely, were what she knew.
+
+They were to pass again through the hall of the inn to get into the
+street, and it was here she presently checked him with a question.
+"Have you looked up my name?"
+
+He could only stop with a laugh.  "Have you looked up mine?"
+
+"Oh dear, yes--as soon as you left me.  I went to the office and asked.
+Hadn't YOU better do the same?"
+
+He wondered.  "Find out who you are?--after the uplifted young woman
+there has seen us thus scrape acquaintance!"
+
+She laughed on her side now at the shade of alarm in his amusement.
+"Isn't it a reason the more?  If what you're afraid of is the injury
+for me--my being seen to walk off with a gentleman who has to ask who I
+am--I assure you I don't in the least mind.  Here, however," she
+continued, "is my card, and as I find there's something else again I
+have to say at the office, you can just study it during the moment I
+leave you."
+
+She left him after he had taken from her the small pasteboard she had
+extracted from her pocket-book, and he had extracted another from his
+own, to exchange with it, before she came back.  He read thus the
+simple designation "Maria Gostrey," to which was attached, in a corner
+of the card, with a number, the name of a street, presumably in Paris,
+without other appreciable identity than its foreignness.  He put the
+card into his waistcoat pocket, keeping his own meanwhile in evidence;
+and as he leaned against the door-post he met with the smile of a
+straying thought what the expanse before the hotel offered to his view.
+It was positively droll to him that he should already have Maria
+Gostrey, whoever she was--of which he hadn't really the least idea--in
+a place of safe keeping.  He had somehow an assurance that he should
+carefully preserve the little token he had just tucked in.  He gazed
+with unseeing lingering eyes as he followed some of the implications of
+his act, asking himself if he really felt admonished to qualify it as
+disloyal.  It was prompt, it was possibly even premature, and there was
+little doubt of the expression of face the sight of it would have
+produced in a certain person.  But if it was "wrong"--why then he had
+better not have come out at all.  At this, poor man, had he
+already--and even before meeting Waymarsh--arrived.  He had believed he
+had a limit, but the limit had been transcended within thirty-six
+hours.  By how long a space on the plane of manners or even of morals,
+moreover, he felt still more sharply after Maria Gostrey had come back
+to him and with a gay decisive "So now--!" led him forth into the
+world. This counted, it struck him as he walked beside her with his
+overcoat on an arm, his umbrella under another and his personal
+pasteboard a little stiffly retained between forefinger and thumb, this
+struck him as really, in comparison his introduction to things.  It
+hadn't been "Europe" at Liverpool no--not even in the dreadful
+delightful impressive streets the night before--to the extent his
+present companion made it so.  She hadn't yet done that so much as
+when, after their walk had lasted a few minutes and he had had time to
+wonder if a couple of sidelong glances from her meant that he had best
+have put on gloves she almost pulled him up with an amused challenge.
+"But why--fondly as it's so easy to imagine your clinging to it--don't
+you put it away?  Or if it's an inconvenience to you to carry it, one's
+often glad to have one's card back.  The fortune one spends in them!"
+
+Then he saw both that his way of marching with his own prepared tribute
+had affected her as a deviation in one of those directions he couldn't
+yet measure, and that she supposed this emblem to be still the one he
+had received from her.  He accordingly handed her the card as if in
+restitution, but as soon as she had it she felt the difference and,
+with her eyes on it, stopped short for apology. "I like," she observed,
+"your name."
+
+"Oh," he answered, "you won't have heard of it!" Yet he had his reasons
+for not being sure but that she perhaps might.
+
+Ah it was but too visible!  She read it over again as one who had never
+seen it.  "'Mr. Lewis Lambert Strether'"--she sounded it almost as
+freely as for any stranger.  She repeated however that she liked
+it--"particularly the Lewis Lambert.  It's the name of a novel of
+Balzac's."
+
+"Oh I know that!" said Strether.
+
+"But the novel's an awfully bad one."
+
+"I know that too," Strether smiled.  To which he added with an
+irrelevance that was only superficial:  "I come from Woollett
+Massachusetts."  It made her for some reason--the irrelevance or
+whatever--laugh.  Balzac had described many cities, but hadn't
+described Woollett Massachusetts.  "You say that," she returned, "as if
+you wanted one immediately to know the worst."
+
+"Oh I think it's a thing," he said, "that you must already have made
+out.  I feel it so that I certainly must look it, speak it, and, as
+people say there, 'act' it.  It sticks out of me, and you knew surely
+for yourself as soon as you looked at me."
+
+"The worst, you mean?"
+
+"Well, the fact of where I come from.  There at any rate it IS; so that
+you won't be able, if anything happens, to say I've not been straight
+with you."
+
+"I see"--and Miss Gostrey looked really interested in the point he had
+made.  "But what do you think of as happening?"
+
+Though he wasn't shy--which was rather anomalous--Strether gazed about
+without meeting her eyes; a motion that was frequent with him in talk,
+yet of which his words often seemed not at all the effect. "Why that
+you should find me too hopeless."  With which they walked on again
+together while she answered, as they went, that the most "hopeless" of
+her countryfolk were in general precisely those she liked best.  All
+sorts of other pleasant small things-small things that were yet large
+for him--flowered in the air of the occasion, but the bearing of the
+occasion itself on matters still remote concerns us too closely to
+permit us to multiply our illustrations. Two or three, however, in
+truth, we should perhaps regret to lose. The tortuous wall--girdle,
+long since snapped, of the little swollen city, half held in place by
+careful civic hands--wanders in narrow file between parapets smoothed
+by peaceful generations, pausing here and there for a dismantled gate
+or a bridged gap, with rises and drops, steps up and steps down, queer
+twists, queer contacts, peeps into homely streets and under the brows
+of gables, views of cathedral tower and waterside fields, of huddled
+English town and ordered English country.  Too deep almost for words
+was the delight of these things to Strether; yet as deeply mixed with
+it were certain images of his inward picture.  He had trod this walks
+in the far-off time, at twenty-five; but that, instead of spoiling it,
+only enriched it for present feeling and marked his renewal as a thing
+substantial enough to share.  It was with Waymarsh he should have
+shared it, and he was now accordingly taking from him something that
+was his due.  He looked repeatedly at his watch, and when he had done
+so for the fifth time Miss Gostrey took him up.
+
+"You're doing something that you think not right."
+
+It so touched the place that he quite changed colour and his laugh grew
+almost awkward.  "Am I enjoying it as much as THAT?"
+
+"You're not enjoying it, I think, so much as you ought."
+
+"I see"--he appeared thoughtfully to agree.  "Great is my privilege."
+
+"Oh it's not your privilege!  It has nothing to do with me.  It has to
+do with yourself.  Your failure's general."
+
+"Ah there you are!" he laughed.  "It's the failure of Woollett. THAT'S
+general."
+
+"The failure to enjoy," Miss Gostrey explained, "is what I mean."
+
+"Precisely.  Woollett isn't sure it ought to enjoy.  If it were it
+would.  But it hasn't, poor thing," Strether continued, "any one to
+show it how.  It's not like me.  I have somebody."
+
+They had stopped, in the afternoon sunshine--constantly pausing, in
+their stroll, for the sharper sense of what they saw--and Strether
+rested on one of the high sides of the old stony groove of the little
+rampart.  He leaned back on this support with his face to the tower of
+the cathedral, now admirably commanded by their station, the high
+red-brown mass, square and subordinately spired and crocketed,
+retouched and restored, but charming to his long-sealed eyes and with
+the first swallows of the year weaving their flight all round it.  Miss
+Gostrey lingered near him, full of an air, to which she more and more
+justified her right, of understanding the effect of things.  She quite
+concurred.  "You've indeed somebody." And she added:  "I wish you WOULD
+let me show you how!"
+
+"Oh I'm afraid of you!" he cheerfully pleaded.
+
+She kept on him a moment, through her glasses and through his own, a
+certain pleasant pointedness.  "Ah no, you're not! You're not in the
+least, thank goodness!  If you had been we shouldn't so soon have found
+ourselves here together.  I think," she comfortably concluded, "you
+trust me."
+
+"I think I do!--but that's exactly what I'm afraid of.  I shouldn't
+mind if I didn't.  It's falling thus in twenty minutes so utterly into
+your hands.  I dare say," Strether continued, "it's a sort of thing
+you're thoroughly familiar with; but nothing more extraordinary has
+ever happened to me."
+
+She watched him with all her kindness.  "That means simply that you've
+recognised me--which IS rather beautiful and rare.  You see what I am."
+As on this, however, he protested, with a good-humoured headshake, a
+resignation of any such claim, she had a moment of explanation.  "If
+you'll only come on further as you HAVE come you'll at any rate make
+out.  My own fate has been too many for me, and I've succumbed to it.
+I'm a general guide--to 'Europe,' don't you know?  I wait for people--I
+put them through.  I pick them up--I set them down.  I'm a sort of
+superior 'courier-maid.' I'm a companion at large.  I take people, as
+I've told you, about.  I never sought it--it has come to me.  It has
+been my fate, and one's fate one accepts.  It's a dreadful thing to
+have to say, in so wicked a world, but I verily believe that, such as
+you see me, there's nothing I don't know.  I know all the shops and the
+prices--but I know worse things still.  I bear on my back the huge load
+of our national consciousness, or, in other words--for it comes to
+that--of our nation itself.  Of what is our nation composed but of the
+men and women individually on my shoulders?  I don't do it, you know,
+for any particular advantage.  I don't do it, for instance--some people
+do, you know--for money."
+
+Strether could only listen and wonder and weigh his chance.  "And yet,
+affected as you are then to so many of your clients, you can scarcely
+be said to do it for love."  He waited a moment.  "How do we reward
+you?"
+
+She had her own hesitation, but "You don't!" she finally returned,
+setting him again in motion.  They went on, but in a few minutes,
+though while still thinking over what she had said, he once more took
+out his watch; mechanically, unconsciously and as if made nervous by
+the mere exhilaration of what struck him as her strange and cynical
+wit.  He looked at the hour without seeing it, and then, on something
+again said by his companion, had another pause. "You're really in
+terror of him."
+
+He smiled a smile that he almost felt to be sickly.  "Now you can see
+why I'm afraid of you."
+
+"Because I've such illuminations?  Why they're all for your help! It's
+what I told you," she added, "just now.  You feel as if this were
+wrong."
+
+He fell back once more, settling himself against the parapet as if to
+hear more about it.  "Then get me out!"
+
+Her face fairly brightened for the joy of the appeal, but, as if it
+were a question of immediate action, she visibly considered.  "Out of
+waiting for him?--of seeing him at all?"
+
+"Oh no--not that," said poor Strether, looking grave.  "I've got to
+wait for him--and I want very much to see him.  But out of the terror.
+You did put your finger on it a few minutes ago.  It's general, but it
+avails itself of particular occasions.  That's what it's doing for me
+now.  I'm always considering something else; something else, I mean,
+than the thing of the moment.  The obsession of the other thing is the
+terror.  I'm considering at present for instance something else than
+YOU."
+
+She listened with charming earnestness.  "Oh you oughtn't to do that!"
+
+"It's what I admit.  Make it then impossible."
+
+She continued to think.  "Is it really an 'order' from you?--that I
+shall take the job?  WILL you give yourself up?"
+
+Poor Strether heaved his sigh.  "If I only could! But that's the deuce
+of it--that I never can.  No--I can't."
+
+She wasn't, however, discouraged.  "But you want to at least?"
+
+"Oh unspeakably!"
+
+"Ah then, if you'll try!"--and she took over the job, as she had called
+it, on the spot.  "Trust me!" she exclaimed, and the action of this, as
+they retraced their steps, was presently to make him pass his hand into
+her arm in the manner of a benign dependent paternal old person who
+wishes to be "nice" to a younger one.  If he drew it out again indeed
+as they approached the inn this may have been because, after more talk
+had passed between them, the relation of age, or at least of
+experience--which, for that matter, had already played to and fro with
+some freedom--affected him as incurring a readjustment.  It was at all
+events perhaps lucky that they arrived in sufficiently separate fashion
+within range of the hotel-door.  The young lady they had left in the
+glass cage watched as if she had come to await them on the threshold.
+At her side stood a person equally interested, by his attitude, in
+their return, and the effect of the sight of whom was instantly to
+determine for Strether another of those responsive arrests that we have
+had so repeatedly to note.  He left it to Miss Gostrey to name, with
+the fine full bravado as it almost struck him, of her "Mr. Waymarsh!"
+what was to have been, what--he more than ever felt as his short stare
+of suspended welcome took things in--would have been, but for herself,
+his doom.  It was already upon him even at that distance--Mr. Waymarsh
+was for HIS part joyless.
+
+
+
+II
+
+He had none the less to confess to this friend that evening that he
+knew almost nothing about her, and it was a deficiency that Waymarsh,
+even with his memory refreshed by contact, by her own prompt and lucid
+allusions and enquiries, by their having publicly partaken of dinner in
+her company, and by another stroll, to which she was not a stranger,
+out into the town to look at the cathedral by moonlight--it was a blank
+that the resident of Milrose, though admitting acquaintance with the
+Munsters, professed himself unable to fill.  He had no recollection of
+Miss Gostrey, and two or three questions that she put to him about
+those members of his circle had, to Strether's observation, the same
+effect he himself had already more directly felt--the effect of
+appearing to place all knowledge, for the time, on this original
+woman's side.  It interested him indeed to mark the limits of any such
+relation for her with his friend as there could possibly be a question
+of, and it particularly struck him that they were to be marked
+altogether in Waymarsh's quarter.  This added to his own sense of
+having gone far with her-gave him an early illustration of a much
+shorter course.  There was a certitude he immediately grasped--a
+conviction that Waymarsh would quite fail, as it were, and on whatever
+degree of acquaintances to profit by her.
+
+There had been after the first interchange among the three a talk of
+some five minutes in the hall, and then the two men had adjourned to
+the garden, Miss Gostrey for the time disappearing. Strether in due
+course accompanied his friend to the room he had bespoken and had,
+before going out, scrupulously visited; where at the end of another
+half-hour he had no less discreetly left him. On leaving him he
+repaired straight to his own room, but with the prompt effect of
+feeling the compass of that chamber resented by his condition.  There
+he enjoyed at once the first consequence of their reunion.  A place was
+too small for him after it that had seemed large enough before.  He had
+awaited it with something he would have been sorry, have been almost
+ashamed not to recognise as emotion, yet with a tacit assumption at the
+same time that emotion would in the event find itself relieved.  The
+actual oddity was that he was only more excited; and his excitement-to
+which indeed he would have found it difficult instantly to give a
+name--brought him once more downstairs and caused him for some minutes
+vaguely to wander.  He went once more to the garden; he looked into the
+public room, found Miss Gostrey writing letters and backed out; he
+roamed, fidgeted and wasted time; but he was to have his more intimate
+session with his friend before the evening closed.
+
+It was late--not till Strether had spent an hour upstairs with
+him--that this subject consented to betake himself to doubtful rest.
+Dinner and the subsequent stroll by moonlight--a dream, on Strether's
+part, of romantic effects rather prosaically merged in a mere missing
+of thicker coats--had measurably intervened, and this midnight
+conference was the result of Waymarsh's having (when they were free, as
+he put it, of their fashionable friend) found the smoking-room not
+quite what he wanted, and yet bed what he wanted less.  His most
+frequent form of words was that he knew himself, and they were applied
+on this occasion to his certainty of not sleeping.  He knew himself
+well enough to know that he should have a night of prowling unless he
+should succeed, as a preliminary, in getting prodigiously tired.  If
+the effort directed to this end involved till a late hour the presence
+of Strether--consisted, that is, in the detention of the latter for
+full discourse--there was yet an impression of minor discipline
+involved for our friend in the picture Waymarsh made as he sat in
+trousers and shirt on the edge of his couch.  With his long legs
+extended and his large back much bent, he nursed alternately, for an
+almost incredible time, his elbows and his beard.  He struck his
+visitor as extremely, as almost wilfully uncomfortable; yet what had
+this been for Strether, from that first glimpse of him disconcerted in
+the porch of the hotel, but the predominant notes.  The discomfort was
+in a manner contagious, as well as also in a manner inconsequent and
+unfounded; the visitor felt that unless he should get used to it--or
+unless Waymarsh himself should--it would constitute a menace for his
+own prepared, his own already confirmed, consciousness of the
+agreeable.  On their first going up together to the room Strether had
+selected for him Waymarsh had looked it over in silence and with a sigh
+that represented for his companion, if not the habit of disapprobation,
+at least the despair of felicity; and this look had recurred to
+Strether as the key of much he had since observed. "Europe," he had
+begun to gather from these things, had up to now rather failed of its
+message to him; he hadn't got into tune with it and had at the end of
+three months almost renounced any such expectation.
+
+He really appeared at present to insist on that by just perching there
+with the gas in his eyes.  This of itself somehow conveyed the futility
+of single rectifications in a multiform failure.  He had a large
+handsome head and a large sallow seamed face--a striking significant
+physiognomic total, the upper range of which, the great political brow,
+the thick loose hair, the dark fuliginous eyes, recalled even to a
+generation whose standard had dreadfully deviated the impressive image,
+familiar by engravings and busts, of some great national worthy of the
+earlier part of the mid-century. He was of the personal type--and it
+was an element in the power and promise that in their early time
+Strether had found in him--of the American statesman, the statesman
+trained in "Congressional halls," of an elder day.  The legend had been
+in later years that as the lower part of his face, which was weak, and
+slightly crooked, spoiled the likeness, this was the real reason for
+the growth of his beard, which might have seemed to spoil it for those
+not in the secret.  He shook his mane; he fixed, with his admirable
+eyes, his auditor or his observer; he wore no glasses and had a way,
+partly formidable, yet also partly encouraging, as from a
+representative to a constituent, of looking very hard at those who
+approached him. He met you as if you had knocked and he had bidden you
+enter. Strether, who hadn't seen him for so long an interval,
+apprehended him now with a freshness of taste, and had perhaps never
+done him such ideal justice.  The head was bigger, the eyes finer, than
+they need have been for the career; but that only meant, after all,
+that the career was itself expressive.  What it expressed at midnight
+in the gas-glaring bedroom at Chester was that the subject of it had,
+at the end of years, barely escaped, by flight in time, a general
+nervous collapse.  But this very proof of the full life, as the full
+life was understood at Milrose, would have made to Strether's
+imagination an element in which Waymarsh could have floated easily had
+he only consented to float.  Alas nothing so little resembled floating
+as the rigour with which, on the edge of his bed, he hugged his posture
+of prolonged impermanence.  It suggested to his comrade something that
+always, when kept up, worried him--a person established in a
+railway-coach with a forward inclination.  It represented the angle at
+which poor Waymarsh was to sit through the ordeal of Europe.
+
+Thanks to the stress of occupation, the strain of professions, the
+absorption and embarrassment of each, they had not, at home, during
+years before this sudden brief and almost bewildering reign of
+comparative ease, found so much as a day for a meeting; a fact that was
+in some degree an explanation of the sharpness with which most of his
+friend's features stood out to Strether.  Those he had lost sight of
+since the early time came back to him; others that it was never
+possible to forget struck him now as sitting, clustered and expectant,
+like a somewhat defiant family-group, on the doorstep of their
+residence.  The room was narrow for its length, and the occupant of the
+bed thrust so far a pair of slippered feet that the visitor had almost
+to step over them in his recurrent rebounds from his chair to fidget
+back and forth.  There were marks the friends made on things to talk
+about, and on things not to, and one of the latter in particular fell
+like the tap of chalk on the blackboard. Married at thirty, Waymarsh
+had not lived with his wife for fifteen years, and it came up vividly
+between them in the glare of the gas that Strether wasn't to ask about
+her.  He knew they were still separate and that she lived at hotels,
+travelled in Europe, painted her face and wrote her husband abusive
+letters, of not one of which, to a certainty, that sufferer spared
+himself the perusal; but he respected without difficulty the cold
+twilight that had settled on this side of his companion's life.  It was
+a province in which mystery reigned and as to which Waymarsh had never
+spoken the informing word.  Strether, who wanted to do him the highest
+justice wherever he COULD do it, singularly admired him for the dignity
+of this reserve, and even counted it as one of the grounds--grounds all
+handled and numbered--for ranking him, in the range of their
+acquaintance, as a success.  He WAS a success, Waymarsh, in spite of
+overwork, or prostration, of sensible shrinkage, of his wife's letters
+and of his not liking Europe.  Strether would have reckoned his own
+career less futile had he been able to put into it anything so handsome
+as so much fine silence.  One might one's self easily have left Mrs.
+Waymarsh; and one would assuredly have paid one's tribute to the ideal
+in covering with that attitude the derision of having been left by her.
+Her husband had held his tongue and had made a large income; and these
+were in especial the achievements as to which Strether envied him.  Our
+friend had had indeed on his side too a subject for silence, which he
+fully appreciated; but it was a matter of a different sort, and the
+figure of the income he had arrived at had never been high enough to
+look any one in the face.
+
+"I don't know as I quite see what you require it for.  You don't appear
+sick to speak of."  It was of Europe Waymarsh thus finally spoke.
+
+"Well," said Strether, who fell as much as possible into step, "I guess
+I don't FEEL sick now that I've started.  But I had pretty well run
+down before I did start."
+
+Waymarsh raised his melancholy look.  "Ain't you about up to your usual
+average?"
+
+It was not quite pointedly sceptical, but it seemed somehow a plea for
+the purest veracity, and it thereby affected our friend as the very
+voice of Milrose.  He had long since made a mental distinction--though
+never in truth daring to betray it--between the voice of Milrose and
+the voice even of Woollett.  It was the former he felt, that was most
+in the real tradition.  There had been occasions in his past when the
+sound of it had reduced him to temporary confusion, and the present,
+for some reason, suddenly became such another.  It was nevertheless no
+light matter that the very effect of his confusion should be to make
+him again prevaricate.  "That description hardly does justice to a man
+to whom it has done such a lot of good to see YOU."
+
+Waymarsh fixed on his washing-stand the silent detached stare with
+which Milrose in person, as it were, might have marked the
+unexpectedness of a compliment from Woollett, and Strether for his
+part, felt once more like Woollett in person.  "I mean," his friend
+presently continued, "that your appearance isn't as bad as I've seen
+it:  it compares favourably with what it was when I last noticed it."
+On this appearance Waymarsh's eyes yet failed to rest; it was almost as
+if they obeyed an instinct of propriety, and the effect was still
+stronger when, always considering the basin and jug, he added:  "You've
+filled out some since then."
+
+"I'm afraid I have," Strether laughed:  "one does fill out some with
+all one takes in, and I've taken in, I dare say, more than I've natural
+room for.  I was dog-tired when I sailed."  It had the oddest sound of
+cheerfulness.
+
+"I was dog-tired," his companion returned, "when I arrived, and it's
+this wild hunt for rest that takes all the life out of me.  The fact
+is, Strether--and it's a comfort to have you here at last to say it to;
+though I don't know, after all, that I've really waited; I've told it
+to people I've met in the cars--the fact is, such a country as this
+ain't my KIND of country anyway.  There ain't a country I've seen over
+here that DOES seem my kind.  Oh I don't say but what there are plenty
+of pretty places and remarkable old things; but the trouble is that I
+don't seem to feel anywhere in tune.  That's one of the reasons why I
+suppose I've gained so little.  I haven't had the first sign of that
+lift I was led to expect."  With this he broke out more earnestly.
+"Look here--I want to go back."
+
+His eyes were all attached to Strether's now, for he was one of the men
+who fully face you when they talk of themselves.  This enabled his
+friend to look at him hard and immediately to appear to the highest
+advantage in his eyes by doing so.  "That's a genial thing to say to a
+fellow who has come out on purpose to meet you!"
+
+Nothing could have been finer, on this, than Waymarsh's sombre glow.
+"HAVE you come out on purpose?"
+
+"Well--very largely."
+
+"I thought from the way you wrote there was something back of it."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "Back of my desire to be with you?"
+
+"Back of your prostration."
+
+Strether, with a smile made more dim by a certain consciousness, shook
+his head.  "There are all the causes of it!"
+
+"And no particular cause that seemed most to drive you?"
+
+Our friend could at last conscientiously answer.  "Yes.  One.  There IS
+a matter that has had much to do with my coming out."
+
+Waymarsh waited a little.  "Too private to mention?"
+
+"No, not too private--for YOU.  Only rather complicated."
+
+"Well," said Waymarsh, who had waited again, "I MAY lose my mind over
+here, but I don't know as I've done so yet."
+
+"Oh you shall have the whole thing.  But not tonight."
+
+Waymarsh seemed to sit stiffer and to hold his elbows tighter.  "Why
+not--if I can't sleep?"
+
+"Because, my dear man, I CAN!"
+
+"Then where's your prostration?"
+
+"Just in that--that I can put in eight hours."  And Strether brought it
+out that if Waymarsh didn't "gain" it was because he didn't go to bed:
+the result of which was, in its order, that, to do the latter justice,
+he permitted his friend to insist on his really getting settled.
+Strether, with a kind coercive hand for it, assisted him to this
+consummation, and again found his own part in their relation
+auspiciously enlarged by the smaller touches of lowering the lamp and
+seeing to a sufficiency of blanket.  It somehow ministered for him to
+indulgence to feel Waymarsh, who looked unnaturally big and black in
+bed, as much tucked in as a patient in a hospital and, with his
+covering up to his chin, as much simplified by it He hovered in vague
+pity, to be brief, while his companion challenged him out of the
+bedclothes.  "Is she really after you?  Is that what's behind?"
+
+Strether felt an uneasiness at the direction taken by his companion's
+insight, but he played a little at uncertainty.  "Behind my coming out?"
+
+"Behind your prostration or whatever.  It's generally felt, you know,
+that she follows you up pretty close."
+
+Strether's candour was never very far off.  "Oh it has occurred to you
+that I'm literally running away from Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+"Well, I haven't KNOWN but what you are.  You're a very attractive man,
+Strether.  You've seen for yourself," said Waymarsh "what that lady
+downstairs makes of it.  Unless indeed," he rambled on with an effect
+between the ironic and the anxious, "it's you who are after HER.  IS
+Mrs. Newsome OVER here?"  He spoke as with a droll dread of her.
+
+It made his friend--though rather dimly--smile.  "Dear no she's safe,
+thank goodness--as I think I more and more feel--at home.  She thought
+of coming, but she gave it up.  I've come in a manner instead of her;
+and come to that extent--for you're right in your inference--on her
+business.  So you see there IS plenty of connexion."
+
+Waymarsh continued to see at least all there was.  "Involving
+accordingly the particular one I've referred to?"
+
+Strether took another turn about the room, giving a twitch to his
+companion's blanket and finally gaining the door.  His feeling was that
+of a nurse who had earned personal rest by having made everything
+straight.  "Involving more things than I can think of breaking ground
+on now.  But don't be afraid--you shall have them from me:  you'll
+probably find yourself having quite as much of them as you can do with.
+I shall--if we keep together--very much depend on your impression of
+some of them."
+
+Waymarsh's acknowledgement of this tribute was characteristically
+indirect.  "You mean to say you don't believe we WILL keep together?"
+
+"I only glance at the danger," Strether paternally said, "because when
+I hear you wail to go back I seem to see you open up such possibilities
+of folly."
+
+Waymarsh took it--silent a little--like a large snubbed child "What are
+you going to do with me?"
+
+It was the very question Strether himself had put to Miss Gostrey, and
+he wondered if he had sounded like that.  But HE at least could be more
+definite.  "I'm going to take you right down to London."
+
+"Oh I've been down to London!" Waymarsh more softly moaned.  "I've no
+use, Strether, for anything down there."
+
+"Well," said Strether, good-humouredly, "I guess you've some use for
+me."
+
+"So I've got to go?"
+
+"Oh you've got to go further yet."
+
+"Well," Waymarsh sighed, "do your damnedest! Only you WILL tell me
+before you lead me on all the way--?"
+
+Our friend had again so lost himself, both for amusement and for
+contrition, in the wonder of whether he had made, in his own challenge
+that afternoon, such another figure, that he for an instant missed the
+thread.  "Tell you--?"
+
+"Why what you've got on hand."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "Why it's such a matter as that even if I
+positively wanted I shouldn't be able to keep it from you."
+
+Waymarsh gloomily gazed.  "What does that mean then but that your trip
+is just FOR her?"
+
+"For Mrs. Newsome?  Oh it certainly is, as I say.  Very much."
+
+"Then why do you also say it's for me?"
+
+Strether, in impatience, violently played with his latch.  "It's simple
+enough.  It's for both of you."
+
+Waymarsh at last turned over with a groan.  "Well, I won't marry you!"
+
+"Neither, when it comes to that--!" But the visitor had already laughed
+and escaped.
+
+
+
+III
+
+He had told Miss Gostrey he should probably take, for departure with
+Waymarsh, some afternoon train, and it thereupon in the morning
+appeared that this lady had made her own plan for an earlier one.  She
+had breakfasted when Strether came into the coffee-room; but, Waymarsh
+not having yet emerged, he was in time to recall her to the terms of
+their understanding and to pronounce her discretion overdone.  She was
+surely not to break away at the very moment she had created a want.  He
+had met her as she rose from her little table in a window, where, with
+the morning papers beside her, she reminded him, as he let her know, of
+Major Pendennis breakfasting at his club--a compliment of which she
+professed a deep appreciation; and he detained her as pleadingly as if
+he had already--and notably under pressure of the visions of the
+night--learned to be unable to do without her.  She must teach him at
+all events, before she went, to order breakfast as breakfast was
+ordered in Europe, and she must especially sustain him in the problem
+of ordering for Waymarsh.  The latter had laid upon his friend, by
+desperate sounds through the door of his room, dreadful divined
+responsibilities in respect to beefsteak and oranges--responsibilities
+which Miss Gostrey took over with an alertness of action that matched
+her quick intelligence.  She had before this weaned the expatriated
+from traditions compared with which the matutinal beefsteak was but the
+creature of an hour, and it was not for her, with some of her memories,
+to falter in the path though she freely enough declared, on reflexion,
+that there was always in such cases a choice of opposed policies.
+"There are times when to give them their head, you know--!"
+
+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?"
+
+"Oh that they shouldn't come is as yet too much to ask.  What I attend
+to is that they come quickly and return still more so.  I meet them to
+help it to be over as soon as possible,  and though I don't stop them
+I've my way of putting them through.  That's my little system; and, if
+you want to know,"  said Maria Gostrey, "it's my real secret, my
+innermost mission and use.  I only seem, you see, to beguile and
+approve; but I've thought it all out and I'm working all the while
+underground.  I can't perhaps quite give you my formula, but I think
+that practically I succeed.  I send you back spent.  So you stay back.
+Passed through my hands--"
+
+"We don't turn up again?"  The further she went the further he always
+saw himself able to follow.  "I don't want your formula--I feel quite
+enough, as I hinted yesterday, your abysses.  Spent!" he echoed.  "If
+that's how you're arranging so subtly to send me I thank you for the
+warning."
+
+For a minute, amid the pleasantness--poetry in tariffed items, but all
+the more, for guests already convicted, a challenge to consumption--they
+smiled at each other in confirmed fellowship.  "Do you call it subtly?
+It's a plain poor tale.  Besides, you're a special case."
+
+"Oh special cases--that's weak!" She was weak enough, further still, to
+defer her journey and agree to accompany the gentlemen on their own,
+might a separate carriage mark her independence; though it was in spite
+of this to befall after luncheon that she went off alone and that, with
+a tryst taken for a day of her company in London, they lingered another
+night.  She had, during the morning--spent in a way that he was to
+remember later on as the very climax of his foretaste, as warm with
+presentiments, with what he would have called collapses--had all sorts
+of things out with Strether; and among them the fact that though there
+was never a moment of her life when she wasn't "due" somewhere, there
+was yet scarce a perfidy to others of which she wasn't capable for his
+sake.  She explained moreover that wherever she happened to be she
+found a dropped thread to pick up, a ragged edge to repair, some
+familiar appetite in ambush, jumping out as she approached, yet
+appeasable with a temporary biscuit.  It became, on her taking the risk
+of the deviation imposed on him by her insidious arrangement of his
+morning meal, a point of honour for her not to fail with Waymarsh of
+the larger success too; and her subsequent boast to Strether was that
+she had made their friend fare--and quite without his knowing what was
+the matter--as Major Pendennis would have fared at the Megatherium. She
+had made him breakfast like a gentleman, and it was nothing, she
+forcibly asserted, to what she would yet make him do.  She made him
+participate in the slow reiterated ramble with which, for Strether, the
+new day amply filled itself; and it was by her art that he somehow had
+the air, on the ramparts and in the Rows, of carrying a point of his
+own.
+
+The three strolled and stared and gossiped, or at least the two did;
+the case really yielding for their comrade, if analysed, but the
+element of stricken silence.  This element indeed affected Strether as
+charged with audible rumblings, but he was conscious of the care of
+taking it explicitly as a sign of pleasant peace.  He wouldn't appeal
+too much, for that provoked stiffness; yet he wouldn't be too freely
+tacit, for that suggested giving up. Waymarsh himself adhered to an
+ambiguous dumbness that might have represented either the growth of a
+perception or the despair of one; and at times and in places--where the
+low-browed galleries were darkest, the opposite gables queerest, the
+solicitations of every kind densest--the others caught him fixing hard
+some object of minor interest, fixing even at moments nothing
+discernible, as if he were indulging it with a truce.  When he met
+Strether's eye on such occasions he looked guilty and furtive, fell the
+next minute into some attitude of retractation.  Our friend couldn't
+show him the right things for fear of provoking some total
+renouncement, and was tempted even to show him the wrong in order to
+make him differ with triumph.  There were moments when he himself felt
+shy of professing the full sweetness of the taste of leisure, and there
+were others when he found himself feeling as if his passages of
+interchange with the lady at his side might fall upon the third member
+of their party very much as Mr. Burchell, at Dr. Primrose's fireside,
+was influenced by the high flights of the visitors from London.  The
+smallest things so arrested and amused him that he repeatedly almost
+apologised--brought up afresh in explanation his plea of a previous
+grind.  He was aware at the same time that his grind had been as
+nothing to Waymarsh's, and he repeatedly confessed that, to cover his
+frivolity, he was doing his best for his previous virtue.  Do what he
+might, in any case, his previous virtue was still there, and it seemed
+fairly to stare at him out of the windows of shops that were not as the
+shops of Woollett, fairly to make him want things that he shouldn't
+know what to do with.  It was by the oddest, the least admissible of
+laws demoralising him now; and the way it boldly took was to make him
+want more wants. These first walks in Europe were in fact a kind of
+finely lurid intimation of what one might find at the end of that
+process.  Had he come back after long years, in something already so
+like the evening of life, only to be exposed to it?  It was at all
+events over the shop-windows that he made, with Waymarsh, most free;
+though it would have been easier had not the latter most sensibly
+yielded to the appeal of the merely useful trades.  He pierced with his
+sombre detachment the plate-glass of ironmongers and saddlers, while
+Strether flaunted an affinity with the dealers in stamped letter-paper
+and in smart neckties.  Strether was in fact recurrently shameless in
+the presence of the tailors, though it was just over the heads of the
+tailors that his countryman most loftily looked.  This gave Miss
+Gostrey a grasped opportunity to back up Waymarsh at his expense.  The
+weary lawyer--it was unmistakeable--had a conception of dress; but
+that, in view of some of the features of the effect produced, was just
+what made the danger of insistence on it.  Strether wondered if he by
+this time thought Miss Gostrey less fashionable or Lambert Strether
+more so; and it appeared probable that most of the remarks exchanged
+between this latter pair about passers, figures, faces, personal types,
+exemplified in their degree the disposition to talk as "society" talked.
+
+Was what was happening to himself then, was what already HAD happened,
+really that a woman of fashion was floating him into society and that
+an old friend deserted on the brink was watching the force of the
+current?  When the woman of fashion permitted Strether--as she
+permitted him at the most--the purchase of a pair of gloves, the terms
+she made about it, the prohibition of neckties and other items till she
+should be able to guide him through the Burlington Arcade, were such as
+to fall upon a sensitive ear as a challenge to just imputations.  Miss
+Gostrey was such a woman of fashion as could make without a symptom of
+vulgar blinking an appointment for the Burlington Arcade.  Mere
+discriminations about a pair of gloves could thus at any rate
+represent--always for such sensitive ears as were in
+question--possibilities of something that Strether could make a mark
+against only as the peril of apparent wantonness.  He had quite the
+consciousness of his new friend, for their companion, that he might
+have had of a Jesuit in petticoats, a representative of the recruiting
+interests of the Catholic Church.  The Catholic Church, for
+Waymarsh-that was to say the enemy, the monster of bulging eyes and
+far-reaching quivering groping tentacles--was exactly society, exactly
+the multiplication of shibboleths, exactly the discrimination of types
+and tones, exactly the wicked old Rows of Chester, rank with feudalism;
+exactly in short Europe.
+
+There was light for observation, however, in an incident that occurred
+just before they turned back to luncheon.  Waymarsh had been for a
+quarter of an hour exceptionally mute and distant, and something, or
+other--Strether was never to make out exactly what--proved, as it were,
+too much for him after his comrades had stood for three minutes taking
+in, while they leaned on an old balustrade that guarded the edge of the
+Row, a particularly crooked and huddled street-view.  "He thinks us
+sophisticated, he thinks us worldly, he thinks us wicked, he thinks us
+all sorts of queer things," Strether reflected; for wondrous were the
+vague quantities our friend had within a couple of short days acquired
+the habit of conveniently and conclusively lumping together. There
+seemed moreover a direct connexion between some such inference and a
+sudden grim dash taken by Waymarsh to the opposite side.  This movement
+was startlingly sudden, and his companions at first supposed him to
+have espied, to be pursuing, the glimpse of an acquaintance. They next
+made out, however, that an open door had instantly received him, and
+they then recognised him as engulfed in the establishment of a
+jeweller, behind whose glittering front he was lost to view.  The fact
+had somehow the note of a demonstration, and it left each of the others
+to show a face almost of fear.  But Miss Gostrey broke into a laugh.
+"What's the matter with him?"
+
+"Well," said Strether, "he can't stand it."
+
+"But can't stand what?"
+
+"Anything.  Europe."
+
+"Then how will that jeweller help him?"
+
+Strether seemed to make it out, from their position, between the
+interstices of arrayed watches, of close-hung dangling gewgaws. "You'll
+see."
+
+"Ah that's just what--if he buys anything--I'm afraid of:  that I shall
+see something rather dreadful."
+
+Strether studied the finer appearances.  "He may buy everything."
+
+"Then don't you think we ought to follow him?"
+
+"Not for worlds.  Besides we can't.  We're paralysed.  We exchange a
+long scared look, we publicly tremble.  The thing is, you see, we
+'realise.' He has struck for freedom."
+
+She wondered but she laughed.  "Ah what a price to pay! And I was
+preparing some for him so cheap."
+
+"No, no," Strether went on, frankly amused now; "don't call it that:
+the kind of freedom you deal in is dear."  Then as to justify himself:
+"Am I not in MY way trying it?  It's this."
+
+"Being here, you mean, with me?"
+
+"Yes, and talking to you as I do.  I've known you a few hours, and I've
+known HIM all my life; so that if the ease I thus take with you about
+him isn't magnificent"--and the thought of it held him a moment--"why
+it's rather base."
+
+"It's magnificent!" said Miss Gostrey to make an end of it.  "And you
+should hear," she added, "the ease I take--and I above all intend to
+take--with Mr. Waymarsh."
+
+Strether thought.  "About ME?  Ah that's no equivalent. The equivalent
+would be Waymarsh's himself serving me up--his remorseless analysis of
+me.  And he'll never do that"--he was sadly clear.  "He'll never
+remorselessly analyse me." He quite held her with the authority of
+this.  "He'll never say a word to you about me."
+
+She took it in; she did it justice; yet after an instant her reason,
+her restless irony, disposed of it.  "Of course he won't. For what do
+you take people, that they're able to say words about anything, able
+remorselessly to analyse?  There are not many like you and me.  It will
+be only because he's too stupid."
+
+It stirred in her friend a sceptical echo which was at the same time
+the protest of the faith of years.  "Waymarsh stupid?"
+
+"Compared with you."
+
+Strether had still his eyes on the jeweller's front, and he waited a
+moment to answer.  "He's a success of a kind that I haven't approached."
+
+"Do you mean he has made money?"
+
+"He makes it--to my belief.  And I," said Strether, "though with a back
+quite as bent, have never made anything.  I'm a perfectly equipped
+failure."
+
+He feared an instant she'd ask him if he meant he was poor; and he was
+glad she didn't, for he really didn't know to what the truth on this
+unpleasant point mightn't have prompted her.  She only, however,
+confirmed his assertion.  "Thank goodness you're a failure--it's why I
+so distinguish you! Anything else to-day is too hideous.  Look about
+you--look at the successes.  Would you BE one, on your honour?  Look,
+moreover," she continued, "at me."
+
+For a little accordingly their eyes met.  "I see," Strether returned.
+"You too are out of it."
+
+"The superiority you discern in me," she concurred, "announces my
+futility.  If you knew," she sighed, "the dreams of my youth! But our
+realities are what has brought us together.  We're beaten brothers in
+arms."
+
+He smiled at her kindly enough, but he shook his head.  "It doesn't
+alter the fact that you're expensive.  You've cost me already--!"
+
+But he had hung fire.  "Cost you what?"
+
+"Well, my past--in one great lump.  But no matter," he laughed: "I'll
+pay with my last penny."
+
+Her attention had unfortunately now been engaged by their comrade's
+return, for Waymarsh met their view as he came out of his shop.  "I
+hope he hasn't paid," she said, "with HIS last; though I'm convinced he
+has been splendid, and has been so for you."
+
+"Ah no--not that!"
+
+"Then for me?"
+
+"Quite as little."  Waymarsh was by this time near enough to show signs
+his friend could read, though he seemed to look almost carefully at
+nothing in particular.
+
+"Then for himself?"
+
+"For nobody.  For nothing.  For freedom."
+
+"But what has freedom to do with it?"
+
+Strether's answer was indirect.  "To be as good as you and me.  But
+different."
+
+She had had time to take in their companion's face; and with it, as
+such things were easy for her, she took in all.  "Different--yes. But
+better!"
+
+If Waymarsh was sombre he was also indeed almost sublime.  He told them
+nothing, left his absence unexplained, and though they were convinced
+he had made some extraordinary purchase they were never to learn its
+nature.  He only glowered grandly at the tops of the old gables.  "It's
+the sacred rage," Strether had had further time to say; and this sacred
+rage was to become between them, for convenient comprehension, the
+description of one of his periodical necessities.  It was Strether who
+eventually contended that it did make him better than they.  But by
+that time Miss Gostrey was convinced that she didn't want to be better
+than Strether.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Second
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Those occasions on which Strether was, in association with the exile
+from Milrose, to see the sacred rage glimmer through would doubtless
+have their due periodicity; but our friend had meanwhile to find names
+for many other matters.  On no evening of his life perhaps, as he
+reflected, had he had to supply so many as on the third of his short
+stay in London; an evening spent by Miss Gostrey's side at one of the
+theatres, to which he had found himself transported, without his own
+hand raised, on the mere expression of a conscientious wonder.  She
+knew her theatre, she knew her play, as she had triumphantly known,
+three days running, everything else, and the moment filled to the brim,
+for her companion, that apprehension of the interesting which, whether
+or no the interesting happened to filter through his guide, strained
+now to its limits his brief opportunity.  Waymarsh hadn't come with
+them; he had seen plays enough, he signified, before Strether had
+joined him--an affirmation that had its full force when his friend
+ascertained by questions that he had seen two and a circus. Questions
+as to what he had seen had on him indeed an effect only less favourable
+than questions as to what he hadn't.  He liked the former to be
+discriminated; but how could it be done, Strether asked of their
+constant counsellor, without discriminating the latter?
+
+Miss Gostrey had dined with him at his hotel, face to face over a small
+table on which the lighted candles had rose-coloured shades; and the
+rose-coloured shades and the small table and the soft fragrance of the
+lady--had anything to his mere sense ever been so soft?--were so many
+touches in he scarce knew what positive high picture.  He had been to
+the theatre, even to the opera, in Boston, with Mrs. Newsome, more than
+once acting as her only escort; but there had been no little confronted
+dinner, no pink lights, no whiff of vague sweetness, as a preliminary:
+one of the results of which was that at present, mildly rueful, though
+with a sharpish accent, he actually asked himself WHY there hadn't.
+There was much the same difference in his impression of the noticed
+state of his companion, whose dress was "cut down," as he believed the
+term to be, in respect to shoulders and bosom, in a manner quite other
+than Mrs. Newsome's, and who wore round her throat a broad red velvet
+band with an antique jewel--he was rather complacently sure it was
+antique--attached to it in front.  Mrs. Newsome's dress was never in
+any degree "cut down," and she never wore round her throat a broad red
+velvet band:  if she had, moreover, would it ever have served so to
+carry on and complicate, as he now almost felt, his vision?
+
+It would have been absurd of him to trace into ramifications the effect
+of the ribbon from which Miss Gostrey's trinket depended, had he not
+for the hour, at the best, been so given over to uncontrolled
+perceptions.  What was it but an uncontrolled perception that his
+friend's velvet band somehow added, in her appearance, to the value of
+every other item--to that of her smile and of the way she carried her
+head, to that of her complexion, of her lips, her teeth, her eyes, her
+hair?  What, certainly, had a man conscious of a man's work in the
+world to do with red velvet bands? He wouldn't for anything have so
+exposed himself as to tell Miss Gostrey how much he liked hers, yet he
+HAD none the less not only caught himself in the act--frivolous, no
+doubt, idiotic, and above all unexpected--of liking it:  he had in
+addition taken it as a starting-point for fresh backward, fresh
+forward, fresh lateral flights.  The manner in which Mrs. Newsome's
+throat WAS encircled suddenly represented for him, in an alien order,
+almost as many things as the manner in which Miss Gostrey's was.  Mrs.
+Newsome wore, at operatic hours, a black silk dress--very handsome, he
+knew it was "handsome"--and an ornament that his memory was able
+further to identify as a ruche.  He had his association indeed with the
+ruche, but it was rather imperfectly romantic.  He had once said to the
+wearer--and it was as "free" a remark as he had ever made to her--that
+she looked, with her ruff and other matters, like Queen Elizabeth; and
+it had after this in truth been his fancy that, as a consequence of
+that tenderness and an acceptance of the idea, the form of this special
+tribute to the "frill" had grown slightly more marked.  The connexion,
+as he sat there and let his imagination roam, was to strike him as
+vaguely pathetic; but there it all was, and pathetic was doubtless in
+the conditions the best thing it could possibly be.  It had assuredly
+existed at any rate; for it seemed now to come over him that no
+gentleman of his age at Woollett could ever, to a lady of Mrs.
+Newsome's, which was not much less than his, have embarked on such a
+simile.
+
+All sorts of things in fact now seemed to come over him, comparatively
+few of which his chronicler can hope for space to mention.  It came
+over him for instance that Miss Gostrey looked perhaps like Mary
+Stuart:  Lambert Strether had a candour of fancy which could rest for
+an instant gratified in such an antithesis.  It came over him that
+never before--no, literally never--had a lady dined with him at a
+public place before going to the play.  The publicity of the place was
+just, in the matter, for Strether, the rare strange thing; it affected
+him almost as the achievement of privacy might have affected a man of a
+different experience.  He had married, in the far-away years, so young
+as to have missed the time natural in Boston for taking girls to the
+Museum; and it was absolutely true of hint that--even after the close
+of the period of conscious detachment occupying the centre of his life,
+the grey middle desert of the two deaths, that of his wife and that,
+ten years later, of his boy--he had never taken any one anywhere.  It
+came over him in especial--though the monition had, as happened,
+already sounded, fitfully gleamed, in other forms--that the business he
+had come out on hadn't yet been so brought home to him as by the sight
+of the people about him.  She gave him the impression, his friend, at
+first, more straight than he got it for himself--gave it simply by
+saying with off-hand illumination:  "Oh yes, they're types!"--but after
+he had taken it he made to the full his own use of it; both while he
+kept silence for the four acts and while he talked in the intervals. It
+was an evening, it was a world of types, and this was a connexion above
+all in which the figures and faces in the stalls were interchangeable
+with those on the stage.
+
+He felt as if the play itself penetrated him with the naked elbow of
+his neighbour, a great stripped handsome red-haired lady who conversed
+with a gentleman on her other side in stray dissyllables which had for
+his ear, in the oddest way in the world, so much sound that he wondered
+they hadn't more sense; and he recognised by the same law, beyond the
+footlights, what he was pleased to take for the very flush of English
+life.  He had distracted drops in which he couldn't have said if it
+were actors or auditors who were most true, and the upshot of which,
+each time, was the consciousness of new contacts.  However he viewed
+his job it was "types" he should have to tackle.  Those before him and
+around him were not as the types of Woollett, where, for that matter,
+it had begun to seem to him that there must only have been the male and
+the female. These made two exactly, even with the individual varieties.
+Here, on the other hand, apart from the personal and the sexual
+range--which might be greater or less--a series of strong stamps had
+been applied, as it were, from without; stamps that his observation
+played with as, before a glass case on a table, it might have passed
+from medal to medal and from copper to gold.  It befell that in the
+drama precisely there was a bad woman in a yellow frock who made a
+pleasant weak good-looking young man in perpetual evening dress do the
+most dreadful things.  Strether felt himself on the whole not afraid of
+the yellow frock, but he was vaguely anxious over a certain kindness
+into which he found himself drifting for its victim.  He hadn't come
+out, he reminded himself, to be too kind, or indeed to be kind at all,
+to Chadwick Newsome.  Would Chad also be in perpetual evening dress?
+He somehow rather hoped it--it seemed so to add to THIS young man's
+general amenability; though he wondered too if, to fight him with his
+own weapons, he himself (a thought almost startling) would have
+likewise to be.  This young man furthermore would have been much more
+easy to handle--at least for HIM--than appeared probable in respect to
+Chad.
+
+It came up for him with Miss Gostrey that there were things of which
+she would really perhaps after all have heard, and she admitted when a
+little pressed that she was never quite sure of what she heard as
+distinguished from things such as, on occasions like the present, she
+only extravagantly guessed.  "I seem with this freedom, you see, to
+have guessed Mr. Chad.  He's a young man on whose head high hopes are
+placed at Woollett; a young man a wicked woman has got hold of and whom
+his family over there have sent you out to rescue.  You've accepted the
+mission of separating him from the wicked woman.  Are you quite sure
+she's very bad for him?"
+
+Something in his manner showed it as quite pulling him up.  "Of course
+we are.  Wouldn't YOU be?"
+
+"Oh I don't know.  One never does--does one?--beforehand.  One can only
+judge on the facts.  Yours are quite new to me; I'm really not in the
+least, as you see, in possession of them:  so it will be awfully
+interesting to have them from you.  If you're satisfied, that's all
+that's required.  I mean if you're sure you ARE sure: sure it won't do."
+
+"That he should lead such a life?  Rather!"
+
+"Oh but I don't know, you see, about his life; you've not told me about
+his life.  She may be charming--his life!"
+
+"Charming?"--Strether stared before him.  "She's base, venal-out of the
+streets."
+
+"I see.  And HE--?"
+
+"Chad, wretched boy?"
+
+"Of what type and temper is he?" she went on as Strether had lapsed.
+
+"Well--the obstinate."  It was as if for a moment he had been going to
+say more and had then controlled himself.
+
+That was scarce what she wished.  "Do you like him?"
+
+This time he was prompt.  "No.  How CAN I?"
+
+"Do you mean because of your being so saddled with him?"
+
+"I'm thinking of his mother," said Strether after a moment.  "He has
+darkened her admirable life."  He spoke with austerity.  "He has
+worried her half to death."
+
+"Oh that's of course odious."  She had a pause as if for renewed
+emphasis of this truth, but it ended on another note.  "Is her life
+very admirable?"
+
+"Extraordinarily."
+
+There was so much in the tone that Miss Gostrey had to devote another
+pause to the appreciation of it.  "And has he only HER?  I don't mean
+the bad woman in Paris," she quickly added--"for I assure you I
+shouldn't even at the best be disposed to allow him more than one.  But
+has he only his mother?"
+
+"He has also a sister, older than himself and married; and they're both
+remarkably fine women."
+
+"Very handsome, you mean?"
+
+This promptitude--almost, as he might have thought, this precipitation,
+gave him a brief drop; but he came up again. "Mrs. Newsome, I think, is
+handsome, though she's not of course, with a son of twenty-eight and a
+daughter of thirty, in her very first youth.  She married, however,
+extremely young."
+
+"And is wonderful," Miss Gostrey asked, "for her age?"
+
+Strether seemed to feel with a certain disquiet the pressure of it. "I
+don't say she's wonderful.  Or rather," he went on the next moment, "I
+do say it.  It's exactly what she IS--wonderful.  But I wasn't thinking
+of her appearance," he explained--"striking as that doubtless is.  I
+was thinking--well, of many other things."  He seemed to look at these
+as if to mention some of them; then took, pulling himself up, another
+turn.  "About Mrs. Pocock people may differ."
+
+"Is that the daughter's name--'Pocock'?"
+
+"That's the daughter's name," Strether sturdily confessed.
+
+"And people may differ, you mean, about HER beauty?"
+
+"About everything."
+
+"But YOU admire her?"
+
+He gave his friend a glance as to show how he could bear this "I'm
+perhaps a little afraid of her."
+
+"Oh," said Miss Gostrey, "I see her from here! You may say then I see
+very fast and very far, but I've already shown you I do.  The young man
+and the two ladies," she went on, "are at any rate all the family?"
+
+"Quite all.  His father has been dead ten years, and there's no
+brother, nor any other sister.  They'd do," said Strether, "anything 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."
+
+Strether took this more lightly.  "Oh I jam down the pedal too!"
+
+"Well," she lucidly returned, "we must from this moment bear on it
+together with all our might."  And she forged ahead.  "Have they money?"
+
+But it was as if, while her energetic image still held him, her enquiry
+fell short.  "Mrs. Newsome," he wished further to explain, "hasn't
+moreover your courage on the question of contact.  If she had come it
+would have been to see the person herself."
+
+"The woman?  Ah but that's courage."
+
+"No--it's exaltation, which is a very different thing.  Courage," he,
+however, accommodatingly threw out, "is what YOU have."
+
+She shook her head.  "You say that only to patch me up--to cover the
+nudity of my want of exaltation.  I've neither the one nor the other.
+I've mere battered indifference.  I see that what you mean," Miss
+Gostrey pursued, "is that if your friend HAD come she would take great
+views, and the great views, to put it simply, would be too much for
+her."
+
+Strether looked amused at her notion of the simple, but he adopted her
+formula.  "Everything's too much for her."
+
+"Ah then such a service as this of yours--"
+
+"Is more for her than anything else?  Yes--far more.  But so long as it
+isn't too much for ME--!"
+
+"Her condition doesn't matter?  Surely not; we leave her condition out;
+we take it, that is, for granted.  I see it, her condition, as behind
+and beneath you; yet at the same time I see it as bearing you up."
+
+"Oh it does bear me up!" Strether laughed.
+
+"Well then as yours bears ME nothing more's needed."  With which she
+put again her question.  "Has Mrs. Newsome money?"
+
+This time he heeded.  "Oh plenty.  That's the root of the evil. There's
+money, to very large amounts, in the concern.  Chad has had the free
+use of a great deal.  But if he'll pull himself together and come home,
+all the same, he'll find his account in it."
+
+She had listened with all her interest.  "And I hope to goodness you'll
+find yours!"
+
+"He'll take up his definite material reward," said Strether without
+acknowledgement of this.  "He's at the parting of the ways.  He can
+come into the business now--he can't come later."
+
+"Is there a business?"
+
+"Lord, yes--a big brave bouncing business.  A roaring trade."
+
+"A great shop?"
+
+"Yes--a workshop; a great production, a great industry.  The concern's
+a manufacture--and a manufacture that, if it's only properly looked
+after, may well be on the way to become a monopoly. It's a little thing
+they make--make better, it appears, than other people can, or than
+other people, at any rate, do.  Mr. Newsome, being a man of ideas, at
+least in that particular line," Strether explained, "put them on it
+with great effect, and gave the place altogether, in his time, an
+immense lift."
+
+"It's a place in itself?"
+
+"Well, quite a number of buildings; almost a little industrial colony.
+But above all it's a thing.  The article produced."
+
+"And what IS the article produced?"
+
+Strether looked about him as in slight reluctance to say; then the
+curtain, which he saw about to rise, came to his aid.  "I'll tell you
+next time."  But when the next time came he only said he'd tell her
+later on--after they should have left the theatre; for she had
+immediately reverted to their topic, and even for himself the picture
+of the stage was now overlaid with another image.  His postponements,
+however, made her wonder--wonder if the article referred to were
+anything bad.  And she explained that she meant improper or ridiculous
+or wrong.  But Strether, so far as that went, could satisfy her.
+"Unmentionable?  Oh no, we constantly talk of it; we are quite familiar
+and brazen about it.  Only, as a small, trivial, rather ridiculous
+object of the commonest domestic use, it's just wanting in-what shall I
+say?  Well, dignity, or the least approach to distinction.  Right here
+therefore, with everything about us so grand--!" In short he shrank.
+
+"It's a false note?"
+
+"Sadly.  It's vulgar."
+
+"But surely not vulgarer than this."  Then on his wondering as she
+herself had done:  "Than everything about us."  She seemed a trifle
+irritated.  "What do you take this for?"
+
+"Why for--comparatively--divine!"
+
+"This dreadful London theatre?  It's impossible, if you really want to
+know."
+
+"Oh then," laughed Strether, "I DON'T really want to know!"
+
+It made between them a pause, which she, however, still fascinated by
+the mystery of the production at Woollett, presently broke. "'Rather
+ridiculous'?  Clothes-pins?  Saleratus?  Shoe-polish?"
+
+It brought him round.  "No--you don't even 'burn.'  I don't think, you
+know, you'll guess it."
+
+"How then can I judge how vulgar it is?"
+
+"You'll judge when I do tell you"--and he persuaded her to patience.
+But it may even now frankly be mentioned that he in the sequel never
+WAS to tell her.  He actually never did so, and it moreover oddly
+occurred that by the law, within her, of the incalculable, her desire
+for the information dropped and her attitude to the question converted
+itself into a positive cultivation of ignorance.  In ignorance she
+could humour her fancy, and that proved a useful freedom.  She could
+treat the little nameless object as indeed unnameable--she could make
+their abstention enormously definite.  There might indeed have been for
+Strether the portent of this in what she next said.
+
+"Is it perhaps then because it's so bad--because your industry as you
+call it, IS so vulgar--that Mr. Chad won't come back?  Does he feel the
+taint?  Is he staying away not to be mixed up in it?"
+
+"Oh," Strether laughed, "it wouldn't appear--would it?--that he feels
+'taints'! He's glad enough of the money from it, and the money's his
+whole basis.  There's appreciation in that--I mean as to the allowance
+his mother has hitherto made him.  She has of course the resource of
+cutting this allowance off; but even then he has unfortunately, and on
+no small scale, his independent supply--money left him by his
+grandfather, her own father."
+
+"Wouldn't the fact you mention then," Miss Gostrey asked, "make it just
+more easy for him to be particular?  Isn't he conceivable as fastidious
+about the source--the apparent and public source--of his income?"
+
+Strether was able quite good-humouredly to entertain the proposition.
+"The source of his grandfather's wealth--and thereby of his own share
+in it--was not particularly noble."
+
+"And what source was it?"
+
+Strether cast about.  "Well--practices."
+
+"In business?  Infamies?  He was an old swindler?"
+
+"Oh," he said with more emphasis than spirit, "I shan't describe HIM
+nor narrate his exploits."
+
+"Lord, what abysses! And the late Mr. Newsome then?"
+
+"Well, what about him?"
+
+"Was he like the grandfather?"
+
+"No--he was on the other side of the house.  And he was different."
+
+Miss Gostrey kept it up.  "Better?"
+
+Her friend for a moment hung fire.  "No."
+
+Her comment on his hesitation was scarce the less marked for being
+mute.  "Thank you.  NOW don't you see," she went on, "why the boy
+doesn't come home?  He's drowning his shame."
+
+"His shame?  What shame?"
+
+"What shame?  Comment donc?  THE shame."
+
+"But where and when," Strether asked, "is 'THE shame'--where is any
+shame--to-day?  The men I speak of--they did as every one does; and
+(besides being ancient history) it was all a matter of appreciation."
+
+She showed how she understood.  "Mrs. Newsome has appreciated?"
+
+"Ah I can't speak for HER!"
+
+"In the midst of such doings--and, as I understand you, profiting by
+them, she at least has remained exquisite?"
+
+"Oh I can't talk of her!" Strether said.
+
+"I thought she was just what you COULD talk of.  You DON'T trust me,"
+Miss Gostrey after a moment declared.
+
+It had its effect.  "Well, her money is spent, her life conceived and
+carried on with a large beneficence--"
+
+"That's a kind of expiation of wrongs?  Gracious," she added before he
+could speak, "how intensely you make me see her!"
+
+"If you see her," Strether dropped, "it's all that's necessary."
+
+She really seemed to have her.  "I feel that.  She IS, in spite of
+everything, handsome."
+
+This at least enlivened him.  "What do you mean by everything?"
+
+"Well, I mean YOU."  With which she had one of her swift changes of
+ground.  "You say the concern needs looking after;  but doesn't Mrs.
+Newsome look after it?"
+
+"So far as possible.  She's wonderfully able, but it's not her affair,
+and her life's a good deal overcharged.  She has many, many things."
+
+"And you also?"
+
+"Oh yes--I've many too, if you will."
+
+"I see.  But what I mean is," Miss Gostrey amended, "do you also look
+after the business?"
+
+"Oh no, I don't touch the business."
+
+"Only everything else?"
+
+"Well, yes--some things."
+
+"As for instance--?"
+
+Strether obligingly thought.  "Well, the Review."
+
+"The Review?--you have a Review?"
+
+"Certainly.  Woollett has a Review--which Mrs. Newsome, for the most
+part, magnificently pays for and which I, not at all magnificently,
+edit.  My name's on the cover," Strether pursued, "and I'm really
+rather disappointed and hurt that you seem never to have heard of it."
+
+She neglected for a moment this grievance.  "And what kind of a Review
+is it?"
+
+His serenity was now completely restored.  "Well, it's green."
+
+"Do you mean in political colour as they say here--in thought?"
+
+"No; I mean the cover's green--of the most lovely shade."
+
+"And with Mrs. Newsome's name on it too?"
+
+He waited a little.  "Oh as for that you must judge if she peeps out.
+She's behind the whole thing; but she's of a delicacy and a
+discretion--!"
+
+Miss Gostrey took it all.  "I'm sure.  She WOULD be.  I don't underrate
+her.  She must be rather a swell."
+
+"Oh yes, she's rather a swell!"
+
+"A Woollett swell--bon! I like the idea of a Woollett swell.  And you
+must be rather one too, to be so mixed up with her."
+
+"Ah no," said Strether, "that's not the way it works."
+
+But she had already taken him up.  "The way it works--you needn't tell
+me!--is of course that you efface yourself."
+
+"With my name on the cover?" he lucidly objected.
+
+"Ah but you don't put it on for yourself."
+
+"I beg your pardon--that's exactly what I do put it on for.  It's
+exactly the thing that I'm reduced to doing for myself.  It seems to
+rescue a little, you see, from the wreck of hopes and ambitions, the
+refuse-heap of disappointments and failures,  my one presentable little
+scrap of an identity."
+
+On this she looked at him as to say many things, but what she at last
+simply said was:  "She likes to see it there.  You're the bigger swell
+of the two," she immediately continued,  "because you think you're not
+one.  She thinks she IS one.  However," Miss Gostrey added, "she
+thinks you're one too.  You're at all events the biggest she can get
+hold of."  She embroidered, she abounded. "I don't say it to interfere
+between you, but on the day she gets hold of a bigger one--!"  Strether
+had thrown back his head as in silent mirth over something that struck
+him in her audacity or felicity, and her flight meanwhile was already
+higher.  "Therefore close with her--!"
+
+"Close with her?" he asked as she seemed to hang poised.
+
+"Before you lose your chance."
+
+Their eyes met over it.  "What do you mean by closing?"
+
+"And what do I mean by your chance?  I'll tell you when you tell me all
+the things YOU don't.  Is it her GREATEST fad?" she briskly pursued.
+
+"The Review?"  He seemed to wonder how he could best describe it. This
+resulted however but in a sketch.  "It's her tribute to the ideal."
+
+"I see.  You go in for tremendous things."
+
+"We go in for the unpopular side--that is so far as we dare."
+
+"And how far DO you dare?"
+
+"Well, she very far.  I much less.  I don't begin to have her faith.
+She provides," said Strether, "three fourths of that.  And she
+provides, as I've confided to you, ALL the money."
+
+It evoked somehow a vision of gold that held for a little Miss
+Gostrey's eyes, and she looked as if she heard the bright dollars
+shovelled in.  "I hope then you make a good thing--"
+
+"I NEVER made a good thing!" he at once returned.
+
+She just waited.  "Don't you call it a good thing to be loved?"
+
+"Oh we're not loved.  We're not even hated.  We're only just sweetly
+ignored."
+
+She had another pause.  "You don't trust me!" she once more repeated.
+
+"Don't I when I lift the last veil?--tell you the very secret of the
+prison-house?"
+
+Again she met his eyes, but to the result that after an instant her own
+turned away with impatience.  "You don't sell?  Oh I'm glad of THAT!"
+After which however, and before he could protest, she was off again.
+"She's just a MORAL swell."
+
+He accepted gaily enough the definition.  "Yes--I really think that
+describes her."
+
+But it had for his friend the oddest connexion.  "How does she do her
+hair?"
+
+He laughed out.  "Beautifully!"
+
+"Ah that doesn't tell me.  However, it doesn't matter--I know.  It's
+tremendously neat--a real reproach; quite remarkably thick and without,
+as yet, a single strand of white.  There!"
+
+He blushed for her realism, but gaped at her truth.  "You're the very
+deuce."
+
+"What else SHOULD I be?  It was as the very deuce I pounced on you. But
+don't let it trouble you, for everything but the very deuce--at our
+age--is a bore and a delusion, and even he himself, after all, but half
+a joy."  With which, on a single sweep of her wing, she resumed.  "You
+assist her to expiate--which is rather hard when you've yourself not
+sinned."
+
+"It's she who hasn't sinned," Strether replied.  "I've sinned the most."
+
+"Ah," Miss Gostrey cynically laughed, "what a picture of HER! Have you
+robbed the widow and the orphan?"
+
+"I've sinned enough," said Strether.
+
+"Enough for whom?  Enough for what?"
+
+"Well, to be where I am."
+
+"Thank you!" They were disturbed at this moment by the passage between
+their knees and the back of the seats before them of a gentleman who
+had been absent during a part of the performance and who now returned
+for the close; but the interruption left Miss Gostrey time, before the
+subsequent hush, to express as a sharp finality her sense of the moral
+of all their talk.  "I knew you had something up your sleeve!"  This
+finality, however, left them in its turn, at the end of the play, as
+disposed to hang back as if they had still much to say; so that they
+easily agreed to let every one go before them--they found an interest
+in waiting.  They made out from the lobby that the night had turned to
+rain; yet Miss Gostrey let her friend know that he wasn't to see her
+home.  He was simply to put her, by herself, into a four-wheeler; she
+liked so in London, of wet nights after wild pleasures, thinking things
+over, on the return, in lonely four-wheelers.  This was her great time,
+she intimated, for pulling herself together.  The delays caused by the
+weather, the struggle for vehicles at the door, gave them occasion to
+subside on a divan at the back of the vestibule and just beyond the
+reach of the fresh damp gusts from the street.  Here Strether's comrade
+resumed that free handling of the subject to which his own imagination
+of it already owed so much.  "Does your young friend in Paris like you?"
+
+It had almost, after the interval, startled him.  "Oh I hope not! Why
+SHOULD he?"
+
+"Why shouldn't he?" Miss Gostrey asked.  "That you're coming down on
+him need have nothing to do with it."
+
+"You see more in it," he presently returned, "than I."
+
+"Of course I see you in it."
+
+"Well then you see more in 'me'!"
+
+"Than you see in yourself?  Very likely.  That's always one's right.
+What I was thinking of," she explained, "is the possible particular
+effect on him of his milieu."
+
+"Oh his milieu--!"  Strether really felt he could imagine it better now
+than three hours before.
+
+"Do you mean it can only have been so lowering?"
+
+"Why that's my very starting-point."
+
+"Yes, but you start so far back.  What do his letters say?"
+
+"Nothing.  He practically ignores us--or spares us.  He doesn't write."
+
+"I see.  But there are all the same," she went on, "two quite distinct
+things that--given the wonderful place he's in--may have happened to
+him.  One is that he may have got brutalised.  The other is that he may
+have got refined."
+
+Strether stared--this WAS a novelty.  "Refined?"
+
+"Oh," she said quietly, "there ARE refinements."
+
+The way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh. "YOU
+have them!"
+
+"As one of the signs," she continued in the same tone, "they constitute
+perhaps the worst."
+
+He thought it over and his gravity returned.  "Is it a refinement not
+to answer his mother's letters?"
+
+She appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out.  "Oh I should
+say the greatest of all."
+
+"Well," said Strether, "I'M quite content to let it, as one of the
+signs, pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do what he
+likes with me."
+
+This appeared to strike her.  "How do you know it?"
+
+"Oh I'm sure of it.  I feel it in my bones."
+
+"Feel he CAN do it?"
+
+"Feel that he believes he can.  It may come to the same thing!"
+Strether laughed.
+
+She wouldn't, however, have this.  "Nothing for you will ever come to
+the same thing as anything else."  And she understood what she meant,
+it seemed, sufficiently to go straight on.  "You say that if he does
+break he'll come in for things at home?"
+
+"Quite positively.  He'll come in for a particular chance--a chance
+that any properly constituted young man would jump at.  The business
+has so developed that an opening scarcely apparent three years ago, but
+which his father's will took account of as in certain conditions
+possible and which, under that will, attaches to Chad's availing
+himself of it a large contingent advantage--this opening, the
+conditions having come about, now simply awaits him.  His mother has
+kept it for him, holding out against strong pressure, till the last
+possible moment.  It requires, naturally, as it carries with it a
+handsome 'part,' a large share in profits, his being on the spot and
+making a big effort for a big result. That's what I mean by his chance.
+If he misses it he comes in, as you say, for nothing.  And to see that
+he doesn't miss it is, in a word, what I've come out for."
+
+She let it all sink in.  "What you've come out for then is simply to
+render him an immense service."
+
+Well, poor Strether was willing to take it so.  "Ah if you like."
+
+"He stands, as they say, if you succeed with him, to gain--"
+
+"Oh a lot of advantages."  Strether had them clearly at his fingers'
+ends.
+
+"By which you mean of course a lot of money."
+
+"Well, not only.  I'm acting with a sense for him of other things too.
+Consideration and comfort and security--the general safety of being
+anchored by a strong chain.  He wants, as I see him, to be protected.
+Protected I mean from life."
+
+"Ah voila!"--her thought fitted with a click.  "From life.  What you
+REALLY want to get him home for is to marry him."
+
+"Well, that's about the size of it."
+
+"Of course," she said, "it's rudimentary.  But to any one in
+particular?"
+
+He smiled at this, looking a little more conscious.  "You get
+everything out."
+
+For a moment again their eyes met.  "You put everything in!"
+
+He acknowledged the tribute by telling her.  "To Mamie Pocock."
+
+She wondered; then gravely, even exquisitely, as if to make the oddity
+also fit:  "His own niece?"
+
+"Oh you must yourself find a name for the relation.  His
+brother-in-law's sister.  Mrs. Jim's sister-in-law."
+
+It seemed to have on Miss Gostrey a certain hardening effect.  "And who
+in the world's Mrs. Jim?"
+
+"Chad's sister--who was Sarah Newsome.  She's married--didn't I mention
+it?--to Jim Pocock."
+
+"Ah yes," she tacitly replied; but he had mentioned things--! Then,
+however, with all the sound it could have, "Who in the world's Jim
+Pocock?" she asked.
+
+"Why Sally's husband.  That's the only way we distinguish people at
+Woollett," he good-humoredly explained.
+
+"And is it a great distinction--being Sally's husband?"
+
+He considered.  "I think there can be scarcely a greater--unless it may
+become one, in the future, to be Chad's wife."
+
+"Then how do they distinguish YOU?"
+
+"They DON'T--except, as I've told you, by the green cover."
+
+Once more their eyes met on it, and she held him an instant.  "The
+green cover won't--nor will ANY cover--avail you with ME.  You're of a
+depth of duplicity!"  Still, she could in her own large grasp of the
+real condone it.  "Is Mamie a great parti?"
+
+"Oh the greatest we have--our prettiest brightest girl."
+
+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!" Once
+more she embraced it all, but she had a moment of thought. "Poor Chad!"
+
+"Ah," said Strether cheerfully "Mamie will save him!"
+
+She was looking away, still in her vision, and she spoke with
+impatience and almost as if he hadn't understood her.  "YOU'LL save
+him.  That's who'll save him."
+
+"Oh but with Mamie's aid.  Unless indeed you mean," he added, "that I
+shall effect so much more with yours!"
+
+It made her at last again look at him.  "You'll do more--as you're so
+much better--than all of us put together."
+
+"I think I'm only better since I've known YOU!" Strether bravely
+returned.
+
+The depletion of the place, the shrinkage of the crowd and now
+comparatively quiet withdrawal of its last elements had already brought
+them nearer the door and put them in relation with a messenger of whom
+he bespoke Miss Gostrey's cab.  But this left them a few minutes more,
+which she was clearly in no mood not to use.  "You've spoken to me of
+what--by your success--Mr. Chad stands to gain.  But you've not spoken
+to me of what you do."
+
+"Oh I've nothing more to gain," said Strether very simply.
+
+She took it as even quite too simple.  "You mean you've got it all
+'down'?  You've been paid in advance?"
+
+"Ah don't talk about payment!" he groaned.
+
+Something in the tone of it pulled her up, but as their messenger still
+delayed she had another chance and she put it in another way. "What--by
+failure--do you stand to lose?"
+
+He still, however, wouldn't have it.  "Nothing!" he exclaimed, and on
+the messenger's at this instant reappearing he was able to sink the
+subject in their responsive advance.  When, a few steps up the street,
+under a lamp, he had put her into her four-wheeler and she had asked
+him if the man had called for him no second conveyance, he replied
+before the door was closed.  "You won't take me with you?"
+
+"Not for the world."
+
+"Then I shall walk."
+
+"In the rain?"
+
+"I like the rain," said Strether.  "Good-night!"
+
+She kept him a moment, while his hand was on the door, by not
+answering; after which she answered by repeating her question. "What do
+you stand to lose?"
+
+Why the question now affected him as other he couldn't have said; he
+could only this time meet it otherwise.  "Everything."
+
+"So I thought.  Then you shall succeed.  And to that end I'm yours--"
+
+"Ah, dear lady!" he kindly breathed.
+
+"Till death!" said Maria Gostrey.  "Good-night."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Strether called, his second morning in Paris, on the bankers of the Rue
+Scribe to whom his letter of credit was addressed, and he made this
+visit attended by Waymarsh, in whose company he had crossed from London
+two days before.  They had hastened to the Rue Scribe on the morrow of
+their arrival, but Strether had not then found the letters the hope of
+which prompted this errand.  He had had as yet none at all; hadn't
+expected them in London, but had counted on several in Paris, and,
+disconcerted now, had presently strolled back to the Boulevard with a
+sense of injury that he felt himself taking for as good a start as any
+other.  It would serve, this spur to his spirit, he reflected, as,
+pausing at the top of the street, he looked up and down the great
+foreign avenue, it would serve to begin business with.  His idea was to
+begin business immediately, and it did much for him the rest of his day
+that the beginning of business awaited him.  He did little else till
+night but ask himself what he should do if he hadn't fortunately had so
+much to do; but he put himself the question in many different
+situations and connexions.  What carried him hither and yon was an
+admirable theory that nothing he could do wouldn't be in some manner
+related to what he fundamentally had on hand, or WOULD be--should he
+happen to have a scruple--wasted for it.  He did happen to have a
+scruple--a scruple about taking no definite step till he should get
+letters; but this reasoning carried it off.  A single day to feel his
+feet--he had felt them as yet only at Chester and in London--was he
+could consider, none too much; and having, as he had often privately
+expressed it, Paris to reckon with, he threw these hours of freshness
+consciously into the reckoning.  They made it continually greater, but
+that was what it had best be if it was to be anything at all, and he
+gave himself up till far into the evening, at the theatre and on the
+return, after the theatre, along the bright congested Boulevard, to
+feeling it grow.  Waymarsh had accompanied him this time to the play,
+and the two men had walked together, as a first stage, from the Gymnase
+to the Cafe Riche, into the crowded "terrace" of which
+establishment--the night, or rather the morning, for midnight had
+struck, being bland and populous--they had wedged themselves for
+refreshment. Waymarsh, as a result of some discussion with his friend,
+had made a marked virtue of his having now let himself go; and there
+had been elements of impression in their half-hour over their watered
+beer-glasses that gave him his occasion for conveying that he held this
+compromise with his stiffer self to have become extreme.  He conveyed
+it--for it was still, after all, his stiffer self who gloomed out of
+the glare of the terrace--in solemn silence; and there was indeed a
+great deal of critical silence, every way, between the companions, even
+till they gained the Place de l'Opera, as to the character of their
+nocturnal progress.
+
+This morning there WERE letters--letters which had reached London,
+apparently all together, the day of Strether's journey, and had taken
+their time to follow him; so that, after a controlled impulse to go
+into them in the reception-room of the bank, which, reminding him of
+the post-office at Woollett, affected him as the abutment of some
+transatlantic bridge, he slipped them into the pocket of his loose grey
+overcoat with a sense of the felicity of carrying them off.  Waymarsh,
+who had had letters yesterday, had had them again to-day, and Waymarsh
+suggested in this particular no controlled impulses.  The last one he
+was at all events likely to be observed to struggle with was clearly
+that of bringing to a premature close any visit to the Rue Scribe.
+Strether had left him there yesterday; he wanted to see the papers, and
+he had spent, by what his friend could make out, a succession of hours
+with the papers.  He spoke of the establishment, with emphasis, as a
+post of superior observation; just as he spoke generally of his actual
+damnable doom as a device for hiding from him what was going on. Europe
+was best described, to his mind, as an elaborate engine for
+dissociating the confined American from that indispensable knowledge,
+and was accordingly only rendered bearable by these occasional stations
+of relief, traps for the arrest of wandering western airs.  Strether,
+on his side, set himself to walk again--he had his relief in his
+pocket; and indeed, much as he had desired his budget, the growth of
+restlessness might have been marked in him from the moment he had
+assured himself of the superscription of most of the missives it
+contained.  This restlessness became therefore his temporary law; he
+knew he should recognise as soon as see it the best place of all for
+settling down with his chief correspondent.  He had for the next hour
+an accidental air of looking for it in the windows of shops; he came
+down the Rue de la Paix in the sun and, passing across the Tuileries
+and the river, indulged more than once--as if on finding himself
+determined--in a sudden pause before the book-stalls of the opposite
+quay.  In the garden of the Tuileries he had lingered, on two or three
+spots, to look; it was as if the wonderful Paris spring had stayed him
+as he roamed.  The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes--in a
+soft breeze and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the
+garden-floor, of bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong
+boxes, in the type of ancient thrifty persons basking betimes where
+terrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism
+of humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references of a
+straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged
+soldier.  He watched little brisk figures, figures whose movement was
+as the tick of the great Paris clock, take their smooth diagonal from
+point to point; the air had a taste as of something mixed with art,
+something that presented nature as a white-capped master-chef.  The
+palace was gone, Strether remembered the palace; and when he gazed into
+the irremediable void of its site the historic sense in him might have
+been freely at play--the play under which in Paris indeed it so often
+winces like a touched nerve.  He filled out spaces with dim symbols of
+scenes; he caught the gleam of white statues at the base of which, with
+his letters out, he could tilt back a straw-bottomed chair.  But his
+drift was, for reasons, to the other side, and it floated him unspent
+up the Rue de Seine and as far as the Luxembourg.  In the Luxembourg
+Gardens he pulled up; here at last he found his nook, and here, on a
+penny chair from which terraces, alleys, vistas, fountains, little
+trees in green tubs, little women in white caps and shrill little girls
+at play all sunnily "composed" together, he passed an hour in which the
+cup of his impressions seemed truly to overflow. But a week had elapsed
+since he quitted the ship, and there were more things in his mind than
+so few days could account for.  More than once, during the time, he had
+regarded himself as admonished; but the admonition this morning was
+formidably sharp.  It took as it hadn't done yet the form of a
+question--the question of what he was doing with such an extraordinary
+sense of escape.  This sense was sharpest after he had read his
+letters, but that was also precisely why the question pressed.  Four of
+the letters were from Mrs. Newsome and none of them short; she had lost
+no time, had followed on his heels while he moved, so expressing
+herself that he now could measure the probable frequency with which he
+should hear.  They would arrive, it would seem, her communications, at
+the rate of several a week; he should be able to count, it might even
+prove, on more than one by each mail.  If he had begun yesterday with a
+small grievance he had therefore an opportunity to begin to-day with
+its opposite.  He read the letters successively and slowly, putting
+others back into his pocket but keeping these for a long time
+afterwards gathered in his lap.  He held them there, lost in thought,
+as if to prolong the presence of what they gave him; or as if at the
+least to assure them their part in the constitution of some lucidity.
+His friend wrote admirably, and her tone was even more in her style
+than in her voice--he might almost, for the hour, have had to come this
+distance to get its full carrying quality; yet the plentitude of his
+consciousness of difference consorted perfectly with the deepened
+intensity of the connexion.  It was the difference, the difference of
+being just where he was and AS he was, that formed the escape--this
+difference was so much greater than he had dreamed it would be; and
+what he finally sat there turning over was the strange logic of his
+finding himself so free.  He felt it in a manner his duty to think out
+his state, to approve the process, and when he came in fact to trace
+the steps and add up the items they sufficiently accounted for the sum.
+He had never expected--that was the truth of it--again to find himself
+young, and all the years and other things it had taken to make him so
+were exactly his present arithmetic.  He had to make sure of them to
+put his scruple to rest.
+
+It all sprang at bottom from the beauty of Mrs. Newsome's desire that
+he should be worried with nothing that was not of the essence of his
+task; by insisting that he should thoroughly intermit and break she had
+so provided for his freedom that she would, as it were, have only
+herself to thank.  Strether could not at this point indeed have
+completed his thought by the image of what she might have to thank
+herself FOR:  the image, at best, of his own likeness-poor Lambert
+Strether washed up on the sunny strand by the waves of a single day,
+poor Lambert Strether thankful for breathing-time and stiffening
+himself while he gasped.  There he was, and with nothing in his aspect
+or his posture to scandalise: it was only true that if he had seen Mrs.
+Newsome coming he would instinctively have jumped up to walk away a
+little.  He would have come round and back to her bravely, but he would
+have had first to pull himself together.  She abounded in news of the
+situation at home, proved to him how perfectly she was arranging for
+his absence, told him who would take up this and who take up that
+exactly where he had left it, gave him in fact chapter and verse for
+the moral that nothing would suffer.  It filled for him, this tone of
+hers, all the air; yet it struck him at the same time as the hum of
+vain things.  This latter effect was what he tried to justify--and with
+the success that, grave though the appearance, he at last lighted on a
+form that was happy.  He arrived at it by the inevitable recognition of
+his having been a fortnight before one of the weariest of men.  If ever
+a man had come off tired Lambert Strether was that man; and hadn't it
+been distinctly on the ground of his fatigue that his wonderful friend
+at home had so felt for him and so contrived?  It seemed to him somehow
+at these instants that, could he only maintain with sufficient firmness
+his grasp of that truth, it might become in a manner his compass and
+his helm.  What he wanted most was some idea that would simplify, and
+nothing would do this so much as the fact that he was done for and
+finished.  If it had been in such a light that he had just detected in
+his cup the dregs of youth, that was a mere flaw of the surface of his
+scheme.  He was so distinctly fagged-out that it must serve precisely
+as his convenience, and if he could but consistently be good for little
+enough he might do everything he wanted.
+
+Everything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon--the
+common unattainable art of taking things as they came.  He appeared to
+himself to have given his best years to an active appreciation of the
+way they didn't come; but perhaps--as they would seemingly here be
+things quite other--this long ache might at last drop to rest.  He
+could easily see that from the moment he should accept the notion of
+his foredoomed collapse the last thing he would lack would be reasons
+and memories.  Oh if he SHOULD do the sum no slate would hold the
+figures! The fact that he had failed, as he considered, in everything,
+in each relation and in half a dozen trades, as he liked luxuriously to
+put it, might have made, might still make, for an empty present; but it
+stood solidly for a crowded past.  It had not been, so much achievement
+missed, a light yoke nor a short load.  It was at present as if
+the backward picture had hung there, the long crooked course, grey in
+the shadow of his solitude.  It had been a dreadful cheerful sociable
+solitude, a solitude of life or choice, of community; but though there
+had been people enough all round it there had been but three or four
+persons IN it.  Waymarsh was one of these, and the fact struck him just
+now as marking the record.  Mrs. Newsome was another, and Miss Gostrey
+had of a sudden shown signs of becoming a third.  Beyond, behind them
+was the pale figure of his real youth, which held against its breast
+the two presences paler than itself--the young wife he had early lost
+and the young son he had stupidly sacrificed.  He had again and again
+made out for himself that he might have kept his little boy, his little
+dull boy who had died at school of rapid diphtheria, if he had not in
+those years so insanely given himself to merely missing the mother.  It
+was the soreness of his remorse that the child had in all likelihood
+not really been dull--had been dull, as he had been banished and
+neglected, mainly because the father had been unwittingly selfish. This
+was doubtless but the secret habit of sorrow, which had slowly given
+way to time; yet there remained an ache sharp enough to make the
+spirit, at the sight now and again of some fair young man just growing
+up, wince with the thought of an opportunity lost.  Had ever a man, he
+had finally fallen into the way of asking himself, lost so much and
+even done so much for so little?  There had been particular reasons why
+all yesterday, beyond other days, he should have had in one ear this
+cold enquiry.  His name on the green cover, where he had put it for
+Mrs. Newsome, expressed him doubtless just enough to make the
+world--the world as distinguished, both for more and for less, from
+Woollett--ask who he was.  He had incurred the ridicule of having to
+have his explanation explained.  He was Lambert Strether because he was
+on the cover, whereas it should have been, for anything like glory,
+that he was on the cover because he was Lambert Strether.  He would
+have done anything for Mrs. Newsome, have been still more
+ridiculous--as he might, for that matter, have occasion to be yet;
+which came to saying that this acceptance of fate was all he had to
+show at fifty-five.
+
+He judged the quantity as small because it WAS small, and all the more
+egregiously since it couldn't, as he saw the case, so much as thinkably
+have been larger.  He hadn't had the gift of making the most of what he
+tried, and if he had tried and tried again--no one but himself knew how
+often--it appeared to have been that he might demonstrate what else, in
+default of that, COULD be made.  Old ghosts of experiments came back to
+him, old drudgeries and delusions, and disgusts, old recoveries with
+their relapses, old fevers with their chills, broken moments of good
+faith, others of still better doubt; adventures, for the most part, of
+the sort qualified as lessons.  The special spring that had constantly
+played for him the day before was the recognition--frequent enough to
+surprise him--of the promises to himself that he had after his other
+visit never kept.  The reminiscence to-day most quickened for him was
+that of the vow taken in the course of the pilgrimage that,
+newly-married, with the War just over, and helplessly young in spite of
+it, he had recklessly made with the creature who was so much younger
+still.  It had been a bold dash, for which they had taken money set
+apart for necessities, but kept sacred at the moment in a hundred ways,
+and in none more so than by this private pledge of his own to treat the
+occasion as a relation formed with the higher culture and see that, as
+they said at Woollett, it should bear a good harvest.  He had believed,
+sailing home again, that he had gained something great, and his
+theory--with an elaborate innocent plan of reading, digesting, coming
+back even, every few years--had then been to preserve, cherish and
+extend it. As such plans as these had come to nothing, however, in
+respect to acquisitions still more precious, it was doubtless little
+enough of a marvel that he should have lost account of that handful of
+seed.  Buried for long years in dark corners at any rate these few
+germs had sprouted again under forty-eight hours of Paris.  The process
+of yesterday had really been the process of feeling the general stirred
+life of connexions long since individually dropped.  Strether had
+become acquainted even on this ground with short gusts of
+speculation--sudden flights of fancy in Louvre galleries, hungry gazes
+through clear plates behind which lemon-coloured volumes were as fresh
+as fruit on the tree.
+
+There were instants at which he could ask whether, since there had been
+fundamentally so little question of his keeping anything, the fate
+after all decreed for him hadn't been only to BE kept.  Kept for
+something, in that event, that he didn't pretend, didn't possibly dare
+as yet to divine; something that made him hover and wonder and laugh
+and sigh, made him advance and retreat, feeling half ashamed of his
+impulse to plunge and more than half afraid of his impulse to wait.  He
+remembered for instance how he had gone back in the sixties with
+lemon-coloured volumes in general on the brain as well as with a
+dozen--selected for his wife too--in his trunk; and nothing had at the
+moment shown more confidence than this invocation of the finer taste.
+They were still somewhere at home, the dozen--stale and soiled and
+never sent to the binder; but what had become of the sharp initiation
+they represented?  They represented now the mere sallow paint on the
+door of the temple of taste that he had dreamed of raising up--a
+structure he had practically never carried further.  Strether's present
+highest flights were perhaps those in which this particular lapse
+figured to him as a symbol, a symbol of his long grind and his want of
+odd moments, his want moreover of money, of opportunity, of positive
+dignity.  That the memory of the vow of his youth should, in order to
+throb again, have had to wait for this last, as he felt it, of all his
+accidents--that was surely proof enough of how his conscience had been
+encumbered.  If any further proof were needed it would have been to be
+found in the fact that, as he perfectly now saw, he had ceased even to
+measure his meagreness, a meagreness that sprawled, in this retrospect,
+vague and comprehensive, stretching back like some unmapped Hinterland
+from a rough coast-settlement.  His conscience had been amusing itself
+for the forty-eight hours by forbidding him the purchase of a book; he
+held off from that, held off from everything; from the moment he didn't
+yet call on Chad he wouldn't for the world have taken any other step.
+On this evidence, however, of the way they actually affected him he
+glared at the lemon-coloured covers in confession of the
+subconsciousness that, all the same, in the great desert of the years,
+he must have had of them.  The green covers at home comprised, by the
+law of their purpose, no tribute to letters; it was of a mere rich
+kernel of economics, politics, ethics that, glazed and, as Mrs. Newsome
+maintained rather against HIS view, pre-eminently pleasant to touch,
+they formed the specious shell.  Without therefore any needed
+instinctive knowledge of what was coming out, in Paris, on the bright
+highway, he struck himself at present as having more than once flushed
+with a suspicion:  he couldn't otherwise at present be feeling so many
+fears confirmed.  There were "movements" he was too late for: weren't
+they, with the fun of them, already spent?  There were sequences he had
+missed and great gaps in the procession:  he might have been watching
+it all recede in a golden cloud of dust.  If the playhouse wasn't
+closed his seat had at least fallen to somebody else.  He had had an
+uneasy feeling the night before that if he was at the theatre at
+all--though he indeed justified the theatre, in the specific sense, and
+with a grotesqueness to which his imagination did all honour, as
+something he owed poor Waymarsh--he should have been there with, and as
+might have been said, FOR Chad.
+
+This suggested the question of whether he could properly have taken him
+to such a play, and what effect--it was a point that suddenly rose--his
+peculiar responsibility might be held in general to have on his choice
+of entertainment.  It had literally been present to him at the
+Gymnase--where one was held moreover comparatively safe--that having
+his young friend at his side would have been an odd feature of the work
+of redemption; and this quite in spite of the fact that the picture
+presented might well, confronted with Chad's own private stage, have
+seemed the pattern of propriety.  He clearly hadn't come out in the
+name of propriety but to visit unattended equivocal performances; yet
+still less had he done so to undermine his authority by sharing them
+with the graceless youth.  Was he to renounce all amusement for the
+sweet sake of that authority? and WOULD such renouncement give him for
+Chad a moral glamour?  The little problem bristled the more by reason
+of poor Strether's fairly open sense of the irony of things.  Were
+there then sides on which his predicament threatened to look rather
+droll to him?  Should he have to pretend to believe--either to himself
+or the wretched boy--that there was anything that could make the latter
+worse?  Wasn't some such pretence on the other hand involved in the
+assumption of possible processes that would make him better?  His
+greatest uneasiness seemed to peep at him out of the imminent
+impression that almost any acceptance of Paris might give one's
+authority away.  It hung before him this morning, the vast bright
+Babylon, like some huge iridescent object, a jewel brilliant and hard,
+in which parts were not to be discriminated nor differences comfortably
+marked.  It twinkled and trembled and melted together, and what seemed
+all surface one moment seemed all depth the next.  It was a place of
+which, unmistakeably, Chad was fond; wherefore if he, Strether, should
+like it too much, what on earth, with such a bond, would become of
+either of them?  It all depended of course--which was a gleam of
+light--on how the "too much" was measured; though indeed our friend
+fairly felt, while he prolonged the meditation I describe, that for
+himself even already a certain measure had been reached. It will have
+been sufficiently seen that he was not a man to neglect any good chance
+for reflexion.  Was it at all possible for instance to like Paris
+enough without liking it too much?  He luckily however hadn't promised
+Mrs. Newsome not to like it at all.  He was ready to recognise at this
+stage that such an engagement WOULD have tied his hands.  The
+Luxembourg Gardens were incontestably just so adorable at this hour by
+reason--in addition to their intrinsic charm--of his not having taken
+it.  The only engagement he had taken, when he looked the thing in the
+face, was to do what he reasonably could.
+
+It upset him a little none the less and after a while to find himself
+at last remembering on what current of association he had been floated
+so far.  Old imaginations of the Latin Quarter had played their part
+for him, and he had duly recalled its having been with this scene of
+rather ominous legend that, like so many young men in fiction as well
+as in fact, Chad had begun.  He was now quite out of it, with his
+"home," as Strether figured the place, in the Boulevard Malesherbes;
+which was perhaps why, repairing, not to fail of justice either, to the
+elder neighbourhood, our friend had felt he could allow for the element
+of the usual, the immemorial, without courting perturbation.  He was
+not at least in danger of seeing the youth and the particular Person
+flaunt by together; and yet he was in the very air of which--just to
+feel what the early natural note must have been--he wished most to take
+counsel.  It became at once vivid to him that he had originally had,
+for a few days, an almost envious vision of the boy's romantic
+privilege.  Melancholy Murger, with Francine and Musette and Rodolphe,
+at home, in the company of the tattered, one--if he not in his single
+self two or three--of the unbound, the paper-covered dozen on the
+shelf; and when Chad had written, five years ago, after a sojourn then
+already prolonged to six months, that he had decided to go in for
+economy and the real thing, Strether's fancy had quite fondly
+accompanied him in this migration, which was to convey him, as they
+somewhat confusedly learned at Woollett, across the bridges and up the
+Montagne Sainte-Genevieve.  This was the region--Chad had been quite
+distinct about it--in which the best French, and many other things,
+were to be learned at least cost, and in which all sorts of clever
+fellows, compatriots there for a purpose, formed an awfully pleasant
+set.  The clever fellows, the friendly countrymen were mainly young
+painters, sculptors, architects, medical students; but they were, Chad
+sagely opined, a much more profitable lot to be with--even on the
+footing of not being quite one of them--than the "terrible toughs"
+(Strether remembered the edifying discrimination) of the American bars
+and banks roundabout the Opera.  Chad had thrown out, in the
+communications following this one--for at that time he did once in a
+while communicate--that several members of a band of earnest workers
+under one of the great artists had taken him right in, making him dine
+every night, almost for nothing, at their place, and even pressing him
+not to neglect the hypothesis of there being as much "in him" as in any
+of them.  There had been literally a moment at which it appeared there
+might be something in him; there had been at any rate a moment at which
+he had written that he didn't know but what a month or two more might
+see him enrolled in some atelier.  The season had been one at which
+Mrs. Newsome was moved to gratitude for small mercies; it had broken on
+them all as a blessing that their absentee HAD perhaps a
+conscience--that he was sated in fine with idleness, was ambitious of
+variety.  The exhibition was doubtless as yet not brilliant, but
+Strether himself, even by that time much enlisted and immersed, had
+determined, on the part of the two ladies, a temperate approval and in
+fact, as he now recollected, a certain austere enthusiasm.
+
+But the very next thing that happened had been a dark drop of the
+curtain.  The son and brother had not browsed long on the Montagne
+Sainte-Genevieve--his effective little use of the name of which, like
+his allusion to the best French, appeared to have been but one of the
+notes of his rough cunning.  The light refreshment of these vain
+appearances had not accordingly carried any of them very far.  On the
+other hand it had gained Chad time; it had given him a chance,
+unchecked, to strike his roots, had paved the way for initiations more
+direct and more deep.  It was Strether's belief that he had been
+comparatively innocent before this first migration, and even that the
+first effects of the migration would not have been, without some
+particular bad accident, to have been deplored.  There had been three
+months--he had sufficiently figured it out--in which Chad had wanted to
+try.  He HAD tried, though not very hard--he had had his little hour of
+good faith.  The weakness of this principle in him was that almost any
+accident attestedly bad enough was stronger.  Such had at any rate
+markedly been the case for the precipitation of a special series of
+impressions. They had proved, successively, these impressions--all of
+Musette and Francine, but Musette and Francine vulgarised by the larger
+evolution of the type--irresistibly sharp:  he had "taken up," by what
+was at the time to be shrinkingly gathered, as it was scantly
+mentioned, with one ferociously "interested" little person after
+another.  Strether had read somewhere of a Latin motto, a description
+of the hours, observed on a clock by a traveller in Spain; and he had
+been led to apply it in thought to Chad's number one, number two,
+number three.  Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat--they had all morally
+wounded, the last had morally killed.  The last had been longest in
+possession--in possession, that is, of whatever was left of the poor
+boy's finer mortality.  And it hadn't been she, it had been one of her
+early predecessors, who had determined the second migration, the
+expensive return and relapse, the exchange again, as was fairly to be
+presumed, of the vaunted best French for some special variety of the
+worst.
+
+He pulled himself then at last together for his own progress back; not
+with the feeling that he had taken his walk in vain.  He prolonged it a
+little, in the immediate neighbourhood, after he had quitted his chair;
+and the upshot of the whole morning for him was that his campaign had
+begun.  He had wanted to put himself in relation, and he would be
+hanged if he were NOT in relation.  He was that at no moment so much as
+while, under the old arches of the Odeon, he lingered before the
+charming open-air array of literature classic and casual.  He found the
+effect of tone and tint, in the long charged tables and shelves,
+delicate and appetising; the impression--substituting one kind of
+low-priced consommation for another--might have been that of one of the
+pleasant cafes that overlapped, under an awning, to the pavement; but
+he edged along, grazing the tables, with his hands firmly behind him.
+He wasn't there to dip, to consume--he was there to reconstruct.  He
+wasn't there for his own profit--not, that is, the direct; he was there
+on some chance of feeling the brush of the wing of the stray spirit of
+youth.  He felt it in fact, he had it beside him; the old arcade
+indeed, as his inner sense listened, gave out the faint sound, as from
+far off, of the wild waving of wings.  They were folded now over the
+breasts of buried generations; but a flutter or two lived again in the
+turned page of shock-headed slouch-hatted loiterers whose young
+intensity of type, in the direction of pale acuteness, deepened his
+vision, and even his appreciation, of racial differences, and whose
+manipulation of the uncut volume was too often, however, but a
+listening at closed doors.  He reconstructed a possible groping Chad of
+three or four years before, a Chad who had, after all, simply--for that
+was the only way to see it--been too vulgar for his privilege.  Surely
+it WAS a privilege to have been young and happy just there.  Well, the
+best thing Strether knew of him was that he had had such a dream.
+
+But his own actual business half an hour later was with a third floor
+on the Boulevard Malesherbes--so much as that was definite; and the
+fact of the enjoyment by the third-floor windows of a continuous
+balcony, to which he was helped by this knowledge, had perhaps
+something to do with his lingering for five minutes on the opposite
+side of the street.  There were points as to which he had quite made up
+his mind, and one of these bore precisely on the wisdom of the
+abruptness to which events had finally committed him, a policy that he
+was pleased to find not at all shaken as he now looked at his watch and
+wondered.  He HAD announced himself--six months before; had written out
+at least that Chad wasn't to be surprised should he see him some day
+turn up.  Chad had thereupon, in a few words of rather carefully
+colourless answer, offered him a general welcome; and Strether,
+ruefully reflecting that he might have understood the warning as a hint
+to hospitality, a bid for an invitation, had fallen back upon silence
+as the corrective most to his own taste.  He had asked Mrs. Newsome
+moreover not to announce him again; he had so distinct an opinion on
+his attacking his job, should he attack it at all, in his own way.  Not
+the least of this lady's high merits for him was that he could
+absolutely rest on her word.  She was the only woman he had known, even
+at Woollett, as to whom his conviction was positive that to lie was
+beyond her art. Sarah Pocock, for instance, her own daughter, though
+with social ideals, as they said, in some respects different--Sarah who
+WAS, in her way, aesthetic, had never refused to human commerce that
+mitigation of rigour; there were occasions when he had distinctly seen
+her apply it.  Since, accordingly, at all events, he had had it from
+Mrs. Newsome that she had, at whatever cost to her more strenuous view,
+conformed, in the matter of preparing Chad, wholly to his restrictions,
+he now looked up at the fine continuous balcony with a safe sense that
+if the case had been bungled the mistake was at least his property. Was
+there perhaps just a suspicion of that in his present pause on the edge
+of the Boulevard and well in the pleasant light?
+
+Many things came over him here, and one of them was that he should
+doubtless presently know whether he had been shallow or sharp. Another
+was that the balcony in question didn't somehow show as a convenience
+easy to surrender.  Poor Strether had at this very moment to recognise
+the truth that wherever one paused in Paris the imagination reacted
+before one could stop it.  This perpetual reaction put a price, if one
+would, on pauses; but it piled up consequences till there was scarce
+room to pick one's steps among them.  What call had he, at such a
+juncture, for example, to like Chad's very house?  High broad clear--he
+was expert enough to make out in a moment that it was admirably
+built--it fairly embarrassed our friend by the quality that, as he
+would have said, it "sprang" on him.  He had struck off the fancy that
+it might, as a preliminary, be of service to him to be seen, by a happy
+accident, from the third-story windows, which took all the March sun,
+but of what service was it to find himself making out after a moment
+that the quality "sprung," the quality produced by measure and balance,
+the fine relation of part to part and space to space, was
+probably--aided by the presence of ornament as positive as it was
+discreet, and by the complexion of the stone, a cold fair grey, warmed
+and polished a little by life--neither more nor less than a case of
+distinction, such a case as he could only feel unexpectedly as a sort
+of delivered challenge? Meanwhile, however, the chance he had allowed
+for--the chance of being seen in time from the balcony--had become a
+fact.  Two or three of the windows stood open to the violet air; and,
+before Strether had cut the knot by crossing, a young man had come out
+and looked about him, had lighted a cigarette and tossed the match
+over, and then, resting on the rail, had given himself up to watching
+the life below while he smoked.  His arrival contributed, in its order,
+to keeping Strether in position; the result of which in turn was that
+Strether soon felt himself noticed.  The young man began to look at him
+as in acknowledgement of his being himself in observation.
+
+This was interesting so far as it went, but the interest was affected
+by the young man's not being Chad.  Strether wondered at first if he
+were perhaps Chad altered, and then saw that this was asking too much
+of alteration.  The young man was light bright and alert--with an air
+too pleasant to have been arrived at by patching.  Strether had
+conceived Chad as patched, but not beyond recognition.  He was in
+presence, he felt, of amendments enough as they stood; it was a
+sufficient amendment that the gentleman up there should be Chad's
+friend.  He was young too then, the gentleman up there--he was very
+young; young enough apparently to be amused at an elderly watcher, to
+be curious even to see what the elderly watcher would do on finding
+himself watched.  There was youth in that, there was youth in the
+surrender to the balcony, there was youth for Strether at this moment
+in everything but his own business; and Chad's thus pronounced
+association with youth had given the next instant an extraordinary
+quick lift to the issue. The balcony, the distinguished front,
+testified suddenly, for Strether's fancy, to something that was up and
+up; they placed the whole case materially, and as by an admirable
+image, on a level that he found himself at the end of another moment
+rejoicing to think he might reach.  The young man looked at him still,
+he looked at the young man; and the issue, by a rapid process, was that
+this knowledge of a perched privacy appeared to him the last of
+luxuries.  To him too the perched privacy was open, and he saw it now
+but in one light--that of the only domicile, the only fireside, in the
+great ironic city, on which he had the shadow of a claim. Miss Gostrey
+had a fireside; she had told him of it, and it was something that
+doubtless awaited him; but Miss Gostrey hadn't yet arrived--she
+mightn't arrive for days; and the sole attenuation of his excluded
+state was his vision of the small, the admittedly secondary hotel in
+the bye-street from the Rue de la Paix, in which her solicitude for his
+purse had placed him, which affected him somehow as all indoor chill,
+glass-roofed court and slippery staircase, and which, by the same
+token, expressed the presence of Waymarsh even at times when Waymarsh
+might have been certain to be round at the bank.  It came to pass
+before he moved that Waymarsh, and Waymarsh alone, Waymarsh not only
+undiluted but positively strengthened, struck him as the present
+alternative to the young man in the balcony.  When he did move it was
+fairly to escape that alternative.  Taking his way over the street at
+last and passing through the porte-cochere of the house was like
+consciously leaving Waymarsh out.  However, he would tell him all about
+it.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Third
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Strether told Waymarsh all about it that very evening, on their dining
+together at the hotel; which needn't have happened, he was all the
+while aware, hadn't he chosen to sacrifice to this occasion a rarer
+opportunity.  The mention to his companion of the sacrifice was
+moreover exactly what introduced his recital--or, as he would have
+called it with more confidence in his interlocutor, his confession. His
+confession was that he had been captured and that one of the features
+of the affair had just failed to be his engaging himself on the spot to
+dinner.  As by such a freedom Waymarsh would have lost him he had
+obeyed his scruple; and he had likewise obeyed another scruple--which
+bore on the question of his himself bringing a guest.
+
+Waymarsh looked gravely ardent, over the finished soup, at this array
+of scruples; Strether hadn't yet got quite used to being so unprepared
+for the consequences of the impression he produced.  It was
+comparatively easy to explain, however, that he hadn't felt sure his
+guest would please.  The person was a young man whose acquaintance he
+had made but that afternoon in the course of rather a hindered enquiry
+for another person--an enquiry his new friend had just prevented in
+fact from being vain.  "Oh," said Strether, "I've all sorts of things
+to tell you!"--and he put it in a way that was a virtual hint to
+Waymarsh to help him to enjoy the telling.  He waited for his fish, he
+drank of his wine, he wiped his long moustache, he leaned back in his
+chair, he took in the two English ladies who had just creaked past them
+and whom he would even have articulately greeted if they hadn't rather
+chilled the impulse; so that all he could do was--by way of doing
+something--to say "Merci, Francois!" out quite loud when his fish was
+brought. Everything was there that he wanted, everything that could
+make the moment an occasion, that would do beautifully--everything but
+what Waymarsh might give.  The little waxed salle-a-manger was sallow
+and sociable; Francois, dancing over it, all smiles, was a man and a
+brother; the high-shouldered patronne, with her high-held, much-rubbed
+hands, seemed always assenting exuberantly to something unsaid; the
+Paris evening in short was, for Strether, in the very taste of the
+soup, in the goodness, as he was innocently pleased to think it, of the
+wine, in the pleasant coarse texture of the napkin and the crunch of
+the thick-crusted bread.  These all were things congruous with his
+confession, and his confession was that he HAD--it would come out
+properly just there if Waymarsh would only take it properly--agreed to
+breakfast out, at twelve literally, the next day.  He didn't quite know
+where; the delicacy of the case came straight up in the remembrance of
+his new friend's "We'll see; I'll take you somewhere!"--for it had
+required little more than that, after all, to let him right in.  He was
+affected after a minute, face to face with his actual comrade, by the
+impulse to overcolour. There had already been things in respect to
+which he knew himself tempted by this perversity.  If Waymarsh thought
+them bad he should at least have his reason for his discomfort; so
+Strether showed them as worse.  Still, he was now, in his way,
+sincerely perplexed.
+
+Chad had been absent from the Boulevard Malesherbes--was absent from
+Paris altogether; he had learned that from the concierge, but had
+nevertheless gone up, and gone up--there were no two ways about
+it--from an uncontrollable, a really, if one would, depraved curiosity.
+The concierge had mentioned to him that a friend of the tenant of the
+troisieme was for the time in possession; and this had been Strether's
+pretext for a further enquiry, an experiment carried on, under Chad's
+roof, without his knowledge.  "I found his friend in fact there keeping
+the place warm, as he called it, for him; Chad himself being, as
+appears, in the south.  He went a month ago to Cannes and though his
+return begins to be looked for it can't be for some days.  I might, you
+see, perfectly have waited a week; might have beaten a retreat as soon
+as I got this essential knowledge.  But I beat no retreat; I did the
+opposite; I stayed, I dawdled, I trifled; above all I looked round.  I
+saw, in fine; and--I don't know what to call it--I sniffed.  It's a
+detail, but it's as if there were something--something very good--TO
+sniff."
+
+Waymarsh's face had shown his friend an attention apparently so remote
+that the latter was slightly surprised to find it at this point abreast
+with him.  "Do you mean a smell? What of?"
+
+"A charming scent.  But I don't know."
+
+Waymarsh gave an inferential grunt.  "Does he live there with a woman?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Waymarsh waited an instant for more, then resumed.  "Has he taken her
+off with him?"
+
+"And will he bring her back?"--Strether fell into the enquiry.  But he
+wound it up as before.  "I don't know."
+
+The way he wound it up, accompanied as this was with another drop back,
+another degustation of the Leoville, another wipe of his moustache and
+another good word for Francois, seemed to produce in his companion a
+slight irritation.  "Then what the devil DO you know?"
+
+"Well," said Strether almost gaily, "I guess I don't know anything!"
+His gaiety might have been a tribute to the fact that the state he had
+been reduced to did for him again what had been done by his talk of the
+matter with Miss Gostrey at the London theatre.  It was somehow
+enlarging; and the air of that amplitude was now doubtless more or
+less--and all for Waymarsh to feel--in his further response.  "That's
+what I found out from the young man."
+
+"But I thought you said you found out nothing."
+
+"Nothing but that--that I don't know anything."
+
+"And what good does that do you?"
+
+"It's just," said Strether, "what I've come to you to help me to
+discover.  I mean anything about anything over here.  I FELT that, up
+there.  It regularly rose before me in its might.  The young man
+moreover--Chad's friend--as good as told me so."
+
+"As good as told you you know nothing about anything?"  Waymarsh
+appeared to look at some one who might have as good as told HIM. "How
+old is he?"
+
+"Well, I guess not thirty."
+
+"Yet you had to take that from him?"
+
+"Oh I took a good deal more--since, as I tell you, I took an invitation
+to dejeuner."
+
+"And are you GOING to that unholy meal?"
+
+"If you'll come with me.  He wants you too, you know.  I told him about
+you.  He gave me his card," Strether pursued, "and his name's rather
+funny.  It's John Little Bilham, and he says his two surnames are, on
+account of his being small, inevitably used together."
+
+"Well," Waymarsh asked with due detachment from these details, "what's
+he doing up there?"
+
+"His account of himself is that he's 'only a little artist-man.' That
+seemed to me perfectly to describe him.  But he's yet in the phase of
+study; this, you know, is the great art-school--to pass a certain
+number of years in which he came over.  And he's a great friend of
+Chad's, and occupying Chad's rooms just now because they're so
+pleasant.  HE'S very pleasant and curious too," Strether added--"though
+he's not from Boston."
+
+Waymarsh looked already rather sick of him.  "Where is he from?"
+
+Strether thought.  "I don't know that, either.  But he's 'notoriously,'
+as he put it himself, not from Boston."
+
+"Well," Waymarsh moralised from dry depths, "every one can't
+notoriously be from Boston.  Why," he continued, "is he curious?"
+
+"Perhaps just for THAT--for one thing! But really," Strether added,
+"for everything.  When you meet him you'll see."
+
+"Oh I don't want to meet him," Waymarsh impatiently growled.  "Why
+don't he go home?"
+
+Strether hesitated.  "Well, because he likes it over here."
+
+This appeared in particular more than Waymarsh could bear.  "He ought
+then to be ashamed of himself, and, as you admit that you think so too,
+why drag him in?"
+
+Strether's reply again took time.  "Perhaps I do think so
+myself--though I don't quite yet admit it.  I'm not a bit sure--it's
+again one of the things I want to find out.  I liked him, and CAN you
+like people--? But no matter."  He pulled himself up.  "There's no
+doubt I want you to come down on me and squash me."
+
+Waymarsh helped himself to the next course, which, however proving not
+the dish he had just noted as supplied to the English ladies, had the
+effect of causing his imagination temporarily to wander. But it
+presently broke out at a softer spot.  "Have they got a handsome place
+up there?"
+
+"Oh a charming place; full of beautiful and valuable things.  I never
+saw such a place"--and Strether's thought went back to it. "For a
+little artist-man--!"  He could in fact scarce express it.
+
+But his companion, who appeared now to have a view, insisted. "Well?"
+
+"Well, life can hold nothing better.  Besides, they're things of which
+he's in charge."
+
+"So that he does doorkeeper for your precious pair? Can life," Waymarsh
+enquired, "hold nothing better than THAT?"  Then as Strether, silent,
+seemed even yet to wonder, "Doesn't he know what SHE is?" he went on.
+
+"I don't know.  I didn't ask him.  I couldn't.  It was impossible.  You
+wouldn't either.  Besides I didn't want to.  No more would you."
+Strether in short explained it at a stroke.  "You can't make out over
+here what people do know."
+
+"Then what did you come over for?"
+
+"Well, I suppose exactly to see for myself--without their aid."
+
+"Then what do you want mine for?"
+
+"Oh," Strether laughed, "you're not one of THEM!  I do know what you
+know."
+
+As, however, this last assertion caused Waymarsh again to look at him
+hard--such being the latter's doubt of its implications--he felt his
+justification lame.  Which was still more the case when Waymarsh
+presently said:  "Look here, Strether.  Quit this."
+
+Our friend smiled with a doubt of his own.  "Do you mean my tone?"
+
+"No--damn your tone.  I mean your nosing round.  Quit the whole job.
+Let them stew in their juice.  You're being used for a thing you ain't
+fit for.  People don't take a fine-tooth comb to groom a horse."
+
+"Am I a fine-tooth comb?" Strether laughed.  "It's something I never
+called myself!"
+
+"It's what you are, all the same.  You ain't so young as you were, but
+you've kept your teeth."
+
+He acknowledged his friend's humour.  "Take care I don't get them into
+YOU! You'd like them, my friends at home, Waymarsh," he declared;
+"you'd really particularly like them.  And I know"--it was slightly
+irrelevant, but he gave it sudden and singular force--"I know they'd
+like you!"
+
+"Oh don't work them off on ME!" Waymarsh groaned.
+
+Yet Strether still lingered with his hands in his pockets.  "It's
+really quite as indispensable as I say that Chad should be got back."
+
+"Indispensable to whom? To you?"
+
+"Yes," Strether presently said.
+
+"Because if you get him you also get Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+Strether faced it.  "Yes."
+
+"And if you don't get him you don't get her?"
+
+It might be merciless, but he continued not to flinch.  "I think it
+might have some effect on our personal understanding.  Chad's of real
+importance--or can easily become so if he will--to the business."
+
+"And the business is of real importance to his mother's husband?"
+
+"Well, I naturally want what my future wife wants.  And the thing will
+be much better if we have our own man in it."
+
+"If you have your own man in it, in other words," Waymarsh said,
+"you'll marry--you personally--more money.  She's already rich, as I
+understand you, but she'll be richer still if the business can be made
+to boom on certain lines that you've laid down."
+
+"I haven't laid them down," Strether promptly returned.  "Mr.
+Newsome--who knew extraordinarily well what he was about--laid them
+down ten years ago."
+
+Oh well, Waymarsh seemed to indicate with a shake of his mane, THAT
+didn't matter! "You're fierce for the boom anyway."
+
+His friend weighed a moment in silence the justice of the charge. "I
+can scarcely be called fierce, I think, when I so freely take my chance
+of the possibility, the danger, of being influenced in a sense counter
+to Mrs. Newsome's own feelings."
+
+Waymarsh gave this proposition a long hard look.  "I see.  You're
+afraid yourself of being squared.  But you're a humbug," he added, "all
+the same."
+
+"Oh!" Strether quickly protested.
+
+"Yes, you ask me for protection--which makes you very interesting; and
+then you won't take it.  You say you want to be squashed--"
+
+"Ah but not so easily! Don't you see," Strether demanded "where my
+interest, as already shown you, lies? It lies in my not being squared.
+If I'm squared where's my marriage? If I miss my errand I miss that;
+and if I miss that I miss everything--I'm nowhere."
+
+Waymarsh--but all relentlessly--took this in.  "What do I care where
+you are if you're spoiled?"
+
+Their eyes met on it an instant.  "Thank you awfully," Strether at last
+said.  "But don't you think HER judgement of that--?"
+
+"Ought to content me? No."
+
+It kept them again face to face, and the end of this was that Strether
+again laughed.  "You do her injustice.  You really MUST know her.
+Good-night."
+
+He breakfasted with Mr. Bilham on the morrow, and, as inconsequently
+befell, with Waymarsh massively of the party.  The latter announced, at
+the eleventh hour and much to his friend's surprise, that, damn it, he
+would as soon join him as do anything else; on which they proceeded
+together, strolling in a state of detachment practically luxurious for
+them to the Boulevard Malesherbes, a couple engaged that day with the
+sharp spell of Paris as confessedly, it might have been seen, as any
+couple among the daily thousands so compromised.  They walked,
+wandered, wondered and, a little, lost themselves; Strether hadn't had
+for years so rich a consciousness of time--a bag of gold into which he
+constantly dipped for a handful.  It was present to him that when the
+little business with Mr. Bilham should be over he would still have
+shining hours to use absolutely as he liked.  There was no great pulse
+of haste yet in this process of saving Chad; nor was that effect a bit
+more marked as he sat, half an hour later, with his legs under Chad's
+mahogany, with Mr. Bilham on one side, with a friend of Mr. Bilham's on
+the other, with Waymarsh stupendously opposite, and with the great hum
+of Paris coming up in softness, vagueness-for Strether himself indeed
+already positive sweetness--through the sunny windows toward which, the
+day before, his curiosity had raised its wings from below.  The feeling
+strongest with him at that moment had borne fruit almost faster than he
+could taste it, and Strether literally felt at the present hour that
+there was a precipitation in his fate.  He had known nothing and nobody
+as he stood in the street; but hadn't his view now taken a bound in the
+direction of every one and of every thing?
+
+"What's he up to, what's he up to?"--something like that was at the
+back of his head all the while in respect to little Bilham; but
+meanwhile, till he should make out, every one and every thing were as
+good as represented for him by the combination of his host and the lady
+on his left.  The lady on his left, the lady thus promptly and
+ingeniously invited to "meet" Mr. Strether and Mr. Waymarsh--it was the
+way she herself expressed her case--was a very marked person, a person
+who had much to do with our friend's asking himself if the occasion
+weren't in its essence the most baited, the most gilded of traps.
+Baited it could properly be called when the repast was of so wise a
+savour, and gilded surrounding objects seemed inevitably to need to be
+when Miss Barrace--which was the lady's name--looked at them with
+convex Parisian eyes and through a glass with a remarkably long
+tortoise-shell handle.  Why Miss Barrace, mature meagre erect and
+eminently gay, highly adorned, perfectly familiar, freely
+contradictions and reminding him of some last-century portrait of a
+clever head without powder--why Miss Barrace should have been in
+particular the note of a "trap" Strether couldn't on the spot have
+explained; he blinked in the light of a conviction that he should know
+later on, and know well--as it came over him, for that matter, with
+force, that he should need to.  He wondered what he was to think
+exactly of either of his new friends; since the young man, Chad's
+intimate and deputy, had, in thus constituting the scene, practised so
+much more subtly than he had been prepared for, and since in especial
+Miss Barrace, surrounded clearly by every consideration, hadn't
+scrupled to figure as a familiar object.  It was interesting to him to
+feel that he was in the presence of new measures, other standards, a
+different scale of relations, and that evidently here were a happy pair
+who didn't think of things at all as he and Waymarsh thought.  Nothing
+was less to have been calculated in the business than that it should
+now be for him as if he and Waymarsh were comparatively quite at one.
+
+The latter was magnificent--this at least was an assurance privately
+given him by Miss Barrace.  "Oh your friend's a type, the grand old
+American--what shall one call it? The Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel,
+Jeremiah, who used when I was a little girl in the Rue Montaigne to
+come to see my father and who was usually the American Minister to the
+Tuileries or some other court.  I haven't seen one these ever so many
+years; the sight of it warms my poor old chilled heart; this specimen
+is wonderful; in the right quarter, you know, he'll have a succes fou."
+Strether hadn't failed to ask what the right quarter might be, much as
+he required his presence of mind to meet such a change in their scheme.
+"Oh the artist-quarter and that kind of thing; HERE already, for
+instance, as you see."  He had been on the point of echoing
+"'Here'?--is THIS the artist-quarter?" but she had already disposed of
+the question with a wave of all her tortoise-shell and an easy "Bring
+him to ME!"  He knew on the spot how little he should be able to bring
+him, for the very air was by this time, to his sense, thick and hot
+with poor Waymarsh's judgement of it. He was in the trap still more
+than his companion and, unlike his companion, not making the best of
+it; which was precisely what doubtless gave him his admirable sombre
+glow.  Little did Miss Barrace know that what was behind it was his
+grave estimate of her own laxity. The general assumption with which our
+two friends had arrived had been that of finding Mr. Bilham ready to
+conduct them to one or other of those resorts of the earnest, the
+aesthetic fraternity which were shown among the sights of Paris.  In
+this character it would have justified them in a proper insistence on
+discharging their score.  Waymarsh's only proviso at the last had been
+that nobody should pay for him; but he found himself, as the occasion
+developed, paid for on a scale as to which Strether privately made out
+that he already nursed retribution.  Strether was conscious across the
+table of what worked in him, conscious when they passed back to the
+small salon to which, the previous evening, he himself had made so rich
+a reference; conscious most of all as they stepped out to the balcony
+in which one would have had to be an ogre not to recognise the perfect
+place for easy aftertastes.  These things were enhanced for Miss
+Barrace by a succession of excellent cigarettes--acknowledged,
+acclaimed, as a part of the wonderful supply left behind him by
+Chad--in an almost equal absorption of which Strether found himself
+blindly, almost wildly pushing forward.  He might perish by the sword
+as well as by famine, and he knew that his having abetted the lady by
+an excess that was rare with him would count for little in the sum--as
+Waymarsh might so easily add it up--of her licence.  Waymarsh had
+smoked of old, smoked hugely; but Waymarsh did nothing now, and that
+gave him his advantage over people who took things up lightly just when
+others had laid them heavily down.  Strether had never smoked, and he
+felt as if he flaunted at his friend that this had been only because of
+a reason.  The reason, it now began to appear even to himself, was that
+he had never had a lady to smoke with.
+
+It was this lady's being there at all, however, that was the strange
+free thing; perhaps, since she WAS there, her smoking was the least of
+her freedoms.  If Strether had been sure at each juncture of what--with
+Bilham in especial--she talked about, he might have traced others and
+winced at them and felt Waymarsh wince; but he was in fact so often at
+sea that his sense of the range of reference was merely general and
+that he on several different occasions guessed and interpreted only to
+doubt.  He wondered what they meant, but there were things he scarce
+thought they could be supposed to mean, and "Oh no--not THAT!" was at
+the end of most of his ventures.  This was the very beginning with him
+of a condition as to which, later on, it will be seen, he found cause
+to pull himself up; and he was to remember the moment duly as the first
+step in a process.  The central fact of the place was neither more nor
+less, when analysed--and a pressure superficial sufficed--than the
+fundamental impropriety of Chad's situation, round about which they
+thus seemed cynically clustered. Accordingly, since they took it for
+granted, they took for granted all that was in connexion with it taken
+for granted at Woollett--matters as to which, verily, he had been
+reduced with Mrs. Newsome to the last intensity of silence.  That was
+the consequence of their being too bad to be talked about, and was the
+accompaniment, by the same token, of a deep conception of their
+badness.  It befell therefore that when poor Strether put it to himself
+that their badness was ultimately, or perhaps even insolently, what
+such a scene as the one before him was, so to speak, built upon, he
+could scarce shirk the dilemma of reading a roundabout echo of them
+into almost anything that came up.  This, he was well aware, was a
+dreadful necessity; but such was the stern logic, he could only gather,
+of a relation to the irregular life.
+
+It was the way the irregular life sat upon Bilham and Miss Barrace that
+was the insidious, the delicate marvel.  He was eager to concede that
+their relation to it was all indirect, for anything else in him would
+have shown the grossness of bad manners; but the indirectness was none
+the less consonant--THAT was striking-with a grateful enjoyment of
+everything that was Chad's.  They spoke of him repeatedly, invoking his
+good name and good nature, and the worst confusion of mind for Strether
+was that all their mention of him was of a kind to do him honour. They
+commended his munificence and approved his taste, and in doing so sat
+down, as it seemed to Strether, in the very soil out of which these
+things flowered.  Our friend's final predicament was that he himself
+was sitting down, for the time, WITH them, and there was a supreme
+moment at which, compared with his collapse, Waymarsh's erectness
+affected him as really high.  One thing was certain--he saw he must
+make up his mind.  He must approach Chad, must wait for him, deal with
+him, master him, but he mustn't dispossess himself of the faculty of
+seeing things as they were.  He must bring him to HIM--not go himself,
+as it were, so much of the way.  He must at any rate be clearer as to
+what--should he continue to do that for convenience--he was still
+condoning.  It was on the detail of this quantity--and what could the
+fact be but mystifying?-that Bilham and Miss Barrace threw so little
+light.  So there they were.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+When Miss Gostrey arrived, at the end of a week, she made him a sign;
+he went immediately to see her, and it wasn't till then that he could
+again close his grasp on the idea of a corrective. This idea however
+was luckily all before him again from the moment he crossed the
+threshold of the little entresol of the Quartier Marboeuf into which
+she had gathered, as she said, picking them up in a thousand flights
+and funny little passionate pounces, the makings of a final nest.  He
+recognised in an instant that there really, there only, he should find
+the boon with the vision of which he had first mounted Chad's stairs.
+He might have been a little scared at the picture of how much more, in
+this place, he should know himself "in" hadn't his friend been on the
+spot to measure the amount to his appetite.  Her compact and crowded
+little chambers, almost dusky, as they at first struck him, with
+accumulations, represented a supreme general adjustment to
+opportunities and conditions.  Wherever he looked he saw an old ivory
+or an old brocade, and he scarce knew where to sit for fear of a
+misappliance.  The life of the occupant struck him of a sudden as more
+charged with possession even than Chad's or than Miss Barrace's; wide
+as his glimpse had lately become of the empire of "things," what was
+before him still enlarged it; the lust of the eyes and the pride of
+life had indeed thus their temple.  It was the innermost nook of the
+shrine--as brown as a pirate's cave.  In the brownness were glints of
+gold; patches of purple were in the gloom; objects all that caught,
+through the muslin, with their high rarity, the light of the low
+windows. Nothing was clear about them but that they were precious, and
+they brushed his ignorance with their contempt as a flower, in a
+liberty taken with him, might have been whisked under his nose. But
+after a full look at his hostess he knew none the less what most
+concerned him.  The circle in which they stood together was warm with
+life, and every question between them would live there as nowhere else.
+A question came up as soon as they had spoken, for his answer, with a
+laugh, was quickly:  "Well, they've got hold of me!"  Much of their
+talk on this first occasion was his development of that truth.  He was
+extraordinarily glad to see her, expressing to her frankly what she
+most showed him, that one might live for years without a blessing
+unsuspected, but that to know it at last for no more than three days
+was to need it or miss it for ever.  She was the blessing that had now
+become his need, and what could prove it better than that without her
+he had lost himself?
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked with an absence of alarm that, correcting
+him as if he had mistaken the "period" of one of her pieces, gave him
+afresh a sense of her easy movement through the maze he had but begun
+to tread.  "What in the name of all the Pococks have you managed to do?"
+
+"Why exactly the wrong thing.  I've made a frantic friend of little
+Bilham."
+
+"Ah that sort of thing was of the essence of your case and to have been
+allowed for from the first."  And it was only after this that, quite as
+a minor matter, she asked who in the world little Bilham might be. When
+she learned that he was a friend of Chad's and living for the time in
+Chad's rooms in Chad's absence, quite as if acting in Chad's spirit and
+serving Chad's cause, she showed, however, more interest.  "Should you
+mind my seeing him? Only once, you know," she added.
+
+"Oh the oftener the better:  he's amusing--he's original."
+
+"He doesn't shock you?" Miss Gostrey threw out.
+
+"Never in the world! We escape that with a perfection--! I feel it to
+be largely, no doubt, because I don't half-understand him; but our
+modus vivendi isn't spoiled even by that.  You must dine with me to
+meet him," Strether went on.  "Then you'll see.'
+
+"Are you giving dinners?"
+
+"Yes--there I am.  That's what I mean."
+
+All her kindness wondered.  "That you're spending too much money?"
+
+"Dear no--they seem to cost so little.  But that I do it to THEM. I
+ought to hold off."
+
+She thought again--she laughed.  "The money you must be spending to
+think it cheap! But I must be out of it--to the naked eye."
+
+He looked for a moment as if she were really failing him.  "Then you
+won't meet them?"  It was almost as if she had developed an unexpected
+personal prudence.
+
+She hesitated.  "Who are they--first?"
+
+"Why little Bilham to begin with."  He kept back for the moment Miss
+Barrace.  "And Chad--when he comes--you must absolutely see."
+
+"When then does he come?"
+
+"When Bilham has had time to write him, and hear from him about me.
+Bilham, however," he pursued, "will report favourably--favourably for
+Chad.  That will make him not afraid to come.  I want you the more
+therefore, you see, for my bluff."
+
+"Oh you'll do yourself for your bluff."  She was perfectly easy. "At
+the rate you've gone I'm quiet."
+
+"Ah but I haven't," said Strether, "made one protest."
+
+She turned it over.  "Haven't you been seeing what there's to protest
+about?"
+
+He let her, with this, however ruefully, have the whole truth.  "I
+haven't yet found a single thing."
+
+"Isn't there any one WITH him then?"
+
+"Of the sort I came out about?"  Strether took a moment.  "How do I
+know? And what do I care?"
+
+"Oh oh!"--and her laughter spread.  He was struck in fact by the effect
+on her of his joke.  He saw now how he meant it as a joke. SHE saw,
+however, still other things, though in an instant she had hidden them.
+"You've got at no facts at all?"
+
+He tried to muster them.  "Well, he has a lovely home."
+
+"Ah that, in Paris," she quickly returned, "proves nothing.  That is
+rather it DISproves nothing.  They may very well, you see, the people
+your mission is concerned with, have done it FOR him."
+
+"Exactly.  And it was on the scene of their doings then that Waymarsh
+and I sat guzzling."
+
+"Oh if you forbore to guzzle here on scenes of doings," she replied,
+"you might easily die of starvation."  With which she smiled at him.
+"You've worse before you."
+
+"Ah I've EVERYTHING before me.  But on our hypothesis, you know, they
+must be wonderful."
+
+"They ARE!" said Miss Gostrey.  "You're not therefore, you see," she
+added, "wholly without facts.  They've BEEN, in effect, wonderful."
+
+To have got at something comparatively definite appeared at last a
+little to help--a wave by which moreover, the next moment, recollection
+was washed.  "My young man does admit furthermore that they're our
+friend's great interest."
+
+"Is that the expression he uses?"
+
+Strether more exactly recalled.  "No--not quite."
+
+"Something more vivid?  Less?"
+
+He had bent, with neared glasses, over a group of articles on a small
+stand; and at this he came up.  "It was a mere allusion, but, on the
+lookout as I was, it struck me.  'Awful, you know, as Chad is'--those
+were Bilham's words."
+
+"'Awful, you know'--?  Oh!"--and Miss Gostrey turned them over.  She
+seemed, however, satisfied.  "Well, what more do you want?"
+
+He glanced once more at a bibelot or two, and everything sent him back.
+"But it is all the same as if they wished to let me have it between the
+eyes."
+
+She wondered.  "Quoi donc?"
+
+"Why what I speak of.  The amenity.  They can stun you with that as
+well as with anything else."
+
+"Oh," she answered, "you'll come round! I must see them each," she went
+on, "for myself.  I mean Mr. Bilham and Mr. Newsome--Mr. Bilham
+naturally first.  Once only--once for each; that will do. But face to
+face--for half an hour.  What's Mr. Chad," she immediately pursued,
+"doing at Cannes?  Decent men don't go to Cannes with the--well, with
+the kind of ladies you mean."
+
+"Don't they?"  Strether asked with an interest in decent men that
+amused her.
+
+"No, elsewhere, but not to Cannes.  Cannes is different.  Cannes is
+better.  Cannes is best.  I mean it's all people you know--when you do
+know them.  And if HE does, why that's different too.  He must have
+gone alone.  She can't be with him."
+
+"I haven't," Strether confessed in his weakness, "the least idea."
+There seemed much in what she said, but he was able after a little to
+help her to a nearer impression.  The meeting with little Bilham took
+place, by easy arrangement, in the great gallery of the Louvre; and
+when, standing with his fellow visitor before one of the splendid
+Titians--the overwhelming portrait of the young man with the
+strangely-shaped glove and the blue-grey eyes--he turned to see the
+third member of their party advance from the end of the waxed and
+gilded vista, he had a sense of having at last taken hold.  He had
+agreed with Miss Gostrey--it dated even from Chester--for a morning at
+the Louvre, and he had embraced independently the same idea as thrown
+out by little Bilham, whom he had already accompanied to the museum of
+the Luxembourg.  The fusion of these schemes presented no difficulty,
+and it was to strike him again that in little Bilham's company
+contrarieties in general dropped.
+
+"Oh he's all right--he's one of US!" Miss Gostrey, after the first
+exchange, soon found a chance to murmur to her companion; and Strether,
+as they proceeded and paused and while a quick unanimity between the
+two appeared to have phrased itself in half a dozen remarks--Strether
+knew that he knew almost immediately what she meant, and took it as
+still another sign that he had got his job in hand.  This was the more
+grateful to him that he could think of the intelligence now serving him
+as an acquisition positively new. He wouldn't have known even the day
+before what she meant--that is if she meant, what he assumed, that they
+were intense Americans together.  He had just worked round--and with a
+sharper turn of the screw than any yet--to the conception of an
+American intense as little Bilham was intense.  The young man was his
+first specimen; the specimen had profoundly perplexed him; at present
+however there was light.  It was by little Bilham's amazing serenity
+that he had at first been affected, but he had inevitably, in his
+circumspection, felt it as the trail of the serpent, the corruption, as
+he might conveniently have said, of Europe; whereas the promptness with
+which it came up for Miss Gostrey but as a special little form of the
+oldest thing they knew justified it at once to his own vision as well.
+He wanted to be able to like his specimen with a clear good conscience,
+and this fully permitted it.  What had muddled him was precisely the
+small artist-man's way--it was so complete--of being more American than
+anybody.  But it now for the time put Strether vastly at his ease to
+have this view of a new way.
+
+The amiable youth then looked out, as it had first struck Strether, at
+a world in respect to which he hadn't a prejudice. The one our friend
+most instantly missed was the usual one in favour of an occupation
+accepted.  Little Bilham had an occupation, but it was only an
+occupation declined; and it was by his general exemption from alarm,
+anxiety or remorse on this score that the impression of his serenity
+was made.  He had come out to Paris to paint--to fathom, that is, at
+large, that mystery; but study had been fatal to him so far as anything
+COULD be fatal, and his productive power faltered in proportion as his
+knowledge grew. Strether had gathered from him that at the moment of
+his finding him in Chad's rooms he hadn't saved from his shipwreck a
+scrap of anything but his beautiful intelligence and his confirmed
+habit of Paris.  He referred to these things with an equal fond
+familiarity, and it was sufficiently clear that, as an outfit, they
+still served him.  They were charming to Strether through the hour
+spent at the Louvre, where indeed they figured for him as an
+unseparated part of the charged iridescent air, the glamour of the
+name, the splendour of the space, the colour of the masters.  Yet they
+were present too wherever the young man led, and the day after the
+visit to the Louvre they hung, in a different walk, about the steps of
+our party.  He had invited his companions to cross the river with him,
+offering to show them his own poor place; and his own poor place, which
+was very poor, gave to his idiosyncrasies, for Strether--the small
+sublime indifference and independences that had struck the latter as
+fresh--an odd and engaging dignity. He lived at the end of an alley
+that went out of an old short cobbled street, a street that went in
+turn out of a new long smooth avenue--street and avenue and alley
+having, however, in common a sort of social shabbiness; and he
+introduced them to the rather cold and blank little studio which he had
+lent to a comrade for the term of his elegant absence.  The comrade was
+another ingenuous compatriot, to whom he had wired that tea was to
+await them "regardless," and this reckless repast, and the second
+ingenuous compatriot, and the faraway makeshift life, with its jokes
+and its gaps, its delicate daubs and its three or four chairs, its
+overflow of taste and conviction and its lack of nearly all else--these
+things wove round the occasion a spell to which our hero unreservedly
+surrendered.
+
+He liked the ingenuous compatriots--for two or three others soon
+gathered; he liked the delicate daubs and the free
+discriminations--involving references indeed, involving enthusiasms and
+execrations that made him, as they said, sit up; he liked above all the
+legend of good-humoured poverty, of mutual accommodation fairly raised
+to the romantic, that he soon read into the scene.  The ingenuous
+compatriots showed a candour, he thought, surpassing even the candour
+of Woollett; they were red-haired and long-legged, they were quaint and
+queer and dear and droll; they made the place resound with the
+vernacular, which he had never known so marked as when figuring for the
+chosen language, he must suppose, of contemporary art.  They twanged
+with a vengeance the aesthetic lyre--they drew from it wonderful airs.
+This aspect of their life had an admirable innocence; and he looked on
+occasion at Maria Gostrey to see to what extent that element reached
+her.  She gave him however for the hour, as she had given him the
+previous day, no further sign than to show how she dealt with boys;
+meeting them with the air of old Parisian practice that she had for
+every one, for everything, in turn. Wonderful about the delicate daubs,
+masterful about the way to make tea, trustful about the legs of chairs
+and familiarly reminiscent of those, in the other time, the named, the
+numbered or the caricatured, who had flourished or failed, disappeared
+or arrived, she had accepted with the best grace her second course of
+little Bilham, and had said to Strether, the previous afternoon on his
+leaving them, that, since her impression was to be renewed, she would
+reserve judgement till after the new evidence.
+
+The new evidence was to come, as it proved, in a day or two.  He soon
+had from Maria a message to the effect that an excellent box at the
+Francais had been lent her for the following night; it seeming on such
+occasions not the least of her merits that she was subject to such
+approaches.  The sense of how she was always paying for something in
+advance was equalled on Strether's part only by the sense of how she
+was always being paid; all of which made for his consciousness, in the
+larger air, of a lively bustling traffic, the exchange of such values
+as were not for him to handle.  She hated, he knew, at the French play,
+anything but a box--just as she hated at the English anything but a
+stall; and a box was what he was already in this phase girding himself
+to press upon her. But she had for that matter her community with
+little Bilham:  she too always, on the great issues, showed as having
+known in time. It made her constantly beforehand with him and gave him
+mainly the chance to ask himself how on the day of their settlement
+their account would stand.  He endeavoured even now to keep it a little
+straight by arranging that if he accepted her invitation she should
+dine with him first; but the upshot of this scruple was that at eight
+o'clock on the morrow he awaited her with Waymarsh under the pillared
+portico.  She hadn't dined with him, and it was characteristic of their
+relation that she had made him embrace her refusal without in the least
+understanding it.  She ever caused her rearrangements to affect him as
+her tenderest touches.  It was on that principle for instance that,
+giving him the opportunity to be amiable again to little Bilham, she
+had suggested his offering the young man a seat in their box.  Strether
+had dispatched for this purpose a small blue missive to the Boulevard
+Malesherbes, but up to the moment of their passing into the theatre he
+had received no response to his message.  He held, however, even after
+they had been for some time conveniently seated, that their friend, who
+knew his way about, would come in at his own right moment.  His
+temporary absence moreover seemed, as never yet, to make the right
+moment for Miss Gostrey.  Strether had been waiting till tonight to get
+back from her in some mirrored form her impressions and conclusions.
+She had elected, as they said, to see little Bilham once; but now she
+had seen him twice and had nevertheless not said more than a word.
+
+Waymarsh meanwhile sat opposite him with their hostess between; and
+Miss Gostrey spoke of herself as an instructor of youth introducing her
+little charges to a work that was one of the glories of literature. The
+glory was happily unobjectionable, and the little charges were candid;
+for herself she had travelled that road and she merely waited on their
+innocence.  But she referred in due time to their absent friend, whom
+it was clear they should have to give up.  "He either won't have got
+your note," she said, "or you won't have got his:  he has had some kind
+of hindrance, and, of course, for that matter, you know, a man never
+writes about coming to a box."  She spoke as if, with her look, it
+might have been Waymarsh who had written to the youth, and the latter's
+face showed a mixture of austerity and anguish.  She went on however as
+if to meet this.  "He's far and away, you know, the best of them."
+
+"The best of whom, ma'am?"
+
+"Why of all the long procession--the boys, the girls, or the old men
+and old women as they sometimes really are; the hope, as one may say,
+of our country.  They've all passed, year after year; but there has
+been no one in particular I've ever wanted to stop.  I feel--don't
+YOU?--that I want to stop little Bilham; he's so exactly right as he
+is."  She continued to talk to Waymarsh.  "He's too delightful.  If
+he'll only not spoil it! But they always WILL; they always do; they
+always have."
+
+"I don't think Waymarsh knows," Strether said after a moment, "quite
+what it's open to Bilham to spoil."
+
+"It can't be a good American," Waymarsh lucidly enough replied; "for it
+didn't strike me the young man had developed much in THAT shape."
+
+"Ah," Miss Gostrey sighed, "the name of the good American is as easily
+given as taken away! What IS it, to begin with, to BE one, and what's
+the extraordinary hurry?  Surely nothing that's so pressing was ever so
+little defined.  It's such an order, really, that before we cook you
+the dish we must at least have your receipt.  Besides the poor chicks
+have time! What I've seen so often spoiled," she pursued, "is the happy
+attitude itself, the state of faith and--what shall I call it?--the
+sense of beauty. You're right about him"--she now took in Strether;
+"little Bilham has them to a charm, we must keep little Bilham along."
+Then she was all again for Waymarsh.  "The others have all wanted so
+dreadfully to do something, and they've gone and done it in too many
+cases indeed.  It leaves them never the same afterwards; the charm's
+always somehow broken.  Now HE, I think, you know, really won't.  He
+won't do the least dreadful little thing.  We shall continue to enjoy
+him just as he is.  No--he's quite beautiful.  He sees everything.  He
+isn't a bit ashamed.  He has every scrap of the courage of it that one
+could ask.  Only think what he MIGHT do. One wants really--for fear of
+some accident--to keep him in view. At this very moment perhaps what
+mayn't he be up to?  I've had my disappointments--the poor things are
+never really safe; or only at least when you have them under your eye.
+One can never completely trust them.  One's uneasy, and I think that's
+why I most miss him now."
+
+She had wound up with a laugh of enjoyment over her embroidery of her
+idea--an enjoyment that her face communicated to Strether, who almost
+wished none the less at this moment that she would let poor Waymarsh
+alone.  HE knew more or less what she meant; but the fact wasn't a
+reason for her not pretending to Waymarsh that he didn't.  It was
+craven of him perhaps, but he would, for the high amenity of the
+occasion, have liked Waymarsh not to be so sure of his wit.  Her
+recognition of it gave him away and, before she had done with him or
+with that article, would give him worse.  What was he, all the same, to
+do?  He looked across the box at his friend; their eyes met; something
+queer and stiff, something that bore on the situation but that it was
+better not to touch, passed in silence between them.  Well, the effect
+of it for Strether was an abrupt reaction, a final impatience of his
+own tendency to temporise.  Where was that taking him anyway?  It was
+one of the quiet instants that sometimes settle more matters than the
+outbreaks dear to the historic muse.  The only qualification of the
+quietness was the synthetic "Oh hang it!" into which Strether's share
+of the silence soundlessly flowered.  It represented, this mute
+ejaculation, a final impulse to burn his ships.  These ships, to the
+historic muse, may seem of course mere cockles, but when he presently
+spoke to Miss Gostrey it was with the sense at least of applying the
+torch.  "Is it then a conspiracy?"
+
+"Between the two young men?  Well, I don't pretend to be a seer or a
+prophetess," she presently replied; "but if I'm simply a woman of sense
+he's working for you to-night.  I don't quite know how--but it's in my
+bones."  And she looked at him at last as if, little material as she
+yet gave him, he'd really understand.  "For an opinion THAT'S my
+opinion.  He makes you out too well not to."
+
+"Not to work for me to-night?"  Strether wondered.  "Then I hope he
+isn't doing anything very bad."
+
+"They've got you," she portentously answered.
+
+"Do you mean he IS--?"
+
+"They've got you," she merely repeated.  Though she disclaimed the
+prophetic vision she was at this instant the nearest approach he had
+ever met to the priestess of the oracle.  The light was in her eyes.
+"You must face it now."
+
+He faced it on the spot.  "They HAD arranged--?"
+
+"Every move in the game.  And they've been arranging ever since.  He
+has had every day his little telegram from Cannes."
+
+It made Strether open his eyes.  "Do you KNOW that?"
+
+"I do better.  I see it.  This was, before I met him, what I wondered
+whether I WAS to see.  But as soon as I met him I ceased to wonder, and
+our second meeting made me sure.  I took him all in. He was acting--he
+is still--on his daily instructions."
+
+"So that Chad has done the whole thing?"
+
+"Oh no--not the whole.  WE'VE done some of it.  You and I and 'Europe.'"
+
+"Europe--yes," Strether mused.
+
+"Dear old Paris," she seemed to explain.  But there was more, and, with
+one of her turns, she risked it.  "And dear old Waymarsh. You," she
+declared, "have been a good bit of it."
+
+He sat massive.  "A good bit of what, ma'am?"
+
+"Why of the wonderful consciousness of our friend here.  You've helped
+too in your way to float him to where he is."
+
+"And where the devil IS he?"
+
+She passed it on with a laugh.  "Where the devil, Strether, are you?"
+
+He spoke as if he had just been thinking it out.  "Well, quite already
+in Chad's hands, it would seem."  And he had had with this another
+thought.  "Will that be--just all through Bilham--the way he's going to
+work it?  It would be, for him, you know, an idea. And Chad with an
+idea--!"
+
+"Well?" she asked while the image held him.
+
+"Well, is Chad--what shall I say?--monstrous?"
+
+"Oh as much as you like! But the idea you speak of," she said, "won't
+have been his best.  He'll have a better.  It won't be all through
+little Bilham that he'll work it."
+
+This already sounded almost like a hope destroyed.  "Through whom else
+then?"
+
+"That's what we shall see!"  But quite as she spoke she turned, and
+Strether turned; for the door of the box had opened, with the click of
+the ouvreuse,  from the lobby, and a gentleman, a stranger to them, had
+come in with a quick step.  The door closed behind him, and, though
+their faces showed him his mistake, his air, which was striking, was
+all good confidence.  The curtain had just again arisen, and, in the
+hush of the general attention, Strether's challenge was tacit, as was
+also the greeting, with a quickly deprecating hand and smile, of the
+unannounced visitor.  He discreetly signed that he would wait, would
+stand, and these things and his face, one look from which she had
+caught, had suddenly worked for Miss Gostrey.  She fitted to them all
+an answer for Strether's last question.  The solid stranger was simply
+the answer--as she now, turning to her friend, indicated.  She brought
+it straight out for him--it presented the intruder.  "Why, through this
+gentleman!"  The gentleman indeed, at the same time, though sounding
+for Strether a very short name, did practically as much to explain.
+Strether gasped the name back--then only had he seen Miss Gostrey had
+said more than she knew.  They were in presence of Chad himself.
+
+Our friend was to go over it afterwards again and again--he was going
+over it much of the time that they were together, and they were
+together constantly for three or four days:  the note had been so
+strongly struck during that first half-hour that everything happening
+since was comparatively a minor development.  The fact was that his
+perception of the young man's identity--so absolutely checked for a
+minute--had been quite one of the sensations that count in life; he
+certainly had never known one that had acted, as he might have said,
+with more of a crowded rush.  And the rush though both vague and
+multitudinous, had lasted a long time, protected, as it were, yet at
+the same time aggravated, by the circumstance of its coinciding with a
+stretch of decorous silence. They couldn't talk without disturbing the
+spectators in the part of the balcony just below them; and it, for that
+matter, came to Strether--being a thing of the sort that did come to
+him--that these were the accidents of a high civilisation; the imposed
+tribute to propriety, the frequent exposure to conditions, usually
+brilliant, in which relief has to await its time.  Relief was never
+quite near at hand for kings, queens, comedians and other such people,
+and though you might be yourself not exactly one of those, you could
+yet, in leading the life of high pressure, guess a little how they
+sometimes felt.  It was truly the life of high pressure that Strether
+had seemed to feel himself lead while he sat there, close to Chad,
+during the long tension of the act.  He was in presence of a fact that
+occupied his whole mind, that occupied for the half-hour his senses
+themselves all together; but he couldn't without inconvenience show
+anything--which moreover might count really as luck.  What he might
+have shown, had he shown at all, was exactly the kind of emotion--the
+emotion of bewilderment--that he had proposed to himself from the
+first, whatever should occur, to show least.  The phenomenon that had
+suddenly sat down there with him was a phenomenon of change so complete
+that his imagination, which had worked so beforehand, felt itself, in
+the connexion, without margin or allowance.  It had faced every
+contingency but that Chad should not BE Chad, and this was what it now
+had to face with a mere strained smile and an uncomfortable flush.
+
+He asked himself if, by any chance, before he should have in some way
+to commit himself, he might feel his mind settled to the new vision,
+might habituate it, so to speak, to the remarkable truth. But oh it was
+too remarkable, the truth; for what could be more remarkable than this
+sharp rupture of an identity?  You could deal with a man as
+himself--you couldn't deal with him as somebody else.  It was a small
+source of peace moreover to be reduced to wondering how little he might
+know in such an event what a sum he was setting you.  He couldn't
+absolutely not know, for you couldn't absolutely not let him.  It was a
+CASE then simply, a strong case, as people nowadays called such
+things,' a case of transformation unsurpassed, and the hope was but in
+the general law that strong cases were liable to control from without.
+Perhaps he, Strether himself, was the only person after all aware of
+it. Even Miss Gostrey, with all her science, wouldn't be, would
+she?--and he had never seen any one less aware of anything than
+Waymarsh as he glowered at Chad.  The social sightlessness of his old
+friend's survey marked for him afresh, and almost in an humiliating
+way, the inevitable limits of direct aid from this source.  He was not
+certain, however, of not drawing a shade of compensation from the
+privilege, as yet untasted, of knowing more about something in
+particular than Miss Gostrey did.  His situation too was a case, for
+that matter, and he was now so interested, quite so privately agog,
+about it, that he had already an eye to the fun it would be to open up
+to her afterwards.  He derived during his half-hour no assistance from
+her, and just this fact of her not meeting his eyes played a little, it
+must be confessed, into his predicament.
+
+He had introduced Chad, in the first minutes, under his breath, and
+there was never the primness in her of the person unacquainted; but she
+had none the less betrayed at first no vision but of the stage, where
+she occasionally found a pretext for an appreciative moment that she
+invited Waymarsh to share.  The latter's faculty of participation had
+never had, all round, such an assault to meet; the pressure on him
+being the sharper for this chosen attitude in her, as Strether judged
+it, of isolating, for their natural intercourse, Chad and himself. This
+intercourse was meanwhile restricted to a frank friendly look from the
+young man, something markedly like a smile, but falling far short of a
+grin, and to the vivacity of Strether's private speculation as to
+whether HE carried himself like a fool.  He didn't quite see how he
+could so feel as one without somehow showing as one.  The worst of that
+question moreover was that he knew it as a symptom the sense of which
+annoyed him.  "If I'm going to be odiously conscious of how I may
+strike the fellow," he reflected, "it was so little what I came out for
+that I may as well stop before I begin."  This sage consideration too,
+distinctly, seemed to leave untouched the fact that he WAS going to be
+conscious.  He was conscious of everything but of what would have
+served him.
+
+He was to know afterwards, in the watches of the night, that nothing
+would have been more open to him than after a minute or two to propose
+to Chad to seek with him the refuge of the lobby. He hadn't only not
+proposed it, but had lacked even the presence of mind to see it as
+possible.  He had stuck there like a schoolboy wishing not to miss a
+minute of the show; though for that portion of the show then presented
+he hadn't had an instant's real attention.  He couldn't when the
+curtain fell have given the slightest account of what had happened.  He
+had therefore, further, not at that moment acknowledged the amenity
+added by this acceptance of his awkwardness to Chad's general patience.
+Hadn't he none the less known at the very time--known it stupidly and
+without reaction--that the boy was accepting something?  He was
+modestly benevolent, the boy--that was at least what he had been
+capable of the superiority of making out his chance to be; and one had
+one's self literally not had the gumption to get in ahead of him.  If
+we should go into all that occupied our friend in the watches of the
+night we should have to mend our pen; but an instance or two may mark
+for us the vividness with which he could remember.  He remembered the
+two absurdities that, if his presence of mind HAD failed, were the
+things that had had most to do with it.  He had never in his life seen
+a young man come into a box at ten o'clock at night, and would, if
+challenged on the question in advance, have scarce been ready to
+pronounce as to different ways of doing so.  But it was in spite of
+this definite to him that Chad had had a way that was wonderful:  a
+fact carrying with it an implication that, as one might imagine it, he
+knew, he had learned, how.
+
+Here already then were abounding results; he had on the spot and
+without the least trouble of intention taught Strether that even in so
+small a thing as that there were different ways.  He had done in the
+same line still more than this; had by a mere shake or two of the head
+made his old friend observe that the change in him was perhaps more
+than anything else, for the eye, a matter of the marked streaks of
+grey, extraordinary at his age, in his thick black hair; as well as
+that this new feature was curiously becoming to him, did something for
+him, as characterisation, also even--of all things in the world--as
+refinement, that had been a good deal wanted.  Strether felt, however,
+he would have had to confess, that it wouldn't have been easy just now,
+on this and other counts, in the presence of what had been supplied, to
+be quite clear as to what had been missed.  A reflexion a candid critic
+might have made of old, for instance, was that it would have been
+happier for the son to look more like the mother; but this was a
+reflexion that at present would never occur.  The ground had quite
+fallen away from it, yet no resemblance whatever to the mother had
+supervened.  It would have been hard for a young man's face and air to
+disconnect themselves more completely than Chad's at this juncture from
+any discerned, from any imaginable aspect of a New England female
+parent.  That of course was no more than had been on the cards; but it
+produced in Strether none the less one of those frequent phenomena of
+mental reference with which all judgement in him was actually beset.
+
+Again and again as the days passed he had had a sense of the pertinence
+of communicating quickly with Woollett--communicating with a quickness
+with which telegraphy alone would rhyme; the fruit really of a fine
+fancy in him for keeping things straight, for the happy forestalment of
+error.  No one could explain better when needful, nor put more
+conscience into an account or a report; which burden of conscience is
+perhaps exactly the reason why his heart always sank when the clouds of
+explanation gathered.  His highest ingenuity was in keeping the sky of
+life clear of them. Whether or no he had a grand idea of the lucid, he
+held that nothing ever was in fact--for any one else--explained.  One
+went through the vain motions, but it was mostly a waste of life.  A
+personal relation was a relation only so long as people either
+perfectly understood or, better still, didn't care if they didn't. From
+the moment they cared if they didn't it was living by the sweat of
+one's brow; and the sweat of one's brow was just what one might buy
+one's self off from by keeping the ground free of the wild weed of
+delusion.  It easily grew too fast, and the Atlantic cable now alone
+could race with it.  That agency would each day have testified for him
+to something that was not what Woollett had argued.  He was not at this
+moment absolutely sure that the effect of the morrow's--or rather of
+the night's--appreciation of the crisis wouldn't be to determine some
+brief missive.  "Have at last seen him, but oh dear!"--some temporary
+relief of that sort seemed to hover before him.  It hovered somehow as
+preparing them all--yet preparing them for what?  If he might do so
+more luminously and cheaply he would tick out in four words:  "Awfully
+old--grey hair." To this particular item in Chad's appearance he
+constantly, during their mute half-hour, reverted; as if so very much
+more than he could have said had been involved in it.  The most he
+could have said would have been:  "If he's going to make me feel
+young--!" which indeed, however, carried with it quite enough.  If
+Strether was to feel young, that is, it would be because Chad was to
+feel old; and an aged and hoary sinner had been no part of the scheme.
+
+The question of Chadwick's true time of life was, doubtless, what came
+up quickest after the adjournment of the two, when the play was over,
+to a cafe in the Avenue de l'Opera.  Miss Gostrey had in due course
+been perfect for such a step; she had known exactly what they
+wanted--to go straight somewhere and talk; and Strether had even felt
+she had known what he wished to say and that he was arranging
+immediately to begin.  She hadn't pretended this, as she HAD pretended
+on the other hand, to have divined Waymarsh's wish to extend to her an
+independent protection homeward; but Strether nevertheless found how,
+after he had Chad opposite to him at a small table in the brilliant
+halls that his companion straightway selected, sharply and easily
+discriminated from others, it was quite, to his mind, as if she heard
+him speak; as if, sitting up, a mile away, in the little apartment he
+knew, she would listen hard enough to catch.  He found too that he
+liked that idea, and he wished that, by the same token, Mrs. Newsome
+might have caught as well.  For what had above all been determined in
+him as a necessity of the first order was not to lose another hour, nor
+a fraction of one; was to advance, to overwhelm, with a rush.  This was
+how he would anticipate--by a night-attack, as might be--any forced
+maturity that a crammed consciousness of Paris was likely to take upon
+itself to assert on behalf of the boy.  He knew to the full, on what he
+had just extracted from Miss Gostrey, Chad's marks of alertness; but
+they were a reason the more for not dawdling.  If he was himself
+moreover to be treated as young he wouldn't at all events be so treated
+before he should have struck out at least once.  His arms might be
+pinioned afterwards, but it would have been left on record that he was
+fifty.  The importance of this he had indeed begun to feel before they
+left the theatre; it had become a wild unrest, urging him to seize his
+chance.  He could scarcely wait for it as they went; he was on the
+verge of the indecency of bringing up the question in the street; he
+fairly caught himself going on--so he afterwards invidiously named
+it--as if there would be for him no second chance should the present be
+lost.  Not till, on the purple divan before the perfunctory bock, he
+had brought out the words themselves, was he sure, for that matter,
+that the present would be saved.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Fourth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"I've come, you know, to make you break with everything, neither more
+nor less, and take you straight home; so you'll be so good as
+immediately and favourably to consider it!"--Strether, face to face
+with Chad after the play, had sounded these words almost breathlessly,
+and with an effect at first positively disconcerting to himself alone.
+For Chad's receptive attitude was that of a person who had been
+gracefully quiet while the messenger at last reaching him has run a
+mile through the dust.  During some seconds after he had spoken
+Strether felt as if HE had made some such exertion; he was not even
+certain that the perspiration wasn't on his brow.  It was the kind of
+consciousness for which he had to thank the look that, while the strain
+lasted, the young man's eyes gave him.  They reflected--and the deuce
+of the thing was that they reflected really with a sort of shyness of
+kindness--his momentarily disordered state; which fact brought on in
+its turn for our friend the dawn of a fear that Chad might simply "take
+it out"--take everything out--in being sorry for him.  Such a fear, any
+fear, was unpleasant.  But everything was unpleasant; it was odd how
+everything had suddenly turned so.  This however was no reason for
+letting the least thing go.  Strether had the next minute proceeded as
+roundly as if with an advantage to follow up. "Of course I'm a
+busybody, if you want to fight the case to the death; but after all
+mainly in the sense of having known you and having given you such
+attention as you kindly permitted when you were in jackets and
+knickerbockers.  Yes--it was knickerbockers, I'm busybody enough to
+remember that; and that you had, for your age--I speak of the first
+far-away time--tremendously stout legs. Well, we want you to break.
+Your mother's heart's passionately set upon it, but she has above and
+beyond that excellent arguments and reasons.  I've not put them into
+her head--I needn't remind you how little she's a person who needs
+that.  But they exist--you must take it from me as a friend both of
+hers and yours--for myself as well.  I didn't invent them, I didn't
+originally work them out; but I understand them, I think I can explain
+them--by which I mean make you actively do them justice; and that's why
+you see me here. You had better know the worst at once.  It's a
+question of an immediate rupture and an immediate return.  I've been
+conceited enough to dream I can sugar that pill.  I take at any rate
+the greatest interest in the question.  I took it already before I left
+home, and I don't mind telling you that, altered as you are, I take it
+still more now that I've seen you.  You're older and--I don't know what
+to call it!--more of a handful; but you're by so much the more, I seem
+to make out, to our purpose."
+
+"Do I strike you as improved?"  Strether was to recall that Chad had at
+this point enquired.
+
+He was likewise to recall--and it had to count for some time as his
+greatest comfort--that it had been "given" him, as they said at
+Woollett, to reply with some presence of mind:  "I haven't the least
+idea."  He was really for a while to like thinking he had been
+positively hard.  On the point of conceding that Chad had improved in
+appearance, but that to the question of appearance the remark must be
+confined, he checked even that compromise and left his reservation
+bare.  Not only his moral, but also, as it were, his aesthetic sense
+had a little to pay for this, Chad being unmistakeably--and wasn't it a
+matter of the confounded grey hair again?--handsomer than he had ever
+promised.  That however fell in perfectly with what Strether had said.
+They had no desire to keep down his proper expansion, and he wouldn't
+be less to their purpose for not looking, as he had too often done of
+old, only bold and wild.  There was indeed a signal particular in which
+he would distinctly be more so.  Strether didn't, as he talked,
+absolutely follow himself; he only knew he was clutching his thread and
+that he held it from moment to moment a little tighter; his mere
+uninterruptedness during the few minutes helped him to do that.  He had
+frequently for a month, turned over what he should say on this very
+occasion, and he seemed at last to have said nothing he had thought
+of--everything was so totally different.
+
+But in spite of all he had put the flag at the window.  This was what
+he had done, and there was a minute during which he affected himself as
+having shaken it hard, flapped it with a mighty flutter, straight in
+front of his companion's nose.  It gave him really almost the sense of
+having already acted his part.  The momentary relief--as if from the
+knowledge that nothing of THAT at least could be undone--sprang from a
+particular cause, the cause that had flashed into operation, in Miss
+Gostrey's box, with direct apprehension, with amazed recognition, and
+that had been concerned since then in every throb of his consciousness.
+What it came to was that with an absolutely new quantity to deal with
+one simply couldn't know.  The new quantity was represented by the fact
+that Chad had been made over.  That was all; whatever it was it was
+everything.  Strether had never seen the thing so done before--it was
+perhaps a speciality of Paris.  If one had been present at the process
+one might little by little have mastered the result; but he was face to
+face, as matters stood, with the finished business. It had freely been
+noted for him that he might be received as a dog among skittles, but
+that was on the basis of the old quantity. He had originally thought of
+lines and tones as things to be taken, but these possibilities had now
+quite melted away.  There was no computing at all what the young man
+before him would think or feel or say on any subject whatever.  This
+intelligence Strether had afterwards, to account for his nervousness,
+reconstituted as he might, just as he had also reconstituted the
+promptness with which Chad had corrected his uncertainty.  An
+extraordinarily short time had been required for the correction, and
+there had ceased to be anything negative in his companion's face and
+air as soon as it was made.  "Your engagement to my mother has become
+then what they call here a fait accompli?"--it had consisted, the
+determinant touch, in nothing more than that.
+
+Well, that was enough, Strether had felt while his answer hung fire. He
+had felt at the same time, however, that nothing could less become him
+than that it should hang fire too long.  "Yes," he said brightly, "it
+was on the happy settlement of the question that I started.  You see
+therefore to what tune I'm in your family. Moreover," he added, "I've
+been supposing you'd suppose it."
+
+"Oh I've been supposing it for a long time, and what you tell me helps
+me to understand that you should want to do something.  To do
+something, I mean," said Chad, "to commemorate an event so--what do
+they call it?--so auspicious.  I see you make out, and not
+unnaturally," he continued, "that bringing me home in triumph as a sort
+of wedding-present to Mother would commemorate it better than anything
+else.  You want to make a bonfire in fact," he laughed, "and you pitch
+me on.  Thank you, thank you!" he laughed again.
+
+He was altogether easy about it, and this made Strether now see how at
+bottom, and in spite of the shade of shyness that really cost him
+nothing, he had from the first moment been easy about everything.  The
+shade of shyness was mere good taste.  People with manners formed could
+apparently have, as one of their best cards, the shade of shyness too.
+He had leaned a little forward to speak; his elbows were on the table;
+and the inscrutable new face that he had got somewhere and somehow was
+brought by the movement nearer to his critics There was a fascination
+for that critic in its not being, this ripe physiognomy, the face that,
+under observation at least, he had originally carried away from
+Woollett.  Strether found a certain freedom on his own side in defining
+it as that of a man of the world--a formula that indeed seemed to come
+now in some degree to his relief; that of a man to whom things had
+happened and were variously known.  In gleams, in glances, the past did
+perhaps peep out of it; but such lights were faint and instantly
+merged.  Chad was brown and thick and strong, and of old Chad had been
+rough.  Was all the difference therefore that he was actually smooth?
+Possibly; for that he WAS smooth was as marked as in the taste of a
+sauce or in the rub of a hand.  The effect of it was general--it had
+retouched his features, drawn them with a cleaner line.  It had cleared
+his eyes and settled his colour and polished his fine square teeth--the
+main ornament of his face; and at the same time that it had given him a
+form and a surface, almost a design, it had toned his voice,
+established his accent, encouraged his smile to more play and his other
+motions to less. He had formerly, with a great deal of action,
+expressed very little; and he now expressed whatever was necessary with
+almost none at all.  It was as if in short he had really, copious
+perhaps but shapeless, been put into a firm mould and turned
+successfully out.  The phenomenon--Strether kept eyeing it as a
+phenomenon, an eminent case--was marked enough to be touched by the
+finger.  He finally put his hand across the table and laid it on Chad's
+arm. "If you'll promise me--here on the spot and giving me your word of
+honour--to break straight off, you'll make the future the real right
+thing for all of us alike.  You'll ease off the strain of this decent
+but none the less acute suspense in which I've for so many days been
+waiting for you, and let me turn in to rest.  I shall leave you with my
+blessing and go to bed in peace."
+
+Chad again fell back at this and, his hands pocketed, settled himself a
+little; in which posture he looked, though he rather anxiously smiled,
+only the more earnest.  Then Strether seemed to see that he was really
+nervous, and he took that as what he would have called a wholesome
+sign.  The only mark of it hitherto had been his more than once taking
+off and putting on his wide-brimmed crush hat.  He had at this moment
+made the motion again to remove it, then had only pushed it back, so
+that it hung informally on his strong young grizzled crop.  It was a
+touch that gave the note of the familiar--the intimate and the
+belated--to their quiet colloquy; and it was indeed by some such
+trivial aid that Strether became aware at the same moment of something
+else.  The observation was at any rate determined in him by some light
+too fine to distinguish from so many others, but it was none the less
+sharply determined.  Chad looked unmistakeably during these
+instants--well, as Strether put it to himself, all he was worth.  Our
+friend had a sudden apprehension of what that would on certain sides
+be. He saw him in a flash as the young man marked out by women; and for
+a concentrated minute the dignity, the comparative austerity, as he
+funnily fancied it, of this character affected him almost with awe.
+There was an experience on his interlocutor's part that looked out at
+him from under the displaced hat, and that looked out moreover by a
+force of its own, the deep fact of its quantity and quality, and not
+through Chad's intending bravado or swagger. That was then the way men
+marked out by women WERE--and also the men by whom the women were
+doubtless in turn sufficiently distinguished.  It affected Strether for
+thirty seconds as a relevant truth, a truth which, however, the next
+minute, had fallen into its relation.  "Can't you imagine there being
+some questions," Chad asked, "that a fellow--however much impressed by
+your charming way of stating things--would like to put to you first?"
+
+"Oh yes--easily.  I'm here to answer everything.  I think I can even
+tell you things, of the greatest interest to you, that you won't know
+enough to ask me.  We'll take as many days to it as you like. But I
+want," Strether wound up, "to go to bed now."
+
+"Really?"
+
+Chad had spoken in such surprise that he was amused.  "Can't you
+believe it?--with what you put me through?"
+
+The young man seemed to consider.  "Oh I haven't put you through
+much--yet."
+
+"Do you mean there's so much more to come?"  Strether laughed.  "All
+the more reason then that I should gird myself."  And as if to mark
+what he felt he could by this time count on he was already on his feet.
+
+Chad, still seated, stayed him, with a hand against him, as he passed
+between their table and the next.  "Oh we shall get on!"
+
+The tone was, as who should say, everything Strether could have
+desired; and quite as good the expression of face with which the
+speaker had looked up at him and kindly held him.  All these things
+lacked was their not showing quite so much as the fruit of experience.
+Yes, experience was what Chad did play on him, if he didn't play any
+grossness of defiance.  Of course experience was in a manner defiance;
+but it wasn't, at any rate--rather indeed quite the
+contrary!--grossness; which was so much gained.  He fairly grew older,
+Strether thought, while he himself so reasoned.  Then with his mature
+pat of his visitor's arm he also got up; and there had been enough of
+it all by this time to make the visitor feel that something WAS
+settled.  Wasn't it settled that he had at least the testimony of
+Chad's own belief in a settlement?  Strether found himself treating
+Chad's profession that they would get on as a sufficient basis for
+going to bed.  He hadn't nevertheless after this gone to bed directly;
+for when they had again passed out together into the mild bright night
+a check had virtually sprung from nothing more than a small
+circumstance which might have acted only as confirming quiescence.
+There were people, expressive sound, projected light, still abroad, and
+after they had taken in for a moment, through everything, the great
+clear architectural street, they turned off in tacit union to the
+quarter of Strether's hotel.  "Of course," Chad here abruptly began,
+"of course Mother's making things out with you about me has been
+natural--and of course also you've had a good deal to go upon. Still,
+you must have filled out."
+
+He had stopped, leaving his friend to wonder a little what point he
+wished to make; and this it was that enabled Strether meanwhile to make
+one.  "Oh we've never pretended to go into detail.  We weren't in the
+least bound to THAT.  It was 'filling out' enough to miss you as we
+did."
+
+But Chad rather oddly insisted, though under the high lamp at their
+corner, where they paused, he had at first looked as if touched by
+Strether's allusion to the long sense, at home, of his absence.  "What
+I mean is you must have imagined."
+
+"Imagined what?"
+
+"Well--horrors."
+
+It affected Strether:  horrors were so little--superficially at
+least--in this robust and reasoning image.  But he was none the less
+there to be veracious.  "Yes, I dare say we HAVE imagined horrors.  But
+where's the harm if we haven't been wrong?"
+
+Chad raised his face to the lamp, and it was one of the moments at
+which he had, in his extraordinary way, most his air of designedly
+showing himself.  It was as if at these instants he just presented
+himself, his identity so rounded off, his palpable presence and his
+massive young manhood, as such a link in the chain as might practically
+amount to a kind of demonstration.  It was as if--and how but
+anomalously?--he couldn't after all help thinking sufficiently well of
+these things to let them go for what they were worth.  What could there
+be in this for Strether but the hint of some self-respect, some sense
+of power, oddly perverted; something latent and beyond access, ominous
+and perhaps enviable? The intimation had the next thing, in a flash,
+taken on a name--a name on which our friend seized as he asked himself
+if he weren't perhaps really dealing with an irreducible young Pagan.
+This description--he quite jumped at it--had a sound that gratified his
+mental ear, so that of a sudden he had already adopted it.  Pagan--yes,
+that was, wasn't it?  what Chad WOULD logically be.  It was what he
+must be.  It was what he was.  The idea was a clue and, instead of
+darkening the prospect, projected a certain clearness. Strether made
+out in this quick ray that a Pagan was perhaps, at the pass they had
+come to, the thing most wanted at Woollett. They'd be able to do with
+one--a good one; he'd find an opening--yes; and Strether's imagination
+even now prefigured and accompanied the first appearance there of the
+rousing personage. He had only the slight discomfort of feeling, as the
+young man turned away from the lamp, that his thought had in the
+momentary silence possibly been guessed.  "Well, I've no doubt," said
+Chad, "you've come near enough.  The details, as you say, don't matter.
+It HAS been generally the case that I've let myself go.  But I'm coming
+round--I'm not so bad now."  With which they walked on again to
+Strether's hotel.
+
+"Do you mean," the latter asked as they approached the door, "that
+there isn't any woman with you now?"
+
+"But pray what has that to do with it?"
+
+"Why it's the whole question."
+
+"Of my going home?"  Chad was clearly surprised.  "Oh not much! Do you
+think that when I want to go any one will have any power--"
+
+"To keep you"--Strether took him straight up--"from carrying out your
+wish?  Well, our idea has been that somebody has hitherto--or a good
+many persons perhaps--kept you pretty well from 'wanting.' That's
+what--if you're in anybody's hands--may again happen.  You don't answer
+my question"--he kept it up; "but if you aren't in anybody's hands so
+much the better.  There's nothing then but what makes for your going."
+
+Chad turned this over.  "I don't answer your question?"  He spoke quite
+without resenting it.  "Well, such questions have always a rather
+exaggerated side.  One doesn't know quite what you mean by being in
+women's 'hands.' It's all so vague.  One is when one isn't.  One isn't
+when one is.  And then one can't quite give people away."  He seemed
+kindly to explain.  "I've NEVER got stuck--so very hard; and, as
+against anything at any time really better, I don't think I've ever
+been afraid."  There was something in it that held Strether to wonder,
+and this gave him time to go on.  He broke out as with a more helpful
+thought.  "Don't you know how I like Paris itself?"
+
+The upshot was indeed to make our friend marvel.  "Oh if THAT'S all
+that's the matter with you--!"  It was HE who almost showed resentment.
+
+Chad's smile of a truth more than met it.  "But isn't that enough?"
+
+Strether hesitated, but it came out.  "Not enough for your mother!"
+Spoken, however, it sounded a trifle odd--the effect of which was that
+Chad broke into a laugh.  Strether, at this, succumbed as well, though
+with extreme brevity.  "Permit us to have still our theory.  But if you
+ARE so free and so strong you're inexcusable. I'll write in the
+morning," he added with decision.  "I'll say I've got you."
+
+This appeared to open for Chad a new interest.  "How often do you
+write?"
+
+"Oh perpetually."
+
+"And at great length?"
+
+Strether had become a little impatient.  "I hope it's not found too
+great."
+
+"Oh I'm sure not.  And you hear as often?"
+
+Again Strether paused.  "As often as I deserve."
+
+"Mother writes," said Chad, "a lovely letter."
+
+Strether, before the closed porte-cochere, fixed him a moment. "It's
+more, my boy, than YOU do!  But our suppositions don't matter," he
+added, "if you're actually not entangled."
+
+Chad's pride seemed none the less a little touched.  "I never WAS
+that--let me insist.  I always had my own way."  With which he pursued:
+"And I have it at present."
+
+"Then what are you here for?  What has kept you," Strether asked, "if
+you HAVE been able to leave?"
+
+It made Chad, after a stare, throw himself back.  "Do you think one's
+kept only by women?"  His surprise and his verbal emphasis rang out so
+clear in the still street that Strether winced till he remembered the
+safety of their English speech.  "Is that," the young man demanded,
+"what they think at Woollett?"  At the good faith in the question
+Strether had changed colour, feeling that, as he would have said, he
+had put his foot in it.  He had appeared stupidly to misrepresent what
+they thought at Woollett; but before he had time to rectify Chad again
+was upon him.  "I must say then you show a low mind!"
+
+It so fell in, unhappily for Strether, with that reflexion of his own
+prompted in him by the pleasant air of the Boulevard Malesherbes, that
+its disconcerting force was rather unfairly great.  It was a dig that,
+administered by himself--and administered even to poor Mrs.
+Newsome--was no more than salutary; but administered by Chad--and quite
+logically--it came nearer drawing blood.  They HADn't a low mind--nor
+any approach to one; yet incontestably they had worked, and with a
+certain smugness, on a basis that might be turned against them.  Chad
+had at any rate pulled his visitor up; he had even pulled up his
+admirable mother; he had absolutely, by a turn of the wrist and a jerk
+of the far-flung noose, pulled up, in a bunch, Woollett browsing in its
+pride.  There was no doubt Woollett HAD insisted on his coarseness; and
+what he at present stood there for in the sleeping street was, by his
+manner of striking the other note, to make of such insistence a
+preoccupation compromising to the insisters.  It was exactly as if they
+had imputed to him a vulgarity that he had by a mere gesture caused to
+fall from him.  The devil of the case was that Strether felt it, by the
+same stroke, as falling straight upon himself.  He had been wondering a
+minute ago if the boy weren't a Pagan, and he found himself wondering
+now if he weren't by chance a gentleman.  It didn't in the least, on
+the spot, spring up helpfully for him that a person couldn't at the
+same time be both. There was nothing at this moment in the air to
+challenge the combination; there was everything to give it on the
+contrary something of a flourish.  It struck Strether into the bargain
+as doing something to meet the most difficult of the questions; though
+perhaps indeed only by substituting another.  Wouldn't it be precisely
+by having learned to be a gentleman that he had mastered the consequent
+trick of looking so well that one could scarce speak to him straight?
+But what in the world was the clue to such a prime producing cause?
+There were too many clues then that Strether still lacked, and these
+clues to clues were among them. What it accordingly amounted to for him
+was that he had to take full in the face a fresh attribution of
+ignorance.  He had grown used by this time to reminders, especially
+from his own lips, of what he didn't know; but he had borne them
+because in the first place they were private and because in the second
+they practically conveyed a tribute.  He didn't know what was bad,
+and--as others didn't know how little he knew it--he could put up with
+his state. But if he didn't know, in so important a particular, what
+was good, Chad at least was now aware he didn't; and that, for some
+reason, affected our friend as curiously public.  It was in fact an
+exposed condition that the young man left him in long enough for him to
+feel its chill--till he saw fit, in a word, generously again to cover
+him.  This last was in truth what Chad quite gracefully did.  But he
+did it as with a simple thought that met the whole of the case.  "Oh
+I'm all right!"  It was what Strether had rather bewilderedly to go to
+bed on.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It really looked true moreover from the way Chad was to behave after
+this.  He was full of attentions to his mother's ambassador; in spite
+of which, all the while, the latter's other relations rather remarkably
+contrived to assert themselves.  Strether's sittings pen in hand with
+Mrs. Newsome up in his own room were broken, yet they were richer; and
+they were more than ever interspersed with the hours in which he
+reported himself, in a different fashion, but with scarce less
+earnestness and fulness, to Maria Gostrey.  Now that, as he would have
+expressed it, he had really something to talk about he found himself,
+in respect to any oddity that might reside for him in the double
+connexion, at once more aware and more indifferent.  He had been fine
+to Mrs. Newsome about his useful friend, but it had begun to haunt his
+imagination that Chad, taking up again for her benefit a pen too long
+disused, might possibly be finer.  It wouldn't at all do, he saw, that
+anything should come up for him at Chad's hand but what specifically
+was to have come; the greatest divergence from which would be precisely
+the element of any lubrication of their intercourse by levity It was
+accordingly to forestall such an accident that he frankly put before
+the young man the several facts, just as they had occurred, of his
+funny alliance.  He spoke of these facts, pleasantly and obligingly, as
+"the whole story," and felt that he might qualify the alliance as funny
+if he remained sufficiently grave about it.  He flattered himself that
+he even exaggerated the wild freedom of his original encounter with the
+wonderful lady; he was scrupulously definite about the absurd
+conditions in which they had made acquaintance--their having picked
+each other up almost in the street; and he had (finest inspiration of
+all!) a conception of carrying the war into the enemy's country by
+showing surprise at the enemy's ignorance.
+
+He had always had a notion that this last was the grand style of
+fighting; the greater therefore the reason for it, as he couldn't
+remember that he had ever before fought in the grand style.  Every one,
+according to this, knew Miss Gostrey:  how came it Chad didn't know
+her?  The difficulty, the impossibility, was really to escape it;
+Strether put on him, by what he took for granted, the burden of proof
+of the contrary.  This tone was so far successful as that Chad quite
+appeared to recognise her as a person whose fame had reached him, but
+against his acquaintance with whom much mischance had worked.  He made
+the point at the same time that his social relations, such as they
+could be called, were perhaps not to the extent Strether supposed with
+the rising flood of their compatriots.  He hinted at his having more
+and more given way to a different principle of selection; the moral of
+which seemed to be that he went about little in the "colony."  For the
+moment certainly he had quite another interest.  It was deep, what he
+understood, and Strether, for himself, could only so observe it. He
+couldn't see as yet how deep.  Might he not all too soon! For there was
+really too much of their question that Chad had already committed
+himself to liking.  He liked, to begin with, his prospective
+stepfather; which was distinctly what had not been on the cards.  His
+hating him was the untowardness for which Strether had been best
+prepared; he hadn't expected the boy's actual form to give him more to
+do than his imputed.  It gave him more through suggesting that he must
+somehow make up to himself for not being sure he was sufficiently
+disagreeable.  That had really been present to him as his only way to
+be sure he was sufficiently thorough.  The point was that if Chad's
+tolerance of his thoroughness were insincere, were but the best of
+devices for gaining time, it none the less did treat everything as
+tacitly concluded.
+
+That seemed at the end of ten days the upshot of the abundant, the
+recurrent talk through which Strether poured into him all it concerned
+him to know, put him in full possession of facts and figures.  Never
+cutting these colloquies short by a minute, Chad behaved, looked and
+spoke as if he were rather heavily, perhaps even a trifle gloomily, but
+none the less fundamentally and comfortably free.  He made no crude
+profession of eagerness to yield, but he asked the most intelligent
+questions, probed, at moments, abruptly, even deeper than his friend's
+layer of information, justified by these touches the native estimate of
+his latent stuff, and had in every way the air of trying to live,
+reflectively, into the square bright picture.  He walked up and down in
+front of this production, sociably took Strether's arm at the points at
+which he stopped, surveyed it repeatedly from the right and from the
+left, inclined a critical head to either quarter, and, while he puffed
+a still more critical cigarette, animadverted to his companion on this
+passage and that.  Strether sought relief--there were hours when he
+required it--in repeating himself; it was in truth not to be blinked
+that Chad had a way. The main question as yet was of what it was a way
+TO.  It made vulgar questions no more easy; but that was unimportant
+when all questions save those of his own asking had dropped.  That he
+was free was answer enough, and it wasn't quite ridiculous that this
+freedom should end by presenting itself as what was difficult to move.
+His changed state, his lovely home, his beautiful things, his easy
+talk, his very appetite for Strether, insatiable and, when all was
+said, flattering--what were such marked matters all but the notes of
+his freedom?  He had the effect of making a sacrifice of it just in
+these handsome forms to his visitor; which was mainly the reason the
+visitor was privately, for the time, a little out of countenance.
+Strether was at this period again and again thrown back on a felt need
+to remodel somehow his plan.  He fairly caught himself shooting rueful
+glances, shy looks of pursuit, toward the embodied influence, the
+definite adversary, who had by a stroke of her own failed him and on a
+fond theory of whose palpable presence he had, under Mrs. Newsome's
+inspiration, altogether proceeded.  He had once or twice, in secret,
+literally expressed the irritated wish that SHE would come out and find
+her.
+
+He couldn't quite yet force it upon Woollett that such a career, such a
+perverted young life, showed after all a certain plausible side, DID in
+the case before them flaunt something like an impunity for the social
+man; but he could at least treat himself to the statement that would
+prepare him for the sharpest echo. This echo--as distinct over there in
+the dry thin air as some shrill "heading" above a column of
+print--seemed to reach him even as he wrote.  "He says there's no
+woman," he could hear Mrs. Newsome report, in capitals almost of
+newspaper size, to Mrs. Pocock; and he could focus in Mrs. Pocock the
+response of the reader of the journal.  He could see in the younger
+lady's face the earnestness of her attention and catch the full
+scepticism of her but slightly delayed "What is there then?"  Just so
+he could again as little miss the mother's clear decision:  "There's
+plenty of disposition, no doubt, to pretend there isn't."  Strether
+had, after posting his letter, the whole scene out; and it was a scene
+during which, coming and going, as befell, he kept his eye not least
+upon the daughter.  He had his fine sense of the conviction Mrs. Pocock
+would take occasion to reaffirm--a conviction bearing, as he had from
+the first deeply divined it to bear, on Mr. Strether's essential
+inaptitude.  She had looked him in his conscious eyes even before he
+sailed, and that she didn't believe HE would find the woman had been
+written in her book. Hadn't she at the best but a scant faith in
+his ability to find women? It wasn't even as if he had found her
+mother--so much more, to her discrimination, had her mother performed
+the finding.  Her mother had, in a case her private judgement of which
+remained educative of Mrs. Pocock's critical sense, found the man.  The
+man owed his unchallenged state, in general, to the fact that Mrs.
+Newsome's discoveries were accepted at Woollett; but he knew in his
+bones, our friend did, how almost irresistibly Mrs. Pocock would now be
+moved to show what she thought of his own.  Give HER a free hand, would
+be the moral, and the woman would soon be found.
+
+His impression of Miss Gostrey after her introduction to Chad was
+meanwhile an impression of a person almost unnaturally on her guard. He
+struck himself as at first unable to extract from her what he wished;
+though indeed OF what he wished at this special juncture he would
+doubtless have contrived to make but a crude statement.  It sifted and
+settled nothing to put to her, tout betement, as she often said, "Do
+you like him, eh?"--thanks to his feeling it actually the least of his
+needs to heap up the evidence in the young man's favour. He repeatedly
+knocked at her door to let her have it afresh that Chad's
+case--whatever else of minor interest it might yield--was first and
+foremost a miracle almost monstrous.  It was the alteration of the
+entire man, and was so signal an instance that nothing else, for the
+intelligent observer, could--COULD it?--signify.  "It's a plot," he
+declared--"there's more in it than meets the eye."  He gave the rein to
+his fancy.  "It's a plant!"
+
+His fancy seemed to please her.  "Whose then?"
+
+"Well, the party responsible is, I suppose, the fate that waits for
+one, the dark doom that rides.  What I mean is that with such elements
+one can't count.  I've but my poor individual, my modest human means.
+It isn't playing the game to turn on the uncanny.  All one's energy
+goes to facing it, to tracking it.  One wants, confound it, don't you
+see?" he confessed with a queer face--"one wants to enjoy anything so
+rare.  Call it then life"--he puzzled it out--"call it poor dear old
+life simply that springs the surprise. Nothing alters the fact that the
+surprise is paralysing, or at any rate engrossing--all, practically,
+hang it, that one sees, that one CAN see."
+
+Her silences were never barren, nor even dull.  "Is that what you've
+written home?"
+
+He tossed it off.  "Oh dear, yes!"
+
+She had another pause while, across her carpets, he had another walk.
+"If you don't look out you'll have them straight over."
+
+"Oh but I've said he'll go back."
+
+"And WILL he?" Miss Gostrey asked.
+
+The special tone of it made him, pulling up, look at her long. "What's
+that but just the question I've spent treasures of patience and
+ingenuity in giving you, by the sight of him--after everything had led
+up--every facility to answer?  What is it but just the thing I came
+here to-day to get out of you?  Will he?"
+
+"No--he won't," she said at last.  "He's not free."
+
+The air of it held him.  "Then you've all the while known--?"
+
+"I've known nothing but what I've seen; and I wonder," she declared
+with some impatience, "that you didn't see as much.  It was enough to be
+with him there--"
+
+"In the box?  Yes," he rather blankly urged.
+
+"Well--to feel sure."
+
+"Sure of what?"
+
+She got up from her chair, at this, with a nearer approach than she had
+ever yet shown to dismay at his dimness.  She even, fairly pausing for
+it, spoke with a shade of pity.  "Guess!"
+
+It was a shade, fairly, that brought a flush into his face; so that for
+a moment, as they waited together, their difference was between them.
+"You mean that just your hour with him told you so much of his story?
+Very good; I'm not such a fool, on my side, as that I don't understand
+you, or as that I didn't in some degree understand HIM.  That he has
+done what he liked most isn't, among any of us, a matter the least in
+dispute.  There's equally little question at this time of day of what
+it is he does like most.  But I'm not talking," he reasonably
+explained, "of any mere wretch he may still pick up.  I'm talking of
+some person who in his present situation may have held her own, may
+really have counted."
+
+"That's exactly what I am!" said Miss Gostrey.  But she as quickly made
+her point.  "I thought you thought--or that they think at
+Woollett--that that's what mere wretches necessarily do.  Mere wretches
+necessarily DON'T!" she declared with spirit.  "There must, behind
+every appearance to the contrary, still be somebody--somebody who's not
+a mere wretch, since we accept the miracle. What else but such a
+somebody can such a miracle be?"
+
+He took it in.  "Because the fact itself IS the woman?"
+
+"A woman.  Some woman or other.  It's one of the things that HAVE to
+be."
+
+"But you mean then at least a good one."
+
+"A good woman?"  She threw up her arms with a laugh.  "I should call
+her excellent!"
+
+"Then why does he deny her?"
+
+Miss Gostrey thought a moment.  "Because she's too good to admit! Don't
+you see," she went on, "how she accounts for him?"
+
+Strether clearly, more and more, did see; yet it made him also see
+other things.  "But isn't what we want that he shall account for HER?"
+
+"Well, he does.  What you have before you is his way.  You must forgive
+him if it isn't quite outspoken.  In Paris such debts are tacit."
+
+Strether could imagine; but still--! "Even when the woman's good?"
+
+Again she laughed out.  "Yes, and even when the man is! There's always
+a caution in such cases," she more seriously explained--"for what it
+may seem to show.  There's nothing that's taken as showing so much here
+as sudden unnatural goodness."
+
+"Ah then you're speaking now," Strether said, "of people who are NOT
+nice."
+
+"I delight," she replied, "in your classifications.  But do you want
+me," she asked, "to give you in the matter, on this ground, the wisest
+advice I'm capable of?  Don't consider her, don't judge her at all in
+herself.  Consider her and judge her only in Chad."
+
+He had the courage at least of his companion's logic.  "Because then I
+shall like her?"  He almost looked, with his quick imagination as if he
+already did, though seeing at once also the full extent of how little
+it would suit his book.  "But is that what I came out for?"
+
+She had to confess indeed that it wasn't.  But there was something
+else.  "Don't make up your mind.  There are all sorts of things.  You
+haven't seen him all."
+
+This on his side Strether recognised; but his acuteness none the less
+showed him the danger.  "Yes, but if the more I see the better he
+seems?"
+
+Well, she found something.  "That may be--but his disavowal of her
+isn't, all the same, pure consideration.  There's a hitch."  She made
+it out.  "It's the effort to sink her."
+
+Strether winced at the image.  "To 'sink'--?"
+
+"Well, I mean there's a struggle, and a part of it is just what he
+hides.  Take time--that's the only way not to make some mistake that
+you'll regret.  Then you'll see.  He does really want to shake her off."
+
+Our friend had by this time so got into the vision that he almost
+gasped.  "After all she has done for him?"
+
+Miss Gostrey gave him a look which broke the next moment into a
+wonderful smile.  "He's not so good as you think!"
+
+They remained with him, these words, promising him, in their character
+of warning, considerable help; but the support he tried to draw from
+them found itself on each renewal of contact with Chad defeated by
+something else.  What could it be, this disconcerting force, he asked
+himself, but the sense, constantly renewed, that Chad WAS--quite in
+fact insisted on being--as good as he thought?  It seemed somehow as if
+he couldn't BUT be as good from the moment he wasn't as bad.  There was
+a succession of days at all events when contact with him--and in its
+immediate effect, as if it could produce no other--elbowed out of
+Strether's consciousness everything but itself.  Little Bilham once
+more pervaded the scene, but little Bilham became even in a higher
+degree than he had originally been one of the numerous forms of the
+inclusive relation; a consequence promoted, to our friend's sense, by
+two or three incidents with which we have yet to make acquaintance.
+Waymarsh himself, for the occasion, was drawn into the eddy; it
+absolutely, though but temporarily, swallowed him down, and there were
+days when Strether seemed to bump against him as a sinking swimmer
+might brush a submarine object.  The fathomless medium held
+them--Chad's manner was the fathomless medium; and our friend felt as
+if they passed each other, in their deep immersion, with the round
+impersonal eye of silent fish.  It was practically produced between
+them that Waymarsh was giving him then his chance; and the shade of
+discomfort that Strether drew from the allowance resembled not a little
+the embarrassment he had known at school, as a boy, when members of his
+family had been present at exhibitions.  He could perform before
+strangers, but relatives were fatal, and it was now as if,
+comparatively, Waymarsh were a relative.  He seemed to hear him say
+"Strike up then!" and to enjoy a foretaste of conscientious domestic
+criticism.  He HAD struck up, so far as he actually could; Chad knew by
+this time in profusion what he wanted; and what vulgar violence did his
+fellow pilgrim expect of him when he had really emptied his mind?  It
+went somehow to and fro that what poor Waymarsh meant was "I told you
+so--that you'd lose your immortal soul!" but it was also fairly
+explicit that Strether had his own challenge and that, since they must
+go to the bottom of things, he wasted no more virtue in watching Chad
+than Chad wasted in watching him.  His dip for duty's sake--where was
+it worse than Waymarsh's own?  For HE needn't have stopped resisting
+and refusing, needn't have parleyed, at that rate, with the foe.
+
+The strolls over Paris to see something or call somewhere were
+accordingly inevitable and natural, and the late sessions in the
+wondrous troisieme, the lovely home, when men dropped in and the
+picture composed more suggestively through the haze of tobacco, of
+music more or less good and of talk more or less polyglot, were on a
+principle not to be distinguished from that of the mornings and the
+afternoons.  Nothing, Strether had to recognise as he leaned back and
+smoked, could well less resemble a scene of violence than even the
+liveliest of these occasions.  They were occasions of discussion, none
+the less, and Strether had never in his life heard so many opinions on
+so many subjects.  There were opinions at Woollett, but only on three
+or four.  The differences were there to match; if they were doubtless
+deep, though few, they were quiet--they were, as might be said, almost
+as shy as if people had been ashamed of them.  People showed little
+diffidence about such things, on the other hand, in the Boulevard
+Malesherbes, and were so far from being ashamed of them--or indeed of
+anything else--that they often seemed to have invented them to avert
+those agreements that destroy the taste of talk.  No one had ever done
+that at Woollett, though Strether could remember times when he himself
+had been tempted to it without quite knowing why.  He saw why at
+present--he had but wanted to promote intercourse.
+
+These, however, were but parenthetic memories, and the turn taken by
+his affair on the whole was positively that if his nerves were on the
+stretch it was because he missed violence.  When he asked himself if
+none would then, in connexion with it, ever come at all, he might
+almost have passed as wondering how to provoke it. It would be too
+absurd if such a vision as THAT should have to be invoked for relief;
+it was already marked enough as absurd that he should actually have
+begun with flutters and dignities on the score of a single accepted
+meal.  What sort of a brute had he expected Chad to be,
+anyway?--Strether had occasion to make the enquiry but was careful to
+make it in private.  He could himself, comparatively recent as it
+was--it was truly but the fact of a few days since--focus his primal
+crudity; but he would on the approach of an observer, as if handling an
+illicit possession, have slipped the reminiscence out of sight.  There
+were echoes of it still in Mrs. Newsome's letters, and there were
+moments when these echoes made him exclaim on her want of tact.  He
+blushed of course, at once, still more for the explanation than for the
+ground of it:  it came to him in time to save his manners that she
+couldn't at the best become tactful as quickly as he.  Her tact had to
+reckon with the Atlantic Ocean, the General Post-Office and the
+extravagant curve of the globe.  Chad had one day offered tea at the
+Boulevard Malesherbes to a chosen few, a group again including the
+unobscured Miss Barrace; and Strether had on coming out walked away
+with the acquaintance whom in his letters to Mrs. Newsome he always
+spoke of as the little artist-man.  He had had full occasion to mention
+him as the other party, so oddly, to the only close personal alliance
+observation had as yet detected in Chad's existence.  Little Bilham's
+way this afternoon was not Strether's, but he had none the less kindly
+come with him, and it was somehow a part of his kindness that as it had
+sadly begun to rain they suddenly found themselves seated for
+conversation at a cafe in which they had taken refuge.  He had passed
+no more crowded hour in Chad's society than the one just ended; he had
+talked with Miss Barrace, who had reproached him with not having come
+to see her, and he had above all hit on a happy thought for causing
+Waymarsh's tension to relax.  Something might possibly be extracted for
+the latter from the idea of his success with that lady, whose quick
+apprehension of what might amuse her had given Strether a free hand.
+What had she meant if not to ask whether she couldn't help him with his
+splendid encumbrance, and mightn't the sacred rage at any rate be kept
+a little in abeyance by thus creating for his comrade's mind even in a
+world of irrelevance the possibility of a relation?  What was it but a
+relation to be regarded as so decorative and, in especial, on the
+strength of it, to be whirled away, amid flounces and feathers, in a
+coupe lined, by what Strether could make out, with dark blue brocade?
+He himself had never been whirled away--never at least in a coupe and
+behind a footman; he had driven with Miss Gostrey in cabs, with Mrs.
+Pocock, a few times, in an open buggy, with Mrs. Newsome in a
+four-seated cart and, occasionally up at the mountains, on a buckboard;
+but his friend's actual adventure transcended his personal experience.
+He now showed his companion soon enough indeed how inadequate, as a
+general monitor, this last queer quantity could once more feel itself.
+
+"What game under the sun is he playing?"  He signified the next moment
+that his allusion was not to the fat gentleman immersed in dominoes on
+whom his eyes had begun by resting, but to their host of the previous
+hour, as to whom, there on the velvet bench, with a final collapse of
+all consistency, he treated himself to the comfort of indiscretion.
+"Where do you see him come out?"
+
+Little Bilham, in meditation, looked at him with a kindness almost
+paternal. "Don't you like it over here?"
+
+Strether laughed out--for the tone was indeed droll; he let himself go.
+"What has that to do with it?  The only thing I've any business to like
+is to feel that I'm moving him.  That's why I ask you whether you
+believe I AM?  Is the creature"--and he did his best to show that he
+simply wished to ascertain--"honest?"
+
+His companion looked responsible, but looked it through a small dim
+smile.  "What creature do you mean?"
+
+It was on this that they did have for a little a mute interchange. "Is
+it untrue that he's free?  How then," Strether asked wondering "does he
+arrange his life?"
+
+"Is the creature you mean Chad himself?" little Bilham said.
+
+Strether here, with a rising hope, just thought, "We must take one of
+them at a time."  But his coherence lapsed.  "IS there some woman?  Of
+whom he's really afraid of course I mean--or who does with him what she
+likes."
+
+"It's awfully charming of you," Bilham presently remarked, "not to have
+asked me that before."
+
+"Oh I'm not fit for my job!"
+
+The exclamation had escaped our friend, but it made little Bilham more
+deliberate.  "Chad's a rare case!" he luminously observed. "He's
+awfully changed," he added.
+
+"Then you see it too?"
+
+"The way he has improved?  Oh yes--I think every one must see it. But
+I'm not sure," said little Bilham, "that I didn't like him about as
+well in his other state."
+
+"Then this IS really a new state altogether?"
+
+"Well," the young man after a moment returned, "I'm not sure he was
+really meant by nature to be quite so good.  It's like the new edition
+of an old book that one has been fond of--revised and amended, brought
+up to date, but not quite the thing one knew and loved.  However that
+may be at all events," he pursued, "I don't think, you know, that he's
+really playing, as you call it, any game.  I believe he really wants to
+go back and take up a career. He's capable of one, you know, that will
+improve and enlarge him still more.  He won't then," little Bilham
+continued to remark, "be my pleasant well-rubbed old-fashioned volume
+at all.  But of course I'm beastly immoral.  I'm afraid it would be a
+funny world altogether--a world with things the way I like them.  I
+ought, I dare say, to go home and go into business myself.  Only I'd
+simply rather die--simply.  And I've not the least difficulty in making
+up my mind not to, and in knowing exactly why, and in defending my
+ground against all comers.  All the same," he wound up, "I assure you I
+don't say a word against it--for himself, I mean--to Chad.  I seem to
+see it as much the best thing for him.  You see he's not happy."
+
+"DO I?"--Strether stared.  "I've been supposing I see just the
+opposite--an extraordinary case of the equilibrium arrived at and
+assured."
+
+"Oh there's a lot behind it."
+
+"Ah there you are!" Strether exclaimed.  "That's just what I want to
+get at.  You speak of your familiar volume altered out of recognition.
+Well, who's the editor?"
+
+Little Bilham looked before him a minute in silence.  "He ought to get
+married.  THAT would do it.  And he wants to."
+
+"Wants to marry her?"
+
+Again little Bilham waited, and, with a sense that he had information,
+Strether scarce knew what was coming.  "He wants to be free.  He isn't
+used, you see," the young man explained in his lucid way, "to being so
+good."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "Then I may take it from you that he IS good?"
+
+His companion matched his pause, but making it up with a quiet fulness.
+"DO take it from me."
+
+"Well then why isn't he free?  He swears to me he is, but meanwhile
+does nothing--except of course that he's so kind to me--to prove it;
+and couldn't really act much otherwise if he weren't.  My question to
+you just now was exactly on this queer impression of his diplomacy:  as
+if instead of really giving ground his line were to keep me on here and
+set me a bad example."
+
+As the half-hour meanwhile had ebbed Strether paid his score, and the
+waiter was presently in the act of counting out change.  Our friend
+pushed back to him a fraction of it, with which, after an emphatic
+recognition, the personage in question retreated.  "You give too much,"
+little Bilham permitted himself benevolently to observe.
+
+"Oh I always give too much!" Strether helplessly sighed.  "But you
+don't," he went on as if to get quickly away from the contemplation of
+that doom, "answer my question.  Why isn't he free?"
+
+Little Bilham had got up as if the transaction with the waiter had been
+a signal, and had already edged out between the table and the divan.
+The effect of this was that a minute later they had quitted the place,
+the gratified waiter alert again at the open door. Strether had found
+himself deferring to his companion's abruptness as to a hint that he
+should be answered as soon as they were more isolated.  This happened
+when after a few steps in the outer air they had turned the next comer.
+There our friend had kept it up. "Why isn't he free if he's good?"
+
+Little Bilham looked him full in the face.  "Because it's a virtuous
+attachment."
+
+This had settled the question so effectually for the time--that is for
+the next few days--that it had given Strether almost a new lease of
+life.  It must be added however that, thanks to his constant habit of
+shaking the bottle in which life handed him the wine of experience, he
+presently found the taste of the lees rising as usual into his draught.
+His imagination had in other words already dealt with his young
+friend's assertion; of which it had made something that sufficiently
+came out on the very next occasion of his seeing Maria Gostrey.  This
+occasion moreover had been determined promptly by a new circumstance--a
+circumstance he was the last man to leave her for a day in ignorance
+of.  "When I said to him last night," he immediately began, "that
+without some definite word from him now that will enable me to speak to
+them over there of our sailing--or at least of mine, giving them some
+sort of date--my responsibility becomes uncomfortable and my situation
+awkward; when I said that to him what do you think was his reply?"  And
+then as she this time gave it up:  "Why that he has two particular
+friends, two ladies, mother and daughter, about to arrive in
+Paris--coming back from an absence; and that he wants me so furiously
+to meet them, know them and like them, that I shall oblige him by
+kindly not bringing our business to a crisis till he has had a chance
+to see them again himself.  Is that," Strether enquired, "the way he's
+going to try to get off?  These are the people," he explained, "that he
+must have gone down to see before I arrived.  They're the best friends
+he has in the world, and they take more interest than any one else in
+what concerns him.  As I'm his next best he sees a thousand reasons why
+we should comfortably meet.  He hasn't broached the question sooner
+because their return was uncertain--seemed in fact for the present
+impossible.  But he more than intimates that--if you can believe
+it--their desire to make my acquaintance has had to do with their
+surmounting difficulties."
+
+"They're dying to see you?" Miss Gostrey asked.
+
+"Dying.  Of course," said Strether, "they're the virtuous attachment."
+He had already told her about that--had seen her the day after his talk
+with little Bilham; and they had then threshed out together the bearing
+of the revelation.  She had helped him to put into it the logic in
+which little Bilham had left it slightly deficient Strether hadn't
+pressed him as to the object of the preference so unexpectedly
+described; feeling in the presence of it, with one of his irrepressible
+scruples, a delicacy from which he had in the quest of the quite other
+article worked himself sufficiently free.  He had held off, as on a
+small principle of pride, from permitting his young friend to mention a
+name; wishing to make with this the great point that Chad's virtuous
+attachments were none of his business.  He had wanted from the first
+not to think too much of his dignity, but that was no reason for not
+allowing it any little benefit that might turn up.  He had often enough
+wondered to what degree his interference might pass for interested; so
+that there was no want of luxury in letting it be seen whenever he
+could that he didn't interfere.  That had of course at the same time
+not deprived him of the further luxury of much private astonishment;
+which however he had reduced to some order before communicating his
+knowledge.  When he had done this at last it was with the remark that,
+surprised as Miss Gostrey might, like himself, at first be, she would
+probably agree with him on reflexion that such an account of the matter
+did after all fit the confirmed appearances.  Nothing certainly, on all
+the indications, could have been a greater change for him than a
+virtuous attachment, and since they had been in search of the "word" as
+the French called it, of that change, little Bilham's
+announcement--though so long and so oddly delayed--would serve as well
+as another. She had assured Strether in fact after a pause that the
+more she thought of it the more it did serve; and yet her assurance
+hadn't so weighed with him as that before they parted he hadn't
+ventured to challenge her sincerity.  Didn't she believe the attachment
+was virtuous?--he had made sure of her again with the aid of that
+question. The tidings he brought her on this second occasion were
+moreover such as would help him to make surer still.
+
+She showed at first none the less as only amused.  "You say there are
+two?  An attachment to them both then would, I suppose, almost
+necessarily be innocent."
+
+Our friend took the point, but he had his clue.  "Mayn't he be still in
+the stage of not quite knowing which of them, mother or daughter, he
+likes best?"
+
+She gave it more thought.  "Oh it must be the daughter--at his age."
+
+"Possibly.  Yet what do we know," Strether asked, "about hers?  She may
+be old enough."
+
+"Old enough for what?"
+
+"Why to marry Chad.  That may be, you know, what they want.  And if
+Chad wants it too, and little Bilham wants it, and even we, at a pinch,
+could do with it--that is if she doesn't prevent repatriation--why it
+may be plain sailing yet."
+
+It was always the case for him in these counsels that each of his
+remarks, as it came, seemed to drop into a deeper well.  He had at all
+events to wait a moment to hear the slight splash of this one. "I don't
+see why if Mr. Newsome wants to marry the young lady he hasn't already
+done it or hasn't been prepared with some statement to you about it.
+And if he both wants to marry her and is on good terms with them why
+isn't he 'free'?"
+
+Strether, responsively, wondered indeed.  "Perhaps the girl herself
+doesn't like him."
+
+"Then why does he speak of them to you as he does?"
+
+Strether's mind echoed the question, but also again met it.  "Perhaps
+it's with the mother he's on good terms."
+
+"As against the daughter?"
+
+"Well, if she's trying to persuade the daughter to consent to him, what
+could make him like the mother more?  Only," Strether threw out, "why
+shouldn't the daughter consent to him?"
+
+"Oh," said Miss Gostrey, "mayn't it be that every one else isn't quite
+so struck with him as you?"
+
+"Doesn't regard him you mean as such an 'eligible' young man?  Is that
+what I've come to?" he audibly and rather gravely sought to know.
+"However," he went on, "his marriage is what his mother most
+desires--that is if it will help.  And oughtn't ANY marriage to help?
+They must want him"--he had already worked it out--"to be better off.
+Almost any girl he may marry will have a direct interest in his taking
+up his chances.  It won't suit HER at least that he shall miss them."
+
+Miss Gostrey cast about.  "No--you reason well! But of course on the
+other hand there's always dear old Woollett itself."
+
+"Oh yes," he mused--"there's always dear old Woollett itself."
+
+She waited a moment.  "The young lady mayn't find herself able to
+swallow THAT quantity.  She may think it's paying too much; she may
+weigh one thing against another."
+
+Strether, ever restless in such debates, took a vague turn "It will all
+depend on who she is.  That of course--the proved ability to deal with
+dear old Woollett, since I'm sure she does deal with it--is what makes
+so strongly for Mamie."
+
+"Mamie?"
+
+He stopped short, at her tone, before her; then, though seeing that it
+represented not vagueness, but a momentary embarrassed fulness, let his
+exclamation come.  "You surely haven't forgotten about Mamie!"
+
+"No, I haven't forgotten about Mamie," she smiled.  "There's no doubt
+whatever that there's ever so much to be said for her. Mamie's MY
+girl!" she roundly declared.
+
+Strether resumed for a minute his walk.  "She's really perfectly
+lovely, you know.  Far prettier than any girl I've seen over here yet."
+
+"That's precisely on what I perhaps most build."  And she mused a
+moment in her friend's way.  "I should positively like to take her in
+hand!"
+
+He humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it.  "Oh but
+don't, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and can't, you
+know, be left."
+
+But she kept it up.  "I wish they'd send her out to me!"
+
+"If they knew you," he returned, "they would."
+
+"Ah but don't they?--after all that, as I've understood you you've told
+them about me?"
+
+He had paused before her again, but he continued his course "They
+WILL--before, as you say, I've done."  Then he came out with the point
+he had wished after all most to make.  "It seems to give away now his
+game.  This is what he has been doing--keeping me along for.  He has
+been waiting for them."
+
+Miss Gostrey drew in her lips.  "You see a good deal in it!"
+
+"I doubt if I see as much as you.  Do you pretend," he went on, "that
+you don't see--?"
+
+"Well, what?"--she pressed him as he paused.
+
+"Why that there must be a lot between them--and that it has been going
+on from the first; even from before I came."
+
+She took a minute to answer.  "Who are they then--if it's so grave?"
+
+"It mayn't be grave--it may be gay.  But at any rate it's marked. Only
+I don't know," Strether had to confess, "anything about them. Their
+name for instance was a thing that, after little Bilham's information,
+I found it a kind of refreshment not to feel obliged to follow up."
+
+"Oh," she returned, "if you think you've got off--!"
+
+Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom.  "I don't think I've got
+off.  I only think I'm breathing for about five minutes.  I dare say I
+SHALL have, at the best, still to get on."  A look, over it all, passed
+between them, and the next minute he had come back to good humour.  "I
+don't meanwhile take the smallest interest in their name."
+
+"Nor in their nationality?--American, French, English, Polish?"
+
+"I don't care the least little 'hang,'" he smiled, "for their
+nationality.  It would be nice if they're Polish!" he almost
+immediately added.
+
+"Very nice indeed."  The transition kept up her spirits.  "So you see
+you do care."
+
+He did this contention a modified justice.  "I think I should if they
+WERE Polish.  Yes," he thought--"there might be joy in THAT."
+
+"Let us then hope for it."  But she came after this nearer to the
+question.  "If the girl's of the right age of course the mother can't
+be.  I mean for the virtuous attachment.  If the girl's twenty--and she
+can't be less--the mother must be at least forty. So it puts the mother
+out.  SHE'S too old for him."
+
+Strether, arrested again, considered and demurred.  "Do you think so?
+Do you think any one would be too old for him?  I'M eighty, and I'm too
+young.  But perhaps the girl," he continued, "ISn't twenty. Perhaps
+she's only ten--but such a little dear that Chad finds himself counting
+her in as an attraction of the acquaintance. Perhaps she's only five.
+Perhaps the mother's but five-and-twenty--a charming young widow."
+
+Miss Gostrey entertained the suggestion.  "She IS a widow then?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea!"  They once more, in spite of this
+vagueness, exchanged a look--a look that was perhaps the longest yet.
+It seemed in fact, the next thing, to require to explain itself; which
+it did as it could.  "I only feel what I've told you--that he has some
+reason."
+
+Miss Gostrey's imagination had taken its own flight.  "Perhaps she's
+NOT a widow."
+
+Strether seemed to accept the possibility with reserve.  Still he
+accepted it.  "Then that's why the attachment--if it's to her--is
+virtuous."
+
+But she looked as if she scarce followed.  "Why is it virtuous
+if--since she's free--there's nothing to impose on it any condition?"
+
+He laughed at her question.  "Oh I perhaps don't mean as virtuous as
+THAT! Your idea is that it can be virtuous--in any sense worthy of the
+name--only if she's NOT free?  But what does it become then," he asked,
+"for HER?"
+
+"Ah that's another matter."  He said nothing for a moment, and she soon
+went on.  "I dare say you're right, at any rate, about Mr. Newsome's
+little plan.  He HAS been trying you--has been reporting on you to
+these friends."
+
+Strether meanwhile had had time to think more.  "Then where's his
+straightness?"
+
+"Well, as we say, it's struggling up, breaking out, asserting itself as
+it can.  We can be on the side, you see, of his straightness. We can
+help him.  But he has made out," said Miss Gostrey, "that you'll do."
+
+"Do for what?"
+
+"Why, for THEM--for ces dames.  He has watched you, studied you, liked
+you--and recognised that THEY must.  It's a great compliment to you, my
+dear man; for I'm sure they're particular.  You came out for a success.
+Well," she gaily declared, "you're having it!"
+
+He took it from her with momentary patience and then turned abruptly
+away.  It was always convenient to him that there were so many fine
+things in her room to look at.  But the examination of two or three of
+them appeared soon to have determined a speech that had little to do
+with them.  "You don't believe in it!"
+
+"In what?"
+
+"In the character of the attachment.  In its innocence."
+
+But she defended herself.  "I don't pretend to know anything about it.
+Everything's possible.  We must see."
+
+"See?" he echoed with a groan.  "Haven't we seen enough?"
+
+"I haven't," she smiled.
+
+"But do you suppose then little Bilham has lied?"
+
+"You must find out."
+
+It made him almost turn pale.  "Find out any MORE?"
+
+He had dropped on a sofa for dismay; but she seemed, as she stood over
+him, to have the last word.  "Wasn't what you came out for to find out
+ALL?"
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Fifth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The Sunday of the next week was a wonderful day, and Chad Newsome had
+let his friend know in advance that he had provided for it. There had
+already been a question of his taking him to see the great Gloriani,
+who was at home on Sunday afternoons and at whose house, for the most
+part, fewer bores were to be met than elsewhere; but the project,
+through some accident, had not had instant effect, and now revived in
+happier conditions.  Chad had made the point that the celebrated
+sculptor had a queer old garden, for which the weather--spring at last
+frank and fair--was propitious; and two or three of his other allusions
+had confirmed for Strether the expectation of something special.  He
+had by this time, for all introductions and adventures, let himself
+recklessly go, cherishing the sense that whatever the young man showed
+him he was showing at least himself.  He could have wished indeed, so
+far as this went, that Chad were less of a mere cicerone; for he was
+not without the impression--now that the vision of his game, his plan,
+his deep diplomacy, did recurrently assert itself--of his taking refuge
+from the realities of their intercourse in profusely dispensing, as our
+friend mentally phrased et panem et circenses. Our friend continued to
+feel rather smothered in flowers, though he made in his other moments
+the almost angry inference that this was only because of his odious
+ascetic suspicion of any form of beauty.  He periodically assured
+himself--for his reactions were sharp--that he shouldn't reach the
+truth of anything till he had at least got rid of that.
+
+He had known beforehand that Madame de Vionnet and her daughter would
+probably be on view, an intimation to that effect having constituted
+the only reference again made by Chad to his good friends from the
+south.  The effect of Strether's talk about them with Miss Gostrey had
+been quite to consecrate his reluctance to pry; something in the very
+air of Chad's silence--judged in the light of that talk--offered it to
+him as a reserve he could markedly match.  It shrouded them about with
+he scarce knew what, a consideration, a distinction; he was in presence
+at any rate--so far as it placed him there--of ladies; and the one
+thing that was definite for him was that they themselves should be, to
+the extent of his responsibility, in presence of a gentleman.  Was it
+because they were very beautiful, very clever, or even very good--was
+it for one of these reasons that Chad was, so to speak, nursing his
+effect?  Did he wish to spring them, in the Woollett phrase, with a
+fuller force--to confound his critic, slight though as yet the
+criticism, with some form of merit exquisitely incalculable? The most
+the critic had at all events asked was whether the persons in question
+were French; and that enquiry had been but a proper comment on the
+sound of their name.  "Yes.  That is no!" had been Chad's reply; but he
+had immediately added that their English was the most charming in the
+world, so that if Strether were wanting an excuse for not getting on
+with them he wouldn't in the least find one.  Never in fact had
+Strether--in the mood into which the place had quickly launched
+him--felt, for himself, less the need of an excuse.  Those he might
+have found would have been, at the worst, all for the others, the
+people before him, in whose liberty to be as they were he was aware
+that he positively rejoiced.  His fellow guests were multiplying, and
+these things, their liberty, their intensity, their variety, their
+conditions at large, were in fusion in the admirable medium of the
+scene.
+
+The place itself was a great impression--a small pavilion, clear-faced
+and sequestered, an effect of polished parquet, of fine white panel and
+spare sallow gilt, of decoration delicate and rare, in the heart of the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain and on the edge of a cluster of gardens attached
+to old noble houses.  Far back from streets and unsuspected by crowds,
+reached by a long passage and a quiet court, it was as striking to the
+unprepared mind, he immediately saw, as a treasure dug up; giving him
+too, more than anything yet, the note of the range of the immeasurable
+town and sweeping away, as by a last brave brush, his usual landmarks
+and terms. It was in the garden, a spacious cherished remnant, out of
+which a dozen persons had already passed, that Chad's host presently
+met them while the tall bird-haunted trees, all of a twitter with the
+spring and the weather, and the high party-walls, on the other side of
+which grave hotels stood off for privacy, spoke of survival,
+transmission, association, a strong indifferent persistent order.  The
+day was so soft that the little party had practically adjourned to the
+open air but the open air was in such conditions all a chamber of
+state.  Strether had presently the sense of a great convent, a convent
+of missions, famous for he scarce knew what, a nursery of young
+priests, of scattered shade, of straight alleys and chapel-bells, that
+spread its mass in one quarter; he had the sense of names in the air,
+of ghosts at the windows, of signs and tokens, a whole range of
+expression, all about him, too thick for prompt discrimination.
+
+This assault of images became for a moment, in the address of the
+distinguished sculptor, almost formidable:  Gloriani showed him, in
+such perfect confidence, on Chad's introduction of him, a fine worn
+handsome face, a face that was like an open letter in a foreign tongue.
+With his genius in his eyes, his manners on his lips, his long career
+behind him and his honours and rewards all round, the great artist, in
+the course of a single sustained look and a few words of delight at
+receiving him, affected our friend as a dazzling prodigy of type.
+Strether had seen in museums--in the Luxembourg as well as, more
+reverently, later on, in the New York of the billionaires--the work of
+his hand; knowing too that after an earlier time in his native Rome he
+had migrated, in mid-career, to Paris, where, with a personal lustre
+almost violent, he shone in a constellation:  all of which was more
+than enough to crown him, for his guest, with the light, with the
+romance, of glory.  Strether, in contact with that element as he had
+never yet so intimately been, had the consciousness of opening to it,
+for the happy instant, all the windows of his mind, of letting this
+rather grey interior drink in for once the sun of a clime not marked in
+his old geography.  He was to remember again repeatedly the medal-like
+Italian face, in which every line was an artist's own, in which time
+told only as tone and consecration; and he was to recall in especial,
+as the penetrating radiance, as the communication of the illustrious
+spirit itself, the manner in which, while they stood briefly, in
+welcome and response, face to face, he was held by the sculptor's eyes.
+He wasn't soon to forget them, was to think of them, all unconscious,
+unintending, preoccupied though they were, as the source of the deepest
+intellectual sounding to which he had ever been exposed.  He was in
+fact quite to cherish his vision of it, to play with it in idle hours;
+only speaking of it to no one and quite aware he couldn't have spoken
+without appearing to talk nonsense.  Was what it had told him or what
+it had asked him the greater of the mysteries? Was it the most special
+flare, unequalled, supreme, of the aesthetic torch, lighting that
+wondrous world for ever, or was it above all the long straight shaft
+sunk by a personal acuteness that life had seasoned to steel?  Nothing
+on earth could have been stranger and no one doubtless more surprised
+than the artist himself, but it was for all the world to Strether just
+then as if in the matter of his accepted duty he had positively been on
+trial. The deep human expertness in Gloriani's charming smile--oh the
+terrible life behind it!--was flashed upon him as a test of his stuff.
+
+Chad meanwhile, after having easily named his companion, had still more
+easily turned away and was already greeting other persons present. He
+was as easy, clever Chad, with the great artist as with his obscure
+compatriot, and as easy with every one else as with either: this fell
+into its place for Strether and made almost a new light, giving him, as
+a concatenation, something more he could enjoy. He liked Gloriani, but
+should never see him again; of that he was sufficiently sure.  Chad
+accordingly, who was wonderful with both of them, was a kind of link
+for hopeless fancy, an implication of possibilities--oh if everything
+had been different! Strether noted at all events that he was thus on
+terms with illustrious spirits, and also that--yes, distinctly--he
+hadn't in the least swaggered about it.  Our friend hadn't come there
+only for this figure of Abel Newsome's son, but that presence
+threatened to affect the observant mind as positively central. Gloriani
+indeed, remembering something and excusing himself, pursued Chad to
+speak to him, and Strether was left musing on many things.  One of them
+was the question of whether, since he had been tested, he had passed.
+Did the artist drop him from having made out that he wouldn't do? He
+really felt just to-day that he might do better than usual. Hadn't he
+done well enough, so far as that went, in being exactly so dazzled? and
+in not having too, as he almost believed, wholly hidden from his host
+that he felt the latter's plummet?  Suddenly, across the garden, he saw
+little Bilham approach, and it was a part of the fit that was on him
+that as their eyes met he guessed also HIS knowledge. If he had said to
+him on the instant what was uppermost he would have said:  "HAVE I
+passed?--for of course I know one has to pass here." Little Bilham
+would have reassured him, have told him that he exaggerated, and have
+adduced happily enough the argument of little Bilham's own very
+presence; which, in truth, he could see, was as easy a one as
+Gloriani's own or as Chad's.  He himself would perhaps then after a
+while cease to be frightened, would get the point of view for some of
+the faces--types tremendously alien, alien to Woollett--that he had
+already begun to take in.  Who were they all, the dispersed groups and
+couples, the ladies even more unlike those of Woollett than the
+gentlemen?--this was the enquiry that, when his young friend had
+greeted him, he did find himself making.
+
+"Oh they're every one--all sorts and sizes; of course I mean within
+limits, though limits down perhaps rather more than limits up.  There
+are always artists--he's beautiful and inimitable to the cher confrere;
+and then gros bonnets of many kinds--ambassadors, cabinet ministers,
+bankers, generals, what do I know? even Jews. Above all always some
+awfully nice women--and not too many; sometimes an actress, an artist,
+a great performer--but only when they're not monsters; and in
+particular the right femmes du monde. You can fancy his history on that
+side--I believe it's fabulous: they NEVER give him up.  Yet he keeps
+them down:  no one knows how he manages; it's too beautiful and bland.
+Never too many--and a mighty good thing too; just a perfect choice. But
+there are not in any way many bores; it has always been so; he has some
+secret. It's extraordinary.  And you don't find it out.  He's the same
+to every one.  He doesn't ask questions.'
+
+"Ah doesn't he?" Strether laughed.
+
+Bilham met it with all his candour.  "How then should I be here?
+
+"Oh for what you tell me.  You're part of the perfect choice."
+
+Well, the young man took in the scene.  "It seems rather good to-day."
+
+Strether followed the direction of his eyes.  "Are they all, this time,
+femmes du monde?"
+
+Little Bilham showed his competence.  "Pretty well."
+
+This was a category our friend had a feeling for; a light, romantic and
+mysterious, on the feminine element, in which he enjoyed for a little
+watching it.  "Are there any Poles?"
+
+His companion considered.  "I think I make out a 'Portuguee.' But I've
+seen Turks."
+
+Strether wondered, desiring justice.  "They seem--all the women--very
+harmonious."
+
+"Oh in closer quarters they come out!" And then, while Strether was
+aware of fearing closer quarters, though giving himself again to the
+harmonies, "Well," little Bilham went on, "it IS at the worst rather
+good, you know.  If you like it, you feel it, this way, that shows
+you're not in the least out But you always know things," he handsomely
+added, "immediately."
+
+Strether liked it and felt it only too much; so "I say, don't lay traps
+for me!" he rather helplessly murmured.
+
+"Well," his companion returned, "he's wonderfully kind to us."
+
+"To us Americans you mean?"
+
+"Oh no--he doesn't know anything about THAT.  That's half the battle
+here--that you can never hear politics.  We don't talk them. I mean to
+poor young wretches of all sorts.  And yet it's always as charming as
+this; it's as if, by something in the air, our squalor didn't show.  It
+puts us all back--into the last century."
+
+"I'm afraid," Strether said, amused, "that it puts me rather forward:
+oh ever so far!"
+
+"Into the next? But isn't that only," little Bilham asked, "because
+you're really of the century before?"
+
+"The century before the last? Thank you!" Strether laughed.  "If I ask
+you about some of the ladies it can't be then that I may hope, as such
+a specimen of the rococo, to please them."
+
+"On the contrary they adore--we all adore here--the rococo, and where
+is there a better setting for it than the whole thing, the pavilion and
+the garden, together? There are lots of people with collections,"
+little Bilham smiled as he glanced round.  "You'll be secured!"
+
+It made Strether for a moment give himself again to contemplation.
+There were faces he scarce knew what to make of.  Were they charming or
+were they only strange? He mightn't talk politics, yet he suspected a
+Pole or two.  The upshot was the question at the back of his head from
+the moment his friend had joined him.  "Have Madame de Vionnet and her
+daughter arrived?"
+
+"I haven't seen them yet, but Miss Gostrey has come.  She's in the
+pavilion looking at objects.  One can see SHE'S a collector," little
+Bilham added without offence.
+
+"Oh yes, she's a collector, and I knew she was to come.  Is Madame de
+Vionnet a collector?" Strether went on.
+
+"Rather, I believe; almost celebrated."  The young man met, on it, a
+little, his friend's eyes.  "I happen to know--from Chad, whom I saw
+last night--that they've come back; but only yesterday. He wasn't
+sure--up to the last.  This, accordingly," little Bilham went on, "will
+be--if they ARE here--their first appearance after their return."
+
+Strether, very quickly, turned these things over.  "Chad told you last
+night? To me, on our way here, he said nothing about it."
+
+"But did you ask him?"
+
+Strether did him the justice.  "I dare say not."
+
+"Well," said little Bilham, "you're not a person to whom it's easy to
+tell things you don't want to know.  Though it is easy, I admit--it's
+quite beautiful," he benevolently added, "when you do want to."
+
+Strether looked at him with an indulgence that matched his
+intelligence.  "Is that the deep reasoning on which--about these
+ladies--you've been yourself so silent?"
+
+Little Bilham considered the depth of his reasoning.  "I haven't been
+silent.  I spoke of them to you the other day, the day we sat together
+after Chad's tea-party."
+
+Strether came round to it.  "They then are the virtuous attachment?"
+
+"I can only tell you that it's what they pass for.  But isn't that
+enough? What more than a vain appearance does the wisest of us know? I
+commend you," the young man declared with a pleasant emphasis, "the
+vain appearance."
+
+Strether looked more widely round, and what he saw, from face to face,
+deepened the effect of his young friend's words.  "Is it so good?"
+
+"Magnificent."
+
+Strether had a pause.  "The husband's dead?"
+
+"Dear no.  Alive."
+
+"Oh!" said Strether.  After which, as his companion laughed: "How then
+can it be so good?"
+
+"You'll see for yourself.  One does see."
+
+"Chad's in love with the daughter?"
+
+"That's what I mean."
+
+Strether wondered.  "Then where's the difficulty?"
+
+"Why, aren't you and I--with our grander bolder ideas?"
+
+"Oh mine--!" Strether said rather strangely.  But then as if to
+attenuate:  "You mean they won't hear of Woollett?"
+
+Little Bilham smiled.  "Isn't that just what you must see about?"
+
+It had brought them, as she caught the last words, into relation with
+Miss Barrace, whom Strether had already observed--as he had never
+before seen a lady at a party--moving about alone.  Coming within sound
+of them she had already spoken, and she took again, through her
+long-handled glass, all her amused and amusing possession.  "How much,
+poor Mr. Strether, you seem to have to see about! But you can't say,"
+she gaily declared, "that I don't do what I can to help you.  Mr.
+Waymarsh is placed.  I've left him in the house with Miss Gostrey."
+
+"The way," little Bilham exclaimed, "Mr. Strether gets the ladies to
+work for him! He's just preparing to draw in another; to pounce--don't
+you see him?--on Madame de Vionnet."
+
+"Madame de Vionnet?  Oh, oh, oh!" Miss Barrace cried in a wonderful
+crescendo.  There was more in it, our friend made out, than met the
+ear.  Was it after all a joke that he should be serious about anything?
+He envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not being.  She seemed,
+with little cries and protests and quick recognitions, movements like
+the darts of some fine high-feathered free-pecking bird, to stand
+before life as before some full shop-window.  You could fairly hear, as
+she selected and pointed, the tap of her tortoise-shell against the
+glass.  "It's certain that we do need seeing about; only I'm glad it's
+not I who have to do it. One does, no doubt, begin that way; then
+suddenly one finds that one has given it up.  It's too much, it's too
+difficult.  You're wonderful, you people," she continued to Strether,
+"for not feeling those things--by which I mean impossibilities.  You
+never feel them. You face them with a fortitude that makes it a lesson
+to watch you."
+
+"Ah but"--little Bilham put it with discouragement--"what do we achieve
+after all? We see about you and report--when we even go so far as
+reporting.  But nothing's done."
+
+"Oh you, Mr. Bilham," she replied as with an impatient rap on the
+glass, "you're not worth sixpence! You come over to convert the
+savages--for I know you verily did, I remember you--and the savages
+simply convert YOU."
+
+"Not even!" the young man woefully confessed:  "they haven't gone
+through that form.  They've simply--the cannibals!--eaten me; converted
+me if you like, but converted me into food.  I'm but the bleached bones
+of a Christian."
+
+"Well then there we are!  Only"--and Miss Barrace appealed again to
+Strether--"don't let it discourage you.  You'll break down soon enough,
+but you'll meanwhile have had your moments.  Il faut en avoir.  I
+always like to see you while you last.  And I'll tell you who WILL
+last."
+
+"Waymarsh?"--he had already taken her up.
+
+She laughed out as at the alarm of it.  "He'll resist even Miss
+Gostrey:  so grand is it not to understand.  He's wonderful."
+
+"He is indeed," Strether conceded.  "He wouldn't tell me of this
+affair--only said he had an engagement; but with such a gloom, you must
+let me insist, as if it had been an engagement to be hanged. Then
+silently and secretly he turns up here with you.  Do you call THAT
+'lasting'?"
+
+"Oh I hope it's lasting!" Miss Barrace said.  "But he only, at the
+best, bears with me.  He doesn't understand--not one little scrap. He's
+delightful.  He's wonderful," she repeated.
+
+"Michelangelesque!"--little Bilham completed her meaning.  "He IS a
+success.  Moses, on the ceiling, brought down to the floor;
+overwhelming, colossal, but somehow portable."
+
+"Certainly, if you mean by portable," she returned, "looking so well in
+one's carriage.  He's too funny beside me in his comer; he looks like
+somebody, somebody foreign and famous, en exil; so that people
+wonder--it's very amusing--whom I'm taking about.  I show him Paris,
+show him everything, and he never turns a hair.  He's like the Indian
+chief one reads about, who, when he comes up to Washington to see the
+Great Father, stands wrapt in his blanket and gives no sign.  I might
+be the Great Father--from the way he takes everything."  She was
+delighted at this hit of her identity with that personage--it fitted so
+her character; she declared it was the title she meant henceforth to
+adopt.  "And the way he sits, too, in the corner of my room, only
+looking at my visitors very hard and as if he wanted to start
+something! They wonder what he does want to start.  But he's
+wonderful," Miss Barrace once more insisted.  "He has never started
+anything yet."
+
+It presented him none the less, in truth, to her actual friends, who
+looked at each other in intelligence, with frank amusement on Bilham's
+part and a shade of sadness on Strether's.  Strether's sadness
+sprang--for the image had its grandeur--from his thinking how little he
+himself was wrapt in his blanket, how little, in marble halls, all too
+oblivious of the Great Father, he resembled a really majestic
+aboriginal.  But he had also another reflexion. "You've all of you here
+so much visual sense that you've somehow all 'run' to it.  There are
+moments when it strikes one that you haven't any other."
+
+"Any moral," little Bilham explained, watching serenely, across the
+garden, the several femmes du monde.  "But Miss Barrace has a moral
+distinction," he kindly continued; speaking as if for Strether's
+benefit not less than for her own.
+
+"HAVE you?" Strether, scarce knowing what he was about, asked of her
+almost eagerly.
+
+"Oh not a distinction"--she was mightily amused at his tone--"Mr.
+Bilham's too good.  But I think I may say a sufficiency.  Yes, a
+sufficiency. Have you supposed strange things of me?"--and she fixed
+him again, through all her tortoise-shell, with the droll interest of
+it. "You ARE all indeed wonderful.  I should awfully disappoint you. I
+do take my stand on my sufficiency.  But I know, I confess," she went
+on, "strange people.  I don't know how it happens; I don't do it on
+purpose; it seems to be my doom--as if I were always one of their
+habits:  it's wonderful! I dare say moreover," she pursued with an
+interested gravity, "that I do, that we all do here, run too much to
+mere eye.  But how can it be helped? We're all looking at each
+other--and in the light of Paris one sees what things resemble.  That's
+what the light of Paris seems always to show.  It's the fault of the
+light of Paris--dear old light!"
+
+"Dear old Paris!" little Bilham echoed.
+
+"Everything, every one shows," Miss Barrace went on.
+
+"But for what they really are?" Strether asked.
+
+"Oh I like your Boston 'reallys'!  But sometimes--yes."
+
+"Dear old Paris then!" Strether resignedly sighed while for a moment
+they looked at each other.  Then he broke out:  "Does Madame de Vionnet
+do that? I mean really show for what she is?"
+
+Her answer was prompt.  "She's charming.  She's perfect."
+
+"Then why did you a minute ago say 'Oh, oh, oh!' at her name?"
+
+She easily remembered.  "Why just because--!  She's wonderful."
+
+"Ah she too?"--Strether had almost a groan.
+
+But Miss Barrace had meanwhile perceived relief.  "Why not put your
+question straight to the person who can answer it best?"
+
+"No," said little Bilham; "don't put any question; wait, rather--it
+will be much more fun--to judge for yourself.  He has come to take you
+to her."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+On which Strether saw that Chad was again at hand, and he afterwards
+scarce knew, absurd as it may seem, what had then quickly occurred. The
+moment concerned him, he felt, more deeply than he could have
+explained, and he had a subsequent passage of speculation as to
+whether, on walking off with Chad, he hadn't looked either pale or red.
+The only thing he was clear about was that, luckily, nothing indiscreet
+had in fact been said and that Chad himself was more than ever, in Miss
+Barrace's great sense, wonderful.  It was one of the connexions--though
+really why it should be, after all, was none so apparent--in which the
+whole change in him came out as most striking.  Strether recalled as
+they approached the house that he had impressed him that first night as
+knowing how to enter a box.  Well, he impressed him scarce less now as
+knowing how to make a presentation.  It did something for Strether's
+own quality--marked it as estimated; so that our poor friend, conscious
+and passive, really seemed to feel himself quite handed over and
+delivered; absolutely, as he would have said, made a present of, given
+away.  As they reached the house a young woman, about to come forth,
+appeared, unaccompanied, on the steps; at the exchange with whom of a
+word on Chad's part Strether immediately perceived that, obligingly,
+kindly, she was there to meet them. Chad had left her in the house, but
+she had afterwards come halfway and then the next moment had joined
+them in the garden. Her air of youth, for Strether, was at first almost
+disconcerting, while his second impression was, not less sharply, a
+degree of relief at there not having just been, with the others, any
+freedom used about her.  It was upon him at a touch that she was no
+subject for that, and meanwhile, on Chad's introducing him, she had
+spoken to him, very simply and gently, in an English clearly of the
+easiest to her, yet unlike any other he had ever heard.  It wasn't as
+if she tried; nothing, he could see after they had been a few minutes
+together, was as if she tried; but her speech, charming correct and
+odd, was like a precaution against her passing for a Pole.  There were
+precautions, he seemed indeed to see, only when there were really
+dangers.
+
+Later on he was to feel many more of them, but by that time he was to
+feel other things besides.  She was dressed in black, but in black that
+struck him as light and transparent; she was exceedingly fair, and,
+though she was as markedly slim, her face had a roundness, with eyes
+far apart and a little strange. Her smile was natural and dim; her hat
+not extravagant; he had only perhaps a sense of the clink, beneath her
+fine black sleeves, of more gold bracelets and bangles than he had ever
+seen a lady wear. Chad was excellently free and light about their
+encounter; it was one of the occasions on which Strether most wished he
+himself might have arrived at such ease and such humour:  "Here you are
+then, face to face at last; you're made for each other--vous allez
+voir; and I bless your union."  It was indeed, after he had gone off,
+as if he had been partly serious too.  This latter motion had been
+determined by an enquiry from him about "Jeanne"; to which her mother
+had replied that she was probably still in the house with Miss Gostrey,
+to whom she had lately committed her.  "Ah but you know," the young man
+had rejoined, "he must see her"; with which, while Strether pricked up
+his ears, he had started as if to bring her, leaving the other objects
+of his interest together. Strether wondered to find Miss Gostrey
+already involved, feeling that he missed a link; but feeling also, with
+small delay, how much he should like to talk with her of Madame de
+Vionnet on this basis of evidence.
+
+The evidence as yet in truth was meagre; which, for that matter, was
+perhaps a little why his expectation had had a drop.  There was somehow
+not quite a wealth in her; and a wealth was all that, in his
+simplicity, he had definitely prefigured.  Still, it was too much to be
+sure already that there was but a poverty.  They moved away from the
+house, and, with eyes on a bench at some distance, he proposed that
+they should sit down.  "I've heard a great deal about you," she said as
+they went; but he had an answer to it that made her stop short.  "Well,
+about YOU, Madame de Vionnet, I've heard, I'm bound to say, almost
+nothing"--those struck him as the only words he himself could utter
+with any lucidity; conscious as he was, and as with more reason, of the
+determination to be in respect to the rest of his business perfectly
+plain and go perfectly straight.  It hadn't at any rate been in the
+least his idea to spy on Chad's proper freedom.  It was possibly,
+however, at this very instant and under the impression of Madame de
+Vionnet's pause, that going straight began to announce itself as a
+matter for care.  She had only after all to smile at him ever so gently
+in order to make him ask himself if he weren't already going crooked.
+It might be going crooked to find it of a sudden just only clear that
+she intended very definitely to be what he would have called nice to
+him.  This was what passed between them while, for another instant,
+they stood still; he couldn't at least remember afterwards what else it
+might have been.  The thing indeed really unmistakeable was its rolling
+over him as a wave that he had been, in conditions incalculable and
+unimaginable, a subject of discussion.  He had been, on some ground
+that concerned her, answered for; which gave her an advantage he should
+never be able to match.
+
+"Hasn't Miss Gostrey," she asked, "said a good word for me?"
+
+What had struck him first was the way he was bracketed with that lady;
+and he wondered what account Chad would have given of their
+acquaintance.  Something not as yet traceable, at all events, had
+obviously happened.  "I didn't even know of her knowing you."
+
+"Well, now she'll tell you all.  I'm so glad you're in relation with
+her."
+
+This was one of the things--the "all" Miss Gostrey would now tell
+him--that, with every deference to present preoccupation, was uppermost
+for Strether after they had taken their seat.  One of the others was,
+at the end of five minutes, that she--oh incontestably, yes--DIFFERED
+less; differed, that is, scarcely at all--well, superficially speaking,
+from Mrs. Newsome or even from Mrs. Pocock. She was ever so much
+younger than the one and not so young as the other; but what WAS there
+in her, if anything, that would have made it impossible he should meet
+her at Woollett? And wherein was her talk during their moments on the
+bench together not the same as would have been found adequate for a
+Woollett garden-party?--unless perhaps truly in not being quite so
+bright.  She observed to him that Mr. Newsome had, to her knowledge,
+taken extraordinary pleasure in his visit; but there was no good lady
+at Woollett who wouldn't have been at least up to that. Was there in
+Chad, by chance, after all, deep down, a principle of aboriginal
+loyalty that had made him, for sentimental ends, attach himself to
+elements, happily encountered, that would remind him most of the old
+air and the old soil? Why accordingly be in a flutter--Strether could
+even put it that way--about this unfamiliar phenomenon of the femme du
+monde?  On these terms Mrs. Newsome herself was as much of one.  Little
+Bilham verily had testified that they came out, the ladies of the type,
+in close quarters; but it was just in these quarters--now comparatively
+close--that he felt Madame de Vionnet's common humanity.  She did come
+out, and certainly to his relief, but she came out as the usual thing.
+There might be motives behind, but so could there often be even at
+Woollett.  The only thing was that if she showed him she wished to like
+him--as the motives behind might conceivably prompt--it would possibly
+have been more thrilling for him that she should have shown as more
+vividly alien.  Ah she was neither Turk nor Pole!--which would be
+indeed flat once more for Mrs. Newsome and Mrs. Pocock.  A lady and two
+gentlemen had meanwhile, however, approached their bench, and this
+accident stayed for the time further developments.
+
+They presently addressed his companion, the brilliant strangers; she
+rose to speak to them, and Strether noted how the escorted lady, though
+mature and by no means beautiful, had more of the bold high look, the
+range of expensive reference, that he had, as might have been said,
+made his plans for.  Madame de Vionnet greeted her as "Duchesse" and
+was greeted in turn, while talk started in French, as "Ma toute-belle";
+little facts that had their due, their vivid interest for Strether.
+Madame de Vionnet didn't, none the less, introduce him--a note he was
+conscious of as false to the Woollett scale and the Woollett humanity;
+though it didn't prevent the Duchess, who struck him as confident and
+free, very much what he had obscurely supposed duchesses, from looking
+at him as straight and as hard--for it WAS hard--as if she would have
+liked, all the same, to know him.  "Oh yes, my dear, it's all right,
+it's ME; and who are YOU, with your interesting wrinkles and your most
+effective (is it the handsomest, is it the ugliest?) of noses?"--some
+such loose handful of bright flowers she seemed, fragrantly enough, to
+fling at him.  Strether almost wondered--at such a pace was he
+going--if some divination of the influence of either party were what
+determined Madame de Vionnet's abstention.  One of the gentlemen, in
+any case, succeeded in placing himself in close relation with our
+friend's companion; a gentleman rather stout and importantly short, in
+a hat with a wonderful wide curl to its brim and a frock coat buttoned
+with an effect of superlative decision.  His French had quickly turned
+to equal English, and it occurred to Strether that he might well be one
+of the ambassadors.  His design was evidently to assert a claim to
+Madame de Vionnet's undivided countenance, and he made it good in the
+course of a minute--led her away with a trick of three words; a trick
+played with a social art of which Strether, looking after them as the
+four, whose backs were now all turned, moved off, felt himself no
+master.
+
+He sank again upon his bench and, while his eyes followed the party,
+reflected, as he had done before, on Chad's strange communities.  He
+sat there alone for five minutes, with plenty to think of; above all
+with his sense of having suddenly been dropped by a charming woman
+overlaid now by other impressions and in fact quite cleared and
+indifferent.  He hadn't yet had so quiet a surrender; he didn't in the
+least care if nobody spoke to him more.  He might have been, by his
+attitude, in for something of a march so broad that the want of
+ceremony with which he had just been used could fall into its place as
+but a minor incident of the procession.  Besides, there would be
+incidents enough, as he felt when this term of contemplation was closed
+by the reappearance of little Bilham, who stood before him a moment
+with a suggestive "Well?" in which he saw himself reflected as
+disorganised, as possibly floored.  He replied with a "Well!" intended
+to show that he wasn't floored in the least.  No indeed; he gave it
+out, as the young man sat down beside him, that if, at the worst, he
+had been overturned at all, he had been overturned into the upper air,
+the sublimer element with which he had an affinity and in which he
+might be trusted a while to float.  It wasn't a descent to earth to say
+after an instant and in sustained response to the reference: "You're
+quite sure her husband's living?"
+
+"Oh dear, yes."
+
+"Ah then--!"
+
+"Ah then what?"
+
+Strether had after all to think.  "Well, I'm sorry for them."  But it
+didn't for the moment matter more than that.  He assured his young
+friend he was quite content.  They wouldn't stir; were all right as
+they were.  He didn't want to be introduced; had been introduced
+already about as far as he could go.  He had seen moreover an
+immensity; liked Gloriani, who, as Miss Barrace kept saying, was
+wonderful; had made out, he was sure, the half-dozen other 'men who
+were distinguished, the artists, the critics and oh the great
+dramatist--HIM it was easy to spot; but wanted--no, thanks, really--to
+talk with none of them; having nothing at all to say and finding it
+would do beautifully as it was; do beautifully because what it
+was--well, was just simply too late. And when after this little Bilham,
+submissive and responsive, but with an eye to the consolation nearest,
+easily threw off some "Better late than never!" all he got in return
+for it was a sharp "Better early than late!"  This note indeed the next
+thing overflowed for Strether into a quiet stream of demonstration that
+as soon as he had let himself go he felt as the real relief.  It had
+consciously gathered to a head, but the reservoir had filled sooner
+than he knew, and his companion's touch was to make the waters spread.
+There were some things that had to come in time if they were to come at
+all.  If they didn't come in time they were lost for ever.  It was the
+general sense of them that had overwhelmed him with its long slow rush.
+
+"It's not too late for YOU, on any side, and you don't strike me as in
+danger of missing the train; besides which people can be in general
+pretty well trusted, of course--with the clock of their freedom ticking
+as loud as it seems to do here--to keep an eye on the fleeting hour.
+All the same don't forget that you're young--blessedly young; be glad
+of it on the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can; it's a
+mistake not to.  It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular,
+so long as you have your life.  If you haven't had that what HAVE you
+had? This place and these impressions--mild as you may find them to
+wind a man up so; all my impressions of Chad and of people I've seen at
+HIS place--well, have had their abundant message for me, have just
+dropped THAT into my mind.  I see it now.  I haven't done so enough
+before--and now I'm old; too old at any rate for what I see.  Oh I DO
+see, at least; and more than you'd believe or I can express.  It's too
+late. And it's as if the train had fairly waited at the station for me
+without my having had the gumption to know it was there. Now I hear its
+faint receding whistle miles and miles down the line. What one loses
+one loses; make no mistake about that.  The affair--I mean the affair
+of life--couldn't, no doubt, have been different for me; for it's at
+the best a tin mould, either fluted and embossed, with ornamental
+excrescences, or else smooth and dreadfully plain, into which, a
+helpless jelly, one's consciousness is poured--so that one 'takes' the
+form as the great cook says, and is more or less compactly held by it:
+one lives in fine as one can. Still, one has the illusion of freedom;
+therefore don't be, like me, without the memory of that illusion.  I
+was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have
+it; I don't quite know which. Of course at present I'm a case of
+reaction against the mistake; and the voice of reaction should, no
+doubt, always be taken with an allowance.  But that doesn't affect the
+point that the right time is now yours.  The right time is ANY time
+that one is still so lucky as to have.  You've plenty; that's the great
+thing; you're, as I say, damn you, so happily and hatefully young.
+Don't at any rate miss things out of stupidity.  Of course I don't take
+you for a fool, or I shouldn't be addressing you thus awfully.  Do what
+you like so long as you don't make MY mistake.  For it was a mistake.
+Live!" ... Slowly and sociably, with full pauses and straight
+dashes, Strether had so delivered himself; holding little Bilham from
+step to step deeply and gravely attentive.  The end of all was that the
+young man had turned quite solemn, and that this was a contradiction of
+the innocent gaiety the speaker had wished to promote.  He watched for
+a moment the consequence of his words, and then, laying a hand on his
+listener's knee and as if to end with the proper joke:  "And now for
+the eye I shall keep on you!"
+
+"Oh but I don't know that I want to be, at your age, too different from
+you!"
+
+"Ah prepare while you're about it," said Strether, "to be more amusing."
+
+Little Bilham continued to think, but at last had a smile.  "Well, you
+ARE amusing--to ME."
+
+"Impayable, as you say, no doubt.  But what am I to myself?" Strether
+had risen with this, giving his attention now to an encounter that, in
+the middle of the garden, was in the act of taking place between their
+host and the lady at whose side Madame de Vionnet had quitted him. This
+lady, who appeared within a few minutes to have left her friends,
+awaited Gloriani's eager approach with words on her lips that Strether
+couldn't catch, but of which her interesting witty face seemed to give
+him the echo. He was sure she was prompt and fine, but also that she
+had met her match, and he liked--in the light of what he was quite sure
+was the Duchess's latent insolence--the good humour with which the
+great artist asserted equal resources.  Were they, this pair, of the
+"great world"?--and was he himself, for the moment and thus related to
+them by his observation, IN it? Then there was something in the great
+world covertly tigerish, which came to him across the lawn and in the
+charming air as a waft from the jungle. Yet it made him admire most of
+the two, made him envy, the glossy male tiger, magnificently marked.
+These absurdities of the stirred sense, fruits of suggestion ripening
+on the instant, were all reflected in his next words to little Bilham.
+"I know--if we talk of that--whom I should enjoy being like!"
+
+Little Bilham followed his eyes; but then as with a shade of knowing
+surprise:  "Gloriani?"
+
+Our friend had in fact already hesitated, though not on the hint of his
+companion's doubt, in which there were depths of critical reserve.  He
+had just made out, in the now full picture, something and somebody
+else; another impression had been superimposed.  A young girl in a
+white dress and a softly plumed white hat had suddenly come into view,
+and what was presently clear was that her course was toward them.  What
+was clearer still was that the handsome young man at her side was Chad
+Newsome, and what was clearest of all was that she was therefore
+Mademoiselle de Vionnet, that she was unmistakeably pretty--bright
+gentle shy happy wonderful--and that Chad now, with a consummate
+calculation of effect, was about to present her to his old friend's
+vision. What was clearest of all indeed was something much more than
+this, something at the single stroke of which--and wasn't it simply
+juxtaposition?--all vagueness vanished.  It was the click of a
+spring--he saw the truth.  He had by this time also met Chad's look;
+there was more of it in that; and the truth, accordingly, so far as
+Bilham's enquiry was concerned, had thrust in the answer. "Oh
+Chad!"--it was that rare youth he should have enjoyed being "like." The
+virtuous attachment would be all there before him; the virtuous
+attachment would be in the very act of appeal for his blessing; Jeanne
+de Vionnet, this charming creature, would be exquisitely, intensely
+now--the object of it.  Chad brought her straight up to him, and Chad
+was, oh yes, at this moment--for the glory of Woollett or
+whatever--better still even than Gloriani.  He had plucked this
+blossom; he had kept it over-night in water; and at last as he held it
+up to wonder he did enjoy his effect.  That was why Strether had felt
+at first the breath of calculation--and why moreover, as he now knew,
+his look at the girl would be, for the young man, a sign of the
+latter's success.  What young man had ever paraded about that way,
+without a reason, a maiden in her flower?  And there was nothing in his
+reason at present obscure.  Her type sufficiently told of it--they
+wouldn't, they couldn't, want her to go to Woollett.  Poor Woollett,
+and what it might miss!--though brave Chad indeed too, and what it
+might gain! Brave Chad however had just excellently spoken.  "This is a
+good little friend of mine who knows all about you and has moreover a
+message for you.  And this, my dear"--he had turned to the child
+herself--"is the best man in the world, who has it in his power to do a
+great deal for us and whom I want you to like and revere as nearly as
+possible as much as I do."
+
+She stood there quite pink, a little frightened, prettier and prettier
+and not a bit like her mother.  There was in this last particular no
+resemblance but that of youth to youth; and here was in fact suddenly
+Strether's sharpest impression.  It went wondering, dazed, embarrassed,
+back to the woman he had just been talking with; it was a revelation in
+the light of which he already saw she would become more interesting. So
+slim and fresh and fair, she had yet put forth this perfection; so that
+for really believing it of her, for seeing her to any such developed
+degree as a mother, comparison would be urgent.  Well, what was it now
+but fairly thrust upon him?  "Mamma wishes me to tell you before we
+go," the girl said, "that she hopes very much you'll come to see us
+very soon. She has something important to say to you."
+
+"She quite reproaches herself," Chad helpfully explained:  "you were
+interesting her so much when she accidentally suffered you to be
+interrupted."
+
+"Ah don't mention it!" Strether murmured, looking kindly from one to
+the other and wondering at many things.
+
+"And I'm to ask you for myself," Jeanne continued with her hands
+clasped together as if in some small learnt prayer--"I'm to ask you for
+myself if you won't positively come."
+
+"Leave it to me, dear--I'll take care of it!" Chad genially declared in
+answer to this, while Strether himself almost held his breath.  What
+was in the girl was indeed too soft, too unknown for direct dealing; so
+that one could only gaze at it as at a picture, quite staying one's own
+hand.  But with Chad he was now on ground--Chad he could meet; so
+pleasant a confidence in that and in everything did the young man
+freely exhale.  There was the whole of a story in his tone to his
+companion, and he spoke indeed as if already of the family.  It made
+Strether guess the more quickly what it might be about which Madame de
+Vionnet was so urgent.  Having seen him then she had found him easy;
+she wished to have it out with him that some way for the young people
+must be discovered, some way that would not impose as a condition the
+transplantation of her daughter.  He already saw himself discussing
+with this lady the attractions of Woollett as a residence for Chad's
+companion. Was that youth going now to trust her with the affair--so
+that it would be after all with one of his "lady-friends" that his
+mother's missionary should be condemned to deal?  It was quite as if
+for an instant the two men looked at each other on this question.  But
+there was no mistaking at last Chad's pride in the display of such a
+connexion.  This was what had made him so carry himself while, three
+minutes before, he was bringing it into view; what had caused his
+friend, first catching sight of him, to be so struck with his air.  It
+was, in a word, just when he thus finally felt Chad putting things
+straight off on him that he envied him, as he had mentioned to little
+Bilham, most.  The whole exhibition however was but a matter of three
+or four minutes, and the author of it had soon explained that, as
+Madame de Vionnet was immediately going "on," this could be for Jeanne
+but a snatch.  They would all meet again soon, and Strether was
+meanwhile to stay and amuse himself--"I'll pick you up again in plenty
+of time." He took the girl off as he had brought her, and Strether,
+with the faint sweet foreignness of her "Au revoir, monsieur!" in his
+ears as a note almost unprecedented, watched them recede side by side
+and felt how, once more, her companion's relation to her got an accent
+from it.  They disappeared among the others and apparently into the
+house; whereupon our friend turned round to give out to little Bilham
+the conviction of which he was full.  But there was no little Bilham
+any more; little Bilham had within the few moments, for reasons of his
+own, proceeded further:  a circumstance by which, in its order,
+Strether was also sensibly affected.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Chad was not in fact on this occasion to keep his promise of coming
+back; but Miss Gostrey had soon presented herself with an explanation
+of his failure.  There had been reasons at the last for his going off
+with ces dames; and he had asked her with much instance to come out and
+take charge of their friend.  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.  They
+were neither more nor less, she and the child's mother, than old
+school-friends--friends who had scarcely met for years but whom this
+unlooked-for chance had brought together with a rush.  It was a relief,
+Miss Gostrey hinted, to feel herself no longer groping; she was
+unaccustomed to grope and as a general thing, he might well have seen,
+made straight enough for her clue.  With the one she had now picked up
+in her hands there need be at least no waste of wonder.  "She's coming
+to see me--that's for YOU," Strether's counsellor continued; "but I
+don't require it to know where I am."
+
+The waste of wonder might be proscribed; but Strether,
+characteristically, was even by this time in the immensity of space.
+"By which you mean that you know where SHE is?"
+
+She just hesitated.  "I mean that if she comes to see me I shall--now
+that I've pulled myself round a bit after the shock--not be at home."
+
+Strether hung poised.  "You call it--your recognition--a shock?"
+
+She gave one of her rare flickers of impatience.  "It was a surprise,
+an emotion.  Don't be so literal.  I wash my hands of her."
+
+Poor Strether's face lengthened.  "She's impossible--?"
+
+"She's even more charming than I remembered her."
+
+"Then what's the matter?"
+
+She had to think how to put it.  "Well, I'M impossible.  It's
+impossible.  Everything's impossible."
+
+He looked at her an instant.  "I see where you're coming out.
+Everything's possible." Their eyes had on it in fact an exchange of
+some duration; after which he pursued:  "Isn't it that beautiful
+child?" Then as she still said nothing:  "Why don't you mean to receive
+her?"
+
+Her answer in an instant rang clear.  "Because I wish to keep out of
+the business."
+
+It provoked in him a weak wail.  "You're going to abandon me NOW?"
+
+"No, I'm only going to abandon HER.  She'll want me to help her with
+you.  And I won't."
+
+"You'll only help me with her?  Well then--!"  Most of the persons
+previously gathered had, in the interest of tea, passed into the house,
+and they had the gardens mainly to themselves.  The shadows were long,
+the last call of the birds, who had made a home of their own in the
+noble interspaced quarter, sounded from the high trees in the other
+gardens as well, those of the old convent and of the old hotels; it was
+as if our friends had waited for the full charm to come out. Strether's
+impressions were still present; it was as if something had happened
+that "nailed" them, made them more intense; but he was to ask himself
+soon afterwards, that evening, what really HAD happened--conscious as
+he could after all remain that for a gentleman taken, and taken the
+first time, into the "great world," the world of ambassadors and
+duchesses, the items made a meagre total.  It was nothing new to him,
+however, as we know, that a man might have--at all events such a man as
+he--an amount of experience out of any proportion to his adventures; so
+that, though it was doubtless no great adventure to sit on there with
+Miss Gostrey and hear about Madame de Vionnet, the hour, the picture,
+the immediate, the recent, the possible--as well as the communication
+itself, not a note of which failed to reverberate--only gave the
+moments more of the taste of history.
+
+It was history, to begin with, that Jeanne's mother had been
+three-and-twenty years before, at Geneva, schoolmate and good
+girlfriend to Maria Gostrey, who had moreover enjoyed since then,
+though interruptedly and above all with a long recent drop, other
+glimpses of her.  Twenty-three years put them both on, no doubt; and
+Madame de Vionnet--though she had married straight after
+school--couldn't be today an hour less than thirty-eight. This made her
+ten years older than Chad--though ten years, also, if Strether liked,
+older than she looked; the least, at any rate, that a prospective
+mother-in-law could be expected to do with.  She would be of all
+mothers-in-law the most charming; unless indeed, through some
+perversity as yet insupposeable, she should utterly belie herself in
+that relation.  There was none surely in which, as Maria remembered
+her, she mustn't be charming; and this frankly in spite of the stigma
+of failure in the tie where failure always most showed.  It was no test
+there--when indeed WAS it a test there?--for Monsieur de Vionnet had
+been a brute.  She had lived for years apart from him--which was of
+course always a horrid position; but Miss Gostrey's impression of the
+matter had been that she could scarce have made a better thing of it
+had she done it on purpose to show she was amiable.  She was so amiable
+that nobody had had a word to say; which was luckily not the case for
+her husband.  He was so impossible that she had the advantage of all
+her merits.
+
+It was still history for Strether that the Comte de Vionnet--it being
+also history that the lady in question was a Countess--should now,
+under Miss Gostrey's sharp touch, rise before him as a high
+distinguished polished impertinent reprobate, the product of a
+mysterious order; it was history, further, that the charming girl so
+freely sketched by his companion should have been married out of hand
+by a mother, another figure of striking outline, full of dark personal
+motive; it was perhaps history most of all that this company was, as a
+matter of course, governed by such considerations as put divorce out of
+the question.  "Ces gens-la don't divorce, you know, any more than they
+emigrate or abjure--they think it impious and vulgar"; a fact in the
+light of which they seemed but the more richly special.  It was all
+special; it was all, for Strether's imagination, more or less rich. The
+girl at the Genevese school, an isolated interesting attaching
+creature, then both sensitive and violent, audacious but always
+forgiven, was the daughter of a French father and an English mother
+who, early left a widow, had married again--tried afresh with a
+foreigner; in her career with whom she had apparently given her child
+no example of comfort.  All these people--the people of the English
+mother's side--had been of condition more or less eminent; yet with
+oddities and disparities that had often since made Maria, thinking them
+over, wonder what they really quite rhymed to.  It was in any case her
+belief that the mother, interested and prone to adventure, had been
+without conscience, had only thought of ridding herself most quickly of
+a possible, an actual encumbrance.  The father, by her impression, a
+Frenchman with a name one knew, had been a different matter, leaving
+his child, she clearly recalled, a memory all fondness, as well as an
+assured little fortune which was unluckily to make her more or less of
+a prey later on.  She had been in particular, at school, dazzlingly,
+though quite booklessly, clever; as polyglot as a little Jewess (which
+she wasn't, oh no!) and chattering French, English, German, Italian,
+anything one would, in a way that made a clean sweep, if not of prizes
+and parchments, at least of every "part," whether memorised or
+improvised, in the curtained costumed school repertory, and in especial
+of all mysteries of race and vagueness of reference, all swagger about
+"home," among their variegated mates.
+
+It would doubtless be difficult to-day, as between French and English,
+to name her and place her; she would certainly show, on knowledge, Miss
+Gostrey felt, as one of those convenient types who don't keep you
+explaining--minds with doors as numerous as the many-tongued cluster of
+confessionals at Saint Peter's.  You might confess to her with
+confidence in Roumelian, and even Roumelian sins.  Therefore--! But
+Strether's narrator covered her implication with a laugh; a laugh by
+which his betrayal of a sense of the lurid in the picture was also
+perhaps sufficiently protected.  He had a moment of wondering, while
+his friend went on, what sins might be especially Roumelian.  She went
+on at all events to the mention of her having met the young
+thing--again by some Swiss lake--in her first married state, which had
+appeared for the few intermediate years not at least violently
+disturbed.  She had been lovely at that moment, delightful to HER, full
+of responsive emotion, of amused recognitions and amusing reminders,
+and then once more, much later, after a long interval, equally but
+differently charming--touching and rather mystifying for the five
+minutes of an encounter at a railway-station en province, during which
+it had come out that her life was all changed.  Miss Gostrey had
+understood enough to see, essentially, what had happened, and yet had
+beautifully dreamed that she was herself faultless.  There were
+doubtless depths in her, but she was all right; Strether would see if
+she wasn't.  She was another person however--that had been promptly
+marked--from the small child of nature at the Geneva school, a little
+person quite made over (as foreign women WERE, compared with American)
+by marriage.  Her situation too had evidently cleared itself up; there
+would have been--all that was possible--a judicial separation.  She had
+settled in Paris, brought up her daughter, steered her boat.  It was no
+very pleasant boat--especially there--to be in; but Marie de Vionnet
+would have headed straight.  She would have friends, certainly--and
+very good ones.  There she was at all events--and it was very
+interesting.  Her knowing Mr. Chad didn't in the least prove she hadn't
+friends; what it proved was what good ones HE had. "I saw that," said
+Miss Gostrey, "that night at the Francais; it came out for me in three
+minutes.  I saw HER--or somebody like her. And so," she immediately
+added, "did you."
+
+"Oh no--not anybody like her!" Strether laughed.  "But you mean," he as
+promptly went on, "that she has had such an influence on him?"
+
+Miss Gostrey was on her feet; it was time for them to go.  "She has
+brought him up for her daughter."
+
+Their eyes, as so often, in candid conference, through their settled
+glasses, met over it long; after which Strether's again took in the
+whole place.  They were quite alone there now.  "Mustn't she rather--in
+the time then--have rushed it?"
+
+"Ah she won't of course have lost an hour.  But that's just the good
+mother--the good French one.  You must remember that of her--that as a
+mother she's French, and that for them there's a special providence. It
+precisely however--that she mayn't have been able to begin as far back
+as she'd have liked--makes her grateful for aid."
+
+Strether took this in as they slowly moved to the house on their way
+out.  "She counts on me then to put the thing through?"
+
+"Yes--she counts on you.  Oh and first of all of course," Miss Gostrey
+added, "on her--well, convincing you."
+
+"Ah," her friend returned, "she caught Chad young!"
+
+"Yes, but there are women who are for all your 'times of life.' They're
+the most wonderful sort."
+
+She had laughed the words out, but they brought her companion, the next
+thing, to a stand.  "Is what you mean that she'll try to make a fool of
+me?"
+
+"Well, I'm wondering what she WILL--with an opportunity--make."
+
+"What do you call," Strether asked, "an opportunity?  My going to see
+her?"
+
+"Ah you must go to see her"--Miss Gostrey was a trifle evasive. "You
+can't not do that.  You'd have gone to see the other woman.  I mean if
+there had been one--a different sort.  It's what you came out for."
+
+It might be; but Strether distinguished.  "I didn't come out to see
+THIS sort."
+
+She had a wonderful look at him now.  "Are you disappointed she isn't
+worse?"
+
+He for a moment entertained the question, then found for it the
+frankest of answers.  "Yes.  If she were worse she'd be better for our
+purpose.  It would be simpler."
+
+"Perhaps," she admitted.  "But won't this be pleasanter?"
+
+"Ah you know," he promptly replied, "I didn't come out--wasn't that
+just what you originally reproached me with?--for the pleasant."
+
+"Precisely.  Therefore I say again what I said at first.  You must take
+things as they come.  Besides," Miss Gostrey added, "I'm not afraid for
+myself."
+
+"For yourself--?"
+
+"Of your seeing her.  I trust her.  There's nothing she'll say about
+me.  In fact there's nothing she CAN."
+
+Strether wondered--little as he had thought of this.  Then he broke
+out.  "Oh you women!"
+
+There was something in it at which she flushed.  "Yes--there we are.
+We're abysses." At last she smiled.  "But I risk her!"
+
+He gave himself a shake.  "Well then so do I!"  But he added as they
+passed into the house that he would see Chad the first thing in the
+morning.
+
+This was the next day the more easily effected that the young man, as
+it happened, even before he was down, turned up at his hotel. Strether
+took his coffee, by habit, in the public room; but on his descending
+for this purpose Chad instantly proposed an adjournment to what he
+called greater privacy.  He had himself as yet had nothing--they would
+sit down somewhere together; and when after a few steps and a turn into
+the Boulevard they had, for their greater privacy, sat down among
+twenty others, our friend saw in his companion's move a fear of the
+advent of Waymarsh.  It was the first time Chad had to that extent
+given this personage "away"; and Strether found himself wondering of
+what it was symptomatic.  He made out in a moment that the youth was in
+earnest as he hadn't yet seen him; which in its turn threw a ray
+perhaps a trifle startling on what they had each up to that time been
+treating as earnestness. It was sufficiently flattering however that
+the real thing--if this WAS at last the real thing--should have been
+determined, as appeared, precisely by an accretion of Strether's
+importance.  For this was what it quickly enough came to--that Chad,
+rising with the lark, had rushed down to let him know while his morning
+consciousness was yet young that he had literally made the afternoon
+before a tremendous impression.  Madame de Vionnet wouldn't, couldn't
+rest till she should have some assurance from him that he WOULD consent
+again to see her.  The announcement was made, across their
+marble-topped table, while the foam of the hot milk was in their cups
+and its plash still in the air, with the smile of Chad's easiest
+urbanity; and this expression of his face caused our friend's doubts to
+gather on the spot into a challenge of the lips.  "See here"--that was
+all; he only for the moment said again "See here." Chad met it with all
+his air of straight intelligence, while Strether remembered again that
+fancy of the first impression of him, the happy young Pagan, handsome
+and hard but oddly indulgent, whose mysterious measure he had under the
+street-lamp tried mentally to take.  The young Pagan, while a long look
+passed between them, sufficiently understood.  Strether scarce needed
+at last to say the rest--"I want to know where I am." But he said it,
+adding before any answer something more.  "Are you engaged to be
+married--is that your secret?--to the young lady?"
+
+Chad shook his head with the slow amenity that was one of his ways of
+conveying that there was time for everything.  "I have no
+secret--though I may have secrets! I haven't at any rate that one.
+We're not engaged.  No."
+
+"Then where's the hitch?"
+
+"Do you mean why I haven't already started with you?" Chad, beginning
+his coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to explain. "Nothing
+would have induced me--nothing will still induce me--not to try to keep
+you here as long as you can be made to stay. It's too visibly good for
+you." Strether had himself plenty to say about this, but it was amusing
+also to measure the march of Chad's tone.  He had never been more a man
+of the world, and it was always in his company present to our friend
+that one was seeing how in successive connexions a man of the world
+acquitted himself.  Chad kept it up beautifully. "My idea--voyons!--is
+simply that you should let Madame de Vionnet know you, simply that you
+should consent to know HER.  I don't in the least mind telling you
+that, clever and charming as she is, she's ever so much in my
+confidence. All I ask of you is to let her talk to you. You've asked me
+about what you call my hitch, and so far as it goes she'll explain it
+to you.  She's herself my hitch, hang it--if you must really have it
+all out.  But in a sense," he hastened in the most wonderful manner to
+add, "that you'll quite make out for yourself. She's too good a friend,
+confound her.  Too good, I mean, for me to leave without--without--" It
+was his first hesitation.
+
+"Without what?"
+
+"Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms of my
+sacrifice."
+
+"It WILL be a sacrifice then?"
+
+"It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered.  I owe her so much."
+
+It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was now
+confessedly--oh quite flagrantly and publicly--interesting.  The moment
+really took on for Strether an intensity.  Chad owed Madame de Vionnet
+so much?  What DID that do then but clear up the whole mystery?  He was
+indebted for alterations, and she was thereby in a position to have
+sent in her bill for expenses incurred in reconstruction.  What was
+this at bottom but what had been to be arrived at?  Strether sat there
+arriving at it while he munched toast and stirred his second cup.  To
+do this with the aid of Chad's pleasant earnest face was also to do
+more besides.  No, never before had he been so ready to take him as he
+was.  What was it that had suddenly so cleared up?  It was just
+everybody's character; that is everybody's but--in a measure--his own.
+Strether felt HIS character receive for the instant a smutch from all
+the wrong things he had suspected or believed.  The person to whom Chad
+owed it that he could positively turn out such a comfort to other
+persons--such a person was sufficiently raised above any "breath" by
+the nature of her work and the young man's steady light.  All of which
+was vivid enough to come and go quickly; though indeed in the midst of
+it Strether could utter a question.  "Have I your word of honour that
+if I surrender myself to Madame de Vionnet you'll surrender yourself to
+me?"
+
+Chad laid his hand firmly on his friend's.  "My dear man, you have it."
+
+There was finally something in his felicity almost embarrassing and
+oppressive--Strether had begun to fidget under it for the open air and
+the erect posture.  He had signed to the waiter that he wished to pay,
+and this transaction took some moments, during which he thoroughly
+felt, while he put down money and pretended--it was quite hollow--to
+estimate change, that Chad's higher spirit, his youth, his practice,
+his paganism, his felicity, his assurance, his impudence, whatever it
+might be, had consciously scored a success. Well, that was all right so
+far as it went; his sense of the thing in question covered our friend
+for a minute like a veil through which--as if he had been muffled--he
+heard his interlocutor ask him if he mightn't take him over about five.
+"Over" was over the river, and over the river was where Madame de
+Vionnet lived, and five was that very afternoon.  They got at last out
+of the place--got out before he answered.  He lighted, in the street, a
+cigarette, which again gave him more time.  But it was already sharp
+for him that there was no use in time.  "What does she propose to do to
+me?" he had presently demanded.
+
+Chad had no delays.  "Are you afraid of her?"
+
+"Oh immensely.  Don't you see it?"
+
+"Well," said Chad, "she won't do anything worse to you than make you
+like her."
+
+"It's just of that I'm afraid."
+
+"Then it's not fair to me."
+
+Strether cast about.  "It's fair to your mother."
+
+"Oh," said Chad, "are you afraid of HER?"
+
+"Scarcely less.  Or perhaps even more.  But is this lady against your
+interests at home?" Strether went on.
+
+"Not directly, no doubt; but she's greatly in favour of them here."
+
+"And what--'here'--does she consider them to be?"
+
+"Well, good relations!"
+
+"With herself?"
+
+"With herself."
+
+"And what is it that makes them so good?"
+
+"What?  Well, that's exactly what you'll make out if you'll only go, as
+I'm supplicating you, to see her."
+
+Strether stared at him with a little of the wanness, no doubt, that the
+vision of more to "make out" could scarce help producing.  "I mean HOW
+good are they?"
+
+"Oh awfully good."
+
+Again Strether had faltered, but it was brief.  It was all very well,
+but there was nothing now he wouldn't risk.  "Excuse me, but I must
+really--as I began by telling you--know where I am.  Is she bad?"
+
+"'Bad'?"--Chad echoed it, but without a shock.  "Is that what's
+implied--?"
+
+"When relations are good?" Strether felt a little silly, and was even
+conscious of a foolish laugh, at having it imposed on him to have
+appeared to speak so.  What indeed was he talking about?  His stare had
+relaxed; he looked now all round him.  But something in him brought him
+back, though he still didn't know quite how to turn it.  The two or
+three ways he thought of, and one of them in particular, were, even
+with scruples dismissed, too ugly.  He none the less at last found
+something.  "Is her life without reproach?"
+
+It struck him, directly he had found it, as pompous and priggish; so
+much so that he was thankful to Chad for taking it only in the right
+spirit.  The young man spoke so immensely to the point that the effect
+was practically of positive blandness.  "Absolutely without reproach. A
+beautiful life.  Allez donc voir!"
+
+These last words were, in the liberality of their confidence, so
+imperative that Strether went through no form of assent; but before
+they separated it had been confirmed that he should be picked up at a
+quarter to five.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Sixth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+It was quite by half-past five--after the two men had been together in
+Madame de Vionnet's drawing-room not more than a dozen minutes--that
+Chad, with a look at his watch and then another at their hostess, said
+genially, gaily:  "I've an engagement, and I know you won't complain if
+I leave him with you.  He'll interest you immensely; and as for her,"
+he declared to Strether, "I assure you, if you're at all nervous, she's
+perfectly safe."
+
+He had left them to be embarrassed or not by this guarantee, as they
+could best manage, and embarrassment was a thing that Strether wasn't
+at first sure Madame de Vionnet escaped.  He escaped it himself, to his
+surprise; but he had grown used by this time to thinking of himself as
+brazen.  She occupied, his hostess, in the Rue de Bellechasse, the
+first floor of an old house to which our visitors had had access from
+an old clean court.  The court was large and open, full of revelations,
+for our friend, of the habit of privacy, the peace of intervals, the
+dignity of distances and approaches; the house, to his restless sense,
+was in the high homely style of an elder day, and the ancient Paris
+that he was always looking for--sometimes intensely felt, sometimes
+more acutely missed--was in the immemorial polish of the wide waxed
+staircase and in the fine boiseries, the medallions, mouldings,
+mirrors, great clear spaces, of the greyish-white salon into which he
+had been shown.  He seemed at the very outset to see her in the midst
+of possessions not vulgarly numerous, but hereditary cherished
+charming.  While his eyes turned after a little from those of his
+hostess and Chad freely talked--not in the least about HIM, but about
+other people, people he didn't know, and quite as if he did know
+them--he found himself making out, as a background of the occupant,
+some glory, some prosperity of the First Empire, some Napoleonic
+glamour, some dim lustre of the great legend; elements clinging still
+to all the consular chairs and mythological brasses and sphinxes' heads
+and faded surfaces of satin striped with alternate silk.
+
+The place itself went further back--that he guessed, and how old Paris
+continued in a manner to echo there; but the post-revolutionary period,
+the world he vaguely thought of as the world of Chateaubriand, of
+Madame de Stael, even of the young Lamartine, had left its stamp of
+harps and urns and torches, a stamp impressed on sundry small objects,
+ornaments and relics.  He had never before, to his knowledge, had
+present to him relics, of any special dignity, of a private
+order--little old miniatures, medallions, pictures, books; books in
+leather bindings, pinkish and greenish, with gilt garlands on the back,
+ranged, together with other promiscuous properties, under the glass of
+brass-mounted cabinets.  His attention took them all tenderly into
+account. They were among the matters that marked Madame de Vionnet's
+apartment as something quite different from Miss Gostrey's little
+museum of bargains and from Chad's lovely home; he recognised it as
+founded much more on old accumulations that had possibly from time to
+time shrunken than on any contemporary method of acquisition or form of
+curiosity.  Chad and Miss Gostrey had rummaged and purchased and picked
+up and exchanged, sifting, selecting, comparing; whereas the mistress
+of the scene before him, beautifully passive under the spell of
+transmission--transmission from her father's line, he quite made up his
+mind--had only received, accepted and been quiet.  When she hadn't been
+quiet she had been moved at the most to some occult charity for some
+fallen fortune.  There had been objects she or her predecessors might
+even conceivably have parted with under need, but Strether couldn't
+suspect them of having sold old pieces to get "better" ones.  They
+would have felt no difference as to better or worse.  He could but
+imagine their having felt--perhaps in emigration, in proscription, for
+his sketch was slight and confused--the pressure of want or the
+obligation of sacrifice.
+
+The pressure of want--whatever might be the case with the other
+force--was, however, presumably not active now, for the tokens of a
+chastened ease still abounded after all, many marks of a taste whose
+discriminations might perhaps have been called eccentric.  He guessed
+at intense little preferences and sharp little exclusions, a deep
+suspicion of the vulgar and a personal view of the right. The general
+result of this was something for which he had no name on the spot quite
+ready, but something he would have come nearest to naming in speaking
+of it as the air of supreme respectability, the consciousness, small,
+still, reserved, but none the less distinct and diffused, of private
+honour.  The air of supreme respectability--that was a strange blank
+wall for his adventure to have brought him to break his nose against.
+It had in fact, as he was now aware, filled all the approaches, hovered
+in the court as he passed, hung on the staircase as he mounted, sounded
+in the grave rumble of the old bell, as little electric as possible, of
+which Chad, at the door, had pulled the ancient but neatly-kept tassel;
+it formed in short the clearest medium of its particular kind that he
+had ever breathed.  He would have answered for it at the end of a
+quarter of an hour that some of the glass cases contained swords and
+epaulettes of ancient colonels and generals; medals and orders once
+pinned over hearts that had long since ceased to beat; snuff-boxes
+bestowed on ministers and envoys; copies of works presented, with
+inscriptions, by authors now classic.  At bottom of it all for him was
+the sense of her rare unlikeness to the women he had known.  This sense
+had grown, since the day before, the more he recalled her, and had been
+above all singularly fed by his talk with Chad in the morning.
+Everything in fine made her immeasurably new, and nothing so new as the
+old house and the old objects.  There were books, two or three, on a
+small table near his chair, but they hadn't the lemon-coloured covers
+with which his eye had begun to dally from the hour of his arrival and
+to the opportunity of a further acquaintance with which he had for a
+fortnight now altogether succumbed.  On another table, across the room,
+he made out the great _Revue_; but even that familiar face, conspicuous
+in Mrs. Newsome's parlours, scarce counted here as a modern note.  He
+was sure on the spot--and he afterwards knew he was right--that this
+was a touch of Chad's own hand.  What would Mrs. Newsome say to the
+circumstance that Chad's interested "influence" kept her paper-knife in
+the _Revue_?  The interested influence at any rate had, as we say, gone
+straight to the point--had in fact soon left it quite behind.
+
+She was seated, near the fire, on a small stuffed and fringed chair one
+of the few modern articles in the room, and she leaned back in it with
+her hands clasped in her lap and no movement, in all her person, but
+the fine prompt play of her deep young face.  The fire, under the low
+white marble, undraped and academic, had burnt down to the silver ashes
+of light wood, one of the windows, at a distance, stood open to the
+mildness and stillness, out of which, in the short pauses, came the
+faint sound, pleasant and homely, almost rustic, of a plash and a
+clatter of sabots from some coach-house on the other side of the court.
+Madame de Vionnet, while Strether sat there, wasn't to shift her
+posture by an inch. "I don't think you seriously believe in what you're
+doing," she said; "but all the same, you know, I'm going to treat you
+quite as if I did."
+
+"By which you mean," Strether directly replied, "quite as if you
+didn't!  I assure you it won't make the least difference with me how
+you treat me."
+
+"Well," she said, taking that menace bravely and philosophically
+enough, "the only thing that really matters is that you shall get on
+with me."
+
+"Ah but I don't!" he immediately returned.
+
+It gave her another pause; which, however, she happily enough shook
+off.  "Will you consent to go on with me a little--provisionally--as if
+you did?"
+
+Then it was that he saw how she had decidedly come all the way; and
+there accompanied it an extraordinary sense of her raising from
+somewhere below him her beautiful suppliant eyes.  He might have been
+perched at his door-step or at his window and she standing in the road.
+For a moment he let her stand and couldn't moreover have spoken.  It
+had been sad, of a sudden, with a sadness that was like a cold breath
+in his face.  "What can I do," he finally asked, "but listen to you as
+I promised Chadwick?"
+
+"Ah but what I'm asking you," she quickly said, "isn't what Mr. Newsome
+had in mind." She spoke at present, he saw, as if to take courageously
+ALL her risk.  "This is my own idea and a different thing."
+
+It gave poor Strether in truth--uneasy as it made him too--something of
+the thrill of a bold perception justified.  "Well," he answered kindly
+enough, "I was sure a moment since that some idea of your own had come
+to you."
+
+She seemed still to look up at him, but now more serenely.  "I made out
+you were sure--and that helped it to come.  So you see," she continued,
+"we do get on."
+
+"Oh but it appears to me I don't at all meet your request.  How can I
+when I don't understand it?"
+
+"It isn't at all necessary you should understand; it will do quite well
+enough if you simply remember it.  Only feel I trust you--and for
+nothing so tremendous after all.  Just," she said with a wonderful
+smile, "for common civility."
+
+Strether had a long pause while they sat again face to face, as they
+had sat, scarce less conscious, before the poor lady had crossed the
+stream.  She was the poor lady for Strether now because clearly she had
+some trouble, and her appeal to him could only mean that her trouble
+was deep.  He couldn't help it; it wasn't his fault; he had done
+nothing; but by a turn of the hand she had somehow made their encounter
+a relation.  And the relation profited by a mass of things that were
+not strictly in it or of it; by the very air in which they sat, by the
+high cold delicate room, by the world outside and the little plash in
+the court, by the First Empire and the relics in the stiff cabinets, by
+matters as far off as those and by others as near as the unbroken clasp
+of her hands in her lap and the look her expression had of being most
+natural when her eyes were most fixed.  "You count upon me of course
+for something really much greater than it sounds."
+
+"Oh it sounds great enough too!" she laughed at this.
+
+He found himself in time on the point of telling her that she was, as
+Miss Barrace called it, wonderful; but, catching himself up, he said
+something else instead.  "What was it Chad's idea then that you should
+say to me?"
+
+"Ah his idea was simply what a man's idea always is--to put every
+effort off on the woman."
+
+"The 'woman'--?" Strether slowly echoed.
+
+"The woman he likes--and just in proportion as he likes her.  In
+proportion too--for shifting the trouble--as she likes HIM."
+
+Strether followed it; then with an abruptness of his own: "How much do
+you like Chad?"
+
+"Just as much as THAT--to take all, with you, on myself." But she got
+at once again away from this.  "I've been trembling as if we were to
+stand or fall by what you may think of me; and I'm even now," she went
+on wonderfully, "drawing a long breath--and, yes, truly taking a great
+courage--from the hope that I don't in fact strike you as impossible."
+
+"That's at all events, clearly," he observed after an instant, "the way
+I don't strike YOU."
+
+"Well," she so far assented, "as you haven't yet said you WON'T have
+the little patience with me I ask for--"
+
+"You draw splendid conclusions?  Perfectly.  But I don't understand
+them," Strether pursued.  "You seem to me to ask for much more than you
+need.  What, at the worst for you, what at the best for myself, can I
+after all do?  I can use no pressure that I haven't used.  You come
+really late with your request.  I've already done all that for myself
+the case admits of.  I've said my say, and here I am."
+
+"Yes, here you are, fortunately!" Madame de Vionnet laughed.  "Mrs.
+Newsome," she added in another tone, "didn't think you can do so
+little."
+
+He had an hesitation, but he brought the words out.  "Well, she thinks
+so now."
+
+"Do you mean by that--?" But she also hung fire.
+
+"Do I mean what?"
+
+She still rather faltered.  "Pardon me if I touch on it, but if I'm
+saying extraordinary things, why, perhaps, mayn't I?  Besides, doesn't
+it properly concern us to know?"
+
+"To know what?" he insisted as after thus beating about the bush she
+had again dropped.
+
+She made the effort.  "Has she given you up?"
+
+He was amazed afterwards to think how simply and quietly he had met it.
+"Not yet." It was almost as if he were a trifle disappointed--had
+expected still more of her freedom.  But he went straight on. "Is that
+what Chad has told you will happen to me?"
+
+She was evidently charmed with the way he took it.  "If you mean if
+we've talked of it--most certainly.  And the question's not what has
+had least to do with my wishing to see you."
+
+"To judge if I'm the sort of man a woman CAN--?"
+
+"Precisely," she exclaimed--"you wonderful gentleman! I do judge--I
+HAVE judged.  A woman can't.  You're safe--with every right to be.
+You'd be much happier if you'd only believe it."
+
+Strether was silent a little; then he found himself speaking with a
+cynicism of confidence of which even at the moment the sources were
+strange to him.  "I try to believe it.  But it's a marvel," he
+exclaimed, "how YOU already get at it!"
+
+Oh she was able to say.  "Remember how much I was on the way to it
+through Mr. Newsome--before I saw you.  He thinks everything of your
+strength."
+
+"Well, I can bear almost anything!" our friend briskly interrupted.
+Deep and beautiful on this her smile came back, and with the effect of
+making him hear what he had said just as she had heard it.  He easily
+enough felt that it gave him away, but what in truth had everything
+done but that?  It had been all very well to think at moments that he
+was holding her nose down and that he had coerced her:  what had he by
+this time done but let her practically see that he accepted their
+relation?  What was their relation moreover--though light and brief
+enough in form as yet--but whatever she might choose to make it?
+Nothing could prevent her--certainly he couldn't--from making it
+pleasant.  At the back of his head, behind everything, was the sense
+that she was--there, before him, close to him, in vivid imperative
+form--one of the rare women he had so often heard of, read of, thought
+of, but never met, whose very presence, look, voice, the mere
+contemporaneous FACT of whom, from the moment it was at all presented,
+made a relation of mere recognition.  That was not the kind of woman he
+had ever found Mrs. Newsome, a contemporaneous fact who had been
+distinctly slow to establish herself; and at present, confronted with
+Madame de Vionnet, he felt the simplicity of his original impression of
+Miss Gostrey.  She certainly had been a fact of rapid growth; but the
+world was wide, each day was more and more a new lesson.  There were at
+any rate even among the stranger ones relations and relations. "Of
+course I suit Chad's grand way," he quickly added.  "He hasn't had much
+difficulty in working me in."
+
+She seemed to deny a little, on the young man's behalf, by the rise of
+her eyebrows, an intention of any process at all inconsiderate. "You
+must know how grieved he'd be if you were to lose anything.  He
+believes you can keep his mother patient."
+
+Strether wondered with his eyes on her.  "I see.  THAT'S then what you
+really want of me.  And how am I to do it?  Perhaps you'll tell me
+that."
+
+"Simply tell her the truth."
+
+"And what do you call the truth?"
+
+"Well, any truth--about us all--that you see yourself.  I leave it to
+you."
+
+"Thank you very much.  I like," Strether laughed with a slight
+harshness, "the way you leave things!"
+
+But she insisted kindly, gently, as if it wasn't so bad.  "Be perfectly
+honest.  Tell her all."
+
+"All?" he oddly echoed.
+
+"Tell her the simple truth," Madame de Vionnet again pleaded.
+
+"But what is the simple truth?  The simple truth is exactly what I'm
+trying to discover."
+
+She looked about a while, but presently she came back to him.  "Tell
+her, fully and clearly, about US."
+
+Strether meanwhile had been staring.  "You and your daughter?"
+
+"Yes--little Jeanne and me.  Tell her," she just slightly quavered,
+"you like us."
+
+"And what good will that do me?  Or rather"--he caught himself
+up--"what good will it do YOU?"
+
+She looked graver.  "None, you believe, really?"
+
+Strether debated.  "She didn't send me out to 'like' you."
+
+"Oh," she charmingly contended, "she sent you out to face the facts."
+
+He admitted after an instant that there was something in that.  "But
+how can I face them till I know what they are?  Do you want him," he
+then braced himself to ask, "to marry your daughter?"
+
+She gave a headshake as noble as it was prompt.  "No--not that."
+
+"And he really doesn't want to himself?"
+
+She repeated the movement, but now with a strange light in her face.
+"He likes her too much."
+
+Strether wondered.  "To be willing to consider, you mean, the question
+of taking her to America?"
+
+"To be willing to do anything with her but be immensely kind and
+nice--really tender of her.  We watch over her, and you must help us.
+You must see her again."
+
+Strether felt awkward.  "Ah with pleasure--she's so remarkably
+attractive."
+
+The mother's eagerness with which Madame de Vionnet jumped at this was
+to come back to him later as beautiful in its grace.  "The dear thing
+DID please you?" Then as he met it with the largest "Oh!" of
+enthusiasm:  "She's perfect.  She's my joy."
+
+"Well, I'm sure that--if one were near her and saw more of her--she'd
+be mine."
+
+"Then," said Madame de Vionnet, "tell Mrs. Newsome that!"
+
+He wondered the more.  "What good will that do you?" As she appeared
+unable at once to say, however, he brought out something else.  "Is
+your daughter in love with our friend?"
+
+"Ah," she rather startlingly answered, "I wish you'd find out!"
+
+He showed his surprise.  "I?  A stranger?"
+
+"Oh you won't be a stranger--presently.  You shall see her quite, I
+assure you, as if you weren't."
+
+It remained for him none the less an extraordinary notion.  "It seems
+to me surely that if her mother can't--"
+
+"Ah little girls and their mothers to-day!" she rather inconsequently
+broke in.  But she checked herself with something she seemed to give
+out as after all more to the point.  "Tell her I've been good for him.
+Don't you think I have?"
+
+It had its effect on him--more than at the moment he quite measured.
+Yet he was consciously enough touched.  "Oh if it's all you--!"
+
+"Well, it may not be 'all,'" she interrupted, "but it's to a great
+extent.  Really and truly," she added in a tone that was to take its
+place with him among things remembered.
+
+"Then it's very wonderful."  He smiled at her from a face that he felt
+as strained, and her own face for a moment kept him so.  At last she
+also got up.  "Well, don't you think that for that--"
+
+"I ought to save you?"  So it was that the way to meet her--and the
+way, as well, in a manner, to get off--came over him.  He heard himself
+use the exorbitant word, the very sound of which helped to determine
+his flight.  "I'll save you if I can."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+In Chad's lovely home, however, one evening ten days later, he felt
+himself present at the collapse of the question of Jeanne de Vionnet's
+shy secret.  He had been dining there in the company of that young lady
+and her mother, as well as of other persons, and he had gone into the
+petit salon, at Chad's request, on purpose to talk with her. The young
+man had put this to him as a favour--"I should like so awfully to know
+what you think of her.  It will really be a chance for you," he had
+said, "to see the jeune fille--I mean the type--as she actually is, and
+I don't think that, as an observer of manners, it's a thing you ought
+to miss.  It will be an impression that--whatever else you take--you
+can carry home with you, where you'll find again so much to compare it
+with."
+
+Strether knew well enough with what Chad wished him to compare it, and
+though he entirely assented he hadn't yet somehow been so deeply
+reminded that he was being, as he constantly though mutely expressed
+it, used.  He was as far as ever from making out exactly to what end;
+but he was none the less constantly accompanied by a sense of the
+service he rendered.  He conceived only that this service was highly
+agreeable to those who profited by it; and he was indeed still waiting
+for the moment at which he should catch it in the act of proving
+disagreeable, proving in some degree intolerable, to himself.  He
+failed quite to see how his situation could clear up at all logically
+except by some turn of events that would give him the pretext of
+disgust.  He was building from day to day on the possibility of
+disgust, but each day brought forth meanwhile a new and more engaging
+bend of the road.  That possibility was now ever so much further from
+sight than on the eve of his arrival, and he perfectly felt that,
+should it come at all, it would have to be at best inconsequent and
+violent.  He struck himself as a little nearer to it only when he asked
+himself what service, in such a life of utility, he was after all
+rendering Mrs. Newsome.  When he wished to help himself to believe that
+he was still all right he reflected--and in fact with wonder--on the
+unimpaired frequency of their correspondence; in relation to which what
+was after all more natural than that it should become more frequent
+just in proportion as their problem became more complicated?
+
+Certain it is at any rate that he now often brought himself balm by the
+question, with the rich consciousness of yesterday's letter, "Well,
+what can I do more than that--what can I do more than tell her
+everything?"  To persuade himself that he did tell her, had told her,
+everything, he used to try to think of particular things he hadn't told
+her.  When at rare moments and in the watches of the night he pounced
+on one it generally showed itself to be--to a deeper scrutiny--not
+quite truly of the essence.  When anything new struck him as coming up,
+or anything already noted as reappearing, he always immediately wrote,
+as if for fear that if he didn't he would miss something; and also that
+he might be able to say to himself from time to time "She knows it
+NOW--even while I worry." It was a great comfort to him in general not
+to have left past things to be dragged to light and explained; not to
+have to produce at so late a stage anything not produced, or anything
+even veiled and attenuated, at the moment.  She knew it now:  that was
+what he said to himself to-night in relation to the fresh fact of
+Chad's acquaintance with the two ladies--not to speak of the fresher
+one of his own.  Mrs. Newsome knew in other words that very night at
+Woollett that he himself knew Madame de Vionnet and that he had
+conscientiously been to see her; also that he had found her remarkably
+attractive and that there would probably be a good deal more to tell.
+But she further knew, or would know very soon, that, again
+conscientiously, he hadn't repeated his visit; and that when Chad had
+asked him on the Countess's behalf--Strether made her out vividly, with
+a thought at the back of his head, a Countess--if he wouldn't name a
+day for dining with her, he had replied lucidly: "Thank you very
+much--impossible."  He had begged the young man would present his
+excuses and had trusted him to understand that it couldn't really
+strike one as quite the straight thing.  He hadn't reported to Mrs.
+Newsome that he had promised to "save" Madame de Vionnet; but, so far
+as he was concerned with that reminiscence, he hadn't at any rate
+promised to haunt her house.  What Chad had understood could only, in
+truth, be inferred from Chad's behaviour, which had been in this
+connexion as easy as in every other.  He was easy, always, when he
+understood; he was easier still, if possible, when he didn't; he had
+replied that he would make it all right; and he had proceeded to do
+this by substituting the present occasion--as he was ready to
+substitute others--for any, for every occasion as to which his old
+friend should have a funny scruple.
+
+"Oh but I'm not a little foreign girl; I'm just as English as I can
+be," Jeanne de Vionnet had said to him as soon as, in the petit salon,
+he sank, shyly enough on his own side, into the place near her vacated
+by Madame Gloriani at his approach.  Madame Gloriani, who was in black
+velvet, with white lace and powdered hair, and whose somewhat massive
+majesty melted, at any contact, into the graciousness of some
+incomprehensible tongue, moved away to make room for the vague
+gentleman, after benevolent greetings to him which embodied, as he
+believed, in baffling accents, some recognition of his face from a
+couple of Sundays before.  Then he had remarked--making the most of the
+advantage of his years--that it frightened him quite enough to find
+himself dedicated to the entertainment of a little foreign girl.  There
+were girls he wasn't afraid of--he was quite bold with little
+Americans.  Thus it was that she had defended herself to the end--"Oh
+but I'm almost American too.  That's what mamma has wanted me to be--I
+mean LIKE that; for she has wanted me to have lots of freedom.  She has
+known such good results from it."
+
+She was fairly beautiful to him--a faint pastel in an oval frame: he
+thought of her already as of some lurking image in a long gallery, the
+portrait of a small old-time princess of whom nothing was known but
+that she had died young.  Little Jeanne wasn't, doubtless, to die
+young, but one couldn't, all the same, bear on her lightly enough.  It
+was bearing hard, it was bearing as HE, in any case, wouldn't bear, to
+concern himself, in relation to her, with the question of a young man.
+Odious really the question of a young man; one didn't treat such a
+person as a maid-servant suspected of a "follower."  And then young
+men, young men--well, the thing was their business simply, or was at
+all events hers.  She was fluttered, fairly fevered--to the point of a
+little glitter that came and went in her eyes and a pair of pink spots
+that stayed in her cheeks--with the great adventure of dining out and
+with the greater one still, possibly, of finding a gentleman whom she
+must think of as very, very old, a gentleman with eye-glasses,
+wrinkles, a long grizzled moustache.  She spoke the prettiest English,
+our friend thought, that he had ever heard spoken, just as he had
+believed her a few minutes before to be speaking the prettiest French.
+He wondered almost wistfully if such a sweep of the lyre didn't react
+on the spirit itself; and his fancy had in fact, before he knew it,
+begun so to stray and embroider that he finally found himself, absent
+and extravagant, sitting with the child in a friendly silence.  Only by
+this time he felt her flutter to have fortunately dropped and that she
+was more at her ease.  She trusted him, liked him, and it was to come
+back to him afterwards that she had told him things.  She had dipped
+into the waiting medium at last and found neither surge nor
+chill--nothing but the small splash she could herself make in the
+pleasant warmth, nothing but the safety of dipping and dipping again.
+At the end of the ten minutes he was to spend with her his
+impression--with all it had thrown off and all it had taken in--was
+complete.  She had been free, as she knew freedom, partly to show him
+that, unlike other little persons she knew, she had imbibed that ideal.
+She was delightfully quaint about herself, but the vision of what she
+had imbibed was what most held him.  It really consisted, he was soon
+enough to feel, in just one great little matter, the fact that,
+whatever her nature, she was thoroughly--he had to cast about for the
+word, but it came--bred. He couldn't of course on so short an
+acquaintance speak for her nature, but the idea of breeding was what
+she had meanwhile dropped into his mind.  He had never yet known it so
+sharply presented.  Her mother gave it, no doubt; but her mother, to
+make that less sensible, gave so much else besides, and on neither of
+the two previous occasions, extraordinary woman, Strether felt,
+anything like what she was giving tonight.  Little Jeanne was a case,
+an exquisite case of education; whereas the Countess, whom it so amused
+him to think of by that denomination, was a case, also exquisite,
+of--well, he didn't know what.
+
+"He has wonderful taste, notre jeune homme":  this was what Gloriani
+said to him on turning away from the inspection of a small picture
+suspended near the door of the room.  The high celebrity in question
+had just come in, apparently in search of Mademoiselle de Vionnet, but
+while Strether had got up from beside her their fellow guest, with his
+eye sharply caught, had paused for a long look.  The thing was a
+landscape, of no size, but of the French school, as our friend was glad
+to feel he knew, and also of a quality--which he liked to think he
+should also have guessed; its frame was large out of proportion to the
+canvas, and he had never seen a person look at anything, he thought,
+just as Gloriani, with his nose very near and quick movements of the
+head from side to side and bottom to top, examined this feature of
+Chad's collection.  The artist used that word the next moment smiling
+courteously, wiping his nippers and looking round him further--paying
+the place in short by the very manner of his presence and by something
+Strether fancied he could make out in this particular glance, such a
+tribute as, to the latter's sense, settled many things once for all.
+Strether was conscious at this instant, for that matter, as he hadn't
+yet been, of how, round about him, quite without him, they WERE
+consistently settled.  Gloriani's smile, deeply Italian, he considered,
+and finely inscrutable, had had for him, during dinner, at which they
+were not neighbours, an indefinite greeting; but the quality in it was
+gone that had appeared on the other occasion to turn him inside out; it
+was as if even the momentary link supplied by the doubt between them
+had snapped.  He was conscious now of the final reality, which was that
+there wasn't so much a doubt as a difference altogether; all the more
+that over the difference the famous sculptor seemed to signal almost
+condolingly, yet oh how vacantly! as across some great flat sheet of
+water.  He threw out the bridge of a charming hollow civility on which
+Strether wouldn't have trusted his own full weight a moment.  That
+idea, even though but transient and perhaps belated, had performed the
+office of putting Strether more at his ease, and the blurred picture
+had already dropped--dropped with the sound of something else said and
+with his becoming aware, by another quick turn, that Gloriani was now
+on the sofa talking with Jeanne, while he himself had in his ears again
+the familiar friendliness and the elusive meaning of the "Oh, oh, oh!"
+that had made him, a fortnight before, challenge Miss Barrace in vain.
+She had always the air, this picturesque and original lady, who struck
+him, so oddly, as both antique and modern--she had always the air of
+taking up some joke that one had already had out with her.  The point
+itself, no doubt, was what was antique, and the use she made of it what
+was modern.  He felt just now that her good-natured irony did bear on
+something, and it troubled him a little that she wouldn't be more
+explicit only assuring him, with the pleasure of observation so visible
+in her, that she wouldn't tell him more for the world.  He could take
+refuge but in asking her what she had done with Waymarsh, though it
+must be added that he felt himself a little on the way to a clue after
+she had answered that this personage was, in the other room, engaged in
+conversation with Madame de Vionnet.  He stared a moment at the image
+of such a conjunction; then, for Miss Barrace's benefit, he wondered.
+"Is she too then under the charm--?"
+
+"No, not a bit"--Miss Barrace was prompt.  "She makes nothing of him.
+She's bored.  She won't help you with him."
+
+"Oh," Strether laughed, "she can't do everything.
+
+"Of course not--wonderful as she is.  Besides, he makes nothing of HER.
+She won't take him from me--though she wouldn't, no doubt, having other
+affairs in hand, even if she could.  I've never," said Miss Barrace,
+"seen her fail with any one before.  And to-night, when she's so
+magnificent, it would seem to her strange--if she minded.  So at any
+rate I have him all.  Je suis tranquille!"
+
+Strether understood, so far as that went; but he was feeling for his
+clue.  "She strikes you to-night as particularly magnificent?"
+
+"Surely.  Almost as I've never seen her.  Doesn't she you? Why it's FOR
+you."
+
+He persisted in his candour.  "'For' me--?"
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" cried Miss Barrace, who persisted in the opposite of that
+quality.
+
+"Well," he acutely admitted, "she IS different.  She's gay."
+
+"She's gay!" Miss Barrace laughed.  "And she has beautiful
+shoulders--though there's nothing different in that."
+
+"No," said Strether, "one was sure of her shoulders. It isn't her
+shoulders."
+
+His companion, with renewed mirth and the finest sense,  between the
+puffs of her cigarette, of the drollery of things, appeared to find
+their conversation highly delightful.  "Yes, it isn't her shoulders ."
+
+"What then is it?" Strether earnestly enquired.
+
+"Why, it's SHE--simply.  It's her mood.  It's her charm."
+
+"Of course it's her charm, but we're speaking of the difference."
+"Well," Miss Barrace explained, "she's just brilliant, as we used to
+say.  That's all.  She's various.  She's fifty women."
+
+"Ah but only one"--Strether kept it clear--"at a time."
+
+"Perhaps.  But in fifty times--!"
+
+"Oh we shan't come to that," our friend declared; and the next moment
+he had moved in another direction.  "Will you answer me a plain
+question?  Will she ever divorce?"
+
+Miss Barrace looked at him through all her tortoise-shell.  "Why should
+she?"
+
+It wasn't what he had asked for, he signified; but he met it well
+enough.  "To marry Chad."
+
+"Why should she marry Chad?"
+
+"Because I'm convinced she's very fond of him.  She has done wonders
+for him."
+
+"Well then, how could she do more?  Marrying a man, or woman either,"
+Miss Barrace sagely went on, "is never the wonder for any Jack and Jill
+can bring THAT off.  The wonder is their doing such things without
+marrying."
+
+Strether considered a moment this proposition.  "You mean it's so
+beautiful for our friends simply to go on so?"
+
+But whatever he said made her laugh.  "Beautiful."
+
+He nevertheless insisted.  "And THAT because it's disinterested?"
+
+She was now, however, suddenly tired of the question.  "Yes then--call
+it that.  Besides, she'll never divorce.  Don't, moreover," she added,
+"believe everything you hear about her husband."
+
+"He's not then," Strether asked, "a wretch?"
+
+"Oh yes.  But charming."
+
+"Do you know him?"
+
+"I've met him.  He's bien aimable."
+
+"To every one but his wife?"
+
+"Oh for all I know, to her too--to any, to every woman.  I hope you at
+any rate," she pursued with a quick change, "appreciate the care I take
+of Mr. Waymarsh."
+
+"Oh immensely." But Strether was not yet in line.  "At all events," he
+roundly brought out, "the attachment's an innocent one."
+
+"Mine and his?  Ah," she laughed, "don't rob it of ALL interest!"
+
+"I mean our friend's here--to the lady we've been speaking of." That
+was what he had settled to as an indirect but none the less closely
+involved consequence of his impression of Jeanne.  That was where he
+meant to stay.  "It's innocent," he repeated--"I see the whole thing."
+
+Mystified by his abrupt declaration, she had glanced over at Gloriani
+as at the unnamed subject of his allusion, but the next moment she had
+understood; though indeed not before Strether had noticed her momentary
+mistake and wondered what might possibly be behind that too.  He
+already knew that the sculptor admired Madame de Vionnet; but did this
+admiration also represent an attachment of which the innocence was
+discussable?  He was moving verily in a strange air and on ground not
+of the firmest.  He looked hard for an instant at Miss Barrace, but she
+had already gone on.  "All right with Mr. Newsome?  Why of course she
+is!"--and she got gaily back to the question of her own good friend. "I
+dare say you're surprised that I'm not worn out with all I see--it
+being so much!--of Sitting Bull.  But I'm not, you know--I don't mind
+him; I bear up, and we get on beautifully.  I'm very strange; I'm like
+that; and often I can't explain.  There are people who are supposed
+interesting or remarkable or whatever, and who bore me to death; and
+then there are others as to whom nobody can understand what anybody
+sees in them--in whom I see no end of things."  Then after she had
+smoked a moment, "He's touching, you know," she said.
+
+"'Know'?" Strether echoed--"don't I, indeed?  We must move you almost
+to tears."
+
+"Oh but I don't mean YOU!" she laughed.
+
+"You ought to then, for the worst sign of all--as I must have it for
+you--is that you can't help me.  That's when a woman pities."
+
+"Ah but I do help you!" she cheerfully insisted.
+
+Again he looked at her hard, and then after a pause:  "No you don't!"
+
+Her tortoise-shell, on its long chain, rattled down.  "I help you with
+Sitting Bull.  That's a good deal."
+
+"Oh that, yes."  But Strether hesitated.  "Do you mean he talks of me?"
+
+"So that I have to defend you?  No, never.'
+
+"I see," Strether mused.  "It's too deep."
+
+"That's his only fault," she returned--"that everything, with him, is
+too deep.  He has depths of silence--which he breaks only at the
+longest intervals by a remark.  And when the remark comes it's always
+something he has seen or felt for himself--never a bit banal THAT would
+be what one might have feared and what would kill me But never."  She
+smoked again as she thus, with amused complacency, appreciated her
+acquisition.  "And never about you.  We keep clear of you.  We're
+wonderful.  But I'll tell you what he does do," she continued:  "he
+tries to make me presents."
+
+"Presents?" poor Strether echoed, conscious with a pang that HE hadn't
+yet tried that in any quarter.
+
+"Why you see," she explained, "he's as fine as ever in the victoria; so
+that when I leave him, as I often do almost for hours--he likes it
+so--at the doors of shops, the sight of him there helps me, when I come
+out, to know my carriage away off in the rank.  But sometimes, for a
+change, he goes with me into the shops, and then I've all I can do to
+prevent his buying me things."
+
+"He wants to 'treat' you?"  Strether almost gasped at all he himself
+hadn't thought of.  He had a sense of admiration.  "Oh he's much more
+in the real tradition than I.  Yes," he mused, "it's the sacred rage."
+
+"The sacred rage, exactly!"--and Miss Barrace, who hadn't before heard
+this term applied, recognised its bearing with a clap of her gemmed
+hands.  "Now I do know why he's not banal.  But I do prevent him all
+the same--and if you saw what he sometimes selects--from buying.  I
+save him hundreds and hundreds.  I only take flowers."
+
+"Flowers?" Strether echoed again with a rueful reflexion.  How many
+nosegays had her present converser sent?
+
+"Innocent flowers," she pursued, "as much as he likes.  And he sends me
+splendours; he knows all the best places--he has found them for
+himself; he's wonderful."
+
+"He hasn't told them to me," her friend smiled, "he has a life of his
+own."  But Strether had swung back to the consciousness that for
+himself after all it never would have done.  Waymarsh hadn't Mrs.
+Waymarsh in the least to consider, whereas Lambert Strether had
+constantly, in the inmost honour of his thoughts, to consider Mrs.
+Newsome.  He liked moreover to feel how much his friend was in the real
+tradition.  Yet he had his conclusion.  "WHAT a rage it is!" He had
+worked it out.  "It's an opposition."
+
+She followed, but at a distance.  "That's what I feel.  Yet to what?"
+
+"Well, he thinks, you know, that I'VE a life of my own.  And I haven't!"
+
+"You haven't?"  She showed doubt, and her laugh confirmed it. "Oh, oh,
+oh!"
+
+"No--not for myself.  I seem to have a life only for other people."
+
+"Ah for them and WITH them! Just now for instance with--"
+
+"Well, with whom?" he asked before she had had time to say.
+
+His tone had the effect of making her hesitate and even, as he guessed,
+speak with a difference.  "Say with Miss Gostrey.  What do you do for
+HER?"  It really made him wonder.  "Nothing at all!"
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Madame de Vionnet, having meanwhile come in, was at present close to
+them, and Miss Barrace hereupon, instead of risking a rejoinder, became
+again with a look that measured her from top to toe all mere
+long-handled appreciative tortoise-shell.  She had struck our friend,
+from the first of her appearing, as dressed for a great occasion, and
+she met still more than on either of the others the conception
+reawakened in him at their garden-party, the idea of the femme du monde
+in her habit as she lived.  Her bare shoulders and arms were white and
+beautiful; the materials of her dress, a mixture, as he supposed, of
+silk and crape, were of a silvery grey so artfully composed as to give
+an impression of warm splendour; and round her neck she wore a collar
+of large old emeralds, the green note of which was more dimly repeated,
+at other points of her apparel, in embroidery, in enamel, in satin, in
+substances and textures vaguely rich.  Her head, extremely fair and
+exquisitely festal, was like a happy fancy, a notion of the antique, on
+an old precious medal, some silver coin of the Renaissance; while her
+slim lightness and brightness, her gaiety, her expression, her
+decision, contributed to an effect that might have been felt by a poet
+as half mythological and half conventional. He could have compared her
+to a goddess still partly engaged in a morning cloud, or to a sea-nymph
+waist-high in the summer surge. Above all she suggested to him the
+reflexion that the femme du monde--in these finest developments of the
+type--was, like Cleopatra in the play, indeed various and multifold.
+She had aspects, characters, days, nights--or had them at least, showed
+them by a mysterious law of her own, when in addition to everything she
+happened also to be a woman of genius.  She was an obscure person, a
+muffled person one day, and a showy person, an uncovered person the
+next.  He thought of Madame de Vionnet to-night as showy and uncovered,
+though he felt the formula rough, because, thanks to one of the
+short-cuts of genius she had taken all his categories by surprise.
+Twice during dinner he had met Chad's eyes in a longish look; but these
+communications had in truth only stirred up again old ambiguities--so
+little was it clear from them whether they were an appeal or an
+admonition. "You see how I'm fixed," was what they appeared to convey;
+yet how he was fixed was exactly what Strether didn't see.  However,
+perhaps he should see now.
+
+"Are you capable of the very great kindness of going to relieve
+Newsome, for a few minutes, of the rather crushing responsibility of
+Madame Gloriani, while I say a word, if he'll allow me, to Mr.
+Strether, of whom I've a question to ask?  Our host ought to talk a bit
+to those other ladies, and I'll come back in a minute to your rescue."
+She made this proposal to Miss Barrace as if her consciousness of a
+special duty had just flickered-up, but that lady's recognition of
+Strether's little start at it--as at a betrayal on the speaker's part
+of a domesticated state--was as mute as his own comment; and after an
+instant, when their fellow guest had good-naturedly left them, he had
+been given something else to think of.  "Why has Maria so suddenly
+gone?  Do you know?"  That was the question Madame de Vionnet had
+brought with her.
+
+"I'm afraid I've no reason to give you but the simple reason I've had
+from her in a note--the sudden obligation to join in the south a sick
+friend who has got worse."
+
+"Ah then she has been writing you?"
+
+"Not since she went--I had only a brief explanatory word before she
+started.  I went to see her," Strether explained--"it was the day after
+I called on you--but she was already on her way, and her concierge told
+me that in case of my coming I was to be informed she had written to
+me.  I found her note when I got home."
+
+Madame de Vionnet listened with interest and with her eyes on
+Strether's face; then her delicately decorated head had a small
+melancholy motion.  "She didn't write to ME.  I went to see her," she
+added, "almost immediately after I had seen you, and as I assured her I
+would do when I met her at Gloriani's.  She hadn't then told me she was
+to be absent, and I felt at her door as if I understood. She's
+absent--with all respect to her sick friend, though I know indeed she
+has plenty--so that I may not see her.  She doesn't want to meet me
+again.  Well," she continued with a beautiful conscious mildness, "I
+liked and admired her beyond every one in the old time, and she knew
+it--perhaps that's precisely what has made her go--and I dare say I
+haven't lost her for ever."  Strether still said nothing; he had a
+horror, as he now thought of himself, of being in question between
+women--was in fact already quite enough on his way to that, and there
+was moreover, as it came to him, perceptibly, something behind these
+allusions and professions that, should he take it in, would square but
+ill with his present resolve to simplify. It was as if, for him, all
+the same, her softness and sadness were sincere.  He felt that not less
+when she soon went on: "I'm extremely glad of her happiness."  But it
+also left him mute--sharp and fine though the imputation it conveyed.
+What it conveyed was that HE was Maria Gostrey's happiness, and for the
+least little instant he had the impulse to challenge the thought.  He
+could have done so however only by saying "What then do you suppose to
+be between us?" and he was wonderfully glad a moment later not to have
+spoken.  He would rather seem stupid any day than fatuous, and he drew
+back as well, with a smothered inward shudder, from the consideration
+of what women--of highly-developed type in particular--might think of
+each other.  Whatever he had come out for he hadn't come to go into
+that; so that he absolutely took up nothing his interlocutress had now
+let drop.  Yet, though he had kept away from her for days, had laid
+wholly on herself the burden of their meeting again, she hadn't a gleam
+of irritation to show him.  "Well, about Jeanne now?" she smiled--it
+had the gaiety with which she had originally come in. He felt it on the
+instant to represent her motive and real errand. But he had been
+schooling her of a truth to say much in proportion to his little.  "Do
+you make out that she has a sentiment?  I mean for Mr. Newsome."
+
+Almost resentful, Strether could at last be prompt.  "How can I make
+out such things?"
+
+She remained perfectly good-natured.  "Ah but they're beautiful little
+things, and you make out--don't pretend--everything in the world.
+Haven't you," she asked, "been talking with her?"
+
+"Yes, but not about Chad.  At least not much."
+
+"Oh you don't require 'much'!" she reassuringly declared.  But she
+immediately changed her ground.  "I hope you remember your promise of
+the other day."
+
+"To 'save' you, as you called it?"
+
+"I call it so still.  You WILL?" she insisted.  "You haven't repented?"
+
+He wondered.  "No--but I've been thinking what I meant."
+
+She kept it up.  "And not, a little, what I did?"
+
+"No--that's not necessary.  It will be enough if I know what I meant
+myself."
+
+"And don't you know," she asked, "by this time?"
+
+Again he had a pause.  "I think you ought to leave it to me. But how
+long," he added, "do you give me?"
+
+"It seems to me much more a question of how long you give ME. Doesn't
+our friend here himself, at any rate," she went on, "perpetually make
+me present to you?"
+
+"Not," Strether replied, "by ever speaking of you to me."
+
+"He never does that?"
+
+"Never."
+
+She considered, and, if the fact was disconcerting to her, effectually
+concealed it.  The next minute indeed she had recovered. "No, he
+wouldn't.  But do you NEED that?"
+
+Her emphasis was wonderful, and though his eyes had been wandering he
+looked at her longer now.  "I see what you mean."
+
+"Of course you see what I mean."
+
+Her triumph was gentle, and she really had tones to make justice weep.
+"I've before me what he owes you."
+
+"Admit then that that's something," she said, yet still with the same
+discretion in her pride.
+
+He took in this note but went straight on.  "You've made of him what I
+see, but what I don't see is how in the world you've done it."
+
+"Ah that's another question!" she smiled.  "The point is of what use is
+your declining to know me when to know Mr. Newsome--as you do me the
+honour to find him--IS just to know me."
+
+"I see," he mused, still with his eyes on her.  "I shouldn't have met
+you to-night."
+
+She raised and dropped her linked hands.  "It doesn't matter.  If I
+trust you why can't you a little trust me too?  And why can't you
+also," she asked in another tone, "trust yourself?"  But she gave him
+no time to reply.  "Oh I shall be so easy for you! And I'm glad at any
+rate you've seen my child."
+
+"I'm glad too," he said; "but she does you no good."
+
+"No good?"--Madame de Vionnet had a clear stare.  "Why she's an angel
+of light."
+
+"That's precisely the reason.  Leave her alone.  Don't try to find out.
+I mean," he explained, "about what you spoke to me of--the way she
+feels."
+
+His companion wondered.  "Because one really won't?"
+
+"Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to.  She's the
+most charming creature I've ever seen.  Therefore don't touch her.
+Don't know--don't want to know.  And moreover--yes--you won't."
+
+It was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in.  "As a favour to
+you?"
+
+"Well--since you ask me."
+
+"Anything, everything you ask," she smiled.  "I shan't know
+then--never. Thank you," she added with peculiar gentleness as she
+turned away.
+
+The sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if he had
+been tripped up and had a fall.  In the very act of arranging with her
+for his independence he had, under pressure from a particular
+perception, inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed himself, and,
+with her subtlety sensitive on the spot to an advantage, she had driven
+in by a single word a little golden nail, the sharp intention of which
+he signally felt.  He hadn't detached, he had more closely connected
+himself, and his eyes, as he considered with some intensity this
+circumstance, met another pair which had just come within their range
+and which struck him as reflecting his sense of what he had done.  He
+recognised them at the same moment as those of little Bilham, who had
+apparently drawn near on purpose to speak to him, and little Bilham
+wasn't, in the conditions, the person to whom his heart would be most
+closed. They were seated together a minute later at the angle of the
+room obliquely opposite the corner in which Gloriani was still engaged
+with Jeanne de Vionnet, to whom at first and in silence their attention
+had been benevolently given.  "I can't see for my life," Strether had
+then observed, "how a young fellow of any spirit--such a one as you for
+instance--can be admitted to the sight of that young lady without being
+hard hit.  Why don't you go in, little Bilham?"  He remembered the tone
+into which he had been betrayed on the garden-bench at the sculptor's
+reception, and this might make up for that by being much more the right
+sort of thing to say to a young man worthy of any advice at all. "There
+WOULD be some reason."
+
+"Some reason for what?"
+
+"Why for hanging on here."
+
+"To offer my hand and fortune to Mademoiselle de Vionnet?"
+
+"Well," Strether asked, "to what lovelier apparition COULD you offer
+them?  She's the sweetest little thing I've ever seen."
+
+"She's certainly immense.  I mean she's the real thing.  I believe the
+pale pink petals are folded up there for some wondrous efflorescence in
+time; to open, that is, to some great golden sun. I'M unfortunately but
+a small farthing candle.  What chance in such a field for a poor little
+painter-man?"
+
+"Oh you're good enough," Strether threw out.
+
+"Certainly I'm good enough.  We're good enough, I consider, nous
+autres, for anything.  But she's TOO good.  There's the difference.
+They wouldn't look at me."
+
+Strether, lounging on his divan and still charmed by the young girl,
+whose eyes had consciously strayed to him, he fancied, with a vague
+smile--Strether, enjoying the whole occasion as with dormant pulses at
+last awake and in spite of new material thrust upon him, thought over
+his companion's words.  "Whom do you mean by 'they'? She and her
+mother?"
+
+"She and her mother.  And she has a father too, who, whatever else he
+may be, certainly can't be indifferent to the possibilities she
+represents.  Besides, there's Chad."
+
+Strether was silent a little.  "Ah but he doesn't care for her--not, I
+mean, it appears, after all, in the sense I'm speaking of.  He's NOT in
+love with her."
+
+"No--but he's her best friend; after her mother.  He's very fond of
+her.  He has his ideas about what can be done for her."
+
+"Well, it's very strange!" Strether presently remarked with a sighing
+sense of fulness.
+
+"Very strange indeed.  That's just the beauty of it.  Isn't it very
+much the kind of beauty you had in mind," little Bilham went on, "when
+you were so wonderful and so inspiring to me the other day? Didn't you
+adjure me, in accents I shall never forget, to see, while I've a
+chance, everything I can?--and REALLY to see, for it must have been
+that only you meant.  Well, you did me no end of good, and I'm doing my
+best.  I DO make it out a situation."
+
+"So do I!" Strether went on after a moment.  But he had the next minute
+an inconsequent question.  "How comes Chad so mixed up, anyway?"
+
+"Ah, ah, ah!"--and little Bilham fell back on his cushions.
+
+It reminded our friend of Miss Barrace, and he felt again the brush of
+his sense of moving in a maze of mystic closed allusions.  Yet he kept
+hold of his thread.  "Of course I understand really; only the general
+transformation makes me occasionally gasp.  Chad with such a voice in
+the settlement of the future of a little countess--no," he declared,
+"it takes more time! You say moreover," he resumed, "that we're
+inevitably, people like you and me, out of the running.  The curious
+fact remains that Chad himself isn't.  The situation doesn't make for
+it, but in a different one he could have her if he would."
+
+"Yes, but that's only because he's rich and because there's a
+possibility of his being richer.  They won't think of anything but a
+great name or a great fortune."
+
+"Well," said Strether, "he'll have no great fortune on THESE lines. He
+must stir his stumps."
+
+"Is that," little Bilham enquired, "what you were saying to Madame de
+Vionnet?"
+
+"No--I don't say much to her.  Of course, however," Strether continued,
+"he can make sacrifices if he likes."
+
+Little Bilham had a pause.  "Oh he's not keen for sacrifices; or
+thinks, that is, possibly, that he has made enough."
+
+"Well, it IS virtuous," his companion observed with some decision.
+
+"That's exactly," the young man dropped after a moment, "what I mean."
+
+It kept Strether himself silent a little.  "I've made it out for
+myself," he then went on; "I've really, within the last half-hour, got
+hold of it.  I understand it in short at last; which at first--when you
+originally spoke to me--I didn't.  Nor when Chad originally spoke to me
+either."
+
+"Oh," said little Bilham, "I don't think that at that time you believed
+me."
+
+"Yes--I did; and I believed Chad too.  It would have been odious and
+unmannerly--as well as quite perverse--if I hadn't.  What interest have
+you in deceiving me?"
+
+The young man cast about.  "What interest have I?"
+
+"Yes.  Chad MIGHT have.  But you?"
+
+"Ah, ah, ah!" little Bilham exclaimed.
+
+It might, on repetition, as a mystification, have irritated our friend
+a little, but he knew, once more, as we have seen, where he was, and
+his being proof against everything was only another attestation that he
+meant to stay there.  "I couldn't, without my own impression, realise.
+She's a tremendously clever brilliant capable woman, and with an
+extraordinary charm on top of it all--the charm we surely all of us
+this evening know what to think of. It isn't every clever brilliant
+capable woman that has it.  In fact it's rare with any woman.  So there
+you are," Strether proceeded as if not for little Bilham's benefit
+alone.  "I understand what a relation with such a woman--what such a
+high fine friendship--may be.  It can't be vulgar or coarse,
+anyway--and that's the point."
+
+"Yes, that's the point," said little Bilham.  "It can't be vulgar or
+coarse.  And, bless us and save us, it ISn't!  It's, upon my word, the
+very finest thing I ever saw in my life, and the most distinguished."
+
+Strether, from beside him and leaning back with him as he leaned,
+dropped on him a momentary look which filled a short interval and of
+which he took no notice.  He only gazed before him with intent
+participation.  "Of course what it has done for him," Strether at all
+events presently pursued, "of course what it has done for him--that is
+as to HOW it has so wonderfully worked--isn't a thing I pretend to
+understand.  I've to take it as I find it.  There he is."
+
+"There he is!" little Bilham echoed.  "And it's really and truly she. I
+don't understand either, even with my longer and closer opportunity.
+But I'm like you," he added; "I can admire and rejoice even when I'm a
+little in the dark.  You see I've watched it for some three years, and
+especially for this last.  He wasn't so bad before it as I seem to have
+made out that you think--"
+
+"Oh I don't think anything now!" Strether impatiently broke in: "that
+is but what I DO think! I mean that originally, for her to have cared
+for him--"
+
+"There must have been stuff in him?  Oh yes, there was stuff indeed,
+and much more of it than ever showed, I dare say, at home.  Still, you
+know," the young man in all fairness developed, "there was room for
+her, and that's where she came in.  She saw her chance and took it.
+That's what strikes me as having been so fine.  But of course," he
+wound up, "he liked her first."
+
+"Naturally," said Strether.
+
+"I mean that they first met somehow and somewhere--I believe in some
+American house--and she, without in the least then intending it, made
+her impression.  Then with time and opportunity he made his; and after
+THAT she was as bad as he."
+
+Strether vaguely took it up.  "As 'bad'?"
+
+"She began, that is, to care--to care very much.  Alone, and in her
+horrid position, she found it, when once she had started, an interest.
+It was, it is, an interest, and it did--it continues to do--a lot for
+herself as well.  So she still cares.  She cares in fact," said little
+Bilham thoughtfully "more."
+
+Strether's theory that it was none of his business was somehow not
+damaged by the way he took this.  "More, you mean, than he?"  On which
+his companion looked round at him, and now for an instant their eyes
+met.  "More than he?" he repeated.
+
+Little Bilham, for as long, hung fire.  "Will you never tell any one?"
+
+Strether thought.  "Whom should I tell?"
+
+"Why I supposed you reported regularly--"
+
+"To people at home?"--Strether took him up.  "Well, I won't tell them
+this."
+
+The young man at last looked away.  "Then she does now care more than
+he."
+
+"Oh!" Strether oddly exclaimed.
+
+But his companion immediately met it.  "Haven't you after all had your
+impression of it?  That's how you've got hold of him."
+
+"Ah but I haven't got hold of him!"
+
+"Oh I say!"  But it was all little Bilham said.
+
+"It's at any rate none of my business.  I mean," Strether explained,
+"nothing else than getting hold of him is."  It appeared, however, to
+strike him as his business to add:  "The fact remains nevertheless that
+she has saved him."
+
+Little Bilham just waited.  "I thought that was what you were to do."
+
+But Strether had his answer ready.  "I'm speaking--in connexion with
+her--of his manners and morals, his character and life.  I'm speaking
+of him as a person to deal with and talk with and live with--speaking
+of him as a social animal."
+
+"And isn't it as a social animal that you also want him?"
+
+"Certainly; so that it's as if she had saved him FOR us."
+
+"It strikes you accordingly then," the young man threw out, "as for you
+all to save HER?"
+
+"Oh for us 'all'--!" Strether could but laugh at that.  It brought him
+back, however, to the point he had really wished to make. "They've
+accepted their situation--hard as it is.  They're not free--at least
+she's not; but they take what's left to them.  It's a friendship, of a
+beautiful sort; and that's what makes them so strong.  They're
+straight, they feel; and they keep each other up. It's doubtless she,
+however, who, as you yourself have hinted, feels it most."
+
+Little Bilham appeared to wonder what he had hinted.  "Feels most that
+they're straight?"
+
+"Well, feels that SHE is, and the strength that comes from it.  She
+keeps HIM up--she keeps the whole thing up.  When people are able to
+it's fine.  She's wonderful, wonderful, as Miss Barrace says; and he
+is, in his way, too; however, as a mere man, he may sometimes rebel and
+not feel that he finds his account in it.  She has simply given him an
+immense moral lift, and what that can explain is prodigious. That's why
+I speak of it as a situation.  It IS one, if there ever was."  And
+Strether, with his head back and his eyes on the ceiling, seemed to
+lose himself in the vision of it.
+
+His companion attended deeply.  "You state it much better than I
+could." "Oh you see it doesn't concern you."
+
+Little Bilham considered.  "I thought you said just now that it doesn't
+concern you either."
+
+"Well, it doesn't a bit as Madame de Vionnet's affair.  But as we were
+again saying just now, what did I come out for but to save him?"
+
+"Yes--to remove him."
+
+"To save him by removal; to win him over to HIMSELF thinking it best he
+shall take up business--thinking he must immediately do therefore
+what's necessary to that end."
+
+"Well," said little Bilham after a moment, "you HAVE won him over. He
+does think it best.  He has within a day or two again said to me as
+much."
+
+"And that," Strether asked, "is why you consider that he cares less
+than she?"
+
+"Cares less for her than she for him?  Yes, that's one of the reasons.
+But other things too have given me the impression.  A man, don't you
+think?" little Bilham presently pursued, "CAN'T, in such conditions,
+care so much as a woman.  It takes different conditions to make him,
+and then perhaps he cares more.  Chad," he wound up, "has his possible
+future before him."
+
+"Are you speaking of his business future?"
+
+"No--on the contrary; of the other, the future of what you so justly
+call their situation.  M. de Vionnet may live for ever."
+
+"So that they can't marry?"
+
+The young man waited a moment.  "Not being able to marry is all they've
+with any confidence to look forward to.  A woman--a particular
+woman--may stand that strain.  But can a man?" he propounded.
+
+Strether's answer was as prompt as if he had already, for himself,
+worked it out.  "Not without a very high ideal of conduct.  But that's
+just what we're attributing to Chad.  And how, for that matter," he
+mused, "does his going to America diminish the particular strain?
+Wouldn't it seem rather to add to it?"
+
+"Out of sight out of mind!" his companion laughed.  Then more bravely:
+"Wouldn't distance lessen the torment?"  But before Strether could
+reply, "The thing is, you see, Chad ought to marry!" he wound up.
+
+Strether, for a little, appeared to think of it.  "If you talk of
+torments you don't diminish mine!" he then broke out.  The next moment
+he was on his feet with a question.  "He ought to marry whom?"
+
+Little Bilham rose more slowly.  "Well, some one he CAN--some
+thoroughly nice girl."
+
+Strether's eyes, as they stood together, turned again to Jeanne. "Do
+you mean HER?"
+
+His friend made a sudden strange face.  "After being in love with her
+mother?  No."
+
+"But isn't it exactly your idea that he ISn't in love with her mother?"
+
+His friend once more had a pause.  "Well, he isn't at any rate in love
+with Jeanne."
+
+"I dare say not."
+
+"How CAN he be with any other woman?"
+
+"Oh that I admit.  But being in love isn't, you know, here"--little
+Bilham spoke in friendly reminder--"thought necessary, in strictness,
+for marriage."
+
+"And what torment--to call a torment--can there ever possibly be with a
+woman like that?"  As if from the interest of his own question Strether
+had gone on without hearing.  "Is it for her to have turned a man out
+so wonderfully, too, only for somebody else?" He appeared to make a
+point of this, and little Bilham looked at him now.  "When it's for
+each other that people give things up they don't miss them."  Then he
+threw off as with an extravagance of which he was conscious: "Let them
+face the future together!"
+
+Little Bilham looked at him indeed.  "You mean that after all he
+shouldn't go back?"
+
+"I mean that if he gives her up--!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself."  But Strether spoke with a
+sound that might have passed for a laugh.
+
+
+
+
+
+Volume II
+
+Book Seventh
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+It wasn't the first time Strether had sat alone in the great dim
+church--still less was it the first of his giving himself up, so far as
+conditions permitted, to its beneficent action on his nerves.  He had
+been to Notre Dame with Waymarsh, he had been there with Miss Gostrey,
+he had been there with Chad Newsome, and had found the place, even in
+company, such a refuge from the obsession of his problem that, with
+renewed pressure from that source, he had not unnaturally recurred to a
+remedy meeting the case, for the moment, so indirectly, no doubt, but
+so relievingly.  He was conscious enough that it was only for the
+moment, but good moments--if he could call them good--still had their
+value for a man who by this time struck himself as living almost
+disgracefully from hand to mouth.  Having so well learnt the way, he
+had lately made the pilgrimage more than once by himself--had quite
+stolen off, taking an unnoticed chance and making no point of speaking
+of the adventure when restored to his friends.
+
+His great friend, for that matter, was still absent, as well as
+remarkably silent; even at the end of three weeks Miss Gostrey hadn't
+come back.  She wrote to him from Mentone, admitting that he must judge
+her grossly inconsequent--perhaps in fact for the time odiously
+faithless; but asking for patience, for a deferred sentence, throwing
+herself in short on his generosity.  For her too, she could assure him,
+life was complicated--more complicated than he could have guessed; she
+had moreover made certain of him--certain of not wholly missing him on
+her return--before her disappearance.  If furthermore she didn't burden
+him with letters it was frankly because of her sense of the other great
+commerce he had to carry on.  He himself, at the end of a fortnight,
+had written twice, to show how his generosity could be trusted; but he
+reminded himself in each case of Mrs. Newsome's epistolary manner at
+the times when Mrs. Newsome kept off delicate ground.  He sank his
+problem, he talked of Waymarsh and Miss Barrace, of little Bilham and
+the set over the river, with whom he had again had tea, and he was
+easy, for convenience, about Chad and Madame de Vionnet and Jeanne.  He
+admitted that he continued to see them, he was decidedly so confirmed a
+haunter of Chad's premises and that young man's practical intimacy with
+them was so undeniably great; but he had his reason for not attempting
+to render for Miss Gostrey's benefit the impression of these last days.
+That would be to tell her too much about himself--it being at present
+just from himself he was trying to escape.
+
+This small struggle sprang not a little, in its way, from the same
+impulse that had now carried him across to Notre Dame; the impulse to
+let things be, to give them time to justify themselves or at least to
+pass.  He was aware of having no errand in such a place but the desire
+not to be, for the hour, in certain other places; a sense of safety, of
+simplification, which each time he yielded to it he amused himself by
+thinking of as a private concession to cowardice.  The great church had
+no altar for his worship, no direct voice for his soul; but it was none
+the less soothing even to sanctity; for he could feel while there what
+he couldn't elsewhere, that he was a plain tired man taking the holiday
+he had earned.  He was tired, but he wasn't plain--that was the pity
+and the trouble of it; he was able, however, to drop his problem at the
+door very much as if it had been the copper piece that he deposited, on
+the threshold, in the receptacle of the inveterate blind beggar.  He
+trod the long dim nave, sat in the splendid choir, paused before the
+cluttered chapels of the east end, and the mighty monument laid upon
+him its spell.  He might have been a student under the charm of a
+museum--which was exactly what, in a foreign town, in the afternoon of
+life, he would have liked to be free to be.  This form of sacrifice did
+at any rate for the occasion as well as another; it made him quite
+sufficiently understand how, within the precinct, for the real refugee,
+the things of the world could fall into abeyance.  That was the
+cowardice, probably--to dodge them, to beg the question, not to deal
+with it in the hard outer light; but his own oblivions were too brief,
+too vain, to hurt any one but himself, and he had a vague and fanciful
+kindness for certain persons whom he met, figures of mystery and
+anxiety, and whom, with observation for his pastime, he ranked as those
+who were fleeing from justice.  Justice was outside, in the hard light,
+and injustice too; but one was as absent as the other from the air of
+the long aisles and the brightness of the many altars.
+
+Thus it was at all events that, one morning some dozen days after the
+dinner in the Boulevard Malesherbes at which Madame de Vionnet had been
+present with her daughter, he was called upon to play his part in an
+encounter that deeply stirred his imagination.  He had the habit, in
+these contemplations, of watching a fellow visitant, here and there,
+from a respectable distance, remarking some note of behaviour, of
+penitence, of prostration, of the absolved, relieved state; this was
+the manner in which his vague tenderness took its course, the degree of
+demonstration to which it naturally had to confine itself.  It hadn't
+indeed so felt its responsibility as when on this occasion he suddenly
+measured the suggestive effect of a lady whose supreme stillness, in
+the shade of one of the chapels, he had two or three times noticed as
+he made, and made once more, his slow circuit.  She wasn't
+prostrate--not in any degree bowed, but she was strangely fixed, and
+her prolonged immobility showed her, while he passed and paused, as
+wholly given up to the need, whatever it was, that had brought her
+there.  She only sat and gazed before her, as he himself often sat; but
+she had placed herself, as he never did, within the focus of the
+shrine, and she had lost herself, he could easily see, as he would only
+have liked to do. She was not a wandering alien, keeping back more than
+she gave, but one of the familiar, the intimate, the fortunate, for
+whom these dealings had a method and a meaning.  She reminded our
+friend--since it was the way of nine tenths of his current impressions
+to act as recalls of things imagined--of some fine firm concentrated
+heroine of an old story, something he had heard, read, something that,
+had he had a hand for drama, he might himself have written, renewing
+her courage, renewing her clearness, in splendidly-protected
+meditation.  Her back, as she sat, was turned to him, but his
+impression absolutely required that she should be young and
+interesting, and she carried her head moreover, even in the sacred
+shade, with a discernible faith in herself, a kind of implied
+conviction of consistency, security, impunity.  But what had such a
+woman come for if she hadn't come to pray?  Strether's reading of such
+matters was, it must be owned, confused; but he wondered if her
+attitude were some congruous fruit of absolution, of "indulgence."  He
+knew but dimly what indulgence, in such a place, might mean; yet he
+had, as with a soft sweep, a vision of how it might indeed add to the
+zest of active rites.  All this was a good deal to have been denoted by
+a mere lurking figure who was nothing to him; but, the last thing
+before leaving the church, he had the surprise of a still deeper
+quickening.
+
+He had dropped upon a seat halfway down the nave and, again in the
+museum mood, was trying with head thrown back and eyes aloft, to
+reconstitute a past, to reduce it in fact to the convenient terms of
+Victor Hugo, whom, a few days before, giving the rein for once in a way
+to the joy of life, he had purchased in seventy bound volumes, a
+miracle of cheapness, parted with, he was assured by the shopman, at
+the price of the red-and-gold alone.  He looked, doubtless, while he
+played his eternal nippers over Gothic glooms, sufficiently rapt in
+reverence; but what his thought had finally bumped against was the
+question of where, among packed accumulations, so multiform a wedge
+would be able to enter.  Were seventy volumes in red-and-gold to be
+perhaps what he should most substantially have to show at Woollett as
+the fruit of his mission?  It was a possibility that held him a
+minute--held him till he happened to feel that some one, unnoticed, had
+approached him and paused.  Turning, he saw that a lady stood there as
+for a greeting, and he sprang up as he next took her, securely, for
+Madame de Vionnet, who appeared to have recognised him as she passed
+near him on her way to the door.  She checked, quickly and gaily, a
+certain confusion in him, came to meet it, turned it back, by an art of
+her own; the confusion having threatened him as he knew her for the
+person he had lately been observing.  She was the lurking figure of the
+dim chapel; she had occupied him more than she guessed; but it came to
+him in time, luckily, that he needn't tell her and that no harm, after
+all, had been done.  She herself, for that matter, straightway showing
+she felt their encounter as the happiest of accidents, had for him a
+"You come here too?" that despoiled surprise of every awkwardness.
+
+"I come often," she said.  "I love this place, but I'm terrible, in
+general, for churches.  The old women who live in them all know me; in
+fact I'm already myself one of the old women.  It's like that, at all
+events, that I foresee I shall end."  Looking about for a chair, so
+that he instantly pulled one nearer, she sat down with him again to the
+sound of an "Oh, I like so much your also being fond--!"
+
+He confessed the extent of his feeling, though she left the object
+vague; and he was struck with the tact, the taste of her vagueness,
+which simply took for granted in him a sense of beautiful things. He
+was conscious of how much it was affected, this sense, by something
+subdued and discreet in the way she had arranged herself for her
+special object and her morning walk--he believed her to have come on
+foot; the way her slightly thicker veil was drawn--a mere touch, but
+everything; the composed gravity of her dress, in which, here and
+there, a dull wine-colour seemed to gleam faintly through black; the
+charming discretion of her small compact head; the quiet note, as she
+sat, of her folded, grey-gloved hands.  It was, to Strether's mind, as
+if she sat on her own ground, the light honours of which, at an open
+gate, she thus easily did him, while all the vastness and mystery of
+the domain stretched off behind. When people were so completely in
+possession they could be extraordinarily civil; and our friend had
+indeed at this hour a kind of revelation of her heritage.  She was
+romantic for him far beyond what she could have guessed, and again he
+found his small comfort in the conviction that, subtle though she was,
+his impression must remain a secret from her.  The thing that, once
+more, made him uneasy for secrets in general was this particular
+patience she could have with his own want of colour; albeit that on the
+other hand his uneasiness pretty well dropped after he had been for ten
+minutes as colourless as possible and at the same time as responsive.
+
+The moments had already, for that matter, drawn their deepest tinge
+from the special interest excited in him by his vision of his
+companion's identity with the person whose attitude before the
+glimmering altar had so impressed him.  This attitude fitted admirably
+into the stand he had privately taken about her connexion with Chad on
+the last occasion of his seeing them together.  It helped him to stick
+fast at the point he had then reached; it was there he had resolved
+that he WOULD stick, and at no moment since had it seemed as easy to do
+so.  Unassailably innocent was a relation that could make one of the
+parties to it so carry herself. If it wasn't innocent why did she haunt
+the churches?--into which, given the woman he could believe he made
+out, she would never have come to flaunt an insolence of guilt.  She
+haunted them for continued help, for strength, for peace--sublime
+support which, if one were able to look at it so, she found from day to
+day.  They talked, in low easy tones and with lifted lingering looks,
+about the great monument and its history and its beauty--all of which,
+Madame de Vionnet professed, came to her most in the other, the outer
+view.  "We'll presently, after we go," she said, "walk round it again
+if you like.  I'm not in a particular hurry, and it will be pleasant to
+look at it well with you."  He had spoken of the great romancer and the
+great romance, and of what, to his imagination, they had done for the
+whole, mentioning to her moreover the exorbitance of his purchase, the
+seventy blazing volumes that were so out of proportion.
+
+"Out of proportion to what?"
+
+"Well, to any other plunge."  Yet he felt even as he spoke how at that
+instant he was plunging.  He had made up his mind and was impatient to
+get into the air; for his purpose was a purpose to be uttered outside,
+and he had a fear that it might with delay still slip away from him.
+She however took her time; she drew out their quiet gossip as if she
+had wished to profit by their meeting, and this confirmed precisely an
+interpretation of her manner, of her mystery.  While she rose, as he
+would have called it, to the question of Victor Hugo, her voice itself,
+the light low quaver of her deference to the solemnity about them,
+seemed to make her words mean something that they didn't mean openly.
+Help, strength, peace, a sublime support--she hadn't found so much of
+these things as that the amount wouldn't be sensibly greater for any
+scrap his appearance of faith in her might enable her to feel in her
+hand. Every little, in a long strain, helped, and if he happened to
+affect her as a firm object she could hold on by, he wouldn't jerk
+himself out of her reach.  People in difficulties held on by what was
+nearest, and he was perhaps after all not further off than sources of
+comfort more abstract.  It was as to this he had made up his mind; he
+had made it up, that is, to give her a sign.  The sign would be
+that--though it was her own affair--he understood; the sign would be
+that--though it was her own affair--she was free to clutch.  Since she
+took him for a firm object--much as he might to his own sense appear at
+times to rock--he would do his best to BE one.
+
+The end of it was that half an hour later they were seated together for
+an early luncheon at a wonderful, a delightful house of entertainment
+on the left bank--a place of pilgrimage for the knowing, they were both
+aware, the knowing who came, for its great renown, the homage of
+restless days, from the other end of the town.  Strether had already
+been there three times--first with Miss Gostrey, then with Chad, then
+with Chad again and with Waymarsh and little Bilham, all of whom he had
+himself sagaciously entertained; and his pleasure was deep now on
+learning that Madame de Vionnet hadn't yet been initiated.  When he had
+said as they strolled round the church, by the river, acting at last on
+what, within, he had made up his mind to, "Will you, if you have time,
+come to dejeuner with me somewhere?  For instance, if you know it, over
+there on the other side, which is so easy a walk"--and then had named
+the place; when he had done this she stopped short as for quick
+intensity, and yet deep difficulty, of response.  She took in the
+proposal as if it were almost too charming to be true; and there had
+perhaps never yet been for her companion so unexpected a moment of
+pride--so fine, so odd a case, at any rate, as his finding himself thus
+able to offer to a person in such universal possession a new, a rare
+amusement.  She had heard of the happy spot, but she asked him in reply
+to a further question how in the world he could suppose her to have
+been there.  He supposed himself to have supposed that Chad might have
+taken her, and she guessed this the next moment to his no small
+discomfort.
+
+"Ah, let me explain," she smiled, "that I don't go about with him in
+public; I never have such chances--not having them otherwise--and it's
+just the sort of thing that, as a quiet creature living in my hole, I
+adore."  It was more than kind of him to have thought of it--though,
+frankly, if he asked whether she had time she hadn't a single minute.
+That however made no difference--she'd throw everything over.  Every
+duty at home, domestic, maternal, social, awaited her; but it was a
+case for a high line.  Her affairs would go to smash, but hadn't one a
+right to one's snatch of scandal when one was prepared to pay?  It was
+on this pleasant basis of costly disorder, consequently, that they
+eventually seated themselves, on either side of a small table, at a
+window adjusted to the busy quay and the shining barge-burdened Seine;
+where, for an hour, in the matter of letting himself go, of diving
+deep, Strether was to feel he had touched bottom.  He was to feel many
+things on this occasion, and one of the first of them was that he had
+travelled far since that evening in London, before the theatre, when
+his dinner with Maria Gostrey, between the pink-shaded candles, had
+struck him as requiring so many explanations.  He had at that time
+gathered them in, the explanations--he had stored them up; but it was
+at present as if he had either soared above or sunk below them--he
+couldn't tell which; he could somehow think of none that didn't seem to
+leave the appearance of collapse and cynicism easier for him than
+lucidity.  How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one,
+that he, for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright
+clean ordered water-side life came in at the open window?--the mere way
+Madame de Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen,
+their omelette aux tomates, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis,
+thanked him for everything almost with the smile of a child, while her
+grey eyes moved in and out of their talk, back to the quarter of the
+warm spring air, in which early summer had already begun to throb, and
+then back again to his face and their human questions.
+
+Their human questions became many before they had done--many more, as
+one after the other came up, than our friend's free fancy had at all
+foreseen.  The sense he had had before, the sense he had had
+repeatedly, the sense that the situation was running away with him, had
+never been so sharp as now; and all the more that he could perfectly
+put his finger on the moment it had taken the bit in its teeth.  That
+accident had definitely occurred, the other evening, after Chad's
+dinner; it had occurred, as he fully knew, at the moment when he
+interposed between this lady and her child, when he suffered himself so
+to discuss with her a matter closely concerning them that her own
+subtlety, marked by its significant "Thank you!" instantly sealed the
+occasion in her favour.  Again he had held off for ten days, but the
+situation had continued out of hand in spite of that; the fact that it
+was running so fast being indeed just WHY he had held off.  What had
+come over him as he recognised her in the nave of the church was that
+holding off could be but a losing game from the instant she was worked
+for not only by her subtlety, but by the hand of fate itself.  If all
+the accidents were to fight on her side--and by the actual showing they
+loomed large--he could only give himself up.  This was what he had done
+in privately deciding then and there to propose she should breakfast
+with him. What did the success of his proposal in fact resemble but the
+smash in which a regular runaway properly ends?  The smash was their
+walk, their dejeuner, their omelette, the Chablis, the place, the view,
+their present talk and his present pleasure in it--to say nothing,
+wonder of wonders, of her own.  To this tune and nothing less,
+accordingly, was his surrender made good.  It sufficiently lighted up
+at least the folly of holding off.  Ancient proverbs sounded, for his
+memory, in the tone of their words and the clink of their glasses, in
+the hum of the town and the plash of the river.  It WAS clearly better
+to suffer as a sheep than as a lamb.  One might as well perish by the
+sword as by famine.
+
+"Maria's still away?"--that was the first thing she had asked him; and
+when he had found the frankness to be cheerful about it in spite of the
+meaning he knew her to attach to Miss Gostrey's absence, she had gone
+on to enquire if he didn't tremendously miss her.  There were reasons
+that made him by no means sure, yet he nevertheless answered
+"Tremendously"; which she took in as if it were all she had wished to
+prove.  Then, "A man in trouble MUST be possessed somehow of a woman,"
+she said; "if she doesn't come in one way she comes in another."
+
+"Why do you call me a man in trouble?"
+
+"Ah because that's the way you strike me."  She spoke ever so gently
+and as if with all fear of wounding him while she sat partaking of his
+bounty.  "AREn't you in trouble?"
+
+He felt himself colour at the question, and then hated that--hated to
+pass for anything so idiotic as woundable.  Woundable by Chad's lady,
+in respect to whom he had come out with such a fund of
+indifference--was he already at that point?  Perversely, none the less,
+his pause gave a strange air of truth to her supposition; and what was
+he in fact but disconcerted at having struck her just in the way he had
+most dreamed of not doing?  "I'm not in trouble yet," he at last
+smiled.  "I'm not in trouble now."
+
+"Well, I'm always so.  But that you sufficiently know."  She was a
+woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the
+table.  It was a posture unknown to Mrs. Newsome, but it was easy for a
+femme du monde.  "Yes--I am 'now'!"
+
+"There was a question you put to me," he presently returned, "the night
+of Chad's dinner.  I didn't answer it then, and it has been very
+handsome of you not to have sought an occasion for pressing me about it
+since."
+
+She was instantly all there.  "Of course I know what you allude to. I
+asked you what you had meant by saying, the day you came to see me,
+just before you left me, that you'd save me.  And you then said--at our
+friend's--that you'd have really to wait to see, for yourself, what you
+did mean."
+
+"Yes, I asked for time," said Strether.  "And it sounds now, as you put
+it, like a very ridiculous speech."
+
+"Oh!" she murmured--she was full of attenuation.  But she had another
+thought.  "If it does sound ridiculous why do you deny that you're in
+trouble?"
+
+"Ah if I were," he replied, "it wouldn't be the trouble of fearing
+ridicule.  I don't fear it."
+
+"What then do you?"
+
+"Nothing--now."  And he leaned back in his chair.
+
+"I like your 'now'!" she laughed across at him.
+
+"Well, it's precisely that it fully comes to me at present that I've
+kept you long enough.  I know by this time, at any rate, what I meant
+by my speech; and I really knew it the night of Chad's dinner."
+
+"Then why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"Because it was difficult at the moment.  I had already at that moment
+done something for you, in the sense of what I had said the day I went
+to see you; but I wasn't then sure of the importance I might represent
+this as having."
+
+She was all eagerness.  "And you're sure now?"
+
+"Yes; I see that, practically, I've done for you--had done for you when
+you put me your question--all that it's as yet possible to me to do.  I
+feel now," he went on, "that it may go further than I thought.  What I
+did after my visit to you," he explained, "was to write straight off to
+Mrs. Newsome about you, and I'm at last, from one day to the other,
+expecting her answer.  It's this answer that will represent, as I
+believe, the consequences."
+
+Patient and beautiful was her interest.  "I see--the consequences of
+your speaking for me."  And she waited as if not to hustle him.
+
+He acknowledged it by immediately going on.  "The question, you
+understand, was HOW I should save you.  Well, I'm trying it by thus
+letting her know that I consider you worth saving."
+
+"I see--I see."  Her eagerness broke through.
+
+"How can I thank you enough?"  He couldn't tell her that, however, and
+she quickly pursued.  "You do really, for yourself, consider it?"
+
+His only answer at first was to help her to the dish that had been
+freshly put before them.  "I've written to her again since then--I've
+left her in no doubt of what I think.  I've told her all about you."
+
+"Thanks--not so much.  'All about' me," she went on--"yes."
+
+"All it seems to me you've done for him."
+
+"Ah and you might have added all it seems to ME!"  She laughed again,
+while she took up her knife and fork, as in the cheer of these
+assurances.  "But you're not sure how she'll take it."
+
+"No, I'll not pretend I'm sure."
+
+"Voila."  And she waited a moment.  "I wish you'd tell me about her."
+
+"Oh," said Strether with a slightly strained smile, "all that need
+concern you about her is that she's really a grand person."
+
+Madame de Vionnet seemed to demur.  "Is that all that need concern me
+about her?"
+
+But Strether neglected the question.  "Hasn't Chad talked to you?"
+
+"Of his mother?  Yes, a great deal--immensely.  But not from your point
+of view."
+
+"He can't," our friend returned, "have said any ill of her."
+
+"Not the least bit.  He has given me, like you, the assurance that
+she's really grand.  But her being really grand is somehow just what
+hasn't seemed to simplify our case.  Nothing," she continued, "is
+further from me than to wish to say a word against her; but of course I
+feel how little she can like being told of her owing me anything.  No
+woman ever enjoys such an obligation to another woman."
+
+This was a proposition Strether couldn't contradict.  "And yet what
+other way could I have expressed to her what I felt?  It's what there
+was most to say about you."
+
+"Do you mean then that she WILL be good to me?"
+
+"It's what I'm waiting to see.  But I've little doubt she would," he
+added, "if she could comfortably see you."
+
+It seemed to strike her as a happy, a beneficent thought.  "Oh then
+couldn't that be managed?  Wouldn't she come out?  Wouldn't she if you
+so put it to her?  DID you by any possibility?" she faintly quavered.
+
+"Oh no"--he was prompt.  "Not that.  It would be, much more, to give an
+account of you that--since there's no question of YOUR paying the
+visit--I should go home first."
+
+It instantly made her graver.  "And are you thinking of that?"
+
+"Oh all the while, naturally."
+
+"Stay with us--stay with us!" she exclaimed on this.  "That's your only
+way to make sure."
+
+"To make sure of what?"
+
+"Why that he doesn't break up.  You didn't come out to do that to him."
+
+"Doesn't it depend," Strether returned after a moment, "on what you
+mean by breaking up?"
+
+"Oh you know well enough what I mean!"
+
+His silence seemed again for a little to denote an understanding. "You
+take for granted remarkable things."
+
+"Yes, I do--to the extent that I don't take for granted vulgar ones.
+You're perfectly capable of seeing that what you came out for wasn't
+really at all to do what you'd now have to do."
+
+"Ah it's perfectly simple," Strether good-humouredly pleaded.  "I've
+had but one thing to do--to put our case before him.  To put it as it
+could only be put here on the spot--by personal pressure.  My dear
+lady," he lucidly pursued, "my work, you see, is really done, and my
+reasons for staying on even another day are none of the best.  Chad's
+in possession of our case and professes to do it full justice.  What
+remains is with himself.  I've had my rest, my amusement and
+refreshment; I've had, as we say at Woollett, a lovely time.  Nothing
+in it has been more lovely than this happy meeting with you--in these
+fantastic conditions to which you've so delightfully consented.  I've a
+sense of success.  It's what I wanted.  My getting all this good is
+what Chad has waited for, and I gather that if I'm ready to go he's the
+same."
+
+She shook her head with a finer deeper wisdom.  "You're not ready. If
+you're ready why did you write to Mrs. Newsome in the sense you've
+mentioned to me?"
+
+Strether considered.  "I shan't go before I hear from her.  You're too
+much afraid of her," he added.
+
+It produced between them a long look from which neither shrank.  "I
+don't think you believe that--believe I've not really reason to fear
+her."
+
+"She's capable of great generosity," Strether presently stated.
+
+"Well then let her trust me a little.  That's all I ask.  Let her
+recognise in spite of everything what I've done."
+
+"Ah remember," our friend replied, "that she can't effectually
+recognise it without seeing it for herself.  Let Chad go over and show
+her what you've done, and let him plead with her there for it and, as
+it were, for YOU."
+
+She measured the depth of this suggestion.  "Do you give me your word
+of honour that if she once has him there she won't do her best to marry
+him?"
+
+It made her companion, this enquiry, look again a while out at the
+view; after which he spoke without sharpness.  "When she sees for
+herself what he is--"
+
+But she had already broken in.  "It's when she sees for herself what he
+is that she'll want to marry him most."
+
+Strether's attitude, that of due deference to what she said, permitted
+him to attend for a minute to his luncheon.  "I doubt if that will come
+off.  It won't be easy to make it."
+
+"It will be easy if he remains there--and he'll remain for the money.
+The money appears to be, as a probability, so hideously much."
+
+"Well," Strether presently concluded, "nothing COULD really hurt you
+but his marrying."
+
+She gave a strange light laugh.  "Putting aside what may really hurt
+HIM."
+
+But her friend looked at her as if he had thought of that too. "The
+question will come up, of course, of the future that you yourself offer
+him."
+
+She was leaning back now, but she fully faced him.  "Well, let it come
+up!"
+
+"The point is that it's for Chad to make of it what he can.  His being
+proof against marriage will show what he does make."
+
+"If he IS proof, yes"--she accepted the proposition.  "But for myself,"
+she added, "the question is what YOU make."
+
+"Ah I make nothing.  It's not my affair."
+
+"I beg your pardon.  It's just there that, since you've taken it up and
+are committed to it, it most intensely becomes yours.  You're not
+saving me, I take it, for your interest in myself, but for your
+interest in our friend.  The one's at any rate wholly dependent on the
+other.  You can't in honour not see me through," she wound up, "because
+you can't in honour not see HIM."
+
+Strange and beautiful to him was her quiet soft acuteness.  The thing
+that most moved him was really that she was so deeply serious.  She had
+none of the portentous forms of it, but he had never come in contact,
+it struck him, with a force brought to so fine a head.  Mrs. Newsome,
+goodness knew, was serious; but it was nothing to this.  He took it all
+in, he saw it all together.  "No," he mused, "I can't in honour not see
+him."
+
+Her face affected him as with an exquisite light.  "You WILL then?"
+
+"I will."
+
+At this she pushed back her chair and was the next moment on her feet.
+"Thank you!" she said with her hand held out to him across the table
+and with no less a meaning in the words than her lips had so
+particularly given them after Chad's dinner.  The golden nail she had
+then driven in pierced a good inch deeper.  Yet he reflected that he
+himself had only meanwhile done what he had made up his mind to on the
+same occasion.  So far as the essence of the matter went he had simply
+stood fast on the spot on which he had then planted his feet.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+He received three days after this a communication from America, in the
+form of a scrap of blue paper folded and gummed, not reaching him
+through his bankers, but delivered at his hotel by a small boy in
+uniform, who, under instructions from the concierge, approached him as
+he slowly paced the little court.  It was the evening hour, but
+daylight was long now and Paris more than ever penetrating.  The scent
+of flowers was in the streets, he had the whiff of violets perpetually
+in his nose; and he had attached himself to sounds and suggestions,
+vibrations of the air, human and dramatic, he imagined, as they were
+not in other places, that came out for him more and more as the mild
+afternoons deepened--a far-off hum, a sharp near click on the asphalt,
+a voice calling, replying, somewhere and as full of tone as an actor's
+in a play.  He was to dine at home, as usual, with Waymarsh--they had
+settled to that for thrift and simplicity; and he now hung about before
+his friend came down.
+
+He read his telegram in the court, standing still a long time where he
+had opened it and giving five minutes afterwards to the renewed study
+of it.  At last, quickly, he crumpled it up as if to get it out of the
+way; in spite of which, however, he kept it there--still kept it when,
+at the end of another turn, he had dropped into a chair placed near a
+small table.  Here, with his scrap of paper compressed in his fist and
+further concealed by his folding his arms tight, he sat for some time
+in thought, gazed before him so straight that Waymarsh appeared and
+approached him without catching his eye.  The latter in fact, struck
+with his appearance, looked at him hard for a single instant and then,
+as if determined to that course by some special vividness in it,
+dropped back into the salon de lecture without addressing him.  But the
+pilgrim from Milrose permitted himself still to observe the scene from
+behind the clear glass plate of that retreat.  Strether ended, as he
+sat, by a fresh scrutiny of his compressed missive, which he smoothed
+out carefully again as he placed it on his table.  There it remained
+for some minutes, until, at last looking up, he saw Waymarsh watching
+him from within.  It was on this that their eyes met--met for a moment
+during which neither moved.  But Strether then got up, folding his
+telegram more carefully and putting it into his waistcoat pocket.
+
+A few minutes later the friends were seated together at dinner; but
+Strether had meanwhile said nothing about it, and they eventually
+parted, after coffee in the court, with nothing said on either side.
+Our friend had moreover the consciousness that even less than usual was
+on this occasion said between them, so that it was almost as if each
+had been waiting for something from the other.  Waymarsh had always
+more or less the air of sitting at the door of his tent, and silence,
+after so many weeks, had come to play its part in their concert.  This
+note indeed, to Strether's sense, had lately taken a fuller tone, and
+it was his fancy to-night that they had never quite so drawn it out.
+Yet it befell, none the less that he closed the door to confidence when
+his companion finally asked him if there were anything particular the
+matter with him.  "Nothing," he replied, "more than usual."
+
+On the morrow, however, at an early hour, he found occasion to give an
+answer more in consonance with the facts.  What was the matter had
+continued to be so all the previous evening, the first hours of which,
+after dinner, in his room, he had devoted to the copious composition of
+a letter.  He had quitted Waymarsh for this purpose, leaving him to his
+own resources with less ceremony than their wont, but finally coming
+down again with his letter unconcluded and going forth into the streets
+without enquiry for his comrade.  He had taken a long vague walk, and
+one o'clock had struck before his return and his re-ascent to his room
+by the aid of the glimmering candle-end left for him on the shelf
+outside the porter's lodge.  He had possessed himself, on closing his
+door, of the numerous loose sheets of his unfinished composition, and
+then, without reading them over, had torn them into small pieces.  He
+had thereupon slept--as if it had been in some measure thanks to that
+sacrifice--the sleep of the just, and had prolonged his rest
+considerably beyond his custom.  Thus it was that when, between nine
+and ten, the tap of the knob of a walking-stick sounded on his door, he
+had not yet made himself altogether presentable.  Chad Newsome's bright
+deep voice determined quickly enough none the less the admission of the
+visitor.  The little blue paper of the evening before, plainly an
+object the more precious for its escape from premature destruction, now
+lay on the sill of the open window, smoothed out afresh and kept from
+blowing away by the superincumbent weight of his watch. Chad, looking
+about with careless and competent criticism, as he looked wherever he
+went immediately espied it and permitted himself to fix it for a moment
+rather hard.  After which he turned his eyes to his host.  "It has come
+then at last?"
+
+Strether paused in the act of pinning his necktie.  "Then you know--?
+You've had one too?"
+
+"No, I've had nothing, and I only know what I see.  I see that thing
+and I guess.  Well," he added, "it comes as pat as in a play, for I've
+precisely turned up this morning--as I would have done yesterday, but
+it was impossible--to take you."
+
+"To take me?"  Strether had turned again to his glass.
+
+"Back, at last, as I promised.  I'm ready--I've really been ready this
+month.  I've only been waiting for you--as was perfectly right. But
+you're better now; you're safe--I see that for myself; you've got all
+your good.  You're looking, this morning, as fit as a flea."
+
+Strether, at his glass, finished dressing; consulting that witness
+moreover on this last opinion.  WAS he looking preternaturally fit?
+There was something in it perhaps for Chad's wonderful eye, but he had
+felt himself for hours rather in pieces.  Such a judgement, however,
+was after all but a contribution to his resolve; it testified
+unwittingly to his wisdom.  He was still firmer, apparently--since it
+shone in him as a light--than he had flattered himself.  His firmness
+indeed was slightly compromised, as he faced about to his friend, by
+the way this very personage looked--though the case would of course
+have been worse hadn't the secret of personal magnificence been at
+every hour Chad's unfailing possession.  There he was in all the
+pleasant morning freshness of it--strong and sleek and gay, easy and
+fragrant and fathomless, with happy health in his colour, and pleasant
+silver in his thick young hair, and the right word for everything on
+the lips that his clear brownness caused to show as red.  He had never
+struck Strether as personally such a success; it was as if now, for his
+definite surrender, he had gathered himself vividly together.  This,
+sharply and rather strangely, was the form in which he was to be
+presented to Woollett.  Our friend took him in again--he was always
+taking him in and yet finding that parts of him still remained out;
+though even thus his image showed through a mist of other things. "I've
+had a cable," Strether said, "from your mother."
+
+"I dare say, my dear man.  I hope she's well."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "No--she's not well, I'm sorry to have to tell
+you."
+
+"Ah," said Chad, "I must have had the instinct of it.  All the more
+reason then that we should start straight off."
+
+Strether had now got together hat, gloves and stick, but Chad had
+dropped on the sofa as if to show where he wished to make his point. He
+kept observing his companion's things; he might have been judging how
+quickly they could be packed.  He might even have wished to hint that
+he'd send his own servant to assist.  "What do you mean," Strether
+enquired, "by 'straight off'?"
+
+"Oh by one of next week's boats.  Everything at this season goes out so
+light that berths will be easy anywhere."
+
+Strether had in his hand his telegram, which he had kept there after
+attaching his watch, and he now offered it to Chad, who, however, with
+an odd movement, declined to take it.  "Thanks, I'd rather not.  Your
+correspondence with Mother's your own affair.  I'm only WITH you both
+on it, whatever it is."  Strether, at this, while their eyes met,
+slowly folded the missive and put it in his pocket; after which, before
+he had spoken again, Chad broke fresh ground. "Has Miss Gostrey come
+back?"
+
+But when Strether presently spoke it wasn't in answer.  "It's not, I
+gather, that your mother's physically ill; her health, on the whole,
+this spring, seems to have been better than usual.  But she's worried,
+she's anxious, and it appears to have risen within the last few days to
+a climax.  We've tired out, between us, her patience."
+
+"Oh it isn't YOU!" Chad generously protested.
+
+"I beg your pardon--it IS me."  Strether was mild and melancholy, but
+firm.  He saw it far away and over his companion's head.  "It's very
+particularly me."
+
+"Well then all the more reason.  Marchons, marchons!" said the young
+man gaily.  His host, however, at this, but continued to stand agaze;
+and he had the next thing repeated his question of a moment before.
+"Has Miss Gostrey come back?"
+
+"Yes, two days ago."
+
+"Then you've seen her?"
+
+"No--I'm to see her to-day."  But Strether wouldn't linger now on Miss
+Gostrey.  "Your mother sends me an ultimatum.  If I can't bring you I'm
+to leave you; I'm to come at any rate myself."
+
+"Ah but you CAN bring me now," Chad, from his sofa, reassuringly
+replied.
+
+Strether had a pause.  "I don't think I understand you.  Why was it
+that, more than a month ago, you put it to me so urgently to let Madame
+de Vionnet speak for you?"
+
+"'Why'?"  Chad considered, but he had it at his fingers' ends.  "Why
+but because I knew how well she'd do it?  It was the way to keep you
+quiet and, to that extent, do you good.  Besides," he happily and
+comfortably explained, "I wanted you really to know her and to get the
+impression of her--and you see the good that HAS done you."
+
+"Well," said Strether, "the way she has spoken for you, all the
+same--so far as I've given her a chance--has only made me feel how much
+she wishes to keep you.  If you make nothing of that I don't see why
+you wanted me to listen to her."
+
+"Why my dear man," Chad exclaimed, "I make everything of it! How can
+you doubt--?"
+
+"I doubt only because you come to me this morning with your signal to
+start."
+
+Chad stared, then gave a laugh.  "And isn't my signal to start just
+what you've been waiting for?"
+
+Strether debated; he took another turn.  "This last month I've been
+awaiting, I think, more than anything else, the message I have here."
+
+"You mean you've been afraid of it?"
+
+"Well, I was doing my business in my own way.  And I suppose your
+present announcement," Strether went on, "isn't merely the result of
+your sense of what I've expected.  Otherwise you wouldn't have put me
+in relation--" But he paused, pulling up.
+
+At this Chad rose.  "Ah HER wanting me not to go has nothing to do with
+it! It's only because she's afraid--afraid of the way that, over there,
+I may get caught.  But her fear's groundless."
+
+He had met again his companion's sufficiently searching look.  "Are you
+tired of her?"
+
+Chad gave him in reply to this, with a movement of the head, the
+strangest slow smile he had ever had from him.  "Never."
+
+It had immediately, on Strether's imagination, so deep and soft an
+effect that our friend could only for the moment keep it before him.
+"Never?"
+
+"Never," Chad obligingly and serenely repeated.
+
+It made his companion take several more steps.  "Then YOU'RE not
+afraid."
+
+"Afraid to go?"
+
+Strether pulled up again.  "Afraid to stay."
+
+The young man looked brightly amazed.  "You want me now to 'stay'?"
+
+"If I don't immediately sail the Pococks will immediately come out.
+That's what I mean," said Strether, "by your mother's ultimatum ."
+
+Chad showed a still livelier, but not an alarmed interest.  "She has
+turned on Sarah and Jim?"
+
+Strether joined him for an instant in the vision.  "Oh and you may be
+sure Mamie.  THAT'S whom she's turning on."
+
+This also Chad saw--he laughed out.  "Mamie--to corrupt me?"
+
+"Ah," said Strether, "she's very charming."
+
+"So you've already more than once told me.  I should like to see her."
+
+Something happy and easy, something above all unconscious, in the way
+he said this, brought home again to his companion the facility of his
+attitude and the enviability of his state.  "See her then by all means.
+And consider too," Strether went on, "that you really give your sister
+a lift in letting her come to you.  You give her a couple of months of
+Paris, which she hasn't seen, if I'm not mistaken, since just after she
+was married, and which I'm sure she wants but the pretext to visit."
+
+Chad listened, but with all his own knowledge of the world.  "She has
+had it, the pretext, these several years, yet she has never taken it."
+
+"Do you mean YOU?" Strether after an instant enquired.
+
+"Certainly--the lone exile.  And whom do you mean?" said Chad.
+
+"Oh I mean ME.  I'm her pretext.  That is--for it comes to the same
+thing--I'm your mother's."
+
+"Then why," Chad asked, "doesn't Mother come herself?"
+
+His friend gave him a long look.  "Should you like her to?"  And as he
+for the moment said nothing: "It's perfectly open to you to cable for
+her."
+
+Chad continued to think.  "Will she come if I do?"
+
+"Quite possibly.  But try, and you'll see."
+
+"Why don't YOU try?" Chad after a moment asked.
+
+"Because I don't want to."
+
+Chad thought.  "Don't desire her presence here?"
+
+Strether faced the question, and his answer was the more emphatic.
+"Don't put it off, my dear boy, on ME!"
+
+"Well--I see what you mean.  I'm sure you'd behave beautifully but you
+DON'T want to see her.  So I won't play you that trick.'
+
+"Ah," Strether declared, "I shouldn't call it a trick.  You've a
+perfect right, and it would be perfectly straight of you."  Then he
+added in a different tone: "You'd have moreover, in the person of
+Madame de Vionnet, a very interesting relation prepared for her."
+
+Their eyes, on this proposition, continued to meet, but Chad's pleasant
+and bold, never flinched for a moment.  He got up at last and he said
+something with which Strether was struck.  "She wouldn't understand
+her, but that makes no difference.  Madame de Vionnet would like to see
+her.  She'd like to be charming to her.  She believes she could work
+it."
+
+Strether thought a moment, affected by this, but finally turning away.
+"She couldn't!"
+
+"You're quite sure?" Chad asked.
+
+"Well, risk it if you like!"
+
+Strether, who uttered this with serenity, had urged a plea for their
+now getting into the air; but the young man still waited.  "Have you
+sent your answer?"
+
+"No, I've done nothing yet."
+
+"Were you waiting to see me?"
+
+"No, not that."
+
+"Only waiting"--and Chad, with this, had a smile for him--"to see Miss
+Gostrey?"
+
+"No--not even Miss Gostrey.  I wasn't waiting to see any one.  I had
+only waited, till now, to make up my mind--in complete solitude; and,
+since I of course absolutely owe you the information, was on the point
+of going out with it quite made up.  Have therefore a little more
+patience with me.  Remember," Strether went on, "that that's what you
+originally asked ME to have.  I've had it, you see, and you see what
+has come of it.  Stay on with me."
+
+Chad looked grave.  "How much longer?"
+
+"Well, till I make you a sign.  I can't myself, you know, at the best,
+or at the worst, stay for ever.  Let the Pococks come," Strether
+repeated.
+
+"Because it gains you time?"
+
+"Yes--it gains me time."
+
+Chad, as if it still puzzled him, waited a minute.  "You don't want to
+get back to Mother?"
+
+"Not just yet.  I'm not ready."
+
+"You feel," Chad asked in a tone of his own, "the charm of life over
+here?"
+
+"Immensely."  Strether faced it.  "You've helped me so to feel it that
+that surely needn't surprise you."
+
+"No, it doesn't surprise me, and I'm delighted.  But what, my dear
+man," Chad went on with conscious queerness, "does it all lead to for
+you?"
+
+The change of position and of relation, for each, was so oddly betrayed
+in the question that Chad laughed out as soon as he had uttered
+it--which made Strether also laugh.  "Well, to my having a certitude
+that has been tested--that has passed through the fire. But oh," he
+couldn't help breaking out, "if within my first month here you had been
+willing to move with me--!"
+
+"Well?" said Chad, while he broke down as for weight of thought.
+
+"Well, we should have been over there by now."
+
+"Ah but you wouldn't have had your fun!"
+
+"I should have had a month of it; and I'm having now, if you want to
+know," Strether continued, "enough to last me for the rest of my days."
+
+Chad looked amused and interested, yet still somewhat in the dark;
+partly perhaps because Strether's estimate of fun had required of him
+from the first a good deal of elucidation.  "It wouldn't do if I left
+you--?"
+
+"Left me?"--Strether remained blank.
+
+"Only for a month or two--time to go and come.  Madame de Vionnet,"
+Chad smiled, "would look after you in the interval."
+
+"To go back by yourself, I remaining here?"  Again for an instant their
+eyes had the question out; after which Strether said: "Grotesque!"
+
+"But I want to see Mother," Chad presently returned.  "Remember how
+long it is since I've seen Mother."
+
+"Long indeed; and that's exactly why I was originally so keen for
+moving you.  Hadn't you shown us enough how beautifully you could do
+without it?"
+
+"Oh but," said Chad wonderfully, "I'm better now."
+
+There was an easy triumph in it that made his friend laugh out again.
+"Oh if you were worse I SHOULD know what to do with you.  In that case
+I believe I'd have you gagged and strapped down, carried on board
+resisting, kicking.  How MUCH," Strether asked, "do you want to see
+Mother?"
+
+"How much?"--Chad seemed to find it in fact difficult to say.
+
+"How much."
+
+"Why as much as you've made me.  I'd give anything to see her.  And
+you've left me," Chad went on, "in little enough doubt as to how much
+SHE wants it."
+
+Strether thought a minute.  "Well then if those things are really your
+motive catch the French steamer and sail to-morrow.  Of course, when it
+comes to that, you're absolutely free to do as you choose. From the
+moment you can't hold yourself I can only accept your flight."
+
+"I'll fly in a minute then," said Chad, "if you'll stay here."
+
+"I'll stay here till the next steamer--then I'll follow you."
+
+"And do you call that," Chad asked, "accepting my flight?"
+
+"Certainly--it's the only thing to call it.  The only way to keep me
+here, accordingly," Strether explained, "is by staying yourself."
+
+Chad took it in.  "All the more that I've really dished you, eh?"
+
+"Dished me?" Strether echoed as inexpressively as possible.
+
+"Why if she sends out the Pococks it will be that she doesn't trust
+you, and if she doesn't trust you, that bears upon--well, you know
+what."
+
+Strether decided after a moment that he did know what, and in
+consonance with this he spoke.  "You see then all the more what you owe
+me."
+
+"Well, if I do see, how can I pay?"
+
+"By not deserting me.  By standing by me."
+
+"Oh I say--!"  But Chad, as they went downstairs, clapped a firm hand,
+in the manner of a pledge, upon his shoulder.  They descended slowly
+together and had, in the court of the hotel, some further talk, of
+which the upshot was that they presently separated.  Chad Newsome
+departed, and Strether, left alone, looked about, superficially, for
+Waymarsh.  But Waymarsh hadn't yet, it appeared, come down, and our
+friend finally went forth without sight of him.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+At four o'clock that afternoon he had still not seen him, but he was
+then, as to make up for this, engaged in talk about him with Miss
+Gostrey.  Strether had kept away from home all day, given himself up to
+the town and to his thoughts, wandered and mused, been at once restless
+and absorbed--and all with the present climax of a rich little welcome
+in the Quartier Marboeuf.  "Waymarsh has been, 'unbeknown' to me, I'm
+convinced"--for Miss Gostrey had enquired--"in communication with
+Woollett: the consequence of which was, last night, the loudest
+possible call for me."
+
+"Do you mean a letter to bring you home?"
+
+"No--a cable, which I have at this moment in my pocket: a 'Come back by
+the first ship.'"
+
+Strether's hostess, it might have been made out, just escaped changing
+colour.  Reflexion arrived but in time and established a provisional
+serenity.  It was perhaps exactly this that enabled her to say with
+duplicity: "And you're going--?"
+
+"You almost deserve it when you abandon me so."
+
+She shook her head as if this were not worth taking up.  "My absence
+has helped you--as I've only to look at you to see.  It was my
+calculation, and I'm justified.  You're not where you were.  And the
+thing," she smiled, "was for me not to be there either.  You can go of
+yourself."
+
+"Oh but I feel to-day," he comfortably declared, "that I shall want you
+yet."
+
+She took him all in again.  "Well, I promise you not again to leave
+you, but it will only be to follow you.  You've got your momentum and
+can toddle alone."
+
+He intelligently accepted it.  "Yes--I suppose I can toddle.  It's the
+sight of that in fact that has upset Waymarsh.  He can bear it--the way
+I strike him as going--no longer.  That's only the climax of his
+original feeling.  He wants me to quit; and he must have written to
+Woollett that I'm in peril of perdition."
+
+"Ah good!" she murmured.  "But is it only your supposition?"
+
+"I make it out--it explains."
+
+"Then he denies?--or you haven't asked him?"
+
+"I've not had time," Strether said; "I made it out but last night,
+putting various things together, and I've not been since then face to
+face with him."
+
+She wondered.  "Because you're too disgusted?  You can't trust
+yourself?"
+
+He settled his glasses on his nose.  "Do I look in a great rage?"
+
+"You look divine!"
+
+"There's nothing," he went on, "to be angry about.  He has done me on
+the contrary a service."
+
+She made it out.  "By bringing things to a head?"
+
+"How well you understand!" he almost groaned.  "Waymarsh won't in the
+least, at any rate, when I have it out with him, deny or extenuate.  He
+has acted from the deepest conviction, with the best conscience and
+after wakeful nights.  He'll recognise that he's fully responsible, and
+will consider that he has been highly successful; so that any
+discussion we may have will bring us quite together again--bridge the
+dark stream that has kept us so thoroughly apart.  We shall have at
+last, in the consequences of his act, something we can definitely talk
+about."
+
+She was silent a little.  "How wonderfully you take it! But you're
+always wonderful."
+
+He had a pause that matched her own; then he had, with an adequate
+spirit, a complete admission.  "It's quite true.  I'm extremely
+wonderful just now.  I dare say in fact I'm quite fantastic, and I
+shouldn't be at all surprised if I were mad."
+
+"Then tell me!" she earnestly pressed.  As he, however, for the time
+answered nothing, only returning the look with which she watched him,
+she presented herself where it was easier to meet her.  "What will Mr.
+Waymarsh exactly have done?"
+
+"Simply have written a letter.  One will have been quite enough.  He
+has told them I want looking after."
+
+"And DO you?"--she was all interest.
+
+"Immensely.  And I shall get it."
+
+"By which you mean you don't budge?"
+
+"I don't budge."
+
+"You've cabled?"
+
+"No--I've made Chad do it."
+
+"That you decline to come?"
+
+"That HE declines.  We had it out this morning and I brought him round.
+He had come in, before I was down, to tell me he was ready--ready, I
+mean, to return.  And he went off, after ten minutes with me, to say he
+wouldn't."
+
+Miss Gostrey followed with intensity.  "Then you've STOPPED him?"
+
+Strether settled himself afresh in his chair.  "I've stopped him. That
+is for the time.  That"--he gave it to her more vividly--"is where I
+am."
+
+"I see, I see.  But where's Mr. Newsome?  He was ready," she asked, "to
+go?"
+
+"All ready."
+
+"And sincerely--believing YOU'D be?"
+
+"Perfectly, I think; so that he was amazed to find the hand I had laid
+on him to pull him over suddenly converted into an engine for keeping
+him still."
+
+It was an account of the matter Miss Gostrey could weigh.  "Does he
+think the conversion sudden?"
+
+"Well," said Strether, "I'm not altogether sure what he thinks.  I'm
+not sure of anything that concerns him, except that the more I've seen
+of him the less I've found him what I originally expected. He's
+obscure, and that's why I'm waiting."
+
+She wondered.  "But for what in particular?"
+
+"For the answer to his cable."
+
+"And what was his cable?"
+
+"I don't know," Strether replied; "it was to be, when he left me,
+according to his own taste.  I simply said to him: 'I want to stay, and
+the only way for me to do so is for you to.' That I wanted to stay
+seemed to interest him, and he acted on that."
+
+Miss Gostrey turned it over.  "He wants then himself to stay."
+
+"He half wants it.  That is he half wants to go.  My original appeal
+has to that extent worked in him.  Nevertheless," Strether pursued, "he
+won't go.  Not, at least, so long as I'm here."
+
+"But you can't," his companion suggested, "stay here always.  I wish
+you could."
+
+"By no means.  Still, I want to see him a little further.  He's not in
+the least the case I supposed, he's quite another case.  And it's as
+such that he interests me."  It was almost as if for his own
+intelligence that, deliberate and lucid, our friend thus expressed the
+matter.  "I don't want to give him up."
+
+Miss Gostrey but desired to help his lucidity.  She had however to be
+light and tactful.  "Up, you mean--a--to his mother?"
+
+"Well, I'm not thinking of his mother now.  I'm thinking of the plan of
+which I was the mouthpiece, which, as soon as we met, I put before him
+as persuasively as I knew how, and which was drawn up, as it were, in
+complete ignorance of all that, in this last long period, has been
+happening to him.  It took no account whatever of the impression I was
+here on the spot immediately to begin to receive from him--impressions
+of which I feel sure I'm far from having had the last."
+
+Miss Gostrey had a smile of the most genial criticism.  "So your idea
+is--more or less--to stay out of curiosity?"
+
+"Call it what you like! I don't care what it's called--"
+
+"So long as you do stay?  Certainly not then.  I call it, all the same,
+immense fun," Maria Gostrey declared; "and to see you work it out will
+be one of the sensations of my life.  It IS clear you can toddle alone!"
+
+He received this tribute without elation.  "I shan't be alone when the
+Pococks have come."
+
+Her eyebrows went up.  "The Pococks are coming?"
+
+"That, I mean, is what will happen--and happen as quickly as
+possible--in consequence of Chad's cable.  They'll simply embark. Sarah
+will come to speak for her mother--with an effect different from MY
+muddle."
+
+Miss Gostrey more gravely wondered.  "SHE then will take him back?"
+
+"Very possibly--and we shall see.  She must at any rate have the
+chance, and she may be trusted to do all she can."
+
+"And do you WANT that?"
+
+"Of course," said Strether, "I want it.  I want to play fair."
+
+But she had lost for a moment the thread.  "If it devolves on the
+Pococks why do you stay?"
+
+"Just to see that I DO play fair--and a little also, no doubt, that
+they do."  Strether was luminous as he had never been.  "I came out to
+find myself in presence of new facts--facts that have kept striking me
+as less and less met by our old reasons.  The matter's perfectly
+simple.  New reasons--reasons as new as the facts themselves--are
+wanted; and of this our friends at Woollett--Chad's and mine--were at
+the earliest moment definitely notified.  If any are producible Mrs.
+Pocock will produce them; she'll bring over the whole collection.
+They'll be," he added with a pensive smile "a part of the 'fun' you
+speak of."
+
+She was quite in the current now and floating by his side.  "It's
+Mamie--so far as I've had it from you--who'll be their great card." And
+then as his contemplative silence wasn't a denial she significantly
+added: "I think I'm sorry for her."
+
+"I think I am!"--and Strether sprang up, moving about a little as her
+eyes followed him.  "But it can't be helped."
+
+"You mean her coming out can't be?"
+
+He explained after another turn what he meant.  "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.  Yet he
+was answered still better when she said in a moment: "Will Mr. Newsome
+introduce his sister--?"
+
+"To Madame de Vionnet?"  Strether spoke the name at last.  "I shall be
+greatly surprised if he doesn't."
+
+She seemed to gaze at the possibility.  "You mean you've thought of it
+and you're prepared."
+
+"I've thought of it and I'm prepared."
+
+It was to her visitor now that she applied her consideration.  "Bon!
+You ARE magnificent!"
+
+"Well," he answered after a pause and a little wearily, but still
+standing there before her--"well, that's what, just once in all my dull
+days, I think I shall like to have been!"
+
+Two days later he had news from Chad of a communication from Woollett
+in response to their determinant telegram, this missive being addressed
+to Chad himself and announcing the immediate departure for France of
+Sarah and Jim and Mamie.  Strether had meanwhile on his own side
+cabled; he had but delayed that act till after his visit to Miss
+Gostrey, an interview by which, as so often before, he felt his sense
+of things cleared up and settled.  His message to Mrs. Newsome, in
+answer to her own, had consisted of the words: "Judge best to take
+another month, but with full appreciation of all re-enforcements."  He
+had added that he was writing, but he was of course always writing; it
+was a practice that continued, oddly enough, to relieve him, to make
+him come nearer than anything else to the consciousness of doing
+something: so that he often wondered if he hadn't really, under his
+recent stress, acquired some hollow trick, one of the specious arts of
+make-believe.  Wouldn't the pages he still so freely dispatched by the
+American post have been worthy of a showy journalist, some master of
+the great new science of beating the sense out of words? Wasn't he
+writing against time, and mainly to show he was kind?--since it had
+become quite his habit not to like to read himself over.  On those
+lines he could still be liberal, yet it was at best a sort of whistling
+in the dark.  It was unmistakeable moreover that the sense of being in
+the dark now pressed on him more sharply--creating thereby the need for
+a louder and livelier whistle.  He whistled long and hard after sending
+his message; he whistled again and again in celebration of Chad's news;
+there was an interval of a fortnight in which this exercise helped him.
+He had no great notion of what, on the spot, Sarah Pocock would have to
+say, though he had indeed confused premonitions; but it shouldn't be in
+her power to say--it shouldn't be in any one's anywhere to say--that he
+was neglecting her mother.  He might have written before more freely,
+but he had never written more copiously; and he frankly gave for a
+reason at Woollett that he wished to fill the void created there by
+Sarah's departure.
+
+The increase of his darkness, however, and the quickening, as I have
+called it, of his tune, resided in the fact that he was hearing almost
+nothing.  He had for some time been aware that he was hearing less than
+before, and he was now clearly following a process by which Mrs.
+Newsome's letters could but logically stop. He hadn't had a line for
+many days, and he needed no proof--though he was, in time, to have
+plenty--that she wouldn't have put pen to paper after receiving the
+hint that had determined her telegram. She wouldn't write till Sarah
+should have seen him and reported on him.  It was strange, though it
+might well be less so than his own behaviour appeared at Woollett.  It
+was at any rate significant, and what WAS remarkable was the way his
+friend's nature and manner put on for him, through this very drop of
+demonstration, a greater intensity.  It struck him really that he had
+never so lived with her as during this period of her silence; the
+silence was a sacred hush, a finer clearer medium, in which her
+idiosyncrasies showed. He walked about with her, sat with her, drove
+with her and dined face-to-face with her--a rare treat "in his life,"
+as he could perhaps have scarce escaped phrasing it; and if he had
+never seen her so soundless he had never, on the other hand, felt her
+so highly, so almost austerely, herself: pure and by the vulgar
+estimate "cold," but deep devoted delicate sensitive noble.  Her
+vividness in these respects became for him, in the special conditions,
+almost an obsession; and though the obsession sharpened his pulses,
+adding really to the excitement of life, there were hours at which, to
+be less on the stretch, he directly sought forgetfulness.  He knew it
+for the queerest of adventures--a circumstance capable of playing such
+a part only for Lambert Strether--that in Paris itself, of all places,
+he should find this ghost of the lady of Woollett more importunate than
+any other presence.
+
+When he went back to Maria Gostrey it was for the change to something
+else.  And yet after all the change scarcely operated for he talked to
+her of Mrs. Newsome in these days as he had never talked before.  He
+had hitherto observed in that particular a discretion and a law;
+considerations that at present broke down quite as if relations had
+altered.  They hadn't REALLY altered, he said to himself, so much as
+that came to; for if what had occurred was of course that Mrs. Newsome
+had ceased to trust him, there was nothing on the other hand to prove
+that he shouldn't win back her confidence.  It was quite his present
+theory that he would leave no stone unturned to do so; and in fact if
+he now told Maria things about her that he had never told before this
+was largely because it kept before him the idea of the honour of such a
+woman's esteem. His relation with Maria as well was, strangely enough,
+no longer quite the same; this truth--though not too
+disconcertingly--had come up between them on the renewal of their
+meetings.  It was all contained in what she had then almost immediately
+said to him; it was represented by the remark she had needed but ten
+minutes to make and that he hadn't been disposed to gainsay.  He could
+toddle alone, and the difference that showed was extraordinary.  The
+turn taken by their talk had promptly confirmed this difference; his
+larger confidence on the score of Mrs. Newsome did the rest; and the
+time seemed already far off when he had held out his small thirsty cup
+to the spout of her pail.  Her pail was scarce touched now, and other
+fountains had flowed for him; she fell into her place as but one of his
+tributaries; and there was a strange sweetness--a melancholy mildness
+that touched him--in her acceptance of the altered order.
+
+It marked for himself the flight of time, or at any rate what he was
+pleased to think of with irony and pity as the rush of experience; it
+having been but the day before yesterday that he sat at her feet and
+held on by her garment and was fed by her hand.  It was the proportions
+that were changed, and the proportions were at all times, he
+philosophised, the very conditions of perception, the terms of thought.
+It was as if, with her effective little entresol and and her wide
+acquaintance, her activities, varieties, promiscuities, the duties and
+devotions that took up nine tenths of her time and of which he got,
+guardedly, but the side-wind--it was as if she had shrunk to a
+secondary element and had consented to the shrinkage with the
+perfection of tact.  This perfection had never failed her; it had
+originally been greater than his prime measure for it; it had kept him
+quite apart, kept him out of the shop, as she called her huge general
+acquaintance, made their commerce as quiet, as much a thing of the home
+alone--the opposite of the shop--as if she had never another customer.
+She had been wonderful to him at first, with the memory of her little
+entresol, the image to which, on most mornings at that time, his eyes
+directly opened; but now she mainly figured for him as but part of the
+bristling total--though of course always as a person to whom he should
+never cease to be indebted.  It would never be given to him certainly
+to inspire a greater kindness.  She had decked him out for others, and
+he saw at this point at least nothing she would ever ask for. She only
+wondered and questioned and listened, rendering him the homage of a
+wistful speculation.  She expressed it repeatedly; he was already far
+beyond her, and she must prepare herself to lose him.  There was but
+one little chance for her.
+
+Often as she had said it he met it--for it was a touch he liked--each
+time the same way.  "My coming to grief?"
+
+"Yes--then I might patch you up."
+
+"Oh for my real smash, if it takes place, there will be no patching."
+
+"But you surely don't mean it will kill you."
+
+"No--worse.  It will make me old."
+
+"Ah nothing can do that! The wonderful and special thing about you is
+that you ARE, at this time of day, youth."  Then she always made,
+further, one of those remarks that she had completely ceased to adorn
+with hesitations or apologies, and that had, by the same token, in
+spite of their extreme straightness, ceased to produce in Strether the
+least embarrassment.  She made him believe them, and they became
+thereby as impersonal as truth itself.  "It's just your particular
+charm."
+
+His answer too was always the same.  "Of course I'm youth--youth for
+the trip to Europe.  I began to be young, or at least to get the
+benefit of it, the moment I met you at Chester, and that's what has
+been taking place ever since.  I never had the benefit at the proper
+time--which comes to saying that I never had the thing itself.  I'm
+having the benefit at this moment; I had it the other day when I said
+to Chad 'Wait'; I shall have it still again when Sarah Pocock arrives.
+It's a benefit that would make a poor show for many people; and I don't
+know who else but you and I, frankly, could begin to see in it what I
+feel.  I don't get drunk; I don't pursue the ladies; I don't spend
+money; I don't even write sonnets.  But nevertheless I'm making up late
+for what I didn't have early.  I cultivate my little benefit in my own
+little way.  It amuses me more than anything that has happened to me in
+all my life.  They may say what they like--it's my surrender, it's my
+tribute, to youth.  One puts that in where one can--it has to come in
+somewhere, if only out of the lives, the conditions, the feelings of
+other persons. Chad gives me the sense of it, for all his grey hairs,
+which merely make it solid in him and safe and serene; and SHE does the
+same, for all her being older than he, for all her marriageable
+daughter, her separated husband, her agitated history.  Though they're
+young enough, my pair, I don't say they're, in the freshest way, their
+own absolutely prime adolescence; for that has nothing to do with it.
+The point is that they're mine.  Yes, they're my youth; since somehow
+at the right time nothing else ever was.  What I meant just now
+therefore is that it would all go--go before doing its work--if they
+were to fail me."
+
+On which, just here, Miss Gostrey inveterately questioned.  "What do
+you, in particular, call its work?"
+
+"Well, to see me through."
+
+"But through what?"--she liked to get it all out of him.
+
+"Why through this experience."  That was all that would come.
+
+It regularly gave her none the less the last word.  "Don't you remember
+how in those first days of our meeting it was I who was to see you
+through?"
+
+"Remember?  Tenderly, deeply"--he always rose to it.  "You're just
+doing your part in letting me maunder to you thus."
+
+"Ah don't speak as if my part were small; since whatever else fails
+you--"
+
+"YOU won't, ever, ever, ever?"--he thus took her up.  "Oh I beg your
+pardon; you necessarily, you inevitably WILL.  Your conditions--that's
+what I mean--won't allow me anything to do for you."
+
+"Let alone--I see what you mean--that I'm drearily dreadfully old. I
+AM, but there's a service--possible for you to render--that I know, all
+the same, I shall think of."
+
+"And what will it be?"
+
+This, in fine, however, she would never tell him.  "You shall hear only
+if your smash takes place.  As that's really out of the question, I
+won't expose myself"--a point at which, for reasons of his own,
+Strether ceased to press.
+
+He came round, for publicity--it was the easiest thing--to the idea
+that his smash WAS out of the question, and this rendered idle the
+discussion of what might follow it.  He attached an added importance,
+as the days elapsed, to the arrival of the Pococks; he had even a
+shameful sense of waiting for it insincerely and incorrectly.  He
+accused himself of making believe to his own mind that Sarah's
+presence, her impression, her judgement would simplify and harmonise,
+he accused himself of being so afraid of what they MIGHT do that he
+sought refuge, to beg the whole question, in a vain fury.  He had
+abundantly seen at home what they were in the habit of doing, and he
+had not at present the smallest ground.  His clearest vision was when
+he made out that what he most desired was an account more full and free
+of Mrs. Newsome's state of mind than any he felt he could now expect
+from herself; that calculation at least went hand in hand with the
+sharp consciousness of wishing to prove to himself that he was not
+afraid to look his behaviour in the face.  If he was by an inexorable
+logic to pay for it he was literally impatient to know the cost, and he
+held himself ready to pay in instalments.  The first instalment would
+be precisely this entertainment of Sarah; as a consequence of which
+moreover, he should know vastly better how he stood.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Eighth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Strether rambled alone during these few days, the effect of the
+incident of the previous week having been to simplify in a marked
+fashion his mixed relations with Waymarsh.  Nothing had passed between
+them in reference to Mrs. Newsome's summons but that our friend had
+mentioned to his own the departure of the deputation actually at
+sea--giving him thus an opportunity to confess to the occult
+intervention he imputed to him.  Waymarsh however in the event
+confessed to nothing; and though this falsified in some degree
+Strether's forecast the latter amusedly saw in it the same depth of
+good conscience out of which the dear man's impertinence had originally
+sprung.  He was patient with the dear man now and delighted to observe
+how unmistakeably he had put on flesh; he felt his own holiday so
+successfully large and free that he was full of allowances and
+charities in respect to those cabined and confined' his instinct toward
+a spirit so strapped down as Waymarsh's was to walk round it on tiptoe
+for fear of waking it up to a sense of losses by this time
+irretrievable.  It was all very funny he knew, and but the difference,
+as he often said to himself, of tweedledum and tweedledee--an
+emancipation so purely comparative that it was like the advance of the
+door-mat on the scraper; yet the present crisis was happily to profit
+by it and the pilgrim from Milrose to know himself more than ever in
+the right.
+
+Strether felt that when he heard of the approach of the Pococks the
+impulse of pity quite sprang up in him beside the impulse of triumph.
+That was exactly why Waymarsh had looked at him with eyes in which the
+heat of justice was measured and shaded.  He had looked very hard, as
+if affectionately sorry for the friend--the friend of fifty-five--whose
+frivolity had had thus to be recorded; becoming, however, but obscurely
+sententious and leaving his companion to formulate a charge.  It was in
+this general attitude that he had of late altogether taken refuge; with
+the drop of discussion they were solemnly sadly superficial; Strether
+recognised in him the mere portentous rumination to which Miss Barrace
+had so good-humouredly described herself as assigning a corner of her
+salon.  It was quite as if he knew his surreptitious step had been
+divined, and it was also as if he missed the chance to explain the
+purity of his motive; but this privation of relief should be precisely
+his small penance:  it was not amiss for Strether that he should find
+himself to that degree uneasy.  If he had been challenged or accused,
+rebuked for meddling or otherwise pulled up, he would probably have
+shown, on his own system, all the height of his consistency, all the
+depth of his good faith.  Explicit resentment of his course would have
+made him take the floor, and the thump of his fist on the table would
+have affirmed him as consciously incorruptible.  Had what now really
+prevailed with Strether been but a dread of that thump--a dread of
+wincing a little painfully at what it might invidiously demonstrate?
+However this might be, at any rate, one of the marks of the crisis was
+a visible, a studied lapse, in Waymarsh, of betrayed concern.  As if to
+make up to his comrade for the stroke by which he had played providence
+he now conspicuously ignored his movements, withdrew himself from the
+pretension to share them, stiffened up his sensibility to neglect, and,
+clasping his large empty hands and swinging his large restless foot,
+clearly looked to another quarter for justice.
+
+This made for independence on Strether's part, and he had in truth at
+no moment of his stay been so free to go and come.  The early summer
+brushed the picture over and blurred everything but the near; it made a
+vast warm fragrant medium in which the elements floated together on the
+best of terms, in which rewards were immediate and reckonings
+postponed.  Chad was out of town again, for the first time since his
+visitor's first view of him; he had explained this necessity--without
+detail, yet also without embarrassment, the circumstance was one of
+those which, in the young man's life, testified to the variety of his
+ties.  Strether wasn't otherwise concerned with it than for its so
+testifying--a pleasant multitudinous image in which he took comfort. He
+took comfort, by the same stroke, in the swing of Chad's pendulum back
+from that other swing, the sharp jerk towards Woollett, so stayed by
+his own hand.  He had the entertainment of thinking that if he had for
+that moment stopped the clock it was to promote the next minute this
+still livelier motion.  He himself did what he hadn't done before; he
+took two or three times whole days off--irrespective of others, of two
+or three taken with Miss Gostrey, two or three taken with little
+Bilham:  he went to Chartres and cultivated, before the front of the
+cathedral, a general easy beatitude; he went to Fontainebleau and
+imagined himself on the way to Italy; he went to Rouen with a little
+handbag and inordinately spent the night.
+
+One afternoon he did something quite different; finding himself in the
+neighbourhood of a fine old house across the river, he passed under the
+great arch of its doorway and asked at the porter's lodge for Madame de
+Vionnet.  He had already hovered more than once about that possibility,
+been aware of it, in the course of ostensible strolls, as lurking but
+round the corner.  Only it had perversely happened, after his morning
+at Notre Dame, that his consistency, as he considered and intended it,
+had come back to him; whereby he had reflected that the encounter in
+question had been none of his making; clinging again intensely to the
+strength of his position, which was precisely that there was nothing in
+it for himself.  From the moment he actively pursued the charming
+associate of his adventure, from that moment his position weakened, for
+he was then acting in an interested way.  It was only within a few days
+that he had fixed himself a limit:  he promised himself his consistency
+should end with Sarah's arrival.  It was arguing correctly to feel the
+title to a free hand conferred on him by this event.  If he wasn't to
+be let alone he should be merely a dupe to act with delicacy.  If he
+wasn't to be trusted he could at least take his ease.  If he was to be
+placed under control he gained leave to try what his position MIGHT
+agreeably give him.  An ideal rigour would perhaps postpone the trial
+till after the Pococks had shown their spirit; and it was to an ideal
+rigour that he had quite promised himself to conform.
+
+Suddenly, however, on this particular day, he felt a particular fear
+under which everything collapsed.  He knew abruptly that he was afraid
+of himself--and yet not in relation to the effect on his sensibilities
+of another hour of Madame de Vionnet.  What he dreaded was the effect
+of a single hour of Sarah Pocock, as to whom he was visited, in
+troubled nights, with fantastic waking dreams.  She loomed at him
+larger than life; she increased in volume as she drew nearer; she so
+met his eyes that, his imagination taking, after the first step, all,
+and more than all, the strides, he already felt her come down on him,
+already burned, under her reprobation, with the blush of guilt, already
+consented, by way of penance, to the instant forfeiture of everything.
+He saw himself, under her direction, recommitted to Woollett as
+juvenile offenders are committed to reformatories.  It wasn't of course
+that Woollett was really a place of discipline; but he knew in advance
+that Sarah's salon at the hotel would be.  His danger, at any rate, in
+such moods of alarm, was some concession, on this ground, that would
+involve a sharp rupture with the actual; therefore if he waited to take
+leave of that actual he might wholly miss his chance.  It was
+represented with supreme vividness by Madame de Vionnet, and that is
+why, in a word, he waited no longer.  He had seen in a flash that he
+must anticipate Mrs. Pocock.  He was accordingly much disappointed on
+now learning from the portress that the lady of his quest was not in
+Paris.  She had gone for some days to the country.  There was nothing
+in this accident but what was natural; yet it produced for poor
+Strether a drop of all confidence.  It was suddenly as if he should
+never see her again, and as if moreover he had brought it on himself by
+not having been quite kind to her.
+
+It was the advantage of his having let his fancy lose itself for a
+little in the gloom that, as by reaction, the prospect began really to
+brighten from the moment the deputation from Woollett alighted on the
+platform of the station.  They had come straight from Havre, having
+sailed from New York to that port, and having also, thanks to a happy
+voyage, made land with a promptitude that left Chad Newsome, who had
+meant to meet them at the dock, belated.  He had received their
+telegram, with the announcement of their immediate further advance,
+just as he was taking the train for Havre, so that nothing had remained
+for him but to await them in Paris.  He hastily picked up Strether, at
+the hotel, for this purpose, and he even, with easy pleasantry,
+suggested the attendance of Waymarsh as well--Waymarsh, at the moment
+his cab rattled up, being engaged, under Strether's contemplative
+range, in a grave perambulation of the familiar court.  Waymarsh had
+learned from his companion, who had already had a note, delivered by
+hand, from Chad, that the Pococks were due, and had ambiguously,
+though, as always, impressively, glowered at him over the circumstance;
+carrying himself in a manner in which Strether was now expert enough to
+recognise his uncertainty, in the premises, as to the best tone.  The
+only tone he aimed at with confidence was a full tone--which was
+necessarily difficult in the absence of a full knowledge.  The Pococks
+were a quantity as yet unmeasured, and, as he had practically brought
+them over, so this witness had to that extent exposed himself.  He
+wanted to feel right about it, but could only, at the best, for the
+time, feel vague. "I shall look to you, you know, immensely," our
+friend had said, "to help me with them," and he had been quite
+conscious of the effect of the remark, and of others of the same sort,
+on his comrade's sombre sensibility.  He had insisted on the fact that
+Waymarsh would quite like Mrs. Pocock--one could be certain he would:
+he would be with her about everything, and she would also be with HIM,
+and Miss Barrace's nose, in short, would find itself out of joint.
+
+Strether had woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in the
+court for Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself quiet
+while, caged and leonine, his fellow traveller paced and turned before
+him.  Chad Newsome was doubtless to be struck, when he arrived, with
+the sharpness of their opposition at this particular hour; he was to
+remember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came with him and with Strether
+to the street and stood there with a face half-wistful and half-rueful.
+They talked of him, the two others, as they drove, and Strether put
+Chad in possession of much of his own strained sense of things.  He had
+already, a few days before, named to him the wire he was convinced
+their friend had pulled--a confidence that had made on the young man's
+part quite hugely for curiosity and diversion.  The action of the
+matter, moreover, Strether could see, was to penetrate; he saw that is,
+how Chad judged a system of influence in which Waymarsh had served as a
+determinant--an impression just now quickened again; with the whole
+bearing of such a fact on the youth's view of his relatives.  As it
+came up between them that they might now take their friend for a
+feature of the control of these latter now sought to be exerted from
+Woollett, Strether felt indeed how it would be stamped all over him,
+half an hour later for Sarah Pocock's eyes, that he was as much on
+Chad's "side" as Waymarsh had probably described him.  He was letting
+himself at present, go; there was no denying it; it might be
+desperation, it might be confidence; he should offer himself to the
+arriving travellers bristling with all the lucidity he had cultivated.
+
+He repeated to Chad what he had been saying in the court to Waymarsh;
+how there was no doubt whatever that his sister would find the latter a
+kindred spirit, no doubt of the alliance, based on an exchange of
+views, that the pair would successfully strike up.  They would become
+as thick as thieves--which moreover was but a development of what
+Strether remembered to have said in one of his first discussions with
+his mate, struck as he had then already been with the elements of
+affinity between that personage and Mrs. Newsome herself.  "I told him,
+one day, when he had questioned me on your mother, that she was a
+person who, when he should know her, would rouse in him, I was sure, a
+special enthusiasm; and that hangs together with the conviction we now
+feel--this certitude that Mrs. Pocock will take him into her boat.  For
+it's your mother's own boat that she's pulling."
+
+"Ah," said Chad, "Mother's worth fifty of Sally!"
+
+"A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same you'll be
+meeting your mother's representative--just as I shall.  I feel like the
+outgoing ambassador," said Strether, "doing honour to his appointed
+successor."  A moment after speaking as he had just done he felt he had
+inadvertently rather cheapened Mrs. Newsome to her son; an impression
+audibly reflected, as at first seen, in Chad's prompt protest.  He had
+recently rather failed of apprehension of the young man's attitude and
+temper--remaining principally conscious of how little worry, at the
+worst, he wasted, and he studied him at this critical hour with renewed
+interest.  Chad had done exactly what he had promised him a fortnight
+previous--had accepted without another question his plea for delay.  He
+was waiting cheerfully and handsomely, but also inscrutably and with a
+slight increase perhaps of the hardness originally involved in his
+acquired high polish.  He was neither excited nor depressed; was easy
+and acute and deliberate--unhurried unflurried unworried, only at most
+a little less amused than usual.  Strether felt him more than ever a
+justification of the extraordinary process of which his own absurd
+spirit had been the arena; he knew as their cab rolled along, knew as
+he hadn't even yet known, that nothing else than what Chad had done and
+had been would have led to his present showing.  They had made him,
+these things, what he was, and the business hadn't been easy; it had
+taken time and trouble, it had cost, above all, a price.  The result at
+any rate was now to be offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that
+was concerned, was glad to be there to witness.  Would she in the least
+make it out or take it in, the result, or would she in the least care
+for it if she did?  He scratched his chin as he asked himself by what
+name, when challenged--as he was sure he should be--he could call it
+for her.  Oh those were determinations she must herself arrive at;
+since she wanted so much to see, let her see then and welcome.  She had
+come out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in Strether's
+inner sense that she practically wouldn't see.
+
+That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a
+word that next dropped from him.  "They're children; they play at
+life!"--and the exclamation was significant and reassuring.  It implied
+that he hadn't then, for his companion's sensibility, appeared to give
+Mrs. Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend's presently asking him
+if it were his idea that Mrs. Pocock and Madame de Vionnet should
+become acquainted.  Strether was still more sharply struck, hereupon,
+with Chad's lucidity.  "Why, isn't that exactly--to get a sight of the
+company I keep--what she has come out for?"
+
+"Yes--I'm afraid it is," Strether unguardedly replied.
+
+Chad's quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation.  "Why do you say
+you're afraid?"
+
+"Well, because I feel a certain responsibility.  It's my testimony, I
+imagine, that will have been at the bottom of Mrs. Pocock's curiosity.
+My letters, as I've supposed you to understand from the beginning, have
+spoken freely.  I've certainly said my little say about Madame de
+Vionnet."
+
+All that, for Chad, was beautifully obvious.  "Yes, but you've only
+spoken handsomely."
+
+"Never more handsomely of any woman.  But it's just that tone--!"
+
+"That tone," said Chad, "that has fetched her?  I dare say; but I've no
+quarrel with you about it.  And no more has Madame de Vionnet. Don't
+you know by this time how she likes you?"
+
+"Oh!"--and Strether had, with his groan, a real pang of melancholy.
+"For all I've done for her!"
+
+"Ah you've done a great deal."
+
+Chad's urbanity fairly shamed him, and he was at this moment absolutely
+impatient to see the face Sarah Pocock would present to a sort of
+thing, as he synthetically phrased it to himself, with no adequate
+forecast of which, despite his admonitions, she would certainly arrive.
+"I've done THIS!"
+
+"Well, this is all right.  She likes," Chad comfortably remarked,
+ "to be liked."
+
+It gave his companion a moment's thought.  "And she's sure Mrs. Pocock
+WILL--?"
+
+"No, I say that for you.  She likes your liking her; it's so much, as
+it were," Chad laughed, "to the good.  However, she doesn't despair of
+Sarah either, and is prepared, on her own side, to go all lengths."
+
+"In the way of appreciation?"
+
+"Yes, and of everything else.  In the way of general amiability,
+hospitality and welcome.  She's under arms," Chad laughed again; "she's
+prepared."
+
+Strether took it in; then as if an echo of Miss Barrace were in the
+air:  "She's wonderful."
+
+"You don't begin to know HOW wonderful!"
+
+There was a depth in it, to Strether's ear, of confirmed luxury--almost
+a kind of unconscious insolence of proprietorship; but the effect of
+the glimpse was not at this moment to foster speculation: there was
+something so conclusive in so much graceful and generous assurance.  It
+was in fact a fresh evocation; and the evocation had before many
+minutes another consequence.  "Well, I shall see her oftener now.  I
+shall see her as much as I like--by your leave; which is what I
+hitherto haven't done."
+
+"It has been," said Chad, but without reproach, "only your own fault. I
+tried to bring you together, and SHE, my dear fellow--I never saw her
+more charming to any man.  But you've got your extraordinary ideas."
+
+"Well, I DID have," Strether murmured, while he felt both how they had
+possessed him and how they had now lost their authority.  He couldn't
+have traced the sequence to the end, but it was all because of Mrs.
+Pocock.  Mrs. Pocock might be because of Mrs. Newsome, but that was
+still to be proved.  What came over him was the sense of having
+stupidly failed to profit where profit would have been precious.  It
+had been open to him to see so much more of her, and he had but let the
+good days pass.  Fierce in him almost was the resolve to lose no more
+of them, and he whimsically reflected, while at Chad's side he drew
+nearer to his destination, that it was after all Sarah who would have
+quickened his chance.  What her visit of inquisition might achieve in
+other directions was as yet all obscure--only not obscure that it would
+do supremely much to bring two earnest persons together.  He had but to
+listen to Chad at this moment to feel it; for Chad was in the act of
+remarking to him that they of course both counted on him--he himself
+and the other earnest person--for cheer and support.  It was brave to
+Strether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out
+was to make things ravishing to the Pococks.  No, if Madame de Vionnet
+compassed THAT, compassed the ravishment of the Pococks, Madame de
+Vionnet would be prodigious.  It would be a beautiful plan if it
+succeeded, and it all came to the question of Sarah's being really
+bribeable.  The precedent of his own case helped Strether perhaps but
+little to consider she might prove so; it being distinct that her
+character would rather make for every possible difference.  This idea
+of his own bribeability set him apart for himself; with the further
+mark in fact that his case was absolutely proved.  He liked always,
+where Lambert Strether was concerned, to know the worst, and what he
+now seemed to know was not only that he was bribeable, but that he had
+been effectually bribed.  The only difficulty was that he couldn't
+quite have said with what.  It was as if he had sold himself, but
+hadn't somehow got the cash.  That, however, was what,
+characteristically, WOULD happen to him.  It would naturally be his
+kind of traffic.  While he thought of these things he reminded Chad of
+the truth they mustn't lose sight of--the truth that, with all
+deference to her susceptibility to new interests, Sarah would have come
+out with a high firm definite purpose.  "She hasn't come out, you know,
+to be bamboozled. We may all be ravishing--nothing perhaps can be more
+easy for us; but she hasn't come out to be ravished.  She has come out
+just simply to take you home."
+
+"Oh well, with HER I'll go," said Chad good-humouredly.  "I suppose
+you'll allow THAT."  And then as for a minute Strether said nothing:
+"Or is your idea that when I've seen her I shan't want to go?"  As this
+question, however, again left his friend silent he presently went on:
+"My own idea at any rate is that they shall have while they're here the
+best sort of time."
+
+It was at this that Strether spoke.  "Ah there you are! I think if you
+really wanted to go--!"
+
+"Well?" said Chad to bring it out.
+
+"Well, you wouldn't trouble about our good time.  You wouldn't care
+what sort of a time we have."
+
+Chad could always take in the easiest way in the world any ingenious
+suggestion.  "I see.  But can I help it?  I'm too decent."
+
+"Yes, you're too decent!" Strether heavily sighed.  And he felt for the
+moment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission.
+
+It ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made no
+rejoinder.  But he spoke again as they came in sight of the station.
+"Do you mean to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?"
+
+As to this Strether was ready.  "No."
+
+"But haven't you told me they know about her?"
+
+"I think I've told you your mother knows."
+
+"And won't she have told Sally?"
+
+"That's one of the things I want to see."
+
+"And if you find she HAS--?"
+
+"Will I then, you mean, bring them together?"
+
+"Yes," said Chad with his pleasant promptness:  "to show her there's
+nothing in it."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "I don't know that I care very much what she may
+think there's in it."
+
+"Not if it represents what Mother thinks?"
+
+"Ah what DOES your mother think?"  There was in this some sound of
+bewilderment.
+
+But they were just driving up, and help, of a sort, might after all be
+quite at hand.  "Isn't that, my dear man, what we're both just going to
+make out?"
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Strether quitted the station half an hour later in different company.
+Chad had taken charge, for the journey to the hotel, of Sarah, Mamie,
+the maid and the luggage, all spaciously installed and conveyed; and it
+was only after the four had rolled away that his companion got into a
+cab with Jim.  A strange new feeling had come over Strether, in
+consequence of which his spirits had risen; it was as if what had
+occurred on the alighting of his critics had been something other than
+his fear, though his fear had vet not been of an instant scene of
+violence.  His impression had been nothing but what was inevitable--he
+said that to himself; yet relief and reassurance had softly dropped
+upon him.  Nothing could be so odd as to be indebted for these things
+to the look of faces and the sound of voices that had been with him to
+satiety, as he might have said, for years; but he now knew, all the
+same, how uneasy he had felt; that was brought home to him by his
+present sense of a respite.  It had come moreover in the flash of an
+eye, it had come in the smile with which Sarah, whom, at the window of
+her compartment, they had effusively greeted from the platform, rustled
+down to them a moment later, fresh and handsome from her cool June
+progress through the charming land.  It was only a sign, but enough:
+she was going to be gracious and unallusive, she was going to play the
+larger game--which was still more apparent, after she had emerged from
+Chad's arms, in her direct greeting to the valued friend of her family.
+
+Strether WAS then as much as ever the valued friend of her family, it
+was something he could at all events go on with; and the manner of his
+response to it expressed even for himself how little he had enjoyed the
+prospect of ceasing to figure in that likeness.  He had always seen
+Sarah gracious--had in fact rarely seen her shy or dry, her marked
+thin-lipped smile, intense without brightness and as prompt to act as
+the scrape of a safety-match; the protrusion of her rather remarkably
+long chin, which in her case represented invitation and urbanity, and
+not, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance; the penetration of her
+voice to a distance, the general encouragement and approval of her
+manner, were all elements with which intercourse had made him familiar,
+but which he noted today almost as if she had been a new acquaintance.
+This first glimpse of her had given a brief but vivid accent to her
+resemblance to her mother; he could have taken her for Mrs. Newsome
+while she met his eyes as the train rolled into the station.  It was an
+impression that quickly dropped; Mrs. Newsome was much handsomer, and
+while Sarah inclined to the massive her mother had, at an age, still
+the girdle of a maid; also the latter's chin was rather short, than
+long, and her smile, by good fortune, much more, oh ever so much more,
+mercifully vague.  Strether had seen Mrs. Newsome reserved; he had
+literally heard her silent, though he had never known her unpleasant.
+It was the case with Mrs. Pocock that he had known HER unpleasant, even
+though he had never known her not affable.  She had forms of affability
+that were in a high degree assertive; nothing for instance had ever
+been more striking than that she was affable to Jim.
+
+What had told in any case at the window of the train was her high clear
+forehead, that forehead which her friends, for some reason, always
+thought of as a "brow"; the long reach of her eyes--it came out at this
+juncture in such a manner as to remind him, oddly enough, also of that
+of Waymarsh's; and the unusual gloss of her dark hair, dressed and
+hatted, after her mother's refined example, with such an avoidance of
+extremes that it was always spoken of at Woollett as "their own."
+Though this analogy dropped as soon as she was on the platform it had
+lasted long enough to make him feel all the advantage, as it were, of
+his relief.  The woman at home, the woman to whom he was attached, was
+before him just long enough to give him again the measure of the
+wretchedness, in fact really of the shame, of their having to recognise
+the formation, between them, of a "split."  He had taken this measure
+in solitude and meditation:  but the catastrophe, as Sarah steamed up,
+looked for its seconds unprecedentedly dreadful--or proved, more
+exactly, altogether unthinkable; so that his finding something free and
+familiar to respond to brought with it an instant renewal of his
+loyalty.  He had suddenly sounded the whole depth, had gasped at what
+he might have lost.
+
+Well, he could now, for the quarter of an hour of their detention hover
+about the travellers as soothingly as if their direct message to him
+was that he had lost nothing.  He wasn't going to have Sarah write to
+her mother that night that he was in any way altered or strange.  There
+had been times enough for a month when it had seemed to him that he was
+strange, that he was altered, in every way; but that was a matter for
+himself; he knew at least whose business it was not; it was not at all
+events such a circumstance as Sarah's own unaided lights would help her
+to.  Even if she had come out to flash those lights more than yet
+appeared she wouldn't make much headway against mere pleasantness.  He
+counted on being able to be merely pleasant to the end, and if only
+from incapacity moreover to formulate anything different.  He couldn't
+even formulate to himself his being changed and queer; it had taken
+place, the process, somewhere deep down; Maria Gostrey had caught
+glimpses of it; but how was he to fish it up, even if he desired, for
+Mrs. Pocock?  This was then the spirit in which he hovered, and with
+the easier throb in it much indebted furthermore to the impression of
+high and established adequacy as a pretty girl promptly produced in him
+by Mamie.  He had wondered vaguely--turning over many things in the
+fidget of his thoughts--if Mamie WERE as pretty as Woollett published
+her; as to which issue seeing her now again was to be so swept away by
+Woollett's opinion that this consequence really let loose for the
+imagination an avalanche of others.  There were positively five minutes
+in which the last word seemed of necessity to abide with a Woollett
+represented by a Mamie.  This was the sort of truth the place itself
+would feel; it would send her forth in confidence; it would point to
+her with triumph; it would take its stand on her with assurance; it
+would be conscious of no requirements she didn't meet, of no question
+she couldn't answer.
+
+Well, it was right, Strether slipped smoothly enough into the
+cheerfulness of saying:  granted that a community MIGHT be best
+represented by a young lady of twenty-two, Mamie perfectly played the
+part, played it as if she were used to it, and looked and spoke and
+dressed the character.  He wondered if she mightn't, in the high light
+of Paris, a cool full studio-light, becoming yet treacherous, show as
+too conscious of these matters; but the next moment he felt satisfied
+that her consciousness was after all empty for its size, rather too
+simple than too mixed, and that the kind way with her would be not to
+take many things out of it, but to put as many as possible in.  She was
+robust and conveniently tall; just a trifle too bloodlessly fair
+perhaps, but with a pleasant public familiar radiance that affirmed her
+vitality.  She might have been "receiving" for Woollett, wherever she
+found herself, and there was something in her manner, her tone, her
+motion, her pretty blue eyes, her pretty perfect teeth and her very
+small, too small, nose, that immediately placed her, to the fancy,
+between the windows of a hot bright room in which voices were high--up
+at that end to which people were brought to be "presented." They were
+there to congratulate, these images, and Strether's renewed vision, on
+this hint, completed the idea.  What Mamie was like was the happy
+bride, the bride after the church and just before going away.  She
+wasn't the mere maiden, and yet was only as much married as that
+quantity came to.  She was in the brilliant acclaimed festal stage.
+Well, might it last her long!
+
+Strether rejoiced in these things for Chad, who was all genial
+attention to the needs of his friends, besides having arranged that his
+servant should reinforce him; the ladies were certainly pleasant to
+see, and Mamie would be at any time and anywhere pleasant to exhibit.
+She would look extraordinarily like his young wife--the wife of a
+honeymoon, should he go about with her; but that was his own affair--or
+perhaps it was hers; it was at any rate something she couldn't help.
+Strether remembered how he had seen him come up with Jeanne de Vionnet
+in Gloriani's garden, and the fancy he had had about that--the fancy
+obscured now, thickly overlaid with others; the recollection was during
+these minutes his only note of trouble.  He had often, in spite of
+himself, wondered if Chad but too probably were not with Jeanne the
+object of a still and shaded flame.  It was on the cards that the child
+MIGHT be tremulously in love, and this conviction now flickered up not
+a bit the less for his disliking to think of it, for its being, in a
+complicated situation, a complication the more, and for something
+indescribable in Mamie, something at all events straightway lent her by
+his own mind, something that gave her value, gave her intensity and
+purpose, as the symbol of an opposition.  Little Jeanne wasn't really
+at all in question--how COULD she be?--yet from the moment Miss Pocock
+had shaken her skirts on the platform, touched up the immense bows of
+her hat and settled properly over her shoulder the strap of her
+morocco-and-gilt travelling-satchel, from that moment little Jeanne was
+opposed.
+
+It was in the cab with Jim that impressions really crowded on Strether,
+giving him the strangest sense of length of absence from people among
+whom he had lived for years.  Having them thus come out to him was as
+if he had returned to find them:  and the droll promptitude of Jim's
+mental reaction threw his own initiation far back into the past.
+Whoever might or mightn't be suited by what was going on among them,
+Jim, for one, would certainly be:  his instant recognition--frank and
+whimsical--of what the affair was for HIM gave Strether a glow of
+pleasure.  "I say, you know, this IS about my shape, and if it hadn't
+been for YOU--!" so he broke out as the charming streets met his
+healthy appetite; and he wound up, after an expressive nudge, with a
+clap of his companion's knee and an "Oh you, you--you ARE doing it!"
+that was charged with rich meaning. Strether felt in it the intention
+of homage, but, with a curiosity otherwise occupied, postponed taking
+it up.  What he was asking himself for the time was how Sarah Pocock,
+in the opportunity already given her, had judged her brother--from whom
+he himself, as they finally, at the station, separated for their
+different conveyances, had had a look into which he could read more
+than one message.  However Sarah was judging her brother, Chad's
+conclusion about his sister, and about her husband and her husband's
+sister, was at the least on the way not to fail of confidence. Strether
+felt the confidence, and that, as the look between them was an
+exchange, what he himself gave back was relatively vague.  This
+comparison of notes however could wait; everything struck him as
+depending on the effect produced by Chad.  Neither Sarah nor Mamie had
+in any way, at the station--where they had had after all ample
+time--broken out about it; which, to make up for this, was what our
+friend had expected of Jim as soon as they should find themselves
+together.
+
+It was queer to him that he had that noiseless brush with Chad; an
+ironic intelligence with this youth on the subject of his relatives, an
+intelligence carried on under their nose and, as might be said, at
+their expense--such a matter marked again for him strongly the number
+of stages he had come; albeit that if the number seemed great the time
+taken for the final one was but the turn of a hand.  He had before this
+had many moments of wondering if he himself weren't perhaps changed
+even as Chad was changed.  Only what in Chad was conspicuous
+improvement--well, he had no name ready for the working, in his own
+organism, of his own more timid dose.  He should have to see first what
+this action would amount to. And for his occult passage with the young
+man, after all, the directness of it had no greater oddity than the
+fact that the young man's way with the three travellers should have
+been so happy a manifestation.  Strether liked him for it, on the spot,
+as he hadn't yet liked him; it affected him while it lasted as he might
+have been affected by some light pleasant perfect work of art:  to that
+degree that he wondered if they were really worthy of it, took it in
+and did it justice; to that degree that it would have been scarce a
+miracle if, there in the luggage-room, while they waited for their
+things, Sarah had pulled his sleeve and drawn him aside. "You're right;
+we haven't quite known what you mean, Mother and I, but now we see.
+Chad's magnificent; what can one want more?  If THIS is the kind of
+thing--!"  On which they might, as it were, have embraced and begun to
+work together.
+
+Ah how much, as it was, for all her bridling brightness--which was
+merely general and noticed nothing--WOULD they work together? Strether
+knew he was unreasonable; he set it down to his being nervous:  people
+couldn't notice everything and speak of everything in a quarter of an
+hour.  Possibly, no doubt, also, he made too much of Chad's display.
+Yet, none the less, when, at the end of five minutes, in the cab, Jim
+Pocock had said nothing either--hadn't said, that is, what Strether
+wanted, though he had said much else--it all suddenly bounced back to
+their being either stupid or wilful.  It was more probably on the whole
+the former; so that that would be the drawback of the bridling
+brightness.  Yes, they would bridle and be bright; they would make the
+best of what was before them, but their observation would fail; it
+would be beyond them; they simply wouldn't understand.  Of what use
+would it be then that they had come?--if they weren't to be intelligent
+up to THAT point: unless indeed he himself were utterly deluded and
+extravagant?  Was he, on this question of Chad's improvement, fantastic
+and away from the truth?  Did he live in a false world, a world that
+had grown simply to suit him, and was his present slight irritation--in
+the face now of Jim's silence in particular--but the alarm of the vain
+thing menaced by the touch of the real?  Was this contribution of the
+real possibly the mission of the Pococks?--had they come to make the
+work of observation, as HE had practised observation, crack and
+crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms in which honest minds
+could deal with him?  Had they come in short to be sane where Strether
+was destined to feel that he himself had only been silly?
+
+He glanced at such a contingency, but it failed to hold him long when
+once he had reflected that he would have been silly, in this case, with
+Maria Gostrey and little Bilham, with Madame de Vionnet and little
+Jeanne, with Lambert Strether, in fine, and above all with Chad Newsome
+himself.  Wouldn't it be found to have made more for reality to be
+silly with these persons than sane with Sarah and Jim?  Jim in fact, he
+presently made up his mind, was individually out of it; Jim didn't
+care; Jim hadn't come out either for Chad or for him; Jim in short left
+the moral side to Sally and indeed simply availed himself now, for the
+sense of recreation, of the fact that he left almost everything to
+Sally.  He was nothing compared to Sally, and not so much by reason of
+Sally's temper and will as by that of her more developed type and
+greater acquaintance with the world.  He quite frankly and serenely
+confessed, as he sat there with Strether, that he felt his type hang
+far in the rear of his wife's and still further, if possible, in the
+rear of his sister's.  Their types, he well knew, were recognised and
+acclaimed; whereas the most a leading Woollett business-man could hope
+to achieve socially, and for that matter industrially, was a certain
+freedom to play into this general glamour.
+
+The impression he made on our friend was another of the things that
+marked our friend's road.  It was a strange impression, especially as
+so soon produced; Strether had received it, he judged, all in the
+twenty minutes; it struck him at least as but in a minor degree the
+work of the long Woollett years.  Pocock was normally and consentingly
+though not quite wittingly out of the question.  It was despite his
+being normal; it was despite his being cheerful; it was despite his
+being a leading Woollett business-man; and the determination of his
+fate left him thus perfectly usual--as everything else about it was
+clearly, to his sense, not less so.  He seemed to say that there was a
+whole side of life on which the perfectly usual WAS for leading
+Woollett business-men to be out of the question.  He made no more of it
+than that, and Strether, so far as Jim was concerned, desired to make
+no more.  Only Strether's imagination, as always, worked, and he asked
+himself if this side of life were not somehow connected, for those who
+figured on it with the fact of marriage.  Would HIS relation to it, had
+he married ten years before, have become now the same as Pocock's?
+Might it even become the same should he marry in a few months?  Should
+he ever know himself as much out of the question for Mrs. Newsome as
+Jim knew himself--in a dim way--for Mrs. Jim?
+
+To turn his eyes in that direction was to be personally reassured; he
+was different from Pocock; he had affirmed himself differently and was
+held after all in higher esteem.  What none the less came home to him,
+however, at this hour, was that the society over there, that of which
+Sarah and Mamie--and, in a more eminent way, Mrs. Newsome herself--were
+specimens, was essentially a society of women, and that poor Jim wasn't
+in it.  He himself Lambert Strether, WAS as yet in some degree--which
+was an odd situation for a man; but it kept coming back to him in a
+whimsical way that he should perhaps find his marriage had cost him his
+place.  This occasion indeed, whatever that fancy represented, was not
+a time of sensible exclusion for Jim, who was in a state of manifest
+response to the charm of his adventure.  Small and fat and constantly
+facetious, straw-coloured and destitute of marks, he would have been
+practically indistinguishable hadn't his constant preference for
+light-grey clothes, for white hats, for very big cigars and very little
+stories, done what it could for his identity.  There were signs in him,
+though none of them plaintive, of always paying for others; and the
+principal one perhaps was just this failure of type.  It was with this
+that he paid, rather than with fatigue or waste; and also doubtless a
+little with the effort of humour--never irrelevant to the conditions,
+to the relations, with which he was acquainted.
+
+He gurgled his joy as they rolled through the happy streets; he
+declared that his trip was a regular windfall, and that he wasn't
+there, he was eager to remark, to hang back from anything:  he didn't
+know quite what Sally had come for, but HE had come for a good time.
+Strether indulged him even while wondering if what Sally wanted her
+brother to go back for was to become like her husband. He trusted that
+a good time was to be, out and out, the programme for all of them; and
+he assented liberally to Jim's proposal that, disencumbered and
+irresponsible--his things were in the omnibus with those of the
+others--they should take a further turn round before going to the
+hotel.  It wasn't for HIM to tackle Chad--it was Sally's job; and as it
+would be like her, he felt, to open fire on the spot, it wouldn't be
+amiss of them to hold off and give her time.  Strether, on his side,
+only asked to give her time; so he jogged with his companion along
+boulevards and avenues, trying to extract from meagre material some
+forecast of his catastrophe.  He was quick enough to see that Jim
+Pocock declined judgement, had hovered quite round the outer edge of
+discussion and anxiety, leaving all analysis of their question to the
+ladies alone and now only feeling his way toward some small droll
+cynicism.  It broke out afresh, the cynicism--it had already shown a
+flicker--in a but slightly deferred:  "Well, hanged if I would if I
+were he!"
+
+"You mean you wouldn't in Chad's place--?"
+
+"Give up this to go back and boss the advertising!"  Poor Jim, with his
+arms folded and his little legs out in the open fiacre, drank in the
+sparkling Paris noon and carried his eyes from one side of their vista
+to the other.  "Why I want to come right out and live here myself.  And
+I want to live while I AM here too.  I feel with YOU--oh you've been
+grand, old man, and I've twigged--that it ain't right to worry Chad.  I
+don't mean to persecute him; I couldn't in conscience.  It's thanks to
+you at any rate that I'm here, and I'm sure I'm much obliged.  You're a
+lovely pair."
+
+There were things in this speech that Strether let pass for the time.
+"Don't you then think it important the advertising should be thoroughly
+taken in hand?  Chad WILL be, so far as capacity is concerned," he went
+on, "the man to do it."
+
+"Where did he get his capacity," Jim asked, "over here?"
+
+"He didn't get it over here, and the wonderful thing is that over here
+he hasn't inevitably lost it.  He has a natural turn for business, an
+extraordinary head.  He comes by that," Strether explained, "honestly
+enough.  He's in that respect his father's son, and also--for she's
+wonderful in her way too--his mother's.  He has other tastes and other
+tendencies; but Mrs. Newsome and your wife are quite right about his
+having that.  He's very remarkable."
+
+"Well, I guess he is!"  Jim Pocock comfortably sighed.  "But if you've
+believed so in his making us hum, why have you so prolonged the
+discussion?  Don't you know we've been quite anxious about you?"
+
+These questions were not informed with earnestness, but Strether saw he
+must none the less make a choice and take a line.  "Because, you see,
+I've greatly liked it.  I've liked my Paris, I dare say I've liked it
+too much."
+
+"Oh you old wretch!" Jim gaily exclaimed.
+
+"But nothing's concluded," Strether went on.  "The case is more complex
+than it looks from Woollett."
+
+"Oh well, it looks bad enough from Woollett!" Jim declared.
+
+"Even after all I've written?"
+
+Jim bethought himself.  "Isn't it what you've written that has made
+Mrs. Newsome pack us off?  That at least and Chad's not turning up?"
+
+Strether made a reflexion of his own.  "I see.  That she should do
+something was, no doubt, inevitable, and your wife has therefore of
+course come out to act."
+
+"Oh yes," Jim concurred--"to act.  But Sally comes out to act, you
+know," he lucidly added, "every time she leaves the house.  She never
+comes out but she DOES act.  She's acting moreover now for her mother,
+and that fixes the scale." Then he wound up, opening all his senses to
+it, with a renewed embrace of pleasant Paris.  "We haven't all the same
+at Woollett got anything like this."
+
+Strether continued to consider.  "I'm bound to say for you all that you
+strike me as having arrived in a very mild and reasonable frame of
+mind.  You don't show your claws.  I felt just now in Mrs. Pocock no
+symptom of that.  She isn't fierce," he went on.  "I'm such a nervous
+idiot that I thought she might be."
+
+"Oh don't you know her well enough," Pocock asked, "to have noticed
+that she never gives herself away, any more than her mother ever does?
+They ain't fierce, either of 'em; they let you come quite close.  They
+wear their fur the smooth side out--the warm side in. Do you know what
+they are?" Jim pursued as he looked about him, giving the question, as
+Strether felt, but half his care--"do you know what they are?  They're
+about as intense as they can live."
+
+"Yes"--and Strether's concurrence had a positive precipitation;
+"they're about as intense as they can live."
+
+"They don't lash about and shake the cage," said Jim, who seemed
+pleased with his analogy; "and it's at feeding-time that they're
+quietest.  But they always get there."
+
+"They do indeed--they always get there!" Strether replied with a laugh
+that justified his confession of nervousness.  He disliked to be
+talking sincerely of Mrs.  Newsome with Pocock; he could have talked
+insincerely.  But there was something he wanted to know, a need created
+in him by her recent intermission, by his having given from the first
+so much, as now more than ever appeared to him, and got so little.  It
+was as if a queer truth in his companion's metaphor had rolled over him
+with a rush.  She HAD been quiet at feeding-time; she had fed, and
+Sarah had fed with her, out of the big bowl of all his recent free
+communication, his vividness and pleasantness, his ingenuity and even
+his eloquence, while the current of her response had steadily run thin.
+Jim meanwhile however, it was true, slipped characteristically into
+shallowness from the moment he ceased to speak out of the experience of
+a husband.
+
+"But of course Chad has now the advantage of being there before her. If
+he doesn't work that for all it's worth--!"  He sighed with contingent
+pity at his brother-in-law's possible want of resource. "He has worked
+it on YOU, pretty well, eh?" and he asked the next moment if there were
+anything new at the Varieties, which he pronounced in the American
+manner.  They talked about the Varieties--Strether confessing to a
+knowledge which produced again on Pocock's part a play of innuendo as
+vague as a nursery-rhyme, yet as aggressive as an elbow in his side;
+and they finished their drive under the protection of easy themes.
+Strether waited to the end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim
+had seen Chad as different;  and he could scarce have explained the
+discouragement he drew from the absence of this testimony.  It was what
+he had taken his own stand on,  so far as he had taken a stand; and if
+they were all only going to see nothing he had only wasted his time. He
+gave his friend till the very last moment, till they had come into
+sight of the hotel; and when poor Pocock only continued cheerful and
+envious and funny he fairly grew to dislike him, to feel him
+extravagantly common.  If they were ALL going to see
+nothing!--Strether knew,  as this came back to him, that he was also
+letting Pocock represent for him what Mrs. Newsome wouldn't see.  He
+went on disliking, in the light of Jim's commonness, to talk to him
+about that lady; yet just before the cab pulled up he knew the extent
+of his desire for the real word from Woollett.
+
+"Has Mrs. Newsome at all given way--?"
+
+"'Given way'?"--Jim echoed it with the practical derision of his sense
+of a long past.
+
+"Under the strain, I mean, of hope deferred, of disappointment repeated
+and thereby intensified."
+
+"Oh is she prostrate, you mean?"--he had his categories in hand. "Why
+yes, she's prostrate--just as Sally is.  But they're never so lively,
+you know, as when they're prostrate."
+
+"Ah Sarah's prostrate?" Strether vaguely murmured.
+
+"It's when they're prostrate that they most sit up."
+
+"And Mrs. Newsome's sitting up?"
+
+"All night, my boy--for YOU!"  And Jim fetched him,  with a vulgar
+little guffaw, a thrust that gave relief to the picture.  But he had
+got what he wanted.  He felt on the spot that this WAS the real word
+from Woollett.  "So don't you go home!" Jim added while he alighted and
+while his friend, letting him profusely pay the cabman,  sat on in a
+momentary muse.  Strether wondered if that were the real word too.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+As the door of Mrs. Pocock's salon was pushed open for him, the next
+day, well before noon, he was reached by a voice with a charming sound
+that made him just falter before crossing the threshold.  Madame de
+Vionnet was already on the field, and this gave the drama a quicker
+pace than he felt it as yet--though his suspense had increased--in the
+power of any act of his own to do. He had spent the previous evening
+with all his old friends together yet he would still have described
+himself as quite in the dark in respect to a forecast of their
+influence on his situation. It was strange now, none the less, that in
+the light of this unexpected note of her presence he felt Madame de
+Vionnet a part of that situation as she hadn't even yet been.  She was
+alone, he found himself assuming, with Sarah, and there was a bearing
+in that--somehow beyond his control--on his personal fate.  Yet she was
+only saying something quite easy and independent--the thing she had
+come, as a good friend of Chad's, on purpose to say. "There isn't
+anything at all--?  I should be so delighted."
+
+It was clear enough, when they were there before him, how she had been
+received.  He saw this, as Sarah got up to greet him, from something
+fairly hectic in Sarah's face.  He saw furthermore that they weren't,
+as had first come to him, alone together; he was at no loss as to the
+identity of the broad high back presented to him in the embrasure of
+the window furthest from the door. Waymarsh, whom he had to-day not yet
+seen,  whom he only knew to have left the hotel before him,  and who
+had taken part, the night previous, on Mrs.  Pocock's kind invitation,
+conveyed by Chad, in the entertainment, informal but cordial, promptly
+offered by that lady--Waymarsh had anticipated him even as Madame de
+Vionnet had done, and, with his hands in his pockets and his attitude
+unaffected by Strether's entrance, was looking out, in marked
+detachment, at the Rue de Rivoli.  The latter felt it in the air--it
+was immense how Waymarsh could mark things---that he had remained
+deeply dissociated from the overture to their hostess that we have
+recorded on Madame de Vionnet's side.  He had, conspicuously, tact,
+besides a stiff general view; and this was why he had left Mrs. Pocock
+to struggle alone.  He would outstay the visitor; he would
+unmistakeably wait; to what had he been doomed for months past but
+waiting?  Therefore she was to feel that she had him in reserve. What
+support she drew from this was still to be seen, for, although Sarah
+was vividly bright, she had given herself up for the moment to an
+ambiguous flushed formalism.  She had had to reckon more quickly than
+she expected; but it concerned her first of all to signify that she was
+not to be taken unawares.  Strether arrived precisely in time for her
+showing it.  "Oh you're too good; but I don't think I feel quite
+helpless.  I have my brother--and these American friends.  And then you
+know I've been to Paris.  I KNOW Paris," said Sally Pocock in a tone
+that breathed a certain chill on Strether's heart.
+
+"Ah but a woman, in this tiresome place where everything's always
+changing, a woman of good will," Madame de Vionnet threw off, "can
+always help a woman.  I'm sure you 'know'--but we know perhaps
+different things." She too, visibly, wished to make no mistake; but it
+was a fear of a different order and more kept out of sight.  She smiled
+in welcome at Strether; she greeted him more familiarly than Mrs.
+Pocock; she put out her hand to him without moving from her place; and
+it came to him in the course of a minute and in the oddest way
+that--yes, positively--she was giving him over to ruin. She was all
+kindness and ease, but she couldn't help so giving him; she was
+exquisite, and her being just as she was poured for Sarah a sudden rush
+of meaning into his own equivocations.  How could she know how she was
+hurting him?  She wanted to show as simple and humble--in the degree
+compatible with operative charm; but it was just this that seemed to
+put him on her side.  She struck him as dressed, as arranged, as
+prepared infinitely to conciliate--with the very poetry of good taste
+in her view of the conditions of her early call.  She was ready to
+advise about dressmakers and shops; she held herself wholly at the
+disposition of Chad's family. Strether noticed her card on the
+table--her coronet and her "Comtesse"--and the imagination was sharp in
+him of certain private adjustments in Sarah's mind.  She had never, he
+was sure, sat with a "Comtesse" before, and such was the specimen of
+that class he had been keeping to play on her.  She had crossed the sea
+very particularly for a look at her; but he read in Madame de Vionnet's
+own eyes that this curiosity hadn't been so successfully met as that
+she herself wouldn't now have more than ever need of him.  She looked
+much as she had looked to him that morning at Notre Dame; he noted in
+fact the suggestive sameness of her discreet and delicate dress.  It
+seemed to speak--perhaps a little prematurely or too finely--of the
+sense in which she would help Mrs. Pocock with the shops.  The way that
+lady took her in, moreover, added depth to his impression of what Miss
+Gostrey, by their common wisdom, had escaped.  He winced as he saw
+himself but for that timely prudence ushering in Maria as a guide and
+an example.  There was however a touch of relief for him in his
+glimpse, so far as he had got it, of Sarah's line.  She "knew Paris."
+Madame de Vionnet had, for that matter, lightly taken this up.  "Ah
+then you've a turn for that, an affinity that belongs to your family.
+Your brother, though his long experience makes a difference, I admit,
+has become one of us in a marvellous way." And she appealed to Strether
+in the manner of a woman who could always glide off with smoothness
+into another subject.  Wasn't HE struck with the way Mr. Newsome had
+made the place his own, and hadn't he been in a position to profit by
+his friend's wondrous expertness?
+
+Strether felt the bravery, at the least, of her presenting herself so
+promptly to sound that note, and yet asked himself what other note,
+after all, she COULD strike from the moment she presented herself at
+all.  She could meet Mrs. Pocock only on the ground of the obvious, and
+what feature of Chad's situation was more eminent than the fact that he
+had created for himself a new set of circumstances?  Unless she hid
+herself altogether she could show but as one of these, an illustration
+of his domiciled and indeed of his confirmed condition.  And the
+consciousness of all this in her charming eyes was so clear and fine
+that as she thus publicly drew him into her boat she produced in him
+such a silent agitation as he was not to fail afterwards to denounce as
+pusillanimous.  "Ah don't be so charming to me!--for it makes us
+intimate, and after all what IS between us when I've been so
+tremendously on my guard and have seen you but half a dozen times?"  He
+recognised once more the perverse law that so inveterately governed his
+poor personal aspects:  it would be exactly LIKE the way things always
+turned out for him that he should affect Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh as
+launched in a relation in which he had really never been launched at
+all. They were at this very moment--they could only be--attributing to
+him the full licence of it, and all by the operation of her own tone
+with him; whereas his sole licence had been to cling with intensity to
+the brink, not to dip so much as a toe into the flood. But the flicker
+of his fear on this occasion was not, as may be added, to repeat
+itself; it sprang up, for its moment, only to die down and then go out
+for ever.  To meet his fellow visitor's invocation and, with Sarah's
+brilliant eyes on him, answer, WAS quite sufficiently to step into her
+boat.  During the rest of the time her visit lasted he felt himself
+proceed to each of the proper offices, successively, for helping to
+keep the adventurous skiff afloat.  It rocked beneath him, but he
+settled himself in his place. He took up an oar and, since he was to
+have the credit of pulling, pulled.
+
+"That will make it all the pleasanter if it so happens that we DO
+meet," Madame de Vionnet had further observed in reference to Mrs.
+Pocock's mention of her initiated state; and she had immediately added
+that, after all, her hostess couldn't be in need with the good offices
+of Mr. Strether so close at hand.  "It's he, I gather, who has learnt
+to know his Paris, and to love it, better than any one ever before in
+so short a time; so that between him and your brother, when it comes to
+the point, how can you possibly want for good guidance?  The great
+thing, Mr. Strether will show you," she smiled, "is just to let one's
+self go."
+
+"Oh I've not let myself go very far," Strether answered, feeling quite
+as if he had been called upon to hint to Mrs. Pocock how Parisians
+could talk.  "I'm only afraid of showing I haven't let myself go far
+enough.  I've taken a good deal of time, but I must quite have had the
+air of not budging from one spot." He looked at Sarah in a manner that
+he thought she might take as engaging, and he made, under Madame de
+Vionnet's protection, as it were, his first personal point.  "What has
+really happened has been that, all the while, I've done what I came out
+for."
+
+Yet it only at first gave Madame de Vionnet a chance immediately to
+take him up.  "You've renewed acquaintance with your friend--you've
+learnt to know him again." She spoke with such cheerful helpfulness
+that they might, in a common cause, have been calling together and
+pledged to mutual aid.
+
+Waymarsh, at this, as if he had been in question, straightway turned
+from the window.  "Oh yes, Countess--he has renewed acquaintance with
+ME, and he HAS, I guess, learnt something about me, though I don't know
+how much he has liked it.  It's for Strether himself to say whether he
+has felt it justifies his course."
+
+"Oh but YOU," said the Countess gaily, "are not in the least what he
+came out for--is he really, Strether? and I hadn't you at all in my
+mind.  I was thinking of Mr. Newsome, of whom we think so much and with
+whom, precisely, Mrs. Pocock has given herself the opportunity to take
+up threads.  What a pleasure for you both!" Madame de Vionnet, with her
+eyes on Sarah, bravely continued.
+
+Mrs. Pocock met her handsomely, but Strether quickly saw she meant to
+accept no version of her movements or plans from any other lips. She
+required no patronage and no support, which were but other names for a
+false position; she would show in her own way what she chose to show,
+and this she expressed with a dry glitter that recalled to him a fine
+Woollett winter morning.  "I've never wanted for opportunities to see
+my brother.  We've many things to think of at home, and great
+responsibilities and occupations, and our home's not an impossible
+place.  We've plenty of reasons," Sarah continued a little piercingly,
+"for everything we do"--and in short she wouldn't give herself the
+least little scrap away.  But she added as one who was always bland and
+who could afford a concession:  "I've come because--well, because we do
+come."
+
+"Ah then fortunately!"--Madame de Vionnet breathed it to the air. Five
+minutes later they were on their feet for her to take leave, standing
+together in an affability that had succeeded in surviving a further
+exchange of remarks; only with the emphasised appearance on Waymarsh's
+part of a tendency to revert, in a ruminating manner and as with an
+instinctive or a precautionary lightening of his tread, to an open
+window and his point of vantage.  The glazed and gilded room, all red
+damask, ormolu, mirrors, clocks, looked south, and the shutters were
+bowed upon the summer morning; but the Tuileries garden and what was
+beyond it, over which the whole place hung, were things visible through
+gaps; so that the far-spreading presence of Paris came up in coolness,
+dimness and invitation, in the twinkle of gilt-tipped palings, the
+crunch of gravel, the click of hoofs, the crack of whips, things that
+suggested some parade of the circus.  "I think it probable," said Mrs.
+Pocock, "that I shall have the opportunity of going to my brother's
+I've no doubt it's very pleasant indeed." She spoke as to Strether, but
+her face was turned with an intensity of brightness to Madame de
+Vionnet, and there was a moment during which, while she thus fronted
+her, our friend expected to hear her add:  "I'm much obliged to you,
+I'm sure, for inviting me there." He guessed that for five seconds
+these words were on the point of coming; he heard them as clearly as if
+they had been spoken; but he presently knew they had just failed--knew
+it by a glance, quick and fine, from Madame de Vionnet, which told him
+that she too had felt them in the air, but that the point had luckily
+not been made in any manner requiring notice.  This left her free to
+reply only to what had been said.
+
+"That the Boulevard Malesherbes may be common ground for us offers me
+the best prospect I see for the pleasure of meeting you again."
+
+"Oh I shall come to see you, since you've been so good":  and Mrs.
+Pocock looked her invader well in the eyes.  The flush in Sarah's
+cheeks had by this time settled to a small definite crimson spot that
+was not without its own bravery; she held her head a good deal up, and
+it came to Strether that of the two, at this moment, she was the one
+who most carried out the idea of a Countess.  He quite took in,
+however, that she would really return her visitor's civility:  she
+wouldn't report again at Woollett without at least so much producible
+history as that in her pocket.
+
+"I want extremely to be able to show you my little daughter." Madame de
+Vionnet went on; "and I should have brought her with me if I hadn't
+wished first to ask your leave.  I was in hopes I should perhaps find
+Miss Pocock, of whose being with you I've heard from Mr. Newsome and
+whose acquaintance I should so much like my child to make.  If I have
+the pleasure of seeing her and you do permit it I shall venture to ask
+her to be kind to Jeanne.  Mr. Strether will tell you"--she beautifully
+kept it up--"that my poor girl is gentle and good and rather lonely.
+They've made friends, he and she, ever so happily, and he doesn't, I
+believe, think ill of her.  As for Jeanne herself he has had the same
+success with her that I know he has had here wherever he has turned."
+She seemed to ask him for permission to say these things, or seemed
+rather to take it, softly and happily, with the ease of intimacy, for
+granted, and he had quite the consciousness now that not to meet her at
+any point more than halfway would be odiously, basely to abandon her.
+Yes, he was WITH her, and, opposed even in this covert, this semi-safe
+fashion to those who were not, he felt, strangely and confusedly, but
+excitedly, inspiringly, how much and how far.  It was as if he had
+positively waited in suspense for something from her that would let him
+in deeper, so that he might show her how he could take it.  And what
+did in fact come as she drew out a little her farewell served
+sufficiently the purpose.  "As his success is a matter that I'm sure
+he'll never mention for himself, I feel, you see, the less scruple;
+which it's very good of me to say, you know, by the way," she added as
+she addressed herself to him; "considering how little direct advantage
+I've gained from your triumphs with ME.  When does one ever see you?  I
+wait at home and I languish.  You'll have rendered me the service, Mrs.
+Pocock, at least," she wound up, "of giving me one of my much-too-rare
+glimpses of this gentleman."
+
+"I certainly should be sorry to deprive you of anything that seems so
+much, as you describe it, your natural due.  Mr. Strether and I are
+very old friends," Sarah allowed, "but the privilege of his society
+isn't a thing I shall quarrel about with any one."
+
+"And yet, dear Sarah," he freely broke in, "I feel, when I hear you say
+that, that you don't quite do justice to the important truth of the
+extent to which--as you're also mine--I'm your natural due.  I should
+like much better," he laughed, "to see you fight for me."
+
+She met him, Mrs. Pocock, on this, with an arrest of speech--with a
+certain breathlessness, as he immediately fancied, on the score of a
+freedom for which she wasn't quite prepared.  It had flared up--for all
+the harm he had intended by it--because, confoundedly, he didn't want
+any more to be afraid about her than he wanted to be afraid about
+Madame de Vionnet.  He had never, naturally, called her anything but
+Sarah at home, and though he had perhaps never quite so markedly
+invoked her as his "dear," that was somehow partly because no occasion
+had hitherto laid so effective a trap for it. But something admonished
+him now that it was too late--unless indeed it were possibly too early;
+and that he at any rate shouldn't have pleased Mrs. Pocock the more by
+it.  "Well, Mr. Strether--!" she murmured with vagueness, yet with
+sharpness, while her crimson spot burned a trifle brighter and he was
+aware that this must be for the present the limit of her response.
+Madame de Vionnet had already, however, come to his aid, and Waymarsh,
+as if for further participation, moved again back to them.  It was true
+that the aid rendered by Madame de Vionnet was questionable; it was a
+sign that, for all one might confess to with her, and for all she might
+complain of not enjoying, she could still insidiously show how much of
+the material of conversation had accumulated between them.
+
+"The real truth is, you know, that you sacrifice one without mercy to
+dear old Maria.  She leaves no room in your life for anybody else.  Do
+you know," she enquired of Mrs. Pocock, "about dear old Maria?  The
+worst is that Miss Gostrey is really a wonderful woman."
+
+"Oh yes indeed," Strether answered for her, "Mrs. Pocock knows about
+Miss Gostrey.  Your mother, Sarah, must have told you about her; your
+mother knows everything," he sturdily pursued.  "And I cordially
+admit," he added with his conscious gaiety of courage, "that she's as
+wonderful a woman as you like."
+
+"Ah it isn't I who 'like,' dear Mr. Strether, anything to do with the
+matter!" Sarah Pocock promptly protested; "and I'm by no means sure I
+have--from my mother or from any one else--a notion of whom you're
+talking about."
+
+"Well, he won't let you see her, you know," Madame de Vionnet
+sympathetically threw in.  "He never lets me--old friends as we are: I
+mean as I am with Maria.  He reserves her for his best hours; keeps her
+consummately to himself; only gives us others the crumbs of the feast."
+
+"Well, Countess, I'VE had some of the crumbs," Waymarsh observed with
+weight and covering her with his large look; which led her to break in
+before he could go on.
+
+"Comment donc, he shares her with YOU?" she exclaimed in droll
+stupefaction.  "Take care you don't have, before you go much further,
+rather more of all ces dames than you may know what to do with!"
+
+But he only continued in his massive way.  "I can post you about the
+lady, Mrs. Pocock, so far as you may care to hear.  I've seen her quite
+a number of times, and I was practically present when they made
+acquaintance.  I've kept my eye on her right along, but I don't know as
+there's any real harm in her."
+
+"'Harm'?" Madame de Vionnet quickly echoed.  "Why she's the dearest and
+cleverest of all the clever and dear."
+
+"Well, you run her pretty close, Countess," Waymarsh returned with
+spirit; "though there's no doubt she's pretty well up in things. She
+knows her way round Europe.  Above all there's no doubt she does love
+Strether."
+
+"Ah but we all do that--we all love Strether:  it isn't a merit!" their
+fellow visitor laughed, keeping to her idea with a good conscience at
+which our friend was aware that he marvelled, though he trusted also
+for it, as he met her exquisitely expressive eyes, to some later light.
+
+The prime effect of her tone, however--and it was a truth which his own
+eyes gave back to her in sad ironic play--could only be to make him
+feel that, to say such things to a man in public, a woman must
+practically think of him as ninety years old.  He had turned awkwardly,
+responsively red, he knew, at her mention of Maria Gostrey; Sarah
+Pocock's presence--the particular quality of it--had made this
+inevitable; and then he had grown still redder in proportion as he
+hated to have shown anything at all.  He felt indeed that he was
+showing much, as, uncomfortably and almost in pain, he offered up his
+redness to Waymarsh, who, strangely enough, seemed now to be looking at
+him with a certain explanatory yearning.  Something deep--something
+built on their old old relation--passed, in this complexity, between
+them; he got the side-wind of a loyalty that stood behind all actual
+queer questions.  Waymarsh's dry bare humour--as it gave itself to be
+taken--gloomed out to demand justice.  "Well, if you talk of Miss
+Barrace I've MY chance too," it appeared stiffly to nod, and it granted
+that it was giving him away, but struggled to add that it did so only
+to save him.  The sombre glow stared it at him till it fairly sounded
+out--"to save you, poor old man, to save you; to save you in spite of
+yourself." Yet it was somehow just this communication that showed him
+to himself as more than ever lost. Still another result of it was to
+put before him as never yet that between his comrade and the interest
+represented by Sarah there was already a basis.  Beyond all question
+now, yes:  Waymarsh had been in occult relation with Mrs. Newsome--out,
+out it all came in the very effort of his face.  "Yes, you're feeling
+my hand"--he as good as proclaimed it; "but only because this at least
+I SHALL have got out of the damned Old World:  that I shall have picked
+up the pieces into which it has caused you to crumble." It was as if in
+short, after an instant, Strether had not only had it from him, but had
+recognised that so far as this went the instant had cleared the air.
+Our friend understood and approved; he had the sense that they wouldn't
+otherwise speak of it.  This would be all, and it would mark in himself
+a kind of intelligent generosity.  It was with grim Sarah then--Sarah
+grim for all her grace--that Waymarsh had begun at ten o'clock in the
+morning to save him.  Well--if he COULD, poor dear man, with his big
+bleak kindness!  The upshot of which crowded perception was that
+Strether, on his own side, still showed no more than he absolutely had
+to.  He showed the least possible by saying to Mrs. Pocock after an
+interval much briefer than our glance at the picture reflected in him:
+"Oh it's as true as they please!--There's no Miss Gostrey for any one
+but me--not the least little peep.  I keep her to myself."
+
+"Well, it's very good of you to notify me," Sarah replied without
+looking at him and thrown for a moment by this discrimination, as the
+direction of her eyes showed, upon a dimly desperate little community
+with Madame de Vionnet.  "But I hope I shan't miss her too much."
+
+Madame de Vionnet instantly rallied.  "And you know--though it might
+occur to one--it isn't in the least that he's ashamed of her. She's
+really--in a way--extremely good-looking."
+
+"Ah but extremely!" Strether laughed while he wondered at the odd part
+he found thus imposed on him.
+
+It continued to be so by every touch from Madame de Vionnet.  "Well, as
+I say, you know, I wish you would keep ME a little more to yourself.
+Couldn't you name some day for me, some hour--and better soon than
+late?  I'll be at home whenever it best suits you. There--I can't say
+fairer."
+
+Strether thought a moment while Waymarsh and Mrs. Pocock affected him
+as standing attentive.  "I did lately call on you.  Last week--while
+Chad was out of town."
+
+"Yes--and I was away, as it happened, too.  You choose your moments
+well.  But don't wait for my next absence, for I shan't make another,"
+Madame de Vionnet declared, "while Mrs. Pocock's here."
+
+"That vow needn't keep you long, fortunately," Sarah observed with
+reasserted suavity.  "I shall be at present but a short time in Paris.
+I have my plans for other countries.  I meet a number of charming
+friends"--and her voice seemed to caress that description of these
+persons.
+
+"Ah then," her visitor cheerfully replied, "all the more reason!
+To-morrow, for instance, or next day?" she continued to Strether.
+"Tuesday would do for me beautifully."
+
+"Tuesday then with pleasure."
+
+"And at half-past five?--or at six?"
+
+It was ridiculous, but Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh struck him as fairly
+waiting for his answer.  It was indeed as if they were arranged,
+gathered for a performance, the performance of "Europe" by his
+confederate and himself.  Well, the performance could only go on.  "Say
+five forty-five."
+
+"Five forty-five--good." And now at last Madame de Vionnet must leave
+them, though it carried, for herself, the performance a little further.
+"I DID hope so much also to see Miss Pocock. Mayn't I still?"
+
+Sarah hesitated, but she rose equal.  "She'll return your visit with
+me.  She's at present out with Mr. Pocock and my brother."
+
+"I see--of course Mr. Newsome has everything to show them.  He has told
+me so much about her.  My great desire's to give my daughter the
+opportunity of making her acquaintance.  I'm always on the lookout for
+such chances for her.  If I didn't bring her to-day it was only to make
+sure first that you'd let me." After which the charming woman risked a
+more intense appeal.  "It wouldn't suit you also to mention some near
+time, so that we shall be sure not to lose you?"  Strether on his side
+waited, for Sarah likewise had, after all, to perform; and it occupied
+him to have been thus reminded that she had stayed at home--and on her
+first morning of Paris--while Chad led the others forth.  Oh she was up
+to her eyes; if she had stayed at home she had stayed by an
+understanding, arrived at the evening before, that Waymarsh would come
+and find her alone.  This was beginning well--for a first day in Paris;
+and the thing might be amusing yet.  But Madame de Vionnet's
+earnestness was meanwhile beautiful.  "You may think me indiscreet, but
+I've SUCH a desire my Jeanne shall know an American girl of the really
+delightful kind.  You see I throw myself for it on your charity."
+
+The manner of this speech gave Strether such a sense of depths below it
+and behind it as he hadn't yet had--ministered in a way that almost
+frightened him to his dim divinations of reasons; but if Sarah still,
+in spite of it, faltered, this was why he had time for a sign of
+sympathy with her petitioner.  "Let me say then, dear lady, to back
+your plea, that Miss Mamie is of the most delightful kind of all--is
+charming among the charming."
+
+Even Waymarsh, though with more to produce on the subject, could get
+into motion in time.  "Yes, Countess, the American girl's a thing that
+your country must at least allow ours the privilege to say we CAN show
+you.  But her full beauty is only for those who know how to make use of
+her."
+
+"Ah then," smiled Madame de Vionnet, "that's exactly what I want to do.
+I'm sure she has much to teach us."
+
+It was wonderful, but what was scarce less so was that Strether found
+himself, by the quick effect of it, moved another way.  "Oh that may
+be!  But don't speak of your own exquisite daughter, you know, as if
+she weren't pure perfection.  I at least won't take that from you.
+Mademoiselle de Vionnet," he explained, in considerable form, to Mrs.
+Pocock, "IS pure perfection.  Mademoiselle de Vionnet IS exquisite."
+
+It had been perhaps a little portentous, but "Ah?" Sarah simply
+glittered.
+
+Waymarsh himself, for that matter, apparently recognised, in respect to
+the facts, the need of a larger justice, and he had with it an
+inclination to Sarah.  "Miss Jane's strikingly handsome--in the regular
+French style."
+
+It somehow made both Strether and Madame de Vionnet laugh out, though
+at the very moment he caught in Sarah's eyes, as glancing at the
+speaker, a vague but unmistakeable "You too?"  It made Waymarsh in fact
+look consciously over her head.  Madame de Vionnet meanwhile, however,
+made her point in her own way.  "I wish indeed I could offer you my
+poor child as a dazzling attraction:  it would make one's position
+simple enough!  She's as good as she can be, but of course she's
+different, and the question is now--in the light of the way things seem
+to go--if she isn't after all TOO different: too different I mean from
+the splendid type every one is so agreed that your wonderful country
+produces.  On the other hand of course Mr. Newsome, who knows it so
+well, has, as a good friend, dear kind man that he is, done everything
+he can--to keep us from fatal benightedness--for my small shy creature.
+Well," she wound up after Mrs. Pocock had signified, in a murmur still
+a little stiff, that she would speak to her own young charge on the
+question--"well, we shall sit, my child and I, and wait and wait and
+wait for you." But her last fine turn was for Strether.  "Do speak of
+us in such a way--!"
+
+"As that something can't but come of it?  Oh something SHALL come of
+it!  I take a great interest!" he further declared; and in proof of it,
+the next moment, he had gone with her down to her carriage.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Ninth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"The difficulty is," Strether said to Madame de Vionnet a couple of
+days later, "that I can't surprise them into the smallest sign of his
+not being the same old Chad they've been for the last three years
+glowering at across the sea.  They simply won't give any, and as a
+policy, you know--what you call a parti pris, a deep game--that's
+positively remarkable."
+
+It was so remarkable that our friend had pulled up before his hostess
+with the vision of it; he had risen from his chair at the end of ten
+minutes and begun, as a help not to worry, to move about before her
+quite as he moved before Maria.  He had kept his appointment with her
+to the minute and had been intensely impatient, though divided in truth
+between the sense of having everything to tell her and the sense of
+having nothing at all.  The short interval had, in the face of their
+complication, multiplied his impressions--it being meanwhile to be
+noted, moreover, that he already frankly, already almost publicly,
+viewed the complication as common to them.  If Madame de Vionnet, under
+Sarah's eyes, had pulled him into her boat, there was by this time no
+doubt whatever that he had remained in it and that what he had really
+most been conscious of for many hours together was the movement of the
+vessel itself.  They were in it together this moment as they hadn't yet
+been, and he hadn't at present uttered the least of the words of alarm
+or remonstrance that had died on his lips at the hotel.  He had other
+things to say to her than that she had put him in a position; so
+quickly had his position grown to affect him as quite excitingly,
+altogether richly, inevitable.  That the outlook, however--given the
+point of exposure--hadn't cleared up half so much as he had reckoned
+was the first warning she received from him on his arrival.  She had
+replied with indulgence that he was in too great a hurry, and had
+remarked soothingly that if she knew how to be patient surely HE might
+be.  He felt her presence, on the spot, he felt her tone and everything
+about her, as an aid to that effort; and it was perhaps one of the
+proofs of her success with him that he seemed so much to take his ease
+while they talked. By the time he had explained to her why his
+impressions, though multiplied, still baffled him, it was as if he had
+been familiarly talking for hours.  They baffled him because
+Sarah--well, Sarah was deep, deeper than she had ever yet had a chance
+to show herself. He didn't say that this was partly the effect of her
+opening so straight down, as it were, into her mother, and that, given
+Mrs. Newsome's profundity, the shaft thus sunk might well have a reach;
+but he wasn't without a resigned apprehension that, at such a rate of
+confidence between the two women, he was likely soon to be moved to
+show how already, at moments, it had been for him as if he were dealing
+directly with Mrs. Newsome.  Sarah, to a certainty, would have begun
+herself to feel it in him--and this naturally put it in her power to
+torment him the more.  From the moment she knew he COULD be tormented--!
+
+"But WHY can you be?"--his companion was surprised at his use of the
+word.
+
+"Because I'm made so--I think of everything."
+
+"Ah one must never do that," she smiled.  "One must think of as few
+things as possible."
+
+"Then," he answered, "one must pick them out right.  But all I mean
+is--for I express myself with violence--that she's in a position to
+watch me.  There's an element of suspense for me, and she can see me
+wriggle.  But my wriggling doesn't matter," he pursued.  "I can bear
+it.  Besides, I shall wriggle out."
+
+The picture at any rate stirred in her an appreciation that he felt to
+be sincere.  "I don't see how a man can be kinder to a woman than you
+are to me."
+
+Well, kind was what he wanted to be; yet even while her charming eyes
+rested on him with the truth of this he none the less had his humour of
+honesty.  "When I say suspense I mean, you know," he laughed, "suspense
+about my own case too!"
+
+"Oh yes--about your own case too!"  It diminished his magnanimity, but
+she only looked at him the more tenderly.
+
+"Not, however," he went on, "that I want to talk to you about that.
+It's my own little affair, and I mentioned it simply as part of Mrs.
+Pocock's advantage." No, no; though there was a queer present
+temptation in it, and his suspense was so real that to fidget was a
+relief, he wouldn't talk to her about Mrs. Newsome, wouldn't work off
+on her the anxiety produced in him by Sarah's calculated omissions of
+reference.  The effect she produced of representing her mother had been
+produced--and that was just the immense, the uncanny part of
+it--without her having so much as mentioned that lady.  She had brought
+no message, had alluded to no question, had only answered his enquiries
+with hopeless limited propriety.  She had invented a way of meeting
+them--as if he had been a polite perfunctory poor relation, of distant
+degree--that made them almost ridiculous in him.  He couldn't moreover
+on his own side ask much without appearing to publish how he had lately
+lacked news; a circumstance of which it was Sarah's profound policy not
+to betray a suspicion.  These things, all the same, he wouldn't breathe
+to Madame de Vionnet--much as they might make him walk up and down. And
+what he didn't say--as well as what SHE didn't, for she had also her
+high decencies--enhanced the effect of his being there with her at the
+end of ten minutes more intimately on the basis of saving her than he
+had yet had occasion to be.  It ended in fact by being quite beautiful
+between them, the number of things they had a manifest consciousness of
+not saying.  He would have liked to turn her, critically, to the
+subject of Mrs. Pocock, but he so stuck to the line he felt to be the
+point of honour and of delicacy that he scarce even asked her what her
+personal impression had been. He knew it, for that matter, without
+putting her to trouble: that she wondered how, with such elements,
+Sarah could still have no charm, was one of the principal things she
+held her tongue about. Strether would have been interested in her
+estimate of the elements--indubitably there, some of them, and to be
+appraised according to taste--but he denied himself even the luxury of
+this diversion.  The way Madame de Vionnet affected him to-day was in
+itself a kind of demonstration of the happy employment of gifts.  How
+could a woman think Sarah had charm who struck one as having arrived at
+it herself by such different roads?  On the other hand of course Sarah
+wasn't obliged to have it.  He felt as if somehow Madame de Vionnet
+WAS.  The great question meanwhile was what Chad thought of his sister;
+which was naturally ushered in by that of Sarah's apprehension of Chad.
+THAT they could talk of, and with a freedom purchased by their
+discretion in other senses.  The difficulty however was that they were
+reduced as yet to conjecture.  He had given them in the day or two as
+little of a lead as Sarah, and Madame de Vionnet mentioned that she
+hadn't seen him since his sister's arrival.
+
+"And does that strike you as such an age?"
+
+She met it in all honesty.  "Oh I won't pretend I don't miss him.
+Sometimes I see him every day.  Our friendship's like that.  Make what
+you will of it!" she whimsically smiled; a little flicker of the kind,
+occasional in her, that had more than once moved him to wonder what he
+might best make of HER.  "But he's perfectly right," she hastened to
+add, "and I wouldn't have him fail in any way at present for the world.
+I'd sooner not see him for three months. I begged him to be beautiful
+to them, and he fully feels it for himself."
+
+Strether turned away under his quick perception; she was so odd a
+mixture of lucidity and mystery.  She fell in at moments with the
+theory about her he most cherished, and she seemed at others to blow it
+into air.  She spoke now as if her art were all an innocence, and then
+again as if her innocence were all an art. "Oh he's giving himself up,
+and he'll do so to the end.  How can he but want, now that it's within
+reach, his full impression?--which is much more important, you know,
+than either yours or mine.  But he's just soaking," Strether said as he
+came back; "he's going in conscientiously for a saturation.  I'm bound
+to say he IS very good."
+
+"Ah," she quietly replied, "to whom do you say it?"  And then more
+quietly still:  "He's capable of anything."
+
+Strether more than reaffirmed--"Oh he's excellent.  I more and more
+like," he insisted, "to see him with them;" though the oddity of this
+tone between them grew sharper for him even while they spoke. It placed
+the young man so before them as the result of her interest and the
+product of her genius, acknowledged so her part in the phenomenon and
+made the phenomenon so rare, that more than ever yet he might have been
+on the very point of asking her for some more detailed account of the
+whole business than he had yet received from her.  The occasion almost
+forced upon him some question as to how she had managed and as to the
+appearance such miracles presented from her own singularly close place
+of survey. The moment in fact however passed, giving way to more
+present history, and he continued simply to mark his appreciation of
+the happy truth.  "It's a tremendous comfort to feel how one can trust
+him." And then again while for a little she said nothing--as if after
+all to HER trust there might be a special limit:  "I mean for making a
+good show to them."
+
+"Yes," she thoughtfully returned--"but if they shut their eyes to it!"
+
+Strether for an instant had his own thought.  "Well perhaps that won't
+matter!"
+
+"You mean because he probably--do what they will--won't like them?"
+
+"Oh 'do what they will'--!  They won't do much; especially if Sarah
+hasn't more--well, more than one has yet made out--to give."
+
+Madame de Vionnet weighed it.  "Ah she has all her grace!"  It was a
+statement over which, for a little, they could look at each other
+sufficiently straight, and though it produced no protest from Strether
+the effect was somehow as if he had treated it as a joke. "She may be
+persuasive and caressing with him; she may be eloquent beyond words.
+She may get hold of him," she wound up--"well, as neither you nor I
+have."
+
+"Yes, she MAY"--and now Strether smiled.  "But he has spent all his
+time each day with Jim.  He's still showing Jim round."
+
+She visibly wondered.  "Then how about Jim?"
+
+Strether took a turn before he answered.  "Hasn't he given you Jim?
+Hasn't he before this 'done' him for you?"  He was a little at a loss.
+"Doesn't he tell you things?"
+
+She hesitated.  "No"--and their eyes once more gave and took. "Not as
+you do.  You somehow make me see them--or at least feel them. And I
+haven't asked too much," she added; "I've of late wanted so not to
+worry him."
+
+"Ah for that, so have I," he said with encouraging assent; so that--as
+if she had answered everything--they were briefly sociable on it. It
+threw him back on his other thought, with which he took another turn;
+stopping again, however, presently with something of a glow. "You see
+Jim's really immense.  I think it will be Jim who'll do it."
+
+She wondered.  "Get hold of him?"
+
+"No--just the other thing.  Counteract Sarah's spell." And he showed
+now, our friend, how far he had worked it out.  "Jim's intensely
+cynical."
+
+"Oh dear Jim!" Madame de Vionnet vaguely smiled.
+
+"Yes, literally--dear Jim!  He's awful.  What HE wants, heaven forgive
+him, is to help us."
+
+"You mean"--she was eager--"help ME?"
+
+"Well, Chad and me in the first place.  But he throws you in too,
+though without as yet seeing you much.  Only, so far as he does see
+you--if you don't mind--he sees you as awful."
+
+"'Awful'?"--she wanted it all.
+
+"A regular bad one--though of course of a tremendously superior kind.
+Dreadful, delightful, irresistible."
+
+"Ah dear Jim!  I should like to know him.  I MUST."
+
+"Yes, naturally.  But will it do?  You may, you know," Strether
+suggested, "disappoint him."
+
+She was droll and humble about it.  "I can but try.  But my wickedness
+then," she went on, "is my recommendation for him?"
+
+"Your wickedness and the charms with which, in such a degree as yours,
+he associates it.  He understands, you see, that Chad and I have above
+all wanted to have a good time, and his view is simple and sharp.
+Nothing will persuade him--in the light, that is, of my behaviour--that
+I really didn't, quite as much as Chad, come over to have one before it
+was too late.  He wouldn't have expected it of me; but men of my age,
+at Woollett--and especially the least likely ones--have been noted as
+liable to strange outbreaks, belated uncanny clutches at the unusual,
+the ideal.  It's an effect that a lifetime of Woollett has quite been
+observed as having; and I thus give it to you, in Jim's view, for what
+it's worth.  Now his wife and his mother-in-law," Strether continued to
+explain, "have, as in honour bound, no patience with such phenomena,
+late or early--which puts Jim, as against his relatives, on the other
+side.  Besides," he added, "I don't think he really wants Chad back. If
+Chad doesn't come--"
+
+"He'll have"--Madame de Vionnet quite apprehended--"more of the free
+hand?"
+
+"Well, Chad's the bigger man."
+
+"So he'll work now, en dessous, to keep him quiet?"
+
+"No--he won't 'work' at all, and he won't do anything en dessous. He's
+very decent and won't be a traitor in the camp.  But he'll be amused
+with his own little view of our duplicity, he'll sniff up what he
+supposes to be Paris from morning till night, and he'll be, as to the
+rest, for Chad--well, just what he is."
+
+She thought it over.  "A warning?"
+
+He met it almost with glee.  "You ARE as wonderful as everybody says!"
+And then to explain all he meant:  "I drove him about for his first
+hour, and do you know what--all beautifully unconscious--he most put
+before me?  Why that something like THAT is at bottom, as an
+improvement to his present state, as in fact the real redemption of it,
+what they think it may not be too late to make of our friend." With
+which, as, taking it in, she seemed, in her recurrent alarm, bravely to
+gaze at the possibility, he completed his statement.  "But it IS too
+late.  Thanks to you!"
+
+It drew from her again one of her indefinite reflexions.  "Oh
+'me'--after all!"
+
+He stood before her so exhilarated by his demonstration that he could
+fairly be jocular.  "Everything's comparative.  You're better than
+THAT."
+
+"You"--she could but answer him--"are better than anything." But she
+had another thought.  "WILL Mrs. Pocock come to me?"
+
+"Oh yes--she'll do that.  As soon, that is, as my friend Waymarsh--HER
+friend now--leaves her leisure."
+
+She showed an interest.  "Is he so much her friend as that?"
+
+"Why, didn't you see it all at the hotel?"
+
+"Oh"--she was amused--"'all' is a good deal to say.  I don't know--I
+forget.  I lost myself in HER."
+
+"You were splendid," Strether returned--"but 'all' isn't a good deal to
+say:  it's only a little.  Yet it's charming so far as it goes.  She
+wants a man to herself."
+
+"And hasn't she got you?"
+
+"Do you think she looked at me--or even at you--as if she had?"
+Strether easily dismissed that irony.  "Every one, you see, must strike
+her as having somebody.  You've got Chad--and Chad has got you."
+
+"I see"--she made of it what she could.  "And you've got Maria."
+
+Well, he on his side accepted that.  "I've got Maria.  And Maria has
+got me.  So it goes."
+
+"But Mr. Jim--whom has he got?"
+
+"Oh he has got--or it's as IF he had--the whole place."
+
+"But for Mr. Waymarsh"--she recalled--"isn't Miss Barrace before any
+one else?"
+
+He shook his head.  "Miss Barrace is a raffinee, and her amusement
+won't lose by Mrs. Pocock.  It will gain rather--especially if Sarah
+triumphs and she comes in for a view of it."
+
+"How well you know us!" Madame de Vionnet, at this, frankly sighed.
+
+"No--it seems to me it's we that I know.  I know Sarah--it's perhaps on
+that ground only that my feet are firm.  Waymarsh will take her round
+while Chad takes Jim--and I shall be, I assure you delighted for both
+of them.  Sarah will have had what she requires--she will have paid her
+tribute to the ideal; and he will have done about the same.  In Paris
+it's in the air--so what can one do less?  If there's a point that,
+beyond any other, Sarah wants to make, it's that she didn't come out to
+be narrow.  We shall feel at least that."
+
+"Oh," she sighed, "the quantity we seem likely to 'feel'!  But what
+becomes, in these conditions, of the girl?"
+
+"Of Mamie--if we're all provided?  Ah for that," said Strether, "you
+can trust Chad."
+
+"To be, you mean, all right to her?"
+
+"To pay her every attention as soon as he has polished off Jim. He
+wants what Jim can give him--and what Jim really won't--though he has
+had it all, and more than all, from me.  He wants in short his own
+personal impression, and he'll get it--strong.  But as soon as he has
+got it Mamie won't suffer."
+
+"Oh Mamie mustn't SUFFER!" Madame de Vionnet soothingly emphasised.
+
+But Strether could reassure her.  "Don't fear.  As soon as he has done
+with Jim, Jim will fall to me.  And then you'll see."
+
+It was as if in a moment she saw already; yet she still waited. Then
+"Is she really quite charming?" she asked.
+
+He had got up with his last words and gathered in his hat and gloves.
+"I don't know; I'm watching.  I'm studying the case, as it were--and I
+dare say I shall be able to tell you."
+
+She wondered.  "Is it a case?"
+
+"Yes--I think so.  At any rate I shall see.'
+
+"But haven't you known her before?"
+
+"Yes," he smiled--"but somehow at home she wasn't a case. She has
+become one since." It was as if he made it out for himself. "She has
+become one here."
+
+"So very very soon?"
+
+He measured it, laughing.  "Not sooner than I did."
+
+"And you became one--?"
+
+"Very very soon.  The day I arrived."
+
+Her intelligent eyes showed her thought of it.  "Ah but the day you
+arrived you met Maria.  Whom has Miss Pocock met?"
+
+He paused again, but he brought it out.  "Hasn't she met Chad?"
+
+"Certainly--but not for the first time.  He's an old friend." At which
+Strether had a slow amused significant headshake that made her go on:
+"You mean that for HER at least he's a new person--that she sees him as
+different?"
+
+"She sees him as different."
+
+"And how does she see him?"
+
+Strether gave it up.  "How can one tell how a deep little girl sees a
+deep young man?"
+
+"Is every one so deep?  Is she too?"
+
+"So it strikes me deeper than I thought.  But wait a little--between us
+we'll make it out.  You'll judge for that matter yourself."
+
+Madame de Vionnet looked for the moment fairly bent on the chance.
+"Then she WILL come with her?--I mean Mamie with Mrs. Pocock?"
+
+"Certainly.  Her curiosity, if nothing else, will in any case work
+that.  But leave it all to Chad."
+
+"Ah," wailed Madame de Vionnet, turning away a little wearily, "the
+things I leave to Chad!"
+
+The tone of it made him look at her with a kindness that showed his
+vision of her suspense.  But he fell back on his confidence. "Oh
+well--trust him.  Trust him all the way." He had indeed no sooner so
+spoken than the queer displacement of his point of view appeared again
+to come up for him in the very sound, which drew from him a short
+laugh, immediately checked.  He became still more advisory. "When they
+do come give them plenty of Miss Jeanne.  Let Mamie see her well."
+
+She looked for a moment as if she placed them face to face. "For Mamie
+to hate her?"
+
+He had another of his corrective headshakes.  "Mamie won't. Trust THEM."
+
+She looked at him hard, and then as if it were what she must always
+come back to:  "It's you I trust.  But I was sincere," she said, "at
+the hotel.  I did, I do, want my child--"
+
+"Well?"--Strether waited with deference while she appeared to hesitate
+as to how to put it.
+
+"Well, to do what she can for me."
+
+Strether for a little met her eyes on it; after which something that
+might have been unexpected to her came from him.  "Poor little duck!"
+
+Not more expected for himself indeed might well have been her echo of
+it.  "Poor little duck!  But she immensely wants herself," she said,
+"to see our friend's cousin."
+
+"Is that what she thinks her?"
+
+"It's what we call the young lady."
+
+He thought again; then with a laugh:  "Well, your daughter will help
+you."
+
+And now at last he took leave of her, as he had been intending for five
+minutes.  But she went part of the way with him, accompanying him out
+of the room and into the next and the next.  Her noble old apartment
+offered a succession of three, the first two of which indeed, on
+entering, smaller than the last, but each with its faded and formal
+air, enlarged the office of the antechamber and enriched the sense of
+approach.  Strether fancied them, liked them, and, passing through them
+with her more slowly now, met a sharp renewal of his original
+impression.  He stopped, he looked back; the whole thing made a vista,
+which he found high melancholy and sweet--full, once more, of dim
+historic shades, of the faint faraway cannon-roar of the great Empire.
+It was doubtless half the projection of his mind, but his mind was a
+thing that, among old waxed parquets, pale shades of pink and green,
+pseudo-classic candelabra, he had always needfully to reckon with. They
+could easily make him irrelevant. The oddity, the originality, the
+poetry--he didn't know what to call it--of Chad's connexion reaffirmed
+for him its romantic side. "They ought to see this, you know.  They
+MUST."
+
+"The Pococks?"--she looked about in deprecation; she seemed to see gaps
+he didn't.
+
+"Mamie and Sarah--Mamie in particular."
+
+"My shabby old place?  But THEIR things--!"
+
+"Oh their things!  You were talking of what will do something for you--"
+
+"So that it strikes you," she broke in, "that my poor place may? Oh,"
+she ruefully mused, "that WOULD be desperate!"
+
+"Do you know what I wish?" he went on.  "I wish Mrs. Newsome herself
+could have a look."
+
+She stared, missing a little his logic.  "It would make a difference?"
+
+Her tone was so earnest that as he continued to look about he laughed.
+"It might!"
+
+"But you've told her, you tell me--"
+
+"All about you?  Yes, a wonderful story.  But there's all the
+indescribable--what one gets only on the spot."
+
+"Thank you!" she charmingly and sadly smiled.
+
+"It's all about me here," he freely continued.  "Mrs. Newsome feels
+things."
+
+But she seemed doomed always to come back to doubt.  "No one feels so
+much as YOU.  No--not any one."
+
+"So much the worse then for every one.  It's very easy."
+
+They were by this time in the antechamber, still alone together, as she
+hadn't rung for a servant.  The antechamber was high and square, grave
+and suggestive too, a little cold and slippery even in summer, and with
+a few old prints that were precious, Strether divined, on the walls. He
+stood in the middle, slightly lingering, vaguely directing his glasses,
+while, leaning against the door-post of the room, she gently pressed
+her cheek to the side of the recess.  "YOU would have been a friend."
+
+"I?"--it startled him a little.
+
+"For the reason you say.  You're not stupid." And then abruptly, as if
+bringing it out were somehow founded on that fact: "We're marrying
+Jeanne."
+
+It affected him on the spot as a move in a game, and he was even then
+not without the sense that that wasn't the way Jeanne should be
+married.  But he quickly showed his interest, though--as quickly
+afterwards struck him--with an absurd confusion of mind.  "'You'? You
+and--a--not Chad?"  Of course it was the child's father who made the
+'we,' but to the child's father it would have cost him an effort to
+allude.  Yet didn't it seem the next minute that Monsieur de Vionnet
+was after all not in question?--since she had gone on to say that it
+was indeed to Chad she referred and that he had been in the whole
+matter kindness itself.
+
+"If I must tell you all, it is he himself who has put us in the way.  I
+mean in the way of an opportunity that, so far as I can yet see, is all
+I could possibly have dreamed of.  For all the trouble Monsieur de
+Vionnet will ever take!"  It was the first time she had spoken to him
+of her husband, and he couldn't have expressed how much more intimate
+with her it suddenly made him feel.  It wasn't much, in truth--there
+were other things in what she was saying that were far more; but it was
+as if, while they stood there together so easily in these cold chambers
+of the past, the single touch had shown the reach of her confidence.
+"But our friend," she asked, "hasn't then told you?"
+
+"He has told me nothing."
+
+"Well, it has come with rather a rush--all in a very few days; and
+hasn't moreover yet taken a form that permits an announcement.  It's
+only for you--absolutely you alone--that I speak; I so want you to
+know." The sense he had so often had, since the first hour of his
+disembarkment, of being further and further "in," treated him again at
+this moment to another twinge; but in this wonderful way of her putting
+him in there continued to be something exquisitely remorseless.
+"Monsieur de Vionnet will accept what he MUST accept. He has proposed
+half a dozen things--each one more impossible than the other; and he
+wouldn't have found this if he lives to a hundred. Chad found it," she
+continued with her lighted, faintly flushed, her conscious confidential
+face, "in the quietest way in the world. Or rather it found HIM--for
+everything finds him; I mean finds him right.  You'll think we do such
+things strangely--but at my age," she smiled, "one has to accept one's
+conditions.  Our young man's people had seen her; one of his sisters, a
+charming woman--we know all about them--had observed her somewhere with
+me.  She had spoken to her brother--turned him on; and we were again
+observed, poor Jeanne and I, without our in the least knowing it.  It
+was at the beginning of the winter; it went on for some time; it
+outlasted our absence; it began again on our return; and it luckily
+seems all right.  The young man had met Chad, and he got a friend to
+approach him--as having a decent interest in us.  Mr. Newsome looked
+well before he leaped; he kept beautifully quiet and satisfied himself
+fully; then only he spoke.  It's what has for some time past occupied
+us.  It seems as if it were what would do; really, really all one could
+wish.  There are only two or three points to be settled--they depend on
+her father.  But this time I think we're safe."
+
+Strether, consciously gaping a little, had fairly hung upon her lips.
+"I hope so with all my heart." And then he permitted himself: "Does
+nothing depend on HER?"
+
+"Ah naturally; everything did.  But she's pleased comme tout.  She has
+been perfectly free; and he--our young friend--is really a combination.
+I quite adore him."
+
+Strether just made sure.  "You mean your future son-in-law?"
+
+"Future if we all bring it off."
+
+"Ah well," said Strether decorously, "I heartily hope you may." There
+seemed little else for him to say, though her communication had the
+oddest effect on him.  Vaguely and confusedly he was troubled by it;
+feeling as if he had even himself been concerned in something deep and
+dim.  He had allowed for depths, but these were greater:  and it was as
+if, oppressively--indeed absurdly--he was responsible for what they had
+now thrown up to the surface.  It was--through something ancient and
+cold in it--what he would have called the real thing.  In short his
+hostess's news, though he couldn't have explained why, was a sensible
+shock, and his oppression a weight he felt he must somehow or other
+immediately get rid of.  There were too many connexions missing to make
+it tolerable he should do anything else.  He was prepared to
+suffer--before his own inner tribunal--for Chad; he was prepared to
+suffer even for Madame de Vionnet.  But he wasn't prepared to suffer
+for the little girl So now having said the proper thing, he wanted to
+get away.  She held him an instant, however, with another appeal.
+
+"Do I seem to you very awful?"
+
+"Awful?  Why so?"  But he called it to himself, even as he spoke, his
+biggest insincerity yet.
+
+"Our arrangements are so different from yours."
+
+"Mine?"  Oh he could dismiss that too!  "I haven't any arrangements."
+
+"Then you must accept mine; all the more that they're excellent.
+They're founded on a vieille sagesse.  There will be much more, if all
+goes well, for you to hear and to know, and everything, believe me, for
+you to like.  Don't be afraid; you'll be satisfied." Thus she could
+talk to him of what, of her innermost life--for that was what it came
+to--he must "accept"; thus she could extraordinarily speak as if in
+such an affair his being satisfied had an importance.  It was all a
+wonder and made the whole case larger.  He had struck himself at the
+hotel, before Sarah and Waymarsh, as being in her boat; but where on
+earth was he now?  This question was in the air till her own lips
+quenched it with another.  "And do you suppose HE--who loves her
+so--would do anything reckless or cruel?"
+
+He wondered what he supposed.  "Do you mean your young man--?"
+
+"I mean yours.  I mean Mr. Newsome." It flashed for Strether the next
+moment a finer light, and the light deepened as she went on. "He takes,
+thank God, the truest tenderest interest in her."
+
+It deepened indeed.  "Oh I'm sure of that!"
+
+"You were talking," she said, "about one's trusting him.  You see then
+how I do."
+
+He waited a moment--it all came.  "I see--I see." He felt he really did
+see.
+
+"He wouldn't hurt her for the world, nor--assuming she marries at
+all--risk anything that might make against her happiness.
+And--willingly, at least--he would never hurt ME."
+
+Her face, with what he had by this time grasped, told him more than her
+words; whether something had come into it, or whether he only read
+clearer, her whole story--what at least he then took for such--reached
+out to him from it.  With the initiative she now attributed to Chad it
+all made a sense, and this sense--a light, a lead, was what had
+abruptly risen before him.  He wanted, once more, to get off with these
+things; which was at last made easy, a servant having, for his
+assistance, on hearing voices in the hall, just come forward. All that
+Strether had made out was, while the man opened the door and
+impersonally waited, summed up in his last word.  "I don't think, you
+know, Chad will tell me anything."
+
+"No--perhaps not yet."
+
+"And I won't as yet speak to him."
+
+"Ah that's as you'll think best.  You must judge."
+
+She had finally given him her hand, which he held a moment.  "How MUCH
+I have to judge!"
+
+"Everything," said Madame de Vionnet:  a remark that was indeed--with
+the refined disguised suppressed passion of her face--what he most
+carried away.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+So far as a direct approach was concerned Sarah had neglected him, for
+the week now about to end, with a civil consistency of chill that,
+giving him a higher idea of her social resource, threw him back on the
+general reflexion that a woman could always be amazing. It indeed
+helped a little to console him that he felt sure she had for the same
+period also left Chad's curiosity hanging; though on the other hand,
+for his personal relief, Chad could at least go through the various
+motions--and he made them extraordinarily numerous--of seeing she had a
+good time.  There wasn't a motion on which, in her presence, poor
+Strether could so much as venture, and all he could do when he was out
+of it was to walk over for a talk with Maria.  He walked over of course
+much less than usual, but he found a special compensation in a certain
+half-hour during which, toward the close of a crowded empty expensive
+day, his several companions seemed to him so disposed of as to give his
+forms and usages a rest.  He had been with them in the morning and had
+nevertheless called on the Pococks in the afternoon; but their whole
+group, he then found, had dispersed after a fashion of which it would
+amuse Miss Gostrey to hear.  He was sorry again, gratefully sorry she
+was so out of it--she who had really put him in; but she had
+fortunately always her appetite for news.  The pure flame of the
+disinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine
+vault.  It was just now, as happened, that for so fine a sense as hers
+a near view would have begun to pay.  Within three days, precisely, the
+situation on which he was to report had shown signs of an equilibrium;
+the effect of his look in at the hotel was to confirm this appearance.
+If the equilibrium might only prevail! Sarah was out with Waymarsh,
+Mamie was out with Chad, and Jim was out alone.  Later on indeed he
+himself was booked to Jim, was to take him that evening to the
+Varieties--which Strether was careful to pronounce as Jim pronounced
+them.
+
+Miss Gostrey drank it in.  "What then to-night do the others do?"
+
+"Well, it has been arranged.  Waymarsh takes Sarah to dine at Bignons."
+
+She wondered.  "And what do they do after?  They can't come straight
+home."
+
+"No, they can't come straight home--at least Sarah can't. It's their
+secret, but I think I've guessed it." Then as she waited: "The circus."
+
+It made her stare a moment longer, then laugh almost to extravagance.
+"There's no one like you!"
+
+"Like ME?"--he only wanted to understand.
+
+"Like all of you together--like all of us:  Woollett, Milrose and their
+products.  We're abysmal--but may we never be less so! Mr. Newsome,"
+she continued, "meanwhile takes Miss Pocock--?"
+
+"Precisely--to the Francais:  to see what you took Waymarsh and me to,
+a family-bill."
+
+"Ah then may Mr. Chad enjoy it as I did!"  But she saw so much in
+things.  "Do they spend their evenings, your young people, like that,
+alone together?"
+
+"Well, they're young people--but they're old friends."
+
+"I see, I see.  And do THEY dine--for a difference--at Brebant's?"
+
+"Oh where they dine is their secret too.  But I've my idea that it will
+be, very quietly, at Chad's own place."
+
+"She'll come to him there alone?"
+
+They looked at each other a moment.  "He has known her from a child.
+Besides," said Strether with emphasis, "Mamie's remarkable.  She's
+splendid."
+
+She wondered.  "Do you mean she expects to bring it off?"
+
+"Getting hold of him?  No--I think not."
+
+"She doesn't want him enough?--or doesn't believe in her power?" On
+which as he said nothing she continued:  "She finds she doesn't care
+for him?"
+
+"No--I think she finds she does.  But that's what I mean by so
+describing her.  It's IF she does that she's splendid.  But we'll see,"
+he wound up, "where she comes out."
+
+"You seem to show me sufficiently," Miss Gostrey laughed, "where she
+goes in!  But is her childhood's friend," she asked, "permitting
+himself recklessly to flirt with her?"
+
+"No--not that.  Chad's also splendid.  They're ALL splendid!" he
+declared with a sudden strange sound of wistfulness and envy. "They're
+at least HAPPY."
+
+"Happy?"--it appeared, with their various difficulties, to surprise her.
+
+"Well--I seem to myself among them the only one who isn't."
+
+She demurred.  "With your constant tribute to the ideal?"
+
+He had a laugh at his tribute to the ideal, but he explained after a
+moment his impression.  "I mean they're living.  They're rushing about.
+I've already had my rushing.  I'm waiting."
+
+"But aren't you," she asked by way of cheer, "waiting with ME?"
+
+He looked at her in all kindness.  "Yes--if it weren't for that!"
+
+"And you help me to wait," she said.  "However," she went on, "I've
+really something for you that will help you to wait and which you shall
+have in a minute.  Only there's something more I want from you first. I
+revel in Sarah."
+
+"So do I.  If it weren't," he again amusedly sighed, "for THAT--!"
+
+"Well, you owe more to women than any man I ever saw.  We do seem to
+keep you going.  Yet Sarah, as I see her, must be great."
+
+"She IS" Strether fully assented:  "great!  Whatever happens, she
+won't, with these unforgettable days, have lived in vain."
+
+Miss Gostrey had a pause.  "You mean she has fallen in love?"
+
+"I mean she wonders if she hasn't--and it serves all her purpose."
+
+"It has indeed," Maria laughed, "served women's purposes before!"
+
+"Yes--for giving in.  But I doubt if the idea--as an idea--has ever up
+to now answered so well for holding out.  That's HER tribute to the
+ideal--we each have our own.  It's her romance--and it seems to me
+better on the whole than mine.  To have it in Paris too," he
+explained--"on this classic ground, in this charged infectious air,
+with so sudden an intensity:  well, it's more than she expected.  She
+has had in short to recognise the breaking out for her of a real
+affinity--and with everything to enhance the drama."
+
+Miss Gostrey followed.  "Jim for instance?"
+
+"Jim.  Jim hugely enhances.  Jim was made to enhance.  And then Mr.
+Waymarsh.  It's the crowning touch--it supplies the colour. He's
+positively separated."
+
+"And she herself unfortunately isn't--that supplies the colour too."
+Miss Gostrey was all there.  But somehow--!  "Is HE in love?"
+
+Strether looked at her a long time; then looked all about the room;
+then came a little nearer.  "Will you never tell any one in the world
+as long as ever you live?"
+
+"Never." It was charming.
+
+"He thinks Sarah really is.  But he has no fear," Strether hastened to
+add.
+
+"Of her being affected by it?"
+
+"Of HIS being.  He likes it, but he knows she can hold out.  He's
+helping her, he's floating her over, by kindness."
+
+Maria rather funnily considered it.  "Floating her over in champagne?
+The kindness of dining her, nose to nose, at the hour when all Paris is
+crowding to profane delights, and in the--well, in the great temple, as
+one hears of it, of pleasure?"
+
+"That's just IT, for both of them," Strether insisted--"and all of a
+supreme innocence.  The Parisian place, the feverish hour, the
+putting before her of a hundred francs' worth of food and drink, which
+they'll scarcely touch--all that's the dear man's own romance; the
+expensive kind, expensive in francs and centimes, in which he abounds.
+And the circus afterwards--which is cheaper, but which he'll find some
+means of making as dear as possible--that's also HIS tribute to the
+ideal.  It does for him.  He'll see her through.  They won't talk of
+anything worse than you and me."
+
+"Well, we're bad enough perhaps, thank heaven," she laughed, "to upset
+them!  Mr. Waymarsh at any rate is a hideous old coquette." And the
+next moment she had dropped everything for a different pursuit.  "What
+you don't appear to know is that Jeanne de Vionnet has become engaged.
+She's to marry--it has been definitely arranged--young Monsieur de
+Montbron."
+
+He fairly blushed.  "Then--if you know it--it's 'out'?"
+
+"Don't I often know things that are NOT out?  However," she said, "this
+will be out to-morrow.  But I see I've counted too much on your
+possible ignorance.  You've been before me, and I don't make you jump
+as I hoped."
+
+He gave a gasp at her insight.  "You never fail!  I've HAD my jump. I
+had it when I first heard."
+
+"Then if you knew why didn't you tell me as soon as you came in?"
+
+"Because I had it from her as a thing not yet to be spoken of."
+
+Miss Gostrey wondered.  "From Madame de Vionnet herself?"
+
+"As a probability--not quite a certainty:  a good cause in which Chad
+has been working.  So I've waited."
+
+"You need wait no longer," she returned.  "It reached me
+yesterday--roundabout and accidental, but by a person who had had it
+from one of the young man's own people--as a thing quite settled.  I
+was only keeping it for you."
+
+"You thought Chad wouldn't have told me?"
+
+She hesitated.  "Well, if he hasn't--"
+
+"He hasn't.  And yet the thing appears to have been practically his
+doing.  So there we are."
+
+"There we are!" Maria candidly echoed.
+
+"That's why I jumped.  I jumped," he continued to explain, "because it
+means, this disposition of the daughter, that there's now nothing else:
+nothing else but him and the mother."
+
+"Still--it simplifies."
+
+"It simplifies"--he fully concurred.  "But that's precisely where we
+are.  It marks a stage in his relation.  The act is his answer to Mrs.
+Newsome's demonstration."
+
+"It tells," Maria asked, "the worst?"
+
+"The worst."
+
+"But is the worst what he wants Sarah to know?"
+
+"He doesn't care for Sarah."
+
+At which Miss Gostrey's eyebrows went up.  "You mean she has already
+dished herself?"
+
+Strether took a turn about; he had thought it out again and again
+before this, to the end; but the vista seemed each time longer.  "He
+wants his good friend to know the best.  I mean the measure of his
+attachment.  She asked for a sign, and he thought of that one.  There
+it is."
+
+"A concession to her jealousy?"
+
+Strether pulled up.  "Yes--call it that.  Make it lurid--for that makes
+my problem richer."
+
+"Certainly, let us have it lurid--for I quite agree with you that we
+want none of our problems poor.  But let us also have it clear. Can he,
+in the midst of such a preoccupation, or on the heels of it, have
+seriously cared for Jeanne?--cared, I mean, as a young man at liberty
+would have cared?"
+
+Well, Strether had mastered it.  "I think he can have thought it would
+be charming if he COULD care.  It would be nicer."
+
+"Nicer than being tied up to Marie?"
+
+"Yes--than the discomfort of an attachment to a person he can never
+hope, short of a catastrophe, to marry.  And he was quite right," said
+Strether.  "It would certainly have been nicer.  Even when a thing's
+already nice there mostly is some other thing that would have been
+nicer--or as to which we wonder if it wouldn't.  But his question was
+all the same a dream.  He COULDn't care in that way.  He IS tied up to
+Marie.  The relation is too special and has gone too far.  It's the
+very basis, and his recent lively contribution toward establishing
+Jeanne in life has been his definite and final acknowledgement to
+Madame de Vionnet that he has ceased squirming. I doubt meanwhile," he
+went on, "if Sarah has at all directly attacked him."
+
+His companion brooded.  "But won't he wish for his own satisfaction to
+make his ground good to her?"
+
+"No--he'll leave it to me, he'll leave everything to me.  I 'sort of'
+feel"--he worked it out--"that the whole thing will come upon me.  Yes,
+I shall have every inch and every ounce of it.  I shall be USED for
+it--!"  And Strether lost himself in the prospect.  Then he fancifully
+expressed the issue.  "To the last drop of my blood."
+
+Maria, however, roundly protested.  "Ah you'll please keep a drop for
+ME.  I shall have a use for it!"--which she didn't however follow up.
+She had come back the next moment to another matter. "Mrs. Pocock, with
+her brother, is trusting only to her general charm?"
+
+"So it would seem."
+
+"And the charm's not working?"
+
+Well, Strether put it otherwise, "She's sounding the note of
+home--which is the very best thing she can do."
+
+"The best for Madame de Vionnet?"
+
+"The best for home itself.  The natural one; the right one."
+
+"Right," Maria asked, "when it fails?"
+
+Strether had a pause.  "The difficulty's Jim.  Jim's the note of home."
+
+She debated.  "Ah surely not the note of Mrs. Newsome."
+
+But he had it all.  "The note of the home for which Mrs. Newsome wants
+him--the home of the business.  Jim stands, with his little legs apart,
+at the door of THAT tent; and Jim is, frankly speaking, extremely
+awful."
+
+Maria stared.  "And you in, you poor thing, for your evening with him?"
+
+"Oh he's all right for ME!" Strether laughed.  "Any one's good enough
+for ME.  But Sarah shouldn't, all the same, have brought him. She
+doesn't appreciate him."
+
+His friend was amused with this statement of it.  "Doesn't know, you
+mean, how bad he is?"
+
+Strether shook his head with decision.  "Not really."
+
+She wondered.  "Then doesn't Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+It made him frankly do the same.  "Well, no--since you ask me."
+
+Maria rubbed it in.  "Not really either?"
+
+"Not at all.  She rates him rather high." With which indeed,
+immediately, he took himself up.  "Well, he IS good too, in his way. It
+depends on what you want him for."
+
+Miss Gostrey, however, wouldn't let it depend on anything--wouldn't
+have it, and wouldn't want him, at any price.  "It suits my book," she
+said, "that he should be impossible; and it suits it still better," she
+more imaginatively added, "that Mrs. Newsome doesn't know he is."
+
+Strether, in consequence, had to take it from her, but he fell back on
+something else.  "I'll tell you who does really know."
+
+"Mr. Waymarsh?  Never!"
+
+"Never indeed.  I'm not ALWAYS thinking of Mr. Waymarsh; in fact I find
+now I never am." Then he mentioned the person as if there were a good
+deal in it.  "Mamie."
+
+"His own sister?"  Oddly enough it but let her down.  "What good will
+that do?"
+
+"None perhaps.  But there--as usual--we are!"
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+There they were yet again, accordingly, for two days more; when
+Strether, on being, at Mrs. Pocock's hotel, ushered into that lady's
+salon, found himself at first assuming a mistake on the part of the
+servant who had introduced him and retired.  The occupants hadn't come
+in, for the room looked empty as only a room can look in Paris, of a
+fine afternoon when the faint murmur of the huge collective life,
+carried on out of doors, strays among scattered objects even as a
+summer air idles in a lonely garden.  Our friend looked about and
+hesitated; observed, on the evidence of a table charged with purchases
+and other matters, that Sarah had become possessed--by no aid from
+HIM--of the last number of the salmon-coloured Revue; noted further
+that Mamie appeared to have received a present of Fromentin's "Maitres
+d'Autrefois" from Chad, who had written her name on the cover; and
+pulled up at the sight of a heavy letter addressed in a hand he knew.
+This letter, forwarded by a banker and arriving in Mrs. Pocock's
+absence, had been placed in evidence, and it drew from the fact of its
+being unopened a sudden queer power to intensify the reach of its
+author.  It brought home to him the scale on which Mrs. Newsome--for
+she had been copious indeed this time--was writing to her daughter
+while she kept HIM in durance; and it had altogether such an effect
+upon him as made him for a few minutes stand still and breathe low.  In
+his own room, at his own hotel, he had dozens of well-filled envelopes
+superscribed in that character; and there was actually something in the
+renewal of his interrupted vision of the character that played straight
+into the so frequent question of whether he weren't already
+disinherited beyond appeal.  It was such an assurance as the sharp
+downstrokes of her pen hadn't yet had occasion to give him; but they
+somehow at the present crisis stood for a probable absoluteness in any
+decree of the writer.  He looked at Sarah's name and address, in short,
+as if he had been looking hard into her mother's face, and then turned
+from it as if the face had declined to relax.  But since it was in a
+manner as if Mrs. Newsome were thereby all the more, instead of the
+less, in the room, and were conscious, sharply and sorely conscious, of
+himself, so he felt both held and hushed, summoned to stay at least and
+take his punishment.  By staying, accordingly, he took it--creeping
+softly and vaguely about and waiting for Sarah to come in.  She WOULD
+come in if he stayed long enough, and he had now more than ever the
+sense of her success in leaving him a prey to anxiety.  It wasn't to be
+denied that she had had a happy instinct, from the point of view of
+Woollett, in placing him thus at the mercy of her own initiative. It
+was very well to try to say he didn't care--that she might break ground
+when she would, might never break it at all if she wouldn't, and that
+he had no confession whatever to wait upon her with:  he breathed from
+day to day an air that damnably required clearing, and there were
+moments when he quite ached to precipitate that process.  He couldn't
+doubt that, should she only oblige him by surprising him just as he
+then was, a clarifying scene of some sort would result from the
+concussion.
+
+He humbly circulated in this spirit till he suddenly had a fresh
+arrest.  Both the windows of the room stood open to the balcony, but it
+was only now that, in the glass of the leaf of one of them, folded
+back, he caught a reflexion quickly recognised as the colour of a
+lady's dress.  Somebody had been then all the while on the balcony, and
+the person, whoever it might be, was so placed between the windows as
+to be hidden from him; while on the other hand the many sounds of the
+street had covered his own entrance and movements.  If the person were
+Sarah he might on the spot therefore be served to his taste.  He might
+lead her by a move or two up to the remedy for his vain tension; as to
+which, should he get nothing else from it, he would at least have the
+relief of pulling down the roof on their heads.  There was fortunately
+no one at hand to observe--in respect to his valour--that even on this
+completed reasoning he still hung fire.  He had been waiting for Mrs.
+Pocock and the sound of the oracle; but he had to gird himself
+afresh--which he did in the embrasure of the window, neither advancing
+nor retreating--before provoking the revelation.  It was apparently for
+Sarah to come more into view; he was in that case there at her service.
+She did however, as meanwhile happened, come more into view; only she
+luckily came at the last minute as a contradiction of Sarah.  The
+occupant of the balcony was after all quite another person, a person
+presented, on a second look, by a charming back and a slight shift of
+her position, as beautiful brilliant unconscious Mamie--Mamie alone at
+home, Mamie passing her time in her own innocent way, Mamie in short
+rather shabbily used, but Mamie absorbed interested and interesting.
+With her arms on the balustrade and her attention dropped to the street
+she allowed Strether to watch her, to consider several things, without
+her turning round.
+
+But the oddity was that when he HAD so watched and considered he simply
+stepped back into the room without following up his advantage.  He
+revolved there again for several minutes, quite as with something new
+to think of and as if the bearings of the possibility of Sarah had been
+superseded.  For frankly, yes, it HAD bearings thus to find the girl in
+solitary possession.  There was something in it that touched him to a
+point not to have been reckoned beforehand, something that softly but
+quite pressingly spoke to him, and that spoke the more each time he
+paused again at the edge of the balcony and saw her still unaware.  Her
+companions were plainly scattered; Sarah would be off somewhere with
+Waymarsh and Chad off somewhere with Jim.  Strether didn't at all
+mentally impute to Chad that he was with his "good friend"; he gave him
+the benefit of supposing him involved in appearances that, had he had
+to describe them--for instance to Maria--he would have conveniently
+qualified as more subtle.  It came to him indeed the next thing that
+there was perhaps almost an excess of refinement in having left Mamie
+in such weather up there alone; however she might in fact have
+extemporised, under the charm of the Rue de Rivoli, a little makeshift
+Paris of wonder arid fancy.  Our friend in any case now recognised--and
+it was as if at the recognition Mrs. Newsome's fixed intensity had
+suddenly, with a deep audible gasp, grown thin and vague--that day
+after day he had been conscious in respect to his young lady of
+something odd and ambiguous, yet something into which he could at last
+read a meaning.  It had been at the most, this mystery, an
+obsession--oh an obsession agreeable; and it had just now fallen into
+its place as at the touch of a spring.  It had represented the
+possibility between them of some communication baffled by accident and
+delay--the possibility even of some relation as yet unacknowledged.
+
+There was always their old relation, the fruit of the Woollett years;
+but that--and it was what was strangest--had nothing whatever in common
+with what was now in the air.  As a child, as a "bud," and then again
+as a flower of expansion, Mamie had bloomed for him, freely, in the
+almost incessantly open doorways of home; where he remembered her as
+first very forward, as then very backward--for he had carried on at one
+period, in Mrs. Newsome's parlours (oh Mrs. Newsome's phases and his
+own!) a course of English Literature re-enforced by exams and teas--and
+once more, finally, as very much in advance.  But he had kept no great
+sense of points of contact; it not being in the nature of things at
+Woollett that the freshest of the buds should find herself in the same
+basket with the most withered of the winter apples.  The child had
+given sharpness, above all, to his sense of the flight of time; it was
+but the day before yesterday that he had tripped up on her hoop, yet
+his experience of remarkable women--destined, it would seem, remarkably
+to grow--felt itself ready this afternoon, quite braced itself, to
+include her.  She had in fine more to say to him than he had ever
+dreamed the pretty girl of the moment COULD have; and the proof of the
+circumstance was that, visibly, unmistakeably, she had been able to say
+it to no one else.  It was something she could mention neither to her
+brother, to her sister-in-law nor to Chad; though he could just imagine
+that had she still been at home she might have brought it out, as a
+supreme tribute to age, authority and attitude, for Mrs. Newsome.  It
+was moreover something in which they all took an interest; the strength
+of their interest was in truth just the reason of her prudence.  All
+this then, for five minutes, was vivid to Strether, and it put before
+him that, poor child, she had now but her prudence to amuse her.  That,
+for a pretty girl in Paris, struck him, with a rush, as a sorry state;
+so that under the impression he went out to her with a step as
+hypocritically alert, he was well aware, as if he had just come into
+the room.  She turned with a start at his voice; preoccupied with him
+though she might be, she was just a scrap disappointed. "Oh I thought
+you were Mr. Bilham!"
+
+The remark had been at first surprising and our friend's private
+thought, under the influence of it, temporarily blighted; yet we are
+able to add that he presently recovered his inward tone and that many a
+fresh flower of fancy was to bloom in the same air. Little
+Bilham--since little Bilham was, somewhat incongruously,
+expected--appeared behindhand; a circumstance by which Strether was to
+profit.  They came back into the room together after a little, the
+couple on the balcony, and amid its crimson-and-gold elegance, with the
+others still absent, Strether passed forty minutes that he appraised
+even at the time as far, in the whole queer connexion, from his idlest.
+Yes indeed, since he had the other day so agreed with Maria about the
+inspiration of the lurid, here was something for his problem that
+surely didn't make it shrink and that was floated in upon him as part
+of a sudden flood.  He was doubtless not to know till afterwards, on
+turning them over in thought, of how many elements his impression was
+composed; but he none the less felt, as he sat with the charming girl,
+the signal growth of a confidence.  For she WAS charming, when all was
+said--and none the less so for the visible habit and practice of
+freedom and fluency. She was charming, he was aware, in spite of the
+fact that if he hadn't found her so he would have found her something
+he should have been in peril of expressing as "funny." Yes, she was
+funny, wonderful Mamie, and without dreaming it; she was bland, she was
+bridal--with never, that he could make out as yet, a bridegroom to
+support it; she was handsome and portly and easy and chatty, soft and
+sweet and almost disconcertingly reassuring.  She was dressed, if we
+might so far discriminate, less as a young lady than as an old one--had
+an old one been supposable to Strether as so committed to vanity; the
+complexities of her hair missed moreover also the looseness of youth;
+and she had a mature manner of bending a little, as to encourage and
+reward, while she held neatly together in front of her a pair of
+strikingly polished hands:  the combination of all of which kept up
+about her the glamour of her "receiving," placed her again perpetually
+between the windows and within sound of the ice-cream plates, suggested
+the enumeration of all the names, all the Mr. Brookses and Mr.
+Snookses, gregarious specimens of a single type, she was happy to
+"meet." But if all this was where she was funny, and if what was
+funnier than the rest was the contrast between her beautiful benevolent
+patronage--such a hint of the polysyllabic as might make her something
+of a bore toward middle age--and her rather flat little voice, the
+voice, naturally, unaffectedly yet, of a girl of fifteen; so Strether,
+none the less, at the end of ten minutes, felt in her a quiet dignity
+that pulled things bravely together.  If quiet dignity, almost more
+than matronly, with voluminous, too voluminous clothes, was the effect
+she proposed to produce, that was an ideal one could like in her when
+once one had got into relation.  The great thing now for her visitor
+was that this was exactly what he had done; it made so extraordinary a
+mixture of the brief and crowded hour.  It was the mark of a relation
+that he had begun so quickly to find himself sure she was, of all
+people, as might have been said, on the side and of the party of Mrs.
+Newsome's original ambassador. She was in HIS interest and not in
+Sarah's, and some sign of that was precisely what he had been feeling
+in her, these last days, as imminent.  Finally placed, in Paris, in
+immediate presence of the situation and of the hero of it--by whom
+Strether was incapable of meaning any one but Chad--she had
+accomplished, and really in a manner all unexpected to herself, a
+change of base; deep still things had come to pass within her, and by
+the time she had grown sure of them Strether had become aware of the
+little drama.  When she knew where she was, in short, he had made it
+out; and he made it out at present still better; though with never a
+direct word passing between them all the while on the subject of his
+own predicament.  There had been at first, as he sat there with her, a
+moment during which he wondered if she meant to break ground in respect
+to his prime undertaking.  That door stood so strangely ajar that he
+was half-prepared to be conscious, at any juncture, of her having, of
+any one's having, quite bounced in.  But, friendly, familiar, light of
+touch and happy of tact, she exquisitely stayed out; so that it was for
+all the world as if to show she could deal with him without being
+reduced to--well, scarcely anything.
+
+It fully came up for them then, by means of their talking of everything
+BUT Chad, that Mamie, unlike Sarah, unlike Jim, knew perfectly what had
+become of him.  It fully came up that she had taken to the last
+fraction of an inch the measure of the change in him, and that she
+wanted Strether to know what a secret she proposed to make of it.  They
+talked most conveniently--as if they had had no chance yet--about
+Woollett; and that had virtually the effect of their keeping the secret
+more close.  The hour took on for Strether, little by little, a queer
+sad sweetness of quality, he had such a revulsion in Mamie's favour and
+on behalf of her social value as might have come from remorse at some
+early injustice.  She made him, as under the breath of some vague
+western whiff, homesick and freshly restless; he could really for the
+time have fancied himself stranded with her on a far shore, during an
+ominous calm, in a quaint community of shipwreck.  Their little
+interview was like a picnic on a coral strand; they passed each other,
+with melancholy smiles and looks sufficiently allusive, such cupfuls of
+water as they had saved.  Especially sharp in Strether meanwhile was
+the conviction that his companion really knew, as we have hinted, where
+she had come out.  It was at a very particular place--only THAT she
+would never tell him; it would be above all what he should have to
+puzzle for himself.  This was what he hoped for, because his interest
+in the girl wouldn't be complete without it.  No more would the
+appreciation to which she was entitled--so assured was he that the more
+he saw of her process the more he should see of her pride. She saw,
+herself, everything; but she knew what she didn't want, and that it was
+that had helped her.  What didn't she want?--there was a pleasure lost
+for her old friend in not yet knowing, as there would doubtless be a
+thrill in getting a glimpse.  Gently and sociably she kept that dark to
+him, and it was as if she soothed and beguiled him in other ways to
+make up for it.  She came out with her impression of Madame de
+Vionnet--of whom she had "heard so much"; she came out with her
+impression of Jeanne, whom she had been "dying to see":  she brought it
+out with a blandness by which her auditor was really stirred that she
+had been with Sarah early that very afternoon, and after dreadful
+delays caused by all sorts of things, mainly, eternally, by the
+purchase of clothes--clothes that unfortunately wouldn't be themselves
+eternal--to call in the Rue de Bellechasse.
+
+At the sound of these names Strether almost blushed to feel that he
+couldn't have sounded them first--and yet couldn't either have
+justified his squeamishness.  Mamie made them easy as he couldn't have
+begun to do, and yet it could only have cost her more than he should
+ever have had to spend.  It was as friends of Chad's, friends special,
+distinguished, desirable, enviable, that she spoke of them, and she
+beautifully carried it off that much as she had heard of them--though
+she didn't say how or where, which was a touch of her own--she had
+found them beyond her supposition.  She abounded in praise of them, and
+after the manner of Woollett--which made the manner of Woollett a
+loveable thing again to Strether.  He had never so felt the true
+inwardness of it as when his blooming companion pronounced the elder of
+the ladies of the Rue de Bellechasse too fascinating for words and
+declared of the younger that she was perfectly ideal, a real little
+monster of charm.  "Nothing," she said of Jeanne, "ought ever to happen
+to her--she's so awfully right as she is.  Another touch will spoil
+her--so she oughtn't to BE touched."
+
+"Ah but things, here in Paris," Strether observed, "do happen to little
+girls." And then for the joke's and the occasion's sake: "Haven't you
+found that yourself?"
+
+"That things happen--?  Oh I'm not a little girl.  I'm a big battered
+blowsy one.  I don't care," Mamie laughed, "WHAT happens."
+
+Strether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn't happen that he
+should give her the pleasure of learning that he found her nicer than
+he had really dreamed--a pause that ended when he had said to himself
+that, so far as it at all mattered for her, she had in fact perhaps
+already made this out.  He risked accordingly a different
+question--though conscious, as soon as he had spoken, that he seemed to
+place it in relation to her last speech.  "But that Mademoiselle de
+Vionnet is to be married--I suppose you've heard of THAT." For all, he
+then found, he need fear!  "Dear, yes; the gentleman was there:
+Monsieur de Montbron, whom Madame de Vionnet presented to us."
+
+"And was he nice?"
+
+Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner.  "Any man's
+nice when he's in love."
+
+It made Strether laugh.  "But is Monsieur de Montbron in
+love--already--with YOU?"
+
+"Oh that's not necessary--it's so much better he should be so with HER:
+which, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for myself.  He's
+perfectly gone--and I couldn't have borne it for her if he hadn't been.
+She's just too sweet."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "And through being in love too?"
+
+On which with a smile that struck him as wonderful Mamie had a
+wonderful answer.  "She doesn't know if she is or not."
+
+It made him again laugh out.  "Oh but YOU do!"
+
+She was willing to take it that way.  "Oh yes, I know everything." And
+as she sat there rubbing her polished hands and making the best of
+it--only holding her elbows perhaps a little too much out--the
+momentary effect for Strether was that every one else, in all their
+affair, seemed stupid.
+
+"Know that poor little Jeanne doesn't know what's the matter with her?"
+
+It was as near as they came to saying that she was probably in love
+with Chad; but it was quite near enough for what Strether wanted; which
+was to be confirmed in his certitude that, whether in love or not, she
+appealed to something large and easy in the girl before him.  Mamie
+would be fat, too fat, at thirty; but she would always be the person
+who, at the present sharp hour, had been disinterestedly tender.  "If I
+see a little more of her, as I hope I shall, I think she'll like me
+enough--for she seemed to like me to-day--to want me to tell her."
+
+"And SHALL you?"
+
+"Perfectly.  I shall tell her the matter with her is that she wants
+only too much to do right.  To do right for her, naturally," said
+Mamie, "is to please."
+
+"Her mother, do you mean?"
+
+"Her mother first."
+
+Strether waited.  "And then?"
+
+"Well, 'then'--Mr. Newsome."
+
+There was something really grand for him in the serenity of this
+reference.  "And last only Monsieur de Montbron?"
+
+"Last only"--she good-humouredly kept it up.
+
+Strether considered.  "So that every one after all then will be suited?"
+
+She had one of her few hesitations, but it was a question only of a
+moment; and it was her nearest approach to being explicit with him
+about what was between them.  "I think I can speak for myself.  I shall
+be."
+
+It said indeed so much, told such a story of her being ready to help
+him, so committed to him that truth, in short, for such use as he might
+make of it toward those ends of his own with which, patiently and
+trustfully, she had nothing to do--it so fully achieved all this that
+he appeared to himself simply to meet it in its own spirit by the last
+frankness of admiration.  Admiration was of itself almost accusatory,
+but nothing less would serve to show her how nearly he understood.  He
+put out his hand for good-bye with a "Splendid, splendid, splendid!"
+And he left her, in her splendour, still waiting for little Bilham.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Tenth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Strether occupied beside little Bilham, three evenings after his
+interview with Mamie Pocock, the same deep divan they had enjoyed
+together on the first occasion of our friend's meeting Madame de
+Vionnet and her daughter in the apartment of the Boulevard Malesherbes,
+where his position affirmed itself again as ministering to an easy
+exchange of impressions.  The present evening had a different stamp; if
+the company was much more numerous, so, inevitably, were the ideas set
+in motion.  It was on the other hand, however, now strongly marked that
+the talkers moved, in respect to such matters, round an inner, a
+protected circle. They knew at any rate what really concerned them
+to-night, and Strether had begun by keeping his companion close to it.
+Only a few of Chad's guests had dined--that is fifteen or twenty, a few
+compared with the large concourse offered to sight by eleven o'clock;
+but number and mass, quantity and quality, light, fragrance, sound, the
+overflow of hospitality meeting the high tide of response, had all from
+the first pressed upon Strether's consciousness, and he felt himself
+somehow part and parcel of the most festive scene, as the term was, in
+which he had ever in his life been engaged.  He had perhaps seen, on
+Fourths of July and on dear old domestic Commencements, more people
+assembled, but he had never seen so many in proportion to the space, or
+had at all events never known so great a promiscuity to show so
+markedly as picked. Numerous as was the company, it had still been made
+so by selection, and what was above all rare for Strether was that, by
+no fault of his own, he was in the secret of the principle that had
+worked.  He hadn't enquired, he had averted his head, but Chad had put
+him a pair of questions that themselves smoothed the ground. He hadn't
+answered the questions, he had replied that they were the young man's
+own affair; and he had then seen perfectly that the latter's direction
+was already settled.
+
+Chad had applied for counsel only by way of intimating that he knew
+what to do; and he had clearly never known it better than in now
+presenting to his sister the whole circle of his society.  This was all
+in the sense and the spirit of the note struck by him on that lady's
+arrival; he had taken at the station itself a line that led him without
+a break, and that enabled him to lead the Pococks--though dazed a
+little, no doubt, breathless, no doubt, and bewildered--to the
+uttermost end of the passage accepted by them perforce as pleasant.  He
+had made it for them violently pleasant and mercilessly full; the
+upshot of which was, to Strether's vision, that they had come all the
+way without discovering it to be really no passage at all.  It was a
+brave blind alley, where to pass was impossible and where, unless they
+stuck fast, they would have--which was always awkward--publicly to back
+out.  They were touching bottom assuredly tonight; the whole scene
+represented the terminus of the cul-de-sac.  So could things go when
+there was a hand to keep them consistent--a hand that pulled the wire
+with a skill at which the elder man more and more marvelled.  The elder
+man felt responsible, but he also felt successful, since what had taken
+place was simply the issue of his own contention, six weeks before,
+that they properly should wait to see what their friends would have
+really to say.  He had determined Chad to wait, he had determined him
+to see; he was therefore not to quarrel with the time given up to the
+business.  As much as ever, accordingly, now that a fortnight had
+elapsed, the situation created for Sarah, and against which she had
+raised no protest, was that of her having accommodated herself to her
+adventure as to a pleasure-party surrendered perhaps even somewhat in
+excess to bustle and to "pace." If her brother had been at any point
+the least bit open to criticism it might have been on the ground of his
+spicing the draught too highly and pouring the cup too full.  Frankly
+treating the whole occasion of the presence of his relatives as an
+opportunity for amusement, he left it, no doubt, but scant margin as an
+opportunity for anything else.  He suggested, invented, abounded--yet
+all the while with the loosest easiest rein. Strether, during his own
+weeks, had gained a sense of knowing Paris; but he saw it afresh, and
+with fresh emotion, in the form of the knowledge offered to his
+colleague.
+
+A thousand unuttered thoughts hummed for him in the air of these
+observations; not the least frequent of which was that Sarah might well
+of a truth not quite know whither she was drifting.  She was in no
+position not to appear to expect that Chad should treat her handsomely;
+yet she struck our friend as privately stiffening a little each time
+she missed the chance of marking the great nuance. The great nuance was
+in brief that of course her brother must treat her handsomely--she
+should like to see him not; but that treating her handsomely, none the
+less, wasn't all in all--treating her handsomely buttered no parsnips;
+and that in fine there were moments when she felt the fixed eyes of
+their admirable absent mother fairly screw into the flat of her back.
+Strether, watching, after his habit, and overscoring with thought,
+positively had moments of his own in which he found himself sorry for
+her--occasions on which she affected him as a person seated in a
+runaway vehicle and turning over the question of a possible jump. WOULD
+she jump, could she, would THAT be a safe placed--this question, at
+such instants, sat for him in her lapse into pallor, her tight lips,
+her conscious eyes.  It came back to the main point at issue: would she
+be, after all, to be squared?  He believed on the whole she would jump;
+yet his alternations on this subject were the more especial stuff of
+his suspense.  One thing remained well before him--a conviction that
+was in fact to gain sharpness from the impressions of this evening:
+that if she SHOULD gather in her skirts, close her eyes and quit the
+carriage while in motion, he would promptly enough become aware.  She
+would alight from her headlong course more or less directly upon him;
+it would be appointed to him, unquestionably, to receive her entire
+weight. Signs and portents of the experience thus in reserve for him
+had as it happened, multiplied even through the dazzle of Chad's party.
+It was partly under the nervous consciousness of such a prospect that,
+leaving almost every one in the two other rooms, leaving those of the
+guests already known to him as well as a mass of brilliant strangers of
+both sexes and of several varieties of speech, he had desired five
+quiet minutes with little Bilham, whom he always found soothing and
+even a little inspiring, and to whom he had actually moreover something
+distinct and important to say.
+
+He had felt of old--for it already seemed long ago--rather humiliated
+at discovering he could learn in talk with a personage so much his
+junior the lesson of a certain moral ease; but he had now got used to
+that--whether or no the mixture of the fact with other humiliations had
+made it indistinct, whether or no directly from little Bilham's
+example, the example of his being contentedly just the obscure and
+acute little Bilham he was.  It worked so for him, Strether seemed to
+see; and our friend had at private hours a wan smile over the fact that
+he himself, after so many more years, was still in search of something
+that would work.  However, as we have said, it worked just now for them
+equally to have found a corner a little apart.  What particularly kept
+it apart was the circumstance that the music in the salon was
+admirable, with two or three such singers as it was a privilege to hear
+in private.  Their presence gave a distinction to Chad's entertainment,
+and the interest of calculating their effect on Sarah was actually so
+sharp as to be almost painful.  Unmistakeably, in her single person,
+the motive of the composition and dressed in a splendour of crimson
+which affected Strether as the sound of a fall through a skylight, she
+would now be in the forefront of the listening circle and committed by
+it up to her eyes.  Those eyes during the wonderful dinner itself he
+hadn't once met; having confessedly--perhaps a little
+pusillanimously--arranged with Chad that he should be on the same side
+of the table.  But there was no use in having arrived now with little
+Bilham at an unprecedented point of intimacy unless he could pitch
+everything into the pot.  "You who sat where you could see her, what
+does she make of it all?  By which I mean on what terms does she take
+it?"
+
+"Oh she takes it, I judge, as proving that the claim of his family is
+more than ever justified."
+
+"She isn't then pleased with what he has to show?"
+
+"On the contrary; she's pleased with it as with his capacity to do this
+kind of thing--more than she has been pleased with anything for a long
+time.  But she wants him to show it THERE.  He has no right to waste it
+on the likes of us."
+
+Strether wondered.  "She wants him to move the whole thing over?"
+
+"The whole thing--with an important exception.  Everything he has
+'picked up'--and the way he knows how.  She sees no difficulty in that.
+She'd run the show herself, and she'll make the handsome concession
+that Woollett would be on the whole in some ways the better for it. Not
+that it wouldn't be also in some ways the better for Woollett.  The
+people there are just as good."
+
+"Just as good as you and these others?  Ah that may be.  But such an
+occasion as this, whether or no," Strether said, "isn't the people.
+It's what has made the people possible."
+
+"Well then," his friend replied, "there you are; I give you my
+impression for what it's worth.  Mrs. Pocock has SEEN, and that's
+to-night how she sits there.  If you were to have a glimpse of her face
+you'd understand me.  She has made up her mind--to the sound of
+expensive music."
+
+Strether took it freely in.  "Ah then I shall have news of her."
+
+"I don't want to frighten you, but I think that likely.  However,"
+little Bilham continued, "if I'm of the least use to you to hold on
+by--!"
+
+"You're not of the least!"--and Strether laid an appreciative hand on
+him to say it.  "No one's of the least." With which, to mark how gaily
+he could take it, he patted his companion's knee.  "I must meet my fate
+alone, and I SHALL--oh you'll see!  And yet," he pursued the next
+moment, "you CAN help me too.  You once said to me"--he followed this
+further--"that you held Chad should marry. I didn't see then so well as
+I know now that you meant he should marry Miss Pocock.  Do you still
+consider that he should?  Because if you do"--he kept it up--"I want
+you immediately to change your mind.  You can help me that way."
+
+"Help you by thinking he should NOT marry?"
+
+"Not marry at all events Mamie."
+
+"And who then?"
+
+"Ah," Strether returned, "that I'm not obliged to say.  But Madame de
+Vionnet--I suggest--when he can.'
+
+"Oh!" said little Bilham with some sharpness.
+
+"Oh precisely!  But he needn't marry at all--I'm at any rate not
+obliged to provide for it.  Whereas in your case I rather feel that I
+AM."
+
+Little Bilham was amused.  "Obliged to provide for my marrying?"
+
+"Yes--after all I've done to you!"
+
+The young man weighed it.  "Have you done as much as that?"
+
+"Well," said Strether, thus challenged, "of course I must remember what
+you've also done to ME.  We may perhaps call it square.  But all the
+same," he went on, "I wish awfully you'd marry Mamie Pocock yourself."
+
+Little Bilham laughed out.  "Why it was only the other night, in this
+very place, that you were proposing to me a different union altogether."
+
+"Mademoiselle de Vionnet?"  Well, Strether easily confessed it. "That,
+I admit, was a vain image.  THIS is practical politics. I want to do
+something good for both of you--I wish you each so well; and you can
+see in a moment the trouble it will save me to polish you off by the
+same stroke.  She likes you, you know.  You console her.  And she's
+splendid."
+
+Little Bilham stared as a delicate appetite stares at an overheaped
+plate.  "What do I console her for?"
+
+It just made his friend impatient.  "Oh come, you knows"
+
+"And what proves for you that she likes me?"
+
+"Why the fact that I found her three days ago stopping at home alone
+all the golden afternoon on the mere chance that you'd come to her, and
+hanging over her balcony on that of seeing your cab drive up.  I don't
+know what you want more."
+
+Little Bilham after a moment found it.  "Only just to know what proves
+to you that I like HER."
+
+"Oh if what I've just mentioned isn't enough to make you do it, you're
+a stony-hearted little fiend.  Besides"--Strether encouraged his
+fancy's flight--"you showed your inclination in the way you kept her
+waiting, kept her on purpose to see if she cared enough for you."
+
+His companion paid his ingenuity the deference of a pause.  "I didn't
+keep her waiting.  I came at the hour.  I wouldn't have kept her
+waiting for the world," the young man honourably declared.
+
+"Better still--then there you are!"  And Strether, charmed, held him
+the faster.  "Even if you didn't do her justice, moreover," he
+continued, "I should insist on your immediately coming round to it. I
+want awfully to have worked it.  I want"--and our friend spoke now with
+a yearning that was really earnest--"at least to have done THAT."
+
+"To have married me off--without a penny?"
+
+"Well, I shan't live long; and I give you my word, now and here, that
+I'll leave you every penny of my own.  I haven't many, unfortunately,
+but you shall have them all.  And Miss Pocock, I think, has a few.  I
+want," Strether went on, "to have been at least to that extent
+constructive even expiatory.  I've been sacrificing so to strange gods
+that I feel I want to put on record, somehow, my
+fidelity--fundamentally unchanged after all--to our own.  I feel as if
+my hands were embrued with the blood of monstrous alien altars--of
+another faith altogether.  There it is--it's done." And then he further
+explained.  "It took hold of me because the idea of getting her quite
+out of the way for Chad helps to clear my ground."
+
+The young man, at this, bounced about, and it brought them face to face
+in admitted amusement.  "You want me to marry as a convenience to Chad?"
+
+"No," Strether debated--"HE doesn't care whether you marry or not. It's
+as a convenience simply to my own plan FOR him."
+
+"'Simply'!"--and little Bilham's concurrence was in itself a lively
+comment.  "Thank you.  But I thought," he continued, "you had exactly
+NO plan 'for' him."
+
+"Well then call it my plan for myself--which may be well, as you say,
+to have none.  His situation, don't you see? is reduced now to the bare
+facts one has to recognise.  Mamie doesn't want him, and he doesn't
+want Mamie:  so much as that these days have made clear.  It's a thread
+we can wind up and tuck in."
+
+But little Bilham still questioned.  "YOU can--since you seem so much
+to want to.  But why should I?"
+
+Poor Strether thought it over, but was obliged of course to admit that
+his demonstration did superficially fail.  "Seriously, there is no
+reason.  It's my affair--I must do it alone.  I've only my fantastic
+need of making my dose stiff."
+
+Little Bilham wondered.  "What do you call your dose?"
+
+"Why what I have to swallow.  I want my conditions unmitigated."
+
+He had spoken in the tone of talk for talk's sake, and yet with an
+obscure truth lurking in the loose folds; a circumstance presently not
+without its effect on his young friend.  Little Bilham's eyes rested on
+him a moment with some intensity; then suddenly, as if everything had
+cleared up, he gave a happy laugh.  It seemed to say that if
+pretending, or even trying, or still even hoping, to be able to care
+for Mamie would be of use, he was all there for the job.  "I'll do
+anything in the world for you!"
+
+"Well," Strether smiled, "anything in the world is all I want.  I don't
+know anything that pleased me in her more," he went on, "than the way
+that, on my finding her up there all alone, coming on her unawares and
+feeling greatly for her being so out of it, she knocked down my tall
+house of cards with her instant and cheerful allusion to the next young
+man.  It was somehow so the note I needed--her staying at home to
+receive him."
+
+"It was Chad of course," said little Bilham, "who asked the next young
+man--I like your name for me!--to call."
+
+"So I supposed--all of which, thank God, is in our innocent and natural
+manners.  But do you know," Strether asked, "if Chad knows--?"  And
+then as this interlocutor seemed at a loss: "Why where she has come
+out."
+
+Little Bilham, at this, met his face with a conscious look--it was as
+if, more than anything yet, the allusion had penetrated.  "Do you know
+yourself?"
+
+Strether lightly shook his head.  "There I stop.  Oh, odd as it may
+appear to you, there ARE things I don't know.  I only got the sense
+from her of something very sharp, and yet very deep down, that she was
+keeping all to herself.  That is I had begun with the belief that she
+HAD kept it to herself; but face to face with her there I soon made out
+that there was a person with whom she would have shared it.  I had
+thought she possibly might with ME--but I saw then that I was only half
+in her confidence.  When, turning to me to greet me--for she was on the
+balcony and I had come in without her knowing it--she showed me she had
+been expecting YOU and was proportionately disappointed, I got hold of
+the tail of my conviction.  Half an hour later I was in possession of
+all the rest of it.  You know what has happened." He looked at his
+young friend hard--then he felt sure.  "For all you say, you're up to
+your eyes. So there you are."
+
+Little Bilham after an instant pulled half round.  "I assure you she
+hasn't told me anything."
+
+"Of course she hasn't.  For what do you suggest that I suppose her to
+take you?  But you've been with her every day, you've seen her freely,
+you've liked her greatly--I stick to that--and you've made your profit
+of it.  You know what she has been through as well as you know that she
+has dined here to-night--which must have put her, by the way, through a
+good deal more."
+
+The young man faced this blast; after which he pulled round the rest of
+the way.  "I haven't in the least said she hasn't been nice to me.  But
+she's proud."
+
+"And quite properly.  But not too proud for that."
+
+"It's just her pride that has made her.  Chad," little Bilham loyally
+went on, "has really been as kind to her as possible. It's awkward for
+a man when a girl's in love with him."
+
+"Ah but she isn't--now."
+
+Little Bilham sat staring before him; then he sprang up as if his
+friend's penetration, recurrent and insistent, made him really after
+all too nervous.  "No--she isn't now.  It isn't in the least," he went
+on, "Chad's fault.  He's really all right.  I mean he would have been
+willing.  But she came over with ideas.  Those she had got at home.
+They had been her motive and support in joining her brother and his
+wife.  She was to SAVE our friend."
+
+"Ah like me, poor thing?"  Strether also got to his feet.
+
+"Exactly--she had a bad moment.  It was very soon distinct to her, to
+pull her up, to let her down, that, alas, he was, he IS, saved. There's
+nothing left for her to do."
+
+"Not even to love him?"
+
+"She would have loved him better as she originally believed him."
+
+Strether wondered "Of course one asks one's self what notion a little
+girl forms, where a young man's in question, of such a history and such
+a state."
+
+"Well, this little girl saw them, no doubt, as obscure, but she saw
+them practically as wrong.  The wrong for her WAS the obscure. Chad
+turns out at any rate right and good and disconcerting, while what she
+was all prepared for, primed and girded and wound up for, was to deal
+with him as the general opposite."
+
+"Yet wasn't her whole point"--Strether weighed it--"that he was to be,
+that he COULD be, made better, redeemed?"
+
+Little Bilham fixed it all a moment, and then with a small headshake
+that diffused a tenderness:  "She's too late.  Too late for the
+miracle."
+
+"Yes"--his companion saw enough.  "Still, if the worst fault of his
+condition is that it may be all there for her to profit by--?"
+
+"Oh she doesn't want to 'profit,' in that flat way.  She doesn't want
+to profit by another woman's work--she wants the miracle to have been
+her own miracle.  THAT'S what she's too late for."
+
+Strether quite felt how it all fitted, yet there seemed one loose
+piece.  "I'm bound to say, you know, that she strikes one, on these
+lines, as fastidious--what you call here difficile."
+
+Little Bilham tossed up his chin.  "Of course she's difficile--on any
+lines!  What else in the world ARE our Mamies--the real, the right
+ones?"
+
+"I see, I see," our friend repeated, charmed by the responsive wisdom
+he had ended by so richly extracting.  "Mamie is one of the real and
+the right."
+
+"The very thing itself."
+
+"And what it comes to then," Strether went on, "is that poor awful Chad
+is simply too good for her."
+
+"Ah too good was what he was after all to be; but it was she herself,
+and she herself only, who was to have made him so."
+
+It hung beautifully together, but with still a loose end.  "Wouldn't he
+do for her even if he should after all break--"
+
+"With his actual influence?"  Oh little Bilham had for this enquiry the
+sharpest of all his controls.  "How can he 'do'--on any terms
+whatever--when he's flagrantly spoiled?"
+
+Strether could only meet the question with his passive, his receptive
+pleasure.  "Well, thank goodness, YOU'RE not!  You remain for her to
+save, and I come back, on so beautiful and full a demonstration, to my
+contention of just now--that of your showing distinct signs of her
+having already begun."
+
+The most he could further say to himself--as his young friend turned
+away--was that the charge encountered for the moment no renewed denial.
+Little Bilham, taking his course back to the music, only shook his
+good-natured ears an instant, in the manner of a terrier who has got
+wet; while Strether relapsed into the sense--which had for him in these
+days most of comfort--that he was free to believe in anything that from
+hour to hour kept him going.  He had positively motions and flutters of
+this conscious hour-to-hour kind, temporary surrenders to irony, to
+fancy, frequent instinctive snatches at the growing rose of
+observation, constantly stronger for him, as he felt, in scent and
+colour, and in which he could bury his nose even to wantonness.  This
+last resource was offered him, for that matter, in the very form of his
+next clear perception--the vision of a prompt meeting, in the doorway
+of the room, between little Bilham and brilliant Miss Barrace, who was
+entering as Bilham withdrew.  She had apparently put him a question, to
+which he had replied by turning to indicate his late interlocutor;
+toward whom, after an interrogation further aided by a resort to that
+optical machinery which seemed, like her other ornaments, curious and
+archaic, the genial lady, suggesting more than ever for her fellow
+guest the old French print, the historic portrait, directed herself
+with an intention that Strether instantly met.  He knew in advance the
+first note she would sound, and took in as she approached all her need
+of sounding it.  Nothing yet had been so "wonderful" between them as
+the present occasion; and it was her special sense of this quality in
+occasions that she was there, as she was in most places, to feed.  That
+sense had already been so well fed by the situation about them that she
+had quitted the other room, forsaken the music, dropped out of the
+play, abandoned, in a word, the stage itself, that she might stand a
+minute behind the scenes with Strether and so perhaps figure as one of
+the famous augurs replying, behind the oracle, to the wink of the
+other.  Seated near him presently where little Bilham had sat, she
+replied in truth to many things; beginning as soon as he had said to
+her--what he hoped he said without fatuity--"All you ladies are
+extraordinarily kind to me."
+
+She played her long handle, which shifted her observation; she saw in
+an instant all the absences that left them free.  "How can we be
+anything else?  But isn't that exactly your plight?  'We ladies'--oh
+we're nice, and you must be having enough of us!  As one of us, you
+know, I don't pretend I'm crazy about us.  But Miss Gostrey at least
+to-night has left you alone, hasn't she?"  With which she again looked
+about as if Maria might still lurk.
+
+"Oh yes," said Strether; "she's only sitting up for me at home." And
+then as this elicited from his companion her gay "Oh, oh, oh!" he
+explained that he meant sitting up in suspense and prayer.  "We thought
+it on the whole better she shouldn't be present; and either way of
+course it's a terrible worry for her." He abounded in the sense of his
+appeal to the ladies, and they might take their choice of his doing so
+from humility or from pride.  "Yet she inclines to believe I shall come
+out."
+
+"Oh I incline to believe too you'll come out!"--Miss Barrace, with her
+laugh, was not to be behind.  "Only the question's about WHERE, isn't
+it?  However," she happily continued, "if it's anywhere at all it must
+be very far on, mustn't it?  To do us justice, I think, you know," she
+laughed, "we do, among us all, want you rather far on.  Yes, yes," she
+repeated in her quick droll way; "we want you very, VERY far on!" After
+which she wished to know why he had thought it better Maria shouldn't
+be present.
+
+"Oh," he replied, "it was really her own idea.  I should have wished
+it.  But she dreads responsibility."
+
+"And isn't that a new thing for her?"
+
+"To dread it?  No doubt--no doubt.  But her nerve has given way."
+
+Miss Barrace looked at him a moment.  "She has too much at stake." Then
+less gravely:  "Mine, luckily for me, holds out."
+
+"Luckily for me too"--Strether came back to that.  "My own isn't so
+firm, MY appetite for responsibility isn't so sharp, as that I haven't
+felt the very principle of this occasion to be 'the more the merrier.'
+If we ARE so merry it's because Chad has understood so well."
+
+"He has understood amazingly," said Miss Barrace.
+
+"It's wonderful--Strether anticipated for her.
+
+"It's wonderful!" she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face to face
+over it, they largely and recklessly laughed.  But she presently added:
+"Oh I see the principle.  If one didn't one would be lost.  But when
+once one has got hold of it--"
+
+"It's as simple as twice two!  From the moment he had to do something--"
+
+"A crowd"--she took him straight up--"was the only thing?  Rather,
+rather:  a rumpus of sound," she laughed, "or nothing.  Mrs. Pocock's
+built in, or built out--whichever you call it; she's packed so tight
+she can't move.  She's in splendid isolation"--Miss Barrace embroidered
+the theme.
+
+Strether followed, but scrupulous of justice.  "Yet with every one in
+the place successively introduced to her."
+
+"Wonderfully--but just so that it does build her out.  She's bricked
+up, she's buried alive!"
+
+Strether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him to a
+sigh.  "Oh but she's not dead!  It will take more than this to kill
+her."
+
+His companion had a pause that might have been for pity.  "No, I can't
+pretend I think she's finished--or that it's for more than to-night."
+She remained pensive as if with the same compunction. "It's only up to
+her chin." Then again for the fun of it:  "She can breathe."
+
+"She can breathe!"--he echoed it in the same spirit.  "And do you
+know," he went on, "what's really all this time happening to
+me?--through the beauty of music, the gaiety of voices, the uproar in
+short of our revel and the felicity of your wit?  The sound of Mrs.
+Pocock's respiration drowns for me, I assure you, every other. It's
+literally all I hear."
+
+She focussed him with her clink of chains.  "Well--!" she breathed ever
+so kindly.
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+"She IS free from her chin up," she mused; "and that WILL be enough for
+her."
+
+"It will be enough for me!" Strether ruefully laughed.  "Waymarsh has
+really," he then asked, "brought her to see you?"
+
+"Yes--but that's the worst of it.  I could do you no good.  And yet I
+tried hard."
+
+Strether wondered.  "And how did you try?"
+
+"Why I didn't speak of you."
+
+"I see.  That was better."
+
+"Then what would have been worse?  For speaking or silent," she lightly
+wailed, "I somehow 'compromise.' And it has never been any one but you."
+
+"That shows"--he was magnanimous--"that it's something not in you, but
+in one's self.  It's MY fault."
+
+She was silent a little.  "No, it's Mr. Waymarsh's.  It's the fault of
+his having brought her."
+
+"Ah then," said Strether good-naturedly, "why DID he bring her?"
+
+"He couldn't afford not to."
+
+"Oh you were a trophy--one of the spoils of conquest?  But why in that
+case, since you do 'compromise'--"
+
+"Don't I compromise HIM as well?  I do compromise him as well," Miss
+Barrace smiled.  "I compromise him as hard as I can.  But for Mr.
+Waymarsh it isn't fatal.  It's--so far as his wonderful relation with
+Mrs. Pocock is concerned--favourable." And then, as he still seemed
+slightly at sea:  "The man who had succeeded with ME, don't you see?
+For her to get him from me was such an added incentive."
+
+Strether saw, but as if his path was still strewn with surprises. "It's
+'from' you then that she has got him?"
+
+She was amused at his momentary muddle.  "You can fancy my fight! She
+believes in her triumph.  I think it has been part of her joy.
+
+"Oh her joy!" Strether sceptically murmured.
+
+"Well, she thinks she has had her own way.  And what's to-night for her
+but a kind of apotheosis?  Her frock's really good."
+
+"Good enough to go to heaven in?  For after a real apotheosis,"
+Strether went on, "there's nothing BUT heaven.  For Sarah there's only
+to-morrow."
+
+"And you mean that she won't find to-morrow heavenly?"
+
+"Well, I mean that I somehow feel to-night--on her behalf--too good to
+be true.  She has had her cake; that is she's in the act now of having
+it, of swallowing the largest and sweetest piece.  There won't be
+another left for her.  Certainly I haven't one.  It can only, at the
+best, be Chad." He continued to make it out as for their common
+entertainment.  "He may have one, as it were, up his sleeve; yet it's
+borne in upon me that if he had--"
+
+"He wouldn't"--she quite understood--"have taken all THIS trouble? I
+dare say not, and, if I may be quite free and dreadful, I very much
+hope he won't take any more.  Of course I won't pretend now," she
+added, "not to know what it's a question of."
+
+"Oh every one must know now," poor Strether thoughtfully admitted; "and
+it's strange enough and funny enough that one should feel everybody
+here at this very moment to be knowing and watching and waiting."
+
+"Yes--isn't it indeed funny?"  Miss Barrace quite rose to it. "That's
+the way we ARE in Paris." She was always pleased with a new
+contribution to that queerness.  "It's wonderful!  But, you know," she
+declared, "it all depends on you.  I don't want to turn the knife in
+your vitals, but that's naturally what you just now meant by our all
+being on top of you.  We know you as the hero of the drama, and we're
+gathered to see what you'll do."
+
+Strether looked at her a moment with a light perhaps slightly obscured.
+"I think that must be why the hero has taken refuge in this corner.
+He's scared at his heroism--he shrinks from his part."
+
+"Ah but we nevertheless believe he'll play it.  That's why," Miss
+Barrace kindly went on, "we take such an interest in you. We feel
+you'll come up to the scratch." And then as he seemed perhaps not quite
+to take fire:  "Don't let him do it."
+
+"Don't let Chad go?"
+
+"Yes, keep hold of him.  With all this"--and she indicated the general
+tribute--"he has done enough.  We love him here--he's charming."
+
+"It's beautiful," said Strether, "the way you all can simplify when you
+will."
+
+But she gave it to him back.  "It's nothing to the way you will when
+you must."
+
+He winced at it as at the very voice of prophecy, and it kept him a
+moment quiet.  He detained her, however, on her appearing about to
+leave him alone in the rather cold clearance their talk had made.
+"There positively isn't a sign of a hero to-night; the hero's dodging
+and shirking, the hero's ashamed.  Therefore, you know, I think, what
+you must all REALLY be occupied with is the heroine."
+
+Miss Barrace took a minute.  "The heroine?"
+
+"The heroine.  I've treated her," said Strether, "not a bit like a
+hero.  Oh," he sighed, "I don't do it well!"
+
+She eased him off.  "You do it as you can."  And then after another
+hesitation:  "I think she's satisfied."
+
+But he remained compunctious.  "I haven't been near her.  I haven't
+looked at her."
+
+"Ah then you've lost a good deal!"
+
+He showed he knew it.  "She's more wonderful than ever?"
+
+"Than ever.  With Mr. Pocock."
+
+Strether wondered.  "Madame de Vionnet--with Jim?"
+
+"Madame de Vionnet--with 'Jim.'"  Miss Barrace was historic.
+
+"And what's she doing with him?"
+
+"Ah you must ask HIM!"
+
+Strether's face lighted again at the prospect.  "It WILL be amusing to
+do so."  Yet he continued to wonder.  "But she must have some idea."
+
+"Of course she has--she has twenty ideas.  She has in the first place,"
+said Miss Barrace, swinging a little her tortoise-shell, "that of doing
+her part.  Her part is to help YOU."
+
+It came out as nothing had come yet; links were missing and connexions
+unnamed, but it was suddenly as if they were at the heart of their
+subject.  "Yes; how much more she does it," Strether gravely reflected,
+"than I help HER!"  It all came over him as with the near presence of
+the beauty, the grace, the intense, dissimulated spirit with which he
+had, as he said, been putting off contact.  "SHE has courage."
+
+"Ah she has courage!" Miss Barrace quite agreed; and it was as if for a
+moment they saw the quantity in each other's face.
+
+But indeed the whole thing was present.  "How much she must care!"
+
+"Ah there it is.  She does care.  But it isn't, is it," Miss Barrace
+considerately added, "as if you had ever had any doubt of that?"
+
+Strether seemed suddenly to like to feel that he really never had. "Why
+of course it's the whole point."
+
+"Voila!" Miss Barrace smiled.
+
+"It's why one came out," Strether went on.  "And it's why one has
+stayed so long.  And it's also"--he abounded--"why one's going home.
+It's why, it's why--"
+
+"It's why everything!" she concurred.  "It's why she might be
+to-night--for all she looks and shows, and for all your friend 'Jim'
+does--about twenty years old.  That's another of her ideas; to be for
+him, and to be quite easily and charmingly, as young as a little girl."
+
+Strether assisted at his distance.  "'For him'?  For Chad--?"
+
+"For Chad, in a manner, naturally, always.  But in particular to-night
+for Mr.  Pocock."  And then as her friend still stared: "Yes, it IS of
+a bravery But that's what she has:  her high sense of duty."  It was
+more than sufficiently before them.  "When Mr. Newsome has his hands so
+embarrassed with his sister--"
+
+"It's quite the least"--Strether filled it out--"that she should take
+his sister's husband?  Certainly--quite the least.  So she has taken
+him."
+
+"She has taken him."  It was all Miss Barrace had meant.
+
+Still it remained enough.  "It must be funny."
+
+"Oh it IS funny."  That of course essentially went with it.
+
+But it brought them back.  "How indeed then she must care!" In answer to
+which Strether's entertainer dropped a comprehensive "Ah!" expressive
+perhaps of some impatience for the time he took to get used to it.  She
+herself had got used to it long before.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+When one morning within the week he perceived the whole thing to be
+really at last upon him Strether's immediate feeling was all relief. He
+had known this morning that something was about to happen--known it, in
+a moment, by Waymarsh's manner when Waymarsh appeared before him during
+his brief consumption of coffee and a roll in the small slippery
+salle-a-manger so associated with rich rumination.  Strether had taken
+there of late various lonely and absent-minded meals; he communed
+there, even at the end of June, with a suspected chill, the air of old
+shivers mixed with old savours, the air in which so many of his
+impressions had perversely matured; the place meanwhile renewing its
+message to him by the very circumstance of his single state.  He now
+sat there, for the most part, to sigh softly, while he vaguely tilted
+his carafe, over the vision of how much better Waymarsh was occupied.
+That was really his success by the common measure--to have led this
+companion so on and on.  He remembered how at first there had been
+scarce a squatting-place he could beguile him into passing; the actual
+outcome of which at last was that there was scarce one that could
+arrest him in his rush.  His rush--as Strether vividly and amusedly
+figured it--continued to be all with Sarah, and contained perhaps
+moreover the word of the whole enigma, whipping up in its fine
+full-flavoured froth the very principle, for good or for ill, of his
+own, of Strether's destiny.  It might after all, to the end, only be
+that they had united to save him, and indeed, so far as Waymarsh was
+concerned, that HAD to be the spring of action. Strether was glad at
+all events, in connexion with the case, that the saving he required was
+not more scant; so constituted a luxury was it in certain lights just
+to lurk there out of the full glare. He had moments of quite seriously
+wondering whether Waymarsh wouldn't in fact, thanks to old friendship
+and a conceivable indulgence, make about as good terms for him as he
+might make for himself. They wouldn't be the same terms of course; but
+they might have the advantage that he himself probably should be able
+to make none at all.
+
+He was never in the morning very late, but Waymarsh had already been
+out, and, after a peep into the dim refectory, he presented himself
+with much less than usual of his large looseness.  He had made sure,
+through the expanse of glass exposed to the court, that they would be
+alone; and there was now in fact that about him that pretty well took
+up the room.  He was dressed in the garments of summer; and save that
+his white waistcoat was redundant and bulging these things favoured,
+they determined, his expression.  He wore a straw hat such as his
+friend hadn't yet seen in Paris, and he showed a buttonhole freshly
+adorned with a magnificent rose. Strether read on the instant his
+story--how, astir for the previous hour, the sprinkled newness of the
+day, so pleasant at that season in Paris, he was fairly panting with
+the pulse of adventure and had been with Mrs. Pocock, unmistakeably, to
+the Marche aux Fleurs. Strether really knew in this vision of him a joy
+that was akin to envy; so reversed as he stood there did their old
+positions seem; so comparatively doleful now showed, by the sharp turn
+of the wheel, the posture of the pilgrim from Woollett.  He wondered,
+this pilgrim, if he had originally looked to Waymarsh so brave and
+well, so remarkably launched, as it was at present the latter's
+privilege to appear.  He recalled that his friend had remarked to him
+even at Chester that his aspect belied his plea of prostration; but
+there certainly couldn't have been, for an issue, an aspect less
+concerned than Waymarsh's with the menace of decay.  Strether had at
+any rate never resembled a Southern planter of the great days--which
+was the image picturesquely suggested by the happy relation between the
+fuliginous face and the wide panama of his visitor. This type, it
+further amused him to guess, had been, on Waymarsh's part, the object
+of Sarah's care; he was convinced that her taste had not been a
+stranger to the conception and purchase of the hat, any more than her
+fine fingers had been guiltless of the bestowal of the rose.  It came
+to him in the current of thought, as things so oddly did come, that HE
+had never risen with the lark to attend a brilliant woman to the Marche
+aux Fleurs; this could be fastened on him in connexion neither with
+Miss Gostrey nor with Madame de Vionnet; the practice of getting up
+early for adventures could indeed in no manner be fastened on him.  It
+came to him in fact that just here was his usual case:  he was for ever
+missing things through his general genius for missing them, while
+others were for ever picking them up through a contrary bent.  And it
+was others who looked abstemious and he who looked greedy; it was he
+somehow who finally paid, and it was others who mainly partook.  Yes,
+he should go to the scaffold yet for he wouldn't know quite whom.  He
+almost, for that matter, felt on the scaffold now and really quite
+enjoying it.  It worked out as BECAUSE he was anxious there--it worked
+out as for this reason that Waymarsh was so blooming.  It was HIS trip
+for health, for a change, that proved the success--which was just what
+Strether, planning and exerting himself, had desired it should be. That
+truth already sat full-blown on his companion's lips; benevolence
+breathed from them as with the warmth of active exercise, and also a
+little as with the bustle of haste.
+
+"Mrs. Pocock, whom I left a quarter of an hour ago at her hotel, has
+asked me to mention to you that she would like to find you at home here
+in about another hour.  She wants to see you; she has something to
+say--or considers, I believe, that you may have:  so that I asked her
+myself why she shouldn't come right round.  She hasn't BEEN round
+yet--to see our place; and I took upon myself to say that I was sure
+you'd be glad to have her.  The thing's therefore, you see, to keep
+right here till she comes."
+
+The announcement was sociably, even though, after Waymarsh's wont,
+somewhat solemnly made; but Strether quickly felt other things in it
+than these light features.  It was the first approach, from that
+quarter, to admitted consciousness; it quickened his pulse; it simply
+meant at last that he should have but himself to thank if he didn't
+know where he was.  He had finished his breakfast; he pushed it away
+and was on his feet.  There were plenty of elements of surprise, but
+only one of doubt.  "The thing's for YOU to keep here too?"  Waymarsh
+had been slightly ambiguous.
+
+He wasn't ambiguous, however, after this enquiry; and Strether's
+understanding had probably never before opened so wide and effective a
+mouth as it was to open during the next five minutes. It was no part of
+his friend's wish, as appeared, to help to receive Mrs. Pocock; he
+quite understood the spirit in which she was to present herself, but
+his connexion with her visit was limited to his having--well, as he
+might say--perhaps a little promoted it.  He had thought, and had let
+her know it, that Strether possibly would think she might have been
+round before.  At any rate, as turned out, she had been wanting
+herself, quite a while, to come.  "I told her," said Waymarsh, "that it
+would have been a bright idea if she had only carried it out before."
+
+Strether pronounced it so bright as to be almost dazzling.  "But why
+HASn't she carried it out before?  She has seen me every day--she had
+only to name her hour.  I've been waiting and waiting."
+
+"Well, I told her you had.  And she has been waiting too."  It was, in
+the oddest way in the world, on the showing of this tone, a genial new
+pressing coaxing Waymarsh; a Waymarsh conscious with a different
+consciousness from any he had yet betrayed, and actually rendered by it
+almost insinuating.  He lacked only time for full persuasion, and
+Strether was to see in a moment why.  Meantime, however, our friend
+perceived, he was announcing a step of some magnanimity on Mrs.
+Pocock's part, so that he could deprecate a sharp question.  It was his
+own high purpose in fact to have smoothed sharp questions to rest.  He
+looked his old comrade very straight in the eyes, and he had never
+conveyed to him in so mute a manner so much kind confidence and so much
+good advice.  Everything that was between them was again in his face,
+but matured and shelved and finally disposed of.  "At any rate," he
+added, "she's coming now."
+
+Considering how many pieces had to fit themselves, it all fell, in
+Strether's brain, into a close rapid order.  He saw on the spot what
+had happened, and what probably would yet; and it was all funny enough.
+It was perhaps just this freedom of appreciation that wound him up to
+his flare of high spirits.  "What is she coming FOR?--to kill me?"
+
+"She's coming to be very VERY kind to you, and you must let me say that
+I greatly hope you'll not be less so to herself."
+
+This was spoken by Waymarsh with much gravity of admonition, and as
+Strether stood there he knew he had but to make a movement to take the
+attitude of a man gracefully receiving a present.  The present was that
+of the opportunity dear old Waymarsh had flattered himself he had
+divined in him the slight soreness of not having yet thoroughly
+enjoyed; so he had brought it to him thus, as on a little silver
+breakfast-tray, familiarly though delicately--without oppressive pomp;
+and he was to bend and smile and acknowledge, was to take and use and
+be grateful.  He was not--that was the beauty of it--to be asked to
+deflect too much from his dignity.  No wonder the old boy bloomed in
+this bland air of his own distillation. Strether felt for a moment as
+if Sarah were actually walking up and down outside.  Wasn't she hanging
+about the porte-cochere while her friend thus summarily opened a way?
+Strether would meet her but to take it, and everything would be for the
+best in the best of possible worlds.  He had never so much known what
+any one meant as, in the light of this demonstration, he knew what Mrs.
+Newsome did. It had reached Waymarsh from Sarah, but it had reached
+Sarah from her mother, and there was no break in the chain by which it
+reached HIM.  "Has anything particular happened," he asked after a
+minute--"so suddenly to determine her?  Has she heard anything
+unexpected from home?"
+
+Waymarsh, on this, it seemed to him, looked at him harder than ever.
+"'Unexpected'?"  He had a brief hesitation; then, however, he was firm.
+"We're leaving Paris."
+
+"Leaving?  That IS sudden."
+
+Waymarsh showed a different opinion.  "Less so than it may seem. The
+purpose of Mrs. Pocock's visit is to explain to you in fact that it's
+NOT."
+
+Strether didn't at all know if he had really an advantage--anything
+that would practically count as one; but he enjoyed for the moment--as
+for the first time in his life--the sense of so carrying it off.  He
+wondered--it was amusing--if he felt as the impudent feel.  "I shall
+take great pleasure, I assure you, in any explanation.  I shall be
+delighted to receive Sarah."
+
+The sombre glow just darkened in his comrade's eyes; but he was struck
+with the way it died out again.  It was too mixed with another
+consciousness--it was too smothered, as might be said, in flowers.  He
+really for the time regretted it--poor dear old sombre glow! Something
+straight and simple, something heavy and empty, had been eclipsed in
+its company; something by which he had best known his friend.  Waymarsh
+wouldn't BE his friend, somehow, without the occasional ornament of the
+sacred rage, and the right to the sacred rage--inestimably precious for
+Strether's charity--he also seemed in a manner, and at Mrs. Pocock's
+elbow, to have forfeited. Strether remembered the occasion early in
+their stay when on that very spot he had come out with his earnest, his
+ominous "Quit it!"--and, so remembering, felt it hang by a hair that he
+didn't himself now utter the same note.  Waymarsh was having a good
+time--this was the truth that was embarrassing for him, and he was
+having it then and there, he was having it in Europe, he was having it
+under the very protection of circumstances of which he didn't in the
+least approve; all of which placed him in a false position, with no
+issue possible--none at least by the grand manner.  It was practically
+in the manner of any one--it was all but in poor Strether's own--that
+instead of taking anything up he merely made the most of having to be
+himself explanatory.  "I'm not leaving for the United States direct.
+Mr. and Mrs. Pocock and Miss Mamie are thinking of a little trip before
+their own return, and we've been talking for some days past of our
+joining forces.  We've settled it that we do join and that we sail
+together the end of next month. But we start to-morrow for Switzerland.
+Mrs. Pocock wants some scenery.  She hasn't had much yet."
+
+He was brave in his way too, keeping nothing back, confessing all there
+was, and only leaving Strether to make certain connexions. "Is what
+Mrs. Newsome had cabled her daughter an injunction to break off short?"
+
+The grand manner indeed at this just raised its head a little. "I know
+nothing about Mrs. Newsome's cables."
+
+Their eyes met on it with some intensity--during the few seconds of
+which something happened quite out of proportion to the time. It
+happened that Strether, looking thus at his friend, didn't take his
+answer for truth--and that something more again occurred in consequence
+of THAT.  Yes--Waymarsh just DID know about Mrs. Newsome's cables:  to
+what other end than that had they dined together at Bignon's?  Strether
+almost felt for the instant that it was to Mrs. Newsome herself the
+dinner had been given; and, for that matter, quite felt how she must
+have known about it and, as he might think, protected and consecrated
+it.  He had a quick blurred view of daily cables, questions, answers,
+signals:  clear enough was his vision of the expense that, when so
+wound up, the lady at home was prepared to incur.  Vivid not less was
+his memory of what, during his long observation of her, some of her
+attainments of that high pitch had cost her.  Distinctly she was at the
+highest now, and Waymarsh, who imagined himself an independent
+performer, was really, forcing his fine old natural voice, an
+overstrained accompanist.  The whole reference of his errand seemed to
+mark her for Strether as by this time consentingly familiar to him, and
+nothing yet had so despoiled her of a special shade of consideration.
+"You don't know," he asked, "whether Sarah has been directed from home
+to try me on the matter of my also going to Switzerland?"
+
+"I know," said Waymarsh as manfully as possible, "nothing whatever
+about her private affairs; though I believe her to be acting in
+conformity with things that have my highest respect."  It was as manful
+as possible, but it was still the false note--as it had to be to convey
+so sorry a statement.  He knew everything, Strether more and more felt,
+that he thus disclaimed, and his little punishment was just in this
+doom to a second fib.  What falser position--given the man--could the
+most vindictive mind impose? He ended by squeezing through a passage in
+which three months before he would certainly have stuck fast.  "Mrs
+Pocock will probably be ready herself to answer any enquiry you may put
+to her.  But," he continued, "BUT--!"  He faltered on it.
+
+"But what?  Don't put her too many?"
+
+Waymarsh looked large, but the harm was done; he couldn't, do what he
+would, help looking rosy.  "Don't do anything you'll be sorry for."
+
+It was an attenuation, Strether guessed, of something else that had
+been on his lips; it was a sudden drop to directness, and was thereby
+the voice of sincerity.  He had fallen to the supplicating note, and
+that immediately, for our friend, made a difference and reinstated him.
+They were in communication as they had been, that first morning, in
+Sarah's salon and in her presence and Madame de Vionnet's; and the same
+recognition of a great good will was again, after all, possible.  Only
+the amount of response Waymarsh had then taken for granted was doubled,
+decupled now.  This came out when he presently said:  "Of course I
+needn't assure you I hope you'll come with us."  Then it was that his
+implications and expectations loomed up for Strether as almost
+pathetically gross.
+
+The latter patted his shoulder while he thanked him, giving the go-by
+to the question of joining the Pococks; he expressed the joy he felt at
+seeing him go forth again so brave and free, and he in fact almost took
+leave of him on the spot.  "I shall see you again of course before you
+go; but I'm meanwhile much obliged to you for arranging so conveniently
+for what you've told me.  I shall walk up and down in the court
+there--dear little old court which we've each bepaced so, this last
+couple of months, to the tune of our flights and our drops, our
+hesitations and our plunges:  I shall hang about there, all impatience
+and excitement, please let Sarah know, till she graciously presents
+herself.  Leave me with her without fear," he laughed; "I assure you I
+shan't hurt her.  I don't think either she'll hurt ME:  I'm in a
+situation in which damage was some time ago discounted.  Besides, THAT
+isn't what worries you--but don't, don't explain! We're all right as we
+are:  which was the degree of success our adventure was pledged to for
+each of us.  We weren't, it seemed, all right as we were before; and
+we've got over the ground, all things considered, quickly.  I hope
+you'll have a lovely time in the Alps."
+
+Waymarsh fairly looked up at him as from the foot of them.  "I don't
+know as I OUGHT really to go."
+
+It was the conscience of Milrose in the very voice of Milrose, but, oh
+it was feeble and flat! Strether suddenly felt quite ashamed for him;
+he breathed a greater boldness.  "LET yourself, on the contrary, go--in
+all agreeable directions.  These are precious hours--at our age they
+mayn't recur.  Don't have it to say to yourself at Milrose, next
+winter, that you hadn't courage for them."  And then as his comrade
+queerly stared:  "Live up to Mrs. Pocock."
+
+"Live up to her?"
+
+"You're a great help to her."
+
+Waymarsh looked at it as at one of the uncomfortable things that were
+certainly true and that it was yet ironical to say.  "It's more then
+than you are."
+
+"That's exactly your own chance and advantage.  Besides," said
+Strether, "I do in my way contribute.  I know what I'm about."
+
+Waymarsh had kept on his great panama, and, as he now stood nearer the
+door, his last look beneath the shade of it had turned again to
+darkness and warning.  "So do I!  See here, Strether."
+
+"I know what you're going to say.  'Quit this'?"
+
+"Quit this!"  But it lacked its old intensity; nothing of it remained;
+it went out of the room with him.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Almost the first thing, strangely enough, that, about an hour later,
+Strether found himself doing in Sarah's presence was to remark
+articulately on this failure, in their friend, of what had been
+superficially his great distinction.  It was as if--he alluded of
+course to the grand manner--the dear man had sacrificed it to some
+other advantage; which would be of course only for himself to measure.
+It might be simply that he was physically so much more sound than on
+his first coming out; this was all prosaic, comparatively cheerful and
+vulgar.  And fortunately, if one came to that, his improvement in
+health was really itself grander than any manner it could be conceived
+as having cost him.  "You yourself alone, dear Sarah"--Strether took
+the plunge--"have done him, it strikes me, in these three weeks, as
+much good as all the rest of his time together."
+
+It was a plunge because somehow the range of reference was, in the
+conditions, "funny," and made funnier still by Sarah's attitude, by the
+turn the occasion had, with her appearance, so sensibly taken. Her
+appearance was really indeed funnier than anything else--the spirit in
+which he felt her to be there as soon as she was there, the shade of
+obscurity that cleared up for him as soon as he was seated with her in
+the small salon de lecture that had, for the most part, in all the
+weeks, witnessed the wane of his early vivacity of discussion with
+Waymarsh.  It was an immense thing, quite a tremendous thing, for her
+to have come:  this truth opened out to him in spite of his having
+already arrived for himself at a fairly vivid view of it.  He had done
+exactly what he had given Waymarsh his word for--had walked and
+re-walked the court while he awaited her advent; acquiring in this
+exercise an amount of light that affected him at the time as flooding
+the scene.  She had decided upon the step in order to give him the
+benefit of a doubt, in order to be able to say to her mother that she
+had, even to abjectness, smoothed the way for him.  The doubt had been
+as to whether he mightn't take her as not having smoothed it--and the
+admonition had possibly come from Waymarsh's more detached spirit.
+Waymarsh had at any rate, certainly, thrown his weight into the
+scale--he had pointed to the importance of depriving their friend of a
+grievance.  She had done justice to the plea, and it was to set herself
+right with a high ideal that she actually sat there in her state.  Her
+calculation was sharp in the immobility with which she held her tall
+parasol-stick upright and at arm's length, quite as if she had struck
+the place to plant her flag; in the separate precautions she took not
+to show as nervous; in the aggressive repose in which she did quite
+nothing but wait for him.  Doubt ceased to be possible from the moment
+he had taken in that she had arrived with no proposal whatever; that
+her concern was simply to show what she had come to receive.  She had
+come to receive his submission, and Waymarsh was to have made it plain
+to him that she would expect nothing less.  He saw fifty things, her
+host, at this convenient stage; but one of those he most saw was that
+their anxious friend hadn't quite had the hand required of him.
+Waymarsh HAD, however, uttered the request that she might find him
+mild, and while hanging about the court before her arrival he had
+turned over with zeal the different ways in which he could be so. The
+difficulty was that if he was mild he wasn't, for her purpose,
+conscious.  If she wished him conscious--as everything about her cried
+aloud that she did--she must accordingly be at costs to make him so.
+Conscious he was, for himself--but only of too many things; so she must
+choose the one she required.
+
+Practically, however, it at last got itself named, and when once that
+had happened they were quite at the centre of their situation. One
+thing had really done as well as another; when Strether had spoken of
+Waymarsh's leaving him, and that had necessarily brought on a reference
+to Mrs. Pocock's similar intention, the jump was but short to supreme
+lucidity.  Light became indeed after that so intense that Strether
+would doubtless have but half made out, in the prodigious glare, by
+which of the two the issue had been in fact precipitated.  It was, in
+their contracted quarters, as much there between them as if it had been
+something suddenly spilled with a crash and a splash on the floor.  The
+form of his submission was to be an engagement to acquit himself within
+the twenty-four hours.  "He'll go in a moment if you give him the
+word--he assures me on his honour he'll do that":  this came in its
+order, out of its order, in respect to Chad, after the crash had
+occurred.  It came repeatedly during the time taken by Strether to feel
+that he was even more fixed in his rigour than he had supposed--the
+time he was not above adding to a little by telling her that such a way
+of putting it on her brother's part left him sufficiently surprised.
+She wasn't at all funny at last--she was really fine; and he felt
+easily where she was strong--strong for herself.  It hadn't yet so come
+home to him that she was nobly and appointedly officious. She was
+acting in interests grander and clearer than that of her poor little
+personal, poor little Parisian equilibrium, and all his consciousness
+of her mother's moral pressure profited by this proof of its sustaining
+force.  She would be held up; she would be strengthened; he needn't in
+the least be anxious for her. What would once more have been distinct
+to him had he tried to make it so was that, as Mrs. Newsome was
+essentially all moral pressure, the presence of this element was almost
+identical with her own presence. It wasn't perhaps that he felt he was
+dealing with her straight, but it was certainly as if she had been
+dealing straight with HIM. She was reaching him somehow by the
+lengthened arm of the spirit, and he was having to that extent to take
+her into account; but he wasn't reaching her in turn, not making her
+take HIM; he was only reaching Sarah, who appeared to take so little of
+him. "Something has clearly passed between you and Chad," he presently
+said, "that I think I ought to know something more about.  Does he put
+it all," he smiled, "on me?"
+
+"Did you come out," she asked, "to put it all on HIM?"
+
+But he replied to this no further than, after an instant, by saying:
+"Oh it's all right.  Chad I mean's all right in having said to
+you--well anything he may have said.  I'll TAKE it all--what he does
+put on me.  Only I must see him before I see you again."
+
+She hesitated, but she brought it out.  "Is it absolutely necessary you
+should see me again?"
+
+"Certainly, if I'm to give you any definite word about anything."
+
+"Is it your idea then," she returned, "that I shall keep on meeting you
+only to be exposed to fresh humiliation?"
+
+He fixed her a longer time.  "Are your instructions from Mrs. Newsome
+that you shall, even at the worst, absolutely and irretrievably break
+with me?"
+
+"My instructions from Mrs. Newsome are, if you please, my affair. You
+know perfectly what your own were, and you can judge for yourself of
+what it can do for you to have made what you have of them.  You can
+perfectly see, at any rate, I'll go so far as to say, that if I wish
+not to expose myself I must wish still less to expose HER."  She had
+already said more than she had quite expected; but, though she had also
+pulled up, the colour in her face showed him he should from one moment
+to the other have it all. He now indeed felt the high importance of his
+having it.  "What is your conduct," she broke out as if to
+explain--"what is your conduct but an outrage to women like US?  I mean
+your acting as if there can be a doubt--as between us and such
+another--of his duty?"
+
+He thought a moment.  It was rather much to deal with at once; not only
+the question itself, but the sore abysses it revealed. "Of course
+they're totally different kinds of duty."
+
+"And do you pretend that he has any at all--to such another?"
+
+"Do you mean to Madame de Vionnet?"  He uttered the name not to affront
+her, but yet again to gain time--time that he needed for taking in
+something still other and larger than her demand of a moment before. It
+wasn't at once that he could see all that was in her actual challenge;
+but when he did he found himself just checking a low vague sound, a
+sound which was perhaps the nearest approach his vocal chords had ever
+known to a growl.  Everything Mrs. Pocock had failed to give a sign of
+recognising in Chad as a particular part of a
+transformation--everything that had lent intention to this particular
+failure--affected him as gathered into a large loose bundle and thrown,
+in her words, into his face.  The missile made him to that extent catch
+his breath; which however he presently recovered.  "Why when a woman's
+at once so charming and so beneficent--"
+
+"You can sacrifice mothers and sisters to her without a blush and can
+make them cross the ocean on purpose to feel the more and take from you
+the straighter, HOW you do it?"
+
+Yes, she had taken him up as short and as sharply as that, but he tried
+not to flounder in her grasp.  "I don't think there's anything I've
+done in any such calculated way as you describe. Everything has come as
+a sort of indistinguishable part of everything else.  Your coming out
+belonged closely to my having come before you, and my having come was a
+result of our general state of mind.  Our general state of mind had
+proceeded, on its side, from our queer ignorance, our queer
+misconceptions and confusions--from which, since then, an inexorable
+tide of light seems to have floated us into our perhaps still queerer
+knowledge. Don't you LIKE your brother as he is," he went on, "and
+haven't you given your mother an intelligible account of all that that
+comes to?"
+
+It put to her also, doubtless, his own tone, too many things, this at
+least would have been the case hadn't his final challenge directly
+helped her.  Everything, at the stage they had reached, directly helped
+her, because everything betrayed in him such a basis of intention.  He
+saw--the odd way things came out!--that he would have been held less
+monstrous had he only been a little wilder.  What exposed him was just
+his poor old trick of quiet inwardness, what exposed him was his
+THINKING such offence.  He hadn't in the least however the desire to
+irritate that Sarah imputed to him, and he could only at last
+temporise, for the moment, with her indignant view.  She was altogether
+more inflamed than he had expected, and he would probably understand
+this better when he should learn what had occurred for her with Chad.
+Till then her view of his particular blackness, her clear surprise at
+his not clutching the pole she held out, must pass as extravagant.  "I
+leave you to flatter yourself," she returned, "that what you speak of
+is what YOU'VE beautifully done.  When a thing has been already
+described in such a lovely way--!"  But she caught herself up, and her
+comment on his description rang out sufficiently loud.  "Do you
+consider her even an apology for a decent woman?"
+
+Ah there it was at last! She put the matter more crudely than, for his
+own mixed purposes, he had yet had to do; but essentially it was all
+one matter.  It was so much--so much; and she treated it, poor lady, as
+so little.  He grew conscious, as he was now apt to do, of a strange
+smile, and the next moment he found himself talking like Miss Barrace.
+"She has struck me from the first as wonderful.  I've been thinking too
+moreover that, after all, she would probably have represented even for
+yourself something rather new and rather good."
+
+He was to have given Mrs. Pocock with this, however, but her best
+opportunity for a sound of derision.  "Rather new?  I hope so with all
+my heart!"
+
+"I mean," he explained, "that she might have affected you by her
+exquisite amiability--a real revelation, it has seemed to myself; her
+high rarity, her distinction of every sort."
+
+He had been, with these words, consciously a little "precious"; but he
+had had to be--he couldn't give her the truth of the case without them;
+and it seemed to him moreover now that he didn't care.  He had at all
+events not served his cause, for she sprang at its exposed side.  "A
+'revelation'--to ME:  I've come to such a woman for a revelation?  You
+talk to me about 'distinction'--YOU, you who've had your
+privilege?--when the most distinguished woman we shall either of us
+have seen in this world sits there insulted, in her loneliness, by your
+incredible comparison!"
+
+Strether forbore, with an effort, from straying; but he looked all
+about him.  "Does your mother herself make the point that she sits
+insulted?"
+
+Sarah's answer came so straight, so "pat," as might have been said,
+that he felt on the instant its origin.  "She has confided to my
+judgement and my tenderness the expression of her personal sense of
+everything, and the assertion of her personal dignity."
+
+They were the very words of the lady of Woollett--he would have known
+them in a thousand; her parting charge to her child.  Mrs. Pocock
+accordingly spoke to this extent by book, and the fact immensely moved
+him.  "If she does really feel as you say it's of course very very
+dreadful.  I've given sufficient proof, one would have thought," he
+added, "of my deep admiration for Mrs. Newsome."
+
+"And pray what proof would one have thought you'd CALL sufficient? That
+of thinking this person here so far superior to her?"
+
+He wondered again; he waited.  "Ah dear Sarah, you must LEAVE me this
+person here!"
+
+In his desire to avoid all vulgar retorts, to show how, even
+perversely, he clung to his rag of reason, he had softly almost wailed
+this plea.  Yet he knew it to be perhaps the most positive declaration
+he had ever made in his life, and his visitor's reception of it
+virtually gave it that importance.  "That's exactly what I'm delighted
+to do.  God knows WE don't want her! You take good care not to meet,"
+she observed in a still higher key, "my question about their life.  If
+you do consider it a thing one can even SPEAK of, I congratulate you on
+your taste!"
+
+The life she alluded to was of course Chad's and Madame de Vionnet's,
+which she thus bracketed together in a way that made him wince a
+little; there being nothing for him but to take home her full
+intention.  It was none the less his inconsequence that while he had
+himself been enjoying for weeks the view of the brilliant woman's
+specific action, he just suffered from any characterisation of it by
+other lips.  "I think tremendously well of her, at the same time that I
+seem to feel her 'life' to be really none of my business.  It's my
+business, that is, only so far as Chad's own life is affected by it;
+and what has happened, don't you see? is that Chad's has been affected
+so beautifully.  The proof of the pudding's in the eating"--he tried,
+with no great success, to help it out with a touch of pleasantry, while
+she let him go on as if to sink and sink.  He went on however well
+enough, as well as he could do without fresh counsel; he indeed
+shouldn't stand quite firm, he felt, till he should have re-established
+his communications with Chad.  Still, he could always speak for the
+woman he had so definitely promised to "save."  This wasn't quite for
+her the air of salvation; but as that chill fairly deepened what did it
+become but a reminder that one might at the worst perish WITH her?  And
+it was simple enough--it was rudimentary:  not, not to give her away.
+"I find in her more merits than you would probably have patience with
+my counting over.  And do you know," he enquired, "the effect you
+produce on me by alluding to her in such terms?  It's as if you had
+some motive in not recognising all she has done for your brother, and
+so shut your eyes to each side of the matter, in order, whichever side
+comes up, to get rid of the other.  I don't, you must allow me to say,
+see how you can with any pretence to candour get rid of the side
+nearest you."
+
+"Near me--THAT sort of thing?"  And Sarah gave a jerk back of her head
+that well might have nullified any active proximity.
+
+It kept her friend himself at his distance, and he respected for a
+moment the interval.  Then with a last persuasive effort he bridged it.
+"You don't, on your honour, appreciate Chad's fortunate development?"
+
+"Fortunate?" she echoed again.  And indeed she was prepared. "I call it
+hideous."
+
+Her departure had been for some minutes marked as imminent, and she was
+already at the door that stood open to the court, from the threshold of
+which she delivered herself of this judgement.  It rang out so loud as
+to produce for the time the hush of everything else.  Strether quite,
+as an effect of it, breathed less bravely; he could acknowledge it, but
+simply enough.  "Oh if you think THAT--!"
+
+"Then all's at an end?  So much the better.  I do think that!"  She
+passed out as she spoke and took her way straight across the court,
+beyond which, separated from them by the deep arch of the porte-cochere
+the low victoria that had conveyed her from her own hotel was drawn up.
+She made for it with decision, and the manner of her break, the sharp
+shaft of her rejoinder, had an intensity by which Strether was at first
+kept in arrest.  She had let fly at him as from a stretched cord, and
+it took him a minute to recover from the sense of being pierced.  It
+was not the penetration of surprise; it was that, much more, of
+certainty; his case being put for him as he had as yet only put it to
+himself.  She was away at any rate; she had distanced him--with rather
+a grand spring, an effect of pride and ease, after all; she had got
+into her carriage before he could overtake her, and the vehicle was
+already in motion.  He stopped halfway; he stood there in the court
+only seeing her go and noting that she gave him no other look.  The way
+he had put it to himself was that all quite MIGHT be at an end.  Each
+of her movements, in this resolute rupture, reaffirmed, re-enforced
+that idea. Sarah passed out of sight in the sunny street while, planted
+there in the centre of the comparatively grey court, he continued
+merely to look before him.  It probably WAS all at an end.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Eleventh
+
+[Note:  In the 1909 New York Edition the following two chapters were
+placed in the reverse of the order appearing below.  Since 1950, most
+scholars have agreed, because of the internal evidence of the two
+chapters, that an editorial error caused them to be printed in reverse
+order.  This Etext, like other editions of the past four decades,
+corrects the apparent error.--Richard D. Hathaway, preparer of this
+electronic text]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+He went late that evening to the Boulevard Malesherbes, having his
+impression that it would be vain to go early, and having also, more
+than once in the course of the day, made enquiries of the concierge.
+Chad hadn't come in and had left no intimation; he had affairs,
+apparently, at this juncture--as it occurred to Strether he so well
+might have--that kept him long abroad.  Our friend asked once for him
+at the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli, but the only contribution offered
+there was the fact that every one was out.  It was with the idea that
+he would have to come home to sleep that Strether went up to his rooms,
+from which however he was still absent, though, from the balcony, a few
+moments later, his visitor heard eleven o'clock strike.  Chad's servant
+had by this time answered for his reappearance; he HAD, the visitor
+learned, come quickly in to dress for dinner and vanish again. Strether
+spent an hour in waiting for him--an hour full of strange suggestions,
+persuasions, recognitions; one of those that he was to recall, at the
+end of his adventure, as the particular handful that most had counted.
+The mellowest lamplight and the easiest chair had been placed at his
+disposal by Baptiste, subtlest of servants; the novel half-uncut, the
+novel lemon-coloured and tender, with the ivory knife athwart it like
+the dagger in a contadina's hair, had been pushed within the soft
+circle--a circle which, for some reason, affected Strether as softer
+still after the same Baptiste had remarked that in the absence of a
+further need of anything by Monsieur he would betake himself to bed.
+The night was hot and heavy and the single lamp sufficient; the great
+flare of the lighted city, rising high, spending itself afar, played up
+from the Boulevard and, through the vague vista of the successive
+rooms, brought objects into view and added to their dignity. Strether
+found himself in possession as he never yet had been; he had been there
+alone, had turned over books and prints, had invoked, in Chad's
+absence, the spirit of the place, but never at the witching hour and
+never with a relish quite so like a pang.
+
+He spent a long time on the balcony; he hung over it as he had seen
+little Bilham hang the day of his first approach, as he had seen Mamie
+hang over her own the day little Bilham himself might have seen her
+from below; he passed back into the rooms, the three that occupied the
+front and that communicated by wide doors; and, while he circulated and
+rested, tried to recover the impression that they had made on him three
+months before, to catch again the voice in which they had seemed then
+to speak to him.  That voice, he had to note, failed audibly to sound;
+which he took as the proof of all the change in himself.  He had heard,
+of old, only what he COULD then hear; what he could do now was to think
+of three months ago as a point in the far past.  All voices had grown
+thicker and meant more things; they crowded on him as he moved
+about--it was the way they sounded together that wouldn't let him be
+still.  He felt, strangely, as sad as if he had come for some wrong,
+and yet as excited as if he had come for some freedom.  But the freedom
+was what was most in the place and the hour, it was the freedom that
+most brought him round again to the youth of his own that he had long
+ago missed.  He could have explained little enough to-day either why he
+had missed it or why, after years and years, he should care that he
+had; the main truth of the actual appeal of everything was none the
+less that everything represented the substance of his loss put it
+within reach, within touch, made it, to a degree it had never been, an
+affair of the senses.  That was what it became for him at this singular
+time, the youth he had long ago missed--a queer concrete presence, full
+of mystery, yet full of reality, which he could handle, taste, smell,
+the deep breathing of which he could positively hear.  It was in the
+outside air as well as within; it was in the long watch, from the
+balcony, in the summer night, of the wide late life of Paris, the
+unceasing soft quick rumble, below, of the little lighted carriages
+that, in the press, always suggested the gamblers he had seen of old at
+Monte Carlo pushing up to the tables.  This image was before him when
+he at last became aware that Chad was behind.
+
+"She tells me you put it all on ME"--he had arrived after this promptly
+enough at that information; which expressed the case however quite as
+the young man appeared willing for the moment to leave it.  Other
+things, with this advantage of their virtually having the night before
+them, came up for them, and had, as well, the odd effect of making the
+occasion, instead of hurried and feverish, one of the largest, loosest
+and easiest to which Strether's whole adventure was to have treated
+him.  He had been pursuing Chad from an early hour and had overtaken
+him only now; but now the delay was repaired by their being so
+exceptionally confronted.  They had foregathered enough of course in
+all the various times; they had again and again, since that first night
+at the theatre, been face to face over their question; but they had
+never been so alone together as they were actually alone--their talk
+hadn't yet been so supremely for themselves.  And if many things
+moreover passed before them, none passed more distinctly for Strether
+than that striking truth about Chad of which he had been so often moved
+to take note:  the truth that everything came happily back with him to
+his knowing how to live.  It had been seated in his pleased smile--a
+smile that pleased exactly in the right degree--as his visitor turned
+round, on the balcony, to greet his advent; his visitor in fact felt on
+the spot that there was nothing their meeting would so much do as bear
+witness to that facility.  He surrendered himself accordingly to so
+approved a gift; for what was the meaning of the facility but that
+others DID surrender themselves?  He didn't want, luckily, to prevent
+Chad from living; but he was quite aware that even if he had he would
+himself have thoroughly gone to pieces.  It was in truth essentially by
+bringing down his personal life to a function all subsidiary to the
+young man's own that he held together.  And the great point, above all,
+the sign of how completely Chad possessed the knowledge in question,
+was that one thus became, not only with a proper cheerfulness, but with
+wild native impulses, the feeder of his stream.  Their talk had
+accordingly not lasted three minutes without Strether's feeling basis
+enough for the excitement in which he had waited.  This overflow fairly
+deepened, wastefully abounded, as he observed the smallness of anything
+corresponding to it on the part of his friend.  That was exactly this
+friend's happy case; he "put out" his excitement, or whatever other
+emotion the matter involved, as he put out his washing; than which no
+arrangement could make more for domestic order.  It was quite for
+Strether himself in short to feel a personal analogy with the laundress
+bringing home the triumphs of the mangle.
+
+When he had reported on Sarah's visit, which he did very fully, Chad
+answered his question with perfect candour.  "I positively referred her
+to you--told her she must absolutely see you.  This was last night, and
+it all took place in ten minutes.  It was our first free talk--really
+the first time she had tackled me.  She knew I also knew what her line
+had been with yourself; knew moreover how little you had been doing to
+make anything difficult for her. So I spoke for you frankly--assured
+her you were all at her service. I assured her I was too," the young
+man continued; "and I pointed out how she could perfectly, at any time,
+have got at me.  Her difficulty has been simply her not finding the
+moment she fancied."
+
+"Her difficulty," Strether returned, "has been simply that she finds
+she's afraid of you.  She's not afraid of ME, Sarah, one little scrap;
+and it was just because she has seen how I can fidget when I give my
+mind to it that she has felt her best chance, rightly enough to be in
+making me as uneasy as possible.  I think she's at bottom as pleased to
+HAVE you put it on me as you yourself can possibly be to put it."
+
+"But what in the world, my dear man," Chad enquired in objection to
+this luminosity, "have I done to make Sally afraid?"
+
+"You've been 'wonderful, wonderful,' as we say--we poor people who
+watch the play from the pit; and that's what has, admirably, made her.
+Made her all the more effectually that she could see you didn't set
+about it on purpose--I mean set about affecting her as with fear."
+
+Chad cast a pleasant backward glance over his possibilities of motive.
+"I've only wanted to be kind and friendly, to be decent and
+attentive--and I still only want to be."
+
+Strether smiled at his comfortable clearness.  "Well, there can
+certainly be no way for it better than by my taking the onus.  It
+reduces your personal friction and your personal offence to almost
+nothing."
+
+Ah but Chad, with his completer conception of the friendly, wouldn't
+quite have this!  They had remained on the balcony, where, after their
+day of great and premature heat, the midnight air was delicious; and
+they leaned back in turn against the balustrade, all in harmony with
+the chairs and the flower-pots, the cigarettes and the starlight. "The
+onus isn't REALLY yours--after our agreeing so to wait together and
+judge together.  That was all my answer to Sally," Chad pursued--"that
+we have been, that we are, just judging together."
+
+"I'm not afraid of the burden," Strether explained; "I haven't come in
+the least that you should take it off me.  I've come very much, it
+seems to me, to double up my fore legs in the manner of the camel when
+he gets down on his knees to make his back convenient. But I've
+supposed you all this while to have been doing a lot of special and
+private judging--about which I haven't troubled you; and I've only
+wished to have your conclusion first from you. I don't ask more than
+that; I'm quite ready to take it as it has come."
+
+Chad turned up his face to the sky with a slow puff of his smoke.
+"Well, I've seen."
+
+Strether waited a little.  "I've left you wholly alone; haven't, I
+think I may say, since the first hour or two--when I merely preached
+patience--so much as breathed on you."
+
+"Oh you've been awfully good!"
+
+"We've both been good then--we've played the game.  We've given them
+the most liberal conditions."
+
+"Ah," said Chad, "splendid conditions!  It was open to them, open to
+them"--he seemed to make it out, as he smoked, with his eyes still on
+the stars.  He might in quiet sport have been reading their horoscope.
+Strether wondered meanwhile what had been open to them, and he finally
+let him have it.  "It was open to them simply to let me alone; to have
+made up their minds, on really seeing me for themselves, that I could
+go on well enough as I was."
+
+Strether assented to this proposition with full lucidity, his
+companion's plural pronoun, which stood all for Mrs. Newsome and her
+daughter, having no ambiguity for him.  There was nothing, apparently,
+to stand for Mamie and Jim; and this added to our friend's sense of
+Chad's knowing what he thought.  "But they've made up their minds to
+the opposite--that you CAN'T go on as you are."
+
+"No," Chad continued in the same way; "they won't have it for a minute."
+
+Strether on his side also reflectively smoked.  It was as if their high
+place really represented some moral elevation from which they could
+look down on their recent past.  "There never was the smallest chance,
+do you know, that they WOULD have it for a moment."
+
+"Of course not--no real chance.  But if they were willing to think
+there was--!"
+
+"They weren't willing." Strether had worked it all out.  "It wasn't for
+you they came out, but for me.  It wasn't to see for themselves what
+you're doing, but what I'm doing.  The first branch of their curiosity
+was inevitably destined, under my culpable delay, to give way to the
+second; and it's on the second that, if I may use the expression and
+you don't mind my marking the invidious fact, they've been of late
+exclusively perched.  When Sarah sailed it was me, in other words, they
+were after."
+
+Chad took it in both with intelligence and with indulgence.  "It IS
+rather a business then--what I've let you in for!"
+
+Strether had again a brief pause; which ended in a reply that seemed to
+dispose once for all of this element of compunction. Chad was to treat
+it, at any rate, so far as they were again together, as having done so.
+"I was 'in' when you found me."
+
+"Ah but it was you," the young man laughed, "who found ME."
+
+"I only found you out.  It was you who found me in.  It was all in the
+day's work for them, at all events, that they should come.  And they've
+greatly enjoyed it," Strether declared.
+
+"Well, I've tried to make them," said Chad.
+
+His companion did himself presently the same justice.  "So have I. I
+tried even this very morning--while Mrs. Pocock was with me.  She
+enjoys for instance, almost as much as anything else, not being, as
+I've said, afraid of me; and I think I gave her help in that."
+
+Chad took a deeper interest.  "Was she very very nasty?"
+
+Strether debated.  "Well, she was the most important thing--she was
+definite.  She was--at last--crystalline.  And I felt no remorse. I saw
+that they must have come."
+
+"Oh I wanted to see them for myself; so that if it were only for
+THAT--!"  Chad's own remorse was as small.
+
+This appeared almost all Strether wanted.  "Isn't your having seen them
+for yourself then THE thing, beyond all others, that has come of their
+visit?"
+
+Chad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it so.
+"Don't you count it as anything that you're dished--if you ARE dished?
+Are you, my dear man, dished?"
+
+It sounded as if he were asking if he had caught cold or hurt his foot,
+and Strether for a minute but smoked and smoked.  "I want to see her
+again.  I must see her."
+
+"Of course you must." Then Chad hesitated.  "Do you mean--a--Mother
+herself?"
+
+"Oh your mother--that will depend."
+
+It was as if Mrs. Newsome had somehow been placed by the words very far
+off.  Chad however endeavoured in spite of this to reach the place.
+"What do you mean it will depend on?"
+
+Strether, for all answer, gave him a longish look.  "I was speaking of
+Sarah.  I must positively--though she quite cast me off--see HER again.
+I can't part with her that way."
+
+"Then she was awfully unpleasant?"
+
+Again Strether exhaled.  "She was what she had to be.  I mean that from
+the moment they're not delighted they can only be--well what I admit
+she was.  We gave them," he went on, "their chance to be delighted, and
+they've walked up to it, and looked all round it, and not taken it."
+
+"You can bring a horse to water--!" Chad suggested.
+
+"Precisely.  And the tune to which this morning Sarah wasn't
+delighted--the tune to which, to adopt your metaphor, she refused to
+drink--leaves us on that side nothing more to hope."
+
+Chad had a pause, and then as if consolingly:  "It was never of course
+really the least on the cards that they would be 'delighted.'"
+
+"Well, I don't know, after all," Strether mused.  "I've had to come as
+far round.  However"--he shook it off--"it's doubtless MY performance
+that's absurd."
+
+"There are certainly moments," said Chad, "when you seem to me too good
+to be true.  Yet if you are true," he added, "that seems to be all that
+need concern me."
+
+"I'm true, but I'm incredible.  I'm fantastic and ridiculous--I don't
+explain myself even TO myself.  How can they then," Strether asked,
+"understand me?  So I don't quarrel with them."
+
+"I see.  They quarrel," said Chad rather comfortably, "with US."
+Strether noted once more the comfort, but his young friend had already
+gone on.  "I should feel greatly ashamed, all the same, if I didn't put
+it before you again that you ought to think, after all, tremendously
+well.  I mean before giving up beyond recall--" With which insistence,
+as from a certain delicacy, dropped.
+
+Ah but Strether wanted it.  "Say it all, say it all."
+
+"Well, at your age, and with what--when all's said and done--Mother
+might do for you and be for you."
+
+Chad had said it all, from his natural scruple, only to that extent; so
+that Strether after an instant himself took a hand. "My absence of an
+assured future.  The little I have to show toward the power to take
+care of myself.  The way, the wonderful way, she would certainly take
+care of me.  Her fortune, her kindness, and the constant miracle of her
+having been disposed to go even so far. Of course, of course"--he
+summed it up.  "There are those sharp facts."
+
+Chad had meanwhile thought of another still.  "And don't you really
+care--?"
+
+His friend slowly turned round to him.  "Will you go?"
+
+"I'll go if you'll say you now consider I should.  You know," he went
+on, "I was ready six weeks ago."
+
+"Ah," said Strether, "that was when you didn't know I wasn't! You're
+ready at present because you do know it."
+
+"That may be," Chad returned; "but all the same I'm sincere.  You talk
+about taking the whole thing on your shoulders, but in what light do
+you regard me that you think me capable of letting you pay?"  Strether
+patted his arm, as they stood together against the parapet,
+reassuringly--seeming to wish to contend that he HAD the wherewithal;
+but it was again round this question of purchase and price that the
+young man's sense of fairness continued to hover. "What it literally
+comes to for you, if you'll pardon my putting it so, is that you give
+up money.  Possibly a good deal of money."
+
+"Oh," Strether laughed, "if it were only just enough you'd still be
+justified in putting it so!  But I've on my side to remind you too that
+YOU give up money; and more than 'possibly'--quite certainly, as I
+should suppose--a good deal."
+
+"True enough; but I've got a certain quantity," Chad returned after a
+moment.  "Whereas you, my dear man, you--"
+
+"I can't be at all said"--Strether took him up--"to have a 'quantity'
+certain or uncertain?  Very true.  Still, I shan't starve."
+
+"Oh you mustn't STARVE!" Chad pacifically emphasised; and so, in the
+pleasant conditions, they continued to talk; though there was, for that
+matter, a pause in which the younger companion might have been taken as
+weighing again the delicacy of his then and there promising the elder
+some provision against the possibility just mentioned.  This, however,
+he presumably thought best not to do, for at the end of another minute
+they had moved in quite a different direction.  Strether had broken in
+by returning to the subject of Chad's passage with Sarah and enquiring
+if they had arrived, in the event, at anything in the nature of a
+"scene."  To this Chad replied that they had on the contrary kept
+tremendously polite; adding moreover that Sally was after all not the
+woman to have made the mistake of not being.  "Her hands are a good
+deal tied, you see.  I got so, from the first," he sagaciously
+observed, "the start of her."
+
+"You mean she has taken so much from you?"
+
+"Well, I couldn't of course in common decency give less:  only she
+hadn't expected, I think, that I'd give her nearly so much.  And she
+began to take it before she knew it."
+
+"And she began to like it," said Strether, "as soon as she began to
+take it!"
+
+"Yes, she has liked it--also more than she expected." After which Chad
+observed:  "But she doesn't like ME.  In fact she hates me."
+
+Strether's interest grew.  "Then why does she want you at home?"
+
+"Because when you hate you want to triumph, and if she should get me
+neatly stuck there she WOULD triumph."
+
+Strether followed afresh, but looking as he went.  "Certainly--in a
+manner.  But it would scarce be a triumph worth having if, once
+entangled, feeling her dislike and possibly conscious in time of a
+certain quantity of your own, you should on the spot make yourself
+unpleasant to her."
+
+"Ah," said Chad, "she can bear ME--could bear me at least at home. It's
+my being there that would be her triumph.  She hates me in Paris."
+
+"She hates in other words--"
+
+"Yes, THAT'S it!"--Chad had quickly understood this understanding;
+which formed on the part of each as near an approach as they had yet
+made to naming Madame de Vionnet.  The limitations of their
+distinctness didn't, however, prevent its fairly lingering in the air
+that it was this lady Mrs. Pocock hated.  It added one more touch
+moreover to their established recognition of the rare intimacy of
+Chad's association with her.  He had never yet more twitched away the
+last light veil from this phenomenon than in presenting himself as
+confounded and submerged in the feeling she had created at Woollett.
+"And I'll tell you who hates me too," he immediately went on.
+
+Strether knew as immediately whom he meant, but with as prompt a
+protest.  "Ah no!  Mamie doesn't hate--well," he caught himself in
+time--"anybody at all.  Mamie's beautiful."
+
+Chad shook his head.  "That's just why I mind it.  She certainly
+doesn't like me."
+
+"How much do you mind it?  What would you do for her?"
+
+"Well, I'd like her if she'd like me.  Really, really," Chad declared.
+
+It gave his companion a moment's pause.  "You asked me just now if I
+don't, as you said, 'care' about a certain person.  You rather tempt me
+therefore to put the question in my turn.  Don't YOU care about a
+certain other person?"
+
+Chad looked at him hard in the lamplight of the window.  "The
+difference is that I don't want to."
+
+Strether wondered.  "'Don't want' to?"
+
+"I try not to--that is I HAVE tried.  I've done my best.  You can't be
+surprised," the young man easily went on, "when you yourself set me on
+it.  I was indeed," he added, "already on it a little; but you set me
+harder.  It was six weeks ago that I thought I had come out."
+
+Strether took it well in.  "But you haven't come out!"
+
+"I don't know--it's what I WANT to know," said Chad.  "And if I could
+have sufficiently wanted--by myself--to go back, I think I might have
+found out."
+
+"Possibly"--Strether considered.  "But all you were able to achieve was
+to want to want to!  And even then," he pursued, "only till our friends
+there came.  Do you want to want to still?"  As with a sound
+half-dolorous, half-droll and all vague and equivocal, Chad buried his
+face for a little in his hands, rubbing it in a whimsical way that
+amounted to an evasion, he brought it out more sharply:  "DO you?"
+
+Chad kept for a time his attitude, but at last he looked up, and then
+abruptly, "Jim IS a damned dose!" he declared.
+
+"Oh I don't ask you to abuse or describe or in any way pronounce on
+your relatives; I simply put it to you once more whether you're NOW
+ready.  You say you've 'seen.' Is what you've seen that you can't
+resist?"
+
+Chad gave him a strange smile--the nearest approach he had ever shown
+to a troubled one.  "Can't you make me NOT resist?"
+
+"What it comes to," Strether went on very gravely now and as if he
+hadn't heard him, "what it comes to is that more has been done for you,
+I think, than I've ever seen done--attempted perhaps, but never so
+successfully done--by one human being for another."
+
+"Oh an immense deal certainly"--Chad did it full justice.  "And you
+yourself are adding to it."
+
+It was without heeding this either that his visitor continued. "And our
+friends there won't have it."
+
+"No, they simply won't."
+
+"They demand you on the basis, as it were, of repudiation and
+ingratitude; and what has been the matter with me," Strether went on,
+"is that I haven't seen my way to working with you for repudiation."
+
+Chad appreciated this.  "Then as you haven't seen yours you naturally
+haven't seen mine.  There it is." After which he proceeded, with a
+certain abruptness, to a sharp interrogation. "NOW do you say she
+doesn't hate me?"
+
+Strether hesitated.  "'She'--?"
+
+"Yes--Mother.  We called it Sarah, but it comes to the same thing."
+
+"Ah," Strether objected, "not to the same thing as her hating YOU."
+
+On which--though as if for an instant it had hung fire--Chad remarkably
+replied:  "Well, if they hate my good friend, THAT comes to the same
+thing." It had a note of inevitable truth that made Strether take it as
+enough, feel he wanted nothing more.  The young man spoke in it for his
+"good friend" more than he had ever yet directly spoken, confessed to
+such deep identities between them as he might play with the idea of
+working free from, but which at a given moment could still draw him
+down like a whirlpool.  And meanwhile he had gone on.  "Their hating
+you too moreover--that also comes to a good deal."
+
+"Ah," said Strether, "your mother doesn't."
+
+Chad, however, loyally stuck to it--loyally, that is, to Strether. "She
+will if you don't look out."
+
+"Well, I do look out.  I am, after all, looking out.  That's just why,"
+our friend explained, "I want to see her again."
+
+It drew from Chad again the same question.  "To see Mother?"
+
+"To see--for the present--Sarah."
+
+"Ah then there you are!  And what I don't for the life of me make out,"
+Chad pursued with resigned perplexity, "is what you GAIN by it."
+
+Oh it would have taken his companion too long to say!  "That's because
+you have, I verily believe, no imagination.  You've other qualities.
+But no imagination, don't you see? at all."
+
+"I dare say.  I do see." It was an idea in which Chad showed interest.
+"But haven't you yourself rather too much?"
+
+"Oh RATHER--!"  So that after an instant, under this reproach and as if
+it were at last a fact really to escape from, Strether made his move
+for departure.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+One of the features of the restless afternoon passed by him after Mrs.
+Pocock's visit was an hour spent, shortly before dinner, with Maria
+Gostrey, whom of late, in spite of so sustained a call on his attention
+from other quarters, he had by no means neglected.  And that he was
+still not neglecting her will appear from the fact that he was with her
+again at the same hour on the very morrow--with no less fine a
+consciousness moreover of being able to hold her ear. It continued
+inveterately to occur, for that matter, that whenever he had taken one
+of his greater turns he came back to where she so faithfully awaited
+him.  None of these excursions had on the whole been livelier than the
+pair of incidents--the fruit of the short interval since his previous
+visit--on which he had now to report to her.  He had seen Chad Newsome
+late the night before, and he had had that morning, as a sequel to this
+conversation, a second interview with Sarah.  "But they're all off," he
+said, "at last."
+
+It puzzled her a moment.  "All?--Mr. Newsome with them?"
+
+"Ah not yet!  Sarah and Jim and Mamie.  But Waymarsh with them--for
+Sarah.  It's too beautiful," Strether continued; "I find I don't get
+over that--it's always a fresh joy.  But it's a fresh joy too," he
+added, "that--well, what do you think?  Little Bilham also goes. But he
+of course goes for Mamie."
+
+Miss Gostrey wondered.  "'For' her?  Do you mean they're already
+engaged?"
+
+"Well," said Strether, "say then for ME.  He'll do anything for me;
+just as I will, for that matter--anything I can--for him.  Or for Mamie
+either.  SHE'LL do anything for me."
+
+Miss Gostrey gave a comprehensive sigh.  "The way you reduce people to
+subjection!"
+
+"It's certainly, on one side, wonderful.  But it's quite equalled, on
+another, by the way I don't.  I haven't reduced Sarah, since yesterday;
+though I've succeeded in seeing her again, as I'll presently tell you.
+The others however are really all right. Mamie, by that blessed law of
+ours, absolutely must have a young man."
+
+"But what must poor Mr. Bilham have?  Do you mean they'll MARRY for
+you?"
+
+"I mean that, by the same blessed law, it won't matter a grain if they
+don't--I shan't have in the least to worry."
+
+She saw as usual what he meant.  "And Mr. Jim?--who goes for him?"
+
+"Oh," Strether had to admit, "I couldn't manage THAT.  He's thrown, as
+usual, on the world; the world which, after all, by his account--for he
+has prodigious adventures--seems very good to him. He
+fortunately--'over here,' as he says--finds the world everywhere; and
+his most prodigious adventure of all," he went on, "has been of course
+of the last few days."
+
+Miss Gostrey, already knowing, instantly made the connexion.  "He has
+seen Marie de Vionnet again?"
+
+"He went, all by himself, the day after Chad's party--didn't I tell
+you?--to tea with her.  By her invitation--all alone."
+
+"Quite like yourself!" Maria smiled.
+
+"Oh but he's more wonderful about her than I am!"  And then as his
+friend showed how she could believe it, filling it out, fitting it on
+to old memories of the wonderful woman:  "What I should have liked to
+manage would have been HER going."
+
+"To Switzerland with the party?"
+
+"For Jim--and for symmetry.  If it had been workable moreover for a
+fortnight she'd have gone.  She's ready"--he followed up his renewed
+vision of her--"for anything."
+
+Miss Gostrey went with him a minute.  "She's too perfect!"
+
+"She WILL, I think," he pursued, "go to-night to the station."
+
+"To see him off?"
+
+"With Chad--marvellously--as part of their general attention.  And she
+does it"--it kept before him--"with a light, light grace, a free, free
+gaiety, that may well softly bewilder Mr. Pocock."
+
+It kept her so before him that his companion had after an instant a
+friendly comment.  "As in short it has softly bewildered a saner man.
+Are you really in love with her?" Maria threw off.
+
+"It's of no importance I should know," he replied.  "It matters so
+little--has nothing to do, practically, with either of us."
+
+"All the same"--Maria continued to smile--"they go, the five, as I
+understand you, and you and Madame de Vionnet stay."
+
+"Oh and Chad." To which Strether added:  "And you."
+
+"Ah 'me'!"--she gave a small impatient wail again, in which something
+of the unreconciled seemed suddenly to break out.  "I don't stay, it
+somehow seems to me, much to my advantage.  In the presence of all you
+cause to pass before me I've a tremendous sense of privation."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "But your privation, your keeping out of
+everything, has been--hasn't it?--by your own choice."
+
+"Oh yes; it has been necessary--that is it has been better for you.
+What I mean is only that I seem to have ceased to serve you."
+
+"How can you tell that?" he asked.  "You don't know how you serve me.
+When you cease--"
+
+"Well?" she said as he dropped.
+
+"Well, I'll LET you know.  Be quiet till then."
+
+She thought a moment.  "Then you positively like me to stay?"
+
+"Don't I treat you as if I did?"
+
+"You're certainly very kind to me.  But that," said Maria, "is for
+myself.  It's getting late, as you see, and Paris turning rather hot
+and dusty.  People are scattering, and some of them, in other places
+want me.  But if you want me here--!"
+
+She had spoken as resigned to his word, but he had of a sudden a still
+sharper sense than he would have expected of desiring not to lose her.
+"I want you here."
+
+She took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they brought
+her, gave her something that was the compensation of her case.  "Thank
+you," she simply answered.  And then as he looked at her a little
+harder, "Thank you very much," she repeated.
+
+It had broken as with a slight arrest into the current of their talk,
+and it held him a moment longer.  "Why, two months, or whatever the
+time was, ago, did you so suddenly dash off?  The reason you afterwards
+gave me for having kept away three weeks wasn't the real one."
+
+She recalled.  "I never supposed you believed it was.  Yet," she
+continued, "if you didn't guess it that was just what helped you."
+
+He looked away from her on this; he indulged, so far as space
+permitted, in one of his slow absences.  "I've often thought of it, but
+never to feel that I could guess it.  And you see the consideration
+with which I've treated you in never asking till now."
+
+"Now then why DO you ask?"
+
+"To show you how I miss you when you're not here, and what it does for
+me."
+
+"It doesn't seem to have done," she laughed, "all it might! However,"
+she added, "if you've really never guessed the truth I'll tell it you."
+
+"I've never guessed it," Strether declared.
+
+"Never?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Well then I dashed off, as you say, so as not to have the confusion of
+being there if Marie de Vionnet should tell you anything to my
+detriment."
+
+He looked as if he considerably doubted.  "You even then would have had
+to face it on your return."
+
+"Oh if I had found reason to believe it something very bad I'd have
+left you altogether."
+
+"So then," he continued, "it was only on guessing she had been on the
+whole merciful that you ventured back?"
+
+Maria kept it together.  "I owe her thanks.  Whatever her temptation
+she didn't separate us.  That's one of my reasons," she went on "for
+admiring her so."
+
+"Let it pass then," said Strether, "for one of mine as well.  But what
+would have been her temptation?"
+
+"What are ever the temptations of women?"
+
+He thought--but hadn't, naturally, to think too long.  "Men?"
+
+"She would have had you, with it, more for herself.  But she saw she
+could have you without it."
+
+"Oh 'have' me!" Strether a trifle ambiguously sighed.  "YOU," he
+handsomely declared, "would have had me at any rate WITH it."
+
+"Oh 'have' you!"--she echoed it as he had done.  "I do have you,
+however," she less ironically said, "from the moment you express a
+wish."
+
+He stopped before her, full of the disposition.  "I'll express fifty."
+
+Which indeed begot in her, with a certain inconsequence, a return of
+her small wail.  "Ah there you are!"
+
+There, if it were so, he continued for the rest of the time to be, and
+it was as if to show her how she could still serve him that, coming
+back to the departure of the Pococks, he gave her the view, vivid with
+a hundred more touches than we can reproduce, of what had happened for
+him that morning.  He had had ten minutes with Sarah at her hotel, ten
+minutes reconquered, by irresistible pressure, from the time over which
+he had already described her to Miss Gostrey as having, at the end of
+their interview on his own premises, passed the great sponge of the
+future.  He had caught her by not announcing himself, had found her in
+her sitting-room with a dressmaker and a lingere whose accounts she
+appeared to have been more or less ingenuously settling and who soon
+withdrew.  Then he had explained to her how he had succeeded, late the
+night before, in keeping his promise of seeing Chad.  "I told her I'd
+take it all."
+
+"You'd 'take' it?"
+
+"Why if he doesn't go."
+
+Maria waited.  "And who takes it if he does?" she enquired with a
+certain grimness of gaiety.
+
+"Well," said Strether, "I think I take, in any event, everything."
+
+"By which I suppose you mean," his companion brought out after a
+moment, "that you definitely understand you now lose everything."
+
+He stood before her again.  "It does come perhaps to the same thing.
+But Chad, now that he has seen, doesn't really want it."
+
+She could believe that, but she made, as always, for clearness. "Still,
+what, after all, HAS he seen?"
+
+"What they want of him.  And it's enough."
+
+"It contrasts so unfavourably with what Madame de Vionnet wants?"
+
+"It contrasts--just so; all round, and tremendously."
+
+"Therefore, perhaps, most of all with what YOU want?"
+
+"Oh," said Strether, "what I want is a thing I've ceased to measure or
+even to understand."
+
+But his friend none the less went on.  "Do you want Mrs. Newsome--after
+such a way of treating you?"
+
+It was a straighter mode of dealing with this lady than they had as
+yet--such was their high form--permitted themselves; but it seemed not
+wholly for this that he delayed a moment.  "I dare say it has been,
+after all, the only way she could have imagined."
+
+"And does that make you want her any more?"
+
+"I've tremendously disappointed her," Strether thought it worth while
+to mention.
+
+"Of course you have.  That's rudimentary; that was plain to us long
+ago.  But isn't it almost as plain," Maria went on, "that you've even
+yet your straight remedy?  Really drag him away, as I believe you still
+can, and you'd cease to have to count with her disappointment."
+
+"Ah then," he laughed, "I should have to count with yours!"
+
+But this barely struck her now.  "What, in that case, should you call
+counting?  You haven't come out where you are, I think, to please ME."
+
+"Oh," he insisted, "that too, you know, has been part of it. I can't
+separate--it's all one; and that's perhaps why, as I say, I don't
+understand." But he was ready to declare again that this didn't in the
+least matter; all the more that, as he affirmed, he HADn't really as
+yet "come out." "She gives me after all, on its coming to the pinch, a
+last mercy, another chance.  They don't sail, you see, for five or six
+weeks more, and they haven't--she admits that--expected Chad would take
+part in their tour.  It's still open to him to join them, at the last,
+at Liverpool."
+
+Miss Gostrey considered.  "How in the world is it 'open' unless you
+open it?  How can he join them at Liverpool if he but sinks deeper into
+his situation here?"
+
+"He has given her--as I explained to you that she let me know
+yesterday--his word of honour to do as I say."
+
+Maria stared.  "But if you say nothing!"
+
+Well, he as usual walked about on it.  "I did say something this
+morning.  I gave her my answer--the word I had promised her after
+hearing from himself what HE had promised.  What she demanded of me
+yesterday, you'll remember, was the engagement then and there to make
+him take up this vow."
+
+"Well then," Miss Gostrey enquired, "was the purpose of your visit to
+her only to decline?"
+
+"No; it was to ask, odd as that may seem to you, for another delay."
+
+"Ah that's weak!"
+
+"Precisely!"  She had spoken with impatience, but, so far as that at
+least, he knew where he was.  "If I AM weak I want to find it out.  If
+I don't find it out I shall have the comfort, the little glory, of
+thinking I'm strong."
+
+"It's all the comfort, I judge," she returned, "that you WILL have!"
+
+"At any rate," he said, "it will have been a month more.  Paris may
+grow, from day to day, hot and dusty, as you say; but there are other
+things that are hotter and dustier.  I'm not afraid to stay on; the
+summer here must be amusing in a wild--if it isn't a tame--way of its
+own; the place at no time more picturesque.  I think I shall like it.
+And then," he benevolently smiled for her, "there will be always you."
+
+"Oh," she objected, "it won't be as a part of the picturesqueness that
+I shall stay, for I shall be the plainest thing about you. You may, you
+see, at any rate," she pursued, "have nobody else. Madame de Vionnet
+may very well be going off, mayn't she?--and Mr. Newsome by the same
+stroke:  unless indeed you've had an assurance from them to the
+contrary.  So that if your idea's to stay for them"--it was her duty to
+suggest it--"you may be left in the lurch. Of course if they do
+stay"--she kept it up--"they would be part of the picturesqueness.  Or
+else indeed you might join them somewhere."
+
+Strether seemed to face it as if it were a happy thought; but the next
+moment he spoke more critically.  "Do you mean that they'll probably go
+off together?"
+
+She just considered.  "I think it will be treating you quite without
+ceremony if they do; though after all," she added, "it would be
+difficult to see now quite what degree of ceremony properly meets your
+case."
+
+"Of course," Strether conceded, "my attitude toward them is
+extraordinary."
+
+"Just so; so that one may ask one's self what style of proceeding on
+their own part can altogether match it.  The attitude of their own that
+won't pale in its light they've doubtless still to work out.  The
+really handsome thing perhaps," she presently threw off, "WOULD be for
+them to withdraw into more secluded conditions, offering at the same
+time to share them with you." He looked at her, on this, as if some
+generous irritation--all in his interest--had suddenly again flickered
+in her; and what she next said indeed half-explained it.  "Don't really
+be afraid to tell me if what now holds you IS the pleasant prospect of
+the empty town, with plenty of seats in the shade, cool drinks,
+deserted museums, drives to the Bois in the evening, and our wonderful
+woman all to yourself." And she kept it up still more.  "The handsomest
+thing of ALL, when one makes it out, would, I dare say, be that Mr.
+Chad should for a while go off by himself.  It's a pity, from that
+point of view," she wound up, "that he doesn't pay his mother a visit.
+It would at least occupy your interval." The thought in fact held her a
+moment.  "Why doesn't he pay his mother a visit?  Even a week, at this
+good moment, would do."
+
+"My dear lady," Strether replied--and he had it even to himself
+surprisingly ready--"my dear lady, his mother has paid HIM a visit.
+Mrs. Newsome has been with him, this month, with an intensity that I'm
+sure he has thoroughly felt; he has lavishly entertained her, and she
+has let him have her thanks.  Do you suggest he shall go back for more
+of them?"
+
+Well, she succeeded after a little in shaking it off.  "I see. It's
+what you don't suggest--what you haven't suggested. And you know."
+
+"So would you, my dear," he kindly said, "if you had so much as seen
+her."
+
+"As seen Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+"No, Sarah--which, both for Chad and for myself, has served all the
+purpose."
+
+"And served it in a manner," she responsively mused, "so extraordinary!"
+
+"Well, you see," he partly explained, "what it comes to is that she's
+all cold thought--which Sarah could serve to us cold without its really
+losing anything.  So it is that we know what she thinks of us."
+
+Maria had followed, but she had an arrest.  "What I've never made out,
+if you come to that, is what you think--I mean you personally--of HER.
+Don't you so much, when all's said, as care a little?"
+
+"That," he answered with no loss of promptness, "is what even Chad
+himself asked me last night.  He asked me if I don't mind the
+loss--well, the loss of an opulent future.  Which moreover," he
+hastened to add, "was a perfectly natural question."
+
+"I call your attention, all the same," said Miss Gostrey, "to the fact
+that I don't ask it.  What I venture to ask is whether it's to Mrs.
+Newsome herself that you're indifferent."
+
+"I haven't been so"--he spoke with all assurance.  "I've been the very
+opposite.  I've been, from the first moment, preoccupied with the
+impression everything might be making on her--quite oppressed, haunted,
+tormented by it.  I've been interested ONLY in her seeing what I've
+seen.  And I've been as disappointed in her refusal to see it as she
+has been in what has appeared to her the perversity of my insistence."
+
+"Do you mean that she has shocked you as you've shocked her?"
+
+Strether weighed it.  "I'm probably not so shockable.  But on the other
+hand I've gone much further to meet her.  She, on her side, hasn't
+budged an inch."
+
+"So that you're now at last"--Maria pointed the moral--"in the sad
+stage of recriminations."
+
+"No--it's only to you I speak.  I've been like a lamb to Sarah. I've
+only put my back to the wall.  It's to THAT one naturally staggers when
+one has been violently pushed there."
+
+She watched him a moment.  "Thrown over?"
+
+"Well, as I feel I've landed somewhere I think I must have been thrown."
+
+She turned it over, but as hoping to clarify much rather than to
+harmonise.  "The thing is that I suppose you've been disappointing--"
+
+"Quite from the very first of my arrival?  I dare say.  I admit I was
+surprising even to myself."
+
+"And then of course," Maria went on, "I had much to do with it."
+
+"With my being surprising--?"
+
+"That will do," she laughed, "if you're too delicate to call it MY
+being!  Naturally," she added, "you came over more or less for
+surprises."
+
+"Naturally!"--he valued the reminder.
+
+"But they were to have been all for you"--she continued to piece it
+out--"and none of them for HER."
+
+Once more he stopped before her as if she had touched the point.
+"That's just her difficulty--that she doesn't admit surprises. It's a
+fact that, I think, describes and represents her; and it falls in with
+what I tell you--that she's all, as I've called it, fine cold thought.
+She had, to her own mind, worked the whole thing out in advance, and
+worked it out for me as well as for herself.  Whenever she has done
+that, you see, there's no room left; no margin, as it were, for any
+alteration.  She's filled as full, packed as tight, as she'll hold and
+if you wish to get anything more or different either out or in--"
+
+"You've got to make over altogether the woman herself?"
+
+"What it comes to," said Strether, "is that you've got morally and
+intellectually to get rid of her."
+
+"Which would appear," Maria returned, "to be practically what you've
+done."
+
+But her friend threw back his head.  "I haven't touched her.  She won't
+BE touched.  I see it now as I've never done; and she hangs together
+with a perfection of her own," he went on, "that does suggest a kind of
+wrong in ANY change of her composition.  It was at any rate," he wound
+up, "the woman herself, as you call her the whole moral and
+intellectual being or block, that Sarah brought me over to take or to
+leave."
+
+It turned Miss Gostrey to deeper thought.  "Fancy having to take at the
+point of the bayonet a whole moral and intellectual being or block!"
+
+"It was in fact," said Strether, "what, at home, I HAD done. But
+somehow over there I didn't quite know it."
+
+"One never does, I suppose," Miss Gostrey concurred, "realise in
+advance, in such a case, the size, as you may say, of the block. Little
+by little it looms up.  It has been looming for you more and more till
+at last you see it all."
+
+"I see it all," he absently echoed, while his eyes might have been
+fixing some particularly large iceberg in a cool blue northern sea.
+"It's magnificent!" he then rather oddly exclaimed.
+
+But his friend, who was used to this kind of inconsequence in him, kept
+the thread.  "There's nothing so magnificent--for making others feel
+you--as to have no imagination."
+
+It brought him straight round.  "Ah there you are! It's what I said
+last night to Chad.  That he himself, I mean, has none."
+
+"Then it would appear," Maria suggested, "that he has, after all,
+something in common with his mother."
+
+"He has in common that he makes one, as you say, 'feel' him.  And yet,"
+he added, as if the question were interesting, "one feels others too,
+even when they have plenty."
+
+Miss Gostrey continued suggestive.  "Madame de Vionnet?"
+
+"SHE has plenty."
+
+"Certainly--she had quantities of old.  But there are different ways of
+making one's self felt."
+
+"Yes, it comes, no doubt, to that.  You now--"
+
+He was benevolently going on, but she wouldn't have it. "Oh I DON'T
+make myself felt; so my quantity needn't be settled. Yours, you know,"
+she said, "is monstrous.  No one has ever had so much."
+
+It struck him for a moment.  "That's what Chad also thinks."
+
+"There YOU are then--though it isn't for him to complain of it!"
+
+"Oh he doesn't complain of it," said Strether.
+
+"That's all that would be wanting! But apropos of what," Maria went on,
+"did the question come up?"
+
+"Well, of his asking me what it is I gain."
+
+She had a pause.  "Then as I've asked you too it settles my case. Oh
+you HAVE," she repeated, "treasures of imagination."
+
+But he had been for an instant thinking away from this, and he came up
+in another place.  "And yet Mrs. Newsome--it's a thing to remember--HAS
+imagined, did, that is, imagine, and apparently still does, horrors
+about what I should have found.  I was booked, by her
+vision--extraordinarily intense, after all--to find them; and that I
+didn't, that I couldn't, that, as she evidently felt, I wouldn't--this
+evidently didn't at all, as they say, 'suit' her book. It was more than
+she could bear.  That was her disappointment."
+
+"You mean you were to have found Chad himself horrible?"
+
+"I was to have found the woman."
+
+"Horrible?"
+
+"Found her as she imagined her."  And Strether paused as if for his own
+expression of it he could add no touch to that picture.
+
+His companion had meanwhile thought.  "She imagined stupidly--so it
+comes to the same thing."
+
+"Stupidly?  Oh!" said Strether.
+
+But she insisted.  "She imagined meanly."
+
+He had it, however, better.  "It couldn't but be ignorantly."
+
+"Well, intensity with ignorance--what do you want worse?"
+
+This question might have held him, but he let it pass.  "Sarah isn't
+ignorant--now; she keeps up the theory of the horrible."
+
+"Ah but she's intense--and that by itself will do sometimes as well. If
+it doesn't do, in this case, at any rate, to deny that Marie's
+charming, it will do at least to deny that she's good."
+
+"What I claim is that she's good for Chad."
+
+"You don't claim"--she seemed to like it clear--"that she's good for
+YOU."
+
+But he continued without heeding.  "That's what I wanted them to come
+out for--to see for themselves if she's bad for him."
+
+"And now that they've done so they won't admit that she's good even for
+anything?"
+
+"They do think," Strether presently admitted, "that she's on the whole
+about as bad for me.  But they're consistent of course, inasmuch as
+they've their clear view of what's good for both of us."
+
+"For you, to begin with"--Maria, all responsive, confined the question
+for the moment--"to eliminate from your existence and if possible even
+from your memory the dreadful creature that I must gruesomely shadow
+forth for them, even more than to eliminate the distincter
+evil--thereby a little less portentous--of the person whose confederate
+you've suffered yourself to become.  However, that's comparatively
+simple.  You can easily, at the worst, after all, give me up."
+
+"I can easily at the worst, after all, give you up." The irony was so
+obvious that it needed no care.  "I can easily at the worst, after all,
+even forget you."
+
+"Call that then workable.  But Mr. Newsome has much more to forget. How
+can HE do it?"
+
+"Ah there again we are! That's just what I was to have made him do;
+just where I was to have worked with him and helped."
+
+She took it in silence and without attenuation--as if perhaps from very
+familiarity with the facts; and her thought made a connexion without
+showing the links.  "Do you remember how we used to talk at Chester and
+in London about my seeing you through?"  She spoke as of far-off
+things and as if they had spent weeks at the places she named.
+
+"It's just what you ARE doing."
+
+"Ah but the worst--since you've left such a margin--may be still to
+come.  You may yet break down."
+
+"Yes, I may yet break down.  But will you take me--?"
+
+He had hesitated, and she waited.  "Take you?"
+
+"For as long as I can bear it."
+
+She also debated "Mr. Newsome and Madame de Vionnet may, as we were
+saying, leave town.  How long do you think you can bear it without
+them?"
+
+Strether's reply to this was at first another question.  "Do you mean
+in order to get away from me?"
+
+Her answer had an abruptness.  "Don't find me rude if I say I should
+think they'd want to!"
+
+He looked at her hard again--seemed even for an instant to have an
+intensity of thought under which his colour changed.  But he smiled.
+"You mean after what they've done to me?"
+
+"After what SHE has."
+
+At this, however, with a laugh, he was all right again.  "Ah but she
+hasn't done it yet!"
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+He had taken the train a few days after this from a station--as well as
+to a station--selected almost at random; such days, whatever should
+happen, were numbered, and he had gone forth under the impulse--artless
+enough, no doubt--to give the whole of one of them to that French
+ruralism, with its cool special green, into which he had hitherto
+looked only through the little oblong window of the picture-frame.  It
+had been as yet for the most part but a land of fancy for him--the
+background of fiction, the medium of art, the nursery of letters;
+practically as distant as Greece, but practically also well-nigh as
+consecrated.  Romance could weave itself, for Strether's sense, out of
+elements mild enough; and even after what he had, as he felt, lately
+"been through," he could thrill a little at the chance of seeing
+something somewhere that would remind him of a certain small Lambinet
+that had charmed him, long years before, at a Boston dealer's and that
+he had quite absurdly never forgotten.  It had been offered, he
+remembered, at a price he had been instructed to believe the lowest
+ever named for a Lambinet, a price he had never felt so poor as on
+having to recognise, all the same, as beyond a dream of possibility. He
+had dreamed--had turned and twisted possibilities for an hour:  it had
+been the only adventure of his life in connexion with the purchase of a
+work of art.  The adventure, it will be perceived, was modest; but the
+memory, beyond all reason and by some accident of association, was
+sweet.  The little Lambinet abode with him as the picture he WOULD have
+bought--the particular production that had made him for the moment
+overstep the modesty of nature.  He was quite aware that if he were to
+see it again he should perhaps have a drop or a shock, and he never
+found himself wishing that the wheel of time would turn it up again,
+just as he had seen it in the maroon-coloured, sky-lighted inner shrine
+of Tremont Street. It would be a different thing, however, to see the
+remembered mixture resolved back into its elements--to assist at the
+restoration to nature of the whole far-away hour:  the dusty day in
+Boston, the background of the Fitchburg Depot, of the maroon-coloured
+sanctum, the special-green vision, the ridiculous price, the poplars,
+the willows, the rushes, the river, the sunny silvery sky, the shady
+woody horizon.
+
+He observed in respect to his train almost no condition save that it
+should stop a few times after getting out of the banlieue; he threw
+himself on the general amiability of the day for the hint of where to
+alight.  His theory of his excursion was that he could alight
+anywhere--not nearer Paris than an hour's run--on catching a suggestion
+of the particular note required.  It made its sign, the
+suggestion--weather, air, light, colour and his mood all favouring--at
+the end of some eighty minutes; the train pulled up just at the right
+spot, and he found himself getting out as securely as if to keep an
+appointment.  It will be felt of him that he could amuse himself, at
+his age, with very small things if it be again noted that his
+appointment was only with a superseded Boston fashion.  He hadn't gone
+far without the quick confidence that it would be quite sufficiently
+kept.  The oblong gilt frame disposed its enclosing lines; the poplars
+and willows, the reeds and river--a river of which he didn't know, and
+didn't want to know, the name--fell into a composition, full of
+felicity, within them; the sky was silver and turquoise and varnish;
+the village on the left was white and the church on the right was grey;
+it was all there, in short--it was what he wanted:  it was Tremont
+Street, it was France, it was Lambinet.  Moreover he was freely walking
+about in it. He did this last, for an hour, to his heart's content,
+making for the shady woody horizon and boring so deep into his
+impression and his idleness that he might fairly have got through them
+again and reached the maroon-coloured wall.  It was a wonder, no doubt,
+that the taste of idleness for him shouldn't need more time to sweeten;
+but it had in fact taken the few previous days; it had been sweetening
+in truth ever since the retreat of the Pococks. He walked and walked as
+if to show himself how little he had now to do; he had nothing to do
+but turn off to some hillside where he might stretch himself and hear
+the poplars rustle, and whence--in the course of an afternoon so spent,
+an afternoon richly suffused too with the sense of a book in his
+pocket--he should sufficiently command the scene to be able to pick out
+just the right little rustic inn for an experiment in respect to
+dinner.  There was a train back to Paris at 9.20, and he saw himself
+partaking, at the close of the day, with the enhancements of a coarse
+white cloth and a sanded door, of something fried and felicitous,
+washed down with authentic wine; after which he might, as he liked,
+either stroll back to his station in the gloaming or propose for the
+local carriole and converse with his driver, a driver who naturally
+wouldn't fail of a stiff clean blouse, of a knitted nightcap and of the
+genius of response--who, in fine, would sit on the shafts, tell him
+what the French people were thinking, and remind him, as indeed the
+whole episode would incidentally do, of Maupassant.  Strether heard his
+lips, for the first time in French air, as this vision assumed
+consistency, emit sounds of expressive intention without fear of his
+company. He had been afraid of Chad and of Maria and of Madame de
+Vionnet; he had been most of all afraid of Waymarsh, in whose presence,
+so far as they had mixed together in the light of the town, he had
+never without somehow paying for it aired either his vocabulary or his
+accent.  He usually paid for it by meeting immediately afterwards
+Waymarsh's eye.
+
+Such were the liberties with which his fancy played after he had turned
+off to the hillside that did really and truly, as well as most amiably,
+await him beneath the poplars, the hillside that made him feel, for a
+murmurous couple of hours, how happy had been his thought.  He had the
+sense of success, of a finer harmony in things; nothing but what had
+turned out as yet according to his plan. It most of all came home to
+him, as he lay on his back on the grass, that Sarah had really gone,
+that his tension was really relaxed; the peace diffused in these ideas
+might be delusive, but it hung about him none the less for the time. It
+fairly, for half an hour, sent him to sleep; he pulled his straw hat
+over his eyes--he had bought it the day before with a reminiscence of
+Waymarsh's--and lost himself anew in Lambinet.  It was as if he had
+found out he was tired--tired not from his walk, but from that inward
+exercise which had known, on the whole, for three months, so little
+intermission.  That was it--when once they were off he had dropped;
+this moreover was what he had dropped to, and now he was touching
+bottom.  He was kept luxuriously quiet, soothed and amused by the
+consciousness of what he had found at the end of his descent.  It was
+very much what he had told Maria Gostrey he should like to stay on for,
+the hugely-distributed Paris of summer, alternately dazzling and dusky,
+with a weight lifted for him off its columns and cornices and with
+shade and air in the flutter of awnings as wide as avenues.  It was
+present to him without attenuation that, reaching out, the day after
+making the remark, for some proof of his freedom, he had gone that very
+afternoon to see Madame de Vionnet. He had gone again the next day but
+one, and the effect of the two visits, the after-sense of the couple of
+hours spent with her, was almost that of fulness and frequency.  The
+brave intention of frequency, so great with him from the moment of his
+finding himself unjustly suspected at Woollett, had remained rather
+theoretic, and one of the things he could muse about under his poplars
+was the source of the special shyness that had still made him careful.
+He had surely got rid of it now, this special shyness; what had become
+of it if it hadn't precisely, within the week, rubbed off?
+
+It struck him now in fact as sufficiently plain that if he had still
+been careful he had been so for a reason.  He had really feared, in his
+behaviour, a lapse from good faith; if there was a danger of one's
+liking such a woman too much one's best safety was in waiting at least
+till one had the right to do so.  In the light of the last few days the
+danger was fairly vivid; so that it was proportionately fortunate that
+the right was likewise established. It seemed to our friend that he had
+on each occasion profited to the utmost by the latter:  how could he
+have done so more, he at all events asked himself, than in having
+immediately let her know that, if it was all the same to her, he
+preferred not to talk about anything tiresome?  He had never in his
+life so sacrificed an armful of high interests as in that remark; he
+had never so prepared the way for the comparatively frivolous as in
+addressing it to Madame de Vionnet's intelligence.  It hadn't been till
+later that he quite recalled how in conjuring away everything but the
+pleasant he had conjured away almost all they had hitherto talked
+about; it was not till later even that he remembered how, with their
+new tone, they hadn't so much as mentioned the name of Chad himself.
+One of the things that most lingered with him on his hillside was this
+delightful facility, with such a woman, of arriving at a new tone; he
+thought, as he lay on his back, of all the tones she might make
+possible if one were to try her, and at any rate of the probability
+that one could trust her to fit them to occasions.  He had wanted her
+to feel that, as he was disinterested now, so she herself should be,
+and she had showed she felt it, and he had showed he was grateful, and
+it had been for all the world as if he were calling for the first time.
+They had had other, but irrelevant, meetings; it was quite as if, had
+they sooner known how much they REALLY had in common, there were
+quantities of comparatively dull matters they might have skipped. Well,
+they were skipping them now, even to graceful gratitude, even to
+handsome "Don't mention it!"--and it was amazing what could still come
+up without reference to what had been going on between them.  It might
+have been, on analysis, nothing more than Shakespeare and the musical
+glasses; but it had served all the purpose of his appearing to have
+said to her: "Don't like me, if it's a question of liking me, for
+anything obvious and clumsy that I've, as they call it, 'done' for you:
+like me--well, like me, hang it, for anything else you choose.  So, by
+the same propriety, don't be for me simply the person I've come to know
+through my awkward connexion with Chad--was ever anything, by the way,
+MORE awkward?  Be for me, please, with all your admirable tact and
+trust, just whatever I may show you it's a present pleasure to me to
+think you." It had been a large indication to meet; but if she hadn't
+met it what HAD she done, and how had their time together slipped along
+so smoothly, mild but not slow, and melting, liquefying, into his happy
+illusion of idleness?  He could recognise on the other hand that he had
+probably not been without reason, in his prior, his restricted state,
+for keeping an eye on his liability to lapse from good faith.
+
+He really continued in the picture--that being for himself his
+situation--all the rest of this rambling day; so that the charm was
+still, was indeed more than ever upon him when, toward six o'clock he
+found himself amicably engaged with a stout white-capped deep-voiced
+woman at the door of the auberge of the biggest village, a village that
+affected him as a thing of whiteness, blueness and crookedness, set in
+coppery green, and that had the river flowing behind or before it--one
+couldn't say which; at the bottom, in particular, of the inn-garden. He
+had had other adventures before this; had kept along the height, after
+shaking off slumber; had admired, had almost coveted, another small old
+church, all steep roof and dim slate-colour without and all whitewash
+and paper flowers within; had lost his way and had found it again; had
+conversed with rustics who struck him perhaps a little more as men of
+the world than he had expected; had acquired at a bound a fearless
+facility in French; had had, as the afternoon waned, a watery bock, all
+pale and Parisian, in the cafe of the furthest village, which was not
+the biggest; and had meanwhile not once overstepped the oblong gilt
+frame. The frame had drawn itself out for him, as much as you please;
+but that was just his luck.  He had finally come down again to the
+valley, to keep within touch of stations and trains, turning his face
+to the quarter from which he had started; and thus it was that he had
+at last pulled up before the hostess of the Cheval Blanc, who met him,
+with a rough readiness that was like the clatter of sabots over stones,
+on their common ground of a cotelette de veau a l'oseille and a
+subsequent lift.  He had walked many miles and didn't know he was
+tired; but he still knew he was amused, and even that, though he had
+been alone all day, he had never yet so struck himself as engaged with
+others and in midstream of his drama.  It might have passed for
+finished his drama, with its catastrophe all but reached:  it had,
+however, none the less been vivid again for him as he thus gave it its
+fuller chance.  He had only had to be at last well out of it to feel
+it, oddly enough, still going on.
+
+For this had been all day at bottom the spell of the picture--that it
+was essentially more than anything else a scene and a stage, that the
+very air of the play was in the rustle of the willows and the tone of
+the sky.  The play and the characters had, without his knowing it till
+now, peopled all his space for him, and it seemed somehow quite happy
+that they should offer themselves, in the conditions so supplied, with
+a kind of inevitability.  It was as if the conditions made them not
+only inevitable, but so much more nearly natural and right as that they
+were at least easier, pleasanter, to put up with.  The conditions had
+nowhere so asserted their difference from those of Woollett as they
+appeared to him to assert it in the little court of the Cheval Blanc
+while he arranged with his hostess for a comfortable climax.  They were
+few and simple, scant and humble, but they were THE THING, as he would
+have called it, even to a greater degree than Madame de Vionnet's old
+high salon where the ghost of the Empire walked.  "The" thing was the
+thing that implied the greatest number of other things of the sort he
+had had to tackle; and it was queer of course, but so it was--the
+implication here was complete.  Not a single one of his observations
+but somehow fell into a place in it; not a breath of the cooler evening
+that wasn't somehow a syllable of the text. The text was simply, when
+condensed, that in THESE places such things were, and that if it was in
+them one elected to move about one had to make one's account with what
+one lighted on.  Meanwhile at all events it was enough that they did
+affect one--so far as the village aspect was concerned--as whiteness,
+crookedness and blueness set in coppery green; there being positively,
+for that matter, an outer wall of the White Horse that was painted the
+most improbable shade.  That was part of the amusement--as if to show
+that the fun was harmless; just as it was enough, further, that the
+picture and the play seemed supremely to melt together in the good
+woman's broad sketch of what she could do for her visitor's appetite.
+He felt in short a confidence, and it was general, and it was all he
+wanted to feel.  It suffered no shock even on her mentioning that she
+had in fact just laid the cloth for two persons who, unlike Monsieur,
+had arrived by the river--in a boat of their own; who had asked her,
+half an hour before, what she could do for them, and had then paddled
+away to look at something a little further up--from which promenade
+they would presently return. Monsieur might meanwhile, if he liked,
+pass into the garden, such as it was, where she would serve him, should
+he wish it--for there were tables and benches in plenty--a "bitter"
+before his repast. Here she would also report to him on the possibility
+of a conveyance to his station, and here at any rate he would have the
+agrement of the river.
+
+It may be mentioned without delay that Monsieur had the agrement of
+everything, and in particular, for the next twenty minutes, of a small
+and primitive pavilion that, at the garden's edge, almost overhung the
+water, testifying, in its somewhat battered state, to much fond
+frequentation.  It consisted of little more than a platform, slightly
+raised, with a couple of benches and a table, a protecting rail and a
+projecting roof; but it raked the full grey-blue stream, which, taking
+a turn a short distance above, passed out of sight to reappear much
+higher up; and it was clearly in esteemed requisition for Sundays and
+other feasts.  Strether sat there and, though hungry, felt at peace;
+the confidence that had so gathered for him deepened with the lap of
+the water, the ripple of the surface, the rustle of the reeds on the
+opposite bank, the faint diffused coolness and the slight rock of a
+couple of small boats attached to a rough landing-place hard by.  The
+valley on the further side was all copper-green level and glazed pearly
+sky, a sky hatched across with screens of trimmed trees, which looked
+flat, like espaliers; and though the rest of the village straggled away
+in the near quarter the view had an emptiness that made one of the
+boats suggestive.  Such a river set one afloat almost before one could
+take up the oars--the idle play of which would be moreover the aid to
+the full impression.  This perception went so far as to bring him to
+his feet; but that movement, in turn, made him feel afresh that he was
+tired, and while he leaned against a post and continued to look out he
+saw something that gave him a sharper arrest.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+What he saw was exactly the right thing--a boat advancing round the
+bend and containing a man who held the paddles and a lady, at the
+stern, with a pink parasol.  It was suddenly as if these figures, or
+something like them, had been wanted in the picture, had been wanted
+more or less all day, and had now drifted into sight, with the slow
+current, on purpose to fill up the measure.  They came slowly, floating
+down, evidently directed to the landing-place near their spectator and
+presenting themselves to him not less clearly as the two persons for
+whom his hostess was already preparing a meal.  For two very happy
+persons he found himself straightway taking them--a young man in
+shirt-sleeves, a young woman easy and fair, who had pulled pleasantly
+up from some other place and, being acquainted with the neighbourhood,
+had known what this particular retreat could offer them.  The air quite
+thickened, at their approach, with further intimations; the intimation
+that they were expert, familiar, frequent--that this wouldn't at all
+events be the first time.  They knew how to do it, he vaguely felt--and
+it made them but the more idyllic, though at the very moment of the
+impression, as happened, their boat seemed to have begun to drift wide,
+the oarsman letting it go.  It had by this time none the less come
+much nearer--near enough for Strether to dream the lady in the stern
+had for some reason taken account of his being there to watch them. She
+had remarked on it sharply, yet her companion hadn't turned round; it
+was in fact almost as if our friend had felt her bid him keep still.
+She had taken in something as a result of which their course had
+wavered, and it continued to waver while they just stood off.  This
+little effect was sudden and rapid, so rapid that Strether's sense of
+it was separate only for an instant from a sharp start of his own.  He
+too had within the minute taken in something, taken in that he knew the
+lady whose parasol, shifting as if to hide her face, made so fine a
+pink point in the shining scene.  It was too prodigious, a chance in a
+million, but, if he knew the lady, the gentleman, who still presented
+his back and kept off, the gentleman, the coatless hero of the idyll,
+who had responded to her start, was, to match the marvel, none other
+than Chad.
+
+Chad and Madame de Vionnet were then like himself taking a day in the
+country--though it was as queer as fiction, as farce, that their
+country could happen to be exactly his; and she had been the first at
+recognition, the first to feel, across the water, the shock--for it
+appeared to come to that--of their wonderful accident. Strether became
+aware, with this, of what was taking place--that her recognition had
+been even stranger for the pair in the boat, that her immediate impulse
+had been to control it, and that she was quickly and intensely debating
+with Chad the risk of betrayal. He saw they would show nothing if they
+could feel sure he hadn't made them out; so that he had before him for
+a few seconds his own hesitation.  It was a sharp fantastic crisis that
+had popped up as if in a dream, and it had had only to last the few
+seconds to make him feel it as quite horrible.  They were thus, on
+either side, TRYING the other side, and all for some reason that broke
+the stillness like some unprovoked harsh note.  It seemed to him again,
+within the limit, that he had but one thing to do--to settle their
+common question by some sign of surprise and joy.  He hereupon gave
+large play to these things, agitating his hat and his stick and loudly
+calling out--a demonstration that brought him relief as soon as he had
+seen it answered.  The boat, in mid-stream, still went a little
+wild--which seemed natural, however, while Chad turned round, half
+springing up; and his good friend, after blankness and wonder, began
+gaily to wave her parasol.  Chad dropped afresh to his paddles and the
+boat headed round, amazement and pleasantry filling the air meanwhile,
+and relief, as Strether continued to fancy, superseding mere violence.
+Our friend went down to the water under this odd impression as of
+violence averted--the violence of their having "cut" him, out there in
+the eye of nature, on the assumption that he wouldn't know it.  He
+awaited them with a face from which he was conscious of not being able
+quite to banish this idea that they would have gone on, not seeing and
+not knowing, missing their dinner and disappointing their hostess, had
+he himself taken a line to match. That at least was what darkened his
+vision for the moment.  Afterwards, after they had bumped at the
+landing-place and he had assisted their getting ashore, everything
+found itself sponged over by the mere miracle of the encounter.
+
+They could so much better at last, on either side, treat it as a wild
+extravagance of hazard, that the situation was made elastic by the
+amount of explanation called into play.  Why indeed--apart from
+oddity--the situation should have been really stiff was a question
+naturally not practical at the moment, and in fact, so far as we are
+concerned, a question tackled, later on and in private, only by
+Strether himself.  He was to reflect later on and in private that it
+was mainly HE who had explained--as he had had moreover comparatively
+little difficulty in doing.  He was to have at all events meanwhile the
+worrying thought of their perhaps secretly suspecting him of having
+plotted this coincidence, taking such pains as might be to give it the
+semblance of an accident.  That possibility--as their
+imputation--didn't of course bear looking into for an instant; yet the
+whole incident was so manifestly, arrange it as they would, an awkward
+one, that he could scarce keep disclaimers in respect to his own
+presence from rising to his lips. Disclaimers of intention would have
+been as tactless as his presence was practically gross; and the
+narrowest escape they either of them had was his lucky escape, in the
+event, from making any.  Nothing of the sort, so far as surface and
+sound were involved, was even in question; surface and sound all made
+for their common ridiculous good fortune, for the general
+invraisemblance of the occasion, for the charming chance that they had,
+the others, in passing, ordered some food to be ready, the charming
+chance that he had himself not eaten, the charming chance, even more,
+that their little plans, their hours, their train, in short, from
+la-bas, would all match for their return together to Paris.  The chance
+that was most charming of all, the chance that drew from Madame de
+Vionnet her clearest, gayest "Comme cela se trouve!" was the
+announcement made to Strether after they were seated at table, the word
+given him by their hostess in respect to his carriage for the station,
+on which he might now count.  It settled the matter for his friends as
+well; the conveyance--it WAS all too lucky!--would serve for them; and
+nothing was more delightful than his being in a position to make the
+train so definite. It might have been, for themselves--to hear Madame
+de Vionnet--almost unnaturally vague, a detail left to be fixed; though
+Strether indeed was afterwards to remember that Chad had promptly
+enough intervened to forestall this appearance, laughing at his
+companion's flightiness and making the point that he had after all, in
+spite of the bedazzlement of a day out with her, known what he was
+about.
+
+Strether was to remember afterwards further that this had had for him
+the effect of forming Chad's almost sole intervention; and indeed he
+was to remember further still, in subsequent meditation, many things
+that, as it were, fitted together.  Another of them was for instance
+that the wonderful woman's overflow of surprise and amusement was
+wholly into French, which she struck him as speaking with an
+unprecedented command of idiomatic turns, but in which she got, as he
+might have said, somewhat away from him, taking all at once little
+brilliant jumps that he could but lamely match.  The question of his
+own French had never come up for them; it was the one thing she
+wouldn't have permitted--it belonged, for a person who had been through
+much, to mere boredom; but the present result was odd, fairly veiling
+her identity, shifting her back into a mere voluble class or race to
+the intense audibility of which he was by this time inured.  When she
+spoke the charming slightly strange English he best knew her by he
+seemed to feel her as a creature, among all the millions, with a
+language quite to herself, the real monopoly of a special shade of
+speech, beautifully easy for her, yet of a colour and a cadence that
+were both inimitable and matters of accident.  She came back to these
+things after they had shaken down in the inn-parlour and knew, as it
+were, what was to become of them; it was inevitable that loud
+ejaculation over the prodigy of their convergence should at last wear
+itself out.  Then it was that his impression took fuller form--the
+impression, destined only to deepen, to complete itself, that they had
+something to put a face upon, to carry off and make the best of, and
+that it was she who, admirably on the whole, was doing this.  It was
+familiar to him of course that they had something to put a face upon;
+their friendship, their connexion, took any amount of explaining--that
+would have been made familiar by his twenty minutes with Mrs. Pocock if
+it hadn't already been so.  Yet his theory, as we know, had bountifully
+been that the facts were specifically none of his business, and were,
+over and above, so far as one had to do with them, intrinsically
+beautiful; and this might have prepared him for anything, as well as
+rendered him proof against mystification. When he reached home that
+night, however, he knew he had been, at bottom, neither prepared nor
+proof; and since we have spoken of what he was, after his return, to
+recall and interpret, it may as well immediately be said that his real
+experience of these few hours put on, in that belated vision--for he
+scarce went to bed till morning--the aspect that is most to our purpose.
+
+He then knew more or less how he had been affected--he but half knew at
+the time.  There had been plenty to affect him even after, as has been
+said, they had shaken down; for his consciousness, though muffled, had
+its sharpest moments during this passage, a marked drop into innocent
+friendly Bohemia.  They then had put their elbows on the table,
+deploring the premature end of their two or three dishes; which they
+had tried to make up with another bottle while Chad joked a little
+spasmodically, perhaps even a little irrelevantly, with the hostess.
+What it all came to had been that fiction and fable WERE, inevitably,
+in the air, and not as a simple term of comparison, but as a result of
+things said; also that they were blinking it, all round, and that they
+yet needn't, so much as that, have blinked it--though indeed if they
+hadn't Strether didn't quite see what else they could have done.
+Strether didn't quite see THAT even at an hour or two past midnight,
+even when he had, at his hotel, for a long time, without a light and
+without undressing, sat back on his bedroom sofa and stared straight
+before him.  He was, at that point of vantage, in full possession, to
+make of it all what he could.  He kept making of it that there had been
+simply a LIE in the charming affair--a lie on which one could now,
+detached and deliberate, perfectly put one's finger.  It was with the
+lie that they had eaten and drunk and talked and laughed, that they had
+waited for their carriole rather impatiently, and had then got into the
+vehicle and, sensibly subsiding, driven their three or four miles
+through the darkening summer night.  The eating and drinking, which had
+been a resource, had had the effect of having served its turn; the talk
+and laughter had done as much; and it was during their somewhat tedious
+progress to the station, during the waits there, the further delays,
+their submission to fatigue, their silences in the dim compartment of
+the much-stopping train, that he prepared himself for reflexions to
+come. It had been a performance, Madame de Vionnet's manner, and though
+it had to that degree faltered toward the end, as through her ceasing
+to believe in it, as if she had asked herself, or Chad had found a
+moment surreptitiously to ask her, what after all was the use, a
+performance it had none the less quite handsomely remained, with the
+final fact about it that it was on the whole easier to keep up than to
+abandon.
+
+From the point of view of presence of mind it had been very wonderful
+indeed, wonderful for readiness, for beautiful assurance, for the way
+her decision was taken on the spot, without time to confer with Chad,
+without time for anything.  Their only conference could have been the
+brief instants in the boat before they confessed to recognising the
+spectator on the bank, for they hadn't been alone together a moment
+since and must have communicated all in silence. It was a part of the
+deep impression for Strether, and not the least of the deep interest,
+that they COULD so communicate--that Chad in particular could let her
+know he left it to her.  He habitually left things to others, as
+Strether was so well aware, and it in fact came over our friend in
+these meditations that there had been as yet no such vivid illustration
+of his famous knowing how to live. It was as if he had humoured her to
+the extent of letting her lie without correction--almost as if, really,
+he would be coming round in the morning to set the matter, as between
+Strether and himself, right.  Of course he couldn't quite come; it was
+a case in which a man was obliged to accept the woman's version, even
+when fantastic; if she had, with more flurry than she cared to show,
+elected, as the phrase was, to represent that they had left Paris that
+morning, and with no design but of getting back within the day--if she
+had so sized-up, in the Woollett phrase, their necessity, she knew best
+her own measure.  There were things, all the same, it was impossible to
+blink and which made this measure an odd one--the too evident fact for
+instance that she hadn't started out for the day dressed and hatted and
+shod, and even, for that matter, pink parasol'd, as she had been in the
+boat.  From what did the drop in her assurance proceed as the tension
+increased--from what did this slightly baffled ingenuity spring but
+from her consciousness of not presenting, as night closed in, with not
+so much as a shawl to wrap her round, an appearance that matched her
+story?  She admitted that she was cold, but only to blame her
+imprudence which Chad suffered her to give such account of as she
+might.  Her shawl and Chad's overcoat and her other garments, and his,
+those they had each worn the day before, were at the place, best known
+to themselves--a quiet retreat enough, no doubt--at which they had been
+spending the twenty-four hours, to which they had fully meant to return
+that evening, from which they had so remarkably swum into Strether's
+ken, and the tacit repudiation of which had been thus the essence of
+her comedy. Strether saw how she had perceived in a flash that they
+couldn't quite look to going back there under his nose; though,
+honestly, as he gouged deeper into the matter, he was somewhat
+surprised, as Chad likewise had perhaps been, at the uprising of this
+scruple. He seemed even to divine that she had entertained it rather
+for Chad than for herself, and that, as the young man had lacked the
+chance to enlighten her, she had had to go on with it, he meanwhile
+mistaking her motive.
+
+He was rather glad, none the less, that they had in point of fact not
+parted at the Cheval Blanc, that he hadn't been reduced to giving them
+his blessing for an idyllic retreat down the river. He had had in the
+actual case to make-believe more than he liked, but this was nothing,
+it struck him, to what the other event would have required.  Could he,
+literally, quite have faced the other event?  Would he have been
+capable of making the best of it with them?  This was what he was
+trying to do now; but with the advantage of his being able to give more
+time to it a good deal counteracted by his sense of what, over and
+above the central fact itself, he had to swallow.  It was the quantity
+of make-believe involved and so vividly exemplified that most disagreed
+with his spiritual stomach.  He moved, however, from the consideration
+of that quantity--to say nothing of the consciousness of that
+organ--back to the other feature of the show, the deep, deep truth of
+the intimacy revealed.  That was what, in his vain vigil, he oftenest
+reverted to:  intimacy, at such a point, was LIKE that--and what in the
+world else would one have wished it to be like?  It was all very well
+for him to feel the pity of its being so much like lying; he almost
+blushed, in the dark, for the way he had dressed the possibility in
+vagueness, as a little girl might have dressed her doll. He had made
+them--and by no fault of their own--momentarily pull it for him, the
+possibility, out of this vagueness; and must he not therefore take it
+now as they had had simply, with whatever thin attenuations, to give it
+to him?  The very question, it may be added, made him feel lonely and
+cold.  There was the element of the awkward all round, but Chad and
+Madame de Vionnet had at least the comfort that they could talk it over
+together.  With whom could HE talk of such things?--unless indeed
+always, at almost any stage, with Maria?  He foresaw that Miss Gostrey
+would come again into requisition on the morrow; though it wasn't to be
+denied that he was already a little afraid of her "What on
+earth--that's what I want to know now--had you then supposed?"  He
+recognised at last that he had really been trying all along to suppose
+nothing.  Verily, verily, his labour had been lost. He found himself
+supposing innumerable and wonderful things.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Twelfth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Strether couldn't have said he had during the previous hours definitely
+expected it; yet when, later on, that morning--though no later indeed
+than for his coming forth at ten o'clock--he saw the concierge produce,
+on his approach, a petit bleu delivered since his letters had been sent
+up, he recognised the appearance as the first symptom of a sequel.  He
+then knew he had been thinking of some early sign from Chad as more
+likely, after all, than not; and this would be precisely the early
+sign.  He took it so for granted that he opened the petit bleu just
+where he had stopped, in the pleasant cool draught of the
+porte-cochere--only curious to see where the young man would, at such a
+juncture, break out.  His curiosity, however, was more than gratified;
+the small missive, whose gummed edge he had detached without attention
+to the address, not being from the young man at all, but from the
+person whom the case gave him on the spot as still more worth while.
+Worth while or not, he went round to the nearest telegraph-office, the
+big one on the Boulevard, with a directness that almost confessed to a
+fear of the danger of delay.  He might have been thinking that if he
+didn't go before he could think he wouldn't perhaps go at all.  He at
+any rate kept, in the lower side-pocket of his morning coat, a very
+deliberate hand on his blue missive, crumpling it up rather tenderly
+than harshly.  He wrote a reply, on the Boulevard, also in the form of
+a petit bleu--which was quickly done, under pressure of the place,
+inasmuch as, like Madame de Vionnet's own communication, it consisted
+of the fewest words.  She had asked him if he could do her the very
+great kindness of coming to see her that evening at half-past nine, and
+he answered, as if nothing were easier, that he would present himself
+at the hour she named.  She had added a line of postscript, to the
+effect that she would come to him elsewhere and at his own hour if he
+preferred; but he took no notice of this, feeling that if he saw her at
+all half the value of it would be in seeing her where he had already
+seen her best.  He mightn't see her at all; that was one of the
+reflexions he made after writing and before he dropped his closed card
+into the box; he mightn't see any one at all any more at all; he might
+make an end as well now as ever, leaving things as they were, since he
+was doubtless not to leave them better, and taking his way home so far
+as should appear that a home remained to him.  This alternative was for
+a few minutes so sharp that if he at last did deposit his missive it
+was perhaps because the pressure of the place had an effect.
+
+There was none other, however, than the common and constant pressure,
+familiar to our friend under the rubric of Postes et Telegraphes--the
+something in the air of these establishments; the vibration of the vast
+strange life of the town, the influence of the types, the performers
+concocting their messages; the little prompt Paris women, arranging,
+pretexting goodness knew what, driving the dreadful needle-pointed
+public pen at the dreadful sand-strewn public table: implements that
+symbolised for Strether's too interpretative innocence something more
+acute in manners, more sinister in morals, more fierce in the national
+life.  After he had put in his paper he had ranged himself, he was
+really amused to think, on the side of the fierce, the sinister, the
+acute.  He was carrying on a correspondence, across the great city,
+quite in the key of the Postes et Telegraphes in general; and it was
+fairly as if the acceptance of that fact had come from something in his
+state that sorted with the occupation of his neighbours.  He was mixed
+up with the typical tale of Paris, and so were they, poor things--how
+could they all together help being? They were no worse than he, in
+short, and he no worse than they--if, queerly enough, no better; and at
+all events he had settled his hash, so that he went out to begin, from
+that moment, his day of waiting.  The great settlement was, as he felt,
+in his preference for seeing his correspondent in her own best
+conditions.  THAT was part of the typical tale, the part most
+significant in respect to himself.  He liked the place she lived in,
+the picture that each time squared itself, large and high and clear,
+around her:  every occasion of seeing it was a pleasure of a different
+shade.  Yet what precisely was he doing with shades of pleasure now,
+and why hadn't he properly and logically compelled her to commit
+herself to whatever of disadvantage and penalty the situation might
+throw up?  He might have proposed, as for Sarah Pocock, the cold
+hospitality of his own salon de lecture, in which the chill of Sarah's
+visit seemed still to abide and shades of pleasure were dim; he might
+have suggested a stone bench in the dusty Tuileries or a penny chair at
+the back part of the Champs Elysees.  These things would have been a
+trifle stern, and sternness alone now wouldn't be sinister.  An
+instinct in him cast about for some form of discipline in which they
+might meet--some awkwardness they would suffer from, some danger, or at
+least some grave inconvenience, they would incur.  This would give a
+sense--which the spirit required, rather ached and sighed in the
+absence of--that somebody was paying something somewhere and somehow,
+that they were at least not all floating together on the silver stream
+of impunity.  Just instead of that to go and see her late in the
+evening, as if, for all the world--well, as if he were as much in the
+swim as anybody else:  this had as little as possible in common with
+the penal form.
+
+Even when he had felt that objection melt away, however, the practical
+difference was small; the long stretch of his interval took the colour
+it would, and if he lived on thus with the sinister from hour to hour
+it proved an easier thing than one might have supposed in advance.  He
+reverted in thought to his old tradition, the one he had been brought
+up on and which even so many years of life had but little worn away;
+the notion that the state of the wrongdoer, or at least this person's
+happiness, presented some special difficulty.  What struck him now
+rather was the ease of it--for nothing in truth appeared easier.  It
+was an ease he himself fairly tasted of for the rest of the day; giving
+himself quite up; not so much as trying to dress it out, in any
+particular whatever, as a difficulty; not after all going to see
+Maria--which would have been in a manner a result of such dressing;
+only idling, lounging, smoking, sitting in the shade, drinking lemonade
+and consuming ices.  The day had turned to heat and eventual thunder,
+and he now and again went back to his hotel to find that Chad hadn't
+been there.  He hadn't yet struck himself, since leaving Woollett, so
+much as a loafer, though there had been times when he believed himself
+touching bottom.  This was a deeper depth than any, and with no
+foresight, scarcely with a care, as to what he should bring up.  He
+almost wondered if he didn't LOOK demoralised and disreputable; he had
+the fanciful vision, as he sat and smoked, of some accidental, some
+motived, return of the Pococks, who would be passing along the
+Boulevard and would catch this view of him. They would have distinctly,
+on his appearance, every ground for scandal. But fate failed to
+administer even that sternness; the Pococks never passed and Chad made
+no sign.  Strether meanwhile continued to hold off from Miss Gostrey,
+keeping her till to-morrow; so that by evening his irresponsibility,
+his impunity, his luxury, had become--there was no other word for
+them--immense.
+
+Between nine and ten, at last, in the high clear picture--he was moving
+in these days, as in a gallery, from clever canvas to clever canvas--he
+drew a long breath:  it was so presented to him from the first that the
+spell of his luxury wouldn't be broken.  He wouldn't have, that is, to
+become responsible--this was admirably in the air: she had sent for him
+precisely to let him feel it, so that he might go on with the comfort
+(comfort already established, hadn't it been?) of regarding his ordeal,
+the ordeal of the weeks of Sarah's stay and of their climax, as safely
+traversed and left behind him.  Didn't she just wish to assure him that
+SHE now took it all and so kept it; that he was absolutely not to worry
+any more, was only to rest on his laurels and continue generously to
+help her?  The light in her beautiful formal room was dim, though it
+would do, as everything would always do; the hot night had kept out
+lamps, but there was a pair of clusters of candles that glimmered over
+the chimney-piece like the tall tapers of an altar. The windows were
+all open, their redundant hangings swaying a little, and he heard once
+more, from the empty court, the small plash of the fountain.  From
+beyond this, and as from a great distance--beyond the court, beyond the
+corps de logis forming the front--came, as if excited and exciting, the
+vague voice of Paris. Strether had all along been subject to sudden
+gusts of fancy in connexion with such matters as these--odd starts of
+the historic sense, suppositions and divinations with no warrant but
+their intensity.  Thus and so, on the eve of the great recorded dates,
+the days and nights of revolution, the sounds had come in, the omens,
+the beginnings broken out.  They were the smell of revolution, the
+smell of the public temper--or perhaps simply the smell of blood.
+
+It was at present queer beyond words, "subtle," he would have risked
+saying, that such suggestions should keep crossing the scene; but it
+was doubtless the effect of the thunder in the air, which had hung
+about all day without release.  His hostess was dressed as for
+thunderous times, and it fell in with the kind of imagination we have
+just attributed to him that she should be in simplest coolest white, of
+a character so old-fashioned, if he were not mistaken, that Madame
+Roland must on the scaffold have worn something like it.  This effect
+was enhanced by a small black fichu or scarf, of crape or gauze,
+disposed quaintly round her bosom and now completing as by a mystic
+touch the pathetic, the noble analogy. Poor Strether in fact scarce
+knew what analogy was evoked for him as the charming woman, receiving
+him and making him, as she could do such things, at once familiarly and
+gravely welcome, moved over her great room with her image almost
+repeated in its polished floor, which had been fully bared for summer.
+The associations of the place, all felt again; the gleam here and
+there, in the subdued light, of glass and gilt and parquet, with the
+quietness of her own note as the centre--these things were at first as
+delicate as if they had been ghostly, and he was sure in a moment that,
+whatever he should find he had come for, it wouldn't be for an
+impression that had previously failed him.  That conviction held him
+from the outset, and, seeming singularly to simplify, certified to him
+that the objects about would help him, would really help them both. No,
+he might never see them again--this was only too probably the last
+time; and he should certainly see nothing in the least degree like
+them. He should soon be going to where such things were not, and it
+would be a small mercy for memory, for fancy, to have, in that stress,
+a loaf on the shelf.  He knew in advance he should look back on the
+perception actually sharpest with him as on the view of something old,
+old, old, the oldest thing he had ever personally touched; and he also
+knew, even while he took his companion in as the feature among
+features, that memory and fancy couldn't help being enlisted for her.
+She might intend what she would, but this was beyond anything she could
+intend, with things from far back--tyrannies of history, facts of type,
+values, as the painters said, of expression--all working for her and
+giving her the supreme chance, the chance of the happy, the really
+luxurious few, the chance, on a great occasion, to be natural and
+simple.  She had never, with him, been more so; or if it was the
+perfection of art it would never--and that came to the same thing--be
+proved against her.
+
+What was truly wonderful was her way of differing so from time to time
+without detriment to her simplicity.  Caprices, he was sure she felt,
+were before anything else bad manners, and that judgement in her was by
+itself a thing making more for safety of intercourse than anything that
+in his various own past intercourses he had had to reckon on.  If
+therefore her presence was now quite other than the one she had shown
+him the night before, there was nothing of violence in the change--it
+was all harmony and reason.  It gave him a mild deep person, whereas he
+had had on the occasion to which their interview was a direct reference
+a person committed to movement and surface and abounding in them; but
+she was in either character more remarkable for nothing than for her
+bridging of intervals, and this now fell in with what he understood he
+was to leave to her.  The only thing was that, if he was to leave it
+ALL to her, why exactly had she sent for him?  He had had, vaguely, in
+advance, his explanation, his view of the probability of her wishing to
+set something right, to deal in some way with the fraud so lately
+practised on his presumed credulity.  Would she attempt to carry it
+further or would she blot it out?  Would she throw over it some more or
+less happy colour; or would she do nothing about it at all?  He
+perceived soon enough at least that, however reasonable she might be,
+she wasn't vulgarly confused, and it herewith pressed upon him that
+their eminent "lie," Chad's and hers, was simply after all such an
+inevitable tribute to good taste as he couldn't have wished them not to
+render.  Away from them, during his vigil, he had seemed to wince at
+the amount of comedy involved; whereas in his present posture he could
+only ask himself how he should enjoy any attempt from her to take the
+comedy back.  He shouldn't enjoy it at all; but, once more and yet once
+more, he could trust her.  That is he could trust her to make deception
+right.  As she presented things the ugliness--goodness knew why--went
+out of them; none the less too that she could present them, with an art
+of her own, by not so much as touching them.  She let the matter, at
+all events, lie where it was--where the previous twenty-four hours had
+placed it; appearing merely to circle about it respectfully, tenderly,
+almost piously, while she took up another question.
+
+She knew she hadn't really thrown dust in his eyes; this, the previous
+night, before they separated, had practically passed between them; and,
+as she had sent for him to see what the difference thus made for him
+might amount to, so he was conscious at the end of five minutes that he
+had been tried and tested.  She had settled with Chad after he left
+them that she would, for her satisfaction, assure herself of this
+quantity, and Chad had, as usual, let her have her way.  Chad was
+always letting people have their way when he felt that it would somehow
+turn his wheel for him; it somehow always did turn his wheel.  Strether
+felt, oddly enough, before these facts, freshly and consentingly
+passive; they again so rubbed it into him that the couple thus fixing
+his attention were intimate, that his intervention had absolutely aided
+and intensified their intimacy, and that in fine he must accept the
+consequence of that.  He had absolutely become, himself, with his
+perceptions and his mistakes, his concessions and his reserves, the
+droll mixture, as it must seem to them, of his braveries and his fears,
+the general spectacle of his art and his innocence, almost an added
+link and certainly a common priceless ground for them to meet upon.  It
+was as if he had been hearing their very tone when she brought out a
+reference that was comparatively straight. "The last twice that you've
+been here, you know, I never asked you," she said with an abrupt
+transition--they had been pretending before this to talk simply of the
+charm of yesterday and of the interest of the country they had seen.
+The effort was confessedly vain; not for such talk had she invited him;
+and her impatient reminder was of their having done for it all the
+needful on his coming to her after Sarah's flight.  What she hadn't
+asked him then was to state to her where and how he stood for her; she
+had been resting on Chad's report of their midnight hour together in
+the Boulevard Malesherbes.  The thing therefore she at present desired
+was ushered in by this recall of the two occasions on which,
+disinterested and merciful, she hadn't worried him.  To-night truly she
+WOULD worry him, and this was her appeal to him to let her risk it.  He
+wasn't to mind if she bored him a little: she had behaved, after
+all--hadn't she?--so awfully, awfully well.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"Oh, you're all right, you're all right," he almost impatiently
+declared; his impatience being moreover not for her pressure, but for
+her scruple.  More and more distinct to him was the tune to which she
+would have had the matter out with Chad:  more and more vivid for him
+the idea that she had been nervous as to what he might be able to
+"stand." Yes, it had been a question if he had "stood" what the scene
+on the river had given him, and, though the young man had doubtless
+opined in favour of his recuperation, her own last word must have been
+that she should feel easier in seeing for herself.  That was it,
+unmistakeably; she WAS seeing for herself.  What he could stand was
+thus, in these moments, in the balance for Strether, who reflected, as
+he became fully aware of it, that he must properly brace himself.  He
+wanted fully to appear to stand all he might; and there was a certain
+command of the situation for him in this very wish not to look too much
+at sea. She was ready with everything, but so, sufficiently, was he;
+that is he was at one point the more prepared of the two, inasmuch as,
+for all her cleverness, she couldn't produce on the spot--and it was
+surprising--an account of the motive of her note.  He had the advantage
+that his pronouncing her "all right" gave him for an enquiry.  "May I
+ask, delighted as I've been to come, if you've wished to say something
+special?"  He spoke as if she might have seen he had been waiting for
+it--not indeed with discomfort, but with natural interest.  Then he saw
+that she was a little taken aback, was even surprised herself at the
+detail she had neglected--the only one ever yet; having somehow assumed
+he would know, would recognise, would leave some things not to be said.
+She looked at him, however, an instant as if to convey that if he
+wanted them ALL--!
+
+"Selfish and vulgar--that's what I must seem to you.  You've done
+everything for me, and here I am as if I were asking for more.  But it
+isn't," she went on, "because I'm afraid--though I AM of course afraid,
+as a woman in my position always is.  I mean it isn't because one lives
+in terror--it isn't because of that one is selfish, for I'm ready to
+give you my word to-night that I don't care; don't care what still may
+happen and what I may lose.  I don't ask you to raise your little
+finger for me again, nor do I wish so much as to mention to you what
+we've talked of before, either my danger or my safety, or his mother,
+or his sister, or the girl he may marry, or the fortune he may make or
+miss, or the right or the wrong, of any kind, he may do.  If after the
+help one has had from you one can't either take care of one's self or
+simply hold one's tongue, one must renounce all claim to be an object
+of interest.  It's in the name of what I DO care about that I've tried
+still to keep hold of you.  How can I be indifferent," she asked, "to
+how I appear to you?"  And as he found himself unable immediately to
+say:  "Why, if you're going, NEED you, after all? Is it impossible you
+should stay on--so that one mayn't lose you?"
+
+"Impossible I should live with you here instead of going home?"
+
+"Not 'with' us, if you object to that, but near enough to us,
+somewhere, for us to see you--well," she beautifully brought out, "when
+we feel we MUST.  How shall we not sometimes feel it?  I've wanted to
+see you often when I couldn't," she pursued, "all these last weeks. How
+shan't I then miss you now, with the sense of your being gone forever?"
+Then as if the straightness of this appeal, taking him unprepared, had
+visibly left him wondering:  "Where IS your 'home' moreover now--what
+has become of it?  I've made a change in your life, I know I have; I've
+upset everything in your mind as well; in your sense of--what shall I
+call it?--all the decencies and possibilities. It gives me a kind of
+detestation--" She pulled up short.
+
+Oh but he wanted to hear.  "Detestation of what?"
+
+"Of everything--of life."
+
+"Ah that's too much," he laughed--"or too little!"
+
+"Too little, precisely"--she was eager.  "What I hate is myself--when I
+think that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the lives of
+others, and that one isn't happy even then.  One does it to cheat one's
+self and to stop one's mouth--but that's only at the best for a little.
+The wretched self is always there, always making one somehow a fresh
+anxiety.  What it comes to is that it's not, that it's never, a
+happiness, any happiness at all, to TAKE. The only safe thing is to
+give.  It's what plays you least false." Interesting, touching,
+strikingly sincere as she let these things come from her, she yet
+puzzled and troubled him--so fine was the quaver of her quietness.  He
+felt what he had felt before with her, that there was always more
+behind what she showed, and more and more again behind that.  "You know
+so, at least," she added, "where you are!"
+
+"YOU ought to know it indeed then; for isn't what you've been giving
+exactly what has brought us together this way?  You've been making, as
+I've so fully let you know I've felt," Strether said, "the most
+precious present I've ever seen made, and if you can't sit down
+peacefully on that performance you ARE, no doubt, born to torment
+yourself.  But you ought," he wound up, "to be easy."
+
+"And not trouble you any more, no doubt--not thrust on you even the
+wonder and the beauty of what I've done; only let you regard our
+business as over, and well over, and see you depart in a peace that
+matches my own?  No doubt, no doubt, no doubt," she nervously
+repeated--"all the more that I don't really pretend I believe you
+couldn't, for yourself, NOT have done what you have.  I don't pretend
+you feel yourself victimised, for this evidently is the way you live,
+and it's what--we're agreed--is the best way.  Yes, as you say," she
+continued after a moment, "I ought to be easy and rest on my work. Well
+then here am I doing so.  I AM easy.  You'll have it for your last
+impression.  When is it you say you go?" she asked with a quick change.
+
+He took some time to reply--his last impression was more and more so
+mixed a one.  It produced in him a vague disappointment, a drop that
+was deeper even than the fall of his elation the previous night.  The
+good of what he had done, if he had done so much, wasn't there to
+enliven him quite to the point that would have been ideal for a grand
+gay finale.  Women were thus endlessly absorbent, and to deal with them
+was to walk on water.  What was at bottom the matter with her,
+embroider as she might and disclaim as she might--what was at bottom
+the matter with her was simply Chad himself. It was of Chad she was
+after all renewedly afraid; the strange strength of her passion was the
+very strength of her fear; she clung to HIM, Lambert Strether, as to a
+source of safety she had tested, and, generous graceful truthful as she
+might try to be, exquisite as she was, she dreaded the term of his
+being within reach. With this sharpest perception yet, it was like a
+chill in the air to him, it was almost appalling, that a creature so
+fine could be, by mysterious forces, a creature so exploited.  For at
+the end of all things they WERE mysterious:  she had but made Chad what
+he was--so why could she think she had made him infinite? She had made
+him better, she had made him best, she had made him anything one would;
+but it came to our friend with supreme queerness that he was none the
+less only Chad.  Strether had the sense that HE, a little, had made him
+too; his high appreciation had as it were, consecrated her work The
+work, however admirable, was nevertheless of the strict human order,
+and in short it was marvellous that the companion of mere earthly joys,
+of comforts, aberrations (however one classed them) within the common
+experience should be so transcendently prized.  It might have made
+Strether hot or shy, as such secrets of others brought home sometimes
+do make us; but he was held there by something so hard that it was
+fairly grim.  This was not the discomposure of last night; that had
+quite passed--such discomposures were a detail; the real coercion was
+to see a man ineffably adored.  There it was again--it took women, it
+took women; if to deal with them was to walk on water what wonder that
+the water rose?  And it had never surely risen higher than round this
+woman.  He presently found himself taking a long look from her, and the
+next thing he knew he had uttered all his thought.  "You're afraid for
+your life!"
+
+It drew out her long look, and he soon enough saw why.  A spasm came
+into her face, the tears she had already been unable to hide overflowed
+at first in silence, and then, as the sound suddenly comes from a
+child, quickened to gasps, to sobs.  She sat and covered her face with
+her hands, giving up all attempt at a manner. "It's how you see me,
+it's how you see me"--she caught her breath with it--"and it's as I AM,
+and as I must take myself, and of course it's no matter." Her emotion
+was at first so incoherent that he could only stand there at a loss,
+stand with his sense of having upset her, though of having done it by
+the truth.  He had to listen to her in a silence that he made no
+immediate effort to attenuate, feeling her doubly woeful amid all her
+dim diffused elegance; consenting to it as he had consented to the
+rest, and even conscious of some vague inward irony in the presence of
+such a fine free range of bliss and bale.  He couldn't say it was NOT
+no matter; for he was serving her to the end, he now knew,
+anyway--quite as if what he thought of her had nothing to do with it.
+It was actually moreover as if he didn't think of her at all, as if he
+could think of nothing but the passion, mature, abysmal, pitiful, she
+represented, and the possibilities she betrayed. She was older for him
+to-night, visibly less exempt from the touch of time; but she was as
+much as ever the finest and subtlest creature, the happiest apparition,
+it had been given him, in all his years, to meet; and yet he could see
+her there as vulgarly troubled, in very truth, as a maidservant crying
+for her young man.  The only thing was that she judged herself as the
+maidservant wouldn't; the weakness of which wisdom too, the dishonour
+of which judgement, seemed but to sink her lower. Her collapse,
+however, no doubt, was briefer and she had in a manner recovered
+herself before he intervened.  "Of course I'm afraid for my life.  But
+that's nothing.  It isn't that."
+
+He was silent a little longer, as if thinking what it might be.
+"There's something I have in mind that I can still do."
+
+But she threw off at last, with a sharp sad headshake, drying her eyes,
+what he could still do.  "I don't care for that.  Of course, as I've
+said, you're acting, in your wonderful way, for yourself; and what's
+for yourself is no more my business--though I may reach out unholy
+hands so clumsily to touch it--than if it were something in Timbuctoo.
+It's only that you don't snub me, as you've had fifty chances to
+do--it's only your beautiful patience that makes one forget one's
+manners.  In spite of your patience, all the same," she went on, "you'd
+do anything rather than be with us here, even if that were possible.
+You'd do everything for us but be mixed up with us--which is a
+statement you can easily answer to the advantage of your own manners.
+You can say 'What's the use of talking of things that at the best are
+impossible?' What IS of course the use?  It's only my little madness.
+You'd talk if you were tormented.  And I don't mean now about HIM.  Oh
+for him--!" Positively, strangely, bitterly, as it seemed to Strether,
+she gave "him," for the moment, away.  "You don't care what I think of
+you; but I happen to care what you think of me.  And what you MIGHT,"
+she added.  "What you perhaps even did."
+
+He gained time.  "What I did--?"
+
+"Did think before.  Before this.  DIDn't you think--?"
+
+But he had already stopped her.  "I didn't think anything.  I never
+think a step further than I'm obliged to."
+
+"That's perfectly false, I believe," she returned--"except that you
+may, no doubt, often pull up when things become TOO ugly; or even, I'll
+say, to save you a protest, too beautiful.  At any rate, even so far as
+it's true, we've thrust on you appearances that you've had to take in
+and that have therefore made your obligation.  Ugly or beautiful--it
+doesn't matter what we call them--you were getting on without them, and
+that's where we're detestable.  We bore you--that's where we are.  And
+we may well--for what we've cost you.  All you can do NOW is not to
+think at all.  And I who should have liked to seem to you--well,
+sublime!"
+
+He could only after a moment re-echo Miss Barrace.  "You're wonderful!"
+
+"I'm old and abject and hideous"--she went on as without hearing him.
+"Abject above all.  Or old above all.  It's when one's old that it's
+worst.  I don't care what becomes of it--let what WILL; there it is.
+It's a doom--I know it; you can't see it more than I do myself.  Things
+have to happen as they will." With which she came back again to what,
+face to face with him, had so quite broken down.  "Of course you
+wouldn't, even if possible, and no matter what may happen to you, be
+near us.  But think of me, think of me--!" She exhaled it into air.
+
+He took refuge in repeating something he had already said and that she
+had made nothing of.  "There's something I believe I can still do." And
+he put his hand out for good-bye.
+
+She again made nothing of it; she went on with her insistence. "That
+won't help you.  There's nothing to help you."
+
+"Well, it may help YOU," he said.
+
+She shook her head.  "There's not a grain of certainty in my
+future--for the only certainty is that I shall be the loser in the end."
+
+She hadn't taken his hand, but she moved with him to the door. "That's
+cheerful," he laughed, "for your benefactor!"
+
+"What's cheerful for ME," she replied, "is that we might, you and I,
+have been friends.  That's it--that's it.  You see how, as I say, I
+want everything.  I've wanted you too."
+
+"Ah but you've HAD me!" he declared, at the door, with an emphasis that
+made an end.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+His purpose had been to see Chad the next day, and he had prefigured
+seeing him by an early call; having in general never stood on ceremony
+in respect to visits at the Boulevard Malesherbes.  It had been more
+often natural for him to go there than for Chad to come to the small
+hotel, the attractions of which were scant; yet it nevertheless, just
+now, at the eleventh hour, did suggest itself to Strether to begin by
+giving the young man a chance.  It struck him that, in the inevitable
+course, Chad would be "round," as Waymarsh used to say--Waymarsh who
+already, somehow, seemed long ago.  He hadn't come the day before,
+because it had been arranged between them that Madame de Vionnet should
+see their friend first; but now that this passage had taken place he
+would present himself, and their friend wouldn't have long to wait.
+Strether assumed, he became aware, on this reasoning, that the
+interesting parties to the arrangement would have met betimes, and that
+the more interesting of the two--as she was after all--would have
+communicated to the other the issue of her appeal.  Chad would know
+without delay that his mother's messenger had been with her, and,
+though it was perhaps not quite easy to see how she could qualify what
+had occurred, he would at least have been sufficiently advised to feel
+he could go on.  The day, however, brought, early or late, no word from
+him, and Strether felt, as a result of this, that a change had
+practically come over their intercourse.  It was perhaps a premature
+judgement; or it only meant perhaps--how could he tell?--that the
+wonderful pair he protected had taken up again together the excursion
+he had accidentally checked.  They might have gone back to the country,
+and gone back but with a long breath drawn; that indeed would best mark
+Chad's sense that reprobation hadn't rewarded Madame de Vionnet's
+request for an interview.  At the end of the twenty-four hours, at the
+end of the forty-eight, there was still no overture; so that Strether
+filled up the time, as he had so often filled it before, by going to
+see Miss Gostrey.
+
+He proposed amusements to her; he felt expert now in proposing
+amusements; and he had thus, for several days, an odd sense of leading
+her about Paris, of driving her in the Bois, of showing her the penny
+steamboats--those from which the breeze of the Seine was to be best
+enjoyed--that might have belonged to a kindly uncle doing the honours
+of the capital to an Intelligent niece from the country.  He found
+means even to take her to shops she didn't know, or that she pretended
+she didn't; while she, on her side, was, like the country maiden, all
+passive modest and grateful--going in fact so far as to emulate
+rusticity in occasional fatigues and bewilderments.  Strether described
+these vague proceedings to himself, described them even to her, as a
+happy interlude; the sign of which was that the companions said for the
+time no further word about the matter they had talked of to satiety. He
+proclaimed satiety at the outset, and she quickly took the hint; as
+docile both in this and in everything else as the intelligent obedient
+niece.  He told her as yet nothing of his late adventure--for as an
+adventure it now ranked with him; he pushed the whole business
+temporarily aside and found his interest in the fact of her beautiful
+assent.  She left questions unasked--she who for so long had been all
+questions; she gave herself up to him with an understanding of which
+mere mute gentleness might have seemed the sufficient expression.  She
+knew his sense of his situation had taken still another step--of that
+he was quite aware; but she conveyed that, whatever had thus happened
+for him, it was thrown into the shade by what was happening for
+herself.  This--though it mightn't to a detached spirit have seemed
+much--was the major interest, and she met it with a new directness of
+response, measuring it from hour to hour with her grave hush of
+acceptance. Touched as he had so often been by her before, he was, for
+his part too, touched afresh; all the more that though he could be duly
+aware of the principle of his own mood he couldn't be equally so of the
+principle of hers.  He knew, that is, in a manner--knew roughly and
+resignedly--what he himself was hatching; whereas he had to take the
+chance of what he called to himself Maria's calculations.  It was all
+he needed that she liked him enough for what they were doing, and even
+should they do a good deal more would still like him enough for that;
+the essential freshness of a relation so simple was a cool bath to the
+soreness produced by other relations.  These others appeared to him now
+horribly complex; they bristled with fine points, points all
+unimaginable beforehand, points that pricked and drew blood; a fact
+that gave to an hour with his present friend on a bateau-mouche, or in
+the afternoon shade of the Champs Elysees, something of the innocent
+pleasure of handling rounded ivory.  His relation with Chad
+personally--from the moment he had got his point of view--had been of
+the simplest; yet this also struck him as bristling, after a third and
+a fourth blank day had passed.  It was as if at last however his care
+for such indications had dropped; there came a fifth blank day and he
+ceased to enquire or to heed.
+
+They now took on to his fancy, Miss Gostrey and he, the image of the
+Babes in the Wood; they could trust the merciful elements to let them
+continue at peace.  He had been great already, as he knew, at
+postponements; but he had only to get afresh into the rhythm of one to
+feel its fine attraction.  It amused him to say to himself that he
+might for all the world have been going to die--die resignedly; the
+scene was filled for him with so deep a death-bed hush, so melancholy a
+charm.  That meant the postponement of everything else--which made so
+for the quiet lapse of life; and the postponement in especial of the
+reckoning to come--unless indeed the reckoning to come were to be one
+and the same thing with extinction.  It faced him, the reckoning, over
+the shoulder of much interposing experience--which also faced him; and
+one would float to it doubtless duly through these caverns of Kubla
+Khan.  It was really behind everything; it hadn't merged in what he had
+done; his final appreciation of what he had done--his appreciation on
+the spot--would provide it with its main sharpness.  The spot so
+focussed was of course Woollett, and he was to see, at the best, what
+Woollett would be with everything there changed for him.  Wouldn't THAT
+revelation practically amount to the wind-up of his career?  Well, the
+summer's end would show; his suspense had meanwhile exactly the
+sweetness of vain delay; and he had with it, we should mention, other
+pastimes than Maria's company--plenty of separate musings in which his
+luxury failed him but at one point.  He was well in port, the outer sea
+behind him, and it was only a matter of getting ashore.  There was a
+question that came and went for him, however, as he rested against the
+side of his ship, and it was a little to get rid of the obsession that
+he prolonged his hours with Miss Gostrey.  It was a question about
+himself, but it could only be settled by seeing Chad again; it was
+indeed his principal reason for wanting to see Chad. After that it
+wouldn't signify--it was a ghost that certain words would easily lay to
+rest.  Only the young man must be there to take the words.  Once they
+were taken he wouldn't have a question left; none, that is, in
+connexion with this particular affair.  It wouldn't then matter even to
+himself that he might now have been guilty of speaking BECAUSE of what
+he had forfeited.  That was the refinement of his supreme scruple--he
+wished so to leave what he had forfeited out of account.  He wished not
+to do anything because he had missed something else, because he was
+sore or sorry or impoverished, because he was maltreated or desperate;
+he wished to do everything because he was lucid and quiet, just the
+same for himself on all essential points as he had ever been.  Thus it
+was that while he virtually hung about for Chad he kept mutely putting
+it:  "You've been chucked, old boy; but what has that to do with it?"
+It would have sickened him to feel vindictive.
+
+These tints of feeling indeed were doubtless but the iridescence of his
+idleness, and they were presently lost in a new light from Maria.  She
+had a fresh fact for him before the week was out, and she practically
+met him with it on his appearing one night.  He hadn't on this day seen
+her, but had planned presenting himself in due course to ask her to
+dine with him somewhere out of doors, on one of the terraces, in one of
+the gardens, of which the Paris of summer was profuse.  It had then
+come on to rain, so that, disconcerted, he changed his mind; dining
+alone at home, a little stuffily and stupidly, and waiting on her
+afterwards to make up his loss.  He was sure within a minute that
+something had happened; it was so in the air of the rich little room
+that he had scarcely to name his thought.  Softly lighted, the whole
+colour of the place, with its vague values, was in cool fusion--an
+effect that made the visitor stand for a little agaze.  It was as if in
+doing so now he had felt a recent presence--his recognition of the
+passage of which his hostess in turn divined.  She had scarcely to say
+it--"Yes, she has been here, and this time I received her." It wasn't
+till a minute later that she added:  "There being, as I understand you,
+no reason NOW--!"
+
+"None for your refusing?"
+
+"No--if you've done what you've had to do."
+
+"I've certainly so far done it," Strether said, "as that you needn't
+fear the effect, or the appearance of coming between us.  There's
+nothing between us now but what we ourselves have put there, and not an
+inch of room for anything else whatever.  Therefore you're only
+beautifully WITH us as always--though doubtless now, if she has talked
+to you, rather more with us than less.  Of course if she came," he
+added, "it was to talk to you."
+
+"It was to talk to me," Maria returned; on which he was further sure
+that she was practically in possession of what he himself hadn't yet
+told her.  He was even sure she was in possession of things he himself
+couldn't have told; for the consciousness of them was now all in her
+face and accompanied there with a shade of sadness that marked in her
+the close of all uncertainties.  It came out for him more than ever yet
+that she had had from the first a knowledge she believed him not to
+have had, a knowledge the sharp acquisition of which might be destined
+to make a difference for him.  The difference for him might not
+inconceivably be an arrest of his independence and a change in his
+attitude--in other words a revulsion in favour of the principles of
+Woollett.  She had really prefigured the possibility of a shock that
+would send him swinging back to Mrs. Newsome.  He hadn't, it was true,
+week after week, shown signs of receiving it, but the possibility had
+been none the less in the air.  What Maria accordingly had had now to
+take in was that the shock had descended and that he hadn't, all the
+same, swung back.  He had grown clear, in a flash, on a point long
+since settled for herself; but no reapproximation to Mrs. Newsome had
+occurred in consequence.  Madame de Vionnet had by her visit held up
+the torch to these truths, and what now lingered in poor Maria's face
+was the somewhat smoky light of the scene between them. If the light
+however wasn't, as we have hinted, the glow of joy, the reasons for
+this also were perhaps discernible to Strether even through the blur
+cast over them by his natural modesty.  She had held herself for months
+with a firm hand; she hadn't interfered on any chance--and chances were
+specious enough--that she might interfere to her profit.  She had
+turned her back on the dream that Mrs. Newsome's rupture, their
+friend's forfeiture--the engagement the relation itself, broken beyond
+all mending--might furnish forth her advantage; and, to stay her hand
+from promoting these things, she had on private, difficult, but rigid,
+lines, played strictly fair.  She couldn't therefore but feel that,
+though, as the end of all, the facts in question had been stoutly
+confirmed, her ground for personal, for what might have been called
+interested, elation remained rather vague.  Strether might easily have
+made out that she had been asking herself, in the hours she had just
+sat through, if there were still for her, or were only not, a fair
+shade of uncertainty.  Let us hasten to add, however, that what he at
+first made out on this occasion he also at first kept to himself.  He
+only asked what in particular Madame de Vionnet had come for, and as to
+this his companion was ready.
+
+"She wants tidings of Mr. Newsome, whom she appears not to have seen
+for some days."
+
+"Then she hasn't been away with him again?"
+
+"She seemed to think," Maria answered, "that he might have gone away
+with YOU."
+
+"And did you tell her I know nothing of him?"
+
+She had her indulgent headshake.  "I've known nothing of what you know.
+I could only tell her I'd ask you."
+
+"Then I've not seen him for a week--and of course I've wondered." His
+wonderment showed at this moment as sharper, but he presently went on.
+"Still, I dare say I can put my hand on him.  Did she strike you," he
+asked, "as anxious?"
+
+"She's always anxious."
+
+"After all I've done for her?"  And he had one of the last flickers of
+his occasional mild mirth.  "To think that was just what I came out to
+prevent!"
+
+She took it up but to reply.  "You don't regard him then as safe?"
+
+"I was just going to ask you how in that respect you regard Madame de
+Vionnet."
+
+She looked at him a little.  "What woman was EVER safe?  She told me,"
+she added--and it was as if at the touch of the connexion--"of your
+extraordinary meeting in the country.  After that a quoi se fier?"
+
+"It was, as an accident, in all the possible or impossible chapter,"
+Strether conceded, "amazing enough.  But still, but still--!"
+
+"But still she didn't mind?"
+
+"She doesn't mind anything."
+
+"Well, then, as you don't either, we may all sink to rest!"
+
+He appeared to agree with her, but he had his reservation. "I do mind
+Chad's disappearance."
+
+"Oh you'll get him back.  But now you know," she said, "why I went to
+Mentone." He had sufficiently let her see that he had by this time
+gathered things together, but there was nature in her wish to make them
+clearer still.  "I didn't want you to put it to me."
+
+"To put it to you--?"
+
+"The question of what you were at last--a week ago--to see for
+yourself.  I didn't want to have to lie for her.  I felt that to be too
+much for me.  A man of course is always expected to do it--to do it, I
+mean, for a woman; but not a woman for another woman; unless perhaps on
+the tit-for-tat principle, as an indirect way of protecting herself.  I
+don't need protection, so that I was free to 'funk' you--simply to
+dodge your test.  The responsibility was too much for me.  I gained
+time, and when I came back the need of a test had blown over."
+
+Strether thought of it serenely.  "Yes; when you came back little
+Bilham had shown me what's expected of a gentleman.  Little Bilham had
+lied like one."
+
+"And like what you believed him?"
+
+"Well," said Strether, "it was but a technical lie--he classed the
+attachment as virtuous.  That was a view for which there was much to be
+said--and the virtue came out for me hugely There was of course a great
+deal of it.  I got it full in the face, and I haven't, you see, done
+with it yet."
+
+"What I see, what I saw," Maria returned, "is that you dressed up even
+the virtue.  You were wonderful--you were beautiful, as I've had the
+honour of telling you before; but, if you wish really to know," she
+sadly confessed, "I never quite knew WHERE you were. There were
+moments," she explained, "when you struck me as grandly cynical; there
+were others when you struck me as grandly vague."
+
+Her friend considered.  "I had phases.  I had flights."
+
+"Yes, but things must have a basis."
+
+"A basis seemed to me just what her beauty supplied."
+
+"Her beauty of person?"
+
+"Well, her beauty of everything.  The impression she makes.  She has
+such variety and yet such harmony."
+
+She considered him with one of her deep returns of indulgence--returns
+out of all proportion to the irritations they flooded over. "You're
+complete."
+
+"You're always too personal," he good-humouredly said; "but that's
+precisely how I wondered and wandered."
+
+"If you mean," she went on, "that she was from the first for you the
+most charming woman in the world, nothing's more simple.  Only that was
+an odd foundation."
+
+"For what I reared on it?"
+
+"For what you didn't!"
+
+"Well, it was all not a fixed quantity.  And it had for me--it has
+still--such elements of strangeness.  Her greater age than his, her
+different world, traditions, association; her other opportunities,
+liabilities, standards."
+
+His friend listened with respect to his enumeration of these
+disparities; then she disposed of them at a stroke.  "Those things are
+nothing when a woman's hit.  It's very awful.  She was hit."
+
+Strether, on his side, did justice to that plea.  "Oh of course I saw
+she was hit.  That she was hit was what we were busy with; that she was
+hit was our great affair.  But somehow I couldn't think of her as down
+in the dust.  And as put there by OUR little Chad!"
+
+"Yet wasn't 'your' little Chad just your miracle?"
+
+Strether admitted it.  "Of course I moved among miracles.  It was all
+phantasmagoric.  But the great fact was that so much of it was none of
+my business--as I saw my business.  It isn't even now."
+
+His companion turned away on this, and it might well have been yet
+again with the sharpness of a fear of how little his philosophy could
+bring her personally.  "I wish SHE could hear you!"
+
+"Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+"No--not Mrs. Newsome; since I understand you that it doesn't matter
+now what Mrs. Newsome hears.  Hasn't she heard everything?"
+
+"Practically--yes." He had thought a moment, but he went on.  "You wish
+Madame de Vionnet could hear me?"
+
+"Madame de Vionnet." She had come back to him.  "She thinks just the
+contrary of what you say.  That you distinctly judge her."
+
+He turned over the scene as the two women thus placed together for him
+seemed to give it.  "She might have known--!"
+
+"Might have known you don't?" Miss Gostrey asked as he let it drop.
+"She was sure of it at first," she pursued as he said nothing; "she
+took it for granted, at least, as any woman in her position would. But
+after that she changed her mind; she believed you believed--"
+
+"Well?"--he was curious.
+
+"Why in her sublimity.  And that belief had remained with her, I make
+out, till the accident of the other day opened your eyes.  For that it
+did," said Maria, "open them--"
+
+"She can't help"--he had taken it up--"being aware?  No," he mused; "I
+suppose she thinks of that even yet."
+
+"Then they WERE closed?  There you are!  However, if you see her as the
+most charming woman in the world it comes to the same thing. And if
+you'd like me to tell her that you do still so see her--!" Miss
+Gostrey, in short, offered herself for service to the end.
+
+It was an offer he could temporarily entertain; but he decided. "She
+knows perfectly how I see her."
+
+"Not favourably enough, she mentioned to me, to wish ever to see her
+again.  She told me you had taken a final leave of her.  She says
+you've done with her."
+
+"So I have."
+
+Maria had a pause; then she spoke as if for conscience.  "She wouldn't
+have done with YOU.  She feels she has lost you--yet that she might
+have been better for you."
+
+"Oh she has been quite good enough!" Strether laughed.
+
+"She thinks you and she might at any rate have been friends."
+
+"We might certainly.  That's just"--he continued to laugh--"why I'm
+going."
+
+It was as if Maria could feel with this then at last that she had done
+her best for each.  But she had still an idea.  "Shall I tell her that?"
+
+"No.  Tell her nothing."
+
+"Very well then." To which in the next breath Miss Gostrey added: "Poor
+dear thing!"
+
+Her friend wondered; then with raised eyebrows:  "Me?"
+
+"Oh no.  Marie de Vionnet."
+
+He accepted the correction, but he wondered still.  "Are you so sorry
+for her as that?"
+
+It made her think a moment--made her even speak with a smile.  But she
+didn't really retract.  "I'm sorry for us all!"
+
+
+
+IV
+
+He was to delay no longer to re-establish communication with Chad, and
+we have just seen that he had spoken to Miss Gostrey of this intention
+on hearing from her of the young man's absence.  It was not moreover
+only the assurance so given that prompted him; it was the need of
+causing his conduct to square with another profession still--the motive
+he had described to her as his sharpest for now getting away.  If he
+was to get away because of some of the relations involved in staying,
+the cold attitude toward them might look pedantic in the light of
+lingering on.  He must do both things; he must see Chad, but he must
+go.  The more he thought of the former of these duties the more he felt
+himself make a subject of insistence of the latter.  They were alike
+intensely present to him as he sat in front of a quiet little cafe into
+which he had dropped on quitting Maria's entresol.  The rain that had
+spoiled his evening with her was over; for it was still to him as if
+his evening HAD been spoiled--though it mightn't have been wholly the
+rain.  It was late when he left the cafe, yet not too late; he couldn't
+in any case go straight to bed, and he would walk round by the
+Boulevard Malesherbes--rather far round--on his way home. Present
+enough always was the small circumstance that had originally pressed
+for him the spring of so big a difference--the accident of little
+Bilham's appearance on the balcony of the mystic troisieme at the
+moment of his first visit, and the effect of it on his sense of what
+was then before him.  He recalled his watch, his wait, and the
+recognition that had proceeded from the young stranger, that had played
+frankly into the air and had presently brought him up--things smoothing
+the way for his first straight step.  He had since had occasion, a few
+times, to pass the house without going in; but he had never passed it
+without again feeling how it had then spoken to him.  He stopped short
+to-night on coming to sight of it:  it was as if his last day were
+oddly copying his first.  The windows of Chad's apartment were open to
+the balcony--a pair of them lighted; and a figure that had come out and
+taken up little Bilham's attitude, a figure whose cigarette-spark he
+could see leaned on the rail and looked down at him.  It denoted
+however no reappearance of his younger friend; it quickly defined
+itself in the tempered darkness as Chad's more solid shape; so that
+Chad's was the attention that after he had stepped forward into the
+street and signalled, he easily engaged; Chad's was the voice that,
+sounding into the night with promptness and seemingly with joy, greeted
+him and called him up.
+
+That the young man had been visible there just in this position
+expressed somehow for Strether that, as Maria Gostrey had reported, he
+had been absent and silent; and our friend drew breath on each
+landing--the lift, at that hour, having ceased to work--before the
+implications of the fact.  He had been for a week intensely away, away
+to a distance and alone; but he was more back than ever, and the
+attitude in which Strether had surprised him was something more than a
+return--it was clearly a conscious surrender.  He had arrived but an
+hour before, from London, from Lucerne, from Homburg, from no matter
+where--though the visitor's fancy, on the staircase, liked to fill it
+out; and after a bath, a talk with Baptiste and a supper of light cold
+clever French things, which one could see the remains of there in the
+circle of the lamp, pretty and ultra-Parisian, he had come into the air
+again for a smoke, was occupied at the moment of Strether's approach in
+what might have been called taking up his life afresh.  His life, his
+life!--Strether paused anew, on the last flight, at this final rather
+breathless sense of what Chad's life was doing with Chad's mother's
+emissary.  It was dragging him, at strange hours, up the staircases of
+the rich; it was keeping him out of bed at the end of long hot days; it
+was transforming beyond recognition the simple, subtle, conveniently
+uniform thing that had anciently passed with him for a life of his own.
+Why should it concern him that Chad was to be fortified in the pleasant
+practice of smoking on balconies, of supping on salads, of feeling his
+special conditions agreeably reaffirm themselves, of finding
+reassurance in comparisons and contrasts?  There was no answer to such
+a question but that he was still practically committed--he had perhaps
+never yet so much known it. It made him feel old, and he would buy his
+railway-ticket--feeling, no doubt, older--the next day; but he had
+meanwhile come up four flights, counting the entresol, at midnight and
+without a lift, for Chad's life.  The young man, hearing him by this
+time, and with Baptiste sent to rest, was already at the door; so that
+Strether had before him in full visibility the cause in which he was
+labouring and even, with the troisieme fairly gained, panting a little.
+
+Chad offered him, as always, a welcome in which the cordial and the
+formal--so far as the formal was the respectful--handsomely met; and
+after he had expressed a hope that he would let him put him up for the
+night Strether was in full possession of the key, as it might have been
+called, to what had lately happened.  If he had just thought of himself
+as old Chad was at sight of him thinking of him as older:  he wanted to
+put him up for the night just because he was ancient and weary.  It
+could never be said the tenant of these quarters wasn't nice to him; a
+tenant who, if he might indeed now keep him, was probably prepared to
+work it all still more thoroughly.  Our friend had in fact the
+impression that with the minimum of encouragement Chad would propose to
+keep him indefinitely; an impression in the lap of which one of his own
+possibilities seemed to sit.  Madame de Vionnet had wished him to
+stay--so why didn't that happily fit?  He could enshrine himself for
+the rest of his days in his young host's chambre d'ami and draw out
+these days at his young host's expense:  there could scarce be greater
+logical expression of the countenance he had been moved to give.  There
+was literally a minute--it was strange enough--during which he grasped
+the idea that as he WAS acting, as he could only act, he was
+inconsistent.  The sign that the inward forces he had obeyed really
+hung together would be that--in default always of another career--he
+should promote the good cause by mounting guard on it.  These things,
+during his first minutes, came and went; but they were after all
+practically disposed of as soon as he had mentioned his errand.  He had
+come to say good-bye--yet that was only a part; so that from the moment
+Chad accepted his farewell the question of a more ideal affirmation
+gave way to something else. He proceeded with the rest of his business.
+"You'll be a brute, you know--you'll be guilty of the last infamy--if
+you ever forsake her."
+
+That, uttered there at the solemn hour, uttered in the place that was
+full of her influence, was the rest of his business; and when once he
+had heard himself say it he felt that his message had never before been
+spoken.  It placed his present call immediately on solid ground, and
+the effect of it was to enable him quite to play with what we have
+called the key.  Chad showed no shade of embarrassment, but had none
+the less been troubled for him after their meeting in the country; had
+had fears and doubts on the subject of his comfort.  He was disturbed,
+as it were, only FOR him, and had positively gone away to ease him off,
+to let him down--if it wasn't indeed rather to screw him up--the more
+gently. Seeing him now fairly jaded he had come, with characteristic
+good humour, all the way to meet him, and what Strether thereupon
+supremely made out was that he would abound for him to the end in
+conscientious assurances.  This was what was between them while the
+visitor remained; so far from having to go over old ground he found his
+entertainer keen to agree to everything.  It couldn't be put too
+strongly for him that he'd be a brute.  "Oh rather!--if I should do
+anything of THAT sort.  I hope you believe I really feel it."
+
+"I want it," said Strether, "to be my last word of all to you. I can't
+say more, you know; and I don't see how I can do more, in every way,
+than I've done."
+
+Chad took this, almost artlessly, as a direct allusion.  "You've seen
+her?"
+
+"Oh yes--to say good-bye.  And if I had doubted the truth of what I
+tell you--"
+
+"She'd have cleared up your doubt?"  Chad understood--"rather"--again!
+It even kept him briefly silent.  But he made that up. "She must have
+been wonderful."
+
+"She WAS," Strether candidly admitted--all of which practically told as
+a reference to the conditions created by the accident of the previous
+week.
+
+They appeared for a little to be looking back at it; and that came out
+still more in what Chad next said.  "I don't know what you've really
+thought, all along; I never did know--for anything, with you, seemed to
+be possible.  But of course--of course--"  Without confusion, quite
+with nothing but indulgence, he broke down, he pulled up.  "After all,
+you understand.  I spoke to you originally only as I HAD to speak.
+There's only one way--isn't there?--about such things.  However," he
+smiled with a final philosophy, "I see it's all right."
+
+Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts.  What was
+it that made him at present, late at night and after journeys, so
+renewedly, so substantially young?  Strether saw in a moment what it
+was--it was that he was younger again than Madame de Vionnet. He
+himself said immediately none of the things that he was thinking; he
+said something quite different.  "You HAVE really been to a distance?"
+
+"I've been to England." Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, but gave no
+further account of it than to say:  "One must sometimes get off."
+
+Strether wanted no more facts--he only wanted to justify, as it were,
+his question.  "Of course you do as you're free to do.  But I hope,
+this time, that you didn't go for ME."
+
+"For very shame at bothering you really too much?  My dear man," Chad
+laughed, "what WOULDn't I do for you?"
+
+Strether's easy answer for this was that it was a disposition he had
+exactly come to profit by.  "Even at the risk of being in your way I've
+waited on, you know, for a definite reason."
+
+Chad took it in.  "Oh yes--for us to make if possible a still better
+impression." And he stood there happily exhaling his full general
+consciousness.  "I'm delighted to gather that you feel we've made it."
+
+There was a pleasant irony in the words, which his guest, preoccupied
+and keeping to the point, didn't take up.  "If I had my sense of
+wanting the rest of the time--the time of their being still on this
+side," he continued to explain--"I know now why I wanted it."
+
+He was as grave, as distinct, as a demonstrator before a blackboard,
+and Chad continued to face him like an intelligent pupil.  "You wanted
+to have been put through the whole thing."
+
+Strether again, for a moment, said nothing; he turned his eyes away,
+and they lost themselves, through the open window, in the dusky outer
+air.  "I shall learn from the Bank here where they're now having their
+letters, and my last word, which I shall write in the morning and which
+they're expecting as my ultimatum, will so immediately reach them." The
+light of his plural pronoun was sufficiently reflected in his
+companion's face as he again met it; and he completed his
+demonstration.  He pursued indeed as if for himself.  "Of course I've
+first to justify what I shall do."
+
+"You're justifying it beautifully!" Chad declared.
+
+"It's not a question of advising you not to go," Strether said, "but of
+absolutely preventing you, if possible, from so much as thinking of it.
+Let me accordingly appeal to you by all you hold sacred."
+
+Chad showed a surprise.  "What makes you think me capable--?"
+
+"You'd not only be, as I say, a brute; you'd be," his companion went on
+in the same way, "a criminal of the deepest dye."
+
+Chad gave a sharper look, as if to gauge a possible suspicion. "I don't
+know what should make you think I'm tired of her."
+
+Strether didn't quite know either, and such impressions, for the
+imaginative mind, were always too fine, too floating, to produce on the
+spot their warrant.  There was none the less for him, in the very
+manner of his host's allusion to satiety as a thinkable motive, a
+slight breath of the ominous.  "I feel how much more she can do for
+you.  She hasn't done it all yet.  Stay with her at least till she has."
+
+"And leave her THEN?"
+
+Chad had kept smiling, but its effect in Strether was a shade of
+dryness.  "Don't leave her BEFORE.  When you've got all that can be
+got--I don't say," he added a trifle grimly.  "That will be the proper
+time.  But as, for you, from such a woman, there will always be
+something to be got, my remark's not a wrong to her." Chad let him go
+on, showing every decent deference, showing perhaps also a candid
+curiosity for this sharper accent.  "I remember you, you know, as you
+were."
+
+"An awful ass, wasn't I?"
+
+The response was as prompt as if he had pressed a spring; it had a
+ready abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment to
+meet it.  "You certainly then wouldn't have seemed worth all you've let
+me in for.  You've defined yourself better.  Your value has quintupled."
+
+"Well then, wouldn't that be enough--?"
+
+Chad had risked it jocosely, but Strether remained blank.  "Enough?"
+
+"If one SHOULD wish to live on one's accumulations?"  After which,
+however, as his friend appeared cold to the joke, the young man as
+easily dropped it.  "Of course I really never forget, night or day,
+what I owe her.  I owe her everything.  I give you my word of honour,"
+he frankly rang out, "that I'm not a bit tired of her." Strether at
+this only gave him a stare:  the way youth could express itself was
+again and again a wonder.  He meant no harm, though he might after all
+be capable of much; yet he spoke of being "tired" of her almost as he
+might have spoken of being tired of roast mutton for dinner.  "She has
+never for a moment yet bored me--never been wanting, as the cleverest
+women sometimes are, in tact. She has never talked about her tact--as
+even they too sometimes talk; but she has always had it.  She has never
+had it more"--he handsomely made the point--"than just lately." And he
+scrupulously went further. "She has never been anything I could call a
+burden."
+
+Strether for a moment said nothing; then he spoke gravely, with his
+shade of dryness deepened.  "Oh if you didn't do her justice--!"
+
+"I SHOULD be a beast, eh?"
+
+Strether devoted no time to saying what he would be; THAT, visibly,
+would take them far.  If there was nothing for it but to repeat,
+however, repetition was no mistake.  "You owe her everything--very much
+more than she can ever owe you.  You've in other words duties to her,
+of the most positive sort; and I don't see what other duties--as the
+others are presented to you--can be held to go before them."
+
+Chad looked at him with a smile.  "And you know of course about the
+others, eh?--since it's you yourself who have done the presenting."
+
+"Much of it--yes--and to the best of my ability.  But not all--from the
+moment your sister took my place."
+
+"She didn't," Chad returned.  "Sally took a place, certainly; but it
+was never, I saw from the first moment, to be yours.  No one--with
+us--will ever take yours.  It wouldn't be possible."
+
+"Ah of course," sighed Strether, "I knew it.  I believe you're right.
+No one in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously solemn.  There
+I am," he added with another sigh, as if weary enough, on occasion, of
+this truth.  "I was made so."
+
+Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might
+for this purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured
+the fact.  "YOU have never needed any one to make you better.  There
+has never been any one good enough. They couldn't," the young man
+declared.
+
+His friend hesitated.  "I beg your pardon.  They HAVE."
+
+Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt.  "Who then?"
+
+Strether--though a little dimly--smiled at him.  "Women--too."
+
+"'Two'?"--Chad stared and laughed.  "Oh I don't believe, for such work,
+in any more than one!  So you're proving too much.  And what IS
+beastly, at all events," he added, "is losing you."
+
+Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he
+paused.  "Are you afraid?"
+
+"Afraid--?"
+
+"Of doing wrong.  I mean away from my eye." Before Chad could speak,
+however, he had taken himself up.  "I AM, certainly," he laughed,
+"prodigious."
+
+"Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid--!"  This might have been, on
+Chad's part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely extravagant;
+but it was full, plainly enough, of the intention of comfort, it
+carried with it a protest against doubt and a promise, positively, of
+performance.  Picking up a hat in the vestibule he came out with his
+friend, came downstairs, took his arm, affectionately, as to help and
+guide him, treating him if not exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a
+noble eccentric who appealed to tenderness, and keeping on with him,
+while they walked, to the next corner and the next.  "You needn't tell
+me, you needn't tell me!"--this again as they proceeded, he wished to
+make Strether feel.  What he needn't tell him was now at last, in the
+geniality of separation, anything at all it concerned him to know.  He
+knew, up to the hilt--that really came over Chad; he understood, felt,
+recorded his vow; and they lingered on it as they had lingered in their
+walk to Strether's hotel the night of their first meeting. The latter
+took, at this hour, all he could get; he had given all he had had to
+give; he was as depleted as if he had spent his last sou.  But there
+was just one thing for which, before they broke off, Chad seemed
+disposed slightly to bargain.  His companion needn't, as he said, tell
+him, but he might himself mention that he had been getting some news of
+the art of advertisement.  He came out quite suddenly with this
+announcement while Strether wondered if his revived interest were what
+had taken him, with strange inconsequence, over to London.  He appeared
+at all events to have been looking into the question and had
+encountered a revelation.  Advertising scientifically worked presented
+itself thus as the great new force.  "It really does the thing, you
+know."
+
+They were face to face under the street-lamp as they had been the first
+night, and Strether, no doubt, looked blank.  "Affects, you mean, the
+sale of the object advertised?"
+
+"Yes--but affects it extraordinarily; really beyond what one had
+supposed.  I mean of course when it's done as one makes out that in our
+roaring age, it CAN be done.  I've been finding out a little, though it
+doubtless doesn't amount to much more than what you originally, so
+awfully vividly--and all, very nearly, that first night--put before me.
+It's an art like another, and infinite like all the arts." He went on
+as if for the joke of it--almost as if his friend's face amused him.
+"In the hands, naturally, of a master. The right man must take hold.
+With the right man to work it c'est un monde."
+
+Strether had watched him quite as if, there on the pavement without a
+pretext, he had begun to dance a fancy step.  "Is what you're thinking
+of that you yourself, in the case you have in mind, would be the right
+man?"
+
+Chad had thrown back his light coat and thrust each of his thumbs into
+an armhole of his waistcoat; in which position his fingers played up
+and down.  "Why, what is he but what you yourself, as I say, took me
+for when you first came out?"
+
+Strether felt a little faint, but he coerced his attention.  "Oh yes,
+and there's no doubt that, with your natural parts, you'd have much in
+common with him.  Advertising is clearly at this time of day the secret
+of trade.  It's quite possible it will be open to you--giving the whole
+of your mind to it--to make the whole place hum with you.  Your
+mother's appeal is to the whole of your mind, and that's exactly the
+strength of her case."
+
+Chad's fingers continued to twiddle, but he had something of a drop.
+"Ah we've been through my mother's case!"
+
+"So I thought.  Why then do you speak of the matter?"
+
+"Only because it was part of our original discussion.  To wind up where
+we began, my interest's purely platonic.  There at any rate the fact
+is--the fact of the possible.  I mean the money in it."
+
+"Oh damn the money in it!" said Strether.  And then as the young man's
+fixed smile seemed to shine out more strange:  "Shall you give your
+friend up for the money in it?"
+
+Chad preserved his handsome grimace as well as the rest of his
+attitude.  "You're not altogether--in your so great 'solemnity'--kind.
+Haven't I been drinking you in--showing you all I feel you're worth to
+me?  What have I done, what am I doing, but cleave to her to the death?
+The only thing is," he good-humouredly explained, "that one can't but
+have it before one, in the cleaving--the point where the death comes
+in.  Don't be afraid for THAT. It's pleasant to a fellow's feelings,"
+he developed, "to 'size-up' the bribe he applies his foot to."
+
+"Oh then if all you want's a kickable surface the bribe's enormous."
+
+"Good.  Then there it goes!"  Chad administered his kick with fantastic
+force and sent an imaginary object flying.  It was accordingly as if
+they were once more rid of the question and could come back to what
+really concerned him.  "Of course I shall see you tomorrow."
+
+But Strether scarce heeded the plan proposed for this; he had still the
+impression--not the slighter for the simulated kick--of an irrelevant
+hornpipe or jig.  "You're restless."
+
+"Ah," returned Chad as they parted, "you're exciting."
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+He had, however, within two days, another separation to face. He had
+sent Maria Gostrey a word early, by hand, to ask if he might come to
+breakfast; in consequence of which, at noon, she awaited him in the
+cool shade of her little Dutch-looking dining-room. This retreat was at
+the back of the house, with a view of a scrap of old garden that had
+been saved from modern ravage; and though he had on more than one other
+occasion had his legs under its small and peculiarly polished table of
+hospitality, the place had never before struck him as so sacred to
+pleasant knowledge, to intimate charm, to antique order, to a neatness
+that was almost august. To sit there was, as he had told his hostess
+before, to see life reflected for the time in ideally kept pewter;
+which was somehow becoming, improving to life, so that one's eyes were
+held and comforted.  Strether's were comforted at all events now--and
+the more that it was the last time--with the charming effect, on the
+board bare of a cloth and proud of its perfect surface, of the small
+old crockery and old silver, matched by the more substantial pieces
+happily disposed about the room.  The specimens of vivid Delf, in
+particular had the dignity of family portraits; and it was in the midst
+of them that our friend resignedly expressed himself. He spoke even
+with a certain philosophic humour.  "There's nothing more to wait for;
+I seem to have done a good day's work.  I've let them have it all
+round.  I've seen Chad, who has been to London and come back.  He tells
+me I'm 'exciting,' and I seem indeed pretty well to have upset every
+one.  I've at any rate excited HIM.  He's distinctly restless."
+
+"You've excited ME," Miss Gostrey smiled.  "I'M distinctly restless."
+
+"Oh you were that when I found you.  It seems to me I've rather got you
+out of it.  What's this," he asked as he looked about him, "but a haunt
+of ancient peace?"
+
+"I wish with all my heart," she presently replied, "I could make you
+treat it as a haven of rest." On which they fronted each other, across
+the table, as if things unuttered were in the air.
+
+Strether seemed, in his way, when he next spoke, to take some of them
+up.  "It wouldn't give me--that would be the trouble--what it will, no
+doubt, still give you.  I'm not," he explained, leaning back in his
+chair, but with his eyes on a small ripe round melon--"in real harmony
+with what surrounds me.  You ARE.  I take it too hard. You DON'T.  It
+makes--that's what it comes to in the end--a fool of me." Then at a
+tangent, "What has he been doing in London?" he demanded.
+
+"Ah one may go to London," Maria laughed.  "You know I did."
+
+Yes--he took the reminder.  "And you brought ME back." He brooded there
+opposite to her, but without gloom.  "Whom has Chad brought? He's full
+of ideas.  And I wrote to Sarah," he added, "the first thing this
+morning.  So I'm square.  I'm ready for them."
+
+She neglected certain parts of this speech in the interest of others.
+"Marie said to me the other day that she felt him to have the makings
+of an immense man of business."
+
+"There it is.  He's the son of his father!"
+
+"But SUCH a father!"
+
+"Ah just the right one from that point of view!  But it isn't his
+father in him," Strether added, "that troubles me."
+
+"What is it then?"  He came back to his breakfast; he partook presently
+of the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was only
+after this that he met her question.  Then moreover it was but to
+remark that he'd answer her presently.  She waited, she watched, she
+served him and amused him, and it was perhaps with this last idea that
+she soon reminded him of his having never even yet named to her the
+article produced at Woollett.  "Do you remember our talking of it in
+London--that night at the play?" Before he could say yes, however, she
+had put it to him for other matters.  Did he remember, did he
+remember--this and that of their first days?  He remembered everything,
+bringing up with humour even things of which she professed no
+recollection, things she vehemently denied; and falling back above all
+on the great interest of their early time, the curiosity felt by both
+of them as to where he would "come out." They had so assumed it was to
+be in some wonderful place--they had thought of it as so very MUCH out.
+Well, that was doubtless what it had been--since he had come out just
+there.  He was out, in truth, as far as it was possible to be, and must
+now rather bethink himself of getting in again. He found on the spot
+the image of his recent history; he was like one of the figures of the
+old clock at Berne.  THEY came out, on one side, at their hour, jigged
+along their little course in the public eye, and went in on the other
+side.  He too had jigged his little course--him too a modest retreat
+awaited.  He offered now, should she really like to know, to name the
+great product of Woollett.  It would be a great commentary on
+everything.  At this she stopped him off; she not only had no wish to
+know, but she wouldn't know for the world.  She had done with the
+products of Woollett--for all the good she had got from them.  She
+desired no further news of them, and she mentioned that Madame de
+Vionnet herself had, to her knowledge, lived exempt from the
+information he was ready to supply.  She had never consented to receive
+it, though she would have taken it, under stress, from Mrs. Pocock. But
+it was a matter about which Mrs. Pocock appeared to have had little to
+say--never sounding the word--and it didn't signify now.  There was
+nothing clearly for Maria Gostrey that signified now--save one sharp
+point, that is, to which she came in time. "I don't know whether it's
+before you as a possibility that, left to himself, Mr. Chad may after
+all go back.  I judge that it IS more or less so before you, from what
+you just now said of him."
+
+Her guest had his eyes on her, kindly but attentively, as if foreseeing
+what was to follow this.  "I don't think it will be for the money." And
+then as she seemed uncertain:  "I mean I don't believe it will be for
+that he'll give her up."
+
+"Then he WILL give her up?"
+
+Strether waited a moment, rather slow and deliberate now, drawing out a
+little this last soft stage, pleading with her in various suggestive
+and unspoken ways for patience and understanding. "What were you just
+about to ask me?"
+
+"Is there anything he can do that would make you patch it up?"
+
+"With Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+Her assent, as if she had had a delicacy about sounding the name, was
+only in her face; but she added with it:  "Or is there anything he can
+do that would make HER try it?"
+
+"To patch it up with me?"  His answer came at last in a conclusive
+headshake.  "There's nothing any one can do.  It's over.  Over for both
+of us."
+
+Maria wondered, seemed a little to doubt.  "Are you so sure for her?"
+
+"Oh yes--sure now.  Too much has happened.  I'm different for her."
+
+She took it in then, drawing a deeper breath.  "I see.  So that as
+she's different for YOU--"
+
+"Ah but," he interrupted, "she's not."  And as Miss Gostrey wondered
+again:  "She's the same.  She's more than ever the same. But I do what
+I didn't before--I SEE her."
+
+He spoke gravely and as if responsibly--since he had to pronounce; and
+the effect of it was slightly solemn, so that she simply exclaimed
+"Oh!"  Satisfied and grateful, however, she showed in her own next
+words an acceptance of his statement.  "What then do you go home to?"
+
+He had pushed his plate a little away, occupied with another side of
+the matter; taking refuge verily in that side and feeling so moved that
+he soon found himself on his feet.  He was affected in advance by what
+he believed might come from her, and he would have liked to forestall
+it and deal with it tenderly;  yet in the presence of it he wished
+still more to be--though as smoothly as possible--deterrent and
+conclusive.  He put her question by for the moment; he told her more
+about Chad.  "It would have been impossible to meet me more than he did
+last night on the question of the infamy of not sticking to her."
+
+"Is that what you called it for him--'infamy'?"
+
+"Oh rather!  I described to him in detail the base creature he'd be,
+and he quite agrees with me about it."
+
+"So that it's really as if you had nailed him?"
+
+"Quite really as if--!  I told him I should curse him."
+
+"Oh," she smiled, "you HAVE done it." And then having thought again:
+"You CAN'T after that propose--!"  Yet she scanned his face.
+
+"Propose again to Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+She hesitated afresh, but she brought it out.  "I've never believed,
+you know, that you did propose.  I always believed it was really
+she--and, so far as that goes, I can understand it.  What I mean is,"
+she explained, "that with such a spirit--the spirit of curses!--your
+breach is past mending.  She has only to know what you've done to him
+never again to raise a finger."
+
+"I've done," said Strether, "what I could--one can't do more. He
+protests his devotion and his horror.  But I'm not sure I've saved him.
+He protests too much.  He asks how one can dream of his being tired.
+But he has all life before him."
+
+Maria saw what he meant.  "He's formed to please."
+
+"And it's our friend who has formed him." Strether felt in it the
+strange irony.
+
+"So it's scarcely his fault!"
+
+"It's at any rate his danger.  I mean," said Strether, "it's hers. But
+she knows it."
+
+"Yes, she knows it.  And is your idea," Miss Gostrey asked, "that there
+was some other woman in London?"
+
+"Yes.  No.  That is I HAVE no ideas.  I'm afraid of them. I've done
+with them." And he put out his hand to her.  "Good-bye."
+
+It brought her back to her unanswered question.  "To what do you go
+home?"
+
+"I don't know.  There will always be something."
+
+"To a great difference," she said as she kept his hand.
+
+"A great difference--no doubt.  Yet I shall see what I can make of it."
+
+"Shall you make anything so good--?"  But, as if remembering what Mrs.
+Newsome had done, it was as far as she went.
+
+He had sufficiently understood.  "So good as this place at this moment?
+So good as what YOU make of everything you touch?" He took a moment to
+say, for, really and truly, what stood about him there in her
+offer--which was as the offer of exquisite service, of lightened care,
+for the rest of his days--might well have tempted. It built him softly
+round, it roofed him warmly over, it rested, all so firm, on selection.
+And what ruled selection was beauty and knowledge.  It was awkward, it
+was almost stupid, not to seem to prize such things; yet, none the
+less, so far as they made his opportunity they made it only for a
+moment.  She'd moreover understand--she always understood.
+
+That indeed might be, but meanwhile she was going on. "There's nothing,
+you know, I wouldn't do for you."
+
+"Oh yes--I know."
+
+"There's nothing," she repeated, "in all the world."
+
+"I know.  I know.  But all the same I must go." He had got it at last.
+"To be right."
+
+"To be right?"
+
+She had echoed it in vague deprecation, but he felt it already clear
+for her.  "That, you see, is my only logic. Not, out of the whole
+affair, to have got anything for myself."
+
+She thought.  "But with your wonderful impressions you'll have got a
+great deal."
+
+"A great deal"--he agreed.  "But nothing like YOU.  It's you who would
+make me wrong!"
+
+Honest and fine, she couldn't greatly pretend she didn't see it. Still
+she could pretend just a little.  "But why should you be so dreadfully
+right?"
+
+"That's the way that--if I must go--you yourself would be the first to
+want me.  And I can't do anything else."
+
+So then she had to take it, though still with her defeated protest. "It
+isn't so much your BEING 'right'--it's your horrible sharp eye for what
+makes you so."
+
+"Oh but you're just as bad yourself.  You can't resist me when I point
+that out."
+
+She sighed it at last all comically, all tragically, away. "I can't
+indeed resist you."
+
+"Then there we are!" said Strether.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ambassadors, by Henry James
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diff --git a/old/432.zip b/old/432.zip
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@@ -0,0 +1,18186 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Edition of The Ambassadors, by Henry James
+#5 in our series by Henry James
+
+
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+The Ambassadors
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+by Henry James
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+February, 1996  [Etext #432]
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+The Project Gutenberg Edition of The Ambassadors, by Henry James
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Edition of The Ambassadors, by Henry James.
+New York Edition (1909).
+
+Prepared by Richard D. Hathaway <hathawar@matrix.newpaltz.edu>
+Proofread by Julia P. DeRanek
+
+
+
+Volume I
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+Nothing is more easy than to state the subject of "The Ambassadors,"
+which first appeared in twelve numbers of _The North American Review_
+(1903) and was published as a whole the same year. The situation
+involved is gathered up betimes, that is in the second chapter of
+Book Fifth, for the reader's benefit, into as few words as possible--
+planted or "sunk," stiffly and saliently, in the centre of the current,
+almost perhaps to the obstruction of traffic.  Never can a composition
+of this sort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of suggestion,
+and never can that grain, developed, overgrown and smothered, have yet
+lurked more in the mass as an independent particle.  The whole case,
+in fine, is in Lambert Strether's irrepressible outbreak to little Bilham
+on the Sunday afternoon in Gloriani's garden, the candour with which he
+yields, for his young friend's enlightenment, to the charming admonition
+of that crisis.  The idea of the tale resides indeed in the very fact
+that an hour of such unprecedented ease should have been felt by him AS
+a crisis, and he is at pains to express it for us as neatly as we could
+desire.  The remarks to which he thus gives utterance contain the essence of
+"The Ambassadors," his fingers close, before he has done, round the
+stem of the full-blown flower; which, after that fashion, he continues
+officiously to present to us.  "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to.
+It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular so long as you
+have your life.  If you haven't had that what HAVE you had?  I'm too
+old--too old at any rate for what I see.  What one loses one loses;
+make no mistake about that.  Still, we have the illusion of freedom;
+therefore don't, like me to-day, be without the memory of that illusion.
+I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it,
+and now I'm a case of reaction against the mistake.  Do what you like
+so long as you don't make it.  For it WAS a mistake.  Live, live!"
+Such is the gist of Strether's appeal to the impressed youth, whom
+he likes and whom he desires to befriend; the word "mistake" occurs
+several times, it will be seen, in the course of his remarks--
+which gives the measure of the signal warning he feels attached
+to his case.  He has accordingly missed too much, though perhaps
+after all constitutionally qualified for a better part, and he wakes up
+to it in conditions that press the spring of a terrible question.
+WOULD there yet perhaps be time for reparation?--reparation, that is,
+for the injury done his character; for the affront, he is quite ready to
+say, so stupidly put upon it and in which he has even himself had
+so clumsy a hand?  The answer to which is that he now at all events SEES;
+so that the business of my tale and the march of my action, not to say
+the precious moral of everything, is just my demonstration of this
+process of vision.
+
+Nothing can exceed the closeness with which the whole fits again
+into its germ.  That had been given me bodily, as usual, by the
+spoken word, for I was to take the image over exactly as I
+happened to have met it.  A friend had repeated to me, with great
+appreciation, a thing or two said to him by a man of distinction,
+much his senior, and to which a sense akin to that of Strether's
+melancholy eloquence might be imputed--said as chance would have,
+and so easily might, in Paris, and in a charming old garden
+attached to a house of art, and on a Sunday afternoon of summer,
+many persons of great interest being present.  The observation
+there listened to and gathered up had contained part of the "note"
+that I was to recognise on the spot as to my purpose--had contained
+in fact the greater part; the rest was in the place and the time
+and the scene they sketched: these constituents clustered
+and combined to give me further support, to give me what I may
+call the note absolute.  There it stands, accordingly, full in the
+tideway; driven in, with hard taps, like some strong stake for the
+noose of a cable, the swirl of the current roundabout it.  What
+amplified the hint to more than the bulk of hints in general was
+the gift with it of the old Paris garden, for in that token were
+sealed up values infinitely precious.  There was of course the seal
+to break and each item of the packet to count over and handle and
+estimate; but somehow, in the light of the hint, all the elements
+of a situation of the sort most to my taste were there.  I could
+even remember no occasion on which, so confronted, I had found it
+of a livelier interest to take stock, in this fashion, of
+suggested wealth.  For I think, verily, that there are degrees of
+merit in subjects--in spite of the fact that to treat even one of
+the most ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for the
+feverish and prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its
+dignity as POSSIBLY absolute.  What it comes to, doubtless, is that
+even among the supremely good--since with such alone is it one's
+theory of one's honour to be concerned--there is an ideal BEAUTY
+of goodness the invoked action of which is to raise the artistic
+faith to its maximum.  Then truly, I hold, one's theme may be said
+to shine, and that of "The Ambassadors," I confess, wore this glow
+for me from beginning to end.  Fortunately thus I am able to
+estimate this as, frankly, quite the best, "all round," of all my
+productions; any failure of that justification would have made
+such an extreme of complacency publicly fatuous.
+
+I recall then in this connexion no moment of subjective
+intermittence, never one of those alarms as for a suspected hollow
+beneath one's feet, a felt ingratitude in the scheme adopted,
+under which confidence fails and opportunity seems but to mock.
+If the motive of "The Wings of the Dove," as I have noted, was to
+worry me at moments by a sealing-up of its face--though without
+prejudice to its again, of a sudden, fairly grimacing with
+expression--so in this other business I had absolute conviction
+and constant clearness to deal with; it had been a frank
+proposition, the whole bunch of data, installed on my premises
+like a monotony of fine weather.  (The order of composition, in
+these things, I may mention, was reversed by the order of
+publication; the earlier written of the two books having appeared
+as the later.) Even under the weight of my hero's years I could
+feel my postulate firm; even under the strain of the difference
+between those of Madame de Vionnet and those of Chad Newsome, a
+difference liable to be denounced as shocking, I could still feel
+it serene.  Nothing resisted, nothing betrayed, I seem to make out,
+in this full and sound sense of the matter; it shed from any side
+I could turn it to the same golden glow.  I rejoiced in the promise
+of a hero so mature, who would give me thereby the more to bite
+into--since it's only into thickened motive and accumulated
+character, I think, that the painter of life bites more than a
+little.  My poor friend should have accumulated character,
+certainly; or rather would be quite naturally and handsomely
+possessed of it, in the sense that he would have, and would always
+have felt he had, imagination galore, and that this yet wouldn't
+have wrecked him.  It was immeasurable, the opportunity to "do" a
+man of imagination, for if THERE mightn't be a chance to "bite,"
+where in the world might it be?  This personage of course, so
+enriched, wouldn't give me, for his type, imagination in
+PREDOMINANCE or as his prime faculty, nor should I, in view of
+other matters, have found that convenient.  So particular a luxury
+--some occasion, that is, for study of the high gift in SUPREME
+command of a case or of a career--would still doubtless come on
+the day I should be ready to pay for it; and till then might, as
+from far back, remain hung up well in view and just out of reach.
+The comparative case meanwhile would serve--it was only on the
+minor scale that I had treated myself even to comparative cases.
+
+I was to hasten to add however that, happy stopgaps as the minor
+scale had thus yielded, the instance in hand should enjoy the
+advantage of the full range of the major; since most immediately
+to the point was the question of that SUPPLEMENT of situation
+logically involved in our gentleman's impulse to deliver himself
+in the Paris garden on the Sunday afternoon--or if not involved by
+strict logic then all ideally and enchantingly implied in it.  (I
+say "ideally," because I need scarce mention that for development,
+for expression of its maximum, my glimmering story was, at the
+earliest stage, to have nipped the thread of connexion with the
+possibilities of the actual reported speaker.  HE remains but the
+happiest of accidents; his actualities, all too definite,
+precluded any range of possibilities; it had only been his
+charming office to project upon that wide field of the artist's
+vision--which hangs there ever in place like the white sheet
+suspended for the figures of a child's magic-lantern--a more
+fantastic and more moveable shadow.)  No privilege of the teller of
+tales and the handler of puppets is more delightful, or has more
+of the suspense and the thrill of a game of difficulty
+breathlessly played, than just this business of looking for the
+unseen and the occult, in a scheme half-grasped, by the light or,
+so to speak, by the clinging scent, of the gage already in hand.
+No dreadful old pursuit of the hidden slave with bloodhounds and
+the rag of association can ever, for "excitement," I judge, have
+bettered it at its best.  For the dramatist always, by the very law
+of his genius, believes not only in a possible right issue from
+the rightly-conceived tight place; he does much more than this--he
+believes, irresistibly, in the necessary, the precious "tightness"
+of the place (whatever the issue) on the strength of any
+respectable hint.  It being thus the respectable hint that I had
+with such avidity picked up, what would be the story to which it
+would most inevitably form the centre?  It is part of the charm
+attendant on such questions that the "story," with the omens true,
+as I say, puts on from this stage the authenticity of concrete
+existence.  It then is, essentially--it begins to be, though it may
+more or less obscurely lurk, so that the point is not in the least
+what to make of it, but only, very delightfully and very damnably,
+where to put one's hand on it.
+
+In which truth resides surely much of the interest of that
+admirable mixture for salutary application which we know as art.
+Art deals with what we see, it must first contribute full-handed
+that ingredient; it plucks its material, otherwise expressed, in
+the garden of life--which material elsewhere grown is stale and
+uneatable.  But it has no sooner done this than it has to take
+account of a PROCESS--from which only when it's the basest of the
+servants of man, incurring ignominious dismissal with no
+"character," does it, and whether under some muddled pretext of
+morality or on any other, pusillanimously edge away.  The process,
+that of the expression, the literal squeezing-out, of value is
+another affair--with which the happy luck of mere finding has
+little to do.  The joys of finding, at this stage, are pretty well
+over; that quest of the subject as a whole by "matching," as the
+ladies say at the shops, the big piece with the snippet, having
+ended, we assume, with a capture.  The subject is found, and if the
+problem is then transferred to the ground of what to do with it
+the field opens out for any amount of doing.  This is precisely the
+infusion that, as I submit, completes the strong mixture.  It is on
+the other hand the part of the business that can least be likened
+to the chase with horn and hound.  It's all a sedentary part--
+involves as much ciphering, of sorts, as would merit the highest
+salary paid to a chief accountant.  Not, however, that the chief
+accountant hasn't HIS gleams of bliss; for the felicity, or at
+least the equilibrium of the artist's state dwells less, surely,
+in the further delightful complications he can smuggle in than in
+those he succeeds in keeping out.  He sows his seed at the risk of
+too thick a crop; wherefore yet again, like the gentlemen who
+audit ledgers, he must keep his head at any price.  In consequence
+of all which, for the interest of the matter, I might seem here to
+have my choice of narrating my "hunt" for Lambert Strether, of
+describing the capture of the shadow projected by my friend's
+anecdote, or of reporting on the occurrences subsequent to that
+triumph.  But I had probably best attempt a little to glance in
+each direction; since it comes to me again and again, over this
+licentious record, that one's bag of adventures, conceived or
+conceivable, has been only half-emptied by the mere telling of
+one's story.  It depends so on what one means by that equivocal
+quantity.  There is the story of one's hero, and then, thanks to
+the intimate connexion of things, the story of one's story itself.
+I blush to confess it, but if one's a dramatist one's a dramatist,
+and the latter imbroglio is liable on occasion to strike me as
+really the more objective of the two.
+
+The philosophy imputed to him in that beautiful outbreak, the hour
+there, amid such happy provision, striking for him, would have
+been then, on behalf of my man of imagination, to be logically
+and, as the artless craft of comedy has it, "led up" to; the
+probable course to such a goal, the goal of so conscious a
+predicament, would have in short to be finely calculated.  Where
+has he come from and why has he come, what is he doing (as we
+Anglo-Saxons, and we only, say, in our foredoomed clutch of exotic
+aids to expression) in that galere?  To answer these questions
+plausibly, to answer them as under cross-examination in the
+witness-box by counsel for the prosecution, in other words
+satisfactorily to account for Strether and for his "peculiar
+tone," was to possess myself of the entire fabric.  At the same
+time the clue to its whereabouts would lie in a certain principle
+of probability: he wouldn't have indulged in his peculiar tone
+without a reason; it would take a felt predicament or a false
+position to give him so ironic an accent.  One hadn't been noting
+"tones" all one's life without recognising when one heard it the
+voice of the false position.  The dear man in the Paris garden was
+then admirably and unmistakeably IN one--which was no small point
+gained; what next accordingly concerned us was the determination
+of THIS identity.  One could only go by probabilities, but there
+was the advantage that the most general of the probabilities were
+virtual certainties.  Possessed of our friend's nationality, to
+start with, there was a general probability in his narrower
+localism; which, for that matter, one had really but to keep under
+the lens for an hour to see it give up its secrets.  He would have
+issued, our rueful worthy, from the very heart of New England--at
+the heels of which matter of course a perfect train of secrets
+tumbled for me into the light.  They had to be sifted and sorted,
+and I shall not reproduce the detail of that process; but
+unmistakeably they were all there, and it was but a question,
+auspiciously, of picking among them.  What the "position" would
+infallibly be, and why, on his hands, it had turned "false"--these
+inductive steps could only be as rapid as they were distinct.  I
+accounted for everything--and "everything" had by this time become
+the most promising quantity--by the view that he had come to Paris
+in some state of mind which was literally undergoing, as a result
+of new and unexpected assaults and infusions, a change almost from
+hour to hour.  He had come with a view that might have been figured
+by a clear green liquid, say, in a neat glass phial; and the
+liquid, once poured into the open cup of APPLICATION, once exposed
+to the action of another air, had begun to turn from green to red,
+or whatever, and might, for all he knew, be on its way to purple,
+to black, to yellow.  At the still wilder extremes represented
+perhaps, for all he could say to the contrary, by a variability so
+violent, he would at first, naturally, but have gazed in surprise
+and alarm; whereby the SITUATION clearly would spring from the
+play of wildness and the development of extremes.  I saw in a
+moment that, should this development proceed both with force and
+logic, my "story" would leave nothing to be desired.  There is
+always, of course, for the story-teller, the irresistible
+determinant and the incalculable advantage of his interest in the
+story AS SUCH; it is ever, obviously, overwhelmingly, the prime
+and precious thing (as other than this I have never been able to
+see it); as to which what makes for it, with whatever headlong
+energy, may be said to pale before the energy with which it simply
+makes for itself.  It rejoices, none the less, at its best, to seem
+to offer itself in a light, to seem to know, and with the very
+last knowledge, what it's about--liable as it yet is at moments to
+be caught by us with its tongue in its cheek and absolutely no
+warrant but its splendid impudence.  Let us grant then that the
+impudence is always there--there, so to speak, for grace and
+effect and ALLURE; there, above all, because the Story is just the
+spoiled child of art, and because, as we are always disappointed
+when the pampered don't "play up," we like it, to that extent, to
+look all its character.  It probably does so, in truth, even when
+we most flatter ourselves that we negotiate with it by treaty.
+
+All of which, again, is but to say that the STEPS, for my fable,
+placed themselves with a prompt and, as it were, functional
+assurance--an air quite as of readiness to have dispensed with
+logic had I been in fact too stupid for my clue.  Never,
+positively, none the less, as the links multiplied, had I felt
+less stupid than for the determination of poor Strether's errand
+and for the apprehension of his issue.  These things continued to
+fall together, as by the neat action of their own weight and form,
+even while their commentator scratched his head about them; he
+easily sees now that they were always well in advance of him.  As
+the case completed itself he had in fact, from a good way behind,
+to catch up with them, breathless and a little flurried, as he
+best could.  THE false position, for our belated man of the world--
+belated because he had endeavoured so long to escape being one,
+and now at last had really to face his doom--the false position
+for him, I say, was obviously to have presented himself at the
+gate of that boundless menagerie primed with a moral scheme of the
+most approved pattern which was yet framed to break down on any
+approach to vivid facts; that is to any at all liberal
+appreciation of them.  There would have been of course the case of
+the Strether prepared, wherever presenting himself, only to judge
+and to feel meanly; but HE would have moved for me, I confess,
+enveloped in no legend whatever.  The actual man's note, from the
+first of our seeing it struck, is the note of discrimination, just
+as his drama is to become, under stress, the drama of
+discrimination.  It would have been his blest imagination, we have
+seen, that had already helped him to discriminate; the element
+that was for so much of the pleasure of my cutting thick, as I
+have intimated, into his intellectual, into his moral substance.
+Yet here it was, at the same time, just here, that a shade for a
+moment fell across the scene.
+
+There was the dreadful little old tradition, one of the platitudes
+of the human comedy, that people's moral scheme DOES break down in
+Paris; that nothing is more frequently observed; that hundreds of
+thousands of more or less hypocritical or more or less cynical
+persons annually visit the place for the sake of the probable
+catastrophe, and that I came late in the day to work myself up
+about it.  There was in fine the TRIVIAL association, one of the
+vulgarest in the world; but which give me pause no longer, I
+think, simply because its vulgarity is so advertised.  The
+revolution performed by Strether under the influence of the most
+interesting of great cities was to have nothing to do with any
+betise of the imputably "tempted" state; he was to be thrown
+forward, rather, thrown quite with violence, upon his lifelong
+trick of intense reflexion: which friendly test indeed was to
+bring him out, through winding passages, through alternations of
+darkness and light, very much IN Paris, but with the surrounding
+scene itself a minor matter, a mere symbol for more things than
+had been dreamt of in the philosophy of Woollett.  Another
+surrounding scene would have done as well for our show could it
+have represented a place in which Strether's errand was likely to
+lie and his crisis to await him.  The LIKELY place had the great
+merit of sparing me preparations; there would have been too many
+involved--not at all impossibilities, only rather worrying and
+delaying difficulties--in positing elsewhere Chad Newsome's
+interesting relation, his so interesting complexity of relations.
+Strether's appointed stage, in fine, could be but Chad's most
+luckily selected one.  The young man had gone in, as they say, for
+circumjacent charm; and where he would have found it, by the turn
+of his mind, most "authentic," was where his earnest friend's analysis
+would most find HIM; as well as where, for that matter, the former's
+whole analytic faculty would be led such a wonderful dance.
+
+"The Ambassadors" had been, all conveniently, "arranged for"; its
+first appearance was from month to month, in the _North American
+Review_ during 1903, and I had been open from far back to any
+pleasant provocation for ingenuity that might reside in one's
+actively adopting--so as to make it, in its way, a small compositional
+law--recurrent breaks and resumptions.  I had made up my mind here
+regularly to exploit and enjoy these often rather rude jolts--
+having found, as I believed an admirable way to it; yet every question
+of form and pressure, I easily remember, paled in the light of the
+major propriety, recognised as soon as really weighed; that of
+employing but one centre and keeping it all within my hero's compass.
+The thing was to be so much this worthy's intimate adventure that
+even the projection of his consciousness upon it from beginning to end
+without intermission or deviation would probably still leave a part of
+its value for him, and a fortiori for ourselves, unexpressed.
+I might, however, express every grain of it that there would be
+room for--on condition of contriving a splendid particular economy.
+Other persons in no small number were to people the scene, and each
+with his or her axe to grind, his or her situation to treat, his or her
+coherency not to fail of, his or her relation to my leading motive,
+in a word, to establish and carry on.  But Strether's sense of these
+things, and Strether's only, should avail me for showing them;
+I should know them but through his more or less groping knowledge
+of them, since his very gropings would figure among his most interesting
+motions, and a full observance of the rich rigour I speak of would
+give me more of the effect I should be most "after" than all other
+possible observances together.  It would give me a large unity,
+and that in turn would crown me with the grace to which the
+enlightened story-teller will at any time, for his interest,
+sacrifice if need be all other graces whatever.  I refer of course
+to the grace of intensity, which there are ways of signally achieving
+and ways of signally missing--as we see it, all round us, helplessly
+and woefully missed.  Not that it isn't, on the other hand, a virtue
+eminently subject to appreciation--there being no strict, no absolute
+measure of it; so that one may hear it acclaimed where it has quite
+escaped one's perception, and see it unnoticed where one has gratefully
+hailed it.  After all of which I am not sure, either, that the immense
+amusement of the whole cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not operate,
+for the fond fabulist, when judicious not less than fond, as his best of
+determinants.  That charming principle is always there, at all events,
+to keep interest fresh: it is a principle, we remember, essentially
+ravenous, without scruple and without mercy, appeased with no cheap
+nor easy nourishment.  It enjoys the costly sacrifice and rejoices
+thereby in the very odour of difficulty--even as ogres, with their
+"Fee-faw-fum!" rejoice in the smell of the blood of Englishmen.
+
+Thus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so
+speedy, definition of my gentleman's job--his coming out, all
+solemnly appointed and deputed, to "save" Chad, and his then
+finding the young man so disobligingly and, at first, so
+bewilderingly not lost that a new issue altogether, in the
+connexion, prodigiously faces them, which has to be dealt with in
+a new light--promised as many calls on ingenuity and on the higher
+branches of the compositional art as one could possibly desire.
+Again and yet again, as, from book to book, I proceed with my
+survey, I find no source of interest equal to this verification
+after the fact, as I may call it, and the more in detail the
+better, of the scheme of consistency "gone in" for.  As always--
+since the charm never fails--the retracing of the process from
+point to point brings back the old illusion.  The old intentions
+bloom again and flower--in spite of all the blossoms they were to
+have dropped by the way.  This is the charm, as I say, of adventure
+TRANSPOSED--the thrilling ups and downs, the intricate ins and
+outs of the compositional problem, made after such a fashion
+admirably objective, becoming the question at issue and keeping
+the author's heart in his mouth.  Such an element, for instance, as
+his intention that Mrs. Newsome, away off with her finger on the
+pulse of Massachusetts, should yet be no less intensely than
+circuitously present through the whole thing, should be no less
+felt as to be reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the
+finest portrayal at first hand could make her, such a sign of
+artistic good faith, I say, once it's unmistakeably there, takes
+on again an actuality not too much impaired by the comparative
+dimness of the particular success.  Cherished intention too
+inevitably acts and operates, in the book, about fifty times as
+little as I had fondly dreamt it might; but that scarce spoils for
+me the pleasure of recognising the fifty ways in which I had
+sought to provide for it.  The mere charm of seeing such an idea
+constituent, in its degree; the fineness of the measures taken--a
+real extension, if successful, of the very terms and possibilities
+of representation and figuration--such things alone were, after
+this fashion, inspiring, such things alone were a gage of the
+probable success of that dissimulated calculation with which the
+whole effort was to square.  But oh the cares begotten, none the
+less, of that same "judicious" sacrifice to a particular form of
+interest!  One's work should have composition, because composition
+alone is positive beauty; but all the while--apart from one's
+inevitable consciousness too of the dire paucity of readers ever
+recognising or ever missing positive beauty--how, as to the cheap
+and easy, at every turn, how, as to immediacy and facility, and
+even as to the commoner vivacity, positive beauty might have to be
+sweated for and paid for!  Once achieved and installed it may
+always be trusted to make the poor seeker feel he would have
+blushed to the roots of his hair for failing of it; yet, how, as
+its virtue can be essentially but the virtue of the whole, the
+wayside traps set in the interest of muddlement and pleading but
+the cause of the moment, of the particular bit in itself, have to
+be kicked out of the path!  All the sophistications in life, for
+example, might have appeared to muster on behalf of the menace--
+the menace to a bright variety--involved in Strether's having all
+the subjective "say," as it were, to himself.
+
+Had I, meanwhile, made him at once hero and historian, endowed him
+with the romantic privilege of the "first person"--the darkest
+abyss of romance this, inveterately, when enjoyed on the grand
+scale--variety, and many other queer matters as well, might have
+been smuggled in by a back door.  Suffice it, to be brief, that the
+first person, in the long piece, is a form foredoomed to looseness
+and that looseness, never much my affair, had never been so little
+so as on this particular occasion.  All of which reflexions flocked
+to the standard from the moment--a very early one--the question of
+how to keep my form amusing while sticking so close to my central
+figure and constantly taking its pattern from him had to be faced.
+He arrives (arrives at Chester) as for the dreadful purpose of
+giving his creator "no end" to tell about him--before which
+rigorous mission the serenest of creators might well have quailed.
+I was far from the serenest; I was more than agitated enough to
+reflect that, grimly deprived of one alternative or one substitute
+for "telling," I must address myself tooth and nail to another.  I
+couldn't, save by implication, make other persons tell EACH OTHER
+about him--blest resource, blest necessity, of the drama, which
+reaches its effects of unity, all remarkably, by paths absolutely
+opposite to the paths of the novel: with other persons, save as
+they were primarily HIS persons (not he primarily but one of
+theirs), I had simply nothing to do.  I had relations for him none
+the less, by the mercy of Providence, quite as much as if my
+exhibition was to be a muddle; if I could only by implication and
+a show of consequence make other persons tell each other about
+him, I could at least make him tell THEM whatever in the world he
+must; and could so, by the same token--which was a further luxury
+thrown in--see straight into the deep differences between what
+that could do for me, or at all events for HIM, and the large ease
+of "autobiography."  It may be asked why, if one so keeps to one's
+hero, one shouldn't make a single mouthful of "method," shouldn't
+throw the reins on his neck and, letting them flap there as free
+as in "Gil Blas" or in "David Copperfield," equip him with the
+double privilege of subject and object--a course that has at
+least the merit of brushing away questions at a sweep.  The answer
+to which is, I think, that one makes that surrender only if one is
+prepared NOT to make certain precious discriminations.
+
+The "first person" then, so employed, is addressed by the author
+directly to ourselves, his possible readers, whom he has to reckon
+with, at the best, by our English tradition, so loosely and
+vaguely after all, so little respectfully, on so scant a
+presumption of exposure to criticism.  Strether, on the other hand,
+encaged and provided for as "The Ambassadors" encages and
+provides, has to keep in view proprieties much stiffer and more
+salutary than any our straight and credulous gape are likely to
+bring home to him, has exhibitional conditions to meet, in a word,
+that forbid the terrible FLUIDITY of self-revelation.  I may seem
+not to better the case for my discrimination if I say that, for my
+first care, I had thus inevitably to set him up a confidant or
+two, to wave away with energy the custom of the seated mass of
+explanation after the fact, the inserted block of merely
+referential narrative, which flourishes so, to the shame of the
+modern impatience, on the serried page of Balzac, but which seems
+simply to appal our actual, our general weaker, digestion.
+"Harking back to make up" took at any rate more doing, as the
+phrase is, not only than the reader of to-day demands, but than he
+will tolerate at any price any call upon him either to understand
+or remotely to measure; and for the beauty of the thing when done
+the current editorial mind in particular appears wholly without
+sense.  It is not, however, primarily for either of these reasons,
+whatever their weight, that Strether's friend Waymarsh is so
+keenly clutched at, on the threshold of the book, or that no less
+a pounce is made on Maria Gostrey--without even the pretext,
+either, of HER being, in essence, Strether's friend.  She is the
+reader's friend much rather--in consequence of dispositions that
+make him so eminently require one; and she acts in that capacity,
+and REALLY in that capacity alone, with exemplary devotion from
+beginning to and of the book.  She is an enrolled, a direct, aid to
+lucidity; she is in fine, to tear off her mask, the most
+unmitigated and abandoned of ficelles.  Half the dramatist's art,
+as we well know--since if we don't it's not the fault of the
+proofs that lie scattered about us--is in the use of ficelles; by
+which I mean in a deep dissimulation of his dependence on them.
+Waymarsh only to a slighter degree belongs, in the whole business,
+less to my subject than to my treatment of it; the interesting
+proof, in these connexions, being that one has but to take one's
+subject for the stuff of drama to interweave with enthusiasm as
+many Gostreys as need be.
+
+The material of "The Ambassadors," conforming in this respect
+exactly to that of "The Wings of the Dove," published just before
+it, is taken absolutely for the stuff of drama; so that, availing
+myself of the opportunity given me by this edition for some
+prefatory remarks on the latter work, I had mainly to make on its
+behalf the point of its scenic consistency.  It disguises that
+virtue, in the oddest way in the world, by just LOOKING, as we
+turn its pages, as little scenic as possible; but it sharply
+divides itself, just as the composition before us does, into the
+parts that prepare, that tend in fact to over-prepare, for scenes,
+and the parts, or otherwise into the scenes, that justify and
+crown the preparation.  It may definitely be said, I think, that
+everything in it that is not scene (not, I of course mean,
+complete and functional scene, treating ALL the submitted matter,
+as by logical start, logical turn, and logical finish) is
+discriminated preparation, is the fusion and synthesis of picture.
+These alternations propose themselves all recogniseably, I think,
+from an early stage, as the very form and figure of "The
+Ambassadors"; so that, to repeat, such an agent as Miss Gostrey
+pre-engaged at a high salary, but waits in the draughty wing with
+her shawl and her smelling-salts.  Her function speaks at once for
+itself, and by the time she has dined with Strether in London and
+gone to a play with him her intervention as a ficelle is, I hold,
+expertly justified.  Thanks to it we have treated scenically, and
+scenically alone, the whole lumpish question of Strether's "past,"
+which has seen us more happily on the way than anything else could
+have done; we have strained to a high lucidity and vivacity (or at
+least we hope we have) certain indispensable facts; we have seen
+our two or three immediate friends all conveniently and profitably
+in "action"; to say nothing of our beginning to descry others, of
+a remoter intensity, getting into motion, even if a bit vaguely as
+yet, for our further enrichment.  Let my first point be here that
+the scene in question, that in which the whole situation at
+Woollett and the complex forces that have propelled my hero to
+where this lively extractor of his value and distiller of his
+essence awaits him, is normal and entire, is really an excellent
+STANDARD scene; copious, comprehensive, and accordingly never
+short, but with its office as definite as that of the hammer on
+the gong of the clock, the office of expressing ALL THAT IS IN the
+hour.
+
+The "ficelle" character of the subordinate party is as artfully
+dissimulated, throughout, as may be, and to that extent that, with
+the seams or joints of Maria Gostrey's ostensible connectedness
+taken particular care of, duly smoothed over, that is, and
+anxiously kept from showing as "pieced on;" this figure doubtless
+achieves, after a fashion, something of the dignity of a prime
+idea: which circumstance but shows us afresh how many quite
+incalculable but none the less clear sources of enjoyment for the
+infatuated artist, how many copious springs of our never-to-be-slighted
+"fun" for the reader and critic susceptible of contagion, may
+sound their incidental plash as soon as an artistic process begins
+to enjoy free development.  Exquisite--in illustration of this--
+the mere interest and amusement of such at once "creative" and
+critical questions as how and where and why to make Miss Gostrey's
+false connexion carry itself, under a due high polish, as a real one.
+Nowhere is it more of an artful expedient for mere consistency
+of form, to mention a case, than in the last "scene" of the book,
+where its function is to give or to add nothing whatever,
+but only to express as vividly as possible certain things quite
+other than itself and that are of the already fixed and appointed
+measure.  Since, however, all art is EXPRESSION, and is thereby
+vividness, one was to find the door open here to any amount of
+delightful dissimulation.  These verily are the refinements and
+ecstasies of method--amid which, or certainly under the influence
+of any exhilarated demonstration of which, one must keep one's head
+and not lose one's way.  To cultivate an adequate intelligence
+for them and to make that sense operative is positively to find
+a charm in any produced ambiguity of appearance that is not
+by the same stroke, and all helplessly, an ambiguity of sense.
+To project imaginatively, for my hero, a relation that has
+nothing to do with the matter (the matter of my subject) but has
+everything to do with the manner (the manner of my presentation
+of the same) and yet to treat it, at close quarters and for fully
+economic expression's possible sake, as if it were important and
+essential--to do that sort of thing and yet muddle nothing may
+easily become, as one goes, a signally attaching proposition;
+even though it all remains but part and parcel, I hasten to
+recognise, of the merely general and related question of expressional
+curiosity and expressional decency.
+
+I am moved to add after so much insistence on the scenic side of
+my labour that I have found the steps of re-perusal almost as much
+waylaid here by quite another style of effort in the same signal
+interest--or have in other words not failed to note how, even so
+associated and so discriminated, the finest proprieties and charms
+of the non-scenic may, under the right hand for them, still keep
+their intelligibility and assert their office.  Infinitely
+suggestive such an observation as this last on the whole
+delightful head, where representation is concerned, of possible
+variety, of effective expressional change and contrast.  One would
+like, at such an hour as this, for critical licence, to go into
+the matter of the noted inevitable deviation (from too fond an
+original vision) that the exquisite treachery even of the
+straightest execution may ever be trusted to inflict even on the
+most mature plan--the case being that, though one's last
+reconsidered production always seems to bristle with that
+particular evidence, "The Ambassadors" would place a flood of such
+light at my service.  I must attach to my final remark here a
+different import; noting in the other connexion I just glanced at
+that such passages as that of my hero's first encounter with Chad
+Newsome, absolute attestations of the non-scenic form though they
+be, yet lay the firmest hand too--so far at least as intention
+goes--on representational effect.  To report at all closely and
+completely of what "passes" on a given occasion is inevitably to
+become more or less scenic; and yet in the instance I allude to,
+WITH the conveyance, expressional curiosity and expressional
+decency are sought and arrived at under quite another law.  The
+true inwardness of this may be at bottom but that one of the
+suffered treacheries has consisted precisely, for Chad's whole
+figure and presence, of a direct presentability diminished and
+compromised--despoiled, that is, of its PROPORTIONAL advantage;
+so that, in a word, the whole economy of his author's relation
+to him has at important points to be redetermined.  The book,
+however, critically viewed, is touchingly full of these disguised
+and repaired losses, these insidious recoveries, these intensely
+redemptive consistencies.  The pages in which Mamie Pocock gives
+her appointed and, I can't but think, duly felt lift to the whole
+action by the so inscrutably-applied side-stroke or short-cut of
+our just watching and as quite at an angle of vision as yet
+untried, her single hour of suspense in the hotel salon, in our
+partaking of her concentrated study of the sense of matters
+bearing on her own case, all the bright warm Paris afternoon, from
+the balcony that overlooks the Tuileries garden--these are as
+marked an example of the representational virtue that insists here
+and there on being, for the charm of opposition and renewal, other
+than the scenic.  It wouldn't take much to make me further argue
+that from an equal play of such oppositions the book gathers an
+intensity that fairly adds to the dramatic--though the latter is
+supposed to be the sum of all intensities; or that has at any rate
+nothing to fear from juxtaposition with it.  I consciously fail to
+shrink in fact from that extravagance--I risk it rather, for the
+sake of the moral involved; which is not that the particular
+production before us exhausts the interesting questions it raises,
+but that the Novel remains still, under the right persuasion, the
+most independent, most elastic, most prodigious of literary forms.
+
+
+HENRY JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book First
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Strether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his
+friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to
+arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted.  A telegram from
+him bespeaking a room "only if not noisy," reply paid, was produced
+for the enquirer at the office, so that the understanding they
+should meet at Chester rather than at Liverpool remained to that
+extent sound.  The same secret principle, however, that had prompted
+Strether not absolutely to desire Waymarsh's presence at the dock,
+that had led him thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of
+it, now operated to make him feel he could still wait without
+disappointment.  They would dine together at the worst, and, with
+all respect to dear old Waymarsh--if not even, for that matter, to
+himself--there was little fear that in the sequel they shouldn't
+see enough of each other.  The principle I have just mentioned as
+operating had been, with the most newly disembarked of the two men,
+wholly instinctive--the fruit of a sharp sense that, delightful as
+it would be to find himself looking, after so much separation, into
+his comrade's face, his business would be a trifle bungled should
+he simply arrange for this countenance to present itself to the
+nearing steamer as the first "note," of Europe.  Mixed with
+everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether's part, that
+it would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in quite a
+sufficient degree.
+
+That note had been meanwhile--since the previous afternoon, thanks
+to this happier device--such a consciousness of personal freedom as
+he hadn't known for years; such a deep taste of change and of
+having above all for the moment nobody and nothing to consider, as
+promised already, if headlong hope were not too foolish, to colour
+his adventure with cool success.  There were people on the ship with
+whom he had easily consorted--so far as ease could up to now be
+imputed to him--and who for the most part plunged straight into the
+current that set from the landing-stage to London; there were
+others who had invited him to a tryst at the inn and had even
+invoked his aid for a "look round" at the beauties of Liverpool;
+but he had stolen away from every one alike, had kept no
+appointment and renewed no acquaintance, had been indifferently
+aware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves fortunate in
+being, unlike himself, "met," and had even independently,
+unsociably, alone, without encounter or relapse and by mere quiet
+evasion, given his afternoon and evening to the immediate and the
+sensible.  They formed a qualified draught of Europe, an afternoon
+and an evening on the banks of the Mersey, but such as it was he
+took his potion at least undiluted.  He winced a little, truly, at
+the thought that Waymarsh might be already at Chester; he reflected
+that, should he have to describe himself there as having "got in"
+so early, it would be difficult to make the interval look
+particularly eager; but he was like a man who, elatedly finding in
+his pocket more money than usual, handles it a while and idly and
+pleasantly chinks it before addressing himself to the business of
+spending.  That he was prepared to be vague to Waymarsh about the
+hour of the ship's touching, and that he both wanted extremely to
+see him and enjoyed extremely the duration of delay--these things,
+it is to be conceived, were early signs in him that his relation to
+his actual errand might prove none of the simplest.  He was
+burdened, poor Strether--it had better be confessed at the outset--
+with the oddity of a double consciousness.  There was detachment in
+his zeal and curiosity in his indifference.
+
+After the young woman in the glass cage had held up to him across
+her counter the pale-pink leaflet bearing his friend's name, which
+she neatly pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall,
+facing a lady who met his eyes as with an intention suddenly
+determined, and whose features--not freshly young, not markedly
+fine, but on happy terms with each other--came back to him as from
+a recent vision.  For a moment they stood confronted; then the
+moment placed her:  he had noticed her the day before, noticed her
+at his previous inn, where--again in the hall--she had been briefly
+engaged with some people of his own ship's company.  Nothing had
+actually passed between them, and he would as little have been able
+to say what had been the sign of her face for him on the first
+occasion as to name the ground of his present recognition.
+Recognition at any rate appeared to prevail on her own side as
+well--which would only have added to the mystery.  All she now began
+by saying to him nevertheless was that, having chanced to catch his
+enquiry, she was moved to ask, by his leave, if it were possibly a
+question of Mr. Waymarsh of Milrose Connecticut--Mr. Waymarsh the
+American lawyer.
+
+"Oh yes," he replied, "my very well-known friend.  He's to meet me
+here, coming up from Malvern, and I supposed he'd already have
+arrived.  But he doesn't come till later, and I'm relieved not to
+have kept him.  Do you know him?" Strether wound up.
+
+It wasn't till after he had spoken that he became aware of how much
+there had been in him of response; when the tone of her own
+rejoinder, as well as the play of something more in her face--
+something more, that is, than its apparently usual restless light--
+seemed to notify him.  "I've met him at Milrose--where I used
+sometimes, a good while ago, to stay; I had friends there who were
+friends of his, and I've been at his house.  I won't answer for it
+that he would know me," Strether's new acquaintance pursued; "but I
+should be delighted to see him.  Perhaps," she added, "I shall--for
+I'm staying over."  She paused while our friend took in these
+things, and it was as if a good deal of talk had already passed.
+They even vaguely smiled at it, and Strether presently observed
+that Mr. Waymarsh would, no doubt, be easily to be seen.  This,
+however, appeared to affect the lady as if she might have advanced
+too far.  She appeared to have no reserves about anything.  "Oh," she
+said, "he won't care!"--and she immediately thereupon remarked that
+she believed Strether knew the Munsters; the Munsters being the
+people he had seen her with at Liverpool.
+
+But he didn't, it happened, know the Munsters well enough to give
+the case much of a lift; so that they were left together as if over
+the mere laid table of conversation.  Her qualification of the
+mentioned connexion had rather removed than placed a dish, and
+there seemed nothing else to serve.  Their attitude remained, none
+the less, that of not forsaking the board; and the effect of this
+in turn was to give them the appearance of having accepted each
+other with an absence of preliminaries practically complete.  They
+moved along the hall together, and Strether's companion threw off
+that the hotel had the advantage of a garden.  He was aware by this
+time of his strange inconsequence:  he had shirked the intimacies of
+the steamer and had muffled the shock of Waymarsh only to find
+himself forsaken, in this sudden case, both of avoidance and of
+caution.  He passed, under this unsought protection and before he
+had so much as gone up to his room, into the garden of the hotel,
+and at the end of ten minutes had agreed to meet there again, as
+soon as he should have made himself tidy, the dispenser of such
+good assurances.  He wanted to look at the town, and they would
+forthwith look together.  It was almost as if she had been in
+possession and received him as a guest.  Her acquaintance with the
+place presented her in a manner as a hostess, and Strether had a
+rueful glance for the lady in the glass cage.  It was as if this
+personage had seen herself instantly superseded.
+
+When in a quarter of an hour he came down, what his hostess saw,
+what she might have taken in with a vision kindly adjusted, was the
+lean, the slightly loose figure of a man of the middle height and
+something more perhaps than the middle age--a man of five-and-fifty,
+whose most immediate signs were a marked bloodless brownness of face,
+a thick dark moustache, of characteristically American cut,
+growing strong and falling low, a head of hair still abundant
+but irregularly streaked with grey, and a nose of bold free
+prominence, the even line, the high finish, as it might have been
+called, of which, had a certain effect of mitigation.  A perpetual
+pair of glasses astride of this fine ridge, and a line, unusually
+deep and drawn, the prolonged pen-stroke of time, accompanying the
+curve of the moustache from nostril to chin, did something to
+complete the facial furniture that an attentive observer would have
+seen catalogued, on the spot, in the vision of the other party to
+Strether's appointment.  She waited for him in the garden, the other
+party, drawing on a pair of singularly fresh soft and elastic light
+gloves and presenting herself with a superficial readiness which,
+as he approached her over the small smooth lawn and in the watery
+English sunshine, he might, with his rougher preparation, have
+marked as the model for such an occasion.  She had, this lady, a
+perfect plain propriety, an expensive subdued suitability, that her
+companion was not free to analyse, but that struck him, so that his
+consciousness of it was instantly acute, as a quality quite new to
+him.  Before reaching her he stopped on the grass and went through
+the form of feeling for something, possibly forgotten, in the light
+overcoat he carried on his arm; yet the essence of the act was no
+more than the impulse to gain time.  Nothing could have been odder
+than Strether's sense of himself as at that moment launched in
+something of which the sense would be quite disconnected from the
+sense of his past and which was literally beginning there and then.
+It had begun in fact already upstairs and before the dressing glass
+that struck him as blocking further, so strangely, the dimness of
+the window of his dull bedroom; begun with a sharper survey of the
+elements of Appearance than he had for a long time been moved to
+make.  He had during those moments felt these elements to be not so
+much to his hand as he should have liked, and then had fallen back
+on the thought that they were precisely a matter as to which help
+was supposed to come from what he was about to do.  He was about to
+go up to London, so that hat and necktie might wait.  What had come
+as straight to him as a ball in a well-played game--and caught
+moreover not less neatly--was just the air, in the person of his
+friend, of having seen and chosen, the air of achieved possession
+of those vague qualities and quantities that collectively figured
+to him as the advantage snatched from lucky chances.  Without pomp
+or circumstance, certainly, as her original address to him, equally
+with his own response, had been, he would have sketched to himself
+his impression of her as:  "Well, she's more thoroughly civilized--!"
+If "More thoroughly than WHOM?" would not have been for him a
+sequel to this remark, that was just by reason of his deep
+consciousness of the bearing of his comparison.
+
+The amusement, at all events, of a civilisation intenser was what--
+familiar compatriot as she was, with the full tone of the
+compatriot and the rattling link not with mystery but only with
+dear dyspeptic Waymarsh--she appeared distinctly to promise.  His
+pause while he felt in his overcoat was positively the pause of
+confidence, and it enabled his eyes to make out as much of a case
+for her, in proportion, as her own made out for himself.  She
+affected him as almost insolently young; but an easily carried
+five-and-thirty could still do that.  She was, however, like himself
+marked and wan; only it naturally couldn't have been known to him
+how much a spectator looking from one to the other might have
+discerned that they had in common.  It wouldn't for such a spectator
+have been altogether insupposable that, each so finely brown and so
+sharply spare, each confessing so to dents of surface and aids to
+sight, to a disproportionate nose and a head delicately or grossly
+grizzled, they might have been brother and sister.  On this ground
+indeed there would have been a residuum of difference; such a
+sister having surely known in respect to such a brother the
+extremity of separation, and such a brother now feeling in respect
+to such a sister the extremity of surprise.  Surprise, it was true,
+was not on the other hand what the eyes of Strether's friend most
+showed him while she gave him, stroking her gloves smoother, the
+time he appreciated.  They had taken hold of him straightway
+measuring him up and down as if they knew how; as if he were human
+material they had already in some sort handled.  Their possessor was
+in truth, it may be communicated, the mistress of a hundred cases
+or categories, receptacles of the mind, subdivisions for
+convenience, in which, from a full experience, she pigeon-holed her
+fellow mortals with a hand as free as that of a compositor
+scattering type.  She was as equipped in this particular as Strether
+was the reverse, and it made an opposition between them which he
+might well have shrunk from submitting to if he had fully suspected
+it.  So far as he did suspect it he was on the contrary, after a
+short shake of his consciousness, as pleasantly passive as might
+be.  He really had a sort of sense of what she knew.  He had quite
+the sense that she knew things he didn't, and though this was a
+concession that in general he found not easy to make to women, he
+made it now as good-humouredly as if it lifted a burden.  His eyes
+were so quiet behind his eternal nippers that they might almost
+have been absent without changing his face, which took its
+expression mainly, and not least its stamp of sensibility, from
+other sources, surface and grain and form.  He joined his guide in
+an instant, and then felt she had profited still better than he by
+his having been for the moments just mentioned, so at the disposal
+of her intelligence.  She knew even intimate things about him that
+he hadn't yet told her and perhaps never would.  He wasn't unaware
+that he had told her rather remarkably many for the time, but these
+were not the real ones.  Some of the real ones, however, precisely,
+were what she knew.
+
+They were to pass again through the hall of the inn to get into the
+street, and it was here she presently checked him with a question.
+"Have you looked up my name?"
+
+He could only stop with a laugh.  "Have you looked up mine?"
+
+"Oh dear, yes--as soon as you left me.  I went to the office and
+asked.  Hadn't YOU better do the same?"
+
+He wondered.  "Find out who you are?--after the uplifted young woman
+there has seen us thus scrape acquaintance!"
+
+She laughed on her side now at the shade of alarm in his amusement.
+"Isn't it a reason the more?  If what you're afraid of is the injury
+for me--my being seen to walk off with a gentleman who has to ask
+who I am--l assure you I don't in the least mind.  Here, however,"
+she continued, "is my card, and as I find there's something else
+again I have to say at the office, you can just study it during the
+moment I leave you."
+
+She left him after he had taken from her the small pasteboard she
+had extracted from her pocket-book, and he had extracted another
+from his own, to exchange with it, before she came back.  He read
+thus the simple designation "Maria Gostrey," to which was attached,
+in a corner of the card, with a number, the name of a street,
+presumably in Paris, without other appreciable identity than its
+foreignness.  He put the card into his waistcoat pocket, keeping his
+own meanwhile in evidence; and as he leaned against the door-post
+he met with the smile of a straying thought what the expanse before
+the hotel offered to his view.  It was positively droll to him that
+he should already have Maria Gostrey, whoever she was--of which he
+hadn't really the least idea--in a place of safe keeping.  He had
+somehow an assurance that he should carefully preserve the little
+token he had just tucked in.  He gazed with unseeing lingering eyes
+as he followed some of the implications of his act, asking himself
+if he really felt admonished to qualify it as disloyal.  It was
+prompt, it was possibly even premature, and there was little doubt
+of the expression of face the sight of it would have produced in a
+certain person.  But if it was "wrong"--why then he had better not
+have come out at all.  At this, poor man, had he already--and even
+before meeting Waymarsh--arrived.  He had believed he had a limit,
+but the limit had been transcended within thirty-six hours.  By how
+long a space on the plane of manners or even of morals, moreover,
+he felt still more sharply after Maria Gostrey had come back to him
+and with a gay decisive "So now--!" led him forth into the world.
+This counted, it struck him as he walked beside her with his
+overcoat on an arm, his umbrella under another and his personal
+pasteboard a little stiffly retained between forefinger and thumb,
+this struck him as really, in comparison his introduction to
+things.  It hadn't been "Europe" at Liverpool no--not even in the
+dreadful delightful impressive streets the night before--to the
+extent his present companion made it so.  She hadn't yet done that
+so much as when, after their walk had lasted a few minutes and he
+had had time to wonder if a couple of sidelong glances from her
+meant that he had best have put on gloves she almost pulled him up
+with an amused challenge.  "But why--fondly as it's so easy to
+imagine your clinging to it--don't you put it away?  Or if it's an
+inconvenience to you to carry it, one's often glad to have one's
+card back.  The fortune one spends in them!"
+
+Then he saw both that his way of marching with his own prepared
+tribute had affected her as a deviation in one of those directions
+he couldn't yet measure, and that she supposed this emblem to be
+still the one he had received from her.  He accordingly handed her
+the card as if in restitution, but as soon as she had it she felt
+the difference and, with her eyes on it, stopped short for apology.
+"I like," she observed, "your name."
+
+"Oh," he answered, "you won't have heard of it!" Yet he had his
+reasons for not being sure but that she perhaps might.
+
+Ah it was but too visible!  She read it over again as one who had
+never seen it.  "'Mr. Lewis Lambert Strether'"--she sounded it
+almost as freely as for any stranger.  She repeated however that she
+liked it--"particularly the Lewis Lambert.  It's the name of a novel
+of Balzac's."
+
+"Oh I know that!" said Strether.
+
+"But the novel's an awfully bad one."
+
+"I know that too," Strether smiled.  To which he added with an
+irrelevance that was only superficial:  "I come from Woollett
+Massachusetts."  It made her for some reason--the irrelevance or
+whatever--laugh.  Balzac had described many cities, but hadn't
+described Woollett Massachusetts.  "You say that," she returned,
+"as if you wanted one immediately to know the worst."
+
+"Oh I think it's a thing," he said, "that you must already have
+made out.  I feel it so that I certainly must look it, speak it,
+and, as people say there, 'act' it.  It sticks out of me, and you
+knew surely for yourself as soon as you looked at me."
+
+"The worst, you mean?"
+
+"Well, the fact of where I come from.  There at any rate it IS; so
+that you won't be able, if anything happens, to say I've not been
+straight with you."
+
+"I see"--and Miss Gostrey looked really interested in the point he
+had made.  "But what do you think of as happening?"
+
+Though he wasn't shy--which was rather anomalous--Strether gazed
+about without meeting her eyes; a motion that was frequent with him
+in talk, yet of which his words often seemed not at all the effect.
+"Why that you should find me too hopeless."  With which they walked
+on again together while she answered, as they went, that the most
+"hopeless" of her countryfolk were in general precisely those she
+liked best.  All sorts of other pleasant small things-small things
+that were yet large for him--flowered in the air of the occasion,
+but the bearing of the occasion itself on matters still remote
+concerns us too closely to permit us to multiply our illustrations.
+Two or three, however, in truth, we should perhaps regret to lose.
+The tortuous wall--girdle, long since snapped, of the little
+swollen city, half held in place by careful civic hands--wanders in
+narrow file between parapets smoothed by peaceful generations,
+pausing here and there for a dismantled gate or a bridged gap, with
+rises and drops, steps up and steps down, queer twists, queer
+contacts, peeps into homely streets and under the brows of gables,
+views of cathedral tower and waterside fields, of huddled English
+town and ordered English country.  Too deep almost for words was the
+delight of these things to Strether; yet as deeply mixed with it
+were certain images of his inward picture.  He had trod this walks
+in the far-off time, at twenty-five; but that, instead of spoiling
+it, only enriched it for present feeling and marked his renewal as
+a thing substantial enough to share.  It was with Waymarsh he should
+have shared it.  and he was now accordingly taking from him
+something that was his due.  He looked repeatedly at his watch, and
+when he had done so for the fifth time Miss Gostrey took him up.
+
+"You're doing something that you think not right."
+
+It so touched the place that he quite changed colour and his laugh
+grew almost awkward.  "Am I enjoying it as much as THAT?"
+
+"You're not enjoying it, I think, so much as you ought."
+
+"I see"--he appeared thoughtfully to agree.  "Great is my privilege."
+
+"Oh it's not your privilege!  It has nothing to do with me.  It has
+to do with yourself.  Your failure's general."
+
+"Ah there you are!" he laughed.  "It's the failure of Woollett.
+THAT'S general."
+
+"The failure to enjoy," Miss Gostrey explained, "is what I mean."
+
+"Precisely.  Woollett isn't sure it ought to enjoy.  If it were it
+would.  But it hasn't, poor thing," Strether continued, "any one to
+show it how.  It's not like me.  I have somebody."
+
+They had stopped, in the afternoon sunshine--constantly pausing, in
+their stroll, for the sharper sense of what they saw--and Strether
+rested on one of the high sides of the old stony groove of the
+little rampart.  He leaned back on this support with his face to the
+tower of the cathedral, now admirably commanded by their station,
+the high red-brown mass, square and subordinately spired and
+crocketed, retouched and restored, but charming to his long-sealed
+eyes and with the first swallows of the year weaving their flight
+all round it.  Miss Gostrey lingered near him, full of an air, to
+which she more and more justified her right, of understanding the
+effect of things.  She quite concurred.  "You've indeed somebody."
+And she added:  "I wish you WOULD let me show you how!"
+
+"Oh I'm afraid of you!" he cheerfully pleaded.
+
+She kept on him a moment, through her glasses and through his own,
+a certain pleasant pointedness.  "Ah no, you're not! You're not in
+the least, thank goodness!  If you had been we shouldn't so soon
+have found ourselves here together.  I think," she comfortably
+concluded, "you trust me."
+
+"I think I do!--but that's exactly what I'm afraid of.  I shouldn't
+mind if I didn't.  It's falling thus in twenty minutes so utterly
+into your hands.  I dare say," Strether continued, "it's a sort of
+thing you're thoroughly familiar with; but nothing more
+extraordinary has ever happened to me."
+
+She watched him with all her kindness.  "That means simply that
+you've recognised me--which IS rather beautiful and rare.  You see
+what I am."  As on this, however, he protested, with a good-humoured
+headshake, a resignation of any such claim, she had a moment of
+explanation.  "If you'll only come on further as you HAVE come
+you'll at any rate make out.  My own fate has been too many for me,
+and I've succumbed to it.  I'm a general guide--to 'Europe,' don't
+you know?  I wait for people--l put them through.  I pick them up--
+I set them down.  I'm a sort of superior 'courier-maid.' I'm a
+companion at large.  I take people, as I've told you, about.  I never
+sought it--it has come to me.  It has been my fate, and one's fate
+one accepts.  It's a dreadful thing to have to say, in so wicked a
+world, but I verily believe that, such as you see me, there's
+nothing I don't know.  I know all the shops and the prices--but I
+know worse things still.  I bear on my back the huge load of our
+national consciousness, or, in other words--for it comes to that--
+of our nation itself.  Of what is our nation composed but of the men
+and women individually on my shoulders?  I don't do it, you know,
+for any particular advantage.  I don't do it, for instance--some
+people do, you know--for money."
+
+Strether could only listen and wonder and weigh his chance.  "And
+yet, affected as you are then to so many of your clients, you can
+scarcely be said to do it for love."  He waited a moment.  "How do we
+reward you?"
+
+She had her own hesitation, but "You don't!" she finally returned,
+setting him again in motion.  They went on, but in a few minutes,
+though while still thinking over what she had said, he once more
+took out his watch; mechanically, unconsciously and as if made
+nervous by the mere exhilaration of what struck him as her strange
+and cynical wit.  He looked at the hour without seeing it, and then,
+on something again said by his companion, had another pause.
+"You're really in terror of him."
+
+He smiled a smile that he almost felt to be sickly.  "Now you can
+see why I'm afraid of you."
+
+"Because I've such illuminations?  Why they're all for your help!
+It's what I told you," she added, "just now.  You feel as if this
+were wrong."
+
+He fell back once more, settling himself against the parapet as if
+to hear more about it.  "Then get me out!"
+
+Her face fairly brightened for the joy of the appeal, but, as if it
+were a question of immediate action, she visibly considered.  "Out
+of waiting for him?--of seeing him at all?"
+
+"Oh no--not that," said poor Strether, looking grave.  "I've got to
+wait for him--and I want very much to see him.  But out of the
+terror.  You did put your finger on it a few minutes ago.  It's
+general, but it avails itself of particular occasions.  That's what
+it's doing for me now.  I'm always considering something else;
+something else, I mean, than the thing of the moment.  The obsession
+of the other thing is the terror.  I'm considering at present for
+instance something else than YOU."
+
+She listened with charming earnestness.  "Oh you oughtn't to do
+that!"
+
+"It's what I admit.  Make it then impossible."
+
+She continued to think.  "Is it really an 'order' from you?--that I
+shall take the job?  WILL you give yourself up?"
+
+Poor Strether heaved his sigh.  "If I only could! But that's the
+deuce of it--that I never can.  No--I can't."
+
+She wasn't, however, discouraged.  "But you want to at least?"
+
+"Oh unspeakably!"
+
+"Ah then, if you'll try!"--and she took over the job, as she had
+called it, on the spot.  "Trust me!" she exclaimed, and the action
+of this, as they retraced their steps, was presently to make him
+pass his hand into her arm in the manner of a benign dependent
+paternal old person who wishes to be "nice" to a younger one.  If he
+drew it out again indeed as they approached the inn this may have
+been because, after more talk had passed between them, the relation
+of age, or at least of experience--which, for that matter, had
+already played to and fro with some freedom--affected him as
+incurring a readjustment.  It was at all events perhaps lucky that
+they arrived in sufficiently separate fashion within range of the
+hotel-door.  The young lady they had left in the glass cage watched
+as if she had come to await them on the threshold.  At her side
+stood a person equally interested, by his attitude, in their
+return, and the effect of the sight of whom was instantly to
+determine for Strether another of those responsive arrests that we
+have had so repeatedly to note.  He left it to Miss Gostrey to name,
+with the fine full bravado as it almost struck him, of her
+"Mr. Waymarsh!" what was to have been, what--he more than ever felt
+as his short stare of suspended welcome took things in--would have
+been, but for herself, his doom.  It was already upon him even at
+that distance--Mr. Waymarsh was for HIS part joyless.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+He had none the less to confess to this friend that evening that he
+knew almost nothing about her, and it was a deficiency that
+Waymarsh, even with his memory refreshed by contact, by her own
+prompt and lucid allusions and enquiries, by their having publicly
+partaken of dinner in her company, and by another stroll, to which
+she was not a stranger, out into the town to look at the cathedral
+by moonlight--it was a blank that the resident of Milrose, though
+admitting acquaintance with the Munsters, professed himself unable
+to fill.  He had no recollection of Miss Gostrey, and two or three
+questions that she put to him about those members of his circle
+had, to Strether's observation, the same effect he himself had
+already more directly felt--the effect of appearing to place all
+knowledge, for the time, on this original woman's side.  It
+interested him indeed to mark the limits of any such relation for
+her with his friend as there could possibly be a question of, and
+it particularly struck him that they were to be marked altogether
+in Waymarsh's quarter.  This added to his own sense of having gone
+far with her-gave him an early illustration of a much shorter
+course.  There was a certitude he immediately grasped--a conviction
+that Waymarsh would quite fail, as it were, and on whatever degree
+of acquaintances to profit by her.
+
+There had been after the first interchange among the three a talk
+of some five minutes in the hall, and then the two men had
+adjourned to the garden, Miss Gostrey for the time disappearing.
+Strether in due course accompanied his friend to the room he had
+bespoken and had, before going out, scrupulously visited; where at
+the end of another half-hour he had no less discreetly left him.
+On leaving him he repaired straight to his own room, but with the
+prompt effect of feeling the compass of that chamber resented by
+his condition.  There he enjoyed at once the first consequence of
+their reunion.  A place was too small for him after it that had
+seemed large enough before.  He had awaited it with something he
+would have been sorry, have been almost ashamed not to recognise as
+emotion, yet with a tacit assumption at the same time that emotion
+would in the event find itself relieved.  The actual oddity was that
+he was only more excited; and his excitement-to which indeed he
+would have found it difficult instantly to give a name--brought him
+once more downstairs and caused him for some minutes vaguely to
+wander.  He went once more to the garden; he looked into the public
+room, found Miss Gostrey writing letters and backed out; he roamed,
+fidgeted and wasted time; but he was to have his more intimate
+session with his friend before the evening closed.
+
+It was late--not till Strether had spent an hour upstairs with him--
+that this subject consented to betake himself to doubtful rest.
+Dinner and the subsequent stroll by moonlight--a dream, on
+Strether's part, of romantic effects rather prosaically merged in a
+mere missing of thicker coats--had measurably intervened, and this
+midnight conference was the result of Waymarsh's having (when they
+were free, as he put it, of their fashionable friend) found the
+smoking-room not quite what he wanted, and yet bed what he wanted
+less.  His most frequent form of words was that he knew himself, and
+they were applied on this occasion to his certainty of not
+sleeping.  He knew himself well enough to know that he should have a
+night of prowling unless he should succeed, as a preliminary, in
+getting prodigiously tired.  If the effort directed to this end
+involved till a late hour the presence of Strether--consisted,
+that is, in the detention of the latter for full discourse--there
+was yet an impression of minor discipline involved for our friend
+in the picture Waymarsh made as he sat in trousers and shirt on the
+edge of his couch.  With his long legs extended and his large back
+much bent, he nursed alternately, for an almost incredible time,
+his elbows and his beard.  He struck his visitor as extremely, as
+almost wilfully uncomfortable; yet what had this been for Strether,
+from that first glimpse of him disconcerted in the porch of the
+hotel, but the predominant notes.  The discomfort was in a manner
+contagious, as well as also in a manner inconsequent and unfounded;
+the visitor felt that unless he should get used to it--or unless
+Waymarsh himself should--it would constitute a menace for his own
+prepared, his own already confirmed, consciousness of the
+agreeable.  On their first going up together to the room Strether
+had selected for him Waymarsh had looked it over in silence and
+with a sigh that represented for his companion, if not the habit of
+disapprobation, at least the despair of felicity; and this look had
+recurred to Strether as the key of much he had since observed.
+"Europe," he had begun to gather from these things, had up to now
+rather failed of its message to him; he hadn't got into tune with
+it and had at the end of three months almost renounced any such
+expectation.
+
+He really appeared at present to insist on that by just perching
+there with the gas in his eyes.  This of itself somehow conveyed the
+futility of single rectifications in a multiform failure.  He had a
+large handsome head and a large sallow seamed face--a striking
+significant physiognomic total, the upper range of which, the great
+political brow, the thick loose hair, the dark fuliginous eyes,
+recalled even to a generation whose standard had dreadfully
+deviated the impressive image, familiar by engravings and busts, of
+some great national worthy of the earlier part of the mid-century.
+He was of the personal type--and it was an element in the power and
+promise that in their early time Strether had found in him--of the
+American statesman, the statesman trained in "Congressional halls,"
+of an elder day.  The legend had been in later years that as the
+lower part of his face, which was weak, and slightly crooked,
+spoiled the likeness, this was the real reason for the growth of
+his beard, which might have seemed to spoil it for those not in the
+secret.  He shook his mane; he fixed, with his admirable eyes, his
+auditor or his observer; he wore no glasses and had a way, partly
+formidable, yet also partly encouraging, as from a representative
+to a constituent, of looking very hard at those who approached him.
+He met you as if you had knocked and he had bidden you enter.
+Strether, who hadn't seen him for so long an interval, apprehended
+him now with a freshness of taste, and had perhaps never done him
+such ideal justice.  The head was bigger, the eyes finer, than they
+need have been for the career; but that only meant, after all, that
+the career was itself expressive.  What it expressed at midnight in
+the gas-glaring bedroom at Chester was that the subject of it had,
+at the end of years, barely escaped, by flight in time, a general
+nervous collapse.  But this very proof of the full life, as the full
+life was understood at Milrose, would have made to Strether's
+imagination an element in which Waymarsh could have floated easily
+had he only consented to float.  Alas nothing so little resembled
+floating as the rigour with which, on the edge of his bed, he
+hugged his posture of prolonged impermanence.  It suggested to his
+comrade something that always, when kept up, worried him--a person
+established in a railway-coach with a forward inclination.  It
+represented the angle at which poor Waymarsh was to sit through the
+ordeal of Europe.
+
+Thanks to the stress of occupation, the strain of professions, the
+absorption and embarrassment of each, they had not, at home, during
+years before this sudden brief and almost bewildering reign of
+comparative ease, found so much as a day for a meeting; a fact that
+was in some degree an explanation of the sharpness with which most
+of his friend's features stood out to Strether.  Those he had lost
+sight of since the early time came back to him; others that it was
+never possible to forget struck him now as sitting, clustered and
+expectant, like a somewhat defiant family-group, on the doorstep of
+their residence.  The room was narrow for its length, and the
+occupant of the bed thrust so far a pair of slippered feet that the
+visitor had almost to step over them in his recurrent rebounds from
+his chair to fidget back and forth.  There were marks the friends
+made on things to talk about, and on things not to, and one of the
+latter in particular fell like the tap of chalk on the blackboard.
+Married at thirty, Waymarsh had not lived with his wife for fifteen
+years, and it came up vividly between them in the glare of the gas
+that Strether wasn't to ask about her.  He knew they were still
+separate and that she lived at hotels, travelled in Europe, painted
+her face and wrote her husband abusive letters, of not one of
+which, to a certainty, that sufferer spared himself the perusal;
+but he respected without difficulty the cold twilight that had
+settled on this side of his companion's life.  It was a province in
+which mystery reigned and as to which Waymarsh had never spoken the
+informing word.  Strether, who wanted to do him the highest justice
+wherever he COULD do it, singularly admired him for the dignity of
+this reserve, and even counted it as one of the grounds--grounds
+all handled and numbered--for ranking him, in the range of their
+acquaintance, as a success.  He WAS a success, Waymarsh, in spite of
+overwork, or prostration, of sensible shrinkage, of his wife's
+letters and of his not liking Europe.  Strether would have reckoned
+his own career less futile had he been able to put into it anything
+so handsome as so much fine silence.  One might one's self easily
+have left Mrs. Waymarsh; and one would assuredly have paid one's
+tribute to the ideal in covering with that attitude the derision of
+having been left by her.  Her husband had held his tongue and had
+made a large income; and these were in especial the achievements as
+to which Strether envied him.  Our friend had had indeed on his side
+too a subject for silence, which he fully appreciated; but it was a
+matter of a different sort, and the figure of the income he had
+arrived at had never been high enough to look any one in the face.
+
+"I don't know as I quite see what you require it for.  You don't
+appear sick to speak of."  It was of Europe Waymarsh thus finally
+spoke.
+
+"Well," said Strether, who fell as much as possible into step, "I
+guess I don't FEEL sick now that I've started.  But I had pretty
+well run down before I did start."
+
+Waymarsh raised his melancholy look.  "Ain't you about up to your
+usual average?"
+
+It was not quite pointedly sceptical, but it seemed somehow a plea
+for the purest veracity, and it thereby affected our friend as the
+very voice of Milrose.  He had long since made a mental distinction--
+though never in truth daring to betray it--between the voice of
+Milrose and the voice even of Woollett.  It was the former he felt,
+that was most in the real tradition.  There had been occasions in
+his past when the sound of it had reduced him to temporary
+confusion, and the present, for some reason, suddenly became such
+another.  It was nevertheless no light matter that the very effect
+of his confusion should be to make him again prevaricate.  "That
+description hardly does justice to a man to whom it has done such a
+lot of good to see YOU."
+
+Waymarsh fixed on his washing-stand the silent detached stare with
+which Milrose in person, as it were, might have marked the
+unexpectedness of a compliment from Woollett, and Strether for his
+part, felt once more like Woollett in person.  "I mean," his friend
+presently continued, "that your appearance isn't as bad as I've
+seen it:  it compares favourably with what it was when I last
+noticed it."  On this appearance Waymarsh's eyes yet failed to rest;
+it was almost as if they obeyed an instinct of propriety, and the
+effect was still stronger when, always considering the basin and
+jug, he added:  "You've filled out some since then."
+
+"I'm afraid I have," Strether laughed:  "one does fill out some with
+all one takes in, and I've taken in, I dare say, more than I've
+natural room for.  I was dog-tired when I sailed."  It had the oddest
+sound of cheerfulness.
+
+"I was dog-tired," his companion returned, "when I arrived, and it's
+this wild hunt for rest that takes all the life out of me.  The fact
+is, Strether--and it's a comfort to have you here at last to say it to;
+though I don't know, after all, that I've really waited; I've told
+it to people I've met in the cars--the fact is, such a country as this
+ain't my KIND of country anyway.  There ain't a country I've seen over
+here that DOES seem my kind.  Oh I don't say but what there are plenty
+of pretty places and remarkable old things; but the trouble is that I
+don't seem to feel anywhere in tune.  That's one of the reasons why I
+suppose I've gained so little.  I haven't had the first sign of that
+lift I was led to expect."  With this he broke out more earnestly.
+"Look here--I want to go back."
+
+His eyes were all attached to Strether's now, for he was one of the
+men who fully face you when they talk of themselves.  This enabled
+his friend to look at him hard and immediately to appear to the
+highest advantage in his eyes by doing so.  "That's a genial thing
+to say to a fellow who has come out on purpose to meet you!"
+
+Nothing could have been finer, on this, than Waymarsh's sombre
+glow.  "HAVE you come out on purpose?"
+
+"Well--very largely."
+
+"I thought from the way you wrote there was something back of it."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "Back of my desire to be with you?"
+
+"Back of your prostration."
+
+Strether, with a smile made more dim by a certain consciousness,
+shook his head.  "There are all the causes of it!"
+
+"And no particular cause that seemed most to drive you?"
+
+Our friend could at last conscientiously answer.  "Yes.  One.  There
+IS a matter that has had much to do with my coming out."
+
+Waymarsh waited a little.  "Too private to mention?"
+
+"No, not too private--for YOU.  Only rather complicated."
+
+"Well," said Waymarsh, who had waited again, "I MAY lose my mind
+over here, but I don't know as I've done so yet."
+
+"Oh you shall have the whole thing.  But not tonight."
+
+Waymarsh seemed to sit stiffer and to hold his elbows tighter.  "Why
+not--if I can't sleep?"
+
+"Because, my dear man, I CAN!"
+
+"Then where's your prostration?"
+
+"Just in that--that I can put in eight hours."  And Strether brought
+it out that if Waymarsh didn't "gain" it was because he didn't go
+to bed:  the result of which was, in its order, that, to do the
+latter justice, he permitted his friend to insist on his really
+getting settled.  Strether, with a kind coercive hand for it,
+assisted him to this consummation, and again found his own part in
+their relation auspiciously enlarged by the smaller touches of
+lowering the lamp and seeing to a sufficiency of blanket.  It
+somehow ministered for him to indulgence to feel Waymarsh, who
+looked unnaturally big and black in bed, as much tucked in as a
+patient in a hospital and, with his covering up to his chin, as
+much simplified by it He hovered in vague pity, to be brief, while
+his companion challenged him out of the bedclothes.  "Is she really
+after you?  Is that what's behind?"
+
+Strether felt an uneasiness at the direction taken by his
+companion's insight, but he played a little at uncertainty.  "Behind
+my coming out?"
+
+"Behind your prostration or whatever.  It's generally felt, you
+know, that she follows you up pretty close."
+
+Strether's candour was never very far off.  "Oh it has occurred to
+you that I'm literally running away from Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+"Well, I haven't KNOWN but what you are.  You're a very attractive
+man, Strether.  You've seen for yourself," said Waymarsh "what that
+lady downstairs makes of it.  Unless indeed," he rambled on with an
+effect between the ironic and the anxious, "it's you who are after
+HER.  IS Mrs. Newsome OVER here?"  He spoke as with a droll dread of
+her.
+
+It made his friend--though rather dimly--smile.  "Dear no she's
+safe, thank goodness--as I think I more and more feel--at home.  She
+thought of coming, but she gave it up.  I've come in a manner
+instead of her; and come to that extent--for you're right in your
+inference--on her business.  So you see there IS plenty of
+connexion."
+
+Waymarsh continued to see at least all there was.  "Involving
+accordingly the particular one I've referred to?"
+
+Strether took another turn about the room, giving a twitch to his
+companion's blanket and finally gaining the door.  His feeling was
+that of a nurse who had earned personal rest by having made
+everything straight.  "Involving more things than I can think of
+breaking ground on now.  But don't be afraid--you shall have them
+from me:  you'll probably find yourself having quite as much of them
+as you can do with.  I shall--if we keep together--very much depend
+on your impression of some of them."
+
+Waymarsh's acknowledgement of this tribute was characteristically
+indirect.  "You mean to say you don't believe we WILL keep
+together?"
+
+"I only glance at the danger," Strether paternally said, "because
+when I hear you wail to go back I seem to see you open up such
+possibilities of folly."
+
+Waymarsh took it--silent a little--like a large snubbed child "What
+are you going to do with me?"
+
+It was the very question Strether himself had put to Miss Gostrey,
+and he wondered if he had sounded like that.  But HE at least could
+be more definite.  "I'm going to take you right down to London."
+
+"Oh I've been down to London!" Waymarsh more softly moaned.  "I've
+no use, Strether, for anything down there."
+
+"Well," said Strether, good-humouredly, "I guess you've some use
+for me."
+
+"So I've got to go?"
+
+"Oh you've got to go further yet."
+
+"Well," Waymarsh sighed, "do your damnedest! Only you WILL tell me
+before you lead me on all the way--?"
+
+Our friend had again so lost himself, both for amusement and for
+contrition, in the wonder of whether he had made, in his own
+challenge that afternoon, such another figure, that he for an
+instant missed the thread.  "Tell you--?"
+
+"Why what you've got on hand."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "Why it's such a matter as that even if I
+positively wanted I shouldn't be able to keep it from you."
+
+Waymarsh gloomily gazed.  "What does that mean then but that your
+trip is just FOR her?"
+
+"For Mrs. Newsome?  Oh it certainly is, as I say.  Very much."
+
+"Then why do you also say it's for me?"
+
+Strether, in impatience, violently played with his latch.  "It's
+simple enough.  It's for both of you."
+
+Waymarsh at last turned over with a groan.  "Well, I won't marry
+you!"
+
+"Neither, when it comes to that--!" But the visitor had already
+laughed and escaped.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+He had told Miss Gostrey he should probably take, for departure
+with Waymarsh, some afternoon train, and it thereupon in the
+morning appeared that this lady had made her own plan for an
+earlier one.  She had breakfasted when Strether came into the
+coffee-room; but, Waymarsh not having yet emerged, he was in time
+to recall her to the terms of their understanding and to pronounce
+her discretion overdone.  She was surely not to break away at the
+very moment she had created a want.  He had met her as she rose
+from her little table in a window, where, with the morning papers
+beside her, she reminded him, as he let her know, of Major
+Pendennis breakfasting at his club--a compliment of which she
+professed a deep appreciation; and he detained her as pleadingly
+as if he had already--and notably under pressure of the visions of
+the night--learned to be unable to do without her.  She must teach
+him at all events, before she went, to order breakfast as
+breakfast was ordered in Europe, and she must especially sustain
+him in the problem of ordering for Waymarsh.  The latter had laid
+upon his friend, by desperate sounds through the door of his room,
+dreadful divined responsibilities in respect to beefsteak and
+oranges--responsibilities which Miss Gostrey took over with an
+alertness of action that matched her quick intelligence.   She had
+before this weaned the expatriated from traditions compared with
+which the matutinal beefsteak was but the creature of an hour, and
+it was not for her, with some of her memories, to falter in the
+path though she freely enough declared, on reflexion, that there
+was always in such cases a choice of opposed policies.  "There are
+times when to give them their head, you know--!"
+
+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?"
+
+"Oh that they shouldn't come is as yet too much to ask.   What I
+attend to is that they come quickly and return still more so.  I
+meet them to help it to be over as soon as possible,  and though I
+don't stop them I've my way of putting them through.  That's my
+little system; and, if you want to know,"  said Maria Gostrey,
+"it's my real secret, my innermost mission and use.  I only seem,
+you see, to beguile and approve; but I've thought it all out and
+I'm working all the while underground.  I can't perhaps quite give
+you my formula, but I think that practically I succeed.  I send you
+back spent.  So you stay back.  Passed through my hands--"
+
+"We don't turn up again?"  The further she went the further he
+always saw himself able to follow.  "I don't want your formula--I
+feel quite enough, as I hinted yesterday, your abysses.  Spent!" he
+echoed.  "If that's how you're arranging so subtly to send me I
+thank you for the warning."
+
+For a minute, amid the pleasantness--poetry in tariffed items, but
+all the more, for guests already convicted, a challenge to
+consumption--they smiled at each other in confirmed fellowship.  "Do
+you call it subtly?  It's a plain poor tale.  Besides, you're a
+special case."
+
+"Oh special cases--that's weak!" She was weak enough, further
+still, to defer her journey and agree to accompany the gentlemen on
+their own, might a separate carriage mark her independence; though
+it was in spite of this to befall after luncheon that she went off
+alone and that, with a tryst taken for a day of her company in
+London, they lingered another night.  She had, during the morning--
+spent in a way that he was to remember later on as the very climax
+of his foretaste, as warm with presentiments, with what he would
+have called collapses--had all sorts of things out with Strether;
+and among them the fact that though there was never a moment of her
+life when she wasn't "due" somewhere, there was yet scarce a
+perfidy to others of which she wasn't capable for his sake.  She
+explained moreover that wherever she happened to be she found a
+dropped thread to pick up, a ragged edge to repair, some familiar
+appetite in ambush, jumping out as she approached, yet appeasable
+with a temporary biscuit.  It became, on her taking the risk of the
+deviation imposed on him by her insidious arrangement of his
+morning meal, a point of honour for her not to fail with Waymarsh
+of the larger success too; and her subsequent boast to Strether was
+that she had made their friend fare--and quite without his knowing
+what was the matter--as Major Pendennis would have fared at the
+Megatherium.   She had made him breakfast like a gentleman, and it
+was nothing, she forcibly asserted, to what she would yet make him
+do.  She made him participate in the slow reiterated ramble with
+which, for Strether, the new day amply filled itself; and it was by
+her art that he somehow had the air, on the ramparts and in the
+Rows, of carrying a point of his own.
+
+The three strolled and stared and gossiped, or at least the
+two did; the case really yielding for their comrade, if analysed,
+but the element of stricken silence.  This element indeed affected
+Strether as charged with audible rumblings, but he was conscious of
+the care of taking it explicitly as a sign of pleasant peace.  He
+wouldn't appeal too much, for that provoked stiffness; yet he
+wouldn't be too freely tacit, for that suggested giving up.
+Waymarsh himself adhered to an ambiguous dumbness that might have
+represented either the growth of a perception or the despair of
+one; and at times and in places--where the low-browed galleries
+were darkest, the opposite gables queerest, the solicitations of
+every kind densest--the others caught him fixing hard some object
+of minor interest, fixing even at moments nothing discernible, as
+if he were indulging it with a truce.  When he met Strether's eye on
+such occasions he looked guilty and furtive, fell the next minute
+into some attitude of retractation.  Our friend couldn't show him
+the right things for fear of provoking some total renouncement, and
+was tempted even to show him the wrong in order to make him differ
+with triumph.  There were moments when he himself felt shy of
+professing the full sweetness of the taste of leisure, and there
+were others when he found himself feeling as if his passages of
+interchange with the lady at his side might fall upon the third
+member of their party very much as Mr. Burchell, at Dr. Primrose's
+fireside, was influenced by the high flights of the visitors from
+London.  The smallest things so arrested and amused him that he
+repeatedly almost apologised--brought up afresh in explanation his
+plea of a previous grind.  He was aware at the same time that his
+grind had been as nothing to Waymarsh's, and he repeatedly
+confessed that, to cover his frivolity, he was doing his best for
+his previous virtue.  Do what he might, in any case, his previous
+virtue was still there, and it seemed fairly to stare at him out of
+the windows of shops that were not as the shops of Woollett, fairly
+to make him want things that he shouldn't know what to do with.  It
+was by the oddest, the least admissible of laws demoralising him
+now; and the way it boldly took was to make him want more wants.
+These first walks in Europe were in fact a kind of finely lurid
+intimation of what one might find at the end of that process.  Had
+he come back after long years, in something already so like the
+evening of life, only to be exposed to it?  It was at all events
+over the shop-windows that he made, with Waymarsh, most free;
+though it would have been easier had not the latter most sensibly
+yielded to the appeal of the merely useful trades.  He pierced with
+his sombre detachment the plate-glass of ironmongers and saddlers,
+while Strether flaunted an affinity with the dealers in stamped
+letter-paper and in smart neckties.  Strether was in fact
+recurrently shameless in the presence of the tailors, though it was
+just over the heads of the tailors that his countryman most loftily
+looked.  This gave Miss Gostrey a grasped opportunity to back up
+Waymarsh at his expense.  The weary lawyer--it was unmistakeable--
+had a conception of dress; but that, in view of some of the
+features of the effect produced, was just what made the danger of
+insistence on it.  Strether wondered if he by this time thought Miss
+Gostrey less fashionable or Lambert Strether more so; and it
+appeared probable that most of the remarks exchanged between this
+latter pair about passers, figures, faces, personal types,
+exemplified in their degree the disposition to talk as "society"
+talked.
+
+Was what was happening to himself then, was what already HAD
+happened, really that a woman of fashion was floating him into
+society and that an old friend deserted on the brink was watching
+the force of the current?  When the woman of fashion permitted
+Strether--as she permitted him at the most--the purchase of a pair
+of gloves, the terms she made about it, the prohibition of neckties
+and other items till she should be able to guide him through the
+Burlington Arcade, were such as to fall upon a sensitive ear as a
+challenge to just imputations.  Miss Gostrey was such a woman of
+fashion as could make without a symptom of vulgar blinking an
+appointment for the Burlington Arcade.  Mere discriminations about a
+pair of gloves could thus at any rate represent--always for such
+sensitive ears as were in question--possibilities of something that
+Strether could make a mark against only as the peril of apparent
+wantonness.  He had quite the consciousness of his new friend, for
+their companion, that he might have had of a Jesuit in petticoats,
+a representative of the recruiting interests of the Catholic
+Church.  The Catholic Church, for Waymarsh-that was to say the
+enemy, the monster of bulging eyes and far-reaching quivering
+groping tentacles--was exactly society, exactly the multiplication
+of shibboleths, exactly the discrimination of types and tones,
+exactly the wicked old Rows of Chester, rank with feudalism;
+exactly in short Europe.
+
+There was light for observation, however, in an incident that
+occurred just before they turned back to luncheon.  Waymarsh had
+been for a quarter of an hour exceptionally mute and distant, and
+something, or other--Strether was never to make out exactly what--
+proved, as it were, too much for him after his comrades had stood
+for three minutes taking in, while they leaned on an old balustrade
+that guarded the edge of the Row, a particularly crooked and
+huddled street-view.  "He thinks us sophisticated, he thinks us
+worldly, he thinks us wicked, he thinks us all sorts of queer
+things," Strether reflected; for wondrous were the vague quantities
+our friend had within a couple of short days acquired the habit of
+conveniently and conclusively lumping together.  There seemed
+moreover a direct connexion between some such inference and a
+sudden grim dash taken by Waymarsh to the opposite side.  This
+movement was startlingly sudden, and his companions at first
+supposed him to have espied, to be pursuing, the glimpse of an
+acquaintance.  They next made out, however, that an open door had
+instantly received him, and they then recognised him as engulfed in
+the establishment of a jeweller, behind whose glittering front he
+was lost to view.  The fact had somehow the note of a demonstration,
+and it left each of the others to show a face almost of fear.  But
+Miss Gostrey broke into a laugh.  "What's the matter with him?"
+
+"Well," said Strether, "he can't stand it."
+
+"But can't stand what?"
+
+"Anything.  Europe."
+
+"Then how will that jeweller help him?"
+
+Strether seemed to make it out, from their position, between the
+interstices of arrayed watches, of close-hung dangling gewgaws.
+"You'll see."
+
+"Ah that's just what--if he buys anything--I'm afraid of:  that I
+shall see something rather dreadful."
+
+Strether studied the finer appearances.  "He may buy everything."
+
+"Then don't you think we ought to follow him?"
+
+"Not for worlds.  Besides we can't.  We're paralysed.  We exchange a
+long scared look, we publicly tremble.  The thing is, you see, we
+'realise.' He has struck for freedom."
+
+She wondered but she laughed.  "Ah what a price to pay! And I was
+preparing some for him so cheap."
+
+"No, no," Strether went on, frankly amused now; "don't call it
+that:  the kind of freedom you deal in is dear."  Then as to justify
+himself:  "Am I not in MY way trying it?  It's this."
+
+"Being here, you mean, with me?''
+
+"Yes, and talking to you as I do.  I've known you a few hours, and
+I've known HIM all my life; so that if the ease I thus take with
+you about him isn't magnificent"--and the thought of it held him a
+moment--"why it's rather base."
+
+"It's magnificent!" said Miss Gostrey to make an end of it.  "And
+you should hear," she added, "the ease I take--and I above all
+intend to take--with Mr. Waymarsh."
+
+Strether thought.  "About ME?  Ah that's no equivalent.
+The equivalent would be Waymarsh's himself serving me up--
+his remorseless analysis of me.  And he'll never do that"--
+he was sadly clear.  "He'll never remorselessly analyse me."
+He quite held her with the authority of this.  "He'll never
+say a word to you about me."
+
+She took it in; she did it justice; yet after an instant her
+reason, her restless irony, disposed of it.  "Of course he won't.
+For what do you take people, that they're able to say words about
+anything, able remorselessly to analyse?  There are not many like
+you and me.  It will be only because he's too stupid."
+
+It stirred in her friend a sceptical echo which was at the same
+time the protest of the faith of years.  "Waymarsh stupid?"
+
+"Compared with you."
+
+Strether had still his eyes on the jeweller's front, and he waited
+a moment to answer.  "He's a success of a kind that I haven't
+approached."
+
+"Do you mean he has made money?"
+
+"He makes it--to my belief.  And I," said Strether, "though with a
+back quite as bent, have never made anything.  I'm a perfectly
+equipped failure."
+
+He feared an instant she'd ask him if he meant he was poor; and he
+was glad she didn't, for he really didn't know to what the truth on
+this unpleasant point mightn't have prompted her.  She only,
+however, confirmed his assertion.  "Thank goodness you're a failure--
+it's why I so distinguish you! Anything else to-day is too
+hideous.  Look about you--look at the successes.  Would you BE one,
+on your honour?  Look, moreover," she continued, "at me."
+
+For a little accordingly their eyes met.  "I see," Strether
+returned.  "You too are out of it."
+
+"The superiority you discern in me," she concurred, "announces my
+futility.  If you knew," she sighed, "the dreams of my youth! But
+our realities are what has brought us together.  We're beaten
+brothers in arms."
+
+He smiled at her kindly enough, but he shook his head.  "It doesn't
+alter the fact that you're expensive.  You've cost me already--!"
+
+But he had hung fire.  "Cost you what?"
+
+"Well, my past--in one great lump.  But no matter," he laughed:
+"I'll pay with my last penny."
+
+Her attention had unfortunately now been engaged by their comrade's
+return, for Waymarsh met their view as he came out of his shop.  "I
+hope he hasn't paid," she said, "with HIS last; though I'm
+convinced he has been splendid, and has been so for you."
+
+"Ah no--not that!"
+
+"Then for me?"
+
+"Quite as little."  Waymarsh was by this time near enough to show
+signs his friend could read, though he seemed to look almost
+carefully at nothing in particular.
+
+"Then for himself?"
+
+"For nobody.  For nothing.  For freedom."
+
+"But what has freedom to do with it?"
+
+Strether's answer was indirect.  "To be as good as you and me.  But
+different."
+
+She had had time to take in their companion's face; and with it, as
+such things were easy for her, she took in all.  "Different--yes.
+But better!"
+
+If Waymarsh was sombre he was also indeed almost sublime.  He told
+them nothing, left his absence unexplained, and though they were
+convinced he had made some extraordinary purchase they were never
+to learn its nature.  He only glowered grandly at the tops of the
+old gables.  "It's the sacred rage," Strether had had further time
+to say; and this sacred rage was to become between them, for
+convenient comprehension, the description of one of his periodical
+necessities.  It was Strether who eventually contended that it did
+make him better than they.  But by that time Miss Gostrey was
+convinced that she didn't want to be better than Strether.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Second
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Those occasions on which Strether was, in association with the
+exile from Milrose, to see the sacred rage glimmer through would
+doubtless have their due periodicity; but our friend had meanwhile
+to find names for many other matters.  On no evening of his life
+perhaps, as he reflected, had he had to supply so many as on the
+third of his short stay in London; an evening spent by Miss
+Gostrey's side at one of the theatres, to which he had found
+himself transported, without his own hand raised, on the mere
+expression of a conscientious wonder.  She knew her theatre, she
+knew her play, as she had triumphantly known, three days running,
+everything else, and the moment filled to the brim, for her
+companion, that apprehension of the interesting which, whether or
+no the interesting happened to filter through his guide, strained
+now to its limits his brief opportunity.  Waymarsh hadn't come with
+them; he had seen plays enough, he signified, before Strether had
+joined him--an affirmation that had its full force when his friend
+ascertained by questions that he had seen two and a circus.
+Questions as to what he had seen had on him indeed an effect only
+less favourable than questions as to what he hadn't.  He liked the
+former to be discriminated; but how could it be done, Strether
+asked of their constant counsellor, without discriminating the
+latter?
+
+Miss Gostrey had dined with him at his hotel, face to face over a
+small table on which the lighted candles had rose-coloured shades;
+and the rose-coloured shades and the small table and the soft
+fragrance of the lady--had anything to his mere sense ever been so
+soft?--were so many touches in he scarce knew what positive high
+picture.  He had been to the theatre, even to the opera, in Boston,
+with Mrs. Newsome, more than once acting as her only escort; but
+there had been no little confronted dinner, no pink lights, no
+whiff of vague sweetness, as a preliminary:  one of the results of
+which was that at present, mildly rueful, though with a sharpish
+accent, he actually asked himself WHY there hadn't.  There was much
+the same difference in his impression of the noticed state of his
+companion, whose dress was "cut down," as he believed the term to
+be, in respect to shoulders and bosom, in a manner quite other than
+Mrs. Newsome's, and who wore round her throat a broad red velvet
+band with an antique jewel--he was rather complacently sure it was
+antique--attached to it in front.  Mrs. Newsome's dress was never in
+any degree "cut down," and she never wore round her throat a broad
+red velvet band:  if she had, moreover, would it ever have served so
+to carry on and complicate, as he now almost felt, his vision?
+
+It would have been absurd of him to trace into ramifications the
+effect of the ribbon from which Miss Gostrey's trinket depended,
+had he not for the hour, at the best, been so given over to
+uncontrolled perceptions.  What was it but an uncontrolled
+perception that his friend's velvet band somehow added, in her
+appearance, to the value of every other item--to that of her smile
+and of the way she carried her head, to that of her complexion, of
+her lips, her teeth, her eyes, her hair?  What, certainly, had a man
+conscious of a man's work in the world to do with red velvet bands?
+He wouldn't for anything have so exposed himself as to tell Miss
+Gostrey how much he liked hers, yet he HAD none the less not only
+caught himself in the act--frivolous, no doubt, idiotic, and above
+all unexpected--of liking it:  he had in addition taken it as a
+starting-point for fresh backward, fresh forward, fresh lateral
+flights.  The manner in which Mrs. Newsome's throat WAS encircled
+suddenly represented for him, in an alien order, almost as many
+things as the manner in which Miss Gostrey's was.  Mrs. Newsome
+wore, at operatic hours, a black silk dress--very handsome, he knew
+it was "handsome"--and an ornament that his memory was able further
+to identify as a ruche.  He had his association indeed with the
+ruche, but it was rather imperfectly romantic.  He had once said to
+the wearer--and it was as "free" a remark as he had ever made to
+her--that she looked, with her ruff and other matters, like Queen
+Elizabeth; and it had after this in truth been his fancy that, as a
+consequence of that tenderness and an acceptance of the idea, the
+form of this special tribute to the "frill" had grown slightly more
+marked.  The connexion, as he sat there and let his imagination
+roam, was to strike him as vaguely pathetic; but there it all was,
+and pathetic was doubtless in the conditions the best thing it
+could possibly be.  It had assuredly existed at any rate; for it
+seemed now to come over him that no gentleman of his age at
+Woollett could ever, to a lady of Mrs. Newsome's, which was not
+much less than his, have embarked on such a simile.
+
+All sorts of things in fact now seemed to come over him,
+comparatively few of which his chronicler can hope for space to
+mention.  It came over him for instance that Miss Gostrey looked
+perhaps like Mary Stuart:  Lambert Strether had a candour of fancy
+which could rest for an instant gratified in such an antithesis.  It
+came over him that never before--no, literally never--had a lady
+dined with him at a public place before going to the play.  The
+publicity of the place was just, in the matter, for Strether, the
+rare strange thing; it affected him almost as the achievement of
+privacy might have affected a man of a different experience.  He had
+married, in the far-away years, so young as to have missed the time
+natural in Boston for taking girls to the Museum; and it was
+absolutely true of hint that--even after the close of the period of
+conscious detachment occupying the centre of his life, the grey
+middle desert of the two deaths, that of his wife and that, ten
+years later, of his boy--he had never taken any one anywhere.  It
+came over him in especial--though the monition had, as happened,
+already sounded, fitfully gleamed, in other forms--that the
+business he had come out on hadn't yet been so brought home to him
+as by the sight of the people about him.  She gave him the
+impression, his friend, at first, more straight than he got it for
+himself--gave it simply by saying with off-hand illumination:  "Oh
+yes, they're types!"--but after he had taken it he made to the full
+his own use of it; both while he kept silence for the four acts and
+while he talked in the intervals.  It was an evening, it was a world
+of types, and this was a connexion above all in which the figures
+and faces in the stalls were interchangeable with those on the
+stage.
+
+He felt as if the play itself penetrated him with the naked elbow
+of his neighbour, a great stripped handsome red-haired lady who
+conversed with a gentleman on her other side in stray dissyllables
+which had for his ear, in the oddest way in the world, so much
+sound that he wondered they hadn't more sense; and he recognised by
+the same law, beyond the footlights, what he was pleased to take
+for the very flush of English life.  He had distracted drops in
+which he couldn't have said if it were actors or auditors who were
+most true, and the upshot of which, each time, was the consciousness
+of new contacts.  However he viewed his job it was "types" he should
+have to tackle.  Those before him and around him were not as the
+types of Woollett, where, for that matter, it had begun to seem to
+him that there must only have been the male and the female.
+These made two exactly, even with the individual varieties.  Here,
+on the other hand, apart from the personal and the sexual range--
+which might be greater or less--a series of strong stamps had been
+applied, as it were, from without; stamps that his observation
+played with as, before a glass case on a table, it might have
+passed from medal to medal and from copper to gold.  It befell that
+in the drama precisely there was a bad woman in a yellow frock who
+made a pleasant weak good-looking young man in perpetual evening
+dress do the most dreadful things.  Strether felt himself on the
+whole not afraid of the yellow frock, but he was vaguely anxious
+over a certain kindness into which he found himself drifting for
+its victim.  He hadn't come out, he reminded himself, to be too
+kind, or indeed to be kind at all, to Chadwick Newsome.  Would Chad
+also be in perpetual evening dress?  He somehow rather hoped it--it
+seemed so to add to THIS young man's general amenability; though he
+wondered too if, to fight him with his own weapons, he himself (a
+thought almost startling) would have likewise to be.  This young man
+furthermore would have been much more easy to handle--at least for
+HIM--than appeared probable in respect to Chad.
+
+It came up for him with Miss Gostrey that there were things of
+which she would really perhaps after all have heard, and she admitted
+when a little pressed that she was never quite sure of what she
+heard as distinguished from things such as, on occasions like
+the present, she only extravagantly guessed.  "I seem with this
+freedom, you see, to have guessed Mr. Chad.  He's a young man on
+whose head high hopes are placed at Woollett; a young man a wicked
+woman has got hold of and whom his family over there have sent you
+out to rescue.  You've accepted the mission of separating him from
+the wicked woman.  Are you quite sure she's very bad for him?"
+
+Something in his manner showed it as quite pulling him up.  "Of
+course we are.  Wouldn't YOU be?"
+
+"Oh I don't know.  One never does--does one?--beforehand.  One can
+only judge on the facts.  Yours are quite new to me; I'm really not
+in the least, as you see, in possession of them:  so it will be
+awfully interesting to have them from you.  If you're satisfied,
+that's all that's required.  I mean if you're sure you ARE sure:
+sure it won't do."
+
+"That he should lead such a life?  Rather!"
+
+"Oh but I don't know, you see, about his life; you've not told me
+about his life.  She may be charming--his life!"
+
+"Charming?"--Strether stared before him.  "She's base, venal-out of
+the streets."
+
+"I see.  And HE--?"
+
+"Chad, wretched boy?"
+
+"Of what type and temper is he?" she went on as Strether had
+lapsed.
+
+"Well--the obstinate."  It was as if for a moment he had been going
+to say more and had then controlled himself.
+
+That was scarce what she wished.  "Do you like him?"
+
+This time he was prompt.  "No.  How CAN I?"
+
+"Do you mean because of your being so saddled with him?"
+
+"I'm thinking of his mother," said Strether after a moment.  "He has
+darkened her admirable life."  He spoke with austerity.  "He has
+worried her half to death."
+
+"Oh that's of course odious."  She had a pause as if for renewed
+emphasis of this truth, but it ended on another note.  "Is her life
+very admirable?"
+
+"Extraordinarily."
+
+There was so much in the tone that Miss Gostrey had to devote
+another pause to the appreciation of it.  "And has he only HER?  I
+don't mean the bad woman in Paris," she quickly added--"for I
+assure you I shouldn't even at the best be disposed to allow him
+more than one.  But has he only his mother?"
+
+"He has also a sister, older than himself and married; and they're
+both remarkably fine women."
+
+"Very handsome, you mean?"
+
+This promptitude--almost, as he might have thought, this
+precipitation, gave him a brief drop; but he came up again.
+"Mrs. Newsome, I think, is handsome, though she's not of course,
+with a son of twenty-eight and a daughter of thirty, in her very
+first youth.  She married, however, extremely young."
+
+"And is wonderful," Miss Gostrey asked, "for her age?"
+
+Strether seemed to feel with a certain disquiet the pressure of it.
+"I don't say she's wonderful.  Or rather," he went on the next moment,
+"I do say it.  It's exactly what she IS--wonderful.  But I wasn't
+thinking of her appearance," he explained--"striking as that doubtless
+is.  I was thinking--well, of many other things."  He seemed to look at
+these as if to mention some of them; then took, pulling himself up,
+another turn.  "About Mrs. Pocock people may differ."
+
+"Is that the daughter's name--'Pocock'?"
+
+"That's the daughter's name," Strether sturdily confessed.
+
+"And people may differ, you mean, about HER beauty?"
+
+"About everything."
+
+"But YOU admire her?"
+
+He gave his friend a glance as to show how he could bear this "I'm
+perhaps a little afraid of her."
+
+"Oh," said Miss Gostrey, "I see her from here! You may say then I
+see very fast and very far, but I've already shown you I do.  The
+young man and the two ladies," she went on, "are at any rate all
+the family?"
+
+"Quite all.  His father has been dead ten years, and there's no
+brother, nor any other sister.  They'd do," said Strether, "anything
+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."
+
+Strether took this more lightly.  "Oh I jam down the pedal too!"
+
+"Well," she lucidly returned, "we must from this moment bear on it
+together with all our might."  And she forged ahead.  "Have they
+money?"
+
+But it was as if, while her energetic image still held him, her
+enquiry fell short.  "Mrs. Newsome," he wished further to explain,
+"hasn't moreover your courage on the question of contact.  If she
+had come it would have been to see the person herself."
+
+"The woman?  Ah but that's courage."
+
+"No--it's exaltation, which is a very different thing.  Courage,"
+he, however, accommodatingly threw out, "is what YOU have."
+
+She shook her head.  "You say that only to patch me up--to cover the
+nudity of my want of exaltation.  I've neither the one nor the
+other.  I've mere battered indifference.  I see that what you mean,"
+Miss Gostrey pursued, "is that if your friend HAD come she would
+take great views, and the great views, to put it simply, would be
+too much for her."
+
+Strether looked amused at her notion of the simple, but he adopted
+her formula.  "Everything's too much for her."
+
+"Ah then such a service as this of yours--"
+
+"Is more for her than anything else?  Yes--far more.  But so long as
+it isn't too much for ME--!"
+
+"Her condition doesn't matter?  Surely not; we leave her condition
+out; we take it, that is, for granted.  I see it, her condition, as
+behind and beneath you; yet at the same time I see it as bearing
+you up."
+
+"Oh it does bear me up!" Strether laughed.
+
+"Well then as yours bears ME nothing more's needed."  With which she
+put again her question.  "Has Mrs. Newsome money?"
+
+This time he heeded.  "Oh plenty.  That's the root of the evil.
+There's money, to very large amounts, in the concern.  Chad has had
+the free use of a great deal.  But if he'll pull himself together
+and come home, all the same, he'll find his account in it."
+
+She had listened with all her interest.  "And I hope to goodness
+you'll find yours!"
+
+"He'll take up his definite material reward," said Strether without
+acknowledgement of this.  "He's at the parting of the ways.  He can
+come into the business now--he can't come later."
+
+"Is there a business?"
+
+"Lord, yes--a big brave bouncing business.  A roaring trade."
+
+"A great shop?"
+
+"Yes--a workshop; a great production, a great industry.  The
+concern's a manufacture--and a manufacture that, if it's only
+properly looked after, may well be on the way to become a monopoly.
+It's a little thing they make--make better, it appears, than other
+people can, or than other people, at any rate, do.  Mr. Newsome,
+being a man of ideas, at least in that particular line," Strether
+explained, "put them on it with great effect, and gave the place
+altogether, in his time, an immense lift."
+
+"It's a place in itself?"
+
+"Well, quite a number of buildings; almost a little industrial
+colony.  But above all it's a thing.  The article produced."
+
+"And what IS the article produced?"
+
+Strether looked about him as in slight reluctance to say; then the
+curtain, which he saw about to rise, came to his aid.  "I'll tell
+you next time."  But when the next time came he only said he'd tell
+her later on--after they should have left the theatre; for she had
+immediately reverted to their topic, and even for himself the
+picture of the stage was now overlaid with another image.  His
+postponements, however, made her wonder--wonder if the article
+referred to were anything bad.  And she explained that she meant
+improper or ridiculous or wrong.  But Strether, so far as that went,
+could satisfy her.  "Unmentionable?  Oh no, we constantly talk of it;
+we are quite familiar and brazen about it.  Only, as a small,
+trivial, rather ridiculous object of the commonest domestic use,
+it's just wanting in-what shall I say?  Well, dignity, or the least
+approach to distinction.  Right here therefore, with everything
+about us so grand--!" In short he shrank.
+
+"It's a false note?"
+
+"Sadly.  It's vulgar."
+
+"But surely not vulgarer than this."  Then on his wondering as she
+herself had done:  "Than everything about us."  She seemed a trifle
+irritated.  "What do you take this for?"
+
+"Why for--comparatively--divine! "
+
+"This dreadful London theatre?  It's impossible, if you really want
+to know."
+
+"Oh then," laughed Strether, "I DON'T really want to know!"
+
+It made between them a pause, which she, however, still fascinated
+by the mystery of the production at Woollett, presently broke.
+"'Rather ridiculous'?  Clothes-pins?  Saleratus?  Shoe-polish?"
+
+It brought him round.  "No--you don't even 'burn.'  I don't think,
+you know, you'll guess it."
+
+"How then can I judge how vulgar it is?"
+
+"You'll judge when I do tell you"--and he persuaded her to
+patience.  But it may even now frankly be mentioned that he in the
+sequel never WAS to tell her.  He actually never did so, and it
+moreover oddly occurred that by the law, within her, of the
+incalculable, her desire for the information dropped and her
+attitude to the question converted itself into a positive
+cultivation of ignorance.  In ignorance she could humour her fancy,
+and that proved a useful freedom.  She could treat the little
+nameless object as indeed unnameable--she could make their
+abstention enormously definite.  There might indeed have been for
+Strether the portent of this in what she next said.
+
+"Is it perhaps then because it's so bad--because your industry as
+you call it, IS so vulgar--that Mr. Chad won't come back?  Does he
+feel the taint?  Is he staying away not to be mixed up in it?"
+
+"Oh," Strether laughed, "it wouldn't appear--would it?--that he
+feels 'taints'! He's glad enough of the money from it, and the
+money's his whole basis.  There's appreciation in that--I mean as to
+the allowance his mother has hitherto made him.  She has of course
+the resource of cutting this allowance off; but even then he has
+unfortunately, and on no small scale, his independent supply--money
+left him by his grandfather, her own father."
+
+"Wouldn't the fact you mention then," Miss Gostrey asked, "make it
+just more easy for him to be particular?  Isn't he conceivable as
+fastidious about the source--the apparent and public source--of his
+income?"
+
+Strether was able quite good-humouredly to entertain the
+proposition.  "The source of his grandfather's wealth--and thereby
+of his own share in it--was not particularly noble."
+
+"And what source was it?"
+
+Strether cast about.  "Well--practices."
+
+"In business?  Infamies?  He was an old swindler?"
+
+"Oh," he said with more emphasis than spirit, "I shan't describe
+HIM nor narrate his exploits."
+
+"Lord, what abysses! And the late Mr. Newsome then?"
+
+"Well, what about him?"
+
+"Was he like the grandfather?"
+
+"No--he was on the other side of the house.  And he was different."
+
+Miss Gostrey kept it up.  "Better?"
+
+Her friend for a moment hung fire.  "No."
+
+Her comment on his hesitation was scarce the less marked for being
+mute.  "Thank you.  NOW don't you see," she went on, "why the boy
+doesn't come home?  He's drowning his shame."
+
+"His shame?  What shame?"
+
+"What shame?  Comment donc?  THE shame."
+
+"But where and when," Strether asked, "is 'THE shame'--where is any
+shame--to-day?  The men I speak of--they did as every one does; and
+(besides being ancient history) it was all a matter of appreciation."
+
+She showed how she understood.  "Mrs. Newsome has appreciated?"
+
+"Ah I can't speak for HER!"
+
+"In the midst of such doings--and, as I understand you, profiting
+by them, she at least has remained exquisite?"
+
+"Oh I can't talk of her!" Strether said.
+
+"I thought she was just what you COULD talk of.  You DON'T trust
+me," Miss Gostrey after a moment declared.
+
+It had its effect.  "Well, her money is spent, her life conceived
+and carried on with a large beneficence--"
+
+"That's a kind of expiation of wrongs?  Gracious," she added before
+he could speak, "how intensely you make me see her!"
+
+"If you see her," Strether dropped, "it's all that's necessary."
+
+She really seemed to have her.  "I feel that.  She IS, in spite of
+everything, handsome."
+
+This at least enlivened him.  "What do you mean by everything?"
+
+"Well, I mean YOU."  With which she had one of her swift changes of
+ground.  "You say the concern needs looking after;  but doesn't
+Mrs. Newsome look after it?"
+
+"So far as possible.  She's wonderfully able, but it's not her
+affair, and her life's a good deal overcharged.  She has many,
+many things."
+
+"And you also?"
+
+"Oh yes--I've many too, if you will."
+
+"I see.  But what I mean is," Miss Gostrey amended, "do you also
+look after the business?"
+
+"Oh no, I don't touch the business."
+
+"Only everything else?"
+
+"Well, yes--some things."
+
+"As for instance--?"
+
+Strether obligingly thought.  "Well, the Review."
+
+"The Review?--you have a Review?"
+
+"Certainly.  Woollett has a Review--which Mrs. Newsome, for the
+most part, magnificently pays for and which I, not at all
+magnificently, edit.  My name's on the cover," Strether pursued,
+"and I'm really rather disappointed and hurt that you seem never
+to have heard of it."
+
+She neglected for a moment this grievance.  "And what kind of a
+Review is it?"
+
+His serenity was now completely restored.  "Well, it's green."
+
+"Do you mean in political colour as they say here--in thought?"
+
+"No; I mean the cover's green--of the most lovely shade."
+
+"And with Mrs. Newsome's name on it too?"
+
+He waited a little.  "Oh as for that you must judge if she peeps
+out.  She's behind the whole thing; but she's of a delicacy and a
+discretion--!"
+
+Miss Gostrey took it all.  "I'm sure.  She WOULD be.  I don't
+underrate her.  She must be rather a swell."
+
+"Oh yes, she's rather a swell!"
+
+"A Woollett swell--bon! I like the idea of a Woollett swell.   And
+you must be rather one too, to be so mixed up with her."
+
+"Ah no," said Strether, "that's not the way it works."
+
+But she had already taken him up.  "The way it works--you needn't
+tell me!--is of course that you efface yourself."
+
+"With my name on the cover?" he lucidly objected.
+
+"Ah but you don't put it on for yourself."
+
+"I beg your pardon--that's exactly what I do put it on for.  It's
+exactly the thing that I'm reduced to doing for myself.  It seems
+to rescue a little, you see, from the wreck of hopes and ambitions,
+the refuse-heap of disappointments and failures,  my one presentable
+little scrap of an identity."
+
+On this she looked at him as to say many things, but what she at
+last simply said was:  "She likes to see it there.  You're the
+bigger swell of the two," she immediately continued,  "because you
+think you're not one.  She thinks she IS one.   However," Miss
+Gostrey added, "she thinks you're one too.   You're at all events
+the biggest she can get hold of."  She embroidered, she abounded.
+"I don't say it to interfere between you, but on the day she gets
+hold of a bigger one--!"  Strether had thrown back his head as in
+silent mirth over something that struck him in her audacity or
+felicity, and her flight meanwhile was already higher.  "Therefore
+close with her--!"
+
+"Close with her?" he asked as she seemed to hang poised.
+
+"Before you lose your chance."
+
+Their eyes met over it.  "What do you mean by closing?"
+
+"And what do I mean by your chance?  I'll tell you when you tell me
+all the things YOU don't.  Is it her GREATEST fad?" she briskly
+pursued.
+
+"The Review?"  He seemed to wonder how he could best describe it.
+This resulted however but in a sketch.  "It's her tribute to the
+ideal."
+
+"I see.  You go in for tremendous things."
+
+"We go in for the unpopular side--that is so far as we dare."
+
+"And how far DO you dare?"
+
+"Well, she very far.  I much less.  I don't begin to have her faith.
+She provides," said Strether, "three fourths of that.  And she
+provides, as I've confided to you, ALL the money."
+
+It evoked somehow a vision of gold that held for a little Miss
+Gostrey's eyes, and she looked as if she heard the bright dollars
+shovelled in.  "I hope then you make a good thing--"
+
+"I NEVER made a good thing!" he at once returned.
+
+She just waited.  "Don't you call it a good thing to be loved?"
+
+"Oh we're not loved.  We're not even hated.  We're only just sweetly
+ignored."
+
+She had another pause.  "You don't trust me!" she once more repeated.
+
+"Don't I when I lift the last veil?--tell you the very secret of
+the prison-house?"
+
+Again she met his eyes, but to the result that after an instant
+her own turned away with impatience.  "You don't sell?  Oh I'm glad
+of THAT!" After which however, and before he could protest, she was
+off again.  "She's just a MORAL swell."
+
+He accepted gaily enough the definition.  "Yes--I really think that
+describes her."
+
+But it had for his friend the oddest connexion.  "How does she do
+her hair?"
+
+He laughed out.  "Beautifully!"
+
+"Ah that doesn't tell me.  However, it doesn't matter--I know.  It's
+tremendously neat--a real reproach; quite remarkably thick and
+without, as yet, a single strand of white.  There!"
+
+He blushed for her realism, but gaped at her truth.  "You're the
+very deuce."
+
+"What else SHOULD I be?  It was as the very deuce I pounced on you.
+But don't let it trouble you, for everything but the very deuce--
+at our age--is a bore and a delusion, and even he himself, after all,
+but half a joy."  With which, on a single sweep of her wing, she
+resumed.  "You assist her to expiate--which is rather hard when
+you've yourself not sinned."
+
+"It's she who hasn't sinned," Strether replied.  "I've sinned the
+most."
+
+"Ah," Miss Gostrey cynically laughed, "what a picture of HER!
+Have you robbed the widow and the orphan?"
+
+"I've sinned enough," said Strether.
+
+"Enough for whom?  Enough for what?"
+
+"Well, to be where I am."
+
+"Thank you!" They were disturbed at this moment by the passage
+between their knees and the back of the seats before them of a
+gentleman who had been absent during a part of the performance and
+who now returned for the close; but the interruption left Miss
+Gostrey time, before the subsequent hush, to express as a sharp
+finality her sense of the moral of all their talk.  "I knew you had
+something up your sleeve!"  This finality, however, left them in its
+turn, at the end of the play, as disposed to hang back as if they
+had still much to say; so that they easily agreed to let every one
+go before them--they found an interest in waiting.  They made out
+from the lobby that the night had turned to rain; yet Miss Gostrey
+let her friend know that he wasn't to see her home.  He was simply
+to put her, by herself, into a four-wheeler; she liked so in
+London, of wet nights after wild pleasures, thinking things over,
+on the return, in lonely four-wheelers.  This was her great time,
+she intimated, for pulling herself together.  The delays caused by
+the weather, the struggle for vehicles at the door, gave them
+occasion to subside on a divan at the back of the vestibule and
+just beyond the reach of the fresh damp gusts from the street.  Here
+Strether's comrade resumed that free handling of the subject to
+which his own imagination of it already owed so much.  "Does your
+young friend in Paris like you?"
+
+It had almost, after the interval, startled him.  "Oh I hope not!
+Why SHOULD he?"
+
+"Why shouldn't he?" Miss Gostrey asked.  "That you're coming down on
+him need have nothing to do with it."
+
+"You see more in it," he presently returned, "than I."
+
+"Of course I see you in it."
+
+"Well then you see more in 'me'!"
+
+"Than you see in yourself?  Very likely.  That's always one's right.
+What I was thinking of," she explained, "is the possible particular
+effect on him of his milieu."
+
+"Oh his milieu--!"  Strether really felt he could imagine it better
+now than three hours before.
+
+"Do you mean it can only have been so lowering?"
+
+"Why that's my very starting-point."
+
+"Yes, but you start so far back.  What do his letters say?"
+
+"Nothing.  He practically ignores us--or spares us.  He doesn't
+write."
+
+"I see.  But there are all the same," she went on, "two quite
+distinct things that--given the wonderful place he's in--may have
+happened to him.  One is that he may have got brutalised.  The other
+is that he may have got refined."
+
+Strether stared--this WAS a novelty.  "Refined?"
+
+"Oh," she said quietly, "there ARE refinements."
+
+The way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh.
+"YOU have them!"
+
+"As one of the signs," she continued in the same tone, "they
+constitute perhaps the worst."
+
+He thought it over and his gravity returned.  "Is it a refinement
+not to answer his mother's letters?"
+
+She appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out.  "Oh I
+should say the greatest of all."
+
+"Well," said Strether, "I'M quite content to let it, as one of the
+signs, pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do what he
+likes with me."
+
+This appeared to strike her.  "How do you know it?"
+
+"Oh I'm sure of it.  I feel it in my bones."
+
+"Feel he CAN do it?"
+
+"Feel that he believes he can.  It may come to the same thing!"
+Strether laughed.
+
+She wouldn't, however, have this.  "Nothing for you will ever come
+to the same thing as anything else."  And she understood what she
+meant, it seemed, sufficiently to go straight on.  "You say that if
+he does break he'll come in for things at home?"
+
+"Quite positively.  He'll come in for a particular chance--a chance
+that any properly constituted young man would jump at.  The
+business has so developed that an opening scarcely apparent three
+years ago, but which his father's will took account of as in
+certain conditions possible and which, under that will, attaches
+to Chad's availing himself of it a large contingent advantage--
+this opening, the conditions having come about, now simply awaits
+him.  His mother has kept it for him, holding out against strong
+pressure, till the last possible moment.  It requires, naturally,
+as it carries with it a handsome 'part,' a large share in profits,
+his being on the spot and making a big effort for a big result.
+That's what I mean by his chance.  If he misses it he comes in, as
+you say, for nothing.  And to see that he doesn't miss it is, in a
+word, what I've come out for."
+
+She let it all sink in.  "What you've come out for then is simply
+to render him an immense service."
+
+Well, poor Strether was willing to take it so.  "Ah if you like."
+
+"He stands, as they say, if you succeed with him, to gain--"
+
+"Oh a lot of advantages."  Strether had them clearly at his
+fingers' ends.
+
+"By which you mean of course a lot of money."
+
+"Well, not only.  I'm acting with a sense for him of other things
+too.  Consideration and comfort and security--the general safety of
+being anchored by a strong chain.  He wants, as I see him, to be
+protected.  Protected I mean from life."
+
+"Ah voila!"--her thought fitted with a click.  "From life.  What you
+REALLY want to get him home for is to marry him."
+
+"Well, that's about the size of it."
+
+"Of course," she said, "it's rudimentary.  But to any one in
+particular?"
+
+He smiled at this, looking a little more conscious.  "You get
+everything out."
+
+For a moment again their eyes met.  "You put everything in!"
+
+He acknowledged the tribute by telling her.  "To Mamie Pocock."
+
+She wondered; then gravely, even exquisitely, as if to make the
+oddity also fit:  "His own niece?"
+
+"Oh you must yourself find a name for the relation.  His
+brother-in-law's sister.  Mrs. Jim's sister-in-law."
+
+It seemed to have on Miss Gostrey a certain hardening effect.  "And
+who in the world's Mrs. Jim?"
+
+"Chad's sister--who was Sarah Newsome.  She's married--didn't I
+mention it?--to Jim Pocock."
+
+"Ah yes," she tacitly replied; but he had mentioned things--!
+Then, however, with all the sound it could have, "Who in the
+world's Jim Pocock?" she asked.
+
+"Why Sally's husband.  That's the only way we distinguish people at
+Woollett," he good-humoredly explained.
+
+"And is it a great distinction--being Sally's husband?"
+
+He considered.  "I think there can be scarcely a greater--unless it
+may become one, in the future, to be Chad's wife."
+
+"Then how do they distinguish YOU?"
+
+"They DON'T--except, as I've told you, by the green cover."
+
+Once more their eyes met on it, and she held him an instant.  "The
+green cover won't--nor will ANY cover--avail you with ME.  You're
+of a depth of duplicity!"  Still, she could in her own large grasp
+of the real condone it.  "Is Mamie a great parti?"
+
+"Oh the greatest we have--our prettiest brightest girl."
+
+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!"
+Once more she embraced it all, but she had a moment of thought.
+"Poor Chad!"
+
+"Ah," said Strether cheerfully "Mamie will save him!"
+
+She was looking away, still in her vision, and she spoke with
+impatience and almost as if he hadn't understood her.  "YOU'LL save
+him.  That's who'll save him."
+
+"Oh but with Mamie's aid.  Unless indeed you mean," he added, "that
+I shall effect so much more with yours!"
+
+It made her at last again look at him.  "You'll do more--as you're
+so much better--than all of us put together."
+
+"I think I'm only better since I've known YOU!" Strether bravely
+returned.
+
+The depletion of the place, the shrinkage of the crowd and now
+comparatively quiet withdrawal of its last elements had already
+brought them nearer the door and put them in relation with a
+messenger of whom he bespoke Miss Gostrey's cab.  But this left
+them a few minutes more, which she was clearly in no mood not to
+use.  "You've spoken to me of what--by your success--Mr. Chad
+stands to gain.  But you've not spoken to me of what you do."
+
+"Oh I've nothing more to gain," said Strether very simply.
+
+She took it as even quite too simple.  "You mean you've got it all
+'down'?  You've been paid in advance?"
+
+"Ah don't talk about payment!" he groaned.
+
+Something in the tone of it pulled her up, but as their messenger
+still delayed she had another chance and she put it in another
+way.  "What--by failure--do you stand to lose?"
+
+He still, however, wouldn't have it.  "Nothing!" he exclaimed, and
+on the messenger's at this instant reappearing he was able to sink
+the subject in their responsive advance.  When, a few steps up the
+street, under a lamp, he had put her into her four-wheeler and she
+had asked him if the man had called for him no second conveyance,
+he replied before the door was closed.  "You won't take me with
+you?"
+
+"Not for the world."
+
+"Then I shall walk."
+
+"In the rain?"
+
+"I like the rain," said Strether.  "Good-night!"
+
+She kept him a moment, while his hand was on the door, by not
+answering; after which she answered by repeating her question.
+"What do you stand to lose?"
+
+Why the question now affected him as other he couldn't have said;
+he could only this time meet it otherwise.  "Everything."
+
+"So I thought.  Then you shall succeed.  And to that end I'm yours--"
+
+"Ah, dear lady!" he kindly breathed.
+
+"Till death!" said Maria Gostrey.  "Good-night."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Strether called, his second morning in Paris, on the bankers of
+the Rue Scribe to whom his letter of credit was addressed, and he
+made this visit attended by Waymarsh, in whose company he had
+crossed from London two days before.  They had hastened to the Rue
+Scribe on the morrow of their arrival, but Strether had not then
+found the letters the hope of which prompted this errand.  He had
+had as yet none at all; hadn't expected them in London, but had
+counted on several in Paris, and, disconcerted now, had presently
+strolled back to the Boulevard with a sense of injury that he felt
+himself taking for as good a start as any other.  It would serve,
+this spur to his spirit, he reflected, as, pausing at the top of
+the street, he looked up and down the great foreign avenue, it
+would serve to begin business with.  His idea was to begin business
+immediately, and it did much for him the rest of his day that the
+beginning of business awaited him.  He did little else till night
+but ask himself what he should do if he hadn't fortunately had so
+much to do; but he put himself the question in many different
+situations and connexions.  What carried him hither and yon was an
+admirable theory that nothing he could do wouldn't be in some
+manner related to what he fundamentally had on hand, or WOULD be--
+should he happen to have a scruple--wasted for it.  He did happen
+to have a scruple--a scruple about taking no definite step till he
+should get letters; but this reasoning carried it off.  A single
+day to feel his feet--he had felt them as yet only at Chester and
+in London--was he could consider, none too much; and having, as he
+had often privately expressed it, Paris to reckon with, he threw
+these hours of freshness consciously into the reckoning.  They made
+it continually greater, but that was what it had best be if it was
+to be anything at all, and he gave himself up till far into the
+evening, at the theatre and on the return, after the theatre,
+along the bright congested Boulevard, to feeling it grow.  Waymarsh
+had accompanied him this time to the play, and the two men had
+walked together, as a first stage, from the Gymnase to the Cafe
+Riche, into the crowded "terrace" of which establishment--the
+night, or rather the morning, for midnight had struck, being bland
+and populous--they had wedged themselves for refreshment.
+Waymarsh, as a result of some discussion with his friend, had made
+a marked virtue of his having now let himself go; and there had
+been elements of impression in their half-hour over their watered
+beer-glasses that gave him his occasion for conveying that he held
+this compromise with his stiffer self to have become extreme.  He
+conveyed it--for it was still, after all, his stiffer self who
+gloomed out of the glare of the terrace--in solemn silence; and
+there was indeed a great deal of critical silence, every way,
+between the companions, even till they gained the Place de l'Opera,
+as to the character of their nocturnal progress.
+
+This morning there WERE letters--letters which had reached London,
+apparently all together, the day of Strether's journey, and had
+taken their time to follow him; so that, after a controlled
+impulse to go into them in the reception-room of the bank, which,
+reminding him of the post-office at Woollett, affected him as the
+abutment of some transatlantic bridge, he slipped them into the
+pocket of his loose grey overcoat with a sense of the felicity of
+carrying them off.  Waymarsh, who had had letters yesterday, had
+had them again to-day, and Waymarsh suggested in this particular
+no controlled impulses.  The last one he was at all events likely
+to be observed to struggle with was clearly that of bringing to a
+premature close any visit to the Rue Scribe.  Strether had left him
+there yesterday; he wanted to see the papers, and he had spent, by
+what his friend could make out, a succession of hours with the
+papers.  He spoke of the establishment, with emphasis, as a post of
+superior observation; just as he spoke generally of his actual
+damnable doom as a device for hiding from him what was going on.
+Europe was best described, to his mind, as an elaborate engine for
+dissociating the confined American from that indispensable
+knowledge, and was accordingly only rendered bearable by these
+occasional stations of relief, traps for the arrest of wandering
+western airs.  Strether, on his side, set himself to walk again--he
+had his relief in his pocket; and indeed, much as he had desired
+his budget, the growth of restlessness might have been marked in
+him from the moment he had assured himself of the superscription
+of most of the missives it contained.  This restlessness became
+therefore his temporary law; he knew he should recognise as soon
+as see it the best place of all for settling down with his chief
+correspondent.  He had for the next hour an accidental air of
+looking for it in the windows of shops; he came down the Rue de la
+Paix in the sun and, passing across the Tuileries and the river,
+indulged more than once--as if on finding himself determined--in a
+sudden pause before the book-stalls of the opposite quay.  In the
+garden of the Tuileries he had lingered, on two or three spots, to
+look; it was as if the wonderful Paris spring had stayed him as he
+roamed.  The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes--in a
+soft breeze and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the
+garden-floor, of bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong
+boxes, in the type of ancient thrifty persons basking betimes
+where terrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked brass-labelled
+officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references
+of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered
+red-legged soldier.  He watched little brisk figures, figures whose
+movement was as the tick of the great Paris clock, take their
+smooth diagonal from point to point; the air had a taste as of
+something mixed with art, something that presented nature as a
+white-capped master-chef.  The palace was gone, Strether remembered
+the palace; and when he gazed into the irremediable void of its
+site the historic sense in him might have been freely at play--the
+play under which in Paris indeed it so often winces like a touched
+nerve.  He filled out spaces with dim symbols of scenes; he caught
+the gleam of white statues at the base of which, with his letters
+out, he could tilt back a straw-bottomed chair.  But his drift was,
+for reasons, to the other side, and it floated him unspent up the
+Rue de Seine and as far as the Luxembourg.  In the Luxembourg
+Gardens he pulled up; here at last he found his nook, and here, on
+a penny chair from which terraces, alleys, vistas, fountains,
+little trees in green tubs, little women in white caps and shrill
+little girls at play all sunnily "composed" together, he passed an
+hour in which the cup of his impressions seemed truly to overflow.
+But a week had elapsed since he quitted the ship, and there were
+more things in his mind than so few days could account for.  More
+than once, during the time, he had regarded himself as admonished;
+but the admonition this morning was formidably sharp.  It took as
+it hadn't done yet the form of a question--the question of what he
+was doing with such an extraordinary sense of escape.  This sense
+was sharpest after he had read his letters, but that was also
+precisely why the question pressed.  Four of the letters were from
+Mrs. Newsome and none of them short; she had lost no time, had
+followed on his heels while he moved, so expressing herself that
+he now could measure the probable frequency with which he should
+hear.  They would arrive, it would seem, her communications, at the
+rate of several a week; he should be able to count, it might even
+prove, on more than one by each mail.  If he had begun yesterday
+with a small grievance he had therefore an opportunity to begin
+to-day with its opposite.  He read the letters successively and
+slowly, putting others back into his pocket but keeping these for
+a long time afterwards gathered in his lap.  He held them there,
+lost in thought, as if to prolong the presence of what they gave
+him; or as if at the least to assure them their part in the
+constitution of some lucidity.  His friend wrote admirably, and her
+tone was even more in her style than in her voice--he might
+almost, for the hour, have had to come this distance to get its
+full carrying quality; yet the plentitude of his consciousness of
+difference consorted perfectly with the deepened intensity of the
+connexion.  It was the difference, the difference of being just
+where he was and AS he was, that formed the escape--this
+difference was so much greater than he had dreamed it would be;
+and what he finally sat there turning over was the strange logic
+of his finding himself so free.  He felt it in a manner his duty to
+think out his state, to approve the process, and when he came in
+fact to trace the steps and add up the items they sufficiently
+accounted for the sum.  He had never expected--that was the truth
+of it--again to find himself young, and all the years and other
+things it had taken to make him so were exactly his present
+arithmetic.  He had to make sure of them to put his scruple to
+rest.
+
+It all sprang at bottom from the beauty of Mrs. Newsome's desire
+that he should be worried with nothing that was not of the essence
+of his task; by insisting that he should thoroughly intermit and
+break she had so provided for his freedom that she would, as it
+were, have only herself to thank.  Strether could not at this point
+indeed have completed his thought by the image of what she might
+have to thank herself FOR:  the image, at best, of his own
+likeness-poor Lambert Strether washed up on the sunny strand by
+the waves of a single day, poor Lambert Strether thankful for
+breathing-time and stiffening himself while he gasped.  There he
+was, and with nothing in his aspect or his posture to scandalise:
+it was only true that if he had seen Mrs. Newsome coming he would
+instinctively have jumped up to walk away a little.  He would have
+come round and back to her bravely, but he would have had first to
+pull himself together.  She abounded in news of the situation at
+home, proved to him how perfectly she was arranging for his
+absence, told him who would take up this and who take up that
+exactly where he had left it, gave him in fact chapter and verse
+for the moral that nothing would suffer.  It filled for him, this
+tone of hers, all the air; yet it struck him at the same time as
+the hum of vain things.  This latter effect was what he tried to
+justify--and with the success that, grave though the appearance,
+he at last lighted on a form that was happy.  He arrived at it by
+the inevitable recognition of his having been a fortnight before
+one of the weariest of men.  If ever a man had come off tired
+Lambert Strether was that man; and hadn't it been distinctly on
+the ground of his fatigue that his wonderful friend at home had so
+felt for him and so contrived?  It seemed to him somehow at these
+instants that, could he only maintain with sufficient firmness his
+grasp of that truth, it might become in a manner his compass and
+his helm.  What he wanted most was some idea that would simplify,
+and nothing would do this so much as the fact that he was done for
+and finished.  If it had been in such a light that he had just
+detected in his cup the dregs of youth, that was a mere flaw of
+the surface of his scheme.  He was so distinctly fagged-out that it
+must serve precisely as his convenience, and if he could but
+consistently be good for little enough he might do everything he
+wanted.
+
+Everything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon--the
+common unattainable art of taking things as they came.  He appeared
+to himself to have given his best years to an active appreciation
+of the way they didn't come; but perhaps--as they would seemingly
+here be things quite other--this long ache might at last drop to
+rest.  He could easily see that from the moment he should accept
+the notion of his foredoomed collapse the last thing he would lack
+would be reasons and memories.  Oh if he SHOULD do the sum no slate
+would hold the figures! The fact that he had failed, as he
+considered, in everything, in each relation and in half a dozen
+trades, as he liked luxuriously to put it, might have made, might
+still make, for an empty present; but it stood solidly for a
+crowded past.  It had not been, so much achievement missed, a light
+yoke nor a short load.[sic]  It was at present as if the backward
+picture had hung there, the long crooked course, grey in the
+shadow of his solitude.  It had been a dreadful cheerful sociable
+solitude, a solitude of life or choice, of community; but though
+there had been people enough all round it there had been but three
+or four persons IN it.  Waymarsh was one of these, and the fact
+struck him just now as marking the record.  Mrs. Newsome was
+another, and Miss Gostrey had of a sudden shown signs of becoming
+a third.  Beyond, behind them was the pale figure of his real
+youth, which held against its breast the two presences paler than
+itself--the young wife he had early lost and the young son he had
+stupidly sacrificed.  He had again and again made out for himself
+that he might have kept his little boy, his little dull boy who
+had died at school of rapid diphtheria, if he had not in those
+years so insanely given himself to merely missing the mother.  It
+was the soreness of his remorse that the child had in all
+likelihood not really been dull--had been dull, as he had been
+banished and neglected, mainly because the father had been
+unwittingly selfish.  This was doubtless but the secret habit of
+sorrow, which had slowly given way to time; yet there remained an
+ache sharp enough to make the spirit, at the sight now and again
+of some fair young man just growing up, wince with the thought of
+an opportunity lost.  Had ever a man, he had finally fallen into
+the way of asking himself, lost so much and even done so much for
+so little?  There had been particular reasons why all yesterday,
+beyond other days, he should have had in one ear this cold
+enquiry.  His name on the green cover, where he had put it for Mrs.
+Newsome, expressed him doubtless just enough to make the world--
+the world as distinguished, both for more and for less, from
+Woollett--ask who he was.  He had incurred the ridicule of having
+to have his explanation explained.  He was Lambert Strether because
+he was on the cover, whereas it should have been, for anything
+like glory, that he was on the cover because he was Lambert
+Strether.  He would have done anything for Mrs. Newsome, have been
+still more ridiculous--as he might, for that matter, have occasion
+to be yet; which came to saying that this acceptance of fate was
+all he had to show at fifty-five.
+
+He judged the quantity as small because it WAS small, and all the
+more egregiously since it couldn't, as he saw the case, so much as
+thinkably have been larger.  He hadn't had the gift of making the
+most of what he tried, and if he had tried and tried again--no one
+but himself knew how often--it appeared to have been that he might
+demonstrate what else, in default of that, COULD be made.  Old
+ghosts of experiments came back to him, old drudgeries and
+delusions, and disgusts, old recoveries with their relapses, old
+fevers with their chills, broken moments of good faith, others of
+still better doubt; adventures, for the most part, of the sort
+qualified as lessons.  The special spring that had constantly
+played for him the day before was the recognition--frequent enough
+to surprise him--of the promises to himself that he had after his
+other visit never kept.  The reminiscence to-day most quickened for
+him was that of the vow taken in the course of the pilgrimage
+that, newly-married, with the War just over, and helplessly young
+in spite of it, he had recklessly made with the creature who was
+so much younger still.  It had been a bold dash, for which they had
+taken money set apart for necessities, but kept sacred at the
+moment in a hundred ways, and in none more so than by this private
+pledge of his own to treat the occasion as a relation formed with
+the higher culture and see that, as they said at Woollett, it
+should bear a good harvest.  He had believed, sailing home again,
+that he had gained something great, and his theory--with an
+elaborate innocent plan of reading, digesting, coming back even,
+every few years--had then been to preserve, cherish and extend it.
+As such plans as these had come to nothing, however, in respect to
+acquisitions still more precious, it was doubtless little enough
+of a marvel that he should have lost account of that handful of
+seed.  Buried for long years in dark corners at any rate these few
+germs had sprouted again under forty-eight hours of Paris.  The
+process of yesterday had really been the process of feeling the
+general stirred life of connexions long since individually
+dropped.  Strether had become acquainted even on this ground with
+short gusts of speculation--sudden flights of fancy in Louvre
+galleries, hungry gazes through clear plates behind which
+lemon-coloured volumes were as fresh as fruit on the tree.
+
+There were instants at which he could ask whether, since there had
+been fundamentally so little question of his keeping anything, the
+fate after all decreed for him hadn't been only to BE kept.  Kept
+for something, in that event, that he didn't pretend, didn't
+possibly dare as yet to divine; something that made him hover and
+wonder and laugh and sigh, made him advance and retreat, feeling
+half ashamed of his impulse to plunge and more than half afraid of
+his impulse to wait.  He remembered for instance how he had gone
+back in the sixties with lemon-coloured volumes in general on the
+brain as well as with a dozen--selected for his wife too--in his
+trunk; and nothing had at the moment shown more confidence than
+this invocation of the finer taste.  They were still somewhere at
+home, the dozen--stale and soiled and never sent to the binder;
+but what had become of the sharp initiation they represented?  They
+represented now the mere sallow paint on the door of the temple of
+taste that he had dreamed of raising up--a structure he had
+practically never carried further.  Strether's present highest
+flights were perhaps those in which this particular lapse figured
+to him as a symbol, a symbol of his long grind and his want of odd
+moments, his want moreover of money, of opportunity, of positive
+dignity.  That the memory of the vow of his youth should, in order
+to throb again, have had to wait for this last, as he felt it, of
+all his accidents--that was surely proof enough of how his
+conscience had been encumbered.  If any further proof were needed
+it would have been to be found in the fact that, as he perfectly
+now saw, he had ceased even to measure his meagreness, a
+meagreness that sprawled, in this retrospect, vague and
+comprehensive, stretching back like some unmapped Hinterland from
+a rough coast-settlement.  His conscience had been amusing itself
+for the forty-eight hours by forbidding him the purchase of a
+book; he held off from that, held off from everything; from the
+moment he didn't yet call on Chad he wouldn't for the world have
+taken any other step.  On this evidence, however, of the way they
+actually affected him he glared at the lemon-coloured covers in
+confession of the subconsciousness that, all the same, in the
+great desert of the years, he must have had of them.  The green
+covers at home comprised, by the law of their purpose, no tribute
+to letters; it was of a mere rich kernel of economics, politics,
+ethics that, glazed and, as Mrs. Newsome maintained rather against
+HIS view, pre-eminently pleasant to touch, they formed the
+specious shell.  Without therefore any needed instinctive knowledge
+of what was coming out, in Paris, on the bright highway, he struck
+himself at present as having more than once flushed with a
+suspicion:  he couldn't otherwise at present be feeling so many
+fears confirmed.  There were "movements" he was too late for:
+weren't they, with the fun of them, already spent?  There were
+sequences he had missed and great gaps in the procession:  he might
+have been watching it all recede in a golden cloud of dust.  If the
+playhouse wasn't closed his seat had at least fallen to somebody
+else.  He had had an uneasy feeling the night before that if he was
+at the theatre at all--though he indeed justified the theatre, in
+the specific sense, and with a grotesqueness to which his
+imagination did all honour, as something he owed poor Waymarsh--he
+should have been there with, and as might have been said, FOR
+Chad.
+
+This suggested the question of whether he could properly have
+taken him to such a play, and what effect--it was a point that
+suddenly rose--his peculiar responsibility might be held in
+general to have on his choice of entertainment.  It had literally
+been present to him at the Gymnase--where one was held moreover
+comparatively safe--that having his young friend at his side would
+have been an odd feature of the work of redemption; and this quite
+in spite of the fact that the picture presented might well,
+confronted with Chad's own private stage, have seemed the pattern
+of propriety.  He clearly hadn't come out in the name of propriety
+but to visit unattended equivocal performances; yet still less had
+he done so to undermine his authority by sharing them with the
+graceless youth.  Was he to renounce all amusement for the sweet
+sake of that authority? and WOULD such renouncement give him for
+Chad a moral glamour?  The little problem bristled the more by
+reason of poor Strether's fairly open sense of the irony of
+things.  Were there then sides on which his predicament threatened
+to look rather droll to him?  Should he have to pretend to believe--
+either to himself or the wretched boy--that there was anything
+that could make the latter worse?  Wasn't some such pretence on the
+other hand involved in the assumption of possible processes that
+would make him better?  His greatest uneasiness seemed to peep at
+him out of the imminent impression that almost any acceptance of
+Paris might give one's authority away.  It hung before him this
+morning, the vast bright Babylon, like some huge iridescent
+object, a jewel brilliant and hard, in which parts were not to be
+discriminated nor differences comfortably marked.  It twinkled and
+trembled and melted together, and what seemed all surface one
+moment seemed all depth the next.  It was a place of which,
+unmistakeably, Chad was fond; wherefore if he, Strether, should
+like it too much, what on earth, with such a bond, would become of
+either of them?  It all depended of course--which was a gleam of
+light--on how the "too much" was measured; though indeed our
+friend fairly felt, while he prolonged the meditation I describe,
+that for himself even already a certain measure had been reached.
+It will have been sufficiently seen that he was not a man to
+neglect any good chance for reflexion.  Was it at all possible for
+instance to like Paris enough without liking it too much?  He
+luckily however hadn't promised Mrs. Newsome not to like it at
+all.  He was ready to recognise at this stage that such an
+engagement WOULD have tied his hands.  The Luxembourg Gardens were
+incontestably just so adorable at this hour by reason--in addition
+to their intrinsic charm--of his not having taken it.  The only
+engagement he had taken, when he looked the thing in the face, was
+to do what he reasonably could.
+
+It upset him a little none the less and after a while to find
+himself at last remembering on what current of association he had
+been floated so far.  Old imaginations of the Latin Quarter had
+played their part for him, and he had duly recalled its having
+been with this scene of rather ominous legend that, like so many
+young men in fiction as well as in fact, Chad had begun.  He was
+now quite out of it, with his "home," as Strether figured the
+place, in the Boulevard Malesherbes; which was perhaps why,
+repairing, not to fail of justice either, to the elder
+neighbourhood, our friend had felt he could allow for the element
+of the usual, the immemorial, without courting perturbation.  He
+was not at least in danger of seeing the youth and the particular
+Person flaunt by together; and yet he was in the very air of
+which--just to feel what the early natural note must have been--he
+wished most to take counsel.  It became at once vivid to him that
+he had originally had, for a few days, an almost envious vision of
+the boy's romantic privilege.  Melancholy Murger, with Francine and
+Musette and Rodolphe, at home, in the company of the tattered,
+one--if he not in his single self two or three--of the unbound,
+the paper-covered dozen on the shelf; and when Chad had written,
+five years ago, after a sojourn then already prolonged to six
+months, that he had decided to go in for economy and the real
+thing, Strether's fancy had quite fondly accompanied him in this
+migration, which was to convey him, as they somewhat confusedly
+learned at Woollett, across the bridges and up the Montagne
+Sainte-Genevieve.  This was the region--Chad had been quite
+distinct about it--in which the best French, and many other
+things, were to be learned at least cost, and in which all sorts
+of clever fellows, compatriots there for a purpose, formed an
+awfully pleasant set.  The clever fellows, the friendly countrymen
+were mainly young painters, sculptors, architects, medical
+students; but they were, Chad sagely opined, a much more
+profitable lot to be with--even on the footing of not being quite
+one of them--than the "terrible toughs" (Strether remembered the
+edifying discrimination) of the American bars and banks
+roundabout the Opera.  Chad had thrown out, in the communications
+following this one--for at that time he did once in a while
+communicate--that several members of a band of earnest workers
+under one of the great artists had taken him right in, making him
+dine every night, almost for nothing, at their place, and even
+pressing him not to neglect the hypothesis of there being as much
+"in him" as in any of them.  There had been literally a moment at
+which it appeared there might be something in him; there had been
+at any rate a moment at which he had written that he didn't know
+but what a month or two more might see him enrolled in some
+atelier.  The season had been one at which Mrs. Newsome was moved
+to gratitude for small mercies; it had broken on them all as a
+blessing that their absentee HAD perhaps a conscience--that he was
+sated in fine with idleness, was ambitious of variety.  The
+exhibition was doubtless as yet not brilliant, but Strether
+himself, even by that time much enlisted and immersed, had
+determined, on the part of the two ladies, a temperate approval
+and in fact, as he now recollected, a certain austere enthusiasm.
+
+But the very next thing that happened had been a dark drop of the
+curtain.  The son and brother had not browsed long on the Montagne
+Sainte-Genevieve--his effective little use of the name of which,
+like his allusion to the best French, appeared to have been but
+one of the notes of his rough cunning.  The light refreshment of
+these vain appearances had not accordingly carried any of them
+very far.  On the other hand it had gained Chad time; it had given
+him a chance, unchecked, to strike his roots, had paved the way
+for initiations more direct and more deep.  It was Strether's
+belief that he had been comparatively innocent before this first
+migration, and even that the first effects of the migration would
+not have been, without some particular bad accident, to have been
+deplored.  There had been three months--he had sufficiently figured
+it out--in which Chad had wanted to try.  He HAD tried, though not
+very hard--he had had his little hour of good faith.  The weakness
+of this principle in him was that almost any accident attestedly
+bad enough was stronger.  Such had at any rate markedly been the
+case for the precipitation of a special series of impressions.
+They had proved, successively, these impressions--all of Musette
+and Francine, but Musette and Francine vulgarised by the larger
+evolution of the type--irresistibly sharp:  he had "taken up," by
+what was at the time to be shrinkingly gathered, as it was scantly
+mentioned, with one ferociously "interested" little person after
+another.  Strether had read somewhere of a Latin motto, a
+description of the hours, observed on a clock by a traveller in
+Spain; and he had been led to apply it in thought to Chad's number
+one, number two, number three.  Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat--they
+had all morally wounded, the last had morally killed.  The last had
+been longest in possession--in possession, that is, of whatever
+was left of the poor boy's finer mortality.  And it hadn't been
+she, it had been one of her early predecessors, who had determined
+the second migration, the expensive return and relapse, the
+exchange again, as was fairly to be presumed, of the vaunted best
+French for some special variety of the worst.
+
+He pulled himself then at last together for his own progress back;
+not with the feeling that he had taken his walk in vain.  He
+prolonged it a little, in the immediate neighbourhood, after he
+had quitted his chair; and the upshot of the whole morning for him
+was that his campaign had begun.  He had wanted to put himself in
+relation, and he would be hanged if he were NOT in relation.  He
+was that at no moment so much as while, under the old arches of
+the Odeon, he lingered before the charming open-air array of
+literature classic and casual.  He found the effect of tone and
+tint, in the long charged tables and shelves, delicate and
+appetising; the impression--substituting one kind of low-priced
+consommation for another--might have been that of one of the
+pleasant cafes that overlapped, under an awning, to the pavement;
+but he edged along, grazing the tables, with his hands firmly
+behind him.  He wasn't there to dip, to consume--he was there to
+reconstruct.  He wasn't there for his own profit--not, that is, the
+direct; he was there on some chance of feeling the brush of the
+wing of the stray spirit of youth.  He felt it in fact, he had it
+beside him; the old arcade indeed, as his inner sense listened,
+gave out the faint sound, as from far off, of the wild waving of
+wings.  They were folded now over the breasts of buried generations;
+but a flutter or two lived again in the turned page of shock-headed
+slouch-hatted loiterers whose young intensity of type, in the direction
+of pale acuteness, deepened his vision, and even his appreciation,
+of racial differences, and whose manipulation of the uncut volume was
+too often, however, but a listening at closed doors.  He reconstructed
+a possible groping Chad of three or four years before, a Chad who had,
+after all, simply--for that was the only way to see it--been too vulgar
+for his privilege.  Surely it WAS a privilege to have been young and
+happy just there.  Well, the best thing Strether knew of him was that
+he had had such a dream.
+
+But his own actual business half an hour later was with a third
+floor on the Boulevard Malesherbes--so much as that was definite;
+and the fact of the enjoyment by the third-floor windows of a
+continuous balcony, to which he was helped by this knowledge, had
+perhaps something to do with his lingering for five minutes on the
+opposite side of the street.  There were points as to which he had
+quite made up his mind, and one of these bore precisely on the
+wisdom of the abruptness to which events had finally committed him,
+a policy that he was pleased to find not at all shaken as he now
+looked at his watch and wondered.  He HAD announced himself--six
+months before; had written out at least that Chad wasn't to be
+surprised should he see him some day turn up.  Chad had thereupon,
+in a few words of rather carefully colourless answer, offered him a
+general welcome; and Strether, ruefully reflecting that he might
+have understood the warning as a hint to hospitality, a bid for an
+invitation, had fallen back upon silence as the corrective most to
+his own taste.  He had asked Mrs. Newsome moreover not to announce
+him again; he had so distinct an opinion on his attacking his job,
+should he attack it at all, in his own way.  Not the least of this
+lady's high merits for him was that he could absolutely rest on her
+word.  She was the only woman he had known, even at Woollett, as to
+whom his conviction was positive that to lie was beyond her art.
+Sarah Pocock, for instance, her own daughter, though with social
+ideals, as they said, in some respects different--Sarah who WAS, in
+her way, aesthetic, had never refused to human commerce that
+mitigation of rigour; there were occasions when he had distinctly
+seen her apply it.  Since, accordingly, at all events, he had had it
+from Mrs. Newsome that she had, at whatever cost to her more
+strenuous view, conformed, in the matter of preparing Chad, wholly
+to his restrictions, he now looked up at the fine continuous
+balcony with a safe sense that if the case had been bungled the
+mistake was at least his property.  Was there perhaps just a
+suspicion of that in his present pause on the edge of the Boulevard
+and well in the pleasant light?
+
+Many things came over him here, and one of them was that he should
+doubtless presently know whether he had been shallow or sharp.
+Another was that the balcony in question didn't somehow show as a
+convenience easy to surrender.  Poor Strether had at this very
+moment to recognise the truth that wherever one paused in Paris the
+imagination reacted before one could stop it.  This perpetual
+reaction put a price, if one would, on pauses; but it piled up
+consequences till there was scarce room to pick one's steps among
+them.  What call had he, at such a juncture, for example, to like
+Chad's very house?  High broad clear--he was expert enough to make
+out in a moment that it was admirably built--it fairly embarrassed
+our friend by the quality that, as he would have said, it "sprang"
+on him.  He had struck off the fancy that it might, as a
+preliminary, be of service to him to be seen, by a happy accident,
+from the third-story windows, which took all the March sun, but of
+what service was it to find himself making out after a moment that
+the quality "sprung," the quality produced by measure and balance,
+the fine relation of part to part and space to space, was probably--
+aided by the presence of ornament as positive as it was discreet,
+and by the complexion of the stone, a cold fair grey, warmed and
+polished a little by life--neither more nor less than a case of
+distinction, such a case as he could only feel unexpectedly as a
+sort of delivered challenge? Meanwhile, however, the chance he had
+allowed for--the chance of being seen in time from the balcony--had
+become a fact.  Two or three of the windows stood open to the violet
+air; and, before Strether had cut the knot by crossing, a young man
+had come out and looked about him, had lighted a cigarette and
+tossed the match over, and then, resting on the rail, had given
+himself up to watching the life below while he smoked.  His arrival
+contributed, in its order, to keeping Strether in position; the
+result of which in turn was that Strether soon felt himself
+noticed.  The young man began to look at him as in acknowledgement
+of his being himself in observation.
+
+This was interesting so far as it went, but the interest was
+affected by the young man's not being Chad.  Strether wondered at
+first if he were perhaps Chad altered, and then saw that this was
+asking too much of alteration.  The young man was light bright and
+alert--with an air too pleasant to have been arrived at by
+patching.  Strether had conceived Chad as patched, but not beyond
+recognition.  He was in presence, he felt, of amendments enough as
+they stood; it was a sufficient amendment that the gentleman up
+there should be Chad's friend.  He was young too then, the gentleman
+up there--he was very young; young enough apparently to be amused
+at an elderly watcher, to be curious even to see what the elderly
+watcher would do on finding himself watched.  There was youth in
+that, there was youth in the surrender to the balcony, there was
+youth for Strether at this moment in everything but his own
+business; and Chad's thus pronounced association with youth had
+given the next instant an extraordinary quick lift to the issue.
+The balcony, the distinguished front, testified suddenly, for
+Strether's fancy, to something that was up and up; they placed the
+whole case materially, and as by an admirable image, on a level
+that he found himself at the end of another moment rejoicing to
+think he might reach.  The young man looked at him still, he looked
+at the young man; and the issue, by a rapid process, was that this
+knowledge of a perched privacy appeared to him the last of
+luxuries.  To him too the perched privacy was open, and he saw it
+now but in one light--that of the only domicile, the only fireside,
+in the great ironic city, on which he had the shadow of a claim.
+Miss Gostrey had a fireside; she had told him of it, and it was
+something that doubtless awaited him; but Miss Gostrey hadn't yet
+arrived--she mightn't arrive for days; and the sole attenuation of
+his excluded state was his vision of the small, the admittedly
+secondary hotel in the bye-street from the Rue de la Paix, in which
+her solicitude for his purse had placed him, which affected him
+somehow as all indoor chill, glass-roofed court and slippery
+staircase, and which, by the same token, expressed the presence of
+Waymarsh even at times when Waymarsh might have been certain to be
+round at the bank.  It came to pass before he moved that Waymarsh,
+and Waymarsh alone, Waymarsh not only undiluted but positively
+strengthened, struck him as the present alternative to the young
+man in the balcony.  When he did move it was fairly to escape that
+alternative.  Taking his way over the street at last and passing
+through the porte-cochere of the house was like consciously leaving
+Waymarsh out.  However, he would tell him all about it.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Third
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Strether told Waymarsh all about it that very evening, on their
+dining together at the hotel; which needn't have happened, he was
+all the while aware, hadn't he chosen to sacrifice to this occasion
+a rarer opportunity.  The mention to his companion of the sacrifice
+was moreover exactly what introduced his recital--or, as he would
+have called it with more confidence in his interlocutor, his
+confession.  His confession was that he had been captured and that
+one of the features of the affair had just failed to be his
+engaging himself on the spot to dinner.  As by such a freedom
+Waymarsh would have lost him he had obeyed his scruple; and he had
+likewise obeyed another scruple--which bore on the question of his
+himself bringing a guest.
+
+Waymarsh looked gravely ardent, over the finished soup, at this
+array of scruples; Strether hadn't yet got quite used to being so
+unprepared for the consequences of the impression he produced.  It
+was comparatively easy to explain, however, that he hadn't felt
+sure his guest would please.  The person was a young man whose
+acquaintance he had made but that afternoon in the course of rather
+a hindered enquiry for another person--an enquiry his new friend
+had just prevented in fact from being vain.  "Oh," said Strether,
+"I've all sorts of things to tell you!"--and he put it in a way
+that was a virtual hint to Waymarsh to help him to enjoy the
+telling.  He waited for his fish, he drank of his wine, he wiped his
+long moustache, he leaned back in his chair, he took in the two
+English ladies who had just creaked past them and whom he would
+even have articulately greeted if they hadn't rather chilled the
+impulse; so that all he could do was--by way of doing something--to
+say "Merci, Francois!" out quite loud when his fish was brought.
+Everything was there that he wanted, everything that could make the
+moment an occasion, that would do beautifully--everything but what
+Waymarsh might give.  The little waxed salle-a-manger was sallow and
+sociable; Francois, dancing over it, all smiles, was a man and a
+brother; the high-shouldered patronne, with her high-held,
+much-rubbed hands, seemed always assenting exuberantly to something
+unsaid; the Paris evening in short was, for Strether, in the very
+taste of the soup, in the goodness, as he was innocently pleased to
+think it, of the wine, in the pleasant coarse texture of the napkin
+and the crunch of the thick-crusted bread.  These all were things
+congruous with his confession, and his confession was that he HAD--
+it would come out properly just there if Waymarsh would only take
+it properly--agreed to breakfast out, at twelve literally, the next
+day.  He didn't quite know where; the delicacy of the case came
+straight up in the remembrance of his new friend's "We'll see; I'll
+take you somewhere!"--for it had required little more than that,
+after all, to let him right in.  He was affected after a minute,
+face to face with his actual comrade, by the impulse to overcolour.
+There had already been things in respect to which he knew himself
+tempted by this perversity.  If Waymarsh thought them bad he should
+at least have his reason for his discomfort; so Strether showed
+them as worse.  Still, he was now, in his way, sincerely perplexed.
+
+Chad had been absent from the Boulevard Malesherbes--was absent
+from Paris altogether; he had learned that from the concierge, but
+had nevertheless gone up, and gone up--there were no two ways about
+it--from an uncontrollable, a really, if one would, depraved
+curiosity.  The concierge had mentioned to him that a friend of the
+tenant of the troisieme was for the time in possession; and this
+had been Strether's pretext for a further enquiry, an experiment
+carried on, under Chad's roof, without his knowledge.  "I found his
+friend in fact there keeping the place warm, as he called it, for
+him; Chad himself being, as appears, in the south.  He went a month
+ago to Cannes and though his return begins to be looked for it
+can't be for some days.  I might, you see, perfectly have waited a
+week; might have beaten a retreat as soon as I got this essential
+knowledge.  But I beat no retreat; I did the opposite; I stayed, I
+dawdled, I trifled; above all I looked round.  I saw, in fine; and--
+I don't know what to call it--I sniffed.  It's a detail, but it's as
+if there were something--something very good--TO sniff."
+
+Waymarsh's face had shown his friend an attention apparently so
+remote that the latter was slightly surprised to find it at this
+point abreast with him.  "Do you mean a smell? What of?"
+
+"A charming scent.  But I don't know."
+
+Waymarsh gave an inferential grunt.  "Does he live there with a
+woman?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Waymarsh waited an instant for more, then resumed.  "Has he taken
+her off with him?"
+
+"And will he bring her back?"--Strether fell into the enquiry.  But
+he wound it up as before.  "I don't know."
+
+The way he wound it up, accompanied as this was with another drop
+back, another degustation of the Leoville, another wipe of his
+moustache and another good word for Francois, seemed to produce in
+his companion a slight irritation.  "Then what the devil DO you
+know?"
+
+"Well," said Strether almost gaily, "I guess I don't know anything!"
+His gaiety might have been a tribute to the fact that the state he
+had been reduced to did for him again what had been done by his talk
+of the matter with Miss Gostrey at the London theatre.  It was somehow
+enlarging; and the air of that amplitude was now doubtless more or
+less--and all for Waymarsh to feel--in his further response.  "That's
+what I found out from the young man."
+
+"But I thought you said you found out nothing."
+
+"Nothing but that--that I don't know anything."
+
+"And what good does that do you?"
+
+"It's just," said Strether, "what I've come to you to help me to
+discover.  I mean anything about anything over here.  I FELT that, up
+there.  It regularly rose before me in its might.  The young man
+moreover--Chad's friend--as good as told me so."
+
+"As good as told you you know nothing about anything?"  Waymarsh
+appeared to look at some one who might have as good as told HIM.
+"How old is he?"
+
+"Well, I guess not thirty."
+
+"Yet you had to take that from him?"
+
+"Oh I took a good deal more--since, as I tell you, I took an
+invitation to dejeuner."
+
+"And are you GOING to that unholy meal?"
+
+"If you'll come with me.  He wants you too, you know.  I told him
+about you.  He gave me his card," Strether pursued, "and his name's
+rather funny.  It's John Little Bilham, and he says his two surnames
+are, on account of his being small, inevitably used together."
+
+"Well," Waymarsh asked with due detachment from these details,
+"what's he doing up there?"
+
+"His account of himself is that he's 'only a little artist-man.'
+That seemed to me perfectly to describe him.  But he's yet in the
+phase of study; this, you know, is the great art-school--to pass a
+certain number of years in which he came over.  And he's a great
+friend of Chad's, and occupying Chad's rooms just now because
+they're so pleasant.  HE'S very pleasant and curious too," Strether
+added--"though he's not from Boston."
+
+Waymarsh looked already rather sick of him.  "Where is he from?"
+
+Strether thought.  "I don't know that, either.  But he's
+'notoriously,' as he put it himself, not from Boston."
+
+"Well," Waymarsh moralised from dry depths, "every one can't
+notoriously be from Boston.  Why," he continued, "is he curious?"
+
+"Perhaps just for THAT--for one thing! But really," Strether added,
+"for everything.  When you meet him you'll see."
+
+"Oh I don't want to meet him," Waymarsh impatiently growled.  "Why
+don't he go home?"
+
+Strether hesitated.  "Well, because he likes it over here."
+
+This appeared in particular more than Waymarsh could bear.  "He
+ought then to be ashamed of himself, and, as you admit that you
+think so too, why drag him in?"
+
+Strether's reply again took time.  "Perhaps I do think so myself--
+though I don't quite yet admit it.  I'm not a bit sure--it's again
+one of the things I want to find out.  I liked him, and CAN you like
+people--? But no matter."  He pulled himself up.  "There's no doubt I
+want you to come down on me and squash me."
+
+Waymarsh helped himself to the next course, which, however proving
+not the dish he had just noted as supplied to the English ladies,
+had the effect of causing his imagination temporarily to wander.
+But it presently broke out at a softer spot.  "Have they got a
+handsome place up there?"
+
+"Oh a charming place; full of beautiful and valuable things.  I
+never saw such a place"--and Strether's thought went back to it.
+"For a little artist-man--!"  He could in fact scarce express it.
+
+But his companion, who appeared now to have a view, insisted.
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, life can hold nothing better.  Besides, they're things of
+which he's in charge."
+
+"So that he does doorkeeper for your precious pair? Can life,"
+Waymarsh enquired, "hold nothing better than THAT?"  Then as
+Strether, silent, seemed even yet to wonder, "Doesn't he know what
+SHE is?" he went on.
+
+"I don't know.  I didn't ask him.  I couldn't.  It was impossible.  You
+wouldn't either.  Besides I didn't want to.  No more would you."
+Strether in short explained it at a stroke.  "You can't make out
+over here what people do know."
+
+"Then what did you come over for?"
+
+"Well, I suppose exactly to see for myself--without their aid."
+
+"Then what do you want mine for?"
+
+"Oh," Strether laughed, "you're not one of THEM!  I do know what you
+know."
+
+As, however, this last assertion caused Waymarsh again to look at
+him hard--such being the latter's doubt of its implications--he
+felt his justification lame.  Which was still more the case when
+Waymarsh presently said:  "Look here, Strether.  Quit this."
+
+Our friend smiled with a doubt of his own.  "Do you mean my tone?"
+
+"No--damn your tone.  I mean your nosing round.  Quit the whole job.
+Let them stew in their juice.  You're being used for a thing you
+ain't fit for.  People don't take a fine-tooth comb to groom a
+horse."
+
+"Am I a fine-tooth comb?" Strether laughed.  "It's something I never
+called myself!"
+
+"It's what you are, all the same.  You ain't so young as you were,
+but you've kept your teeth."
+
+He acknowledged his friend's humour.  "Take care I don't get them
+into YOU! You'd like them, my friends at home, Waymarsh," he
+declared; "you'd really particularly like them.  And I know"--it was
+slightly irrelevant, but he gave it sudden and singular force--"I
+know they'd like you!"
+
+"Oh don't work them off on ME!" Waymarsh groaned.
+
+Yet Strether still lingered with his hands in his pockets.  "It's
+really quite as indispensable as I say that Chad should be got
+back."
+
+"Indispensable to whom? To you?"
+
+"Yes," Strether presently said.
+
+"Because if you get him you also get Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+Strether faced it.  "Yes."
+
+"And if you don't get him you don't get her?"
+
+It might be merciless, but he continued not to flinch.  "I think it
+might have some effect on our personal understanding.  Chad's of
+real importance--or can easily become so if he will--to the
+business."
+
+"And the business is of real importance to his mother's husband?"
+
+"Well, I naturally want what my future wife wants.  And the thing
+will be much better if we have our own man in it."
+
+"If you have your own man in it, in other words," Waymarsh said,
+"you'll marry--you personally--more money.  She's already rich, as I
+understand you, but she'll be richer still if the business can be
+made to boom on certain lines that you've laid down."
+
+"I haven't laid them down," Strether promptly returned.  "Mr. Newsome
+--who knew extraordinarily well what he was about--laid them down
+ten years ago."
+
+Oh well, Waymarsh seemed to indicate with a shake of his mane, THAT
+didn't matter! "You're fierce for the boom anyway."
+
+His friend weighed a moment in silence the justice of the charge.
+"I can scarcely be called fierce, I think, when I so freely take my
+chance of the possibility, the danger, of being influenced in a
+sense counter to Mrs. Newsome's own feelings."
+
+Waymarsh gave this proposition a long hard look.  "I see.  You're
+afraid yourself of being squared.  But you're a humbug," he added,
+all the same."
+
+"Oh!" Strether quickly protested.
+
+"Yes, you ask me for protection--which makes you very interesting;
+and then you won't take it.  You say you want to be squashed--"
+
+"Ah but not so easily! Don't you see," Strether demanded "where my
+interest, as already shown you, lies? It lies in my not being
+squared.  If I'm squared where's my marriage? If I miss my errand I
+miss that; and if I miss that I miss everything--I'm nowhere."
+
+Waymarsh--but all relentlessly--took this in.  "What do I care where
+you are if you're spoiled?"
+
+Their eyes met on it an instant.  "Thank you awfully," Strether at
+last said.  "But don't you think HER judgement of that--?"
+
+"Ought to content me? No."
+
+It kept them again face to face, and the end of this was that
+Strether again laughed.  "You do her injustice.  You really MUST know
+her.  Good-night."
+
+He breakfasted with Mr. Bilham on the morrow, and, as
+inconsequently befell, with Waymarsh massively of the party.  The
+latter announced, at the eleventh hour and much to his friend's
+surprise, that, damn it, he would as soon join him as do anything
+else; on which they proceeded together, strolling in a state of
+detachment practically luxurious for them to the Boulevard
+Malesherbes, a couple engaged that day with the sharp spell of
+Paris as confessedly, it might have been seen, as any couple
+among the daily thousands so compromised.  They walked, wandered,
+wondered and, a little, lost themselves; Strether hadn't had for
+years so rich a consciousness of time--a bag of gold into which
+he constantly dipped for a handful.  It was present to him that
+when the little business with Mr. Bilham should be over he would
+still have shining hours to use absolutely as he liked.  There was
+no great pulse of haste yet in this process of saving Chad; nor
+was that effect a bit more marked as he sat, half an hour later,
+with his legs under Chad's mahogany, with Mr. Bilham on one side,
+with a friend of Mr. Bilham's on the other, with Waymarsh
+stupendously opposite, and with the great hum of Paris coming up
+in softness, vagueness-for Strether himself indeed already
+positive sweetness--through the sunny windows toward which, the
+day before, his curiosity had raised its wings from below.  The
+feeling strongest with him at that moment had borne fruit almost
+faster than he could taste it, and Strether literally felt at the
+present hour that there was a precipitation in his fate.  He had
+known nothing and nobody as he stood in the street; but hadn't
+his view now taken a bound in the direction of every one and of
+every thing?
+
+"What's he up to, what's he up to?"--something like that was at
+the back of his head all the while in respect to little Bilham;
+but meanwhile, till he should make out, every one and every thing
+were as good as represented for him by the combination of his
+host and the lady on his left.  The lady on his left, the lady
+thus promptly and ingeniously invited to "meet" Mr. Strether and
+Mr. Waymarsh--it was the way she herself expressed her case--was
+a very marked person, a person who had much to do with our
+friend's asking himself if the occasion weren't in its essence
+the most baited, the most gilded of traps.  Baited it could
+properly be called when the repast was of so wise a savour, and
+gilded surrounding objects seemed inevitably to need to be when
+Miss Barrace--which was the lady's name--looked at them with
+convex Parisian eyes and through a glass with a remarkably long
+tortoise-shell handle.  Why Miss Barrace, mature meagre erect and
+eminently gay, highly adorned, perfectly familiar, freely
+contradictions and reminding him of some last-century portrait of
+a clever head without powder--why Miss Barrace should have been
+in particular the note of a "trap" Strether couldn't on the spot
+have explained; he blinked in the light of a conviction that he
+should know later on, and know well--as it came over him, for
+that matter, with force, that he should need to.  He wondered what
+he was to think exactly of either of his new friends; since the
+young man, Chad's intimate and deputy, had, in thus constituting
+the scene, practised so much more subtly than he had been
+prepared for, and since in especial Miss Barrace, surrounded
+clearly by every consideration, hadn't scrupled to figure as a
+familiar object.  It was interesting to him to feel that he was in
+the presence of new measures, other standards, a different scale
+of relations, and that evidently here were a happy pair who
+didn't think of things at all as he and Waymarsh thought.  Nothing
+was less to have been calculated in the business than that it
+should now be for him as if he and Waymarsh were comparatively
+quite at one.
+
+The latter was magnificent--this at least was an assurance
+privately given him by Miss Barrace.  "Oh your friend's a type,
+the grand old American--what shall one call it? The Hebrew
+prophet, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, who used when I was a little girl in
+the Rue Montaigne to come to see my father and who was usually
+the American Minister to the Tuileries or some other court.  I
+haven't seen one these ever so many years; the sight of it warms
+my poor old chilled heart; this specimen is wonderful; in the
+right quarter, you know, he'll have a succes fou."  Strether
+hadn't failed to ask what the right quarter might be, much as he
+required his presence of mind to meet such a change in their
+scheme.  "Oh the artist-quarter and that kind of thing; HERE
+already, for instance, as you see."  He had been on the point of
+echoing "'Here'?--is THIS the artist-quarter?" but she had
+already disposed of the question with a wave of all her tortoise-shell
+and an easy "Bring him to ME!"  He knew on the spot how little he
+should be able to bring him, for the very air was by this time,
+to his sense, thick and hot with poor Waymarsh's judgement of it.
+He was in the trap still more than his companion and, unlike
+his companion, not making the best of it; which was precisely what
+doubtless gave him his admirable sombre glow.   Little did Miss Barrace
+know that what was behind it was his grave estimate of her own laxity.
+The general assumption with which our two friends had arrived had been
+that of finding Mr. Bilham ready to conduct them to one or other of
+those resorts of the earnest, the aesthetic fraternity which were shown
+among the sights of Paris.  In this character it would have justified
+them in a proper insistence on discharging their score.  Waymarsh's
+only proviso at the last had been that nobody should pay for him;
+but he found himself, as the occasion developed, paid for on a
+scale as to which Strether privately made out that he already
+nursed retribution.  Strether was conscious across the table of
+what worked in him, conscious when they passed back to the small
+salon to which, the previous evening, he himself had made so rich
+a reference; conscious most of all as they stepped out to the
+balcony in which one would have had to be an ogre not to
+recognise the perfect place for easy aftertastes.  These things
+were enhanced for Miss Barrace by a succession of excellent
+cigarettes--acknowledged, acclaimed, as a part of the wonderful
+supply left behind him by Chad--in an almost equal absorption of
+which Strether found himself blindly, almost wildly pushing
+forward.  He might perish by the sword as well as by famine, and
+he knew that his having abetted the lady by an excess that was
+rare with him would count for little in the sum--as Waymarsh
+might so easily add it up--of her licence.  Waymarsh had smoked of
+old, smoked hugely; but Waymarsh did nothing now, and that gave
+him his advantage over people who took things up lightly just
+when others had laid them heavily down.  Strether had never
+smoked, and he felt as if he flaunted at his friend that this had
+been only because of a reason.  The reason, it now began to appear
+even to himself, was that he had never had a lady to smoke with.
+
+It was this lady's being there at all, however, that was the
+strange free thing; perhaps, since she WAS there, her smoking was
+the least of her freedoms.  If Strether had been sure at each
+juncture of what--with Bilham in especial--she talked about, he
+might have traced others and winced at them and felt Waymarsh
+wince; but he was in fact so often at sea that his sense of the
+range of reference was merely general and that he on several
+different occasions guessed and interpreted only to doubt.  He
+wondered what they meant, but there were things he scarce thought
+they could be supposed to mean, and "Oh no--not THAT!" was at the
+end of most of his ventures.  This was the very beginning with him
+of a condition as to which, later on, it will be seen, he found
+cause to pull himself up; and he was to remember the moment duly
+as the first step in a process.  The central fact of the place was
+neither more nor less, when analysed--and a pressure superficial
+sufficed--than the fundamental impropriety of Chad's situation,
+round about which they thus seemed cynically clustered.
+Accordingly, since they took it for granted, they took for
+granted all that was in connexion with it taken for granted at
+Woollett--matters as to which, verily, he had been reduced with
+Mrs. Newsome to the last intensity of silence.  That was the
+consequence of their being too bad to be talked about, and was
+the accompaniment, by the same token, of a deep conception of
+their badness.  It befell therefore that when poor Strether put it
+to himself that their badness was ultimately, or perhaps even
+insolently, what such a scene as the one before him was, so to
+speak, built upon, he could scarce shirk the dilemma of reading a
+roundabout echo of them into almost anything that came up.  This,
+he was well aware, was a dreadful necessity; but such was the
+stern logic, he could only gather, of a relation to the irregular
+life.
+
+It was the way the irregular life sat upon Bilham and Miss
+Barrace that was the insidious, the delicate marvel.  He was eager
+to concede that their relation to it was all indirect, for
+anything else in him would have shown the grossness of bad
+manners; but the indirectness was none the less consonant--THAT
+was striking-with a grateful enjoyment of everything that was
+Chad's.  They spoke of him repeatedly, invoking his good name and
+good nature, and the worst confusion of mind for Strether was
+that all their mention of him was of a kind to do him honour.
+They commended his munificence and approved his taste, and in
+doing so sat down, as it seemed to Strether, in the very soil out
+of which these things flowered.  Our friend's final predicament
+was that he himself was sitting down, for the time, WITH them,
+and there was a supreme moment at which, compared with his
+collapse, Waymarsh's erectness affected him as really high.  One
+thing was certain--he saw he must make up his mind.  He must
+approach Chad, must wait for him, deal with him, master him, but
+he mustn't dispossess himself of the faculty of seeing things as
+they were.  He must bring him to HIM--not go himself, as it were,
+so much of the way.  He must at any rate be clearer as to what--
+should he continue to do that for convenience--he was still
+condoning.  It was on the detail of this quantity--and what could
+the fact be but mystifying?-that Bilham and Miss Barrace threw so
+little light.  So there they were.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+When Miss Gostrey arrived, at the end of a week, she made him a
+sign; he went immediately to see her, and it wasn't till then
+that he could again close his grasp on the idea of a corrective.
+This idea however was luckily all before him again from the
+moment he crossed the threshold of the little entresol of the
+Quartier Marboeuf into which she had gathered, as she said,
+picking them up in a thousand flights and funny little passionate
+pounces, the makings of a final nest.  He recognised in an instant
+that there really, there only, he should find the boon with the
+vision of which he had first mounted Chad's stairs.  He might have
+been a little scared at the picture of how much more, in this
+place, he should know himself "in" hadn't his friend been on the
+spot to measure the amount to his appetite.  Her compact and
+crowded little chambers, almost dusky, as they at first struck
+him, with accumulations, represented a supreme general adjustment
+to opportunities and conditions.  Wherever he looked he saw an old
+ivory or an old brocade, and he scarce knew where to sit for fear
+of a misappliance.  The life of the occupant struck him of a
+sudden as more charged with possession even than Chad's or than
+Miss Barrace's; wide as his glimpse had lately become of the
+empire of "things," what was before him still enlarged it; the
+lust of the eyes and the pride of life had indeed thus their
+temple.  It was the innermost nook of the shrine--as brown as a
+pirate's cave.  In the brownness were glints of gold; patches of
+purple were in the gloom; objects all that caught, through the
+muslin, with their high rarity, the light of the low windows.
+Nothing was clear about them but that they were precious, and
+they brushed his ignorance with their contempt as a flower, in a
+liberty taken with him, might have been whisked under his nose.
+But after a full look at his hostess he knew none the less what
+most concerned him.  The circle in which they stood together was
+warm with life, and every question between them would live there
+as nowhere else.  A question came up as soon as they had spoken,
+for his answer, with a laugh, was quickly:  "Well, they've got
+hold of me!"  Much of their talk on this first occasion was his
+development of that truth.  He was extraordinarily glad to see
+her, expressing to her frankly what she most showed him, that one
+might live for years without a blessing unsuspected, but that to
+know it at last for no more than three days was to need it or
+miss it for ever.  She was the blessing that had now become his
+need, and what could prove it better than that without her he had
+lost himself?
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked with an absence of alarm that,
+correcting him as if he had mistaken the "period" of one of her
+pieces, gave him afresh a sense of her easy movement through the
+maze he had but begun to tread.  "What in the name of all the
+Pococks have you managed to do?"
+
+"Why exactly the wrong thing.  I've made a frantic friend of
+little Bilham."
+
+"Ah that sort of thing was of the essence of your case and to
+have been allowed for from the first."  And it was only after this
+that, quite as a minor matter, she asked who in the world little
+Bilham might be.  When she learned that he was a friend of Chad's
+and living for the time in Chad's rooms in Chad's absence, quite
+as if acting in Chad's spirit and serving Chad's cause, she
+showed, however, more interest.  "Should you mind my seeing him?
+Only once, you know," she added.
+
+"Oh the oftener the better:  he's amusing--he's original."
+
+"He doesn't shock you?" Miss Gostrey threw out.
+
+"Never in the world! We escape that with a perfection--! I feel
+it to be largely, no doubt, because I don't half-understand him;
+but our modus vivendi isn't spoiled even by that.  You must dine
+with me to meet him," Strether went on.  "Then you'll see.'
+
+"Are you giving dinners?"
+
+"Yes--there I am.  That's what I mean."
+
+All her kindness wondered.  "That you're spending too much money?"
+
+"Dear no--they seem to cost so little.  But that I do it to THEM.
+I ought to hold off."
+
+She thought again--she laughed.  "The money you must be spending
+to think it cheap! But I must be out of it--to the naked eye."
+
+He looked for a moment as if she were really failing him.  "Then
+you won't meet them?"  It was almost as if she had developed an
+unexpected personal prudence.
+
+She hesitated.  "Who are they--first?"
+
+"Why little Bilham to begin with."  He kept back for the moment
+Miss Barrace.  "And Chad--when he comes--you must absolutely see."
+
+"When then does he come?"
+
+"When Bilham has had time to write him, and hear from him about
+me.  Bilham, however," he pursued, "will report favourably--
+favourably for Chad.  That will make him not afraid to come.  I
+want you the more therefore, you see, for my bluff."
+
+"Oh you'll do yourself for your bluff."  She was perfectly easy.
+"At the rate you've gone I'm quiet."
+
+"Ah but I haven't," said Strether, "made one protest."
+
+She turned it over.  "Haven't you been seeing what there's to
+protest about?"
+
+He let her, with this, however ruefully, have the whole truth.  "I
+haven't yet found a single thing."
+
+"Isn't there any one WITH him then?"
+
+"Of the sort I came out about?"  Strether took a moment.  "How do I
+know? And what do I care?"
+
+"Oh oh!"--and her laughter spread.  He was struck in fact by the
+effect on her of his joke.  He saw now how he meant it as a joke.
+SHE saw, however, still other things, though in an instant she
+had hidden them.  "You've got at no facts at all?"
+
+He tried to muster them.  "Well, he has a lovely home."
+
+"Ah that, in Paris," she quickly returned, "proves nothing.  That
+is rather it DISproves nothing.  They may very well, you see, the
+people your mission is concerned with, have done it FOR him."
+
+"Exactly.  And it was on the scene of their doings then that
+Waymarsh and I sat guzzling."
+
+"Oh if you forbore to guzzle here on scenes of doings," she
+replied, "you might easily die of starvation."  With which she
+smiled at him.  "You've worse before you."
+
+"Ah I've EVERYTHING before me.  But on our hypothesis, you know,
+they must be wonderful."
+
+"They ARE!" said Miss Gostrey.  "You're not therefore, you see,"
+she added, "wholly without facts.  They've BEEN, in effect,
+wonderful."
+
+To have got at something comparatively definite appeared at last a
+little to help--a wave by which moreover, the next moment,
+recollection was washed.  "My young man does admit furthermore that
+they're our friend's great interest."
+
+"Is that the expression he uses?"
+
+Strether more exactly recalled.  "No--not quite."
+
+"Something more vivid?  Less?"
+
+He had bent, with neared glasses, over a group of articles on a
+small stand; and at this he came up.  "It was a mere allusion, but,
+on the lookout as I was, it struck me.  'Awful, you know, as Chad
+is'--those were Bilham's words."
+
+"'Awful, you know'--?  Oh!"--and Miss Gostrey turned them over.  She
+seemed, however, satisfied.  "Well, what more do you want?"
+
+He glanced once more at a bibelot or two, and everything sent him
+back.  "But it is all the same as if they wished to let me have it
+between the eyes."
+
+She wondered.  "Quoi donc?"
+
+"Why what I speak of.  The amenity.  They can stun you with that as
+well as with anything else."
+
+"Oh," she answered, "you'll come round! I must see them each," she
+went on, "for myself.  I mean Mr. Bilham and Mr. Newsome--Mr.
+Bilham naturally first.  Once only--once for each; that will do.
+But face to face--for half an hour.  What's Mr. Chad," she
+immediately pursued, "doing at Cannes?  Decent men don't go to
+Cannes with the--well, with the kind of ladies you mean."
+
+"Don't they?"  Strether asked with an interest in decent men that
+amused her.
+
+"No, elsewhere, but not to Cannes.  Cannes is different.  Cannes is
+better.  Cannes is best.  I mean it's all people you know--when you
+do know them.  And if HE does, why that's different too.  He must
+have gone alone.  She can't be with him."
+
+"I haven't," Strether confessed in his weakness, "the least
+idea."  There seemed much in what she said, but he was able after a
+little to help her to a nearer impression.  The meeting with little
+Bilham took place, by easy arrangement, in the great gallery of
+the Louvre; and when, standing with his fellow visitor before one
+of the splendid Titians--the overwhelming portrait of the young
+man with the strangely-shaped glove and the blue-grey eyes--he
+turned to see the third member of their party advance from the end
+of the waxed and gilded vista, he had a sense of having at last
+taken hold.  He had agreed with Miss Gostrey--it dated even from
+Chester--for a morning at the Louvre, and he had embraced
+independently the same idea as thrown out by little Bilham, whom
+he had already accompanied to the museum of the Luxembourg.  The
+fusion of these schemes presented no difficulty, and it was to
+strike him again that in little Bilham's company contrarieties in
+general dropped.
+
+"Oh he's all right--he's one of US!" Miss Gostrey, after the first
+exchange, soon found a chance to murmur to her companion; and
+Strether, as they proceeded and paused and while a quick unanimity
+between the two appeared to have phrased itself in half a dozen
+remarks--Strether knew that he knew almost immediately what she
+meant, and took it as still another sign that he had got his job
+in hand.  This was the more grateful to him that he could think of
+the intelligence now serving him as an acquisition positively new.
+He wouldn't have known even the day before what she meant--that
+is if she meant, what he assumed, that they were intense Americans
+together.  He had just worked round--and with a sharper turn of the
+screw than any yet--to the conception of an American intense as
+little Bilham was intense.  The young man was his first specimen;
+the specimen had profoundly perplexed him; at present however
+there was light.  It was by little Bilham's amazing serenity that
+he had at first been affected, but he had inevitably, in his
+circumspection, felt it as the trail of the serpent, the
+corruption, as he might conveniently have said, of Europe; whereas
+the promptness with which it came up for Miss Gostrey but as a
+special little form of the oldest thing they knew justified it at
+once to his own vision as well.  He wanted to be able to like his
+specimen with a clear good conscience, and this fully permitted
+it.  What had muddled him was precisely the small artist-man's way
+--it was so complete--of being more American than anybody.  But it
+now for the time put Strether vastly at his ease to have this view
+of a new way.
+
+The amiable youth then looked out, as it had first struck
+Strether, at a world in respect to which he hadn't a prejudice.
+The one our friend most instantly missed was the usual one in
+favour of an occupation accepted.  Little Bilham had an occupation,
+but it was only an occupation declined; and it was by his general
+exemption from alarm, anxiety or remorse on this score that the
+impression of his serenity was made.  He had come out to Paris to
+paint--to fathom, that is, at large, that mystery; but study had
+been fatal to him so far as anything COULD be fatal, and his
+productive power faltered in proportion as his knowledge grew.
+Strether had gathered from him that at the moment of his finding
+him in Chad's rooms he hadn't saved from his shipwreck a scrap of
+anything but his beautiful intelligence and his confirmed habit of
+Paris.  He referred to these things with an equal fond familiarity,
+and it was sufficiently clear that, as an outfit, they still
+served him.  They were charming to Strether through the hour spent
+at the Louvre, where indeed they figured for him as an unseparated
+part of the charged iridescent air, the glamour of the name, the
+splendour of the space, the colour of the masters.  Yet they were
+present too wherever the young man led, and the day after the
+visit to the Louvre they hung, in a different walk, about the
+steps of our party.  He had invited his companions to cross the
+river with him, offering to show them his own poor place; and his
+own poor place, which was very poor, gave to his idiosyncrasies,
+for Strether--the small sublime indifference and independences
+that had struck the latter as fresh--an odd and engaging dignity.
+He lived at the end of an alley that went out of an old short
+cobbled street, a street that went in turn out of a new long
+smooth avenue--street and avenue and alley having, however, in
+common a sort of social shabbiness; and he introduced them to the
+rather cold and blank little studio which he had lent to a comrade
+for the term of his elegant absence.  The comrade was another
+ingenuous compatriot, to whom he had wired that tea was to await
+them "regardless," and this reckless repast, and the second
+ingenuous compatriot, and the faraway makeshift life, with its
+jokes and its gaps, its delicate daubs and its three or four
+chairs, its overflow of taste and conviction and its lack of
+nearly all else--these things wove round the occasion a spell to
+which our hero unreservedly surrendered.
+
+He liked the ingenuous compatriots--for two or three others soon
+gathered; he liked the delicate daubs and the free
+discriminations--involving references indeed, involving
+enthusiasms and execrations that made him, as they said, sit up;
+he liked above all the legend of good-humoured poverty, of mutual
+accommodation fairly raised to the romantic, that he soon read
+into the scene.  The ingenuous compatriots showed a candour, he
+thought, surpassing even the candour of Woollett; they were
+red-haired and long-legged, they were quaint and queer and dear
+and droll; they made the place resound with the vernacular, which
+he had never known so marked as when figuring for the chosen
+language, he must suppose, of contemporary art.  They twanged with
+a vengeance the aesthetic lyre--they drew from it wonderful airs.
+This aspect of their life had an admirable innocence; and he
+looked on occasion at Maria Gostrey to see to what extent that
+element reached her.  She gave him however for the hour, as she had
+given him the previous day, no further sign than to show how she
+dealt with boys; meeting them with the air of old Parisian
+practice that she had for every one, for everything, in turn.
+Wonderful about the delicate daubs, masterful about the way to
+make tea, trustful about the legs of chairs and familiarly
+reminiscent of those, in the other time, the named, the numbered
+or the caricatured, who had flourished or failed, disappeared or
+arrived, she had accepted with the best grace her second course of
+little Bilham, and had said to Strether, the previous afternoon on
+his leaving them, that, since her impression was to be renewed,
+she would reserve judgement till after the new evidence.
+
+The new evidence was to come, as it proved, in a day or two.  He
+soon had from Maria a message to the effect that an excellent box at
+the Francais had been lent her for the following night; it seeming
+on such occasions not the least of her merits that she was subject
+to such approaches.  The sense of how she was always paying for
+something in advance was equalled on Strether's part only by the
+sense of how she was always being paid; all of which made for his
+consciousness, in the larger air, of a lively bustling traffic,
+the exchange of such values as were not for him to handle.  She
+hated, he knew, at the French play, anything but a box--just as
+she hated at the English anything but a stall; and a box was what
+he was already in this phase girding himself to press upon her.
+But she had for that matter her community with little Bilham:  she
+too always, on the great issues, showed as having known in time.
+It made her constantly beforehand with him and gave him mainly the
+chance to ask himself how on the day of their settlement their
+account would stand.  He endeavoured even now to keep it a little
+straight by arranging that if he accepted her invitation she
+should dine with him first; but the upshot of this scruple was
+that at eight o'clock on the morrow he awaited her with Waymarsh
+under the pillared portico.  She hadn't dined with him, and it was
+characteristic of their relation that she had made him embrace her
+refusal without in the least understanding it.  She ever caused her
+rearrangements to affect him as her tenderest touches.  It was on
+that principle for instance that, giving him the opportunity to be
+amiable again to little Bilham, she had suggested his offering the
+young man a seat in their box.  Strether had dispatched for this
+purpose a small blue missive to the Boulevard Malesherbes, but up
+to the moment of their passing into the theatre he had received no
+response to his message.  He held, however, even after they had
+been for some time conveniently seated, that their friend, who
+knew his way about, would come in at his own right moment.  His
+temporary absence moreover seemed, as never yet, to make the right
+moment for Miss Gostrey.  Strether had been waiting till tonight to
+get back from her in some mirrored form her impressions and
+conclusions.  She had elected, as they said, to see little Bilham
+once; but now she had seen him twice and had nevertheless not said
+more than a word.
+
+Waymarsh meanwhile sat opposite him with their hostess between;
+and Miss Gostrey spoke of herself as an instructor of youth
+introducing her little charges to a work that was one of the
+glories of literature.  The glory was happily unobjectionable, and
+the little charges were candid; for herself she had travelled that
+road and she merely waited on their innocence.  But she referred in
+due time to their absent friend, whom it was clear they should
+have to give up.  "He either won't have got your note," she said,
+"or you won't have got his:  he has had some kind of hindrance,
+and, of course, for that matter, you know, a man never writes
+about coming to a box."  She spoke as if, with her look, it might
+have been Waymarsh who had written to the youth, and the latter's
+face showed a mixture of austerity and anguish.  She went on
+however as if to meet this.  "He's far and away, you know, the best
+of them."
+
+"The best of whom, ma'am?"
+
+"Why of all the long procession--the boys, the girls, or the old
+men and old women as they sometimes really are; the hope, as one
+may say, of our country.  They've all passed, year after year; but
+there has been no one in particular I've ever wanted to stop.  I
+feel--don't YOU?--that I want to stop little Bilham; he's so
+exactly right as he is."  She continued to talk to Waymarsh.  "He's
+too delightful.  If he'll only not spoil it! But they always WILL;
+they always do; they always have."
+
+"I don't think Waymarsh knows," Strether said after a moment,
+"quite what it's open to Bilham to spoil."
+
+"It can't be a good American," Waymarsh lucidly enough replied;
+"for it didn't strike me the young man had developed much in THAT
+shape."
+
+"Ah," Miss Gostrey sighed, "the name of the good American is as
+easily given as taken away! What IS it, to begin with, to BE one,
+and what's the extraordinary hurry?  Surely nothing that's so
+pressing was ever so little defined.  It's such an order, really,
+that before we cook you the dish we must at least have your
+receipt.  Besides the poor chicks have time! What I've seen so
+often spoiled," she pursued, "is the happy attitude itself, the
+state of faith and--what shall I call it?--the sense of beauty.
+You're right about him"--she now took in Strether; "little Bilham
+has them to a charm, we must keep little Bilham along."  Then she
+was all again for Waymarsh.  "The others have all wanted so
+dreadfully to do something, and they've gone and done it in too
+many cases indeed.  It leaves them never the same afterwards; the
+charm's always somehow broken.  Now HE, I think, you know, really
+won't.  He won't do the least dreadful little thing.  We shall
+continue to enjoy him just as he is.  No--he's quite beautiful.  He
+sees everything.  He isn't a bit ashamed.  He has every scrap of
+the courage of it that one could ask.  Only think what he MIGHT do.
+One wants really--for fear of some accident--to keep him in view.
+At this very moment perhaps what mayn't he be up to?  I've had my
+disappointments--the poor things are never really safe; or only at
+least when you have them under your eye.  One can never completely
+trust them.  One's uneasy, and I think that's why I most miss him
+now."
+
+She had wound up with a laugh of enjoyment over her embroidery of
+her idea--an enjoyment that her face communicated to Strether, who
+almost wished none the less at this moment that she would let poor
+Waymarsh alone.  HE knew more or less what she meant; but the fact
+wasn't a reason for her not pretending to Waymarsh that he
+didn't.  It was craven of him perhaps, but he would, for the high
+amenity of the occasion, have liked Waymarsh not to be so sure of
+his wit.  Her recognition of it gave him away and, before she had
+done with him or with that article, would give him worse.  What was
+he, all the same, to do?  He looked across the box at his friend;
+their eyes met; something queer and stiff, something that bore on
+the situation but that it was better not to touch, passed in
+silence between them.  Well, the effect of it for Strether was an
+abrupt reaction, a final impatience of his own tendency to
+temporise.  Where was that taking him anyway?  It was one of the
+quiet instants that sometimes settle more matters than the
+outbreaks dear to the historic muse.  The only qualification of the
+quietness was the synthetic "Oh hang it!" into which Strether's
+share of the silence soundlessly flowered.  It represented, this
+mute ejaculation, a final impulse to burn his ships.  These ships,
+to the historic muse, may seem of course mere cockles, but when he
+presently spoke to Miss Gostrey it was with the sense at least of
+applying the torch.  "Is it then a conspiracy?"
+
+"Between the two young men?  Well, I don't pretend to be a seer or
+a prophetess," she presently replied; "but if I'm simply a woman
+of sense he's working for you to-night.  I don't quite know how--
+but it's in my bones."  And she looked at him at last as if, little
+material as she yet gave him, he'd really understand.  "For an
+opinion THAT'S my opinion.  He makes you out too well not to."
+
+"Not to work for me to-night?"  Strether wondered.  "Then I hope he
+isn't doing anything very bad."
+
+"They've got you," she portentously answered.
+
+"Do you mean he IS--?"
+
+"They've got you," she merely repeated.  Though she disclaimed the
+prophetic vision she was at this instant the nearest approach he
+had ever met to the priestess of the oracle.  The light was in her
+eyes.  "You must face it now."
+
+He faced it on the spot.  "They HAD arranged--?"
+
+"Every move in the game.  And they've been arranging ever since.  He
+has had every day his little telegram from Cannes."
+
+It made Strether open his eyes.  "Do you KNOW that?"
+
+"I do better.  I see it.  This was, before I met him, what I
+wondered whether I WAS to see.  But as soon as I met him I ceased
+to wonder, and our second meeting made me sure.  I took him all in.
+He was acting--he is still--on his daily instructions."
+
+"So that Chad has done the whole thing?"
+
+"Oh no--not the whole.  WE'VE done some of it.  You and I and
+'Europe.'"
+
+"Europe--yes," Strether mused.
+
+"Dear old Paris," she seemed to explain.  But there was more, and,
+with one of her turns, she risked it.  "And dear old Waymarsh.
+You," she declared, "have been a good bit of it."
+
+He sat massive.  "A good bit of what, ma'am?"
+
+"Why of the wonderful consciousness of our friend here.  You've
+helped too in your way to float him to where he is."
+
+"And where the devil IS he?"
+
+She passed it on with a laugh.  "Where the devil, Strether, are
+you?"
+
+He spoke as if he had just been thinking it out.  "Well, quite
+already in Chad's hands, it would seem."  And he had had with this
+another thought.  "Will that be--just all through Bilham--the way
+he's going to work it?  It would be, for him, you know, an idea.
+And Chad with an idea--!"
+
+"Well?" she asked while the image held him.
+
+"Well, is Chad--what shall I say?--monstrous?"
+
+"Oh as much as you like! But the idea you speak of," she said,
+"won't have been his best.  He'll have a better.  It won't be all
+through little Bilham that he'll work it."
+
+This already sounded almost like a hope destroyed.  "Through whom
+else then?"
+
+"That's what we shall see!"  But quite as she spoke she turned, and
+Strether turned; for the door of the box had opened, with the
+click of the ouvreuse,  from the lobby, and a gentleman, a stranger
+to them, had come in with a quick step.  The door closed behind
+him, and, though their faces showed him his mistake, his air,
+which was striking, was all good confidence.  The curtain had just
+again arisen, and, in the hush of the general attention,
+Strether's challenge was tacit, as was also the greeting, with a
+quickly deprecating hand and smile, of the unannounced visitor.  He
+discreetly signed that he would wait, would stand, and these
+things and his face, one look from which she had caught, had
+suddenly worked for Miss Gostrey.  She fitted to them all an answer
+for Strether's last question.  The solid stranger was simply the
+answer--as she now, turning to her friend, indicated.  She brought
+it straight out for him--it presented the intruder.  "Why, through
+this gentleman!"  The gentleman indeed, at the same time, though
+sounding for Strether a very short name, did practically as much
+to explain.  Strether gasped the name back--then only had he seen
+Miss Gostrey had said more than she knew.  They were in presence of
+Chad himself.
+
+Our friend was to go over it afterwards again and again--he was
+going over it much of the time that they were together, and they
+were together constantly for three or four days:  the note had been
+so strongly struck during that first half-hour that everything
+happening since was comparatively a minor development.  The fact
+was that his perception of the young man's identity--so absolutely
+checked for a minute--had been quite one of the sensations that
+count in life; he certainly had never known one that had acted, as
+he might have said, with more of a crowded rush.  And the rush
+though both vague and multitudinous, had lasted a long time,
+protected, as it were, yet at the same time aggravated, by the
+circumstance of its coinciding with a stretch of decorous silence.
+They couldn't talk without disturbing the spectators in the part
+of the balcony just below them; and it, for that matter, came to
+Strether--being a thing of the sort that did come to him--that
+these were the accidents of a high civilisation; the imposed
+tribute to propriety, the frequent exposure to conditions, usually
+brilliant, in which relief has to await its time.  Relief was never
+quite near at hand for kings, queens, comedians and other such
+people, and though you might be yourself not exactly one of those,
+you could yet, in leading the life of high pressure, guess a
+little how they sometimes felt.  It was truly the life of high
+pressure that Strether had seemed to feel himself lead while he
+sat there, close to Chad, during the long tension of the act.  He
+was in presence of a fact that occupied his whole mind, that
+occupied for the half-hour his senses themselves all together; but
+he couldn't without inconvenience show anything--which moreover
+might count really as luck.  What he might have shown, had he shown
+at all, was exactly the kind of emotion--the emotion of
+bewilderment--that he had proposed to himself from the first,
+whatever should occur, to show least.  The phenomenon that had
+suddenly sat down there with him was a phenomenon of change so
+complete that his imagination, which had worked so beforehand,
+felt itself, in the connexion, without margin or allowance.  It had
+faced every contingency but that Chad should not BE Chad, and this
+was what it now had to face with a mere strained smile and an
+uncomfortable flush.
+
+He asked himself if, by any chance, before he should have in some
+way to commit himself, he might feel his mind settled to the new
+vision, might habituate it, so to speak, to the remarkable truth.
+But oh it was too remarkable, the truth; for what could be more
+remarkable than this sharp rupture of an identity?  You could deal
+with a man as himself--you couldn't deal with him as somebody
+else.  It was a small source of peace moreover to be reduced to
+wondering how little he might know in such an event what a sum he
+was setting you.  He couldn't absolutely not know, for you couldn't
+absolutely not let him.  It was a CASE then simply, a strong
+case, as people nowadays called such things,' a case of
+transformation unsurpassed, and the hope was but in the general
+law that strong cases were liable to control from without.  Perhaps
+he, Strether himself, was the only person after all aware of it.
+Even Miss Gostrey, with all her science, wouldn't be, would she?
+--and he had never seen any one less aware of anything than
+Waymarsh as he glowered at Chad.  The social sightlessness of his
+old friend's survey marked for him afresh, and almost in an
+humiliating way, the inevitable limits of direct aid from this
+source.  He was not certain, however, of not drawing a shade of
+compensation from the privilege, as yet untasted, of knowing more
+about something in particular than Miss Gostrey did.  His situation
+too was a case, for that matter, and he was now so interested,
+quite so privately agog, about it, that he had already an eye to
+the fun it would be to open up to her afterwards.  He derived
+during his half-hour no assistance from her, and just this fact of
+her not meeting his eyes played a little, it must be confessed,
+into his predicament.
+
+He had introduced Chad, in the first minutes, under his breath,
+and there was never the primness in her of the person
+unacquainted; but she had none the less betrayed at first no
+vision but of the stage, where she occasionally found a pretext
+for an appreciative moment that she invited Waymarsh to share.  The
+latter's faculty of participation had never had, all round, such
+an assault to meet; the pressure on him being the sharper for this
+chosen attitude in her, as Strether judged it, of isolating, for
+their natural intercourse, Chad and himself.  This intercourse was
+meanwhile restricted to a frank friendly look from the young man,
+something markedly like a smile, but falling far short of a grin,
+and to the vivacity of Strether's private speculation as to
+whether HE carried himself like a fool.  He didn't quite see how
+he could so feel as one without somehow showing as one.  The worst
+of that question moreover was that he knew it as a symptom the
+sense of which annoyed him.  "If I'm going to be odiously conscious
+of how I may strike the fellow," he reflected, "it was so little
+what I came out for that I may as well stop before I begin."  This
+sage consideration too, distinctly, seemed to leave untouched the
+fact that he WAS going to be conscious.  He was conscious of
+everything but of what would have served him.
+
+He was to know afterwards, in the watches of the night, that
+nothing would have been more open to him than after a minute or
+two to propose to Chad to seek with him the refuge of the lobby.
+He hadn't only not proposed it, but had lacked even the presence
+of mind to see it as possible.  He had stuck there like a schoolboy
+wishing not to miss a minute of the show; though for that portion
+of the show then presented he hadn't had an instant's real
+attention.  He couldn't when the curtain fell have given the
+slightest account of what had happened.  He had therefore, further,
+not at that moment acknowledged the amenity added by this
+acceptance of his awkwardness to Chad's general patience.  Hadn't
+he none the less known at the very time--known it stupidly and
+without reaction--that the boy was accepting something?  He was
+modestly benevolent, the boy--that was at least what he had been
+capable of the superiority of making out his chance to be; and one
+had one's self literally not had the gumption to get in ahead of
+him.  If we should go into all that occupied our friend in the
+watches of the night we should have to mend our pen; but an
+instance or two may mark for us the vividness with which he could
+remember.  He remembered the two absurdities that, if his presence
+of mind HAD failed, were the things that had had most to do with
+it.  He had never in his life seen a young man come into a box at
+ten o'clock at night, and would, if challenged on the question in
+advance, have scarce been ready to pronounce as to different ways
+of doing so.  But it was in spite of this definite to him that Chad
+had had a way that was wonderful:  a fact carrying with it an
+implication that, as one might imagine it, he knew, he had
+learned, how.
+
+Here already then were abounding results; he had on the spot and
+without the least trouble of intention taught Strether that even
+in so small a thing as that there were different ways.  He had
+done in the same line still more than this; had by a mere shake or
+two of the head made his old friend observe that the change in him
+was perhaps more than anything else, for the eye, a matter of the
+marked streaks of grey, extraordinary at his age, in his thick
+black hair; as well as that this new feature was curiously
+becoming to him, did something for him, as characterisation, also
+even--of all things in the world--as refinement, that had been a
+good deal wanted.  Strether felt, however, he would have had to
+confess, that it wouldn't have been easy just now, on this and
+other counts, in the presence of what had been supplied, to be
+quite clear as to what had been missed.  A reflexion a candid
+critic might have made of old, for instance, was that it would
+have been happier for the son to look more like the mother; but
+this was a reflexion that at present would never occur.  The ground
+had quite fallen away from it, yet no resemblance whatever to the
+mother had supervened.  It would have been hard for a young man's
+face and air to disconnect themselves more completely than Chad's
+at this juncture from any discerned, from any imaginable aspect of
+a New England female parent.  That of course was no more than had
+been on the cards; but it produced in Strether none the less one
+of those frequent phenomena of mental reference with which all
+judgement in him was actually beset.
+
+Again and again as the days passed he had had a sense of the
+pertinence of communicating quickly with Woollett--communicating
+with a quickness with which telegraphy alone would rhyme; the
+fruit really of a fine fancy in him for keeping things straight,
+for the happy forestalment of error.  No one could explain better
+when needful, nor put more conscience into an account or a report;
+which burden of conscience is perhaps exactly the reason why his
+heart always sank when the clouds of explanation gathered.  His
+highest ingenuity was in keeping the sky of life clear of them.
+Whether or no he had a grand idea of the lucid, he held that nothing
+ever was in fact--for any one else--explained.  One went through
+the vain motions, but it was mostly a waste of life.  A personal
+relation was a relation only so long as people either perfectly
+understood or, better still, didn't care if they didn't.  From
+the moment they cared if they didn't it was living by the sweat
+of one's brow; and the sweat of one's brow was just what one
+might buy one's self off from by keeping the ground free of the
+wild weed of delusion.  It easily grew too fast, and the Atlantic
+cable now alone could race with it.  That agency would each day
+have testified for him to something that was not what Woollett had
+argued.  He was not at this moment absolutely sure that the effect
+of the morrow's--or rather of the night's--appreciation of the
+crisis wouldn't be to determine some brief missive.  "Have at last
+seen him, but oh dear!"--some temporary relief of that sort seemed
+to hover before him.  It hovered somehow as preparing them all--yet
+preparing them for what?  If he might do so more luminously and
+cheaply he would tick out in four words:  "Awfully old--grey hair."
+To this particular item in Chad's appearance he constantly, during
+their mute half-hour, reverted; as if so very much more than he
+could have said had been involved in it.  The most he could have
+said would have been:  "If he's going to make me feel young--!"
+which indeed, however, carried with it quite enough.  If Strether
+was to feel young, that is, it would be because Chad was to feel
+old; and an aged and hoary sinner had been no part of the scheme.
+
+The question of Chadwick's true time of life was, doubtless, what
+came up quickest after the adjournment of the two, when the play
+was over, to a cafe in the Avenue de l'Opera.  Miss Gostrey had in
+due course been perfect for such a step; she had known exactly
+what they wanted--to go straight somewhere and talk; and Strether
+had even felt she had known what he wished to say and that he was
+arranging immediately to begin.  She hadn't pretended this, as she
+HAD pretended on the other hand, to have divined Waymarsh's wish
+to extend to her an independent protection homeward; but Strether
+nevertheless found how, after he had Chad opposite to him at a
+small table in the brilliant halls that his companion straightway
+selected, sharply and easily discriminated from others, it was
+quite, to his mind, as if she heard him speak; as if, sitting up,
+a mile away, in the little apartment he knew, she would listen
+hard enough to catch.  He found too that he liked that idea, and he
+wished that, by the same token, Mrs. Newsome might have caught as
+well.  For what had above all been determined in him as a necessity
+of the first order was not to lose another hour, nor a fraction of
+one; was to advance, to overwhelm, with a rush.  This was how he
+would anticipate--by a night-attack, as might be--any forced
+maturity that a crammed consciousness of Paris was likely to take
+upon itself to assert on behalf of the boy.  He knew to the full,
+on what he had just extracted from Miss Gostrey, Chad's marks of
+alertness; but they were a reason the more for not dawdling.  If he
+was himself moreover to be treated as young he wouldn't at all
+events be so treated before he should have struck out at least
+once.  His arms might be pinioned afterwards, but it would have
+been left on record that he was fifty.  The importance of this he
+had indeed begun to feel before they left the theatre; it had
+become a wild unrest, urging him to seize his chance.  He could
+scarcely wait for it as they went; he was on the verge of the
+indecency of bringing up the question in the street; he fairly
+caught himself going on--so he afterwards invidiously named it--as
+if there would be for him no second chance should the present be
+lost.  Not till, on the purple divan before the perfunctory bock,
+he had brought out the words themselves, was he sure, for that
+matter, that the present would be saved.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Fourth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"I've come, you know, to make you break with everything, neither
+more nor less, and take you straight home; so you'll be so good as
+immediately and favourably to consider it!"--Strether, face to
+face with Chad after the play, had sounded these words almost
+breathlessly, and with an effect at first positively disconcerting
+to himself alone.  For Chad's receptive attitude was that of a
+person who had been gracefully quiet while the messenger at last
+reaching him has run a mile through the dust.  During some seconds
+after he had spoken Strether felt as if HE had made some such
+exertion; he was not even certain that the perspiration wasn't on
+his brow.  It was the kind of consciousness for which he had to
+thank the look that, while the strain lasted, the young man's eyes
+gave him.  They reflected--and the deuce of the thing was that they
+reflected really with a sort of shyness of kindness--his
+momentarily disordered state; which fact brought on in its turn
+for our friend the dawn of a fear that Chad might simply "take it
+out"--take everything out--in being sorry for him.  Such a fear,
+any fear, was unpleasant.  But everything was unpleasant; it was
+odd how everything had suddenly turned so.  This however was no
+reason for letting the least thing go.  Strether had the next
+minute proceeded as roundly as if with an advantage to follow up.
+"Of course I'm a busybody, if you want to fight the case to the
+death; but after all mainly in the sense of having known you and
+having given you such attention as you kindly permitted when you
+were in jackets and knickerbockers.  Yes--it was knickerbockers,
+I'm busybody enough to remember that; and that you had, for your
+age--I speak of the first far-away time--tremendously stout legs.
+Well, we want you to break.  Your mother's heart's passionately set
+upon it, but she has above and beyond that excellent arguments and
+reasons.  I've not put them into her head--I needn't remind you how
+little she's a person who needs that.  But they exist--you must
+take it from me as a friend both of hers and yours--for myself as
+well.  I didn't invent them, I didn't originally work them out; but
+I understand them, I think I can explain them--by which I mean
+make you actively do them justice; and that's why you see me here.
+You had better know the worst at once.  It's a question of an
+immediate rupture and an immediate return.  I've been conceited
+enough to dream I can sugar that pill.  I take at any rate the
+greatest interest in the question.  I took it already before I left
+home, and I don't mind telling you that, altered as you are, I
+take it still more now that I've seen you.  You're older and--I
+don't know what to call it!--more of a handful; but you're by so
+much the more, I seem to make out, to our purpose."
+
+"Do I strike you as improved?"  Strether was to recall that Chad
+had at this point enquired.
+
+He was likewise to recall--and it had to count for some time as
+his greatest comfort--that it had been "given" him, as they said
+at Woollett, to reply with some presence of mind:  "I haven't the
+least idea."  He was really for a while to like thinking he had
+been positively hard.  On the point of conceding that Chad had
+improved in appearance, but that to the question of appearance the
+remark must be confined, he checked even that compromise and left
+his reservation bare.  Not only his moral, but also, as it were,
+his aesthetic sense had a little to pay for this, Chad being
+unmistakeably--and wasn't it a matter of the confounded grey hair
+again?--handsomer than he had ever promised.  That however fell in
+perfectly with what Strether had said.  They had no desire to keep
+down his proper expansion, and he wouldn't be less to their
+purpose for not looking, as he had too often done of old, only
+bold and wild.  There was indeed a signal particular in which he
+would distinctly be more so.  Strether didn't, as he talked,
+absolutely follow himself; he only knew he was clutching his
+thread and that he held it from moment to moment a little tighter;
+his mere uninterruptedness during the few minutes helped him to do
+that.  He had frequently for a month, turned over what he should
+say on this very occasion, and he seemed at last to have said
+nothing he had thought of--everything was so totally different.
+
+But in spite of all he had put the flag at the window.  This was
+what he had done, and there was a minute during which he affected
+himself as having shaken it hard, flapped it with a mighty
+flutter, straight in front of his companion's nose.  It gave him
+really almost the sense of having already acted his part.  The
+momentary relief--as if from the knowledge that nothing of THAT
+at least could be undone--sprang from a particular cause, the
+cause that had flashed into operation, in Miss Gostrey's box, with
+direct apprehension, with amazed recognition, and that had been
+concerned since then in every throb of his consciousness.  What it
+came to was that with an absolutely new quantity to deal with one
+simply couldn't know.  The new quantity was represented by the fact
+that Chad had been made over.  That was all; whatever it was it was
+everything.  Strether had never seen the thing so done before--it
+was perhaps a speciality of Paris.  If one had been present at the
+process one might little by little have mastered the result; but
+he was face to face, as matters stood, with the finished business.
+It had freely been noted for him that he might be received as a
+dog among skittles, but that was on the basis of the old quantity.
+He had originally thought of lines and tones as things to be
+taken, but these possibilities had now quite melted away.  There
+was no computing at all what the young man before him would think
+or feel or say on any subject whatever.  This intelligence Strether
+had afterwards, to account for his nervousness, reconstituted as
+he might, just as he had also reconstituted the promptness with
+which Chad had corrected his uncertainty.  An extraordinarily short
+time had been required for the correction, and there had ceased to
+be anything negative in his companion's face and air as soon as it
+was made.  "Your engagement to my mother has become then what they
+call here a fait accompli?"--it had consisted, the determinant
+touch, in nothing more than that.
+
+Well, that was enough, Strether had felt while his answer hung
+fire.  He had felt at the same time, however, that nothing could
+less become him than that it should hang fire too long.  "Yes," he
+said brightly, "it was on the happy settlement of the question
+that I started.  You see therefore to what tune I'm in your family.
+Moreover," he added, "I've been supposing you'd suppose it."
+
+"Oh I've been supposing it for a long time, and what you tell me
+helps me to understand that you should want to do something.  To do
+something, I mean," said Chad, "to commemorate an event so--what
+do they call it?--so auspicious.  I see you make out, and not
+unnaturally," he continued, "that bringing me home in triumph as a
+sort of wedding-present to Mother would commemorate it better than
+anything else.  You want to make a bonfire in fact," he laughed,
+"and you pitch me on.  Thank you, thank you!" he laughed again.
+
+He was altogether easy about it, and this made Strether now see
+how at bottom, and in spite of the shade of shyness that really
+cost him nothing, he had from the first moment been easy about
+everything.  The shade of shyness was mere good taste.  People with
+manners formed could apparently have, as one of their best cards,
+the shade of shyness too.  He had leaned a little forward to speak;
+his elbows were on the table; and the inscrutable new face that he
+had got somewhere and somehow was brought by the movement nearer
+to his critics There was a fascination for that critic in its not
+being, this ripe physiognomy, the face that, under observation at
+least, he had originally carried away from Woollett.  Strether
+found a certain freedom on his own side in defining it as that of
+a man of the world--a formula that indeed seemed to come now in
+some degree to his relief; that of a man to whom things had
+happened and were variously known.  In gleams, in glances, the past
+did perhaps peep out of it; but such lights were faint and
+instantly merged.  Chad was brown and thick and strong, and of old
+Chad had been rough.  Was all the difference therefore that he was
+actually smooth?  Possibly; for that he WAS smooth was as marked as
+in the taste of a sauce or in the rub of a hand.  The effect of it
+was general--it had retouched his features, drawn them with a
+cleaner line.  It had cleared his eyes and settled his colour and
+polished his fine square teeth--the main ornament of his face; and
+at the same time that it had given him a form and a surface,
+almost a design, it had toned his voice, established his accent,
+encouraged his smile to more play and his other motions to less.
+He had formerly, with a great deal of action, expressed very
+little; and he now expressed whatever was necessary with almost
+none at all.  It was as if in short he had really, copious perhaps
+but shapeless, been put into a firm mould and turned successfully
+out.  The phenomenon--Strether kept eyeing it as a phenomenon, an
+eminent case--was marked enough to be touched by the finger.  He
+finally put his hand across the table and laid it on Chad's arm.
+"If you'll promise me--here on the spot and giving me your word of
+honour--to break straight off, you'll make the future the real
+right thing for all of us alike.  You'll ease off the strain of
+this decent but none the less acute suspense in which I've for so
+many days been waiting for you, and let me turn in to rest.  I
+shall leave you with my blessing and go to bed in peace."
+
+Chad again fell back at this and, his hands pocketed, settled
+himself a little; in which posture he looked, though he rather
+anxiously smiled, only the more earnest.  Then Strether seemed to
+see that he was really nervous, and he took that as what he would
+have called a wholesome sign.  The only mark of it hitherto had
+been his more than once taking off and putting on his wide-brimmed
+crush hat.  He had at this moment made the motion again to remove
+it, then had only pushed it back, so that it hung informally on
+his strong young grizzled crop.  It was a touch that gave the note
+of the familiar--the intimate and the belated--to their quiet
+colloquy; and it was indeed by some such trivial aid that Strether
+became aware at the same moment of something else.  The observation
+was at any rate determined in him by some light too fine to
+distinguish from so many others, but it was none the less sharply
+determined.  Chad looked unmistakeably during these instants--
+well, as Strether put it to himself, all he was worth.  Our friend
+had a sudden apprehension of what that would on certain sides be.
+He saw him in a flash as the young man marked out by women; and
+for a concentrated minute the dignity, the comparative austerity,
+as he funnily fancied it, of this character affected him almost
+with awe.  There was an experience on his interlocutor's part that
+looked out at him from under the displaced hat, and that looked
+out moreover by a force of its own, the deep fact of its quantity
+and quality, and not through Chad's intending bravado or swagger.
+That was then the way men marked out by women WERE--and also the
+men by whom the women were doubtless in turn sufficiently
+distinguished.  It affected Strether for thirty seconds as a
+relevant truth, a truth which, however, the next minute, had
+fallen into its relation.  "Can't you imagine there being some
+questions," Chad asked, "that a fellow--however much impressed by
+your charming way of stating things--would like to put to you
+first?"
+
+"Oh yes--easily.  I'm here to answer everything.  I think I can even
+tell you things, of the greatest interest to you, that you won't
+know enough to ask me.  We'll take as many days to it as you like.
+But I want," Strether wound up, "to go to bed now."
+
+"Really?"
+
+Chad had spoken in such surprise that he was amused.  "Can't you
+believe it?--with what you put me through?"
+
+The young man seemed to consider.  "Oh I haven't put you through
+much--yet."
+
+"Do you mean there's so much more to come?"  Strether laughed.  "All
+the more reason then that I should gird myself."  And as if to mark
+what he felt he could by this time count on he was already on his
+feet.
+
+Chad, still seated, stayed him, with a hand against him, as he
+passed between their table and the next.  "Oh we shall get on!"
+
+The tone was, as who should say, everything Strether could have
+desired; and quite as good the expression of face with which the
+speaker had looked up at him and kindly held him.  All these things
+lacked was their not showing quite so much as the fruit of
+experience.  Yes, experience was what Chad did play on him, if he
+didn't play any grossness of defiance.  Of course experience was in
+a manner defiance; but it wasn't, at any rate--rather indeed quite
+the contrary!--grossness; which was so much gained.  He fairly grew
+older, Strether thought, while he himself so reasoned.  Then with
+his mature pat of his visitor's arm he also got up; and there had
+been enough of it all by this time to make the visitor feel that
+something WAS settled.  Wasn't it settled that he had at least the
+testimony of Chad's own belief in a settlement?  Strether found
+himself treating Chad's profession that they would get on as a
+sufficient basis for going to bed.  He hadn't nevertheless after
+this gone to bed directly; for when they had again passed out
+together into the mild bright night a check had virtually sprung
+from nothing more than a small circumstance which might have acted
+only as confirming quiescence.  There were people, expressive
+sound, projected light, still abroad, and after they had taken in
+for a moment, through everything, the great clear architectural
+street, they turned off in tacit union to the quarter of
+Strether's hotel.  "Of course," Chad here abruptly began, "of
+course Mother's making things out with you about me has been
+natural--and of course also you've had a good deal to go upon.
+Still, you must have filled out."
+
+He had stopped, leaving his friend to wonder a little what point
+he wished to make; and this it was that enabled Strether meanwhile
+to make one.  "Oh we've never pretended to go into detail.  We
+weren't in the least bound to THAT.  It was 'filling out' enough to
+miss you as we did."
+
+But Chad rather oddly insisted, though under the high lamp at
+their corner, where they paused, he had at first looked as if
+touched by Strether's allusion to the long sense, at home, of his
+absence.  "What I mean is you must have imagined."
+
+"Imagined what?"
+
+"Well--horrors."
+
+It affected Strether:  horrors were so little--superficially at
+least--in this robust and reasoning image.  But he was none the
+less there to be veracious.  "Yes, I dare say we HAVE imagined
+horrors.  But where's the harm if we haven't been wrong?"
+
+Chad raised his face to the lamp, and it was one of the moments at
+which he had, in his extraordinary way, most his air of designedly
+showing himself.  It was as if at these instants he just presented
+himself, his identity so rounded off, his palpable presence and
+his massive young manhood, as such a link in the chain as might
+practically amount to a kind of demonstration.  It was as if--and
+how but anomalously?--he couldn't after all help thinking
+sufficiently well of these things to let them go for what they
+were worth.  What could there be in this for Strether but the hint
+of some self-respect, some sense of power, oddly perverted;
+something latent and beyond access, ominous and perhaps enviable?
+The intimation had the next thing, in a flash, taken on a name--a
+name on which our friend seized as he asked himself if he weren't
+perhaps really dealing with an irreducible young Pagan.  This
+description--he quite jumped at it--had a sound that gratified his
+mental ear, so that of a sudden he had already adopted it.  Pagan--
+yes, that was, wasn't it?  what Chad WOULD logically be.  It was
+what he must be.  It was what he was.  The idea was a clue and,
+instead of darkening the prospect, projected a certain clearness.
+Strether made out in this quick ray that a Pagan was perhaps, at
+the pass they had come to, the thing most wanted at Woollett.
+They'd be able to do with one--a good one; he'd find an opening--
+yes; and Strether's imagination even now prefigured and
+accompanied the first appearance there of the rousing personage.
+He had only the slight discomfort of feeling, as the young man
+turned away from the lamp, that his thought had in the momentary
+silence possibly been guessed.  "Well, I've no doubt," said Chad,
+"you've come near enough.  The details, as you say, don't matter.
+It HAS been generally the case that I've let myself go.  But I'm
+coming round--I'm not so bad now."  With which they walked on again
+to Strether's hotel.
+
+"Do you mean," the latter asked as they approached the door, "that
+there isn't any woman with you now?"
+
+"But pray what has that to do with it?"
+
+"Why it's the whole question."
+
+"Of my going home?"  Chad was clearly surprised.  "Oh not much! Do
+you think that when I want to go any one will have any power--"
+
+"To keep you"--Strether took him straight up--"from carrying out
+your wish?  Well, our idea has been that somebody has hitherto--or
+a good many persons perhaps--kept you pretty well from 'wanting.'
+That's what--if you're in anybody's hands--may again happen.  You
+don't answer my question"--he kept it up; "but if you aren't in
+anybody's hands so much the better.  There's nothing then but what
+makes for your going."
+
+Chad turned this over.  "I don't answer your question?"  He spoke
+quite without resenting it.  "Well, such questions have always a
+rather exaggerated side.  One doesn't know quite what you mean by
+being in women's 'hands.' It's all so vague.  One is when one
+isn't.  One isn't when one is.  And then one can't quite give people
+away."  He seemed kindly to explain.  "I've NEVER got stuck--so
+very hard; and, as against anything at any time really better, I
+don't think I've ever been afraid."  There was something in it that
+held Strether to wonder, and this gave him time to go on.  He broke
+out as with a more helpful thought.  "Don't you know how I like
+Paris itself?"
+
+The upshot was indeed to make our friend marvel.  "Oh if THAT'S all
+that's the matter with you--!"  It was HE who almost showed
+resentment.
+
+Chad's smile of a truth more than met it.  "But isn't that enough?"
+
+Strether hesitated, but it came out.  "Not enough for your mother!"
+Spoken, however, it sounded a trifle odd--the effect of which was
+that Chad broke into a laugh.  Strether, at this, succumbed as
+well, though with extreme brevity.  "Permit us to have still our
+theory.  But if you ARE so free and so strong you're inexcusable.
+I'll write in the morning," he added with decision.  "I'll say I've
+got you."
+
+This appeared to open for Chad a new interest.  "How often do you
+write?"
+
+"Oh perpetually."
+
+"And at great length?"
+
+Strether had become a little impatient.  "I hope it's not found too
+great."
+
+"Oh I'm sure not.  And you hear as often?"
+
+Again Strether paused.  "As often as I deserve."
+
+"Mother writes," said Chad, "a lovely letter."
+
+Strether, before the closed porte-cochere, fixed him a moment.
+"It's more, my boy, than YOU do!  But our suppositions don't
+matter," he added, "if you're actually not entangled."
+
+Chad's pride seemed none the less a little touched.  "I never WAS
+that--let me insist.  I always had my own way."  With which he
+pursued:  "And I have it at present."
+
+"Then what are you here for?  What has kept you," Strether asked,
+"if you HAVE been able to leave?"
+
+It made Chad, after a stare, throw himself back.  "Do you think
+one's kept only by women?"  His surprise and his verbal emphasis
+rang out so clear in the still street that Strether winced till he
+remembered the safety of their English speech.  "Is that," the
+young man demanded, "what they think at Woollett?"  At the good
+faith in the question Strether had changed colour, feeling that,
+as he would have said, he had put his foot in it.  He had appeared
+stupidly to misrepresent what they thought at Woollett; but before
+he had time to rectify Chad again was upon him.  "I must say then
+you show a low mind!"
+
+It so fell in, unhappily for Strether, with that reflexion of his
+own prompted in him by the pleasant air of the Boulevard
+Malesherbes, that its disconcerting force was rather unfairly
+great.  It was a dig that, administered by himself--and
+administered even to poor Mrs. Newsome--was no more than salutary;
+but administered by Chad--and quite logically--it came nearer
+drawing blood.  They HADn't a low mind--nor any approach to one;
+yet incontestably they had worked, and with a certain smugness, on
+a basis that might be turned against them.  Chad had at any rate
+pulled his visitor up; he had even pulled up his admirable mother;
+he had absolutely, by a turn of the wrist and a jerk of the far-flung
+noose, pulled up, in a bunch, Woollett browsing in its pride.  There
+was no doubt Woollett HAD insisted on his coarseness; and what
+he at present stood there for in the sleeping street was, by his
+manner of striking the other note, to make of such insistence a
+preoccupation compromising to the insisters.  It was exactly as
+if they had imputed to him a vulgarity that he had by a mere
+gesture caused to fall from him.  The devil of the case was that
+Strether felt it, by the same stroke, as falling straight upon
+himself.  He had been wondering a minute ago if the boy weren't a
+Pagan, and he found himself wondering now if he weren't by chance
+a gentleman.  It didn't in the least, on the spot, spring up
+helpfully for him that a person couldn't at the same time be both.
+There was nothing at this moment in the air to challenge the
+combination; there was everything to give it on the contrary
+something of a flourish.  It struck Strether into the bargain as
+doing something to meet the most difficult of the questions;
+though perhaps indeed only by substituting another.  Wouldn't it be
+precisely by having learned to be a gentleman that he had mastered
+the consequent trick of looking so well that one could scarce
+speak to him straight?  But what in the world was the clue to such
+a prime producing cause?  There were too many clues then that
+Strether still lacked, and these clues to clues were among them.
+What it accordingly amounted to for him was that he had to take
+full in the face a fresh attribution of ignorance.  He had grown
+used by this time to reminders, especially from his own lips, of
+what he didn't know; but he had borne them because in the first
+place they were private and because in the second they practically
+conveyed a tribute.  He didn't know what was bad, and--as others
+didn't know how little he knew it--he could put up with his state.
+But if he didn't know, in so important a particular, what was
+good, Chad at least was now aware he didn't; and that, for some
+reason, affected our friend as curiously public.  It was in fact an
+exposed condition that the young man left him in long enough for
+him to feel its chill--till he saw fit, in a word, generously
+again to cover him.  This last was in truth what Chad quite
+gracefully did.  But he did it as with a simple thought that met
+the whole of the case.  "Oh I'm all right!"  It was what Strether
+had rather bewilderedly to go to bed on.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It really looked true moreover from the way Chad was to behave
+after this.  He was full of attentions to his mother's ambassador;
+in spite of which, all the while, the latter's other relations
+rather remarkably contrived to assert themselves.  Strether's
+sittings pen in hand with Mrs. Newsome up in his own room were
+broken, yet they were richer; and they were more than ever
+interspersed with the hours in which he reported himself, in a
+different fashion, but with scarce less earnestness and fulness,
+to Maria Gostrey.  Now that, as he would have expressed it, he had
+really something to talk about he found himself, in respect to any
+oddity that might reside for him in the double connexion, at once
+more aware and more indifferent.  He had been fine to Mrs. Newsome
+about his useful friend, but it had begun to haunt his imagination
+that Chad, taking up again for her benefit a pen too long disused,
+might possibly be finer.  It wouldn't at all do, he saw, that
+anything should come up for him at Chad's hand but what
+specifically was to have come; the greatest divergence from which
+would be precisely the element of any lubrication of their
+intercourse by levity It was accordingly to forestall such an
+accident that he frankly put before the young man the several
+facts, just as they had occurred, of his funny alliance.  He spoke
+of these facts, pleasantly and obligingly, as "the whole story,"
+and felt that he might qualify the alliance as funny if he
+remained sufficiently grave about it.  He flattered himself that he
+even exaggerated the wild freedom of his original encounter with
+the wonderful lady; he was scrupulously definite about the absurd
+conditions in which they had made acquaintance--their having
+picked each other up almost in the street; and he had (finest
+inspiration of all!) a conception of carrying the war into the
+enemy's country by showing surprise at the enemy's ignorance.
+
+He had always had a notion that this last was the grand style of
+fighting; the greater therefore the reason for it, as he couldn't
+remember that he had ever before fought in the grand style.  Every
+one, according to this, knew Miss Gostrey:  how came it Chad didn't
+know her?  The difficulty, the impossibility, was really to escape
+it; Strether put on him, by what he took for granted, the burden
+of proof of the contrary.  This tone was so far successful as that
+Chad quite appeared to recognise her as a person whose fame had
+reached him, but against his acquaintance with whom much mischance
+had worked.  He made the point at the same time that his social
+relations, such as they could be called, were perhaps not to the
+extent Strether supposed with the rising flood of their
+compatriots.  He hinted at his having more and more given way to a
+different principle of selection; the moral of which seemed to be
+that he went about little in the "colony."  For the moment
+certainly he had quite another interest.  It was deep, what he
+understood, and Strether, for himself, could only so observe it.
+He couldn't see as yet how deep.  Might he not all too soon! For
+there was really too much of their question that Chad had already
+committed himself to liking.  He liked, to begin with, his
+prospective stepfather; which was distinctly what had not been on
+the cards.  His hating him was the untowardness for which Strether
+had been best prepared; he hadn't expected the boy's actual form
+to give him more to do than his imputed.  It gave him more through
+suggesting that he must somehow make up to himself for not being
+sure he was sufficiently disagreeable.  That had really been
+present to him as his only way to be sure he was sufficiently
+thorough.  The point was that if Chad's tolerance of his
+thoroughness were insincere, were but the best of devices for
+gaining time, it none the less did treat everything as tacitly
+concluded.
+
+That seemed at the end of ten days the upshot of the abundant, the
+recurrent talk through which Strether poured into him all it
+concerned him to know, put him in full possession of facts and
+figures.  Never cutting these colloquies short by a minute, Chad
+behaved, looked and spoke as if he were rather heavily, perhaps
+even a trifle gloomily, but none the less fundamentally and
+comfortably free.  He made no crude profession of eagerness to
+yield, but he asked the most intelligent questions, probed, at
+moments, abruptly, even deeper than his friend's layer of
+information, justified by these touches the native estimate of his
+latent stuff, and had in every way the air of trying to live,
+reflectively, into the square bright picture.  He walked up and
+down in front of this production, sociably took Strether's arm at
+the points at which he stopped, surveyed it repeatedly from the
+right and from the left, inclined a critical head to either
+quarter, and, while he puffed a still more critical cigarette,
+animadverted to his companion on this passage and that.  Strether
+sought relief--there were hours when he required it--in repeating
+himself; it was in truth not to be blinked that Chad had a way.
+The main question as yet was of what it was a way TO.  It made
+vulgar questions no more easy; but that was unimportant when all
+questions save those of his own asking had dropped.  That he was
+free was answer enough, and it wasn't quite ridiculous that this
+freedom should end by presenting itself as what was difficult to
+move.  His changed state, his lovely home, his beautiful things,
+his easy talk, his very appetite for Strether, insatiable and,
+when all was said, flattering--what were such marked matters all
+but the notes of his freedom?  He had the effect of making a
+sacrifice of it just in these handsome forms to his visitor; which
+was mainly the reason the visitor was privately, for the time, a
+little out of countenance.  Strether was at this period again and
+again thrown back on a felt need to remodel somehow his plan.  He
+fairly caught himself shooting rueful glances, shy looks of
+pursuit, toward the embodied influence, the definite adversary, who
+had by a stroke of her own failed him and on a fond theory of
+whose palpable presence he had, under Mrs. Newsome's inspiration,
+altogether proceeded.  He had once or twice, in secret, literally
+expressed the irritated wish that SHE would come out and find her.
+
+He couldn't quite yet force it upon Woollett that such a career,
+such a perverted young life, showed after all a certain plausible
+side, DID in the case before them flaunt something like an
+impunity for the social man; but he could at least treat himself
+to the statement that would prepare him for the sharpest echo.
+This echo--as distinct over there in the dry thin air as some
+shrill "heading" above a column of print--seemed to reach him even
+as he wrote.  "He says there's no woman," he could hear Mrs.
+Newsome report, in capitals almost of newspaper size, to Mrs.
+Pocock; and he could focus in Mrs. Pocock the response of the
+reader of the journal.  He could see in the younger lady's face the
+earnestness of her attention and catch the full scepticism of her
+but slightly delayed "What is there then?"  Just so he could again
+as little miss the mother's clear decision:  "There's plenty of
+disposition, no doubt, to pretend there isn't."  Strether had,
+after posting his letter, the whole scene out; and it was a scene
+during which, coming and going, as befell, he kept his eye not
+least upon the daughter.  He had his fine sense of the conviction
+Mrs. Pocock would take occasion to reaffirm--a conviction bearing,
+as he had from the first deeply divined it to bear, on Mr.
+Strether's essential inaptitude.  She had looked him in his
+conscious eyes even before he sailed, and that she didn't believe
+HE would find the woman had been written in her book. [sic]
+Hadn't she at the best but a scant faith in his ability to find women?
+It wasn't even as if he had found her mother--so much more, to her
+discrimination, had her mother performed the finding.  Her mother
+had, in a case her private judgement of which remained educative
+of Mrs. Pocock's critical sense, found the man.  The man owed his
+unchallenged state, in general, to the fact that Mrs. Newsome's
+discoveries were accepted at Woollett; but he knew in his bones,
+our friend did, how almost irresistibly Mrs. Pocock would now be
+moved to show what she thought of his own.  Give HER a free hand,
+would be the moral, and the woman would soon be found.
+
+His impression of Miss Gostrey after her introduction to Chad was
+meanwhile an impression of a person almost unnaturally on her
+guard.  He struck himself as at first unable to extract from her
+what he wished; though indeed OF what he wished at this special
+juncture he would doubtless have contrived to make but a crude
+statement.  It sifted and settled nothing to put to her, tout
+betement, as she often said, "Do you like him, eh?"--thanks to his
+feeling it actually the least of his needs to heap up the evidence
+in the young man's favour.  He repeatedly knocked at her door to
+let her have it afresh that Chad's case--whatever else of minor
+interest it might yield--was first and foremost a miracle almost
+monstrous.  It was the alteration of the entire man, and was so
+signal an instance that nothing else, for the intelligent
+observer, could--COULD it?--signify.  "It's a plot," he declared--
+"there's more in it than meets the eye."  He gave the rein to his
+fancy.  "It's a plant!"
+
+His fancy seemed to please her.  "Whose then?"
+
+"Well, the party responsible is, I suppose, the fate that waits
+for one, the dark doom that rides.  What I mean is that with such
+elements one can't count.  I've but my poor individual, my modest
+human means.  It isn't playing the game to turn on the uncanny.  All
+one's energy goes to facing it, to tracking it.  One wants, confound
+it, don't you see?" he confessed with a queer face--"one wants to
+enjoy anything so rare.  Call it then life"--he puzzled it out--
+"call it poor dear old life simply that springs the surprise.
+Nothing alters the fact that the surprise is paralysing, or at any
+rate engrossing--all, practically, hang it, that one sees, that
+one CAN see."
+
+Her silences were never barren, nor even dull.  "Is that what
+you've written home?"
+
+He tossed it off.  "Oh dear, yes!"
+
+She had another pause while, across her carpets, he had another
+walk.  "If you don't look out you'll have them straight over."
+
+"Oh but I've said he'll go back."
+
+"And WILL he?" Miss Gostrey asked.
+
+The special tone of it made him, pulling up, look at her long.
+"What's that but just the question I've spent treasures of
+patience and ingenuity in giving you, by the sight of him--after
+everything had led up--every facility to answer?  What is it but
+just the thing I came here to-day to get out of you?  Will he?"
+
+"No--he won't," she said at last.  "He's not free."
+
+The air of it held him.  "Then you've all the while known--?"
+
+"I've known nothing but what I've seen; and I wonder," she
+declared with some impatience, that you didn't see as much.  It was
+enough to be with him there--"
+
+"In the box?  Yes," he rather blankly urged.
+
+"Well--to feel sure."
+
+"Sure of what?"
+
+She got up from her chair, at this, with a nearer approach than
+she had ever yet shown to dismay at his dimness.  She even, fairly
+pausing for it, spoke with a shade of pity.  "Guess!"
+
+It was a shade, fairly, that brought a flush into his face; so
+that for a moment, as they waited together, their difference was
+between them.  "You mean that just your hour with him told you so
+much of his story?  Very good; I'm not such a fool, on my side, as
+that I don't understand you, or as that I didn't in some degree
+understand HIM.  That he has done what he liked most isn't, among
+any of us, a matter the least in dispute.  There's equally little
+question at this time of day of what it is he does like most.  But
+I'm not talking," he reasonably explained, "of any mere wretch he
+may still pick up.  I'm talking of some person who in his present
+situation may have held her own, may really have counted."
+
+"That's exactly what I am!" said Miss Gostrey.  But she as quickly
+made her point.  "I thought you thought--or that they think at
+Woollett--that that's what mere wretches necessarily do.  Mere
+wretches necessarily DON'T!" she declared with spirit.  "There
+must, behind every appearance to the contrary, still be somebody--
+somebody who's not a mere wretch, since we accept the miracle.
+What else but such a somebody can such a miracle be?"
+
+He took it in.  "Because the fact itself IS the woman?"
+
+"A woman.  Some woman or other.  It's one of the things that HAVE to
+be."
+
+"But you mean then at least a good one."
+
+"A good woman?"  She threw up her arms with a laugh.  "I should call
+her excellent!"
+
+"Then why does he deny her?"
+
+Miss Gostrey thought a moment.  "Because she's too good to admit!
+Don't you see," she went on, "how she accounts for him?"
+
+Strether clearly, more and more, did see; yet it made him also see
+other things.  "But isn't what we want that he shall account for
+HER?"
+
+"Well, he does.  What you have before you is his way.  You must
+forgive him if it isn't quite outspoken.  In Paris such debts are
+tacit."
+
+Strether could imagine; but still--! "Even when the woman's good?"
+
+Again she laughed out.  "Yes, and even when the man is! There's
+always a caution in such cases," she more seriously explained--
+"for what it may seem to show.  There's nothing that's taken as
+showing so much here as sudden unnatural goodness."
+
+"Ah then you're speaking now," Strether said, "of people who are
+NOT nice."
+
+"I delight," she replied, "in your classifications.  But do you
+want me," she asked, "to give you in the matter, on this ground,
+the wisest advice I'm capable of?  Don't consider her, don't judge
+her at all in herself.  Consider her and judge her only in Chad."
+
+He had the courage at least of his companion's logic.  "Because
+then I shall like her?"  He almost looked, with his quick imagination
+as if he already did, though seeing at once also the full extent
+of how little it would suit his book.  "But is that what I came
+out for?"
+
+She had to confess indeed that it wasn't.  But there was something
+else.  "Don't make up your mind.  There are all sorts of things.  You
+haven't seen him all."
+
+This on his side Strether recognised; but his acuteness none the
+less showed him the danger.  "Yes, but if the more I see the better
+he seems?"
+
+Well, she found something.  "That may be--but his disavowal of her
+isn't, all the same, pure consideration.  There's a hitch."  She
+made it out.  "It's the effort to sink her."
+
+Strether winced at the image.  "To 'sink'--?"
+
+"Well, I mean there's a struggle, and a part of it is just what he
+hides.  Take time--that's the only way not to make some mistake
+that you'll regret.  Then you'll see.  He does really want to shake
+her off."
+
+Our friend had by this time so got into the vision that he almost
+gasped.  "After all she has done for him?"
+
+Miss Gostrey gave him a look which broke the next moment into a
+wonderful smile.  "He's not so good as you think!"
+
+They remained with him, these words, promising him, in their
+character of warning, considerable help; but the support he tried
+to draw from them found itself on each renewal of contact with
+Chad defeated by something else.  What could it be, this
+disconcerting force, he asked himself, but the sense, constantly
+renewed, that Chad WAS--quite in fact insisted on being--as good
+as he thought?  It seemed somehow as if he couldn't BUT be as good
+from the moment he wasn't as bad.  There was a succession of days
+at all events when contact with him--and in its immediate effect,
+as if it could produce no other--elbowed out of Strether's
+consciousness everything but itself.  Little Bilham once more
+pervaded the scene, but little Bilham became even in a higher
+degree than he had originally been one of the numerous forms of
+the inclusive relation; a consequence promoted, to our friend's
+sense, by two or three incidents with which we have yet to make
+acquaintance.  Waymarsh himself, for the occasion, was drawn into
+the eddy; it absolutely, though but temporarily, swallowed him
+down, and there were days when Strether seemed to bump against him
+as a sinking swimmer might brush a submarine object.  The
+fathomless medium held them--Chad's manner was the fathomless
+medium; and our friend felt as if they passed each other, in their
+deep immersion, with the round impersonal eye of silent fish.  It
+was practically produced between them that Waymarsh was giving him
+then his chance; and the shade of discomfort that Strether drew
+from the allowance resembled not a little the embarrassment he had
+known at school, as a boy, when members of his family had been
+present at exhibitions.  He could perform before strangers, but
+relatives were fatal, and it was now as if, comparatively,
+Waymarsh were a relative.  He seemed to hear him say "Strike up
+then!" and to enjoy a foretaste of conscientious domestic
+criticism.  He HAD struck up, so far as he actually could; Chad
+knew by this time in profusion what he wanted; and what vulgar
+violence did his fellow pilgrim expect of him when he had really
+emptied his mind?  It went somehow to and fro that what poor
+Waymarsh meant was "I told you so--that you'd lose your immortal
+soul!" but it was also fairly explicit that Strether had his own
+challenge and that, since they must go to the bottom of things, he
+wasted no more virtue in watching Chad than Chad wasted in
+watching him.  His dip for duty's sake--where was it worse than
+Waymarsh's own?  For HE needn't have stopped resisting and
+refusing, needn't have parleyed, at that rate, with the foe.
+
+The strolls over Paris to see something or call somewhere were
+accordingly inevitable and natural, and the late sessions in the
+wondrous troisieme, the lovely home, when men dropped in and the
+picture composed more suggestively through the haze of tobacco, of
+music more or less good and of talk more or less polyglot, were on
+a principle not to be distinguished from that of the mornings and
+the afternoons.  Nothing, Strether had to recognise as he leaned
+back and smoked, could well less resemble a scene of violence than
+even the liveliest of these occasions.  They were occasions of
+discussion, none the less, and Strether had never in his life
+heard so many opinions on so many subjects.  There were opinions at
+Woollett, but only on three or four.  The differences were there to
+match; if they were doubtless deep, though few, they were quiet--
+they were, as might be said, almost as shy as if people had been
+ashamed of them.  People showed little diffidence about such
+things, on the other hand, in the Boulevard Malesherbes, and were
+so far from being ashamed of them--or indeed of anything else--
+that they often seemed to have invented them to avert those
+agreements that destroy the taste of talk.  No one had ever done that
+at Woollett, though Strether could remember times when he himself had
+been tempted to it without quite knowing why.  He saw why at present
+--he had but wanted to promote intercourse.
+
+These, however, were but parenthetic memories, and the turn taken
+by his affair on the whole was positively that if his nerves were
+on the stretch it was because he missed violence.  When he asked
+himself if none would then, in connexion with it, ever come at
+all, he might almost have passed as wondering how to provoke it.
+It would be too absurd if such a vision as THAT should have to be
+invoked for relief; it was already marked enough as absurd that he
+should actually have begun with flutters and dignities on the
+score of a single accepted meal.  What sort of a brute had he
+expected Chad to be, anyway?--Strether had occasion to make the
+enquiry but was careful to make it in private.  He could himself,
+comparatively recent as it was--it was truly but the fact of a few
+days since--focus his primal crudity; but he would on the
+approach of an observer, as if handling an illicit possession,
+have slipped the reminiscence out of sight.  There were echoes of
+it still in Mrs. Newsome's letters, and there were moments when
+these echoes made him exclaim on her want of tact.  He blushed of
+course, at once, still more for the explanation than for the
+ground of it:  it came to him in time to save his manners that she
+couldn't at the best become tactful as quickly as he.  Her tact had
+to reckon with the Atlantic Ocean, the General Post-Office and the
+extravagant curve of the globe.  Chad had one day offered tea at
+the Boulevard Malesherbes to a chosen few, a group again including
+the unobscured Miss Barrace; and Strether had on coming out walked
+away with the acquaintance whom in his letters to Mrs. Newsome he
+always spoke of as the little artist-man.  He had had full occasion
+to mention him as the other party, so oddly, to the only close
+personal alliance observation had as yet detected in Chad's
+existence.  Little Bilham's way this afternoon was not Strether's,
+but he had none the less kindly come with him, and it was somehow
+a part of his kindness that as it had sadly begun to rain they
+suddenly found themselves seated for conversation at a cafe in
+which they had taken refuge.  He had passed no more crowded hour in
+Chad's society than the one just ended; he had talked with Miss
+Barrace, who had reproached him with not having come to see her,
+and he had above all hit on a happy thought for causing Waymarsh's
+tension to relax.  Something might possibly be extracted for the
+latter from the idea of his success with that lady, whose quick
+apprehension of what might amuse her had given Strether a free
+hand.  What had she meant if not to ask whether she couldn't help
+him with his splendid encumbrance, and mightn't the sacred rage at
+any rate be kept a little in abeyance by thus creating for his
+comrade's mind even in a world of irrelevance the possibility of a
+relation?  What was it but a relation to be regarded as so
+decorative and, in especial, on the strength of it, to be whirled
+away, amid flounces and feathers, in a coupe lined, by what
+Strether could make out, with dark blue brocade?  He himself had
+never been whirled away--never at least in a coupe and behind a
+footman; he had driven with Miss Gostrey in cabs, with Mrs.
+Pocock, a few times, in an open buggy, with Mrs. Newsome in a
+four-seated cart and, occasionally up at the mountains, on a
+buckboard; but his friend's actual adventure transcended his
+personal experience.  He now showed his companion soon enough
+indeed how inadequate, as a general monitor, this last queer
+quantity could once more feel itself.
+
+"What game under the sun is he playing?"  He signified the next
+moment that his allusion was not to the fat gentleman immersed in
+dominoes on whom his eyes had begun by resting, but to their host
+of the previous hour, as to whom, there on the velvet bench, with
+a final collapse of all consistency, he treated himself to the
+comfort of indiscretion.  "Where do you see him come out?"
+
+Little Bilham, in meditation, looked at him with a kindness almost
+paternal. "Don't you like it over here?"
+
+Strether laughed out--for the tone was indeed droll; he let
+himself go.  "What has that to do with it?  The only thing I've any
+business to like is to feel that I'm moving him.  That's why I ask
+you whether you believe I AM?  Is the creature"--and he did his
+best to show that he simply wished to ascertain--"honest?"
+
+His companion looked responsible, but looked it through a small
+dim smile.  "What creature do you mean?"
+
+It was on this that they did have for a little a mute interchange.
+"Is it untrue that he's free?  How then," Strether asked wondering
+"does he arrange his life?"
+
+"Is the creature you mean Chad himself?" little Bilham said.
+
+Strether here, with a rising hope, just thought, "We must take one
+of them at a time."  But his coherence lapsed.  "IS there some
+woman?  Of whom he's really afraid of course I mean--or who does
+with him what she likes."
+
+"It's awfully charming of you," Bilham presently remarked, "not to
+have asked me that before."
+
+"Oh I'm not fit for my job!"
+
+The exclamation had escaped our friend, but it made little Bilham
+more deliberate.  "Chad's a rare case!" he luminously observed.
+"He's awfully changed," he added.
+
+"Then you see it too?"
+
+"The way he has improved?  Oh yes--I think every one must see it.
+But I'm not sure," said little Bilham, "that I didn't like him
+about as well in his other state."
+
+"Then this IS really a new state altogether?"
+
+"Well," the young man after a moment returned, "I'm not sure he
+was really meant by nature to be quite so good.  It's like the new
+edition of an old book that one has been fond of--revised and
+amended, brought up to date, but not quite the thing one knew and
+loved.  However that may be at all events," he pursued, "I don't
+think, you know, that he's really playing, as you call it, any
+game.  I believe he really wants to go back and take up a career.
+He's capable of one, you know, that will improve and enlarge him
+still more.  He won't then," little Bilham continued to remark, "be
+my pleasant well-rubbed old-fashioned volume at all.  But of course
+I'm beastly immoral.  I'm afraid it would be a funny world
+altogether--a world with things the way I like them.  I ought, I
+dare say, to go home and go into business myself.  Only I'd simply
+rather die--simply.  And I've not the least difficulty in making
+up my mind not to, and in knowing exactly why, and in defending my
+ground against all comers.  All the same," he wound up, "I assure
+you I don't say a word against it--for himself, I mean--to Chad.  I
+seem to see it as much the best thing for him.  You see he's not
+happy."
+
+"DO I?"--Strether stared.  "I've been supposing I see just the
+opposite--an extraordinary case of the equilibrium arrived at and
+assured."
+
+"Oh there's a lot behind it."
+
+"Ah there you are!" Strether exclaimed.  "That's just what I want
+to get at.  You speak of your familiar volume altered out of
+recognition.  Well, who's the editor?"
+
+Little Bilham looked before him a minute in silence.  "He ought to
+get married.  THAT would do it.  And he wants to."
+
+"Wants to marry her?"
+
+Again little Bilham waited, and, with a sense that he had
+information, Strether scarce knew what was coming.  "He wants to be
+free.  He isn't used, you see," the young man explained in his
+lucid way, "to being so good."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "Then I may take it from you that he IS good?"
+
+His companion matched his pause, but making it up with a quiet
+fulness.  "DO take it from me."
+
+"Well then why isn't he free?  He swears to me he is, but meanwhile
+does nothing--except of course that he's so kind to me--to prove
+it; and couldn't really act much otherwise if he weren't.  My
+question to you just now was exactly on this queer impression of
+his diplomacy:  as if instead of really giving ground his line were
+to keep me on here and set me a bad example."
+
+As the half-hour meanwhile had ebbed Strether paid his score, and
+the waiter was presently in the act of counting out change.  Our
+friend pushed back to him a fraction of it, with which, after an
+emphatic recognition, the personage in question retreated.  "You
+give too much," little Bilham permitted himself benevolently to
+observe.
+
+"Oh I always give too much!" Strether helplessly sighed.  "But you
+don't," he went on as if to get quickly away from the contemplation
+of that doom, "answer my question.  Why isn't he free?"
+
+Little Bilham had got up as if the transaction with the waiter had
+been a signal, and had already edged out between the table and the
+divan.  The effect of this was that a minute later they had quitted
+the place, the gratified waiter alert again at the open door.
+Strether had found himself deferring to his companion's abruptness
+as to a hint that he should be answered as soon as they were more
+isolated.  This happened when after a few steps in the outer air
+they had turned the next comer.  There our friend had kept it up.
+"Why isn't he free if he's good?"
+
+Little Bilham looked him full in the face.  "Because it's a
+virtuous attachment."
+
+This had settled the question so effectually for the time--that is
+for the next few days--that it had given Strether almost a new
+lease of life.  It must be added however that, thanks to his
+constant habit of shaking the bottle in which life handed him the
+wine of experience, he presently found the taste of the lees
+rising as usual into his draught.  His imagination had in other
+words already dealt with his young friend's assertion; of which it
+had made something that sufficiently came out on the very next
+occasion of his seeing Maria Gostrey.  This occasion moreover had
+been determined promptly by a new circumstance--a circumstance he
+was the last man to leave her for a day in ignorance of.  "When I
+said to him last night," he immediately began, "that without some
+definite word from him now that will enable me to speak to them
+over there of our sailing--or at least of mine, giving them some
+sort of date--my responsibility becomes uncomfortable and my
+situation awkward; when I said that to him what do you think was
+his reply?"  And then as she this time gave it up:  "Why that he has
+two particular friends, two ladies, mother and daughter, about to
+arrive in Paris--coming back from an absence; and that he wants
+me so furiously to meet them, know them and like them, that I
+shall oblige him by kindly not bringing our business to a crisis
+till he has had a chance to see them again himself.  Is that,"
+Strether enquired, "the way he's going to try to get off?  These
+are the people," he explained, "that he must have gone down to see
+before I arrived.  They're the best friends he has in the world,
+and they take more interest than any one else in what concerns
+him.  As I'm his next best he sees a thousand reasons why we should
+comfortably meet.  He hasn't broached the question sooner because
+their return was uncertain--seemed in fact for the present
+impossible.  But he more than intimates that--if you can believe
+it--their desire to make my acquaintance has had to do with their
+surmounting difficulties."
+
+"They're dying to see you?" Miss Gostrey asked.
+
+"Dying.  Of course," said Strether, "they're the virtuous attachment."
+He had already told her about that--had seen her the day after
+his talk with little Bilham; and they had then threshed out
+together the bearing of the revelation.  She had helped him to put
+into it the logic in which little Bilham had left it slightly
+deficient Strether hadn't pressed him as to the object of the
+preference so unexpectedly described; feeling in the presence of
+it, with one of his irrepressible scruples, a delicacy from which
+he had in the quest of the quite other article worked himself
+sufficiently free.  He had held off, as on a small principle of
+pride, from permitting his young friend to mention a name; wishing
+to make with this the great point that Chad's virtuous attachments
+were none of his business.  He had wanted from the first not to
+think too much of his dignity, but that was no reason for not
+allowing it any little benefit that might turn up.  He had often
+enough wondered to what degree his interference might pass for
+interested; so that there was no want of luxury in letting it be
+seen whenever he could that he didn't interfere.  That had of
+course at the same time not deprived him of the further luxury of
+much private astonishment; which however he had reduced to some
+order before communicating his knowledge.  When he had done this at
+last it was with the remark that, surprised as Miss Gostrey might,
+like himself, at first be, she would probably agree with him on
+reflexion that such an account of the matter did after all fit the
+confirmed appearances.  Nothing certainly, on all the indications,
+could have been a greater change for him than a virtuous
+attachment, and since they had been in search of the "word" as the
+French called it, of that change, little Bilham's announcement--
+though so long and so oddly delayed--would serve as well as
+another.  She had assured Strether in fact after a pause that the
+more she thought of it the more it did serve; and yet her
+assurance hadn't so weighed with him as that before they parted he
+hadn't ventured to challenge her sincerity.  Didn't she believe the
+attachment was virtuous?--he had made sure of her again with the
+aid of that question.  The tidings he brought her on this second
+occasion were moreover such as would help him to make surer still.
+
+She showed at first none the less as only amused.  "You say there
+are two?  An attachment to them both then would, I suppose, almost
+necessarily be innocent."
+
+Our friend took the point, but he had his clue.  "Mayn't he be
+still in the stage of not quite knowing which of them, mother or
+daughter, he likes best?"
+
+She gave it more thought.  "Oh it must be the daughter--at his
+age."
+
+"Possibly.  Yet what do we know," Strether asked, "about hers?  She
+may be old enough."
+
+"Old enough for what?"
+
+"Why to marry Chad.  That may be, you know, what they want.  And if
+Chad wants it too, and little Bilham wants it, and even we, at a
+pinch, could do with it--that is if she doesn't prevent repatriation
+--why it may be plain sailing yet."
+
+It was always the case for him in these counsels that each of his
+remarks, as it came, seemed to drop into a deeper well.  He had at
+all events to wait a moment to hear the slight splash of this one.
+"I don't see why if Mr. Newsome wants to marry the young lady he
+hasn't already done it or hasn't been prepared with some statement
+to you about it.  And if he both wants to marry her and is on good
+terms with them why isn't he 'free'?"
+
+Strether, responsively, wondered indeed.  "Perhaps the girl herself
+doesn't like him."
+
+"Then why does he speak of them to you as he does?"
+
+Strether's mind echoed the question, but also again met it.  "Perhaps
+it's with the mother he's on good terms."
+
+"As against the daughter?"
+
+"Well, if she's trying to persuade the daughter to consent to him,
+what could make him like the mother more?  Only," Strether threw
+out, "why shouldn't the daughter consent to him?"
+
+"Oh," said Miss Gostrey, "mayn't it be that every one else isn't
+quite so struck with him as you?"
+
+"Doesn't regard him you mean as such an 'eligible' young man?  Is
+that what I've come to?" he audibly and rather gravely sought to
+know.  "However," he went on, "his marriage is what his mother most
+desires--that is if it will help.  And oughtn't ANY marriage to
+help?  They must want him"--he had already worked it out--"to be
+better off.  Almost any girl he may marry will have a direct
+interest in his taking up his chances.  It won't suit HER at least
+that he shall miss them."
+
+Miss Gostrey cast about.  "No--you reason well! But of course on
+the other hand there's always dear old Woollett itself."
+
+"Oh yes," he mused--"there's always dear old Woollett itself."
+
+She waited a moment.  "The young lady mayn't find herself able to
+swallow THAT quantity.  She may think it's paying too much; she may
+weigh one thing against another."
+
+Strether, ever restless in such debates, took a vague turn "It
+will all depend on who she is.  That of course--the proved ability
+to deal with dear old Woollett, since I'm sure she does deal with
+it--is what makes so strongly for Mamie."
+
+"Mamie?"
+
+He stopped short, at her tone, before her; then, though seeing
+that it represented not vagueness, but a momentary embarrassed
+fulness, let his exclamation come.  "You surely haven't forgotten
+about Mamie!"
+
+"No, I haven't forgotten about Mamie," she smiled.  "There's no
+doubt whatever that there's ever so much to be said for her.
+Mamie's MY girl!" she roundly declared.
+
+Strether resumed for a minute his walk.  "She's really perfectly
+lovely, you know.  Far prettier than any girl I've seen over here
+yet."
+
+"That's precisely on what I perhaps most build."  And she mused a
+moment in her friend's way.  "I should positively like to take her
+in hand!"
+
+He humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it.  "Oh
+but don't, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and
+can't, you know, be left."
+
+But she kept it up.  "I wish they'd send her out to me!"
+
+"If they knew you," he returned, "they would "
+
+"Ah but don't they?--after all that, as I've understood you you've
+told them about me?"
+
+He had paused before her again, but he continued his course "They
+WILL--before, as you say, I've done."  Then he came out with the
+point he had wished after all most to make.  "It seems to give away
+now his game.  This is what he has been doing--keeping me along
+for.  He has been waiting for them."
+
+Miss Gostrey drew in her lips.  "You see a good deal in it!"
+
+"I doubt if I see as much as you.  Do you pretend," he went on,
+"that you don't see--?"
+
+"Well, what?"--she pressed him as he paused.
+
+"Why that there must be a lot between them--and that it has been
+going on from the first; even from before I came."
+
+She took a minute to answer.  "Who are they then--if it's so
+grave?"
+
+"It mayn't be grave--it may be gay.  But at any rate it's marked.
+Only I don't know," Strether had to confess, "anything about them.
+Their name for instance was a thing that, after little Bilham's
+information, I found it a kind of refreshment not to feel obliged
+to follow up."
+
+"Oh," she returned, "if you think you've got off--!"
+
+Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom.  "I don't think I've
+got off.  I only think I'm breathing for about five minutes.  I dare
+say I SHALL have, at the best, still to get on."  A look, over it
+all, passed between them, and the next minute he had come back to
+good humour.  "I don't meanwhile take the smallest interest in
+their name."
+
+"Nor in their nationality?--American, French, English, Polish?"
+
+"I don't care the least little 'hang,'" he smiled, "for their
+nationality.  It would be nice if they're Polish!" he almost
+immediately added.
+
+"Very nice indeed."  The transition kept up her spirits.  "So you
+see you do care."
+
+He did this contention a modified justice.  "I think I should if
+they WERE Polish.  Yes," he thought--"there might be joy in THAT."
+
+"Let us then hope for it."  But she came after this nearer to the
+question.  "If the girl's of the right age of course the mother
+can't be.  I mean for the virtuous attachment.  If the girl's
+twenty--and she can't be less--the mother must be at least forty.
+So it puts the mother out.  SHE'S too old for him."
+
+Strether, arrested again, considered and demurred.  "Do you think
+so?  Do you think any one would be too old for him?  I'M eighty, and
+I'm too young.  But perhaps the girl," he continued, "ISn't twenty.
+Perhaps she's only ten--but such a little dear that Chad finds
+himself counting her in as an attraction of the acquaintance.
+Perhaps she's only five.  Perhaps the mother's but five-and-twenty
+--a charming young widow."
+
+Miss Gostrey entertained the suggestion.  "She IS a widow then?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea!"  They once more, in spite of this
+vagueness, exchanged a look--a look that was perhaps the longest
+yet.  It seemed in fact, the next thing, to require to explain
+itself; which it did as it could.  "I only feel what I've told you
+--that he has some reason."
+
+Miss Gostrey's imagination had taken its own flight.  "Perhaps
+she's NOT a widow."
+
+Strether seemed to accept the possibility with reserve.  Still he
+accepted it.  "Then that's why the attachment--if it's to her--is
+virtuous."
+
+But she looked as if she scarce followed.  "Why is it virtuous if--
+since she's free--there's nothing to impose on it any condition?"
+
+He laughed at her question.  "Oh I perhaps don't mean as virtuous
+as THAT! Your idea is that it can be virtuous--in any sense worthy
+of the name--only if she's NOT free?  But what does it become
+then," he asked, "for HER?"
+
+"Ah that's another matter."  He said nothing for a moment, and she
+soon went on.  "I dare say you're right, at any rate, about
+Mr. Newsome's little plan.  He HAS been trying you--has been
+reporting on you to these friends."
+
+Strether meanwhile had had time to think more.  "Then where's his
+straightness?"
+
+"Well, as we say, it's struggling up, breaking out, asserting itself
+as it can.  We can be on the side, you see, of his straightness.
+We can help him.  But he has made out," said Miss Gostrey, "that
+you'll do."
+
+"Do for what?"
+
+"Why, for THEM--for ces dames.  He has watched you, studied you,
+liked you--and recognised that THEY must.  It's a great compliment
+to you, my dear man; for I'm sure they're particular.  You came out
+for a success.  Well," she gaily declared, "you're having it!"
+
+He took it from her with momentary patience and then turned
+abruptly away.  It was always convenient to him that there were so
+many fine things in her room to look at.  But the examination of
+two or three of them appeared soon to have determined a speech
+that had little to do with them.  "You don't believe in it!"
+
+"In what?"
+
+"In the character of the attachment.  In its innocence."
+
+But she defended herself.  "I don't pretend to know anything about
+it.  Everything's possible.  We must see."
+
+"See?" he echoed with a groan.  "Haven't we seen enough?"
+
+"I haven't," she smiled.
+
+"But do you suppose then little Bilham has lied?"
+
+"You must find out."
+
+It made him almost turn pale.  "Find out any MORE?"
+
+He had dropped on a sofa for dismay; but she seemed, as she stood
+over him, to have the last word.  "Wasn't what you came out for to
+find out ALL?"
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Fifth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The Sunday of the next week was a wonderful day, and Chad Newsome
+had let his friend know in advance that he had provided for it.
+There had already been a question of his taking him to see the
+great Gloriani, who was at home on Sunday afternoons and at whose
+house, for the most part, fewer bores were to be met than
+elsewhere; but the project, through some accident, had not had
+instant effect, and now revived in happier conditions.  Chad had
+made the point that the celebrated sculptor had a queer old
+garden, for which the weather--spring at last frank and fair--was
+propitious; and two or three of his other allusions had confirmed
+for Strether the expectation of something special.  He had by this
+time, for all introductions and adventures, let himself recklessly
+go, cherishing the sense that whatever the young man showed him he
+was showing at least himself.  He could have wished indeed, so far
+as this went, that Chad were less of a mere cicerone; for he was
+not without the impression--now that the vision of his game, his
+plan, his deep diplomacy, did recurrently assert itself--of his
+taking refuge from the realities of their intercourse in profusely
+dispensing, as our friend mentally phrased et panem et circenses.
+Our friend continued to feel rather smothered in flowers, though
+he made in his other moments the almost angry inference that this
+was only because of his odious ascetic suspicion of any form of
+beauty.  He periodically assured himself--for his reactions were
+sharp--that he shouldn't reach the truth of anything till he had
+at least got rid of that.
+
+He had known beforehand that Madame de Vionnet and her daughter
+would probably be on view, an intimation to that effect having
+constituted the only reference again made by Chad to his good
+friends from the south.  The effect of Strether's talk about them
+with Miss Gostrey had been quite to consecrate his reluctance to
+pry; something in the very air of Chad's silence--judged in the
+light of that talk--offered it to him as a reserve he could
+markedly match.  It shrouded them about with he scarce knew what, a
+consideration, a distinction; he was in presence at any rate--so
+far as it placed him there--of ladies; and the one thing that was
+definite for him was that they themselves should be, to the extent
+of his responsibility, in presence of a gentleman.  Was it because
+they were very beautiful, very clever, or even very good--was it
+for one of these reasons that Chad was, so to speak, nursing his
+effect?  Did he wish to spring them, in the Woollett phrase, with a
+fuller force--to confound his critic, slight though as yet the
+criticism, with some form of merit exquisitely incalculable? The
+most the critic had at all events asked was whether the persons in
+question were French; and that enquiry had been but a proper
+comment on the sound of their name.  "Yes.  That is no!" had been
+Chad's reply; but he had immediately added that their English was
+the most charming in the world, so that if Strether were wanting
+an excuse for not getting on with them he wouldn't in the least
+find one.  Never in fact had Strether--in the mood into which the
+place had quickly launched him--felt, for himself, less the need
+of an excuse.  Those he might have found would have been, at the
+worst, all for the others, the people before him, in whose liberty
+to be as they were he was aware that he positively rejoiced.  His
+fellow guests were multiplying, and these things, their liberty,
+their intensity, their variety, their conditions at large, were in
+fusion in the admirable medium of the scene.
+
+The place itself was a great impression--a small pavilion, clear-faced
+and sequestered, an effect of polished parquet, of fine white panel
+and spare sallow gilt, of decoration delicate and rare, in the heart
+of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and on the edge of a cluster of gardens
+attached to old noble houses.  Far back from streets and unsuspected
+by crowds, reached by a long passage and a quiet court,
+it was as striking to the unprepared mind, he immediately saw,
+as a treasure dug up; giving him too, more than anything yet,
+the note of the range of the immeasurable town and sweeping away,
+as by a last brave brush, his usual landmarks and terms.
+It was in the garden, a spacious cherished remnant, out of
+which a dozen persons had already passed, that Chad's host
+presently met them while the tall bird-haunted trees, all of a twitter
+with the spring and the weather, and the high party-walls,
+on the other side of which grave hotels stood off for privacy,
+spoke of survival, transmission, association, a strong indifferent
+persistent order.  The day was so soft that the little party had
+practically adjourned to the open air but the open air was in such
+conditions all a chamber of state.  Strether had presently the
+sense of a great convent, a convent of missions, famous for he
+scarce knew what, a nursery of young priests, of scattered shade,
+of straight alleys and chapel-bells, that spread its mass in one
+quarter; he had the sense of names in the air, of ghosts at the
+windows, of signs and tokens, a whole range of expression, all
+about him, too thick for prompt discrimination.
+
+This assault of images became for a moment, in the address of the
+distinguished sculptor, almost formidable:  Gloriani showed him,
+in such perfect confidence, on Chad's introduction of him, a fine
+worn handsome face, a face that was like an open letter in a
+foreign tongue.  With his genius in his eyes, his manners on his
+lips, his long career behind him and his honours and rewards all
+round, the great artist, in the course of a single sustained look
+and a few words of delight at receiving him, affected our friend
+as a dazzling prodigy of type.  Strether had seen in museums--in
+the Luxembourg as well as, more reverently, later on, in the New
+York of the billionaires--the work of his hand; knowing too that
+after an earlier time in his native Rome he had migrated, in
+mid-career, to Paris, where, with a personal lustre almost violent,
+he shone in a constellation:  all of which was more than enough
+to crown him, for his guest, with the light, with the romance,
+of glory.  Strether, in contact with that element as he had never
+yet so intimately been, had the consciousness of opening to it,
+for the happy instant, all the windows of his mind, of letting this
+rather grey interior drink in for once the sun of a clime not
+marked in his old geography.  He was to remember again repeatedly
+the medal-like Italian face, in which every line was an artist's
+own, in which time told only as tone and consecration; and he was
+to recall in especial, as the penetrating radiance, as the
+communication of the illustrious spirit itself, the manner in
+which, while they stood briefly, in welcome and response, face to
+face, he was held by the sculptor's eyes.  He wasn't soon to forget
+them, was to think of them, all unconscious, unintending,
+preoccupied though they were, as the source of the deepest
+intellectual sounding to which he had ever been exposed.  He was in
+fact quite to cherish his vision of it, to play with it in idle
+hours; only speaking of it to no one and quite aware he couldn't
+have spoken without appearing to talk nonsense.  Was what it had
+told him or what it had asked him the greater of the mysteries?
+Was it the most special flare, unequalled, supreme, of the
+aesthetic torch, lighting that wondrous world for ever, or was it
+above all the long straight shaft sunk by a personal acuteness
+that life had seasoned to steel?  Nothing on earth could have been
+stranger and no one doubtless more surprised than the artist
+himself, but it was for all the world to Strether just then as if
+in the matter of his accepted duty he had positively been on trial.
+The deep human expertness in Gloriani's charming smile--oh the
+terrible life behind it!--was flashed upon him as a test of his stuff.
+
+Chad meanwhile, after having easily named his companion, had still
+more easily turned away and was already greeting other persons present.
+He was as easy, clever Chad, with the great artist as with his obscure
+compatriot, and as easy with every one else as with either:
+this fell into its place for Strether and made almost a new light,
+giving him, as a concatenation, something more he could enjoy.
+He liked Gloriani, but should never see him again; of that he was
+sufficiently sure.  Chad accordingly, who was wonderful with both
+of them, was a kind of link for hopeless fancy, an implication of
+possibilities--oh if everything had been different! Strether noted
+at all events that he was thus on terms with illustrious spirits,
+and also that--yes, distinctly--he hadn't in the least swaggered
+about it.  Our friend hadn't come there only for this figure of Abel
+Newsome's son, but that presence threatened to affect the observant
+mind as positively central.  Gloriani indeed, remembering something
+and excusing himself, pursued Chad to speak to him, and Strether was
+left musing on many things.  One of them was the question of whether,
+since he had been tested, he had passed.  Did the artist drop him
+from having made out that he wouldn't do? He really felt just to-day
+that he might do better than usual.  Hadn't he done well enough,
+so far as that went, in being exactly so dazzled? and in not having
+too, as he almost believed, wholly hidden from his host that he felt
+the latter's plummet?  Suddenly, across the garden, he saw little
+Bilham approach, and it was a part of the fit that was on him that
+as their eyes met he guessed also HIS knowledge.  If he had said to
+him on the instant what was uppermost he would have said:  "HAVE I
+passed?--for of course I know one has to pass here."  Little Bilham
+would have reassured him, have told him that he exaggerated, and
+have adduced happily enough the argument of little Bilham's own
+very presence; which, in truth, he could see, was as easy a one as
+Gloriani's own or as Chad's.  He himself would perhaps then after a
+while cease to be frightened, would get the point of view for some
+of the faces--types tremendously alien, alien to Woollett--that he
+had already begun to take in.  Who were they all, the dispersed
+groups and couples, the ladies even more unlike those of Woollett
+than the gentlemen?--this was the enquiry that, when his young
+friend had greeted him, he did find himself making.
+
+"Oh they're every one--all sorts and sizes; of course I mean
+within limits, though limits down perhaps rather more than limits
+up.  There are always artists--he's beautiful and inimitable to the
+cher confrere; and then gros bonnets of many kinds--ambassadors,
+cabinet ministers, bankers, generals, what do I know? even Jews.
+Above all always some awfully nice women--and not too many;
+sometimes an actress, an artist, a great performer--but only when
+they're not monsters; and in particular the right femmes du monde.
+You can fancy his history on that side--I believe it's fabulous:
+they NEVER give him up.  Yet he keeps them down:  no one knows how
+he manages; it's too beautiful and bland.  Never too many--and a
+mighty good thing too; just a perfect choice.  But there are not in
+any way many bores; it has always been so; he has some secret.
+It's extraordinary.  And you don't find it out.  He's the same to
+every one.  He doesn't ask questions.'
+
+"Ah doesn't he?" Strether laughed.
+
+Bilham met it with all his candour.  "How then should I be here?
+
+"Oh for what you tell me.  You're part of the perfect choice."
+
+Well, the young man took in the scene.  "It seems rather good to-day."
+
+Strether followed the direction of his eyes.  "Are they all, this
+time, femmes du monde?"
+
+Little Bilham showed his competence.  "Pretty well."
+
+This was a category our friend had a feeling for; a light,
+romantic and mysterious, on the feminine element, in which he
+enjoyed for a little watching it.  "Are there any Poles?"
+
+His companion considered.  "I think I make out a 'Portuguee.' But
+I've seen Turks."
+
+Strether wondered, desiring justice.  "They seem--all the women--
+very harmonious."
+
+"Oh in closer quarters they come out!" And then, while Strether
+was aware of fearing closer quarters, though giving himself again
+to the harmonies, "Well," little Bilham went on, "it IS at the
+worst rather good, you know.  If you like it, you feel it, this
+way, that shows you're not in the least out But you always know
+things," he handsomely added, "immediately."
+
+Strether liked it and felt it only too much; so "I say, don't lay
+traps for me!" he rather helplessly murmured.
+
+"Well," his companion returned, "he's wonderfully kind to us."
+
+"To us Americans you mean?"
+
+"Oh no--he doesn't know anything about THAT.  That's half the
+battle here--that you can never hear politics.  We don't talk them.
+I mean to poor young wretches of all sorts.  And yet it's always as
+charming as this; it's as if, by something in the air, our squalor
+didn't show.  It puts us all back--into the last century."
+
+"I'm afraid," Strether said, amused, "that it puts me rather
+forward:  oh ever so far!"
+
+"Into the next? But isn't that only," little Bilham asked,
+"because you're really of the century before?"
+
+"The century before the last? Thank you!" Strether laughed.  "If I
+ask you about some of the ladies it can't be then that I may hope,
+as such a specimen of the rococo, to please them."
+
+"On the contrary they adore--we all adore here--the rococo, and
+where is there a better setting for it than the whole thing, the
+pavilion and the garden, together? There are lots of people with
+collections," little Bilham smiled as he glanced round.  "You'll be
+secured!"
+
+It made Strether for a moment give himself again to contemplation.
+There were faces he scarce knew what to make of.  Were they
+charming or were they only strange? He mightn't talk politics, yet
+he suspected a Pole or two.  The upshot was the question at the
+back of his head from the moment his friend had joined him.  "Have
+Madame de Vionnet and her daughter arrived?"
+
+"I haven't seen them yet, but Miss Gostrey has come.  She's in the
+pavilion looking at objects.  One can see SHE'S a collector,"
+little Bilham added without offence.
+
+"Oh yes, she's a collector, and I knew she was to come.  Is Madame
+de Vionnet a collector?" Strether went on.
+
+"Rather, I believe; almost celebrated."  The young man met, on it,
+a little, his friend's eyes.  "I happen to know--from Chad, whom I
+saw last night--that they've come back; but only yesterday.
+He wasn't sure--up to the last.  This, accordingly," little Bilham
+went on, "will be--if they ARE here--their first appearance after
+their return."
+
+Strether, very quickly, turned these things over.  "Chad told you
+last night? To me, on our way here, he said nothing about it."
+
+"But did you ask him?"
+
+Strether did him the justice.  "I dare say not."
+
+"Well," said little Bilham, "you're not a person to whom it's easy
+to tell things you don't want to know.  Though it is easy, I admit--
+it's quite beautiful," he benevolently added, "when you do want to."
+
+Strether looked at him with an indulgence that matched his
+intelligence.  "Is that the deep reasoning on which--about these
+ladies--you've been yourself so silent?"
+
+Little Bilham considered the depth of his reasoning.  "I haven't
+been silent.  I spoke of them to you the other day, the day we sat
+together after Chad's tea-party."
+
+Strether came round to it.  "They then are the virtuous attachment?"
+
+"I can only tell you that it's what they pass for.  But isn't that
+enough? What more than a vain appearance does the wisest of us
+know? I commend you," the young man declared with a pleasant
+emphasis, "the vain appearance."
+
+Strether looked more widely round, and what he saw, from face to face,
+deepened the effect of his young friend's words.  "Is it so good?"
+
+"Magnificent."
+
+Strether had a pause.  "The husband's dead?"
+
+"Dear no.  Alive."
+
+"Oh!" said Strether.  After which, as his companion laughed:
+"How then can it be so good?"
+
+"You'll see for yourself.  One does see."
+
+"Chad's in love with the daughter?"
+
+"That's what I mean."
+
+Strether wondered.  "Then where's the difficulty?"
+
+"Why, aren't you and I--with our grander bolder ideas?"
+
+"Oh mine--!" Strether said rather strangely.  But then as if to
+attenuate:  "You mean they won't hear of Woollett?"
+
+Little Bilham smiled.  "Isn't that just what you must see about?"
+
+It had brought them, as she caught the last words, into relation
+with Miss Barrace, whom Strether had already observed--as he had
+never before seen a lady at a party--moving about alone.  Coming
+within sound of them she had already spoken, and she took again,
+through her long-handled glass, all her amused and amusing
+possession.  "How much, poor Mr. Strether, you seem to have to see
+about! But you can't say," she gaily declared, "that I don't do
+what I can to help you.  Mr. Waymarsh is placed.  I've left him in
+the house with Miss Gostrey."
+
+"The way," little Bilham exclaimed, "Mr. Strether gets the ladies
+to work for him! He's just preparing to draw in another; to
+pounce--don't you see him?--on Madame de Vionnet."
+
+"Madame de Vionnet?  Oh, oh, oh!" Miss Barrace cried in a wonderful
+crescendo.  There was more in it, our friend made out, than met the
+ear.  Was it after all a joke that he should be serious about
+anything? He envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not
+being.  She seemed, with little cries and protests and quick
+recognitions, movements like the darts of some fine high-feathered
+free-pecking bird, to stand before life as before some full
+shop-window.  You could fairly hear, as she selected and pointed,
+the tap of her tortoise-shell against the glass.  "It's certain that
+we do need seeing about; only I'm glad it's not I who have to do it.
+One does, no doubt, begin that way; then suddenly one finds that
+one has given it up.  It's too much, it's too difficult.  You're
+wonderful, you people," she continued to Strether, "for not feeling
+those things--by which I mean impossibilities.  You never feel them.
+You face them with a fortitude that makes it a lesson to watch you."
+
+"Ah but"--little Bilham put it with discouragement--"what do we
+achieve after all? We see about you and report--when we even go so
+far as reporting.  But nothing's done."
+
+"Oh you, Mr. Bilham," she replied as with an impatient rap on the
+glass, "you're not worth sixpence! You come over to convert the
+savages--for I know you verily did, I remember you--and the
+savages simply convert YOU."
+
+"Not even!" the young man woefully confessed:  "they haven't gone
+through that form.  They've simply--the cannibals!--eaten me;
+converted me if you like, but converted me into food.  I'm but the
+bleached bones of a Christian."
+
+"Well then there we are!  Only"--and Miss Barrace appealed again to
+Strether--"don't let it discourage you.  You'll break down soon
+enough, but you'll meanwhile have had your moments.  Il faut en
+avoir.  I always like to see you while you last.  And I'll tell you
+who WILL last."
+
+"Waymarsh?"--he had already taken her up.
+
+She laughed out as at the alarm of it.  "He'll resist even Miss
+Gostrey:  so grand is it not to understand.  He's wonderful."
+
+"He is indeed," Strether conceded.  "He wouldn't tell me of this
+affair--only said he had an engagement; but with such a gloom, you
+must let me insist, as if it had been an engagement to be hanged.
+Then silently and secretly he turns up here with you.  Do you call
+THAT 'lasting'?"
+
+"Oh I hope it's lasting!" Miss Barrace said.  "But he only, at the
+best, bears with me.  He doesn't understand--not one little scrap.
+He's delightful.  He's wonderful," she repeated.
+
+"Michelangelesque!"--little Bilham completed her meaning.  "He IS
+a success.  Moses, on the ceiling, brought down to the floor;
+overwhelming, colossal, but somehow portable."
+
+"Certainly, if you mean by portable," she returned, "looking so
+well in one's carriage.  He's too funny beside me in his comer; he
+looks like somebody, somebody foreign and famous, en exil; so that
+people wonder--it's very amusing--whom I'm taking about.  I show
+him Paris, show him everything, and he never turns a hair.  He's
+like the Indian chief one reads about, who, when he comes up to
+Washington to see the Great Father, stands wrapt in his blanket
+and gives no sign.  I might be the Great Father--from the way he
+takes everything."  She was delighted at this hit of her identity
+with that personage--it fitted so her character; she declared it
+was the title she meant henceforth to adopt.  "And the way he sits,
+too, in the corner of my room, only looking at my visitors very
+hard and as if he wanted to start something! They wonder what he
+does want to start.  But he's wonderful," Miss Barrace once more
+insisted.  "He has never started anything yet."
+
+It presented him none the less, in truth, to her actual friends,
+who looked at each other in intelligence, with frank amusement on
+Bilham's part and a shade of sadness on Strether's.  Strether's
+sadness sprang--for the image had its grandeur--from his thinking
+how little he himself was wrapt in his blanket, how little, in
+marble halls, all too oblivious of the Great Father, he resembled
+a really majestic aboriginal.  But he had also another reflexion.
+"You've all of you here so much visual sense that you've somehow
+all 'run' to it.  There are moments when it strikes one that you
+haven't any other."
+
+"Any moral," little Bilham explained, watching serenely, across
+the garden, the several femmes du monde.  "But Miss Barrace has a
+moral distinction," he kindly continued; speaking as if for Strether's
+benefit not less than for her own.
+
+"HAVE you?" Strether, scarce knowing what he was about, asked of
+her almost eagerly.
+
+"Oh not a distinction"--she was mightily amused at his tone--"Mr. Bilham's
+too good.  But I think I may say a sufficiency.  Yes, a sufficiency.
+Have you supposed strange things of me?"--and she fixed him again,
+through all her tortoise-shell, with the droll interest of it.
+"You ARE all indeed wonderful.  I should awfully disappoint you.
+I do take my stand on my sufficiency.  But I know, I confess,"
+she went on, "strange people.  I don't know how it happens;
+I don't do it on purpose; it seems to be my doom--as if I were
+always one of their habits:  it's wonderful! I dare say moreover,"
+she pursued with an interested gravity, "that I do, that we all
+do here, run too much to mere eye.  But how can it be helped?
+We're all looking at each other--and in the light of Paris one
+sees what things resemble.  That's what the light of Paris seems
+always to show.  It's the fault of the light of Paris--dear old light!"
+
+"Dear old Paris!" little Bilham echoed.
+
+"Everything, every one shows," Miss Barrace went on.
+
+"But for what they really are?" Strether asked.
+
+"Oh I like your Boston 'reallys'!  But sometimes--yes."
+
+"Dear old Paris then!" Strether resignedly sighed while for a
+moment they looked at each other.  Then he broke out:  "Does
+Madame de Vionnet do that? I mean really show for what she is?"
+
+Her answer was prompt.  "She's charming.  She's perfect."
+
+"Then why did you a minute ago say 'Oh, oh, oh!' at her name?"
+
+She easily remembered.  "Why just because--!  She's wonderful."
+
+"Ah she too?"--Strether had almost a groan.
+
+But Miss Barrace had meanwhile perceived relief.  "Why not put your
+question straight to the person who can answer it best?"
+
+"No," said little Bilham; "don't put any question; wait, rather--
+it will be much more fun--to judge for yourself.  He has come to
+take you to her."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+On which Strether saw that Chad was again at hand, and he
+afterwards scarce knew, absurd as it may seem, what had then
+quickly occurred.  The moment concerned him, he felt, more deeply
+than he could have explained, and he had a subsequent passage of
+speculation as to whether, on walking off with Chad, he hadn't
+looked either pale or red.  The only thing he was clear about was
+that, luckily, nothing indiscreet had in fact been said and that
+Chad himself was more than ever, in Miss Barrace's great sense,
+wonderful.  It was one of the connexions--though really why it
+should be, after all, was none so apparent--in which the whole
+change in him came out as most striking.  Strether recalled as they
+approached the house that he had impressed him that first night as
+knowing how to enter a box.  Well, he impressed him scarce less now
+as knowing how to make a presentation.  It did something for
+Strether's own quality--marked it as estimated; so that our poor
+friend, conscious and passive, really seemed to feel himself quite
+handed over and delivered; absolutely, as he would have said, made
+a present of, given away.  As they reached the house a young woman,
+about to come forth, appeared, unaccompanied, on the steps; at the
+exchange with whom of a word on Chad's part Strether immediately
+perceived that, obligingly, kindly, she was there to meet them.
+Chad had left her in the house, but she had afterwards come
+halfway and then the next moment had joined them in the garden.
+Her air of youth, for Strether, was at first almost disconcerting,
+while his second impression was, not less sharply, a degree of
+relief at there not having just been, with the others, any freedom
+used about her.  It was upon him at a touch that she was no subject
+for that, and meanwhile, on Chad's introducing him, she had spoken
+to him, very simply and gently, in an English clearly of the
+easiest to her, yet unlike any other he had ever heard.  It wasn't
+as if she tried; nothing, he could see after they had been a few
+minutes together, was as if she tried; but her speech, charming
+correct and odd, was like a precaution against her passing for a
+Pole.  There were precautions, he seemed indeed to see, only when
+there were really dangers.
+
+Later on he was to feel many more of them, but by that time he was
+to feel other things besides.  She was dressed in black, but in
+black that struck him as light and transparent; she was
+exceedingly fair, and, though she was as markedly slim, her face
+had a roundness, with eyes far apart and a little strange.
+Her smile was natural and dim; her hat not extravagant; he had only
+perhaps a sense of the clink, beneath her fine black sleeves, of
+more gold bracelets and bangles than he had ever seen a lady wear.
+Chad was excellently free and light about their encounter; it was
+one of the occasions on which Strether most wished he himself
+might have arrived at such ease and such humour:  "Here you are
+then, face to face at last; you're made for each other--vous allez
+voir; and I bless your union."  It was indeed, after he had gone
+off, as if he had been partly serious too.  This latter motion had
+been determined by an enquiry from him about "Jeanne"; to which
+her mother had replied that she was probably still in the house
+with Miss Gostrey, to whom she had lately committed her.  "Ah but
+you know," the young man had rejoined, "he must see her"; with
+which, while Strether pricked up his ears, he had started as if to
+bring her, leaving the other objects of his interest together.
+Strether wondered to find Miss Gostrey already involved, feeling
+that he missed a link; but feeling also, with small delay, how
+much he should like to talk with her of Madame de Vionnet on this
+basis of evidence.
+
+The evidence as yet in truth was meagre; which, for that matter,
+was perhaps a little why his expectation had had a drop.  There was
+somehow not quite a wealth in her; and a wealth was all that, in
+his simplicity, he had definitely prefigured.  Still, it was too
+much to be sure already that there was but a poverty.  They moved
+away from the house, and, with eyes on a bench at some distance,
+he proposed that they should sit down.  "I've heard a great deal
+about you," she said as they went; but he had an answer to it that
+made her stop short.  "Well, about YOU, Madame de Vionnet, I've
+heard, I'm bound to say, almost nothing"--those struck him as the
+only words he himself could utter with any lucidity; conscious as
+he was, and as with more reason, of the determination to be in
+respect to the rest of his business perfectly plain and go
+perfectly straight.  It hadn't at any rate been in the least his
+idea to spy on Chad's proper freedom.  It was possibly, however, at
+this very instant and under the impression of Madame de Vionnet's
+pause, that going straight began to announce itself as a matter
+for care.  She had only after all to smile at him ever so gently in
+order to make him ask himself if he weren't already going crooked.
+It might be going crooked to find it of a sudden just only clear
+that she intended very definitely to be what he would have called
+nice to him.  This was what passed between them while, for another
+instant, they stood still; he couldn't at least remember
+afterwards what else it might have been.  The thing indeed really
+unmistakeable was its rolling over him as a wave that he had been,
+in conditions incalculable and unimaginable, a subject of
+discussion.  He had been, on some ground that concerned her,
+answered for; which gave her an advantage he should never be able
+to match.
+
+"Hasn't Miss Gostrey," she asked, "said a good word for me?"
+
+What had struck him first was the way he was bracketed with that
+lady; and he wondered what account Chad would have given of their
+acquaintance.  Something not as yet traceable, at all events.  had
+obviously happened.  "I didn't even know of her knowing you."
+
+"Well, now she'll tell you all.  I'm so glad you're in relation
+with her."
+
+This was one of the things--the "all" Miss Gostrey would now tell
+him--that, with every deference to present preoccupation, was
+uppermost for Strether after they had taken their seat.  One of the
+others was, at the end of five minutes, that she--oh incontestably,
+yes--DIFFERED less; differed, that is, scarcely at all--well,
+superficially speaking, from Mrs. Newsome or even from Mrs. Pocock.
+She was ever so much younger than the one and not so young as the other;
+but what WAS there in her, if anything, that would have made it
+impossible he should meet her at Woollett? And wherein was her talk
+during their moments on the bench together not the same as would have been
+found adequate for a Woollett garden-party?--unless perhaps truly in
+not being quite so bright.  She observed to him that Mr. Newsome had, to
+her knowledge, taken extraordinary pleasure in his visit; but there was
+no good lady at Woollett who wouldn't have been at least up to that.
+Was there in Chad, by chance, after all, deep down, a principle of
+aboriginal loyalty that had made him, for sentimental ends, attach
+himself to elements, happily encountered, that would remind him most
+of the old air and the old soil? Why accordingly be in a flutter--
+Strether could even put it that way--about this unfamiliar
+phenomenon of the femme du monde?  On these terms Mrs. Newsome
+herself was as much of one.  Little Bilham verily had testified
+that they came out, the ladies of the type, in close quarters; but
+it was just in these quarters--now comparatively close--that he
+felt Madame de Vionnet's common humanity.  She did come out, and
+certainly to his relief, but she came out as the usual thing.
+There might be motives behind, but so could there often be even at
+Woollett.  The only thing was that if she showed him she wished to
+like him--as the motives behind might conceivably prompt--it
+would possibly have been more thrilling for him that she should
+have shown as more vividly alien.  Ah she was neither Turk nor
+Pole!--which would be indeed flat once more for Mrs. Newsome and
+Mrs. Pocock.  A lady and two gentlemen had meanwhile, however,
+approached their bench, and this accident stayed for the time
+further developments.
+
+They presently addressed his companion, the brilliant strangers;
+she rose to speak to them, and Strether noted how the escorted
+lady, though mature and by no means beautiful, had more of the
+bold high look, the range of expensive reference, that he had, as
+might have been said, made his plans for.  Madame de Vionnet
+greeted her as "Duchesse" and was greeted in turn, while talk
+started in French, as "Ma toute-belle"; little facts that had
+their due, their vivid interest for Strether.  Madame de Vionnet
+didn't, none the less, introduce him--a note he was conscious of
+as false to the Woollett scale and the Woollett humanity; though
+it didn't prevent the Duchess, who struck him as confident and
+free, very much what he had obscurely supposed duchesses, from
+looking at him as straight and as hard--for it WAS hard--as if she
+would have liked, all the same, to know him.  "Oh yes, my dear,
+it's all right, it's ME; and who are YOU, with your interesting
+wrinkles and your most effective (is it the handsomest, is it the
+ugliest?) of noses?"--some such loose handful of bright flowers
+she seemed, fragrantly enough, to fling at him.  Strether almost
+wondered--at such a pace was he going--if some divination of the
+influence of either party were what determined Madame de Vionnet's
+abstention.  One of the gentlemen, in any case, succeeded in
+placing himself in close relation with our friend's companion; a
+gentleman rather stout and importantly short, in a hat with a
+wonderful wide curl to its brim and a frock coat buttoned with an
+effect of superlative decision.  His French had quickly turned to
+equal English, and it occurred to Strether that he might well be
+one of the ambassadors.  His design was evidently to assert a claim
+to Madame de Vionnet's undivided countenance, and he made it good
+in the course of a minute--led her away with a trick of three
+words; a trick played with a social art of which Strether, looking
+after them as the four, whose backs were now all turned, moved
+off, felt himself no master.
+
+He sank again upon his bench and, while his eyes followed the
+party, reflected, as he had done before, on Chad's strange
+communities.  He sat there alone for five minutes, with plenty to
+think of; above all with his sense of having suddenly been dropped
+by a charming woman overlaid now by other impressions and in fact
+quite cleared and indifferent.  He hadn't yet had so quiet a
+surrender; he didn't in the least care if nobody spoke to him
+more.  He might have been, by his attitude, in for something of a
+march so broad that the want of ceremony with which he had just
+been used could fall into its place as but a minor incident of the
+procession.  Besides, there would be incidents enough, as he felt
+when this term of contemplation was closed by the reappearance of
+little Bilham, who stood before him a moment with a suggestive
+"Well?" in which he saw himself reflected as disorganised, as
+possibly floored.  He replied with a "Well!" intended to show that
+he wasn't floored in the least.  No indeed; he gave it out, as the
+young man sat down beside him, that if, at the worst, he had been
+overturned at all, he had been overturned into the upper air, the
+sublimer element with which he had an affinity and in which he
+might be trusted a while to float.  It wasn't a descent to earth to
+say after an instant and in sustained response to the reference:
+"You're quite sure her husband's living?"
+
+"Oh dear, yes."
+
+"Ah then--!"
+
+"Ah then what?"
+
+Strether had after all to think.  "Well, I'm sorry for them."  But
+it didn't for the moment matter more than that.  He assured his
+young friend he was quite content.  They wouldn't stir; were all
+right as they were.  He didn't want to be introduced; had been
+introduced already about as far as he could go.  He had seen
+moreover an immensity; liked Gloriani, who, as Miss Barrace kept
+saying, was wonderful; had made out, he was sure, the half-dozen
+other 'men who were distinguished, the artists, the critics and oh
+the great dramatist--HIM it was easy to spot; but wanted--no,
+thanks, really--to talk with none of them; having nothing at all
+to say and finding it would do beautifully as it was; do
+beautifully because what it was--well, was just simply too late.
+And when after this little Bilham, submissive and responsive, but
+with an eye to the consolation nearest, easily threw off some
+"Better late than never!" all he got in return for it was a sharp
+"Better early than late!"  This note indeed the next thing
+overflowed for Strether into a quiet stream of demonstration that
+as soon as he had let himself go he felt as the real relief.  It
+had consciously gathered to a head, but the reservoir had filled
+sooner than he knew, and his companion's touch was to make the
+waters spread.  There were some things that had to come in time if
+they were to come at all.  If they didn't come in time they were
+lost for ever.  It was the general sense of them that had
+overwhelmed him with its long slow rush.
+
+"It's not too late for YOU, on any side, and you don't strike me
+as in danger of missing the train; besides which people can be in
+general pretty well trusted, of course--with the clock of their
+freedom ticking as loud as it seems to do here--to keep an eye on
+the fleeting hour.  All the same don't forget that you're young--
+blessedly young; be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it.
+Live all you can; it's a mistake not to.  It doesn't so much matter
+what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.  If you
+haven't had that what HAVE you had? This place and these
+impressions--mild as you may find them to wind a man up so; all my
+impressions of Chad and of people I've seen at HIS place--well,
+have had their abundant message for me, have just dropped THAT
+into my mind.  I see it now.  I haven't done so enough before--
+and now I'm old; too old at any rate for what I see.  Oh I DO see,
+at least; and more than you'd believe or I can express.  It's too late.
+And it's as if the train had fairly waited at the station for me
+without my having had the gumption to know it was there.
+Now I hear its faint receding whistle miles and miles down the line.
+What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that.  The affair--
+I mean the affair of life--couldn't, no doubt, have been different
+for me; for it's at the best a tin mould, either fluted and embossed,
+with ornamental excrescences, or else smooth and dreadfully plain,
+into which, a helpless jelly, one's consciousness is poured--
+so that one 'takes' the form as the great cook says, and is more
+or less compactly held by it:  one lives in fine as one can.
+Still, one has the illusion of freedom; therefore don't be, like me,
+without the memory of that illusion.  I was either, at the right time,
+too stupid or too intelligent to have it; I don't quite know which.
+Of course at present I'm a case of reaction against the mistake;
+and the voice of reaction should, no doubt, always be taken with
+an allowance.  But that doesn't affect the point that the right time
+is now yours.  The right time is ANY time that one is still so lucky
+as to have.  You've plenty; that's the great thing; you're, as I say,
+damn you, so happily and hatefully young.  Don't at any rate miss things
+out of stupidity.  Of course I don't take you for a fool, or I
+shouldn't be addressing you thus awfully.  Do what you like so long
+as you don't make MY mistake.  For it was a mistake.  Live!" .  .  .
+Slowly and sociably, with full pauses and straight dashes,
+Strether had so delivered himself; holding little Bilham
+from step to step deeply and gravely attentive.  The end of all was
+that the young man had turned quite solemn, and that this was a
+contradiction of the innocent gaiety the speaker had wished to
+promote.  He watched for a moment the consequence of his words,
+and then, laying a hand on his listener's knee and as if to end
+with the proper joke:  "And now for the eye I shall keep on you!"
+
+"Oh but I don't know that I want to be, at your age, too different
+from you!"
+
+"Ah prepare while you're about it," said Strether, "to be more
+amusing."
+
+Little Bilham continued to think, but at last had a smile.  "Well,
+you ARE amusing--to ME."
+
+"Impayable, as you say, no doubt.  But what am I to myself?"
+Strether had risen with this, giving his attention now to an
+encounter that, in the middle of the garden, was in the act of
+taking place between their host and the lady at whose side Madame
+de Vionnet had quitted him.  This lady, who appeared within a few
+minutes to have left her friends, awaited Gloriani's eager
+approach with words on her lips that Strether couldn't catch, but
+of which her interesting witty face seemed to give him the echo.
+He was sure she was prompt and fine, but also that she had met her
+match, and he liked--in the light of what he was quite sure was
+the Duchess's latent insolence--the good humour with which the
+great artist asserted equal resources.  Were they, this pair, of
+the "great world"?--and was he himself, for the moment and thus
+related to them by his observation, IN it? Then there was
+something in the great world covertly tigerish, which came to him
+across the lawn and in the charming air as a waft from the jungle.
+Yet it made him admire most of the two, made him envy, the glossy
+male tiger, magnificently marked.  These absurdities of the stirred
+sense, fruits of suggestion ripening on the instant, were all
+reflected in his next words to little Bilham.  "I know--if we talk
+of that--whom I should enjoy being like!"
+
+Little Bilham followed his eyes; but then as with a shade of knowing
+surprise:  "Gloriani?"
+
+Our friend had in fact already hesitated, though not on the hint
+of his companion's doubt, in which there were depths of critical
+reserve.  He had just made out, in the now full picture, something
+and somebody else; another impression had been superimposed.  A
+young girl in a white dress and a softly plumed white hat had
+suddenly come into view, and what was presently clear was that her
+course was toward them.  What was clearer still was that the
+handsome young man at her side was Chad Newsome, and what was
+clearest of all was that she was therefore Mademoiselle de Vionnet,
+that she was unmistakeably pretty--bright gentle shy happy
+wonderful--and that Chad now, with a consummate calculation
+of effect, was about to present her to his old friend's vision.
+What was clearest of all indeed was something much more than this,
+something at the single stroke of which--and wasn't it simply
+juxtaposition?--all vagueness vanished.  It was the click of a
+spring--he saw the truth.  He had by this time also met Chad's
+look; there was more of it in that; and the truth, accordingly, so
+far as Bilham's enquiry was concerned, had thrust in the answer.
+"Oh Chad!"--it was that rare youth he should have enjoyed being
+"like."  The virtuous attachment would be all there before him; the
+virtuous attachment would be in the very act of appeal for his blessing;
+Jeanne de Vionnet, this charming creature, would be exquisitely,
+intensely now--the object of it.  Chad brought her straight up to him,
+and Chad was, oh yes, at this moment--for the glory of Woollett or
+whatever--better still even than Gloriani.  He had plucked this
+blossom; he had kept it over-night in water; and at last as he held
+it up to wonder he did enjoy his effect.  That was why Strether had
+felt at first the breath of calculation--and why moreover, as he
+now knew, his look at the girl would be, for the young man, a sign
+of the latter's success.  What young man had ever paraded about that
+way, without a reason, a maiden in her flower?  And there was
+nothing in his reason at present obscure.  Her type sufficiently
+told of it--they wouldn't, they couldn't, want her to go to
+Woollett.  Poor Woollett, and what it might miss!--though brave Chad
+indeed too, and what it might gain! Brave Chad however had just
+excellently spoken.  "This is a good little friend of mine who knows
+all about you and has moreover a message for you.  And this, my
+dear"--he had turned to the child herself--"is the best man in the
+world, who has it in his power to do a great deal for us and whom I
+want you to like and revere as nearly as possible as much as I do."
+
+She stood there quite pink, a little frightened, prettier and
+prettier and not a bit like her mother.  There was in this last
+particular no resemblance but that of youth to youth; and here was
+in fact suddenly Strether's sharpest impression.  It went wondering,
+dazed, embarrassed, back to the woman he had just been talking
+with; it was a revelation in the light of which he already saw she
+would become more interesting.  So slim and fresh and fair, she had
+yet put forth this perfection; so that for really believing it of
+her, for seeing her to any such developed degree as a mother,
+comparison would be urgent.  Well, what was it now but fairly thrust
+upon him?  "Mamma wishes me to tell you before we go," the girl
+said, "that she hopes very much you'll come to see us very soon.
+She has something important to say to you."
+
+"She quite reproaches herself," Chad helpfully explained:  "you were
+interesting her so much when she accidentally suffered you to be
+interrupted."
+
+"Ah don't mention it!" Strether murmured, looking kindly from one
+to the other and wondering at many things.
+
+"And I'm to ask you for myself," Jeanne continued with her hands
+clasped together as if in some small learnt prayer--"I'm to ask you
+for myself if you won't positively come."
+
+"Leave it to me, dear--I'll take care of it!" Chad genially
+declared in answer to this, while Strether himself almost held his
+breath.  What was in the girl was indeed too soft, too unknown for
+direct dealing; so that one could only gaze at it as at a picture,
+quite staying one's own hand.  But with Chad he was now on ground--
+Chad he could meet; so pleasant a confidence in that and in
+everything did the young man freely exhale.  There was the whole of
+a story in his tone to his companion, and he spoke indeed as if
+already of the family.  It made Strether guess the more quickly what
+it might be about which Madame de Vionnet was so urgent.  Having
+seen him then she had found him easy; she wished to have it out
+with him that some way for the young people must be discovered,
+some way that would not impose as a condition the transplantation
+of her daughter.  He already saw himself discussing with this lady
+the attractions of Woollett as a residence for Chad's companion.
+Was that youth going now to trust her with the affair--so that it
+would be after all with one of his "lady-friends" that his mother's
+missionary should be condemned to deal?  It was quite as if for an
+instant the two men looked at each other on this question.  But
+there was no mistaking at last Chad's pride in the display of such
+a connexion.  This was what had made him so carry himself while,
+three minutes before, he was bringing it into view; what had caused
+his friend, first catching sight of him, to be so struck with his
+air.  It was, in a word, just when he thus finally felt Chad putting
+things straight off on him that he envied him, as he had mentioned
+to little Bilham, most.  The whole exhibition however was but a
+matter of three or four minutes, and the author of it had soon
+explained that, as Madame de Vionnet was immediately going "on,"
+this could be for Jeanne but a snatch.  They would all meet again
+soon, and Strether was meanwhile to stay and amuse himself--"I'll
+pick you up again in plenty of time." He took the girl off as he
+had brought her, and Strether, with the faint sweet foreignness of
+her "Au revoir, monsieur!" in his ears as a note almost
+unprecedented, watched them recede side by side and felt how, once
+more, her companion's relation to her got an accent from it.  They
+disappeared among the others and apparently into the house;
+whereupon our friend turned round to give out to little Bilham the
+conviction of which he was full.  But there was no little Bilham any
+more; little Bilham had within the few moments, for reasons of his
+own, proceeded further:  a circumstance by which, in its order,
+Strether was also sensibly affected.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Chad was not in fact on this occasion to keep his promise of coming
+back; but Miss Gostrey had soon presented herself with an
+explanation of his failure.  There had been reasons at the last for
+his going off with ces dames; and he had asked her with much
+instance to come out and take charge of their friend.  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.  They were neither more nor less, she and
+the child's mother, than old school-friends--friends who had
+scarcely met for years but whom this unlooked-for chance had
+brought together with a rush.  It was a relief, Miss Gostrey hinted,
+to feel herself no longer groping; she was unaccustomed to grope
+and as a general thing, he might well have seen, made straight
+enough for her clue.  With the one she had now picked up in her
+hands there need be at least no waste of wonder.  "She's coming to
+see me--that's for YOU," Strether's counsellor continued; "but I
+don't require it to know where I am."
+
+The waste of wonder might be proscribed; but Strether,
+characteristically, was even by this time in the immensity of
+space.  "By which you mean that you know where SHE is?"
+
+She just hesitated.  "I mean that if she comes to see me I shall--
+now that I've pulled myself round a bit after the shock--not be at
+home."
+
+Strether hung poised.  "You call it--your recognition--a shock?"
+
+She gave one of her rare flickers of impatience.  "It was a
+surprise, an emotion.  Don't be so literal.  I wash my hands of her."
+
+Poor Strether's face lengthened.  "She's impossible--?"
+
+"She's even more charming than I remembered her."
+
+"Then what's the matter?"
+
+She had to think how to put it.  "Well, I'M impossible.  It's
+impossible.  Everything's impossible."
+
+He looked at her an instant.  "I see where you're coming out.
+Everything's possible." Their eyes had on it in fact an exchange of
+some duration; after which he pursued:  "Isn't it that beautiful
+child?" Then as she still said nothing:  "Why don't you mean to
+receive her?"
+
+Her answer in an instant rang clear.  "Because I wish to keep out of
+the business."
+
+It provoked in him a weak wail.  "You're going to abandon me NOW?"
+
+"No, I'm only going to abandon HER.  She'll want me to help her with
+you.  And I won't."
+
+"You'll only help me with her?  Well then--!"  Most of the persons
+previously gathered had, in the interest of tea, passed into the
+house, and they had the gardens mainly to themselves.  The shadows
+were long, the last call of the birds, who had made a home of their
+own in the noble interspaced quarter, sounded from the high trees
+in the other gardens as well, those of the old convent and of the
+old hotels; it was as if our friends had waited for the full charm
+to come out.  Strether's impressions were still present; it was as
+if something had happened that "nailed" them, made them more
+intense; but he was to ask himself soon afterwards, that evening,
+what really HAD happened--conscious as he could after all remain
+that for a gentleman taken, and taken the first time, into the
+"great world," the world of ambassadors and duchesses, the items
+made a meagre total.  It was nothing new to him, however, as we
+know, that a man might have--at all events such a man as he--an
+amount of experience out of any proportion to his adventures; so
+that, though it was doubtless no great adventure to sit on there
+with Miss Gostrey and hear about Madame de Vionnet, the hour, the
+picture, the immediate, the recent, the possible--as well as the
+communication itself, not a note of which failed to reverberate--
+only gave the moments more of the taste of history.
+
+It was history, to begin with, that Jeanne's mother had been
+three-and-twenty years before, at Geneva, schoolmate and good
+girlfriend to Maria Gostrey, who had moreover enjoyed since then,
+though interruptedly and above all with a long recent drop,
+other glimpses of her.  Twenty-three years put them both on,
+no doubt; and Madame de Vionnet--though she had married straight
+after school--couldn't be today an hour less than thirty-eight.
+This made her ten years older than Chad--though ten years, also, if
+Strether liked, older than she looked; the least, at any rate, that
+a prospective mother-in-law could be expected to do with.  She would
+be of all mothers-in-law the most charming; unless indeed, through
+some perversity as yet insupposeable, she should utterly belie herself
+in that relation.  There was none surely in which, as Maria remembered
+her, she mustn't be charming; and this frankly in spite of the stigma
+of failure in the tie where failure always most showed.  It was no test
+there--when indeed WAS it a test there?--for Monsieur de Vionnet
+had been a brute.  She had lived for years apart from him--which was
+of course always a horrid position; but Miss Gostrey's impression
+of the matter had been that she could scarce have made a better
+thing of it had she done it on purpose to show she was amiable.  She
+was so amiable that nobody had had a word to say; which was luckily
+not the case for her husband.  He was so impossible that she had the
+advantage of all her merits.
+
+It was still history for Strether that the Comte de Vionnet--it
+being also history that the lady in question was a Countess--should
+now, under Miss Gostrey's sharp touch, rise before him as a high
+distinguished polished impertinent reprobate, the product of a
+mysterious order; it was history, further, that the charming girl
+so freely sketched by his companion should have been married out of
+hand by a mother, another figure of striking outline, full of dark
+personal motive; it was perhaps history most of all that this
+company was, as a matter of course, governed by such considerations
+as put divorce out of the question.  "Ces gens-la don't divorce, you
+know, any more than they emigrate or abjure--they think it impious
+and vulgar"; a fact in the light of which they seemed but the more
+richly special.  It was all special; it was all, for Strether's
+imagination, more or less rich.  The girl at the Genevese school, an
+isolated interesting attaching creature, then both sensitive and
+violent, audacious but always forgiven, was the daughter of a
+French father and an English mother who, early left a widow, had
+married again--tried afresh with a foreigner; in her career with
+whom she had apparently given her child no example of comfort.  All
+these people--the people of the English mother's side--had been of
+condition more or less eminent; yet with oddities and disparities
+that had often since made Maria, thinking them over, wonder what
+they really quite rhymed to.  It was in any case her belief that the
+mother, interested and prone to adventure, had been without
+conscience, had only thought of ridding herself most quickly of a
+possible, an actual encumbrance.  The father, by her impression, a
+Frenchman with a name one knew, had been a different matter,
+leaving his child, she clearly recalled, a memory all fondness, as
+well as an assured little fortune which was unluckily to make her
+more or less of a prey later on.  She had been in particular, at
+school, dazzlingly, though quite booklessly, clever; as polyglot
+as a little Jewess (which she wasn't, oh no!) and chattering French,
+English, German, Italian, anything one would, in a way that made a
+clean sweep, if not of prizes and parchments, at least of every
+"part," whether memorised or improvised, in the curtained costumed
+school repertory, and in especial of all mysteries of race and
+vagueness of reference, all swagger about "home," among their
+variegated mates.
+
+It would doubtless be difficult to-day, as between French and
+English, to name her and place her; she would certainly show, on
+knowledge, Miss Gostrey felt, as one of those convenient types who
+don't keep you explaining--minds with doors as numerous as the
+many-tongued cluster of confessionals at Saint Peter's.  You might
+confess to her with confidence in Roumelian, and even Roumelian
+sins.  Therefore--! But Strether's narrator covered her implication
+with a laugh; a laugh by which his betrayal of a sense of the lurid
+in the picture was also perhaps sufficiently protected.  He had a
+moment of wondering, while his friend went on, what sins might be
+especially Roumelian.  She went on at all events to the mention of
+her having met the young thing--again by some Swiss lake--in her
+first married state, which had appeared for the few intermediate
+years not at least violently disturbed.  She had been lovely at that
+moment, delightful to HER, full of responsive emotion, of amused
+recognitions and amusing reminders, and then once more, much later,
+after a long interval, equally but differently charming--touching
+and rather mystifying for the five minutes of an encounter at a
+railway-station en province, during which it had come out that her
+life was all changed.  Miss Gostrey had understood enough to see,
+essentially, what had happened, and yet had beautifully dreamed
+that she was herself faultless.  There were doubtless depths in her,
+but she was all right; Strether would see if she wasn't.  She was
+another person however--that had been promptly marked--from the
+small child of nature at the Geneva school, a little person quite
+made over (as foreign women WERE, compared with American) by
+marriage.  Her situation too had evidently cleared itself up; there
+would have been--all that was possible--a judicial separation.  She
+had settled in Paris, brought up her daughter, steered her boat.  It
+was no very pleasant boat--especially there--to be in; but Marie de
+Vionnet would have headed straight.  She would have friends,
+certainly--and very good ones.  There she was at all events--and it
+was very interesting.  Her knowing Mr. Chad didn't in the least
+prove she hadn't friends; what it proved was what good ones HE had.
+"I saw that," said Miss Gostrey, "that night at the Francais; it
+came out for me in three minutes.  I saw HER--or somebody like her.
+And so," she immediately added, "did you."
+
+"Oh no--not anybody like her!" Strether laughed.  "But you mean," he
+as promptly went on, "that she has had such an influence on him?"
+
+Miss Gostrey was on her feet; it was time for them to go.  "She has
+brought him up for her daughter."
+
+Their eyes, as so often, in candid conference, through their
+settled glasses, met over it long; after which Strether's again
+took in the whole place.  They were quite alone there now.  "Mustn't
+she rather--in the time then--have rushed it?"
+
+"Ah she won't of course have lost an hour.  But that's just the good
+mother--the good French one.  You must remember that of her--that as
+a mother she's French, and that for them there's a special
+providence.  It precisely however--that she mayn't have been able to
+begin as far back as she'd have liked--makes her grateful for aid."
+
+Strether took this in as they slowly moved to the house on their
+way out.  "She counts on me then to put the thing through?"
+
+"Yes--she counts on you.  Oh and first of all of course," Miss
+Gostrey added, "on her--well, convincing you."
+
+"Ah," her friend returned, "she caught Chad young!"
+
+"Yes, but there are women who are for all your 'times of life.'
+They're the most wonderful sort."
+
+She had laughed the words out, but they brought her companion, the
+next thing, to a stand.  "Is what you mean that she'll try to make a
+fool of me?"
+
+"Well, I'm wondering what she WILL--with an opportunity--make."
+
+"What do you call," Strether asked, "an opportunity?  My going to
+see her?"
+
+"Ah you must go to see her"--Miss Gostrey was a trifle evasive.
+"You can't not do that.  You'd have gone to see the other woman.  I
+mean if there had been one--a different sort.  It's what you came
+out for."
+
+It might be; but Strether distinguished.  "I didn't come out to see
+THIS sort."
+
+She had a wonderful look at him now.  "Are you disappointed she
+isn't worse?"
+
+He for a moment entertained the question, then found for it the
+frankest of answers.  "Yes.  If she were worse she'd be better for
+our purpose.  It would be simpler."
+
+"Perhaps," she admitted.  "But won't this be pleasanter?"
+
+"Ah you know," he promptly replied, "I didn't come out--wasn't that
+just what you originally reproached me with?--for the pleasant."
+
+"Precisely.  Therefore I say again what I said at first.  You must
+take things as they come.  Besides," Miss Gostrey added, "I'm not
+afraid for myself."
+
+"For yourself--?"
+
+"Of your seeing her.  I trust her.  There's nothing she'll say about
+me.  In fact there's nothing she CAN."
+
+Strether wondered--little as he had thought of this.  Then he broke
+out.  "Oh you women!"
+
+There was something in it at which she flushed.  "Yes--there we are.
+We're abysses." At last she smiled.  "But I risk her!"
+
+He gave himself a shake.  "Well then so do I!"  But he added as they
+passed into the house that he would see Chad the first thing in the
+morning.
+
+This was the next day the more easily effected that the young man,
+as it happened, even before he was down, turned up at his hotel.
+Strether took his coffee, by habit, in the public room; but on his
+descending for this purpose Chad instantly proposed an adjournment
+to what he called greater privacy.  He had himself as yet had
+nothing--they would sit down somewhere together; and when after a
+few steps and a turn into the Boulevard they had, for their greater
+privacy, sat down among twenty others, our friend saw in his
+companion's move a fear of the advent of Waymarsh.  It was the first
+time Chad had to that extent given this personage "away"; and
+Strether found himself wondering of what it was symptomatic.  He
+made out in a moment that the youth was in earnest as he hadn't yet
+seen him; which in its turn threw a ray perhaps a trifle startling
+on what they had each up to that time been treating as earnestness.
+It was sufficiently flattering however that the real thing--if
+this WAS at last the real thing--should have been determined, as
+appeared, precisely by an accretion of Strether's importance.  For
+this was what it quickly enough came to--that Chad, rising with the
+lark, had rushed down to let him know while his morning
+consciousness was yet young that he had literally made the
+afternoon before a tremendous impression.  Madame de Vionnet
+wouldn't, couldn't rest till she should have some assurance from
+him that he WOULD consent again to see her.  The announcement was
+made, across their marble-topped table, while the foam of the hot
+milk was in their cups and its plash still in the air, with the
+smile of Chad's easiest urbanity; and this expression of his face
+caused our friend's doubts to gather on the spot into a challenge
+of the lips.  "See here"--that was all; he only for the moment said
+again "See here." Chad met it with all his air of straight
+intelligence, while Strether remembered again that fancy of the
+first impression of him, the happy young Pagan, handsome and hard
+but oddly indulgent, whose mysterious measure he had under the
+street-lamp tried mentally to take.  The young Pagan, while a long
+look passed between them, sufficiently understood.  Strether scarce
+needed at last to say the rest--"I want to know where I am." But he
+said it, adding before any answer something more.  "Are you engaged
+to be married--is that your secret?--to the young lady?"
+
+Chad shook his head with the slow amenity that was one of his ways
+of conveying that there was time for everything.  "I have no secret--
+though I may have secrets! I haven't at any rate that one.  We're
+not engaged.  No."
+
+"Then where's the hitch?"
+
+"Do you mean why I haven't already started with you?" Chad,
+beginning his coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to
+explain.  "Nothing would have induced me--nothing will still induce
+me--not to try to keep you here as long as you can be made to stay.
+It's too visibly good for you." Strether had himself plenty to say
+about this, but it was amusing also to measure the march of Chad's
+tone.  He had never been more a man of the world, and it was always
+in his company present to our friend that one was seeing how in
+successive connexions a man of the world acquitted himself.  Chad
+kept it up beautifully.  "My idea--voyons!--is simply that you
+should let Madame de Vionnet know you, simply that you should
+consent to know HER.  I don't in the least mind telling you that,
+clever and charming as she is, she's ever so much in my confidence.
+All I ask of you is to let her talk to you.  You've asked me about
+what you call my hitch, and so far as it goes she'll explain it to
+you.  She's herself my hitch, hang it--if you must really have it
+all out.  But in a sense," he hastened in the most wonderful manner
+to add, "that you'll quite make out for yourself.  She's too good a
+friend, confound her.  Too good, I mean, for me to leave without--
+without--" It was his first hesitation.
+
+"Without what?"
+
+"Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms of
+my sacrifice."
+
+"It WILL be a sacrifice then?"
+
+"It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered.  I owe her so much."
+
+It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was
+now confessedly--oh quite flagrantly and publicly--interesting.  The
+moment really took on for Strether an intensity.  Chad owed Madame
+de Vionnet so much?  What DID that do then but clear up the whole
+mystery?  He was indebted for alterations, and she was thereby in a
+position to have sent in her bill for expenses incurred in
+reconstruction.  What was this at bottom but what had been to be
+arrived at?  Strether sat there arriving at it while he munched
+toast and stirred his second cup.  To do this with the aid of Chad's
+pleasant earnest face was also to do more besides.  No, never before
+had he been so ready to take him as he was.  What was it that had
+suddenly so cleared up?  It was just everybody's character; that is
+everybody's but--in a measure--his own.  Strether felt HIS character
+receive for the instant a smutch from all the wrong things he had
+suspected or believed.  The person to whom Chad owed it that he
+could positively turn out such a comfort to other persons--such a
+person was sufficiently raised above any "breath" by the nature of
+her work and the young man's steady light.  All of which was vivid
+enough to come and go quickly; though indeed in the midst of it
+Strether could utter a question.  "Have I your word of honour that
+if I surrender myself to Madame de Vionnet you'll surrender
+yourself to me?"
+
+Chad laid his hand firmly on his friend's.  "My dear man, you have
+it."
+
+There was finally something in his felicity almost embarrassing and
+oppressive--Strether had begun to fidget under it for the open air
+and the erect posture.  He had signed to the waiter that he wished
+to pay, and this transaction took some moments, during which he
+thoroughly felt, while he put down money and pretended--it was
+quite hollow--to estimate change, that Chad's higher spirit, his
+youth, his practice, his paganism, his felicity, his assurance, his
+impudence, whatever it might be, had consciously scored a success.
+Well, that was all right so far as it went; his sense of the thing
+in question covered our friend for a minute like a veil through
+which--as if he had been muffled--he heard his interlocutor ask him
+if he mightn't take him over about five.  "Over" was over the river,
+and over the river was where Madame de Vionnet lived, and five was
+that very afternoon.  They got at last out of the place--got out
+before he answered.  He lighted, in the street, a cigarette, which
+again gave him more time.  But it was already sharp for him that
+there was no use in time.  "What does she propose to do to me?" he
+had presently demanded.
+
+Chad had no delays.  "Are you afraid of her?"
+
+"Oh immensely.  Don't you see it?"
+
+"Well," said Chad, "she won't do anything worse to you than make
+you like her."
+
+"It's just of that I'm afraid."
+
+"Then it's not fair to me."
+
+Strether cast about.  "It's fair to your mother."
+
+"Oh," said Chad, "are you afraid of HER?"
+
+"Scarcely less.  Or perhaps even more.  But is this lady against your
+interests at home?" Strether went on.
+
+"Not directly, no doubt; but she's greatly in favour of them here."
+
+"And what--'here'--does she consider them to be?"
+
+"Well, good relations!"
+
+"With herself?"
+
+"With herself."
+
+"And what is it that makes them so good?"
+
+"What?  Well, that's exactly what you'll make out if you'll only go,
+as I'm supplicating you, to see her."
+
+Strether stared at him with a little of the wanness, no doubt, that
+the vision of more to "make out" could scarce help producing.  "I
+mean HOW good are they?"
+
+"Oh awfully good."
+
+Again Strether had faltered, but it was brief.  It was all very
+well, but there was nothing now he wouldn't risk.  "Excuse me, but I
+must really--as I began by telling you--know where I am.  Is she
+bad?"
+
+"'Bad'?"--Chad echoed it, but without a shock.  "Is that what's
+implied--?"
+
+"When relations are good?" Strether felt a little silly, and was
+even conscious of a foolish laugh, at having it imposed on him to
+have appeared to speak so.  What indeed was he talking about?  His
+stare had relaxed; he looked now all round him.  But something in
+him brought him back, though he still didn't know quite how to turn
+it.  The two or three ways he thought of, and one of them in
+particular, were, even with scruples dismissed, too ugly.  He none
+the less at last found something.  "Is her life without reproach?"
+
+It struck him, directly he had found it, as pompous and priggish;
+so much so that he was thankful to Chad for taking it only in the
+right spirit.  The young man spoke so immensely to the point that
+the effect was practically of positive blandness.  "Absolutely
+without reproach.  A beautiful life.  Allez donc voir!"
+
+These last words were, in the liberality of their confidence, so
+imperative that Strether went through no form of assent; but before
+they separated it had been confirmed that he should be picked up at
+a quarter to five.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Sixth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+It was quite by half-past five--after the two men had been together
+in Madame de Vionnet's drawing-room not more than a dozen minutes--
+that Chad, with a look at his watch and then another at their
+hostess, said genially, gaily:  "I've an engagement, and I know you
+won't complain if I leave him with you.  He'll interest you
+immensely; and as for her," he declared to Strether, "I assure you,
+if you're at all nervous, she's perfectly safe."
+
+He had left them to be embarrassed or not by this guarantee, as
+they could best manage, and embarrassment was a thing that Strether
+wasn't at first sure Madame de Vionnet escaped.  He escaped it
+himself, to his surprise; but he had grown used by this time to
+thinking of himself as brazen.  She occupied, his hostess, in the
+Rue de Bellechasse, the first floor of an old house to which our
+visitors had had access from an old clean court.  The court was
+large and open, full of revelations, for our friend, of the habit
+of privacy, the peace of intervals, the dignity of distances and
+approaches; the house, to his restless sense, was in the high
+homely style of an elder day, and the ancient Paris that he was
+always looking for--sometimes intensely felt, sometimes more
+acutely missed--was in the immemorial polish of the wide waxed
+staircase and in the fine boiseries, the medallions, mouldings,
+mirrors, great clear spaces, of the greyish-white salon into which
+he had been shown.  He seemed at the very outset to see her in the
+midst of possessions not vulgarly numerous, but hereditary
+cherished charming.  While his eyes turned after a little from those
+of his hostess and Chad freely talked--not in the least about HIM,
+but about other people, people he didn't know, and quite as if he
+did know them--he found himself making out, as a background of the
+occupant, some glory, some prosperity of the First Empire, some
+Napoleonic glamour, some dim lustre of the great legend; elements
+clinging still to all the consular chairs and mythological brasses
+and sphinxes' heads and faded surfaces of satin striped with
+alternate silk.
+
+The place itself went further back--that he guessed, and how old
+Paris continued in a manner to echo there; but the post-revolutionary
+period, the world he vaguely thought of as the world of Chateaubriand,
+of Madame de Stael, even of the young Lamartine, had left its stamp of
+harps and urns and torches, a stamp impressed on sundry small objects,
+ornaments and relics.  He had never before, to his knowledge, had
+present to him relics, of any special dignity, of a private order--
+little old miniatures, medallions, pictures, books; books in leather
+bindings, pinkish and greenish, with gilt garlands on the back, ranged,
+together with other promiscuous properties, under the glass of
+brass-mounted cabinets.  His attention took them all tenderly into account.
+They were among the matters that marked Madame de Vionnet's
+apartment as something quite different from Miss Gostrey's little museum
+of bargains and from Chad's lovely home; he recognised it as founded
+much more on old accumulations that had possibly from time to time
+shrunken than on any contemporary method of acquisition or form of
+curiosity.  Chad and Miss Gostrey had rummaged and purchased and picked
+up and exchanged, sifting, selecting, comparing; whereas the mistress of
+the scene before him, beautifully passive under the spell of
+transmission--transmission from her father's line, he quite made up
+his mind--had only received, accepted and been quiet.  When she
+hadn't been quiet she had been moved at the most to some occult
+charity for some fallen fortune.  There had been objects she or her
+predecessors might even conceivably have parted with under need,
+but Strether couldn't suspect them of having sold old pieces to get
+"better" ones.  They would have felt no difference as to better or
+worse.  He could but imagine their having felt--perhaps in
+emigration, in proscription, for his sketch was slight and
+confused--the pressure of want or the obligation of sacrifice.
+
+The pressure of want--whatever might be the case with the other
+force--was, however, presumably not active now, for the tokens of a
+chastened ease still abounded after all, many marks of a taste
+whose discriminations might perhaps have been called eccentric.  He
+guessed at intense little preferences and sharp little exclusions,
+a deep suspicion of the vulgar and a personal view of the right.
+The general result of this was something for which he had no name
+on the spot quite ready, but something he would have come nearest
+to naming in speaking of it as the air of supreme respectability,
+the consciousness, small, still, reserved, but none the less
+distinct and diffused, of private honour.  The air of supreme
+respectability--that was a strange blank wall for his adventure to
+have brought him to break his nose against.  It had in fact, as he
+was now aware, filled all the approaches, hovered in the court as
+he passed, hung on the staircase as he mounted, sounded in the
+grave rumble of the old bell, as little electric as possible, of
+which Chad, at the door, had pulled the ancient but neatly-kept
+tassel; it formed in short the clearest medium of its particular
+kind that he had ever breathed.  He would have answered for it at
+the end of a quarter of an hour that some of the glass cases
+contained swords and epaulettes of ancient colonels and generals;
+medals and orders once pinned over hearts that had long since
+ceased to beat; snuff-boxes bestowed on ministers and envoys;
+copies of works presented, with inscriptions, by authors now
+classic.  At bottom of it all for him was the sense of her rare
+unlikeness to the women he had known.  This sense had grown, since
+the day before, the more he recalled her, and had been above all
+singularly fed by his talk with Chad in the morning.  Everything in
+fine made her immeasurably new, and nothing so new as the old house
+and the old objects.  There were books, two or three, on a small
+table near his chair, but they hadn't the lemon-coloured covers
+with which his eye had begun to dally from the hour of his arrival
+and to the opportunity of a further acquaintance with which he had
+for a fortnight now altogether succumbed.  On another table, across
+the room, he made out the great _Revue_; but even that familiar face,
+conspicuous in Mrs. Newsome's parlours, scarce counted here as a
+modern note.  He was sure on the spot--and he afterwards knew he was
+right--that this was a touch of Chad's own hand.  What would Mrs.
+Newsome say to the circumstance that Chad's interested "influence"
+kept her paper-knife in the _Revue_?  The interested influence at any
+rate had, as we say, gone straight to the point--had in fact soon
+left it quite behind.
+
+She was seated, near the fire, on a small stuffed and fringed chair
+one of the few modern articles in the room, and she leaned back in
+it with her hands clasped in her lap and no movement, in all her
+person, but the fine prompt play of her deep young face.  The fire,
+under the low white marble, undraped and academic, had burnt down
+to the silver ashes of light wood, one of the windows, at a
+distance, stood open to the mildness and stillness, out of which,
+in the short pauses, came the faint sound, pleasant and homely,
+almost rustic, of a plash and a clatter of sabots from some
+coach-house on the other side of the court.  Madame de Vionnet,
+while Strether sat there, wasn't to shift her posture by an inch.
+"I don't think you seriously believe in what you're doing," she
+said; "but all the same, you know, I'm going to treat you quite as
+if I did."
+
+"By which you mean," Strether directly replied, "quite as if you
+didn't!  I assure you it won't make the least difference with me how
+you treat me."
+
+"Well," she said, taking that menace bravely and
+philosophically enough, "the only thing that really matters is that
+you shall get on with me."
+
+"Ah but I don't!" he immediately returned.
+
+It gave her another pause; which, however, she happily enough shook
+off.  "Will you consent to go on with me a little--provisionally--
+as if you did?"
+
+Then it was that he saw how she had decidedly come all the way; and
+there accompanied it an extraordinary sense of her raising from
+somewhere below him her beautiful suppliant eyes.  He might have
+been perched at his door-step or at his window and she standing in
+the road.  For a moment he let her stand and couldn't moreover have
+spoken.  It had been sad, of a sudden, with a sadness that was like
+a cold breath in his face.  "What can I do," he finally asked, "but
+listen to you as I promised Chadwick?"
+
+"Ah but what I'm asking you," she quickly said, "isn't what Mr.
+Newsome had in mind." She spoke at present, he saw, as if to take
+courageously ALL her risk.  "This is my own idea and a different
+thing."
+
+It gave poor Strether in truth--uneasy as it made him too--
+something of the thrill of a bold perception justified.  "Well," he
+answered kindly enough, "I was sure a moment since that some idea
+of your own had come to you."
+
+She seemed still to look up at him, but now more serenely.  "I made
+out you were sure--and that helped it to come.  So you see," she
+continued, "we do get on."
+
+"Oh but it appears to me I don't at all meet your request.  How can
+I when I don't understand it?"
+
+"It isn't at all necessary you should understand; it will do quite
+well enough if you simply remember it.  Only feel I trust you--and
+for nothing so tremendous after all.  Just," she said with a
+wonderful smile, "for common civility."
+
+Strether had a long pause while they sat again face to face, as
+they had sat, scarce less conscious, before the poor lady had
+crossed the stream.  She was the poor lady for Strether now because
+clearly she had some trouble, and her appeal to him could only mean
+that her trouble was deep.  He couldn't help it; it wasn't his
+fault; he had done nothing; but by a turn of the hand she had
+somehow made their encounter a relation.  And the relation profited
+by a mass of things that were not strictly in it or of it; by the
+very air in which they sat, by the high cold delicate room, by the
+world outside and the little plash in the court, by the First
+Empire and the relics in the stiff cabinets, by matters as far off
+as those and by others as near as the unbroken clasp of her hands
+in her lap and the look her expression had of being most natural
+when her eyes were most fixed.  "You count upon me of course for
+something really much greater than it sounds."
+
+"Oh it sounds great enough too!" she laughed at this.
+
+He found himself in time on the point of telling her that she was,
+as Miss Barrace called it, wonderful; but, catching himself up, he
+said something else instead.  "What was it Chad's idea then that you
+should say to me?"
+
+"Ah his idea was simply what a man's idea always is--to put every
+effort off on the woman."
+
+"The 'woman'--?" Strether slowly echoed.
+
+"The woman he likes--and just in proportion as he likes her.  In
+proportion too--for shifting the trouble--as she likes HIM."
+
+Strether followed it; then with an abruptness of his own:
+"How much do you like Chad?"
+
+"Just as much as THAT--to take all, with you, on myself." But she
+got at once again away from this.  "I've been trembling as if we
+were to stand or fall by what you may think of me; and I'm even
+now," she went on wonderfully, "drawing a long breath--and, yes,
+truly taking a great courage--from the hope that I don't in fact
+strike you as impossible."
+
+"That's at all events, clearly," he observed after an instant, "the
+way I don't strike YOU."
+
+"Well," she so far assented, "as you haven't yet said you WON'T
+have the little patience with me I ask for--"
+
+"You draw splendid conclusions?  Perfectly.  But I don't understand
+them," Strether pursued.  "You seem to me to ask for much more than
+you need.  What, at the worst for you, what at the best for myself,
+can I after all do?  I can use no pressure that I haven't used.  You
+come really late with your request.  I've already done all that for
+myself the case admits of.  I've said my say, and here I am."
+
+"Yes, here you are, fortunately!" Madame de Vionnet laughed.  "Mrs.
+Newsome," she added in another tone, "didn't think you can do so
+little."
+
+He had an hesitation, but he brought the words out.  "Well, she
+thinks so now."
+
+"Do you mean by that--?" But she also hung fire.
+
+"Do I mean what?"
+
+She still rather faltered.  "Pardon me if I touch on it, but if I'm
+saying extraordinary things, why, perhaps, mayn't I?  Besides,
+doesn't it properly concern us to know?"
+
+"To know what?" he insisted as after thus beating about the bush
+she had again dropped.
+
+She made the effort.  "Has she given you up?"
+
+He was amazed afterwards to think how simply and quietly he had met
+it.  "Not yet." It was almost as if he were a trifle disappointed--
+had expected still more of her freedom.  But he went straight on.
+"Is that what Chad has told you will happen to me?"
+
+She was evidently charmed with the way he took it.  "If you mean if
+we've talked of it--most certainly.  And the question's not what has
+had least to do with my wishing to see you."
+
+"To judge if I'm the sort of man a woman CAN--?"
+
+"Precisely," she exclaimed--"you wonderful gentleman! I do judge--I
+HAVE judged.  A woman can't.  You're safe--with every right to be.
+You'd be much happier if you'd only believe it."
+
+Strether was silent a little; then he found himself speaking with a
+cynicism of confidence of which even at the moment the sources were
+strange to him.  "I try to believe it.  But it's a marvel," he
+exclaimed, "how YOU already get at it!"
+
+Oh she was able to say.  "Remember how much I was on the way to it
+through Mr. Newsome--before I saw you.  He thinks everything of your
+strength."
+
+"Well, I can bear almost anything!" our friend briskly interrupted.
+Deep and beautiful on this her smile came back, and with the effect
+of making him hear what he had said just as she had heard it.  He
+easily enough felt that it gave him away, but what in truth had
+everything done but that?  It had been all very well to think at
+moments that he was holding her nose down and that he had coerced
+her:  what had he by this time done but let her practically see that
+he accepted their relation?  What was their relation moreover--
+though light and brief enough in form as yet--but whatever she
+might choose to make it?  Nothing could prevent her--certainly he
+couldn't--from making it pleasant.  At the back of his head, behind
+everything, was the sense that she was--there, before him, close to
+him, in vivid imperative form--one of the rare women he had so
+often heard of, read of, thought of, but never met, whose very
+presence, look, voice, the mere contemporaneous FACT of whom, from
+the moment it was at all presented, made a relation of mere
+recognition.  That was not the kind of woman he had ever found Mrs.
+Newsome, a contemporaneous fact who had been distinctly slow to
+establish herself; and at present, confronted with Madame de
+Vionnet, he felt the simplicity of his original impression of Miss
+Gostrey.  She certainly had been a fact of rapid growth; but the
+world was wide, each day was more and more a new lesson.  There were
+at any rate even among the stranger ones relations and relations.
+"Of course I suit Chad's grand way," he quickly added.  "He hasn't
+had much difficulty in working me in."
+
+She seemed to deny a little, on the young man's behalf, by the rise
+of her eyebrows, an intention of any process at all inconsiderate.
+"You must know how grieved he'd be if you were to lose anything.  He
+believes you can keep his mother patient."
+
+Strether wondered with his eyes on her.  "I see.  THAT'S then what
+you really want of me.  And how am I to do it?  Perhaps you'll tell
+me that."
+
+"Simply tell her the truth."
+
+"And what do you call the truth?"
+
+"Well, any truth--about us all--that you see yourself.  I leave it
+to you."
+
+"Thank you very much.  I like," Strether laughed with a slight
+harshness, "the way you leave things!"
+
+But she insisted kindly, gently, as if it wasn't so bad.  "Be
+perfectly honest.  Tell her all."
+
+"All?" he oddly echoed.
+
+"Tell her the simple truth," Madame de Vionnet again pleaded.
+
+"But what is the simple truth?  The simple truth is exactly what I'm
+trying to discover."
+
+She looked about a while, but presently she came back to him.  "Tell
+her, fully and clearly, about US."
+
+Strether meanwhile had been staring.  "You and your daughter?"
+
+"Yes--little Jeanne and me.  Tell her," she just slightly quavered,
+"you like us."
+
+"And what good will that do me?  Or rather"--he caught himself up--
+"what good will it do YOU?"
+
+She looked graver.  "None, you believe, really?"
+
+Strether debated.  "She didn't send me out to 'like' you."
+
+"Oh," she charmingly contended, "she sent you out to face the
+facts."
+
+He admitted after an instant that there was something in that.  "But
+how can I face them till I know what they are?  Do you want him," he
+then braced himself to ask, "to marry your daughter?"
+
+She gave a headshake as noble as it was prompt.  "No--not that."
+
+"And he really doesn't want to himself?"
+
+She repeated the movement, but now with a strange light in her
+face.  "He likes her too much."
+
+Strether wondered.  "To be willing to consider, you mean, the
+question of taking her to America?"
+
+"To be willing to do anything with her but be immensely kind and
+nice--really tender of her.  We watch over her, and you must help
+us.  You must see her again."
+
+Strether felt awkward.  "Ah with pleasure--she's so remarkably
+attractive."
+
+The mother's eagerness with which Madame de Vionnet jumped at this
+was to come back to him later as beautiful in its grace.  "The dear
+thing DID please you?" Then as he met it with the largest "Oh!" of
+enthusiasm:  "She's perfect.  She's my joy."
+
+"Well, I'm sure that--if one were near her and saw more of her--
+she'd be mine."
+
+"Then," said Madame de Vionnet, "tell Mrs. Newsome that!"
+
+He wondered the more.  "What good will that do you?" As she appeared
+unable at once to say, however, he brought out something else.  "Is
+your daughter in love with our friend?"
+
+"Ah," she rather startlingly answered, "I wish you'd find out!"
+
+He showed his surprise.  "I?  A stranger?"
+
+"Oh you won't be a stranger--presently.  You shall see her quite, I
+assure you, as if you weren't."
+
+It remained for him none the less an extraordinary notion.  "It
+seems to me surely that if her mother can't--"
+
+"Ah little girls and their mothers to-day!" she rather inconsequently
+broke in.  But she checked herself with something she seemed to give
+out as after all more to the point.  "Tell her I've been good for
+him.  Don't you think I have?"
+
+It had its effect on him--more than at the moment he quite measured.
+Yet he was consciously enough touched.  "Oh if it's all you--!"
+
+"Well, it may not be 'all,'" she interrupted, "but it's to a great
+extent.  Really and truly," she added in a tone that was to take its
+place with him among things remembered.
+
+"Then it's very wonderful."  He smiled at her from a face that he
+felt as strained, and her own face for a moment kept him so.  At
+last she also got up.  "Well, don't you think that for that--"
+
+"I ought to save you?"  So it was that the way to meet her--and the
+way, as well, in a manner, to get off--came over him.  He heard
+himself use the exorbitant word, the very sound of which helped to
+determine his flight.  "I'll save you if I can."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+In Chad's lovely home, however, one evening ten days later, he felt
+himself present at the collapse of the question of Jeanne de Vionnet's
+shy secret.  He had been dining there in the company of that young
+lady and her mother, as well as of other persons, and he had gone
+into the petit salon, at Chad's request, on purpose to talk with her.
+The young man had put this to him as a favour--"I should like so
+awfully to know what you think of her.  It will really be a chance
+for you," he had said, "to see the jeune fille--I mean the type--as she
+actually is, and I don't think that, as an observer of manners,
+it's a thing you ought to miss.  It will be an impression that--
+whatever else you take--you can carry home with you, where you'll
+find again so much to compare it with."
+
+Strether knew well enough with what Chad wished him to compare it,
+and though he entirely assented he hadn't yet somehow been so
+deeply reminded that he was being, as he constantly though mutely
+expressed it, used.  He was as far as ever from making out exactly
+to what end; but he was none the less constantly accompanied by a
+sense of the service he rendered.  He conceived only that this
+service was highly agreeable to those who profited by it; and he
+was indeed still waiting for the moment at which he should catch it
+in the act of proving disagreeable, proving in some degree
+intolerable, to himself.  He failed quite to see how his situation
+could clear up at all logically except by some turn of events that
+would give him the pretext of disgust.  He was building from day to
+day on the possibility of disgust, but each day brought forth
+meanwhile a new and more engaging bend of the road.  That
+possibility was now ever so much further from sight than on the eve
+of his arrival, and he perfectly felt that, should it come at all,
+it would have to be at best inconsequent and violent.  He struck
+himself as a little nearer to it only when he asked himself what
+service, in such a life of utility, he was after all rendering
+Mrs. Newsome.  When he wished to help himself to believe that he was
+still all right he reflected--and in fact with wonder--on the
+unimpaired frequency of their correspondence; in relation to which
+what was after all more natural than that it should become more
+frequent just in proportion as their problem became more complicated?
+
+Certain it is at any rate that he now often brought himself balm by
+the question, with the rich consciousness of yesterday's letter,
+"Well, what can I do more than that--what can I do more than tell
+her everything?"  To persuade himself that he did tell her, had told
+her, everything, he used to try to think of particular things he
+hadn't told her.  When at rare moments and in the watches of the
+night he pounced on one it generally showed itself to be--to a
+deeper scrutiny--not quite truly of the essence.  When anything new
+struck him as coming up, or anything already noted as reappearing,
+he always immediately wrote, as if for fear that if he didn't he
+would miss something; and also that he might be able to say to
+himself from time to time "She knows it NOW--even while I worry."
+It was a great comfort to him in general not to have left past
+things to be dragged to light and explained; not to have to produce
+at so late a stage anything not produced, or anything even veiled
+and attenuated, at the moment.  She knew it now:  that was what he
+said to himself to-night in relation to the fresh fact of Chad's
+acquaintance with the two ladies--not to speak of the fresher one
+of his own.  Mrs. Newsome knew in other words that very night at
+Woollett that he himself knew Madame de Vionnet and that he had
+conscientiously been to see her; also that he had found her
+remarkably attractive and that there would probably be a good deal
+more to tell.  But she further knew, or would know very soon, that,
+again conscientiously, he hadn't repeated his visit; and that when
+Chad had asked him on the Countess's behalf--Strether made her out
+vividly, with a thought at the back of his head, a Countess--if he
+wouldn't name a day for dining with her, he had replied lucidly:
+"Thank you very much--impossible."  He had begged the young man
+would present his excuses and had trusted him to understand that it
+couldn't really strike one as quite the straight thing.  He hadn't
+reported to Mrs. Newsome that he had promised to "save" Madame de
+Vionnet; but, so far as he was concerned with that reminiscence, he
+hadn't at any rate promised to haunt her house.  What Chad had
+understood could only, in truth, be inferred from Chad's behaviour,
+which had been in this connexion as easy as in every other.  He was
+easy, always, when he understood; he was easier still, if possible,
+when he didn't; he had replied that he would make it all right; and
+he had proceeded to do this by substituting the present occasion--
+as he was ready to substitute others--for any, for every occasion
+as to which his old friend should have a funny scruple.
+
+"Oh but I'm not a little foreign girl; I'm just as English as I can be,"
+Jeanne de Vionnet had said to him as soon as, in the petit salon,
+he sank, shyly enough on his own side, into the place near her
+vacated by Madame Gloriani at his approach.  Madame Gloriani,
+who was in black velvet, with white lace and powdered hair, and
+whose somewhat massive majesty melted, at any contact, into the
+graciousness of some incomprehensible tongue, moved away to make
+room for the vague gentleman, after benevolent greetings to him
+which embodied, as he believed, in baffling accents, some
+recognition of his face from a couple of Sundays before.  Then he
+had remarked--making the most of the advantage of his years--that
+it frightened him quite enough to find himself dedicated to the
+entertainment of a little foreign girl.  There were girls he wasn't
+afraid of--he was quite bold with little Americans.  Thus it was
+that she had defended herself to the end--"Oh but I'm almost
+American too.  That's what mamma has wanted me to be--I mean LIKE
+that; for she has wanted me to have lots of freedom.  She has known
+such good results from it."
+
+She was fairly beautiful to him--a faint pastel in an oval frame:
+he thought of her already as of some lurking image in a long
+gallery, the portrait of a small old-time princess of whom nothing
+was known but that she had died young.  Little Jeanne wasn't,
+doubtless, to die young, but one couldn't, all the same, bear on
+her lightly enough.  It was bearing hard, it was bearing as HE, in
+any case, wouldn't bear, to concern himself, in relation to her,
+with the question of a young man.  Odious really the question of a
+young man; one didn't treat such a person as a maid-servant
+suspected of a "follower."  And then young men, young men--well, the
+thing was their business simply, or was at all events hers.  She was
+fluttered, fairly fevered--to the point of a little glitter that
+came and went in her eyes and a pair of pink spots that stayed in
+her cheeks--with the great adventure of dining out and with the
+greater one still, possibly, of finding a gentleman whom she must
+think of as very, very old, a gentleman with eye-glasses, wrinkles,
+a long grizzled moustache.  She spoke the prettiest English, our
+friend thought, that he had ever heard spoken, just as he had
+believed her a few minutes before to be speaking the prettiest
+French.  He wondered almost wistfully if such a sweep of the lyre
+didn't react on the spirit itself; and his fancy had in fact,
+before he knew it, begun so to stray and embroider that he finally
+found himself, absent and extravagant, sitting with the child in a
+friendly silence.  Only by this time he felt her flutter to have
+fortunately dropped and that she was more at her ease.  She trusted
+him, liked him, and it was to come back to him afterwards that she
+had told him things.  She had dipped into the waiting medium at last
+and found neither surge nor chill--nothing but the small splash she
+could herself make in the pleasant warmth, nothing but the safety
+of dipping and dipping again.  At the end of the ten minutes he was
+to spend with her his impression--with all it had thrown off and
+all it had taken in--was complete.  She had been free, as she knew
+freedom, partly to show him that, unlike other little persons she
+knew, she had imbibed that ideal.  She was delightfully quaint about
+herself, but the vision of what she had imbibed was what most held
+him.  It really consisted, he was soon enough to feel, in just one
+great little matter, the fact that, whatever her nature, she was
+thoroughly--he had to cast about for the word, but it came--bred.
+He couldn't of course on so short an acquaintance speak for her
+nature, but the idea of breeding was what she had meanwhile dropped
+into his mind.  He had never yet known it so sharply presented.  Her
+mother gave it, no doubt; but her mother, to make that less sensible,
+gave so much else besides, and on neither of the two previous occasions,
+extraordinary woman, Strether felt, anything like what she was giving
+tonight.  Little Jeanne was a case, an exquisite case of education;
+whereas the Countess, whom it so amused him to think of by that
+denomination, was a case, also exquisite, of--well, he didn't know what.
+
+"He has wonderful taste, notre jeune homme":  this was what Gloriani
+said to him on turning away from the inspection of a small picture
+suspended near the door of the room.  The high celebrity in question
+had just come in, apparently in search of Mademoiselle de Vionnet,
+but while Strether had got up from beside her their fellow guest,
+with his eye sharply caught, had paused for a long look.  The thing
+was a landscape, of no size, but of the French school, as our
+friend was glad to feel he knew, and also of a quality--which he
+liked to think he should also have guessed; its frame was large out
+of proportion to the canvas, and he had never seen a person look at
+anything, he thought, just as Gloriani, with his nose very near and
+quick movements of the head from side to side and bottom to top,
+examined this feature of Chad's collection.  The artist used that
+word the next moment smiling courteously, wiping his nippers and
+looking round him further--paying the place in short by the very
+manner of his presence and by something Strether fancied he could
+make out in this particular glance, such a tribute as, to the
+latter's sense, settled many things once for all.  Strether was
+conscious at this instant, for that matter, as he hadn't yet been,
+of how, round about him, quite without him, they WERE consistently
+settled.  Gloriani's smile, deeply Italian, he considered, and
+finely inscrutable, had had for him, during dinner, at which they
+were not neighbours, an indefinite greeting; but the quality in it
+was gone that had appeared on the other occasion to turn him inside
+out; it was as if even the momentary link supplied by the doubt
+between them had snapped.  He was conscious now of the final
+reality, which was that there wasn't so much a doubt as a
+difference altogether; all the more that over the difference the
+famous sculptor seemed to signal almost condolingly, yet oh how
+vacantly! as across some great flat sheet of water.  He threw out
+the bridge of a charming hollow civility on which Strether wouldn't
+have trusted his own full weight a moment.  That idea, even though
+but transient and perhaps belated, had performed the office of
+putting Strether more at his ease, and the blurred picture had
+already dropped--dropped with the sound of something else said and
+with his becoming aware, by another quick turn, that Gloriani was
+now on the sofa talking with Jeanne, while he himself had in his
+ears again the familiar friendliness and the elusive meaning of the
+"Oh, oh, oh!" that had made him, a fortnight before, challenge Miss
+Barrace in vain.  She had always the air, this picturesque and
+original lady, who struck him, so oddly, as both antique and
+modern--she had always the air of taking up some joke that one had
+already had out with her.  The point itself, no doubt, was what was
+antique, and the use she made of it what was modern.  He felt just
+now that her good-natured irony did bear on something, and it
+troubled him a little that she wouldn't be more explicit only
+assuring him, with the pleasure of observation so visible in her,
+that she wouldn't tell him more for the world.  He could take refuge
+but in asking her what she had done with Waymarsh, though it must
+be added that he felt himself a little on the way to a clue after
+she had answered that this personage was, in the other room,
+engaged in conversation with Madame de Vionnet.  He stared a moment
+at the image of such a conjunction; then, for Miss Barrace's
+benefit, he wondered.  "Is she too then under the charm--?"
+
+"No, not a bit"--Miss Barrace was prompt.  "She makes nothing of him.
+She's bored.  She won't help you with him."
+
+"Oh," Strether laughed, "she can't do everything.
+
+"Of course not--wonderful as she is.  Besides, he makes nothing of
+HER.  She won't take him from me--though she wouldn't, no doubt,
+having other affairs in hand, even if she could.  I've never," said
+Miss Barrace, "seen her fail with any one before.  And to-night,
+when she's so magnificent, it would seem to her strange--if she
+minded.  So at any rate I have him all.  Je suis tranquille!''
+
+Strether understood, so far as that went; but he was feeling for
+his clue.  "She strikes you to-night as particularly magnificent?"
+
+"Surely.  Almost as I've never seen her.  Doesn't she you?
+Why it's FOR you."
+
+He persisted in his candour.  "'For' me--?"
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" cried Miss Barrace, who persisted in the opposite of
+that quality.
+
+"Well," he acutely admitted, "she IS different.  She's gay.  "
+
+"She's gay!" Miss Barrace laughed.  "And she has beautiful
+shoulders--though there's nothing different in that."
+
+"No," said Strether, "one was sure of her shoulders.
+It isn't her shoulders."
+
+His companion, with renewed mirth and the finest sense,  between
+the puffs of her cigarette, of the drollery of things, appeared to
+find their conversation highly delightful.  "Yes, it isn't
+her shoulders ."
+
+"What then is it?" Strether earnestly enquired.
+
+"Why, it's SHE--simply.  It's her mood.  It's her charm."
+
+"Of course it's her charm, but we're speaking of the difference."
+"Well," Miss Barrace explained, "she's just brilliant, as we used
+to say.  That's all.  She's various.  She's fifty women."
+
+"Ah but only one"--Strether kept it clear--"at a time."
+
+"Perhaps.  But in fifty times--!"
+
+"Oh we shan't come to that," our friend declared; and the next
+moment he had moved in another direction.  "Will you answer me a
+plain question?  Will she ever divorce?"
+
+Miss Barrace looked at him through all her tortoise-shell.  "Why
+should she?"
+
+It wasn't what he had asked for, he signified; but he met it well
+enough.  "To marry Chad."
+
+"Why should she marry Chad?"
+
+"Because I'm convinced she's very fond of him.  She has done wonders
+for him."
+
+"Well then, how could she do more?  Marrying a man, or woman
+either," Miss Barrace sagely went on, "is never the wonder for any
+Jack and Jill can bring THAT off.  The wonder is their doing such
+things without marrying."
+
+Strether considered a moment this proposition.  "You mean it's so
+beautiful for our friends simply to go on so?"
+
+But whatever he said made her laugh.  "Beautiful."
+
+He nevertheless insisted.  "And THAT because it's disinterested?"
+
+She was now, however, suddenly tired of the question.  "Yes then--
+call it that.  Besides, she'll never divorce.  Don't, moreover," she
+added, "believe everything you hear about her husband."
+
+He's not then," Strether asked, "a wretch?"
+
+"Oh yes.  But charming."
+
+"Do you know him?"
+
+"I've met him.  He's bien aimable."
+
+"To every one but his wife?"
+
+"Oh for all I know, to her too--to any, to every woman.  I hope you
+at any rate," she pursued with a quick change, "appreciate the care
+I take of Mr. Waymarsh."
+
+"Oh immensely." But Strether was not yet in line.  "At all events,"
+he roundly brought out, "the attachment's an innocent one."
+
+"Mine and his?  Ah," she laughed, "don't rob it of ALL interest!"
+
+"I mean our friend's here--to the lady we've been speaking of."
+That was what he had settled to as an indirect but none the less
+closely involved consequence of his impression of Jeanne.  That was
+where he meant to stay.  "It's innocent," he repeated--"I see the
+whole thing."
+
+Mystified by his abrupt declaration, she had glanced over at
+Gloriani as at the unnamed subject of his allusion, but the next
+moment she had understood; though indeed not before Strether had
+noticed her momentary mistake and wondered what might possibly be
+behind that too.  He already knew that the sculptor admired Madame
+de Vionnet; but did this admiration also represent an attachment of
+which the innocence was discussable?  He was moving verily in a
+strange air and on ground not of the firmest.  He looked hard for an
+instant at Miss Barrace, but she had already gone on.  "All right
+with Mr. Newsome?  Why of course she is!"--and she got gaily back
+to the question of her own good friend.  "I dare say you're
+surprised that I'm not worn out with all I see--it being so much!--
+of Sitting Bull.  But I'm not, you know--I don't mind him; I bear
+up, and we get on beautifully.  I'm very strange; I'm like that; and
+often I can't explain.  There are people who are supposed
+interesting or remarkable or whatever, and who bore me to death;
+and then there are others as to whom nobody can understand what
+anybody sees in them--in whom I see no end of things."  Then after
+she had smoked a moment, "He's touching, you know," she said.
+
+"'Know'?" Strether echoed--"don't I, indeed?  We must move you
+almost to tears."
+
+"Oh but I don't mean YOU!" she laughed.
+
+"You ought to then, for the worst sign of all--as I must have it
+for you--is that you can't help me.  That's when a woman pities."
+
+"Ah but I do help you!" she cheerfully insisted.
+
+Again he looked at her hard, and then after a pause:  "No you
+don't!"
+
+Her tortoise-shell, on its long chain, rattled down.  "I help you
+with Sitting Bull.  That's a good deal."
+
+"Oh that, yes."  But Strether hesitated.  "Do you mean he talks of
+me?"
+
+"So that I have to defend you?  No, never.'
+
+"I see," Strether mused.  "It's too deep."
+
+"That's his only fault," she returned--"that everything, with him,
+is too deep.  He has depths of silence--which he breaks only at the
+longest intervals by a remark.  And when the remark comes it's
+always something he has seen or felt for himself--never a bit banal
+THAT would be what one might have feared and what would kill me But
+never."  She smoked again as she thus, with amused complacency,
+appreciated her acquisition.  "And never about you.  We keep clear of
+you.  We're wonderful.  But I'll tell you what he does do," she
+continued:  "he tries to make me presents."
+
+"Presents?" poor Strether echoed, conscious with a pang that HE
+hadn't yet tried that in any quarter.
+
+"Why you see," she explained, "he's as fine as ever in the
+victoria; so that when I leave him, as I often do almost for hours
+--he likes it so--at the doors of shops, the sight of him there
+helps me, when I come out, to know my carriage away off in the
+rank.  But sometimes, for a change, he goes with me into the shops,
+and then I've all I can do to prevent his buying me things."
+
+"He wants to 'treat' you?"  Strether almost gasped at all he himself
+hadn't thought of.  He had a sense of admiration.  "Oh he's much more
+in the real tradition than I.  Yes," he mused, "it's the sacred rage."
+
+"The sacred rage, exactly!"--and Miss Barrace, who hadn't before
+heard this term applied, recognised its bearing with a clap of her
+gemmed hands.  "Now I do know why he's not banal.  But I do prevent
+him all the same--and if you saw what he sometimes selects--from
+buying.  I save him hundreds and hundreds.  I only take flowers."
+
+"Flowers?" Strether echoed again with a rueful reflexion.  How many
+nosegays had her present converser sent?
+
+"Innocent flowers," she pursued, "as much as he likes.  And he sends
+me splendours; he knows all the best places--he has found them for
+himself; he's wonderful."
+
+"He hasn't told them to me," her friend smiled, "he has a life of
+his own."  But Strether had swung back to the consciousness that for
+himself after all it never would have done.  Waymarsh hadn't Mrs.
+Waymarsh in the least to consider, whereas Lambert Strether had
+constantly, in the inmost honour of his thoughts, to consider Mrs.
+Newsome.  He liked moreover to feel how much his friend was in the
+real tradition.  Yet he had his conclusion.  "WHAT a rage it is!"
+He had worked it out.  "It's an opposition."
+
+She followed, but at a distance.  "That's what I feel.  Yet to what?"
+
+"Well, he thinks, you know, that I'VE a life of my own.  And I haven't!"
+
+"You haven't?"  She showed doubt, and her laugh confirmed it.
+"Oh, oh, oh!"
+
+"No--not for myself.  I seem to have a life only for other people."
+
+"Ah for them and WITH them! Just now for instance with--"
+
+"Well, with whom?" he asked before she had had time to say.
+
+His tone had the effect of making her hesitate and even, as he
+guessed, speak with a difference.  "Say with Miss Gostrey.  What do
+you do for HER?"  It really made him wonder.  "Nothing at all!"
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Madame de Vionnet, having meanwhile come in, was at present
+close to them, and Miss Barrace hereupon, instead of risking a
+rejoinder, became again with a look that measured her from top to
+toe all mere long-handled appreciative tortoise-shell.  She had
+struck our friend, from the first of her appearing, as dressed for
+a great occasion, and she met still more than on either of the
+others the conception reawakened in him at their garden-party, the
+idea of the femme du monde in her habit as she lived.  Her bare
+shoulders and arms were white and beautiful; the materials of her
+dress, a mixture, as he supposed, of silk and crape, were of a
+silvery grey so artfully composed as to give an impression of warm
+splendour; and round her neck she wore a collar of large old
+emeralds, the green note of which was more dimly repeated, at other
+points of her apparel, in embroidery, in enamel, in satin, in
+substances and textures vaguely rich.  Her head, extremely fair and
+exquisitely festal, was like a happy fancy, a notion of the
+antique, on an old precious medal, some silver coin of the
+Renaissance; while her slim lightness and brightness, her gaiety,
+her expression, her decision, contributed to an effect that might
+have been felt by a poet as half mythological and half conventional.
+He could have compared her to a goddess still partly engaged
+in a morning cloud, or to a sea-nymph waist-high in the summer surge.
+Above all she suggested to him the reflexion that the femme du monde--
+in these finest developments of the type--was, like Cleopatra
+in the play, indeed various and multifold.  She had aspects, characters,
+days, nights--or had them at least, showed them by a mysterious law
+of her own, when in addition to everything she happened also to be
+a woman of genius.  She was an obscure person, a muffled person one day,
+and a showy person, an uncovered person the next.  He thought of
+Madame de Vionnet to-night as showy and uncovered, though he felt
+the formula rough, because, thanks to one of the short-cuts of genius
+she had taken all his categories by surprise.  Twice during dinner
+he had met Chad's eyes in a longish look; but these communications
+had in truth only stirred up again old ambiguities--so little was it
+clear from them whether they were an appeal or an admonition.
+"You see how I'm fixed," was what they appeared to convey; yet how
+he was fixed was exactly what Strether didn't see.  However, perhaps
+he should see now.
+
+"Are you capable of the very great kindness of going to relieve
+Newsome, for a few minutes, of the rather crushing responsibility
+of Madame Gloriani, while I say a word, if he'll allow me, to
+Mr. Strether, of whom I've a question to ask?  Our host ought to talk
+a bit to those other ladies, and I'll come back in a minute to your
+rescue."  She made this proposal to Miss Barrace as if her
+consciousness of a special duty had just flickered-up, but that
+lady's recognition of Strether's little start at it--as at a
+betrayal on the speaker's part of a domesticated state--was as mute
+as his own comment; and after an instant, when their fellow guest
+had good-naturedly left them, he had been given something else to
+think of.  "Why has Maria so suddenly gone?  Do you know?"  That was
+the question Madame de Vionnet had brought with her.
+
+"I'm afraid I've no reason to give you but the simple reason I've
+had from her in a note--the sudden obligation to join in the south
+a sick friend who has got worse."
+
+"Ah then she has been writing you?"
+
+"Not since she went--I had only a brief explanatory word before she
+started.  I went to see her," Strether explained--"it was the day
+after I called on you--but she was already on her way, and her
+concierge told me that in case of my coming I was to be informed
+she had written to me.  I found her note when I got home."
+
+Madame de Vionnet listened with interest and with her eyes on
+Strether's face; then her delicately decorated head had a small
+melancholy motion.  "She didn't write to ME.  I went to see her," she
+added, "almost immediately after I had seen you, and as I assured
+her I would do when I met her at Gloriani's.  She hadn't then told
+me she was to be absent, and I felt at her door as if I understood.
+She's absent--with all respect to her sick friend, though I know
+indeed she has plenty--so that I may not see her.  She doesn't want
+to meet me again.  Well," she continued with a beautiful conscious
+mildness, "I liked and admired her beyond every one in the old
+time, and she knew it--perhaps that's precisely what has made her go--
+and I dare say I haven't lost her for ever."  Strether still said
+nothing; he had a horror, as he now thought of himself, of being
+in question between women--was in fact already quite enough on his
+way to that, and there was moreover, as it came to him, perceptibly,
+something behind these allusions and professions that, should he
+take it in, would square but ill with his present resolve to simplify.
+It was as if, for him, all the same, her softness and sadness
+were sincere.  He felt that not less when she soon went on:
+"I'm extremely glad of her happiness."  But it also left him mute--
+sharp and fine though the imputation it conveyed.  What it conveyed
+was that HE was Maria Gostrey's happiness, and for the least little
+instant he had the impulse to challenge the thought.  He could have
+done so however only by saying "What then do you suppose to be
+between us?" and he was wonderfully glad a moment later not to have
+spoken.  He would rather seem stupid any day than fatuous, and he
+drew back as well, with a smothered inward shudder, from the
+consideration of what women--of highly-developed type in particular--
+might think of each other.  Whatever he had come out for he hadn't
+come to go into that; so that he absolutely took up nothing his
+interlocutress had now let drop.  Yet, though he had kept away from her
+for days, had laid wholly on herself the burden of their meeting again,
+she hadn't a gleam of irritation to show him.  "Well, about Jeanne now?"
+she smiled--it had the gaiety with which she had originally come in.
+He felt it on the instant to represent her motive and real errand.
+But he had been schooling her of a truth to say much in proportion to
+his little.  "Do you make out that she has a sentiment?  I mean for
+Mr. Newsome."
+
+Almost resentful, Strether could at last be prompt.  "How can I make
+out such things?"
+
+She remained perfectly good-natured.  "Ah but they're beautiful
+little things, and you make out--don't pretend--everything in the
+world.  Haven't you," she asked, "been talking with her?"
+
+"Yes, but not about Chad.  At least not much."
+
+"Oh you don't require 'much'!" she reassuringly declared.  But she
+immediately changed her ground.  "I hope you remember your promise
+of the other day."
+
+"To 'save' you, as you called it?"
+
+"I call it so still.  You WILL?" she insisted.  "You haven't repented?"
+
+He wondered.  "No--but I've been thinking what I meant."
+
+She kept it up.  "And not, a little, what I did?"
+
+"No--that's not necessary.  It will be enough if I know what I
+meant myself."
+
+"And don't you know," she asked, "by this time?"
+
+Again he had a pause.  "I think you ought to leave it to me.
+But how long," he added, "do you give me?"
+
+"It seems to me much more a question of how long you give ME.
+Doesn't our friend here himself, at any rate," she went on,
+"perpetually make me present to you?"
+
+"Not," Strether replied, "by ever speaking of you to me."
+
+"He never does that?"
+
+"Never."
+
+She considered, and, if the fact was disconcerting to her,
+effectually concealed it.  The next minute indeed she had recovered.
+"No, he wouldn't.  But do you NEED that?"
+
+Her emphasis was wonderful, and though his eyes had been wandering
+he looked at her longer now.  "I see what you mean."
+
+"Of course you see what I mean."
+
+Her triumph was gentle, and she really had tones to make justice
+weep.  "I've before me what he owes you."
+
+"Admit then that that's something," she said, yet still with the
+same discretion in her pride.
+
+He took in this note but went straight on.  "You've made of him what
+I see, but what I don't see is how in the world you've done it."
+
+"Ah that's another question!" she smiled.  "The point is of what use
+is your declining to know me when to know Mr. Newsome--as you do me
+the honour to find him--IS just to know me."
+
+"I see," he mused, still with his eyes on her.  "I shouldn't have
+met you to-night."
+
+She raised and dropped her linked hands.  "It doesn't matter.  If I
+trust you why can't you a little trust me too?  And why can't you
+also," she asked in another tone, "trust yourself?"  But she gave
+him no time to reply.  "Oh I shall be so easy for you! And I'm glad
+at any rate you've seen my child."
+
+"I'm glad too," he said; "but she does you no good."
+
+"No good?"--Madame de Vionnet had a clear stare.  "Why she's an
+angel of light."
+
+"That's precisely the reason.  Leave her alone.  Don't try to find
+out.  I mean," he explained, "about what you spoke to me of--
+the way she feels."
+
+His companion wondered.  "Because one really won't?"
+
+"Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to.  She's the
+most charming creature I've ever seen.  Therefore don't touch her.
+Don't know--don't want to know.  And moreover--yes--you won't."
+
+It was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in.  "As a favour to you?"
+
+"Well--since you ask me."
+
+"Anything, everything you ask," she smiled.  "I shan't know then--never.
+Thank you," she added with peculiar gentleness as she turned away.
+
+The sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if he
+had been tripped up and had a fall.  In the very act of arranging
+with her for his independence he had, under pressure from a
+particular perception, inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed
+himself, and, with her subtlety sensitive on the spot to an
+advantage, she had driven in by a single word a little golden nail,
+the sharp intention of which he signally felt.  He hadn't detached,
+he had more closely connected himself, and his eyes, as he
+considered with some intensity this circumstance, met another pair
+which had just come within their range and which struck him as
+reflecting his sense of what he had done.  He recognised them at the
+same moment as those of little Bilham, who had apparently drawn
+near on purpose to speak to him, and little Bilham wasn't, in the
+conditions, the person to whom his heart would be most closed.
+They were seated together a minute later at the angle of the room
+obliquely opposite the corner in which Gloriani was still engaged
+with Jeanne de Vionnet, to whom at first and in silence their
+attention had been benevolently given.  "I can't see for my life,"
+Strether had then observed, "how a young fellow of any spirit--such
+a one as you for instance--can be admitted to the sight of that
+young lady without being hard hit.  Why don't you go in, little
+Bilham?"  He remembered the tone into which he had been betrayed on
+the garden-bench at the sculptor's reception, and this might make
+up for that by being much more the right sort of thing to say to a
+young man worthy of any advice at all.  "There WOULD be some
+reason."
+
+"Some reason for what?"
+
+"Why for hanging on here."
+
+"To offer my hand and fortune to Mademoiselle de Vionnet?"
+
+"Well," Strether asked, "to what lovelier apparition COULD you
+offer them?  She's the sweetest little thing I've ever seen."
+
+"She's certainly immense.  I mean she's the real thing.  I believe
+the pale pink petals are folded up there for some wondrous
+efflorescence in time; to open, that is, to some great golden sun.
+I'M unfortunately but a small farthing candle.  What chance in such
+a field for a poor little painter-man?"
+
+"Oh you're good enough," Strether threw out.
+
+"Certainly I'm good enough.  We're good enough, I consider, nous
+autres, for anything.  But she's TOO good.  There's the difference.
+They wouldn't look at me."
+
+Strether, lounging on his divan and still charmed by the young
+girl, whose eyes had consciously strayed to him, he fancied, with a
+vague smile--Strether, enjoying the whole occasion as with dormant
+pulses at last awake and in spite of new material thrust upon him,
+thought over his companion's words.  "Whom do you mean by 'they'?
+She and her mother?"
+
+"She and her mother.  And she has a father too, who, whatever else
+he may be, certainly can't be indifferent to the possibilities she
+represents.  Besides, there's Chad."
+
+Strether was silent a little.  "Ah but he doesn't care for her--not,
+I mean, it appears, after all, in the sense I'm speaking of.  He's
+NOT in love with her."
+
+"No--but he's her best friend; after her mother.  He's very fond
+of her.  He has his ideas about what can be done for her."
+
+"Well, it's very strange!" Strether presently remarked with a
+sighing sense of fulness.
+
+"Very strange indeed.  That's just the beauty of it.  Isn't it very
+much the kind of beauty you had in mind," little Bilham went on,
+"when you were so wonderful and so inspiring to me the other day?
+Didn't you adjure me, in accents I shall never forget, to see,
+while I've a chance, everything I can?--and REALLY to see, for it
+must have been that only you meant.  Well, you did me no end of
+good, and I'm doing my best.  I DO make it out a situation."
+
+"So do I!" Strether went on after a moment.  But he had the next minute
+an inconsequent question.  "How comes Chad so mixed up, anyway?"
+
+"Ah, ah, ah!"--and little Bilham fell back on his cushions.
+
+It reminded our friend of Miss Barrace, and he felt again the brush
+of his sense of moving in a maze of mystic closed allusions.  Yet he
+kept hold of his thread.  "Of course I understand really; only the
+general transformation makes me occasionally gasp.  Chad with such a
+voice in the settlement of the future of a little countess--no,"
+he declared, "it takes more time! You say moreover," he resumed, "that
+we're inevitably, people like you and me, out of the running.  The
+curious fact remains that Chad himself isn't.  The situation doesn't
+make for it, but in a different one he could have her if he would."
+
+"Yes, but that's only because he's rich and because there's a
+possibility of his being richer.  They won't think of anything but a
+great name or a great fortune."
+
+"Well," said Strether, "he'll have no great fortune on THESE lines.
+He must stir his stumps."
+
+"Is that," little Bilham enquired, "what you were saying to
+Madame de Vionnet?"
+
+"No--I don't say much to her.  Of course, however," Strether
+continued, "he can make sacrifices if he likes."
+
+Little Bilham had a pause.  "Oh he's not keen for sacrifices; or
+thinks, that is, possibly, that he has made enough."
+
+"Well, it IS virtuous," his companion observed with some decision.
+
+"That's exactly," the young man dropped after a moment, "what I mean."
+
+It kept Strether himself silent a little.  "I've made it out for
+myself," he then went on; "I've really, within the last half-hour,
+got hold of it.  I understand it in short at last; which at first--
+when you originally spoke to me--I didn't.  Nor when Chad originally
+spoke to me either."
+
+"Oh," said little Bilham, "I don't think that at that time you
+believed me."
+
+"Yes--I did; and I believed Chad too.  It would have been odious and
+unmannerly--as well as quite perverse--if I hadn't.  What interest
+have you in deceiving me?"
+
+The young man cast about.  "What interest have I?"
+
+"Yes.  Chad MIGHT have.  But you?"
+
+"Ah, ah, ah!" little Bilham exclaimed.
+
+It might, on repetition, as a mystification, have irritated our
+friend a little, but he knew, once more, as we have seen, where he
+was, and his being proof against everything was only another
+attestation that he meant to stay there.  "I couldn't, without my
+own impression, realise.  She's a tremendously clever brilliant
+capable woman, and with an extraordinary charm on top of it all--
+the charm we surely all of us this evening know what to think of.
+It isn't every clever brilliant capable woman that has it.  In fact
+it's rare with any woman.  So there you are," Strether proceeded as
+if not for little Bilham's benefit alone.  "I understand what a
+relation with such a woman--what such a high fine friendship--
+may be.  It can't be vulgar or coarse, anyway--and that's the point."
+
+"Yes, that's the point," said little Bilham.  "It can't be vulgar or
+coarse.  And, bless us and save us, it ISn't!  It's, upon my word,
+the very finest thing I ever saw in my life, and the most
+distinguished."
+
+Strether, from beside him and leaning back with him as he leaned,
+dropped on him a momentary look which filled a short interval and
+of which he took no notice.  He only gazed before him with intent
+participation.  "Of course what it has done for him," Strether at
+all events presently pursued, "of course what it has done for him--
+that is as to HOW it has so wonderfully worked--isn't a thing I
+pretend to understand.  I've to take it as I find it.  There he is."
+
+"There he is!" little Bilham echoed.  "And it's really and truly
+she.  I don't understand either, even with my longer and closer
+opportunity.  But I'm like you," he added; "I can admire and rejoice
+even when I'm a little in the dark.  You see I've watched it for
+some three years, and especially for this last.  He wasn't so bad
+before it as I seem to have made out that you think--"
+
+"Oh I don't think anything now!" Strether impatiently broke in:
+"that is but what I DO think! I mean that originally, for her to
+have cared for him--"
+
+"There must have been stuff in him?  Oh yes, there was stuff indeed,
+and much more of it than ever showed, I dare say, at home.  Still,
+you know," the young man in all fairness developed, "there was room
+for her, and that's where she came in.  She saw her chance and took
+it.  That's what strikes me as having been so fine.  But of course,"
+he wound up, "he liked her first."
+
+"Naturally," said Strether.
+
+"I mean that they first met somehow and somewhere--I believe in
+some American house--and she, without in the least then intending
+it, made her impression.  Then with time and opportunity he made
+his; and after THAT she was as bad as he."
+
+Strether vaguely took it up.  "As 'bad'?"
+
+"She began, that is, to care--to care very much.  Alone, and in her
+horrid position, she found it, when once she had started, an
+interest.  It was, it is, an interest, and it did--it continues to
+do--a lot for herself as well.  So she still cares.  She cares in
+fact," said little Bilham thoughtfully "more."
+
+Strether's theory that it was none of his business was somehow not
+damaged by the way he took this.  "More, you mean, than he?"  On
+which his companion looked round at him, and now for an instant
+their eyes met.  "More than he?" he repeated.
+
+Little Bilham, for as long, hung fire.  "Will you never tell any
+one?"
+
+Strether thought.  "Whom should I tell?"
+
+"Why I supposed you reported regularly--"
+
+"To people at home?"--Strether took him up.  "Well, I won't tell
+them this."
+
+The young man at last looked away.  "Then she does now care more
+than he."
+
+"Oh!" Strether oddly exclaimed.
+
+But his companion immediately met it.  "Haven't you after all had
+your impression of it?  That's how you've got hold of him."
+
+"Ah but I haven't got hold of him!"
+
+"Oh I say!"  But it was all little Bilham said.
+
+"It's at any rate none of my business.  I mean," Strether explained,
+"nothing else than getting hold of him is."  It appeared, however,
+to strike him as his business to add:  "The fact remains
+nevertheless that she has saved him."
+
+Little Bilham just waited.  "I thought that was what you were to do."
+
+But Strether had his answer ready.  "I'm speaking--in connexion with
+her--of his manners and morals, his character and life.  I'm
+speaking of him as a person to deal with and talk with and live
+with--speaking of him as a social animal."
+
+"And isn't it as a social animal that you also want him?"
+
+"Certainly; so that it's as if she had saved him FOR us."
+
+"It strikes you accordingly then," the young man threw out, "as for
+you all to save HER?"
+
+"Oh for us 'all'--!" Strether could but laugh at that.  It brought
+him back, however, to the point he had really wished to make.
+"They've accepted their situation--hard as it is.  They're not free
+--at least she's not; but they take what's left to them.  It's a
+friendship, of a beautiful sort; and that's what makes them so
+strong.  They're straight, they feel; and they keep each other up.
+It's doubtless she, however, who, as you yourself have hinted,
+feels it most."
+
+Little Bilham appeared to wonder what he had hinted.  "Feels most
+that they're straight?"
+
+"Well, feels that SHE is, and the strength that comes from it.  She
+keeps HIM up--she keeps the whole thing up.  When people are able to
+it's fine.  She's wonderful, wonderful, as Miss Barrace says; and he
+is, in his way, too; however, as a mere man, he may sometimes rebel
+and not feel that he finds his account in it.  She has simply given
+him an immense moral lift, and what that can explain is prodigious.
+That's why I speak of it as a situation.  It IS one, if there ever
+was."  And Strether, with his head back and his eyes on the ceiling,
+seemed to lose himself in the vision of it.
+
+His companion attended deeply.  "You state it much better than I
+could."
+"Oh you see it doesn't concern you."
+
+Little Bilham considered.  "I thought you said just now that it
+doesn't concern you either."
+
+"Well, it doesn't a bit as Madame de Vionnet's affair.  But as we
+were again saying just now, what did I come out for but to save
+him?"
+
+"Yes--to remove him."
+
+"To save him by removal; to win him over to HIMSELF thinking it
+best he shall take up business--thinking he must immediately do
+therefore what's necessary to that end."
+
+"Well," said little Bilham after a moment, "you HAVE won him over.
+He does think it best.  He has within a day or two again said to me
+as much."
+
+"And that," Strether asked, "is why you consider that he cares less
+than she?"
+
+"Cares less for her than she for him?  Yes, that's one of the reasons.
+But other things too have given me the impression.  A man, don't
+you think?" little Bilham presently pursued, "CAN'T, in such
+conditions, care so much as a woman.  It takes different conditions
+to make him, and then perhaps he cares more.  Chad," he wound up,
+"has his possible future before him."
+
+"Are you speaking of his business future?"
+
+"No--on the contrary; of the other, the future of what you so
+justly call their situation.  M. de Vionnet may live for ever."
+
+"So that they can't marry?"
+
+The young man waited a moment.  "Not being able to marry is all
+they've with any confidence to look forward to.  A woman--a
+particular woman--may stand that strain.  But can a man?" he
+propounded.
+
+Strether's answer was as prompt as if he had already, for himself,
+worked it out.  "Not without a very high ideal of conduct.  But
+that's just what we're attributing to Chad.  And how, for that
+matter," he mused, "does his going to America diminish the
+particular strain?  Wouldn't it seem rather to add to it?"
+
+"Out of sight out of mind!" his companion laughed.  Then more
+bravely: "Wouldn't distance lessen the torment?"  But before
+Strether could reply, "The thing is, you see, Chad ought to marry!"
+he wound up.
+
+Strether, for a little, appeared to think of it.  "If you talk of
+torments you don't diminish mine!" he then broke out.  The next
+moment he was on his feet with a question.  "He ought to marry
+whom?"
+
+Little Bilham rose more slowly.  "Well, some one he CAN--some
+thoroughly nice girl "
+
+Strether's eyes, as they stood together, turned again to Jeanne.
+"Do you mean HER?"
+
+His friend made a sudden strange face.  "After being in love with
+her mother?  No."
+
+"But isn't it exactly your idea that he ISn't in love with her
+mother?"
+
+His friend once more had a pause.  "Well, he isn't at any rate in
+love with Jeanne."
+
+"I dare say not."
+
+"How CAN he be with any other woman?"
+
+"Oh that I admit.  But being in love isn't, you know, here"--little
+Bilham spoke in friendly reminder--"thought necessary, in strictness,
+for marriage."
+
+"And what torment--to call a torment--can there ever possibly be
+with a woman like that?"  As if from the interest of his own
+question Strether had gone on without hearing.  "Is it for her to
+have turned a man out so wonderfully, too, only for somebody else?"
+He appeared to make a point of this, and little Bilham looked at
+him now.  "When it's for each other that people give things up they
+don't miss them."  Then he threw off as with an extravagance of
+which he was conscious: "Let them face the future together!"
+
+Little Bilham looked at him indeed.  "You mean that after all he
+shouldn't go back?"
+
+"I mean that if he gives her up--!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself."  But Strether spoke with
+a sound that might have passed for a laugh.
+
+
+
+
+
+Volume II
+
+Book Seventh
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+It wasn't the first time Strether had sat alone in the great dim
+church--still less was it the first of his giving himself up, so
+far as conditions permitted, to its beneficent action on his
+nerves.  He had been to Notre Dame with Waymarsh, he had been there
+with Miss Gostrey, he had been there with Chad Newsome, and had
+found the place, even in company, such a refuge from the obsession
+of his problem that, with renewed pressure from that source, he had
+not unnaturally recurred to a remedy meeting the case, for the
+moment, so indirectly, no doubt, but so relievingly.  He was
+conscious enough that it was only for the moment, but good moments--
+if he could call them good--still had their value for a man who by
+this time struck himself as living almost disgracefully from hand
+to mouth.  Having so well learnt the way, he had lately made the
+pilgrimage more than once by himself--had quite stolen off, taking
+an unnoticed chance and making no point of speaking of the
+adventure when restored to his friends.
+
+His great friend, for that matter, was still absent, as well as
+remarkably silent; even at the end of three weeks Miss Gostrey
+hadn't come back.  She wrote to him from Mentone, admitting that he
+must judge her grossly inconsequent--perhaps in fact for the time
+odiously faithless; but asking for patience, for a deferred
+sentence, throwing herself in short on his generosity.  For her too,
+she could assure him, life was complicated--more complicated than
+he could have guessed; she had moreover made certain of him--
+certain of not wholly missing him on her return--before her
+disappearance.  If furthermore she didn't burden him with letters it
+was frankly because of her sense of the other great commerce he had
+to carry on.  He himself, at the end of a fortnight, had written
+twice, to show how his generosity could be trusted; but he reminded
+himself in each case of Mrs. Newsome's epistolary manner at the
+times when Mrs. Newsome kept off delicate ground.  He sank his
+problem, he talked of Waymarsh and Miss Barrace, of little Bilham
+and the set over the river, with whom he had again had tea, and he
+was easy, for convenience, about Chad and Madame de Vionnet and
+Jeanne.  He admitted that he continued to see them, he was decidedly
+so confirmed a haunter of Chad's premises and that young man's
+practical intimacy with them was so undeniably great; but he had
+his reason for not attempting to render for Miss Gostrey's benefit
+the impression of these last days.  That would be to tell her too
+much about himself--it being at present just from himself he was
+trying to escape.
+
+This small struggle sprang not a little, in its way, from the same
+impulse that had now carried him across to Notre Dame; the impulse
+to let things be, to give them time to justify themselves or at
+least to pass.  He was aware of having no errand in such a place but
+the desire not to be, for the hour, in certain other places; a
+sense of safety, of simplification, which each time he yielded to
+it he amused himself by thinking of as a private concession to
+cowardice.  The great church had no altar for his worship, no direct
+voice for his soul; but it was none the less soothing even to
+sanctity; for he could feel while there what he couldn't elsewhere,
+that he was a plain tired man taking the holiday he had earned.  He
+was tired, but he wasn't plain--that was the pity and the trouble
+of it; he was able, however, to drop his problem at the door very
+much as if it had been the copper piece that he deposited, on the
+threshold, in the receptacle of the inveterate blind beggar.  He
+trod the long dim nave, sat in the splendid choir, paused before
+the cluttered chapels of the east end, and the mighty monument laid
+upon him its spell.  He might have been a student under the charm of
+a museum--which was exactly what, in a foreign town, in the
+afternoon of life, he would have liked to be free to be.  This form
+of sacrifice did at any rate for the occasion as well as another;
+it made him quite sufficiently understand how, within the precinct,
+for the real refugee, the things of the world could fall into
+abeyance.  That was the cowardice, probably--to dodge them, to beg
+the question, not to deal with it in the hard outer light; but his
+own oblivions were too brief, too vain, to hurt any one but
+himself, and he had a vague and fanciful kindness for certain
+persons whom he met, figures of mystery and anxiety, and whom, with
+observation for his pastime, he ranked as those who were fleeing
+from justice.  Justice was outside, in the hard light, and injustice
+too; but one was as absent as the other from the air of the long
+aisles and the brightness of the many altars.
+
+Thus it was at all events that, one morning some dozen days after
+the dinner in the Boulevard Malesherbes at which Madame de Vionnet
+had been present with her daughter, he was called upon to play his
+part in an encounter that deeply stirred his imagination.  He had
+the habit, in these contemplations, of watching a fellow visitant,
+here and there, from a respectable distance, remarking some note of
+behaviour, of penitence, of prostration, of the absolved, relieved
+state; this was the manner in which his vague tenderness took its
+course, the degree of demonstration to which it naturally had to
+confine itself.  It hadn't indeed so felt its responsibility as when
+on this occasion he suddenly measured the suggestive effect of a
+lady whose supreme stillness, in the shade of one of the chapels,
+he had two or three times noticed as he made, and made once more,
+his slow circuit.  She wasn't prostrate--not in any degree bowed,
+but she was strangely fixed, and her prolonged immobility showed
+her, while he passed and paused, as wholly given up to the need,
+whatever it was, that had brought her there.  She only sat and gazed
+before her, as he himself often sat; but she had placed herself, as
+he never did, within the focus of the shrine, and she had lost
+herself, he could easily see, as he would only have liked to do.
+She was not a wandering alien, keeping back more than she gave, but
+one of the familiar, the intimate, the fortunate, for whom these
+dealings had a method and a meaning.  She reminded our friend--since
+it was the way of nine tenths of his current impressions to act as
+recalls of things imagined--of some fine firm concentrated heroine
+of an old story, something he had heard, read, something that, had
+he had a hand for drama, he might himself have written, renewing
+her courage, renewing her clearness, in splendidly-protected
+meditation.  Her back, as she sat, was turned to him, but his
+impression absolutely required that she should be young and
+interesting, and she carried her head moreover, even in the sacred
+shade, with a discernible faith in herself, a kind of implied
+conviction of consistency, security, impunity.  But what had such a
+woman come for if she hadn't come to pray?  Strether's reading of
+such matters was, it must be owned, confused; but he wondered if
+her attitude were some congruous fruit of absolution, of
+"indulgence."  He knew but dimly what indulgence, in such a place,
+might mean; yet he had, as with a soft sweep, a vision of how it
+might indeed add to the zest of active rites.  All this was a good
+deal to have been denoted by a mere lurking figure who was nothing
+to him; but, the last thing before leaving the church, he had the
+surprise of a still deeper quickening.
+
+He had dropped upon a seat halfway down the nave and, again in the
+museum mood, was trying with head thrown back and eyes aloft,
+to reconstitute a past, to reduce it in fact to the convenient terms
+of Victor Hugo, whom, a few days before, giving the rein for once
+in a way to the joy of life, he had purchased in seventy bound volumes,
+a miracle of cheapness, parted with, he was assured by the shopman,
+at the price of the red-and-gold alone.  He looked, doubtless, while he
+played his eternal nippers over Gothic glooms, sufficiently rapt in
+reverence; but what his thought had finally bumped against was the
+question of where, among packed accumulations, so multiform a wedge
+would be able to enter.  Were seventy volumes in red-and-gold to be
+perhaps what he should most substantially have to show at Woollett
+as the fruit of his mission?  It was a possibility that held him a
+minute--held him till he happened to feel that some one, unnoticed,
+had approached him and paused.  Turning, he saw that a lady stood
+there as for a greeting, and he sprang up as he next took her,
+securely, for Madame de Vionnet, who appeared to have recognised
+him as she passed near him on her way to the door.  She checked,
+quickly and gaily, a certain confusion in him, came to meet it,
+turned it back, by an art of her own; the confusion having
+threatened him as he knew her for the person he had lately been
+observing.  She was the lurking figure of the dim chapel; she had
+occupied him more than she guessed; but it came to him in time,
+luckily, that he needn't tell her and that no harm, after all, had
+been done.  She herself, for that matter, straightway showing she
+felt their encounter as the happiest of accidents, had for him a
+"You come here too?" that despoiled surprise of every awkwardness.
+
+"I come often," she said.  "I love this place, but I'm terrible, in
+general, for churches.  The old women who live in them all know me;
+in fact I'm already myself one of the old women.  It's like that, at
+all events, that I foresee I shall end."  Looking about for a chair,
+so that he instantly pulled one nearer, she sat down with him again
+to the sound of an "Oh, I like so much your also being fond--!"
+
+He confessed the extent of his feeling, though she left the object
+vague; and he was struck with the tact, the taste of her vagueness,
+which simply took for granted in him a sense of beautiful things.
+He was conscious of how much it was affected, this sense, by
+something subdued and discreet in the way she had arranged herself
+for her special object and her morning walk--he believed her to
+have come on foot; the way her slightly thicker veil was drawn--a
+mere touch, but everything; the composed gravity of her dress, in
+which, here and there, a dull wine-colour seemed to gleam faintly
+through black; the charming discretion of her small compact head;
+the quiet note, as she sat, of her folded, grey-gloved hands.  It
+was, to Strether's mind, as if she sat on her own ground, the light
+honours of which, at an open gate, she thus easily did him, while
+all the vastness and mystery of the domain stretched off behind.
+When people were so completely in possession they could be
+extraordinarily civil; and our friend had indeed at this hour a
+kind of revelation of her heritage.  She was romantic for him far
+beyond what she could have guessed, and again he found his small
+comfort in the conviction that, subtle though she was, his
+impression must remain a secret from her.  The thing that, once
+more, made him uneasy for secrets in general was this particular
+patience she could have with his own want of colour; albeit that on
+the other hand his uneasiness pretty well dropped after he had been
+for ten minutes as colourless as possible and at the same time as
+responsive.
+
+The moments had already, for that matter, drawn their deepest tinge
+from the special interest excited in him by his vision of his
+companion's identity with the person whose attitude before the
+glimmering altar had so impressed him.  This attitude fitted
+admirably into the stand he had privately taken about her connexion
+with Chad on the last occasion of his seeing them together.  It
+helped him to stick fast at the point he had then reached; it was
+there he had resolved that he WOULD stick, and at no moment since
+had it seemed as easy to do so.  Unassailably innocent was a
+relation that could make one of the parties to it so carry herself.
+If it wasn't innocent why did she haunt the churches?--into which,
+given the woman he could believe he made out, she would never have
+come to flaunt an insolence of guilt.  She haunted them for
+continued help, for strength, for peace--sublime support which, if
+one were able to look at it so, she found from day to day.  They
+talked, in low easy tones and with lifted lingering looks, about
+the great monument and its history and its beauty--all of which,
+Madame de Vionnet professed, came to her most in the other, the
+outer view.  "We'll presently, after we go," she said, "walk round
+it again if you like.  I'm not in a particular hurry, and it will be
+pleasant to look at it well with you."  He had spoken of the great
+romancer and the great romance, and of what, to his imagination,
+they had done for the whole, mentioning to her moreover the
+exorbitance of his purchase, the seventy blazing volumes that were
+so out of proportion.
+
+"Out of proportion to what?"
+
+"Well, to any other plunge."  Yet he felt even as he spoke how at
+that instant he was plunging.  He had made up his mind and was
+impatient to get into the air; for his purpose was a purpose to be
+uttered outside, and he had a fear that it might with delay still
+slip away from him.  She however took her time; she drew out their
+quiet gossip as if she had wished to profit by their meeting, and
+this confirmed precisely an interpretation of her manner, of her
+mystery.  While she rose, as he would have called it, to the
+question of Victor Hugo, her voice itself, the light low quaver of
+her deference to the solemnity about them, seemed to make her words
+mean something that they didn't mean openly.  Help, strength, peace,
+a sublime support--she hadn't found so much of these things as that
+the amount wouldn't be sensibly greater for any scrap his
+appearance of faith in her might enable her to feel in her hand.
+Every little, in a long strain, helped, and if he happened to
+affect her as a firm object she could hold on by, he wouldn't jerk
+himself out of her reach.  People in difficulties held on by what
+was nearest, and he was perhaps after all not further off than
+sources of comfort more abstract.  It was as to this he had made up
+his mind; he had made it up, that is, to give her a sign.  The sign
+would be that--though it was her own affair--he understood; the
+sign would be that--though it was her own affair--she was free to
+clutch.  Since she took him for a firm object--much as he might to
+his own sense appear at times to rock--he would do his best to BE one.
+
+The end of it was that half an hour later they were seated together
+for an early luncheon at a wonderful, a delightful house of
+entertainment on the left bank--a place of pilgrimage for the
+knowing, they were both aware, the knowing who came, for its great
+renown, the homage of restless days, from the other end of the
+town.  Strether had already been there three times--first with Miss
+Gostrey, then with Chad, then with Chad again and with Waymarsh and
+little Bilham, all of whom he had himself sagaciously entertained;
+and his pleasure was deep now on learning that Madame de Vionnet
+hadn't yet been initiated.  When he had said as they strolled round
+the church, by the river, acting at last on what, within, he had
+made up his mind to, "Will you, if you have time, come to dejeuner
+with me somewhere?  For instance, if you know it, over there on the
+other side, which is so easy a walk"--and then had named the
+place; when he had done this she stopped short as for quick
+intensity, and yet deep difficulty, of response.  She took in the
+proposal as if it were almost too charming to be true; and there
+had perhaps never yet been for her companion so unexpected a moment
+of pride--so fine, so odd a case, at any rate, as his finding
+himself thus able to offer to a person in such universal possession
+a new, a rare amusement.  She had heard of the happy spot, but she
+asked him in reply to a further question how in the world he could
+suppose her to have been there.  He supposed himself to have
+supposed that Chad might have taken her, and she guessed this the
+next moment to his no small discomfort.
+
+"Ah, let me explain," she smiled, "that I don't go about with him
+in public; I never have such chances--not having them otherwise--
+and it's just the sort of thing that, as a quiet creature living in
+my hole, I adore."  It was more than kind of him to have thought of
+it--though, frankly, if he asked whether she had time she hadn't a
+single minute.  That however made no difference--she'd throw
+everything over.  Every duty at home, domestic, maternal, social,
+awaited her; but it was a case for a high line.  Her affairs would
+go to smash, but hadn't one a right to one's snatch of scandal when
+one was prepared to pay?  It was on this pleasant basis of costly
+disorder, consequently, that they eventually seated themselves, on
+either side of a small table, at a window adjusted to the busy quay
+and the shining barge-burdened Seine; where, for an hour, in the
+matter of letting himself go, of diving deep, Strether was to feel
+he had touched bottom.  He was to feel many things on this occasion,
+and one of the first of them was that he had travelled far since
+that evening in London, before the theatre, when his dinner with
+Maria Gostrey, between the pink-shaded candles, had struck him as
+requiring so many explanations.  He had at that time gathered them
+in, the explanations--he had stored them up; but it was at present
+as if he had either soared above or sunk below them--he couldn't
+tell which; he could somehow think of none that didn't seem to
+leave the appearance of collapse and cynicism easier for him than
+lucidity.  How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one,
+that he, for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the
+bright clean ordered water-side life came in at the open window?--
+the mere way Madame de Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely
+white table-linen, their omelette aux tomates, their bottle of
+straw-coloured Chablis, thanked him for everything almost with the
+smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and out of their
+talk, back to the quarter of the warm spring air, in which early
+summer had already begun to throb, and then back again to his face
+and their human questions.
+
+Their human questions became many before they had done--many more,
+as one after the other came up, than our friend's free fancy had at
+all foreseen.  The sense he had had before, the sense he had had
+repeatedly, the sense that the situation was running away with him,
+had never been so sharp as now; and all the more that he could
+perfectly put his finger on the moment it had taken the bit in its
+teeth.  That accident had definitely occurred, the other evening,
+after Chad's dinner; it had occurred, as he fully knew, at the
+moment when he interposed between this lady and her child, when he
+suffered himself so to discuss with her a matter closely concerning
+them that her own subtlety, marked by its significant "Thank you!"
+instantly sealed the occasion in her favour.  Again he had held off
+for ten days, but the situation had continued out of hand in spite
+of that; the fact that it was running so fast being indeed just WHY
+he had held off.  What had come over him as he recognised her in the
+nave of the church was that holding off could be but a losing game
+from the instant she was worked for not only by her subtlety, but
+by the hand of fate itself.  If all the accidents were to fight on
+her side--and by the actual showing they loomed large--he could
+only give himself up.  This was what he had done in privately
+deciding then and there to propose she should breakfast with him.
+What did the success of his proposal in fact resemble but the smash
+in which a regular runaway properly ends?  The smash was their walk,
+their dejeuner, their omelette, the Chablis, the place, the view,
+their present talk and his present pleasure in it--to say nothing,
+wonder of wonders, of her own.  To this tune and nothing less,
+accordingly, was his surrender made good.  It sufficiently lighted
+up at least the folly of holding off.  Ancient proverbs sounded, for
+his memory, in the tone of their words and the clink of their
+glasses, in the hum of the town and the plash of the river.  It WAS
+clearly better to suffer as a sheep than as a lamb.  One might as
+well perish by the sword as by famine.
+
+"Maria's still away?"--that was the first thing she had asked him;
+and when he had found the frankness to be cheerful about it in
+spite of the meaning he knew her to attach to Miss Gostrey's
+absence, she had gone on to enquire if he didn't tremendously miss
+her.  There were reasons that made him by no means sure, yet he
+nevertheless answered "Tremendously"; which she took in as if it
+were all she had wished to prove.  Then, "A man in trouble MUST be
+possessed somehow of a woman," she said; "if she doesn't come in
+one way she comes in another."
+
+"Why do you call me a man in trouble?"
+
+"Ah because that's the way you strike me."  She spoke ever so gently
+and as if with all fear of wounding him while she sat partaking of
+his bounty.  "AREn't you in trouble?"
+
+He felt himself colour at the question, and then hated that--hated
+to pass for anything so idiotic as woundable.  Woundable by Chad's
+lady, in respect to whom he had come out with such a fund of
+indifference--was he already at that point?  Perversely, none the
+less, his pause gave a strange air of truth to her supposition; and
+what was he in fact but disconcerted at having struck her just in
+the way he had most dreamed of not doing?  "I'm not in trouble yet,"
+he at last smiled.  "I'm not in trouble now."
+
+"Well, I'm always so.  But that you sufficiently know."  She was a
+woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows
+on the table.  It was a posture unknown to Mrs. Newsome, but it was
+easy for a femme du monde.  "Yes--I am 'now'!"
+
+"There was a question you put to me," he presently returned, "the
+night of Chad's dinner.  I didn't answer it then, and it has been
+very handsome of you not to have sought an occasion for pressing me
+about it since."
+
+She was instantly all there.  "Of course I know what you allude to.
+I asked you what you had meant by saying, the day you came to see
+me, just before you left me, that you'd save me.  And you then said
+--at our friend's--that you'd have really to wait to see, for
+yourself, what you did mean."
+
+"Yes, I asked for time," said Strether.  "And it sounds now, as you
+put it, like a very ridiculous speech."
+
+"Oh!" she murmured--she was full of attenuation.  But she had
+another thought.  "If it does sound ridiculous why do you deny that
+you're in trouble?"
+
+"Ah if I were," he replied, "it wouldn't be the trouble of fearing
+ridicule.  I don't fear it."
+
+"What then do you?"
+
+"Nothing--now."  And he leaned back in his chair.
+
+"I like your 'now'!" she laughed across at him.
+
+"Well, it's precisely that it fully comes to me at present that
+I've kept you long enough.  I know by this time, at any rate, what I
+meant by my speech; and I really knew it the night of Chad's
+dinner."
+
+"Then why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"Because it was difficult at the moment.  I had already at that
+moment done something for you, in the sense of what I had said the
+day I went to see you; but I wasn't then sure of the importance I
+might represent this as having."
+
+She was all eagerness.  "And you're sure now?"
+
+"Yes; I see that, practically, I've done for you--had done for you
+when you put me your question--all that it's as yet possible to me
+to do.  I feel now," he went on, "that it may go further than I
+thought.  What I did after my visit to you," he explained, "was to
+write straight off to Mrs. Newsome about you, and I'm at last, from
+one day to the other, expecting her answer.  It's this answer that
+will represent, as I believe, the consequences."
+
+Patient and beautiful was her interest.  "I see--the consequences of
+your speaking for me."  And she waited as if not to hustle him.
+
+He acknowledged it by immediately going on.  "The question, you
+understand, was HOW I should save you.  Well, I'm trying it by thus
+letting her know that I consider you worth saving."
+
+"I see--I see."  Her eagerness broke through.
+
+"How can I thank you enough?"  He couldn't tell her that, however,
+and she quickly pursued.  "You do really, for yourself, consider
+it?"
+
+His only answer at first was to help her to the dish that had been
+freshly put before them.  "I've written to her again since then--
+I've left her in no doubt of what I think.  I've told her all about
+you."
+
+"Thanks--not so much.  'All about' me," she went on--"yes."
+
+"All it seems to me you've done for him."
+
+"Ah and you might have added all it seems to ME!"  She laughed
+again, while she took up her knife and fork, as in the cheer of
+these assurances.  "But you're not sure how she'll take it."
+
+"No, I'll not pretend I'm sure."
+
+"Voila."  And she waited a moment.  "I wish you'd tell me about her."
+
+"Oh," said Strether with a slightly strained smile, "all that
+need concern you about her is that she's really a grand person."
+
+Madame de Vionnet seemed to demur.  "Is that all that need concern
+me about her?"
+
+But Strether neglected the question.  "Hasn't Chad talked to you?"
+
+"Of his mother?  Yes, a great deal--immensely.  But not from your
+point of view."
+
+"He can't," our friend returned, "have said any ill of her."
+
+"Not the least bit.  He has given me, like you, the assurance that
+she's really grand.  But her being really grand is somehow just what
+hasn't seemed to simplify our case.  Nothing," she continued, "is
+further from me than to wish to say a word against her; but of
+course I feel how little she can like being told of her owing me
+anything.  No woman ever enjoys such an obligation to another
+woman."
+
+This was a proposition Strether couldn't contradict.  "And yet what
+other way could I have expressed to her what I felt?  It's what
+there was most to say about you."
+
+"Do you mean then that she WILL be good to me?"
+
+"It's what I'm waiting to see.  But I've little doubt she would," he
+added, "if she could comfortably see you."
+
+It seemed to strike her as a happy, a beneficent thought.  "Oh then
+couldn't that be managed?  Wouldn't she come out?  Wouldn't she if
+you so put it to her?  DID you by any possibility?" she faintly
+quavered.
+
+"Oh no"--he was prompt.  "Not that.  It would be, much more, to give
+an account of you that--since there's no question of YOUR paying
+the visit--I should go home first."
+
+It instantly made her graver.  "And are you thinking of that?"
+
+"Oh all the while, naturally."
+
+"Stay with us--stay with us!" she exclaimed on this.  "That's your
+only way to make sure."
+
+"To make sure of what?"
+
+"Why that he doesn't break up.  You didn't come out to do that to
+him."
+
+"Doesn't it depend," Strether returned after a moment, "on what you
+mean by breaking up?"
+
+"Oh you know well enough what I mean!"
+
+His silence seemed again for a little to denote an understanding.
+"You take for granted remarkable things."
+
+"Yes, I do--to the extent that I don't take for granted vulgar
+ones.  You're perfectly capable of seeing that what you came out for
+wasn't really at all to do what you'd now have to do."
+
+"Ah it's perfectly simple," Strether good-humouredly pleaded.  "I've
+had but one thing to do--to put our case before him.  To put it as
+it could only be put here on the spot--by personal pressure.  My
+dear lady," he lucidly pursued, "my work, you see, is really done,
+and my reasons for staying on even another day are none of the
+best.  Chad's in possession of our case and professes to do it full
+justice.  What remains is with himself.  I've had my rest, my
+amusement and refreshment; I've had, as we say at Woollett, a
+lovely time.  Nothing in it has been more lovely than this happy
+meeting with you--in these fantastic conditions to which you've so
+delightfully consented.  I've a sense of success.  It's what I
+wanted.  My getting all this good is what Chad has waited for, and I
+gather that if I'm ready to go he's the same."
+
+She shook her head with a finer deeper wisdom.  "You're not ready.
+If you're ready why did you write to Mrs. Newsome in the sense
+you've mentioned to me?"
+
+Strether considered.  "I shan't go before I hear from her.  You're
+too much afraid of her," he added.
+
+It produced between them a long look from which neither shrank.  "I
+don't think you believe that--believe I've not really reason to
+fear her."
+
+"She's capable of great generosity," Strether presently stated.
+
+"Well then let her trust me a little.  That's all I ask.  Let her
+recognise in spite of everything what I've done."
+
+"Ah remember," our friend replied, "that she can't effectually
+recognise it without seeing it for herself.  Let Chad go over and
+show her what you've done, and let him plead with her there for it
+and, as it were, for YOU."
+
+She measured the depth of this suggestion.  "Do you give me your
+word of honour that if she once has him there she won't do her best
+to marry him?"
+
+It made her companion, this enquiry, look again a while out at the
+view; after which he spoke without sharpness.  "When she sees for
+herself what he is--"
+
+But she had already broken in.  "It's when she sees for herself what
+he is that she'll want to marry him most."
+
+Strether's attitude, that of due deference to what she said,
+permitted him to attend for a minute to his luncheon.  "I doubt if
+that will come off.  It won't be easy to make it."
+
+"It will be easy if he remains there--and he'll remain for the
+money.  The money appears to be, as a probability, so hideously
+much."
+
+"Well," Strether presently concluded, "nothing COULD really hurt
+you but his marrying."
+
+She gave a strange light laugh.  "Putting aside what may really hurt
+HIM."
+
+But her friend looked at her as if he had thought of that too.
+"The question will come up, of course, of the future that you
+yourself offer him."
+
+She was leaning back now, but she fully faced him.  "Well, let it
+come up!"
+
+"The point is that it's for Chad to make of it what he can.  His
+being proof against marriage will show what he does make."
+
+"If he IS proof, yes"--she accepted the proposition.  "But for
+myself," she added, "the question is what YOU make."
+
+"Ah I make nothing.  It's not my affair."
+
+"I beg your pardon.  It's just there that, since you've taken it up
+and are committed to it, it most intensely becomes yours.  You're
+not saving me, I take it, for your interest in myself, but for your
+interest in our friend.  The one's at any rate wholly dependent on
+the other.  You can't in honour not see me through," she wound up,
+"because you can't in honour not see HIM."
+
+Strange and beautiful to him was her quiet soft acuteness.  The thing
+that most moved him was really that she was so deeply serious.  She had
+none of the portentous forms of it, but he had never come in contact,
+it struck him, with a force brought to so fine a head.  Mrs. Newsome,
+goodness knew, was serious; but it was nothing to this.  He took it
+all in, he saw it all together.  "No," he mused, "I can't in honour
+not see him."
+
+Her face affected him as with an exquisite light.  "You WILL then?"
+
+"I will."
+
+At this she pushed back her chair and was the next moment on her
+feet.  "Thank you!" she said with her hand held out to him across
+the table and with no less a meaning in the words than her lips had
+so particularly given them after Chad's dinner.  The golden nail she
+had then driven in pierced a good inch deeper.  Yet he reflected
+that he himself had only meanwhile done what he had made up his mind to
+on the same occasion.  So far as the essence of the matter went he had
+simply stood fast on the spot on which he had then planted his feet.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+He received three days after this a communication from America, in
+the form of a scrap of blue paper folded and gummed, not reaching
+him through his bankers, but delivered at his hotel by a small boy
+in uniform, who, under instructions from the concierge, approached
+him as he slowly paced the little court.  It was the evening hour,
+but daylight was long now and Paris more than ever penetrating.  The
+scent of flowers was in the streets, he had the whiff of violets
+perpetually in his nose; and he had attached himself to sounds and
+suggestions, vibrations of the air, human and dramatic, he
+imagined, as they were not in other places, that came out for him
+more and more as the mild afternoons deepened--a far-off hum, a
+sharp near click on the asphalt, a voice calling, replying,
+somewhere and as full of tone as an actor's in a play.  He was to
+dine at home, as usual, with Waymarsh--they had settled to that for
+thrift and simplicity; and he now hung about before his friend came
+down.
+
+He read his telegram in the court, standing still a long time where
+he had opened it and giving five minutes afterwards to the renewed
+study of it.  At last, quickly, he crumpled it up as if to get it
+out of the way; in spite of which, however, he kept it there--
+still kept it when, at the end of another turn, he had dropped into
+a chair placed near a small table.  Here, with his scrap of paper
+compressed in his fist and further concealed by his folding his
+arms tight, he sat for some time in thought, gazed before him so
+straight that Waymarsh appeared and approached him without catching
+his eye.  The latter in fact, struck with his appearance, looked at
+him hard for a single instant and then, as if determined to that
+course by some special vividness in it, dropped back into the salon
+de lecture without addressing him.  But the pilgrim from Milrose
+permitted himself still to observe the scene from behind the clear
+glass plate of that retreat.  Strether ended, as he sat, by a fresh
+scrutiny of his compressed missive, which he smoothed out carefully
+again as he placed it on his table.  There it remained for some
+minutes, until, at last looking up, he saw Waymarsh watching him
+from within.  It was on this that their eyes met--met for a moment
+during which neither moved.  But Strether then got up, folding his
+telegram more carefully and putting it into his waistcoat pocket
+
+A few minutes later the friends were seated together at dinner; but
+Strether had meanwhile said nothing about it, and they eventually
+parted, after coffee in the court, with nothing said on either
+side.  Our friend had moreover the consciousness that even less than
+usual was on this occasion said between them, so that it was almost
+as if each had been waiting for something from the other.  Waymarsh
+had always more or less the air of sitting at the door of his tent,
+and silence, after so many weeks, had come to play its part in
+their concert.  This note indeed, to Strether's sense, had lately
+taken a fuller tone, and it was his fancy to-night that they had
+never quite so drawn it out.  Yet it befell, none the less that he
+closed the door to confidence when his companion finally asked him
+if there were anything particular the matter with him.  "Nothing,"
+he replied, "more than usual."
+
+On the morrow, however, at an early hour, he found occasion to give
+an answer more in consonance with the facts.  What was the matter
+had continued to be so all the previous evening, the first hours of
+which, after dinner, in his room, he had devoted to the copious
+composition of a letter.  He had quitted Waymarsh for this purpose,
+leaving him to his own resources with less ceremony than their
+wont, but finally coming down again with his letter unconcluded and
+going forth into the streets without enquiry for his comrade.  He
+had taken a long vague walk, and one o'clock had struck before his
+return and his re-ascent to his room by the aid of the glimmering
+candle-end left for him on the shelf outside the porter's lodge.  He
+had possessed himself, on closing his door, of the numerous loose
+sheets of his unfinished composition, and then, without reading
+them over, had torn them into small pieces.  He had thereupon slept--
+as if it had been in some measure thanks to that sacrifice--the
+sleep of the just, and had prolonged his rest considerably beyond
+his custom.  Thus it was that when, between nine and ten, the tap of
+the knob of a walking-stick sounded on his door, he had not yet
+made himself altogether presentable.  Chad Newsome's bright deep
+voice determined quickly enough none the less the admission of the
+visitor.  The little blue paper of the evening before, plainly an
+object the more precious for its escape from premature destruction,
+now lay on the sill of the open window, smoothed out afresh and
+kept from blowing away by the superincumbent weight of his watch.
+Chad, looking about with careless and competent criticism, as he
+looked wherever he went immediately espied it and permitted himself
+to fix it for a moment rather hard.  After which he turned his eyes
+to his host.  "It has come then at last?"
+
+Strether paused in the act of pinning his necktie.  "Then you know--?
+You've had one too?"
+
+"No, I've had nothing, and I only know what I see.  I see that thing
+and I guess.  Well," he added, "it comes as pat as in a play, for
+I've precisely turned up this morning--as I would have done
+yesterday, but it was impossible--to take you."
+
+"To take me?"  Strether had turned again to his glass.
+
+"Back, at last, as I promised.  I'm ready--I've really been ready
+this month.  I've only been waiting for you--as was perfectly right.
+But you're better now; you're safe--I see that for myself; you've
+got all your good.  You're looking, this morning, as fit as a flea."
+
+Strether, at his glass, finished dressing; consulting that witness
+moreover on this last opinion.  WAS he looking preternaturally fit?
+There was something in it perhaps for Chad's wonderful eye, but he
+had felt himself for hours rather in pieces.  Such a judgement,
+however, was after all but a contribution to his resolve; it
+testified unwittingly to his wisdom.  He was still firmer,
+apparently--since it shone in him as a light--than he had flattered
+himself.  His firmness indeed was slightly compromised, as he faced
+about to his friend, by the way this very personage looked--though
+the case would of course have been worse hadn't the secret of
+personal magnificence been at every hour Chad's unfailing
+possession.  There he was in all the pleasant morning freshness of
+it--strong and sleek and gay, easy and fragrant and fathomless,
+with happy health in his colour, and pleasant silver in his thick
+young hair, and the right word for everything on the lips that his
+clear brownness caused to show as red.  He had never struck Strether
+as personally such a success; it was as if now, for his definite
+surrender, he had gathered himself vividly together.  This, sharply
+and rather strangely, was the form in which he was to be presented
+to Woollett.  Our friend took him in again--he was always taking him
+in and yet finding that parts of him still remained out; though
+even thus his image showed through a mist of other things.  "I've
+had a cable," Strether said, "from your mother."
+
+"I dare say, my dear man.  I hope she's well."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "No--she's not well, I'm sorry to have to tell
+you."
+
+"Ah," said Chad, "I must have had the instinct of it.  All the more
+reason then that we should start straight off."
+
+Strether had now got together hat, gloves and stick, but Chad had
+dropped on the sofa as if to show where he wished to make his
+point.  He kept observing his companion's things; he might have been
+judging how quickly they could be packed.  He might even have wished
+to hint that he'd send his own servant to assist.  "What do you
+mean," Strether enquired, "by 'straight off'?"
+
+"Oh by one of next week's boats.  Everything at this season goes out
+so light that berths will be easy anywhere."
+
+Strether had in his hand his telegram, which he had kept there
+after attaching his watch, and he now offered it to Chad, who,
+however, with an odd movement, declined to take it.  "Thanks, I'd
+rather not.  Your correspondence with Mother's your own affair.  I'm
+only WITH you both on it, whatever it is."  Strether, at this, while
+their eyes met, slowly folded the missive and put it in his pocket;
+after which, before he had spoken again, Chad broke fresh ground.
+"Has Miss Gostrey come back?"
+
+But when Strether presently spoke it wasn't in answer.  "It's not, I
+gather, that your mother's physically ill; her health, on the
+whole, this spring, seems to have been better than usual.  But she's
+worried, she's anxious, and it appears to have risen within the
+last few days to a climax.  We've tired out, between us, her
+patience."
+
+"Oh it isn't YOU!" Chad generously protested.
+
+"I beg your pardon--it IS me."  Strether was mild and melancholy,
+but firm.  He saw it far away and over his companion's head.  "It's
+very particularly me."
+
+"Well then all the more reason.  Marchons, marchons!" said the young
+man gaily.  His host, however, at this, but continued to stand
+agaze; and he had the next thing repeated his question of a moment
+before.  "Has Miss Gostrey come back?"
+
+"Yes, two days ago."
+
+"Then you've seen her?"
+
+"No--I'm to see her to-day."  But Strether wouldn't linger now on
+Miss Gostrey.  "Your mother sends me an ultimatum.  If I can't bring
+you I'm to leave you; I'm to come at any rate myself."
+
+"Ah but you CAN bring me now," Chad, from his sofa, reassuringly
+replied.
+
+Strether had a pause.  "I don't think I understand you.  Why was it
+that, more than a month ago, you put it to me so urgently to let
+Madame de Vionnet speak for you?"
+
+"'Why'?"  Chad considered, but he had it at his fingers' ends.  "Why
+but because I knew how well she'd do it?  It was the way to keep you
+quiet and, to that extent, do you good.  Besides," he happily and
+comfortably explained, "I wanted you really to know her and to get
+the impression of her--and you see the good that HAS done you."
+
+"Well," said Strether, "the way she has spoken for you, all the
+same--so far as I've given her a chance--has only made me feel how
+much she wishes to keep you.  If you make nothing of that I don't
+see why you wanted me to listen to her."
+
+"Why my dear man," Chad exclaimed, "I make everything of it! How
+can you doubt--?"
+
+"I doubt only because you come to me this morning with your signal
+to start."
+
+Chad stared, then gave a laugh.  "And isn't my signal to start just
+what you've been waiting for?"
+
+Strether debated; he took another turn.  "This last month I've been
+awaiting, I think, more than anything else, the message I have
+here."
+
+"You mean you've been afraid of it?"
+
+"Well, I was doing my business in my own way.  And I suppose your
+present announcement," Strether went on, "isn't merely the result
+of your sense of what I've expected.  Otherwise you wouldn't have
+put me in relation--" But he paused, pulling up.
+
+At this Chad rose.  "Ah HER wanting me not to go has nothing to do
+with it! It's only because she's afraid--afraid of the way that,
+over there, I may get caught.  But her fear's groundless."
+
+He had met again his companion's sufficiently searching look.  "Are
+you tired of her?"
+
+Chad gave him in reply to this, with a movement of the head, the
+strangest slow smile he had ever had from him.  "Never."
+
+It had immediately, on Strether's imagination, so deep and soft an
+effect that our friend could only for the moment keep it before
+him.  "Never?"
+
+"Never," Chad obligingly and serenely repeated.
+
+It made his companion take several more steps.  "Then YOU'RE not
+afraid."
+
+"Afraid to go?"
+
+Strether pulled up again.  "Afraid to stay."
+
+The young man looked brightly amazed.  "You want me now to 'stay'?"
+
+"If I don't immediately sail the Pococks will immediately come out.
+That's what I mean," said Strether, "by your mother's ultimatum ."
+
+Chad showed a still livelier, but not an alarmed interest.  "She has
+turned on Sarah and Jim?"
+
+Strether joined him for an instant in the vision.  "Oh and you may
+be sure Mamie.  THAT'S whom she's turning on."
+
+This also Chad saw--he laughed out.  "Mamie--to corrupt me?"
+
+"Ah," said Strether, "she's very charming."
+
+"So you've already more than once told me.  I should like to see
+her."
+
+Something happy and easy, something above all unconscious, in the
+way he said this, brought home again to his companion the facility
+of his attitude and the enviability of his state.  "See her then by
+all means.  And consider too," Strether went on, "that you really
+give your sister a lift in letting her come to you.  You give her a
+couple of months of Paris, which she hasn't seen, if I'm not
+mistaken, since just after she was married, and which I'm sure she
+wants but the pretext to visit."
+
+Chad listened, but with all his own knowledge of the world.  "She
+has had it, the pretext, these several years, yet she has never
+taken it."
+
+"Do you mean YOU?" Strether after an instant enquired.
+
+"Certainly--the lone exile.  And whom do you mean?" said Chad.
+
+"Oh I mean ME.  I'm her pretext.  That is--for it comes to the same
+thing--I'm your mother's."
+
+"Then why," Chad asked, "doesn't Mother come herself?"
+
+His friend gave him a long look.  "Should you like her to?"  And as
+he for the moment said nothing: "It's perfectly open to you to
+cable for her."
+
+Chad continued to think.  "Will she come if I do?"
+
+"Quite possibly.  But try, and you'll see."
+
+"Why don't YOU try?" Chad after a moment asked.
+
+"Because I don't want to."
+
+Chad thought.  "Don't desire her presence here?"
+
+Strether faced the question, and his answer was the more emphatic.
+"Don't put it off, my dear boy, on ME!"
+
+"Well--I see what you mean.  I'm sure you'd behave beautifully but you
+DON'T want to see her.  So I won't play you that trick.'
+
+"Ah," Strether declared, "I shouldn't call it a trick.  You've a
+perfect right, and it would be perfectly straight of you."  Then he
+added in a different tone: "You'd have moreover, in the person of
+Madame de Vionnet, a very interesting relation prepared for her."
+
+Their eyes, on this proposition, continued to meet, but Chad's
+pleasant and bold, never flinched for a moment.  He got up at last
+and he said something with which Strether was struck.  "She wouldn't
+understand her, but that makes no difference.  Madame de Vionnet
+would like to see her.  She'd like to be charming to her.  She
+believes she could work it."
+
+Strether thought a moment, affected by this, but finally turning
+away.  "She couldn't!"
+
+"You're quite sure?" Chad asked.
+
+"Well, risk it if you like!"
+
+Strether, who uttered this with serenity, had urged a plea for their
+now getting into the air; but the young man still waited.  "Have you
+sent your answer?"
+
+"No, I've done nothing yet."
+
+"Were you waiting to see me?"
+
+"No, not that."
+
+"Only waiting"--and Chad, with this, had a smile for him--"to see
+Miss Gostrey?"
+
+"No--not even Miss Gostrey.  I wasn't waiting to see any one.  I had
+only waited, till now, to make up my mind--in complete solitude;
+and, since I of course absolutely owe you the information, was on
+the point of going out with it quite made up.  Have therefore a
+little more patience with me.  Remember," Strether went on, "that
+that's what you originally asked ME to have.  I've had it, you see,
+and you see what has come of it.  Stay on with me."
+
+Chad looked grave.  "How much longer?"
+
+"Well, till I make you a sign.  I can't myself, you know, at the
+best, or at the worst, stay for ever.  Let the Pococks come,"
+Strether repeated.
+
+"Because it gains you time?"
+
+"Yes--it gains me time."
+
+Chad, as if it still puzzled him, waited a minute.  "You don't want
+to get back to Mother?"
+
+"Not just yet.  I'm not ready."
+
+"You feel," Chad asked in a tone of his own, "the charm of life
+over here?"
+
+"Immensely."  Strether faced it.  "You've helped me so to feel it
+that that surely needn't surprise you."
+
+"No, it doesn't surprise me, and I'm delighted.  But what, my dear
+man," Chad went on with conscious queerness, "does it all lead to
+for you?"
+
+The change of position and of relation, for each, was so oddly
+betrayed in the question that Chad laughed out as soon as he had
+uttered it--which made Strether also laugh.  "Well, to my having a
+certitude that has been tested--that has passed through the fire.
+But oh," he couldn't help breaking out, "if within my first month
+here you had been willing to move with me--!"
+
+"Well?" said Chad, while he broke down as for weight of thought.
+
+"Well, we should have been over there by now."
+
+"Ah but you wouldn't have had your fun!"
+
+"I should have had a month of it; and I'm having now, if you want
+to know," Strether continued, "enough to last me for the rest of my
+days."
+
+Chad looked amused and interested, yet still somewhat in the dark;
+partly perhaps because Strether's estimate of fun had required of
+him from the first a good deal of elucidation.  "It wouldn't do if
+I left you--?"
+
+"Left me?"--Strether remained blank.
+
+"Only for a month or two--time to go and come.  Madame de Vionnet,"
+Chad smiled, "would look after you in the interval."
+
+"To go back by yourself, I remaining here?"  Again for an instant
+their eyes had the question out; after which Strether said:
+"Grotesque!"
+
+"But I want to see Mother," Chad presently returned.  "Remember how
+long it is since I've seen Mother."
+
+"Long indeed; and that's exactly why I was originally so keen for
+moving you.  Hadn't you shown us enough how beautifully you could do
+without it?"
+
+"Oh but," said Chad wonderfully, "I'm better now."
+
+There was an easy triumph in it that made his friend laugh out
+again.  "Oh if you were worse I SHOULD know what to do with you.  In
+that case I believe I'd have you gagged and strapped down, carried
+on board resisting, kicking.  How MUCH," Strether asked, "do you
+want to see Mother?"
+
+"How much?"--Chad seemed to find it in fact difficult to say.
+
+"How much."
+
+"Why as much as you've made me.  I'd give anything to see her.  And
+you've left me," Chad went on, "in little enough doubt as to how
+much SHE wants it."
+
+Strether thought a minute.  "Well then if those things are really
+your motive catch the French steamer and sail to-morrow.  Of course,
+when it comes to that, you're absolutely free to do as you choose.
+From the moment you can't hold yourself I can only accept your
+flight."
+
+"I'll fly in a minute then," said Chad, "if you'll stay here."
+
+"I'll stay here till the next steamer--then I'll follow you."
+
+"And do you call that," Chad asked, "accepting my flight?"
+
+"Certainly--it's the only thing to call it.  The only way to keep me
+here, accordingly," Strether explained, "is by staying yourself."
+
+Chad took it in.  "All the more that I've really dished you, eh?"
+
+"Dished me?" Strether echoed as inexpressively as possible.
+
+"Why if she sends out the Pococks it will be that she doesn't trust
+you, and if she doesn't trust you, that bears upon--well, you know
+what."
+
+Strether decided after a moment that he did know what, and in
+consonance with this he spoke.  "You see then all the more what you
+owe me."
+
+"Well, if I do see, how can I pay?"
+
+"By not deserting me.  By standing by me."
+
+"Oh I say--!"  But Chad, as they went downstairs, clapped a firm
+hand, in the manner of a pledge, upon his shoulder.  They descended
+slowly together and had, in the court of the hotel, some further
+talk, of which the upshot was that they presently separated.  Chad
+Newsome departed, and Strether, left alone, looked about, superficially,
+for Waymarsh.  But Waymarsh hadn't yet, it appeared, come down, and
+our friend finally went forth without sight of him.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+At four o'clock that afternoon he had still not seen him, but he
+was then, as to make up for this, engaged in talk about him with
+Miss Gostrey.  Strether had kept away from home all day, given
+himself up to the town and to his thoughts, wandered and mused,
+been at once restless and absorbed--and all with the present climax
+of a rich little welcome in the Quartier Marboeuf.  "Waymarsh has
+been, 'unbeknown' to me, I'm convinced"--for Miss Gostrey had
+enquired--"in communication with Woollett: the consequence of which
+was, last night, the loudest possible call for me."
+
+"Do you mean a letter to bring you home?"
+
+"No--a cable, which I have at this moment in my pocket: a 'Come
+back by the first ship.'"
+
+Strether's hostess, it might have been made out, just escaped
+changing colour.  Reflexion arrived but in time and established a
+provisional serenity.  It was perhaps exactly this that enabled her
+to say with duplicity: "And you're going--?"
+
+"You almost deserve it when you abandon me so."
+
+She shook her head as if this were not worth taking up.  "My absence
+has helped you--as I've only to look at you to see.  It was my
+calculation, and I'm justified.  You're not where you were.  And the
+thing," she smiled, "was for me not to be there either.  You can go
+of yourself."
+
+"Oh but I feel to-day," he comfortably declared, "that I shall want
+you yet."
+
+She took him all in again.  "Well, I promise you not again to leave
+you, but it will only be to follow you.  You've got your momentum
+and can toddle alone."
+
+He intelligently accepted it.  "Yes--I suppose I can toddle.  It's
+the sight of that in fact that has upset Waymarsh.  He can bear it--
+the way I strike him as going--no longer.  That's only the climax
+of his original feeling.  He wants me to quit; and he must have
+written to Woollett that I'm in peril of perdition."
+
+"Ah good!" she murmured.  "But is it only your supposition?"
+
+"I make it out--it explains."
+
+"Then he denies?--or you haven't asked him?"
+
+"I've not had time," Strether said; "I made it out but last night,
+putting various things together, and I've not been since then face
+to face with him."
+
+She wondered.  "Because you're too disgusted?  You can't trust
+yourself?"
+
+He settled his glasses on his nose.  "Do I look in a great rage?"
+
+"You look divine!"
+
+"There's nothing," he went on, "to be angry about.  He has done me
+on the contrary a service."
+
+She made it out.  "By bringing things to a head?"
+
+"How well you understand!" he almost groaned.  "Waymarsh won't in
+the least, at any rate, when I have it out with him, deny or
+extenuate.  He has acted from the deepest conviction, with the best
+conscience and after wakeful nights.  He'll recognise that he's
+fully responsible, and will consider that he has been highly
+successful; so that any discussion we may have will bring us quite
+together again--bridge the dark stream that has kept us so
+thoroughly apart.  We shall have at last, in the consequences of his
+act, something we can definitely talk about."
+
+She was silent a little.  "How wonderfully you take it! But you're
+always wonderful."
+
+He had a pause that matched her own; then he had, with an adequate
+spirit, a complete admission.  "It's quite true.  I'm extremely
+wonderful just now.  I dare say in fact I'm quite fantastic, and I
+shouldn't be at all surprised if I were mad."
+
+"Then tell me!" she earnestly pressed.  As he, however, for the time
+answered nothing, only returning the look with which she watched
+him, she presented herself where it was easier to meet her.  "What
+will Mr. Waymarsh exactly have done?"
+
+"Simply have written a letter.  One will have been quite enough.  He
+has told them I want looking after."
+
+"And DO you?"--she was all interest.
+
+"Immensely.  And I shall get it."
+
+"By which you mean you don't budge?"
+
+"I don't budge."
+
+"You've cabled?"
+
+"No--I've made Chad do it."
+
+"That you decline to come?"
+
+"That HE declines.  We had it out this morning and I brought him
+round.  He had come in, before I was down, to tell me he was ready--
+ready, I mean, to return.  And he went off, after ten minutes with
+me, to say he wouldn't."
+
+Miss Gostrey followed with intensity.  "Then you've STOPPED him?"
+
+Strether settled himself afresh in his chair.  "I've stopped him.
+That is for the time.  That"--he gave it to her more vividly--"is
+where I am."
+
+"I see, I see.  But where's Mr. Newsome?  He was ready," she asked,
+"to go?"
+
+"All ready."
+
+"And sincerely--believing YOU'D be?"
+
+"Perfectly, I think; so that he was amazed to find the hand I had
+laid on him to pull him over suddenly converted into an engine for
+keeping him still."
+
+It was an account of the matter Miss Gostrey could weigh.  "Does he
+think the conversion sudden?"
+
+"Well," said Strether, "I'm not altogether sure what he thinks.  I'm
+not sure of anything that concerns him, except that the more I've
+seen of him the less I've found him what I originally expected.
+He's obscure, and that's why I'm waiting."
+
+She wondered.  "But for what in particular?"
+
+"For the answer to his cable."
+
+"And what was his cable?"
+
+"I don't know," Strether replied; "it was to be, when he left me,
+according to his own taste.  I simply said to him: 'I want to stay,
+and the only way for me to do so is for you to.' That I wanted to
+stay seemed to interest him, and he acted on that."
+
+Miss Gostrey turned it over.  "He wants then himself to stay."
+
+"He half wants it.  That is he half wants to go.  My original appeal
+has to that extent worked in him.  Nevertheless," Strether pursued,
+"he won't go.  Not, at least, so long as I'm here."
+
+"But you can't," his companion suggested, "stay here always.  I wish
+you could."
+
+"By no means.  Still, I want to see him a little further.  He's not
+in the least the case I supposed, he's quite another case.  And it's
+as such that he interests me."  It was almost as if for his own
+intelligence that, deliberate and lucid, our friend thus expressed
+the matter.  "I don't want to give him up."
+
+Miss Gostrey but desired to help his lucidity.  She had however to
+be light and tactful.  "Up, you mean--a--to his mother?"
+
+"Well, I'm not thinking of his mother now.  I'm thinking of the plan
+of which I was the mouthpiece, which, as soon as we met, I put
+before him as persuasively as I knew how, and which was drawn up,
+as it were, in complete ignorance of all that, in this last long
+period, has been happening to him.  It took no account whatever of
+the impression I was here on the spot immediately to begin to
+receive from him--impressions of which I feel sure I'm far from
+having had the last."
+
+Miss Gostrey had a smile of the most genial criticism.  "So your
+idea is--more or less--to stay out of curiosity?"
+
+"Call it what you like! I don't care what it's called--"
+
+"So long as you do stay?  Certainly not then.  I call it, all the
+same, immense fun," Maria Gostrey declared; "and to see you work it
+out will be one of the sensations of my life.  It IS clear you can
+toddle alone!"
+
+He received this tribute without elation.  "I shan't be alone when
+the Pococks have come."
+
+Her eyebrows went up.  "The Pococks are coming?"
+
+"That, I mean, is what will happen--and happen as quickly as
+possible--in consequence of Chad's cable.  They'll simply embark.
+Sarah will come to speak for her mother--with an effect different
+from MY muddle."
+
+Miss Gostrey more gravely wondered.  "SHE then will take him back?"
+
+"Very possibly--and we shall see.  She must at any rate have the
+chance, and she may be trusted to do all she can."
+
+"And do you WANT that?"
+
+"Of course," said Strether, "I want it.  I want to play fair "
+
+But she had lost for a moment the thread.  "If it devolves on the
+Pococks why do you stay?"
+
+"Just to see that I DO play fair--and a little also, no doubt, that
+they do."  Strether was luminous as he had never been.  "I came out
+to find myself in presence of new facts--facts that have kept
+striking me as less and less met by our old reasons.  The matter's
+perfectly simple.  New reasons--reasons as new as the facts
+themselves--are wanted; and of this our friends at Woollett--Chad's
+and mine--were at the earliest moment definitely notified.  If any
+are producible Mrs. Pocock will produce them; she'll bring over the
+whole collection.  They'll be," he added with a pensive smile "a
+part of the 'fun' you speak of."
+
+She was quite in the current now and floating by his side.  "It's
+Mamie--so far as I've had it from you--who'll be their great card."
+And then as his contemplative silence wasn't a denial she
+significantly added: "I think I'm sorry for her."
+
+"I think I am!"--and Strether sprang up, moving about a little as
+her eyes followed him.  "But it can't be helped."
+
+"You mean her coming out can't be?"
+
+He explained after another turn what he meant.  "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.  Yet he was answered still better when she said in a moment:
+"Will Mr. Newsome introduce his sister--?"
+
+"To Madame de Vionnet?"  Strether spoke the name at last.  "I shall
+be greatly surprised if he doesn't."
+
+She seemed to gaze at the possibility.  "You mean you've thought of
+it and you're prepared."
+
+"I've thought of it and I'm prepared."
+
+It was to her visitor now that she applied her consideration.  "Bon!
+You ARE magnificent!"
+
+"Well," he answered after a pause and a little wearily, but still
+standing there before her--"well, that's what, just once in all my
+dull days, I think I shall like to have been!"
+
+Two days later he had news from Chad of a communication from
+Woollett in response to their determinant telegram, this missive
+being addressed to Chad himself and announcing the immediate
+departure for France of Sarah and Jim and Mamie.  Strether had
+meanwhile on his own side cabled; he had but delayed that act till
+after his visit to Miss Gostrey, an interview by which, as so often
+before, he felt his sense of things cleared up and settled.  His
+message to Mrs. Newsome, in answer to her own, had consisted of the
+words: "Judge best to take another month, but with full
+appreciation of all re-enforcements."  He had added that he was
+writing, but he was of course always writing; it was a practice
+that continued, oddly enough, to relieve him, to make him come
+nearer than anything else to the consciousness of doing something:
+so that he often wondered if he hadn't really, under his recent
+stress, acquired some hollow trick, one of the specious arts of
+make-believe.  Wouldn't the pages he still so freely dispatched by
+the American post have been worthy of a showy journalist, some
+master of the great new science of beating the sense out of words?
+Wasn't he writing against time, and mainly to show he was kind?--
+since it had become quite his habit not to like to read himself
+over.  On those lines he could still be liberal, yet it was at best
+a sort of whistling in the dark.  It was unmistakeable moreover that
+the sense of being in the dark now pressed on him more sharply--
+creating thereby the need for a louder and livelier whistle.  He
+whistled long and hard after sending his message; he whistled again
+and again in celebration of Chad's news; there was an interval of a
+fortnight in which this exercise helped him.  He had no great notion
+of what, on the spot, Sarah Pocock would have to say, though he had
+indeed confused premonitions; but it shouldn't be in her power to
+say--it shouldn't be in any one's anywhere to say--that he was
+neglecting her mother.  He might have written before more freely,
+but he had never written more copiously; and he frankly gave for a
+reason at Woollett that he wished to fill the void created there by
+Sarah's departure.
+
+The increase of his darkness, however, and the quickening, as I
+have called it, of his tune, resided in the fact that he was
+hearing almost nothing.  He had for some time been aware that he was
+hearing less than before, and he was now clearly following a
+process by which Mrs. Newsome's letters could but logically stop.
+He hadn't had a line for many days, and he needed no proof--though
+he was, in time, to have plenty--that she wouldn't have put pen to
+paper after receiving the hint that had determined her telegram.
+She wouldn't write till Sarah should have seen him and reported on
+him.  It was strange, though it might well be less so than his own
+behaviour appeared at Woollett.  It was at any rate significant, and
+what WAS remarkable was the way his friend's nature and manner put
+on for him, through this very drop of demonstration, a greater
+intensity.  It struck him really that he had never so lived with her
+as during this period of her silence; the silence was a sacred
+hush, a finer clearer medium, in which her idiosyncrasies showed.
+He walked about with her, sat with her, drove with her and dined
+face-to-face with her--a rare treat "in his life," as he could
+perhaps have scarce escaped phrasing it; and if he had never seen
+her so soundless he had never, on the other hand, felt her so
+highly, so almost austerely, herself: pure and by the vulgar
+estimate "cold," but deep devoted delicate sensitive noble.  Her
+vividness in these respects became for him, in the special
+conditions, almost an obsession; and though the obsession sharpened
+his pulses, adding really to the excitement of life, there were
+hours at which, to be less on the stretch, he directly sought
+forgetfulness.  He knew it for the queerest of adventures--a
+circumstance capable of playing such a part only for Lambert
+Strether--that in Paris itself, of all places, he should find this
+ghost of the lady of Woollett more importunate than any other
+presence.
+
+When he went back to Maria Gostrey it was for the change to
+something else.  And yet after all the change scarcely operated for
+he talked to her of Mrs. Newsome in these days as he had never
+talked before.  He had hitherto observed in that particular a
+discretion and a law; considerations that at present broke down
+quite as if relations had altered.  They hadn't REALLY altered, he
+said to himself, so much as that came to; for if what had occurred
+was of course that Mrs. Newsome had ceased to trust him, there was
+nothing on the other hand to prove that he shouldn't win back her
+confidence.  It was quite his present theory that he would leave no
+stone unturned to do so; and in fact if he now told Maria things
+about her that he had never told before this was largely because it
+kept before him the idea of the honour of such a woman's esteem.
+His relation with Maria as well was, strangely enough, no longer
+quite the same; this truth--though not too disconcertingly--had
+come up between them on the renewal of their meetings.  It was all
+contained in what she had then almost immediately said to him; it
+was represented by the remark she had needed but ten minutes to
+make and that he hadn't been disposed to gainsay.  He could toddle
+alone, and the difference that showed was extraordinary.  The turn
+taken by their talk had promptly confirmed this difference; his
+larger confidence on the score of Mrs. Newsome did the rest; and
+the time seemed already far off when he had held out his small
+thirsty cup to the spout of her pail.  Her pail was scarce touched
+now, and other fountains had flowed for him; she fell into her
+place as but one of his tributaries; and there was a strange
+sweetness--a melancholy mildness that touched him--in her
+acceptance of the altered order.
+
+It marked for himself the flight of time, or at any rate what he
+was pleased to think of with irony and pity as the rush of experience;
+it having been but the day before yesterday that he sat at her feet
+and held on by her garment and was fed by her hand.  It was the
+proportions that were changed, and the proportions were at all
+times, he philosophised, the very conditions of perception, the
+terms of thought.  It was as if, with her effective little entresol and
+and her wide acquaintance, her activities, varieties, promiscuities,
+the duties and devotions that took up nine tenths of her time and
+of which he got, guardedly, but the side-wind--it was as if she had
+shrunk to a secondary element and had consented to the shrinkage
+with the perfection of tact.  This perfection had never failed
+her; it had originally been greater than his prime measure for it;
+it had kept him quite apart, kept him out of the shop, as she
+called her huge general acquaintance, made their commerce as
+quiet, as much a thing of the home alone--the opposite of the
+shop--as if she had never another customer.  She had been wonderful
+to him at first, with the memory of her little entresol, the image
+to which, on most mornings at that time, his eyes directly opened;
+but now she mainly figured for him as but part of the bristling
+total--though of course always as a person to whom he should never
+cease to be indebted.  It would never be given to him certainly
+to inspire a greater kindness.  She had decked him out for others,
+and he saw at this point at least nothing she would ever ask for.
+She only wondered and questioned and listened, rendering him the
+homage of a wistful speculation.  She expressed it repeatedly;
+he was already far beyond her, and she must prepare herself to
+lose him.  There was but one little chance for her.
+
+Often as she had said it he met it--for it was a touch he liked--
+each time the same way.  "My coming to grief?"
+
+"Yes--then I might patch you up."
+
+"Oh for my real smash, if it takes place, there will be no
+patching."
+
+"But you surely don't mean it will kill you."
+
+"No--worse.  It will make me old."
+
+"Ah nothing can do that! The wonderful and special thing about you
+is that you ARE, at this time of day, youth."  Then she always made,
+further, one of those remarks that she had completely ceased to
+adorn with hesitations or apologies, and that had, by the same
+token, in spite of their extreme straightness, ceased to produce in
+Strether the least embarrassment.  She made him believe them, and
+they became thereby as impersonal as truth itself.  "It's just your
+particular charm."
+
+His answer too was always the same.  "Of course I'm youth--youth
+for the trip to Europe.  I began to be young, or at least to get the
+benefit of it, the moment I met you at Chester, and that's what has
+been taking place ever since.  I never had the benefit at the proper
+time--which comes to saying that I never had the thing itself.  I'm
+having the benefit at this moment; I had it the other day when I
+said to Chad 'Wait'; I shall have it still again when Sarah Pocock
+arrives.  It's a benefit that would make a poor show for many
+people; and I don't know who else but you and I, frankly, could
+begin to see in it what I feel.  I don't get drunk; I don't pursue
+the ladies; I don't spend money; I don't even write sonnets.  But
+nevertheless I'm making up late for what I didn't have early.  I
+cultivate my little benefit in my own little way.  It amuses me more
+than anything that has happened to me in all my life.  They may say
+what they like--it's my surrender, it's my tribute, to youth.  One
+puts that in where one can--it has to come in somewhere, if only
+out of the lives, the conditions, the feelings of other persons.
+Chad gives me the sense of it, for all his grey hairs, which merely
+make it solid in him and safe and serene; and SHE does the same,
+for all her being older than he, for all her marriageable daughter,
+her separated husband, her agitated history.  Though they're young
+enough, my pair, I don't say they're, in the freshest way, their
+own absolutely prime adolescence; for that has nothing to do with
+it.  The point is that they're mine.  Yes, they're my youth; since
+somehow at the right time nothing else ever was.  What I meant just
+now therefore is that it would all go--go before doing its work--
+if they were to fail me."
+
+On which, just here, Miss Gostrey inveterately questioned.  "What do
+you, in particular, call its work?"
+
+"Well, to see me through."
+
+"But through what?"--she liked to get it all out of him.
+
+"Why through this experience."  That was all that would come.
+
+It regularly gave her none the less the last word.  "Don't you
+remember how in those first days of our meeting it was I who was to
+see you through?"
+
+"Remember?  Tenderly, deeply"--he always rose to it.  "You're just
+doing your part in letting me maunder to you thus."
+
+"Ah don't speak as if my part were small; since whatever else fails
+you--"
+
+"YOU won't, ever, ever, ever?"--he thus took her up.  "Oh I beg your
+pardon; you necessarily, you inevitably WILL.  Your conditions--that's
+what I mean--won't allow me anything to do for you."
+
+"Let alone--I see what you mean--that I'm drearily dreadfully old.
+I AM, but there's a service--possible for you to render--that I know,
+all the same, I shall think of."
+
+"And what will it be?"
+
+This, in fine, however, she would never tell him.  "You shall hear
+only if your smash takes place.  As that's really out of the
+question, I won't expose myself''--a point at which, for reasons of
+his own, Strether ceased to press.
+
+He came round, for publicity--it was the easiest thing--to the idea
+that his smash WAS out of the question, and this rendered idle the
+discussion of what might follow it.  He attached an added
+importance, as the days elapsed, to the arrival of the Pococks; he
+had even a shameful sense of waiting for it insincerely and
+incorrectly.  He accused himself of making believe to his own mind
+that Sarah's presence, her impression, her judgement would simplify
+and harmonise, he accused himself of being so afraid of what they
+MIGHT do that he sought refuge, to beg the whole question, in a
+vain fury.  He had abundantly seen at home what they were in the
+habit of doing, and he had not at present the smallest ground.  His
+clearest vision was when he made out that what he most desired was
+an account more full and free of Mrs. Newsome's state of mind than
+any he felt he could now expect from herself; that calculation at
+least went hand in hand with the sharp consciousness of wishing to
+prove to himself that he was not afraid to look his behaviour in
+the face.  If he was by an inexorable logic to pay for it he was
+literally impatient to know the cost, and he held himself ready to
+pay in instalments.  The first instalment would be precisely this
+entertainment of Sarah; as a consequence of which moreover.  he
+should know vastly better how he stood.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Eighth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Strether rambled alone during these few days, the effect of the
+incident of the previous week having been to simplify in a marked
+fashion his mixed relations with Waymarsh.  Nothing had passed
+between them in reference to Mrs. Newsome's summons but that our
+friend had mentioned to his own the departure of the deputation
+actually at sea--giving him thus an opportunity to confess to the
+occult intervention he imputed to him.  Waymarsh however in the
+event confessed to nothing; and though this falsified in some
+degree Strether's forecast the latter amusedly saw in it the same
+depth of good conscience out of which the dear man's impertinence
+had originally sprung.  He was patient with the dear man now and
+delighted to observe how unmistakeably he had put on flesh; he felt
+his own holiday so successfully large and free that he was full of
+allowances and charities in respect to those cabined and confined'
+his instinct toward a spirit so strapped down as Waymarsh's was to
+walk round it on tiptoe for fear of waking it up to a sense of
+losses by this time irretrievable.  It was all very funny he knew,
+and but the difference, as he often said to himself, of tweedledum
+and tweedledee--an emancipation so purely comparative that it was
+like the advance of the door-mat on the scraper; yet the present
+crisis was happily to profit by it and the pilgrim from Milrose to
+know himself more than ever in the right.
+
+Strether felt that when he heard of the approach of the Pococks the
+impulse of pity quite sprang up in him beside the impulse of
+triumph.  That was exactly why Waymarsh had looked at him with eyes
+in which the heat of justice was measured and shaded.  He had looked
+very hard, as if affectionately sorry for the friend--the friend of
+fifty-five--whose frivolity had had thus to be recorded; becoming,
+however, but obscurely sententious and leaving his companion to
+formulate a charge.  It was in this general attitude that he had of
+late altogether taken refuge; with the drop of discussion they were
+solemnly sadly superficial; Strether recognised in him the mere
+portentous rumination to which Miss Barrace had so good-humouredly
+described herself as assigning a corner of her salon.  It was quite
+as if he knew his surreptitious step had been divined, and it was
+also as if he missed the chance to explain the purity of his
+motive; but this privation of relief should be precisely his small
+penance:  it was not amiss for Strether that he should find himself
+to that degree uneasy.  If he had been challenged or accused,
+rebuked for meddling or otherwise pulled up, he would probably have
+shown, on his own system, all the height of his consistency, all
+the depth of his good faith.  Explicit resentment of his course
+would have made him take the floor, and the thump of his fist on
+the table would have affirmed him as consciously incorruptible.  Had
+what now really prevailed with Strether been but a dread of that
+thump--a dread of wincing a little painfully at what it might
+invidiously demonstrate?  However this might be, at any rate, one of
+the marks of the crisis was a visible, a studied lapse, in
+Waymarsh, of betrayed concern.  As if to make up to his comrade for
+the stroke by which he had played providence he now conspicuously
+ignored his movements, withdrew himself from the pretension to
+share them, stiffened up his sensibility to neglect, and, clasping
+his large empty hands and swinging his large restless foot, clearly
+looked to another quarter for justice.
+
+This made for independence on Strether's part, and he had in truth
+at no moment of his stay been so free to go and come.  The early
+summer brushed the picture over and blurred everything but the
+near; it made a vast warm fragrant medium in which the elements
+floated together on the best of terms, in which rewards were
+immediate and reckonings postponed.  Chad was out of town again, for
+the first time since his visitor's first view of him; he had
+explained this necessity--without detail, yet also without
+embarrassment, the circumstance was one of those which, in the
+young man's life, testified to the variety of his ties.  Strether
+wasn't otherwise concerned with it than for its so testifying--a
+pleasant multitudinous image in which he took comfort.  He took
+comfort, by the same stroke, in the swing of Chad's pendulum back
+from that other swing, the sharp jerk towards Woollett, so stayed
+by his own hand.  He had the entertainment of thinking that if he
+had for that moment stopped the clock it was to promote the next
+minute this still livelier motion.  He himself did what he hadn't
+done before; he took two or three times whole days off--
+irrespective of others, of two or three taken with Miss Gostrey,
+two or three taken with little Bilham:  he went to Chartres and
+cultivated, before the front of the cathedral, a general easy
+beatitude; he went to Fontainebleau and imagined himself on the way
+to Italy; he went to Rouen with a little handbag and inordinately
+spent the night.
+
+One afternoon he did something quite different; finding himself in
+the neighbourhood of a fine old house across the river, he passed
+under the great arch of its doorway and asked at the porter's lodge
+for Madame de Vionnet.  He had already hovered more than once about
+that possibility, been aware of it, in the course of ostensible
+strolls, as lurking but round the corner.  Only it had perversely
+happened, after his morning at Notre Dame, that his consistency, as
+he considered and intended it, had come back to him; whereby he had
+reflected that the encounter in question had been none of his
+making; clinging again intensely to the strength of his position,
+which was precisely that there was nothing in it for himself.  From
+the moment he actively pursued the charming associate of his
+adventure, from that moment his position weakened, for he was then
+acting in an interested way.  It was only within a few days that he
+had fixed himself a limit:  he promised himself his consistency
+should end with Sarah's arrival.  It was arguing correctly to feel
+the title to a free hand conferred on him by this event.  If he
+wasn't to be let alone he should be merely a dupe to act with
+delicacy.  If he wasn't to be trusted he could at least take his
+ease.  If he was to be placed under control he gained leave to try
+what his position MIGHT agreeably give him.  An ideal rigour would
+perhaps postpone the trial till after the Pococks had shown their
+spirit; and it was to an ideal rigour that he had quite promised
+himself to conform.
+
+Suddenly, however, on this particular day, he felt a particular
+fear under which everything collapsed.  He knew abruptly that he was
+afraid of himself--and yet not in relation to the effect on his
+sensibilities of another hour of Madame de Vionnet.  What he dreaded
+was the effect of a single hour of Sarah Pocock, as to whom he was
+visited, in troubled nights, with fantastic waking dreams.  She
+loomed at him larger than life; she increased in volume as she drew
+nearer; she so met his eyes that, his imagination taking, after the
+first step, all, and more than all, the strides, he already felt
+her come down on him, already burned, under her reprobation, with
+the blush of guilt, already consented, by way of penance, to the
+instant forfeiture of everything.  He saw himself, under her
+direction, recommitted to Woollett as juvenile offenders are
+committed to reformatories.  It wasn't of course that Woollett was
+really a place of discipline; but he knew in advance that Sarah's
+salon at the hotel would be.  His danger, at any rate, in such moods
+of alarm, was some concession, on this ground, that would involve a
+sharp rupture with the actual; therefore if he waited to take leave
+of that actual he might wholly miss his chance.  It was represented
+with supreme vividness by Madame de Vionnet, and that is why, in a
+word, he waited no longer.  He had seen in a flash that he must
+anticipate Mrs. Pocock.  He was accordingly much disappointed on now
+learning from the portress that the lady of his quest was not in
+Paris.  She had gone for some days to the country.  There was nothing
+in this accident but what was natural; yet it produced for poor
+Strether a drop of all confidence.  It was suddenly as if he should
+never see her again, and as if moreover he had brought it on
+himself by not having been quite kind to her.
+
+It was the advantage of his having let his fancy lose itself for a
+little in the gloom that, as by reaction, the prospect began really
+to brighten from the moment the deputation from Woollett alighted
+on the platform of the station.  They had come straight from Havre,
+having sailed from New York to that port, and having also, thanks
+to a happy voyage, made land with a promptitude that left Chad
+Newsome, who had meant to meet them at the dock, belated.  He had
+received their telegram, with the announcement of their immediate
+further advance, just as he was taking the train for Havre, so that
+nothing had remained for him but to await them in Paris.  He hastily
+picked up Strether, at the hotel, for this purpose, and he even,
+with easy pleasantry, suggested the attendance of Waymarsh as well--
+Waymarsh, at the moment his cab rattled up, being engaged, under
+Strether's contemplative range, in a grave perambulation of the
+familiar court.  Waymarsh had learned from his companion, who had
+already had a note, delivered by hand, from Chad, that the Pococks
+were due, and had ambiguously, though, as always, impressively,
+glowered at him over the circumstance; carrying himself in a manner
+in which Strether was now expert enough to recognise his uncertainty,
+in the premises, as to the best tone.  The only tone he aimed at with
+confidence was a full tone--which was necessarily difficult in the
+absence of a full knowledge.  The Pococks were a quantity as yet
+unmeasured, and, as he had practically brought them over, so this
+witness had to that extent exposed himself.  He wanted to feel right
+about it, but could only, at the best, for the time, feel vague.
+"I shall look to you, you know, immensely," our friend had said,
+"to help me with them," and he had been quite conscious of the
+effect of the remark, and of others of the same sort, on his
+comrade's sombre sensibility.  He had insisted on the fact that
+Waymarsh would quite like Mrs. Pocock--one could be certain he
+would:  he would be with her about everything, and she would also be
+with HIM, and Miss Barrace's nose, in short, would find itself out
+of joint.
+
+Strether had woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in
+the court for Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself
+quiet while, caged and leonine, his fellow traveller paced and
+turned before him.  Chad Newsome was doubtless to be struck, when he
+arrived, with the sharpness of their opposition at this particular
+hour; he was to remember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came with
+him and with Strether to the street and stood there with a face
+half-wistful and half-rueful.  They talked of him, the two others, as
+they drove, and Strether put Chad in possession of much of his own
+strained sense of things.  He had already, a few days before, named
+to him the wire he was convinced their friend had pulled--a
+confidence that had made on the young man's part quite hugely for
+curiosity and diversion.  The action of the matter, moreover,
+Strether could see, was to penetrate; he saw that is, how Chad
+judged a system of influence in which Waymarsh had served as a
+determinant--an impression just now quickened again; with the whole
+bearing of such a fact on the youth's view of his relatives.  As it
+came up between them that they might now take their friend for a
+feature of the control of these latter now sought to be exerted
+from Woollett, Strether felt indeed how it would be stamped all
+over him, half an hour later for Sarah Pocock's eyes, that he was
+as much on Chad's "side" as Waymarsh had probably described him.  He
+was letting himself at present, go; there was no denying it; it
+might be desperation, it might be confidence; he should offer
+himself to the arriving travellers bristling with all the lucidity
+he had cultivated.
+
+He repeated to Chad what he had been saying in the court to
+Waymarsh; how there was no doubt whatever that his sister would
+find the latter a kindred spirit, no doubt of the alliance, based
+on an exchange of views, that the pair would successfully strike
+up.  They would become as thick as thieves--which moreover was but a
+development of what Strether remembered to have said in one of his
+first discussions with his mate, struck as he had then already been
+with the elements of affinity between that personage and Mrs.
+Newsome herself.  "I told him, one day, when he had questioned me on
+your mother, that she was a person who, when he should know her,
+would rouse in him, I was sure, a special enthusiasm; and that
+hangs together with the conviction we now feel--this certitude that
+Mrs. Pocock will take him into her boat.  For it's your mother's own
+boat that she's pulling."
+
+"Ah," said Chad, "Mother's worth fifty of Sally!"
+
+"A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same you'll
+be meeting your mother's representative--just as I shall.  I feel
+like the outgoing ambassador," said Strether, "doing honour to his
+appointed successor."  A moment after speaking as he had just done
+he felt he had inadvertently rather cheapened Mrs. Newsome to her
+son; an impression audibly reflected, as at first seen, in Chad's
+prompt protest.  He had recently rather failed of apprehension of
+the young man's attitude and temper--remaining principally
+conscious of how little worry, at the worst, he wasted, and he
+studied him at this critical hour with renewed interest.  Chad had
+done exactly what he had promised him a fortnight previous--had
+accepted without another question his plea for delay.  He was
+waiting cheerfully and handsomely, but also inscrutably and with a
+slight increase perhaps of the hardness originally involved in his
+acquired high polish.  He was neither excited nor depressed; was
+easy and acute and deliberate--unhurried unflurried unworried, only
+at most a little less amused than usual.  Strether felt him more
+than ever a justification of the extraordinary process of which his
+own absurd spirit had been the arena; he knew as their cab rolled
+along, knew as he hadn't even yet known, that nothing else than
+what Chad had done and had been would have led to his present
+showing.  They had made him, these things, what he was, and the
+business hadn't been easy; it had taken time and trouble, it had
+cost, above all, a price.  The result at any rate was now to be
+offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that was concerned, was
+glad to be there to witness.  Would she in the least make it out or
+take it in, the result, or would she in the least care for it if
+she did?  He scratched his chin as he asked himself by what name,
+when challenged--as he was sure he should be--he could call it for
+her.  Oh those were determinations she must herself arrive at; since
+she wanted so much to see, let her see then and welcome.  She had
+come out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in
+Strether's inner sense that she practically wouldn't see.
+
+That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from
+a word that next dropped from him.  "They're children; they play at
+life!"--and the exclamation was significant and reassuring.  It
+implied that he hadn't then, for his companion's sensibility,
+appeared to give Mrs. Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend's
+presently asking him if it were his idea that Mrs. Pocock and
+Madame de Vionnet should become acquainted.  Strether was still more
+sharply struck, hereupon, with Chad's lucidity.  "Why, isn't that
+exactly--to get a sight of the company I keep--what she has come
+out for?"
+
+"Yes--I'm afraid it is," Strether unguardedly replied.
+
+Chad's quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation.  "Why do you say
+you're afraid?"
+
+"Well, because I feel a certain responsibility.  It's my testimony,
+I imagine, that will have been at the bottom of Mrs. Pocock's
+curiosity.  My letters, as I've supposed you to understand from the
+beginning, have spoken freely.  I've certainly said my little say
+about Madame de Vionnet."
+
+All that, for Chad, was beautifully obvious.  "Yes, but you've only
+spoken handsomely."
+
+"Never more handsomely of any woman.  But it's just that tone--!"
+
+"That tone," said Chad, "that has fetched her?  I dare say; but I've
+no quarrel with you about it.  And no more has Madame de Vionnet.
+Don't you know by this time how she likes you?"
+
+"Oh!"--and Strether had, with his groan, a real pang of melancholy.
+"For all I've done for her!"
+
+"Ah you've done a great deal."
+
+Chad's urbanity fairly shamed him, and he was at this moment
+absolutely impatient to see the face Sarah Pocock would present to
+a sort of thing, as he synthetically phrased it to himself, with no
+adequate forecast of which, despite his admonitions, she would
+certainly arrive.  "I've done THIS!"
+
+"Well, this is all right.  She likes," Chad comfortably remarked,
+ "to be liked."
+
+It gave his companion a moment's thought.  "And she's sure Mrs.
+Pocock WILL--?"
+
+"No, I say that for you.  She likes your liking her; it's so much,
+as it were," Chad laughed, "to the good.  However, she doesn't
+despair of Sarah either, and is prepared, on her own side, to go
+all lengths."
+
+"In the way of appreciation?"
+
+"Yes, and of everything else.  In the way of general amiability,
+hospitality and welcome.  She's under arms," Chad laughed again;
+"she's prepared."
+
+Strether took it in; then as if an echo of Miss Barrace were in the
+air:  "She's wonderful."
+
+"You don't begin to know HOW wonderful!"
+
+There was a depth in it, to Strether's ear, of confirmed luxury--
+almost a kind of unconscious insolence of proprietorship; but the
+effect of the glimpse was not at this moment to foster speculation:
+there was something so conclusive in so much graceful and generous
+assurance.  It was in fact a fresh evocation; and the evocation had
+before many minutes another consequence.  "Well, I shall see her
+oftener now.  I shall see her as much as I like--by your leave;
+which is what I hitherto haven't done."
+
+"It has been," said Chad, but without reproach, "only your own
+fault.  I tried to bring you together, and SHE, my dear fellow--I
+never saw her more charming to any man.  But you've got your
+extraordinary ideas."
+
+"Well, I DID have," Strether murmured, while he felt both how they
+had possessed him and how they had now lost their authority.  He
+couldn't have traced the sequence to the end, but it was all
+because of Mrs. Pocock.  Mrs. Pocock might be because of Mrs. Newsome,
+but that was still to be proved.  What came over him was the sense
+of having stupidly failed to profit where profit would have been
+precious.  It had been open to him to see so much more of her, and
+he had but let the good days pass.  Fierce in him almost was the
+resolve to lose no more of them, and he whimsically reflected,
+while at Chad's side he drew nearer to his destination, that it
+was after all Sarah who would have quickened his chance.  What
+her visit of inquisition might achieve in other directions was
+as yet all obscure--only not obscure that it would do supremely
+much to bring two earnest persons together.  He had but to listen
+to Chad at this moment to feel it; for Chad was in the act of
+remarking to him that they of course both counted on him--he
+himself and the other earnest person--for cheer and support.  It was
+brave to Strether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they
+had struck out was to make things ravishing to the Pococks.  No, if
+Madame de Vionnet compassed THAT, compassed the ravishment of the
+Pococks, Madame de Vionnet would be prodigious.  It would be a
+beautiful plan if it succeeded, and it all came to the question of
+Sarah's being really bribeable.  The precedent of his own case
+helped Strether perhaps but little to consider she might prove so;
+it being distinct that her character would rather make for every
+possible difference.  This idea of his own bribeability set him
+apart for himself; with the further mark in fact that his case was
+absolutely proved.  He liked always, where Lambert Strether was
+concerned, to know the worst, and what he now seemed to know was
+not only that he was bribeable, but that he had been effectually
+bribed.  The only difficulty was that he couldn't quite have said
+with what.  It was as if he had sold himself, but hadn't somehow got
+the cash.  That, however, was what, characteristically, WOULD happen
+to him.  It would naturally be his kind of traffic.  While he thought
+of these things he reminded Chad of the truth they mustn't lose
+sight of--the truth that, with all deference to her susceptibility
+to new interests, Sarah would have come out with a high firm
+definite purpose.  "She hasn't come out, you know, to be bamboozled.
+We may all be ravishing--nothing perhaps can be more easy for us;
+but she hasn't come out to be ravished.  She has come out just
+simply to take you home."
+
+"Oh well, with HER I'll go," said Chad good-humouredly.  "I suppose
+you'll allow THAT."  And then as for a minute Strether said nothing:
+"Or is your idea that when I've seen her I shan't want to go?"  As
+this question, however, again left his friend silent he presently went
+on:  "My own idea at any rate is that they shall have while they're here
+the best sort of time."
+
+It was at this that Strether spoke.  "Ah there you are! I think if
+you really wanted to go--!"
+
+"Well?" said Chad to bring it out.
+
+"Well, you wouldn't trouble about our good time.  You wouldn't care
+what sort of a time we have."
+
+Chad could always take in the easiest way in the world any
+ingenious suggestion.  "I see.  But can I help it?  I'm too decent."
+
+"Yes, you're too decent!" Strether heavily sighed.  And he felt for
+the moment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission.
+
+It ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made
+no rejoinder.  But he spoke again as they came in sight of the
+station.  "Do you mean to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?"
+
+As to this Strether was ready.  "No."
+
+"But haven't you told me they know about her?"
+
+"I think I've told you your mother knows."
+
+"And won't she have told Sally?"
+
+"That's one of the things I want to see."
+
+"And if you find she HAS--?"
+
+"Will I then, you mean, bring them together?"
+
+"Yes," said Chad with his pleasant promptness:   "to show her there's
+nothing in it."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "I don't know that I care very much what she
+may think there's in it."
+
+"Not if it represents what Mother thinks?"
+
+"Ah what DOES your mother think?"  There was in this some sound of
+bewilderment.
+
+But they were just driving up, and help, of a sort, might after all
+be quite at hand.  "Isn't that, my dear man, what we're both just
+going to make out?"
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Strether quitted the station half an hour later in different
+company.  Chad had taken charge, for the journey to the hotel, of
+Sarah, Mamie, the maid and the luggage, all spaciously installed
+and conveyed; and it was only after the four had rolled away that
+his companion got into a cab with Jim.  A strange new feeling had
+come over Strether, in consequence of which his spirits had risen;
+it was as if what had occurred on the alighting of his critics had
+been something other than his fear, though his fear had vet not
+been of an instant scene of violence.  His impression had been
+nothing but what was inevitable--he said that to himself; yet
+relief and reassurance had softly dropped upon him.  Nothing could
+be so odd as to be indebted for these things to the look of faces
+and the sound of voices that had been with him to satiety, as he
+might have said, for years; but he now knew, all the same, how
+uneasy he had felt; that was brought home to him by his present
+sense of a respite.  It had come moreover in the flash of an eye, it
+had come in the smile with which Sarah, whom, at the window of her
+compartment, they had effusively greeted from the platform, rustled
+down to them a moment later, fresh and handsome from her cool June
+progress through the charming land.  It was only a sign, but enough:
+she was going to be gracious and unallusive, she was going to play
+the larger game--which was still more apparent, after she had
+emerged from Chad's arms, in her direct greeting to the valued
+friend of her family.
+
+Strether WAS then as much as ever the valued friend of her family,
+it was something he could at all events go on with; and the manner
+of his response to it expressed even for himself how little he had
+enjoyed the prospect of ceasing to figure in that likeness.  He had
+always seen Sarah gracious--had in fact rarely seen her shy or dry,
+her marked thin-lipped smile, intense without brightness and as
+prompt to act as the scrape of a safety-match; the protrusion of
+her rather remarkably long chin, which in her case represented
+invitation and urbanity, and not, as in most others, pugnacity and
+defiance; the penetration of her voice to a distance, the general
+encouragement and approval of her manner, were all elements with
+which intercourse had made him familiar, but which he noted today
+almost as if she had been a new acquaintance.  This first glimpse of
+her had given a brief but vivid accent to her resemblance to her
+mother; he could have taken her for Mrs. Newsome while she met his
+eyes as the train rolled into the station.  It was an impression
+that quickly dropped; Mrs. Newsome was much handsomer, and while
+Sarah inclined to the massive her mother had, at an age, still the
+girdle of a maid; also the latter's chin was rather short, than
+long, and her smile, by good fortune, much more, oh ever so much
+more, mercifully vague.  Strether had seen Mrs. Newsome reserved; he
+had literally heard her silent, though he had never known her
+unpleasant.  It was the case with Mrs. Pocock that he had known HER
+unpleasant, even though he had never known her not affable.  She had
+forms of affability that were in a high degree assertive; nothing
+for instance had ever been more striking than that she was affable
+to Jim.
+
+What had told in any case at the window of the train was her high
+clear forehead, that forehead which her friends, for some reason,
+always thought of as a "brow"; the long reach of her eyes--it came
+out at this juncture in such a manner as to remind him, oddly
+enough, also of that of Waymarsh's; and the unusual gloss of her
+dark hair, dressed and hatted, after her mother's refined example,
+with such an avoidance of extremes that it was always spoken of at
+Woollett as "their own."  Though this analogy dropped as soon as she
+was on the platform it had lasted long enough to make him feel all
+the advantage, as it were, of his relief.  The woman at home, the
+woman to whom he was attached, was before him just long enough to
+give him again the measure of the wretchedness, in fact really of
+the shame, of their having to recognise the formation, between
+them, of a "split."  He had taken this measure in solitude and
+meditation:  but the catastrophe, as Sarah steamed up, looked for
+its seconds unprecedentedly dreadful--or proved, more exactly,
+altogether unthinkable; so that his finding something free and
+familiar to respond to brought with it an instant renewal of his
+loyalty.  He had suddenly sounded the whole depth, had gasped at
+what he might have lost.
+
+Well, he could now, for the quarter of an hour of their detention
+hover about the travellers as soothingly as if their direct message
+to him was that he had lost nothing.  He wasn't going to have Sarah
+write to her mother that night that he was in any way altered or
+strange.  There had been times enough for a month when it had seemed
+to him that he was strange, that he was altered, in every way; but
+that was a matter for himself; he knew at least whose business it
+was not; it was not at all events such a circumstance as Sarah's
+own unaided lights would help her to.  Even if she had come out to
+flash those lights more than yet appeared she wouldn't make much
+headway against mere pleasantness.  He counted on being able to be
+merely pleasant to the end, and if only from incapacity moreover to
+formulate anything different.  He couldn't even formulate to himself
+his being changed and queer; it had taken place, the process,
+somewhere deep down; Maria Gostrey had caught glimpses of it; but
+how was he to fish it up, even if he desired, for Mrs. Pocock?  This
+was then the spirit in which he hovered, and with the easier throb
+in it much indebted furthermore to the impression of high and
+established adequacy as a pretty girl promptly produced in him by
+Mamie.  He had wondered vaguely--turning over many things in the
+fidget of his thoughts--if Mamie WERE as pretty as Woollett
+published her; as to which issue seeing her now again was to be so
+swept away by Woollett's opinion that this consequence really let
+loose for the imagination an avalanche of others.  There were
+positively five minutes in which the last word seemed of necessity
+to abide with a Woollett represented by a Mamie.  This was the sort
+of truth the place itself would feel; it would send her forth in
+confidence; it would point to her with triumph; it would take its
+stand on her with assurance; it would be conscious of no
+requirements she didn't meet, of no question she couldn't answer.
+
+Well, it was right, Strether slipped smoothly enough into the
+cheerfulness of saying:  granted that a community MIGHT be best
+represented by a young lady of twenty-two, Mamie perfectly played
+the part, played it as if she were used to it, and looked and spoke
+and dressed the character.  He wondered if she mightn't, in the high
+light of Paris, a cool full studio-light, becoming yet treacherous,
+show as too conscious of these matters; but the next moment he felt
+satisfied that her consciousness was after all empty for its size,
+rather too simple than too mixed, and that the kind way with her
+would be not to take many things out of it, but to put as many as
+possible in.  She was robust and conveniently tall; just a trifle
+too bloodlessly fair perhaps, but with a pleasant public familiar
+radiance that affirmed her vitality.  She might have been
+"receiving" for Woollett, wherever she found herself, and there was
+something in her manner, her tone, her motion, her pretty blue
+eyes, her pretty perfect teeth and her very small, too small, nose,
+that immediately placed her, to the fancy, between the windows of a
+hot bright room in which voices were high--up at that end to which
+people were brought to be "presented." They were there to
+congratulate, these images, and Strether's renewed vision, on this
+hint, completed the idea.  What Mamie was like was the happy bride,
+the bride after the church and just before going away.  She wasn't
+the mere maiden, and yet was only as much married as that quantity
+came to.  She was in the brilliant acclaimed festal stage.  Well,
+might it last her long!
+
+Strether rejoiced in these things for Chad, who was all genial
+attention to the needs of his friends, besides having arranged that
+his servant should reinforce him; the ladies were certainly
+pleasant to see, and Mamie would be at any time and anywhere
+pleasant to exhibit.  She would look extraordinarily like his young
+wife--the wife of a honeymoon, should he go about with her; but
+that was his own affair--or perhaps it was hers; it was at any rate
+something she couldn't help.  Strether remembered how he had seen
+him come up with Jeanne de Vionnet in Gloriani's garden, and the
+fancy he had had about that--the fancy obscured now, thickly
+overlaid with others; the recollection was during these minutes his
+only note of trouble.  He had often, in spite of himself, wondered
+if Chad but too probably were not with Jeanne the object of a still
+and shaded flame.  It was on the cards that the child MIGHT be
+tremulously in love, and this conviction now flickered up not a bit
+the less for his disliking to think of it, for its being, in a
+complicated situation, a complication the more, and for something
+indescribable in Mamie, something at all events straightway lent
+her by his own mind, something that gave her value, gave her
+intensity and purpose, as the symbol of an opposition.  Little
+Jeanne wasn't really at all in question--how COULD she be?--yet
+from the moment Miss Pocock had shaken her skirts on the platform,
+touched up the immense bows of her hat and settled properly over
+her shoulder the strap of her morocco-and-gilt travelling-satchel,
+from that moment little Jeanne was opposed.
+
+It was in the cab with Jim that impressions really crowded on
+Strether, giving him the strangest sense of length of absence from
+people among whom he had lived for years.  Having them thus come out
+to him was as if he had returned to find them:  and the droll
+promptitude of Jim's mental reaction threw his own initiation far
+back into the past.  Whoever might or mightn't be suited by what was
+going on among them, Jim, for one, would certainly be:  his instant
+recognition--frank and whimsical--of what the affair was for HIM
+gave Strether a glow of pleasure.  "I say, you know, this IS about
+my shape, and if it hadn't been for YOU--!" so he broke out as the
+charming streets met his healthy appetite; and he wound up, after
+an expressive nudge, with a clap of his companion's knee and an "Oh
+you, you--you ARE doing it!" that was charged with rich meaning.
+Strether felt in it the intention of homage, but, with a curiosity
+otherwise occupied, postponed taking it up.  What he was asking
+himself for the time was how Sarah Pocock, in the opportunity
+already given her, had judged her brother--from whom he himself, as
+they finally, at the station, separated for their different
+conveyances, had had a look into which he could read more than one
+message.  However Sarah was judging her brother, Chad's conclusion
+about his sister, and about her husband and her husband's sister,
+was at the least on the way not to fail of confidence.  Strether
+felt the confidence, and that, as the look between them was an
+exchange, what he himself gave back was relatively vague.  This
+comparison of notes however could wait; everything struck him as
+depending on the effect produced by Chad.  Neither Sarah nor Mamie
+had in any way, at the station--where they had had after all ample
+time--broken out about it; which, to make up for this, was what our
+friend had expected of Jim as soon as they should find themselves
+together.
+
+It was queer to him that he had that noiseless brush with Chad; an
+ironic intelligence with this youth on the subject of his
+relatives, an intelligence carried on under their nose and, as
+might be said, at their expense--such a matter marked again for him
+strongly the number of stages he had come; albeit that if the
+number seemed great the time taken for the final one was but the
+turn of a hand.  He had before this had many moments of wondering if
+he himself weren't perhaps changed even as Chad was changed.  Only
+what in Chad was conspicuous improvement--well, he had no name
+ready for the working, in his own organism, of his own more timid
+dose.  He should have to see first what this action would amount to.
+And for his occult passage with the young man, after all, the
+directness of it had no greater oddity than the fact that the young
+man's way with the three travellers should have been so happy a
+manifestation.  Strether liked him for it, on the spot, as he hadn't
+yet liked him; it affected him while it lasted as he might have
+been affected by some light pleasant perfect work of art:  to that
+degree that he wondered if they were really worthy of it, took it
+in and did it justice; to that degree that it would have been
+scarce a miracle if, there in the luggage-room, while they waited
+for their things, Sarah had pulled his sleeve and drawn him aside.
+"You're right; we haven't quite known what you mean, Mother and I,
+but now we see.  Chad's magnificent; what can one want more?  If THIS
+is the kind of thing--!"  On which they might, as it were, have
+embraced and begun to work together.
+
+Ah how much, as it was, for all her bridling brightness--which was
+merely general and noticed nothing--WOULD they work together?
+Strether knew he was unreasonable; he set it down to his being
+nervous:  people couldn't notice everything and speak of everything
+in a quarter of an hour.  Possibly, no doubt, also, he made too much
+of Chad's display.  Yet, none the less, when, at the end of five
+minutes, in the cab, Jim Pocock had said nothing either--hadn't
+said, that is, what Strether wanted, though he had said much else--
+it all suddenly bounced back to their being either stupid or
+wilful.  It was more probably on the whole the former; so that that
+would be the drawback of the bridling brightness.  Yes, they would
+bridle and be bright; they would make the best of what was before
+them, but their observation would fail; it would be beyond them;
+they simply wouldn't understand.  Of what use would it be then that
+they had come?--if they weren't to be intelligent up to THAT point:
+unless indeed he himself were utterly deluded and extravagant?  Was
+he, on this question of Chad's improvement, fantastic and away from
+the truth?  Did he live in a false world, a world that had grown
+simply to suit him, and was his present slight irritation--in the
+face now of Jim's silence in particular--but the alarm of the vain
+thing menaced by the touch of the real?  Was this contribution of
+the real possibly the mission of the Pococks?--had they come to
+make the work of observation, as HE had practised observation,
+crack and crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms in which
+honest minds could deal with him?  Had they come in short to be sane
+where Strether was destined to feel that he himself had only been
+silly?
+
+He glanced at such a contingency, but it failed to hold him long
+when once he had reflected that he would have been silly, in this
+case, with Maria Gostrey and little Bilham, with Madame de Vionnet
+and little Jeanne, with Lambert Strether, in fine, and above all
+with Chad Newsome himself.  Wouldn't it be found to have made more
+for reality to be silly with these persons than sane with Sarah and
+Jim?  Jim in fact, he presently made up his mind, was individually
+out of it; Jim didn't care; Jim hadn't come out either for Chad or
+for him; Jim in short left the moral side to Sally and indeed
+simply availed himself now, for the sense of recreation, of the
+fact that he left almost everything to Sally.  He was nothing
+compared to Sally, and not so much by reason of Sally's temper and
+will as by that of her more developed type and greater acquaintance
+with the world.  He quite frankly and serenely confessed, as he sat
+there with Strether, that he felt his type hang far in the rear of
+his wife's and still further, if possible, in the rear of his
+sister's.  Their types, he well knew, were recognised and acclaimed;
+whereas the most a leading Woollett business-man could hope to
+achieve socially, and for that matter industrially, was a certain
+freedom to play into this general glamour.
+
+The impression he made on our friend was another of the things that
+marked our friend's road.  It was a strange impression, especially
+as so soon produced; Strether had received it, he judged, all in
+the twenty minutes; it struck him at least as but in a minor degree
+the work of the long Woollett years.  Pocock was normally and
+consentingly though not quite wittingly out of the question.  It was
+despite his being normal; it was despite his being cheerful; it was
+despite his being a leading Woollett business-man; and the
+determination of his fate left him thus perfectly usual--as
+everything else about it was clearly, to his sense, not less so.  He
+seemed to say that there was a whole side of life on which the
+perfectly usual WAS for leading Woollett business-men to be out of
+the question.  He made no more of it than that, and Strether, so far
+as Jim was concerned, desired to make no more.  Only Strether's
+imagination, as always, worked, and he asked himself if this side
+of life were not somehow connected, for those who figured on it
+with the fact of marriage.  Would HIS relation to it, had he married
+ten years before, have become now the same as Pocock's?  Might it
+even become the same should he marry in a few months?  Should he
+ever know himself as much out of the question for Mrs. Newsome as
+Jim knew himself--in a dim way--for Mrs. Jim?
+
+To turn his eyes in that direction was to be personally reassured;
+he was different from Pocock; he had affirmed himself differently
+and was held after all in higher esteem.  What none the less came
+home to him, however, at this hour, was that the society over
+there, that of which Sarah and Mamie--and, in a more eminent way,
+Mrs. Newsome herself--were specimens, was essentially a society of
+women, and that poor Jim wasn't in it.  He himself Lambert Strether,
+WAS as yet in some degree--which was an odd situation for a man;
+but it kept coming back to him in a whimsical way that he should
+perhaps find his marriage had cost him his place.  This occasion
+indeed, whatever that fancy represented, was not a time of sensible
+exclusion for Jim, who was in a state of manifest response to the
+charm of his adventure.  Small and fat and constantly facetious,
+straw-coloured and destitute of marks, he would have been
+practically indistinguishable hadn't his constant preference for
+light-grey clothes, for white hats, for very big cigars and very
+little stories, done what it could for his identity.  There were
+signs in him, though none of them plaintive, of always paying for
+others; and the principal one perhaps was just this failure of
+type.  It was with this that he paid, rather than with fatigue or
+waste; and also doubtless a little with the effort of humour--never
+irrelevant to the conditions, to the relations, with which he was
+acquainted.
+
+He gurgled his joy as they rolled through the happy streets; he
+declared that his trip was a regular windfall, and that he wasn't
+there, he was eager to remark, to hang back from anything:  he
+didn't know quite what Sally had come for, but HE had come for a
+good time.  Strether indulged him even while wondering if what Sally
+wanted her brother to go back for was to become like her husband.
+He trusted that a good time was to be, out and out, the programme
+for all of them; and he assented liberally to Jim's proposal that,
+disencumbered and irresponsible--his things were in the omnibus
+with those of the others--they should take a further turn round
+before going to the hotel.  It wasn't for HIM to tackle Chad--it was
+Sally's job; and as it would be like her, he felt, to open fire on
+the spot, it wouldn't be amiss of them to hold off and give her
+time.  Strether, on his side, only asked to give her time; so he
+jogged with his companion along boulevards and avenues, trying to
+extract from meagre material some forecast of his catastrophe.  He
+was quick enough to see that Jim Pocock declined judgement, had
+hovered quite round the outer edge of discussion and anxiety,
+leaving all analysis of their question to the ladies alone and now
+only feeling his way toward some small droll cynicism.  It broke out
+afresh, the cynicism--it had already shown a flicker--in a but
+slightly deferred:  "Well, hanged if I would if I were he!"
+
+"You mean you wouldn't in Chad's place--?"
+
+"Give up this to go back and boss the advertising!"  Poor Jim, with
+his arms folded and his little legs out in the open fiacre, drank
+in the sparkling Paris noon and carried his eyes from one side of
+their vista to the other.  "Why I want to come right out and live
+here myself.  And I want to live while I AM here too.  I feel with
+YOU--oh you've been grand, old man, and I've twigged--that it ain't
+right to worry Chad.  I don't mean to persecute him; I couldn't in
+conscience.  It's thanks to you at any rate that I'm here, and I'm
+sure I'm much obliged.  You're a lovely pair."
+
+There were things in this speech that Strether let pass for the
+time.  "Don't you then think it important the advertising should be
+thoroughly taken in hand?  Chad WILL be, so far as capacity is
+concerned," he went on, "the man to do it."
+
+"Where did he get his capacity," Jim asked, "over here?"
+
+"He didn't get it over here, and the wonderful thing is that over
+here he hasn't inevitably lost it.  He has a natural turn for
+business, an extraordinary head.  He comes by that," Strether
+explained, "honestly enough.  He's in that respect his father's son,
+and also--for she's wonderful in her way too--his mother's.  He has
+other tastes and other tendencies; but Mrs. Newsome and your wife
+are quite right about his having that.  He's very remarkable."
+
+"Well, I guess he is!"  Jim Pocock comfortably sighed.  "But if
+you've believed so in his making us hum, why have you so prolonged
+the discussion?  Don't you know we've been quite anxious about you?"
+
+These questions were not informed with earnestness, but Strether
+saw he must none the less make a choice and take a line.  "Because,
+you see, I've greatly liked it.  I've liked my Paris, I dare say
+I've liked it too much."
+
+"Oh you old wretch!" Jim gaily exclaimed.
+
+"But nothing's concluded," Strether went on.  "The case is more
+complex than it looks from Woollett."
+
+"Oh well, it looks bad enough from Woollett!" Jim declared.
+
+"Even after all I've written?"
+
+Jim bethought himself.  "Isn't it what you've written that has made
+Mrs. Newsome pack us off?  That at least and Chad's not turning up?"
+
+Strether made a reflexion of his own.  "I see.  That she should do
+something was, no doubt, inevitable, and your wife has therefore of
+course come out to act."
+
+"Oh yes," Jim concurred--"to act.  But Sally comes out to act, you
+know," he lucidly added, "every time she leaves the house.  She
+never comes out but she DOES act.  She's acting moreover now for her
+mother, and that fixes the scale." Then he wound up, opening all
+his senses to it, with a renewed embrace of pleasant Paris.  "We
+haven't all the same at Woollett got anything like this."
+
+Strether continued to consider.  "I'm bound to say for you all that
+you strike me as having arrived in a very mild and reasonable frame
+of mind.  You don't show your claws.  I felt just now in Mrs. Pocock
+no symptom of that.  She isn't fierce," he went on.  "I'm such a
+nervous idiot that I thought she might be."
+
+"Oh don't you know her well enough," Pocock asked, "to have noticed
+that she never gives herself away, any more than her mother ever
+does?  They ain't fierce, either of 'em; they let you come quite
+close.  They wear their fur the smooth side out--the warm side in.
+Do you know what they are?" Jim pursued as he looked about him,
+giving the question, as Strether felt, but half his care--"do you
+know what they are?  They're about as intense as they can live."
+
+"Yes"--and Strether's concurrence had a positive precipitation;
+"they're about as intense as they can live."
+
+"They don't lash about and shake the cage," said Jim, who seemed
+pleased with his analogy; "and it's at feeding-time that they're
+quietest.  But they always get there."
+
+"They do indeed--they always get there!" Strether replied with a
+laugh that justified his confession of nervousness.  He disliked to
+be talking sincerely of Mrs.  Newsome with Pocock; he could have
+talked insincerely.  But there was something he wanted to know, a
+need created in him by her recent intermission, by his having
+given from the first so much, as now more than ever appeared to
+him, and got so little.  It was as if a queer truth in his
+companion's metaphor had rolled over him with a rush.  She HAD been
+quiet at feeding-time; she had fed, and Sarah had fed with her,
+out of the big bowl of all his recent free communication, his
+vividness and pleasantness, his ingenuity and even his eloquence,
+while the current of her response had steadily run thin.  Jim
+meanwhile however, it was true, slipped characteristically into
+shallowness from the moment he ceased to speak out of the
+experience of a husband.
+
+"But of course Chad has now the advantage of being there before
+her.  If he doesn't work that for all it's worth--!"  He sighed with
+contingent pity at his brother-in-law's possible want of resource.
+"He has worked it on YOU, pretty well, eh?" and he asked the next
+moment if there were anything new at the Varieties, which he
+pronounced in the American manner.  They talked about the
+Varieties--Strether confessing to a knowledge which produced again
+on Pocock's part a play of innuendo as vague as a nursery-rhyme,
+yet as aggressive as an elbow in his side; and they finished their
+drive under the protection of easy themes.  Strether waited to the
+end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim had seen Chad as
+different;  and he could scarce have explained the discouragement
+he drew from the absence of this testimony.  It was what he had
+taken his own stand on,  so far as he had taken a stand; and if
+they were all only going to see nothing he had only wasted his
+time.  He gave his friend till the very last moment, till they had
+come into sight of the hotel; and when poor Pocock only continued
+cheerful and envious and funny he fairly grew to dislike him, to
+feel him extravagantly common.   If they were ALL going to see
+nothing!--Strether knew,  as this came back to him, that he was
+also letting Pocock represent for him what Mrs. Newsome wouldn't
+see.  He went on disliking, in the light of Jim's commonness, to
+talk to him about that lady; yet just before the cab pulled up he
+knew the extent of his desire for the real word from Woollett.
+
+"Has Mrs. Newsome at all given way--?"
+
+"'Given way'?"--Jim echoed it with the practical derision of his
+sense of a long past.
+
+"Under the strain, I mean, of hope deferred, of disappointment
+repeated and thereby intensified."
+
+"Oh is she prostrate, you mean?"--he had his categories in hand.
+"Why yes, she's prostrate--just as Sally is.  But they're never so
+lively, you know, as when they're prostrate."
+
+"Ah Sarah's prostrate?" Strether vaguely murmured.
+
+"It's when they're prostrate that they most sit up."
+
+"And Mrs. Newsome's sitting up?"
+
+"All night, my boy--for YOU!"  And Jim fetched him,  with a vulgar
+little guffaw, a thrust that gave relief to the picture.  But he
+had got what he wanted.  He felt on the spot that this WAS the real
+word from Woollett.  "So don't you go home!" Jim added while he
+alighted and while his friend, letting him profusely pay the
+cabman,  sat on in a momentary muse.  Strether wondered if that
+were the real word too.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+As the door of Mrs. Pocock's salon was pushed open for him, the
+next day, well before noon, he was reached by a voice with a
+charming sound that made him just falter before crossing the
+threshold.  Madame de Vionnet was already on the field, and this
+gave the drama a quicker pace than he felt it as yet--though his
+suspense had increased--in the power of any act of his own to do.
+He had spent the previous evening with all his old friends
+together yet he would still have described himself as quite in the
+dark in respect to a forecast of their influence on his situation.
+It was strange now, none the less, that in the light of this
+unexpected note of her presence he felt Madame de Vionnet a part
+of that situation as she hadn't even yet been.  She was alone, he
+found himself assuming, with Sarah, and there was a bearing in
+that--somehow beyond his control--on his personal fate.  Yet she
+was only saying something quite easy and independent--the thing
+she had come, as a good friend of Chad's, on purpose to say.
+"There isn't anything at all--?  I should be so delighted."
+
+It was clear enough, when they were there before him, how she had
+been received.  He saw this, as Sarah got up to greet him, from
+something fairly hectic in Sarah's face.  He saw furthermore that
+they weren't, as had first come to him, alone together; he was at
+no loss as to the identity of the broad high back presented to
+him in the embrasure of the window furthest from the door.
+Waymarsh, whom he had to-day not yet seen,  whom he only knew to
+have left the hotel before him,  and who had taken part, the night
+previous, on Mrs.  Pocock's kind invitation, conveyed by Chad, in
+the entertainment, informal but cordial, promptly offered by that
+lady--Waymarsh had anticipated him even as Madame de Vionnet had
+done, and, with his hands in his pockets and his attitude
+unaffected by Strether's entrance, was looking out, in marked
+detachment, at the Rue de Rivoli.  The latter felt it in the air--
+it was immense how Waymarsh could mark things---that he had remained
+deeply dissociated from the overture to their hostess that we have
+recorded on Madame de Vionnet's side.  He had, conspicuously, tact,
+besides a stiff general view; and this was why he had left Mrs.
+Pocock to struggle alone.  He would outstay the visitor; he would
+unmistakeably wait; to what had he been doomed for months past but
+waiting?  Therefore she was to feel that she had him in reserve.
+What support she drew from this was still to be seen, for, although
+Sarah was vividly bright, she had given herself up for the moment
+to an ambiguous flushed formalism.  She had had to reckon more
+quickly than she expected; but it concerned her first of all to
+signify that she was not to be taken unawares.  Strether arrived
+precisely in time for her showing it.  "Oh you're too good; but I
+don't think I feel quite helpless.  I have my brother--and these
+American friends.  And then you know I've been to Paris.  I KNOW
+Paris," said Sally Pocock in a tone that breathed a certain chill
+on Strether's heart.
+
+"Ah but a woman, in this tiresome place where everything's always
+changing, a woman of good will," Madame de Vionnet threw off, "can
+always help a woman.  I'm sure you 'know'--but we know perhaps
+different things." She too, visibly, wished to make no mistake; but
+it was a fear of a different order and more kept out of sight.  She
+smiled in welcome at Strether; she greeted him more familiarly than
+Mrs. Pocock; she put out her hand to him without moving from her
+place; and it came to him in the course of a minute and in the
+oddest way that--yes, positively--she was giving him over to ruin.
+She was all kindness and ease, but she couldn't help so giving him;
+she was exquisite, and her being just as she was poured for Sarah a
+sudden rush of meaning into his own equivocations.  How could she
+know how she was hurting him?  She wanted to show as simple and
+humble--in the degree compatible with operative charm; but it was
+just this that seemed to put him on her side.  She struck him as
+dressed, as arranged, as prepared infinitely to conciliate--with
+the very poetry of good taste in her view of the conditions of her
+early call.  She was ready to advise about dressmakers and shops;
+she held herself wholly at the disposition of Chad's family.
+Strether noticed her card on the table--her coronet and her
+"Comtesse"--and the imagination was sharp in him of certain private
+adjustments in Sarah's mind.  She had never, he was sure, sat with a
+"Comtesse" before, and such was the specimen of that class he had
+been keeping to play on her.  She had crossed the sea very
+particularly for a look at her; but he read in Madame de Vionnet's
+own eyes that this curiosity hadn't been so successfully met as
+that she herself wouldn't now have more than ever need of him.  She
+looked much as she had looked to him that morning at Notre Dame; he
+noted in fact the suggestive sameness of her discreet and delicate
+dress.  It seemed to speak--perhaps a little prematurely or too
+finely--of the sense in which she would help Mrs. Pocock with the
+shops.  The way that lady took her in, moreover, added depth to his
+impression of what Miss Gostrey, by their common wisdom, had
+escaped.  He winced as he saw himself but for that timely prudence
+ushering in Maria as a guide and an example.  There was however a
+touch of relief for him in his glimpse, so far as he had got it, of
+Sarah's line.  She "knew Paris." Madame de Vionnet had, for that
+matter, lightly taken this up.  "Ah then you've a turn for that, an
+affinity that belongs to your family.  Your brother, though his long
+experience makes a difference, I admit, has become one of us in a
+marvellous way." And she appealed to Strether in the manner of a
+woman who could always glide off with smoothness into another
+subject.  Wasn't HE struck with the way Mr. Newsome had made the
+place his own, and hadn't he been in a position to profit by his
+friend's wondrous expertness?
+
+Strether felt the bravery, at the least, of her presenting herself
+so promptly to sound that note, and yet asked himself what other
+note, after all, she COULD strike from the moment she presented
+herself at all.  She could meet Mrs. Pocock only on the ground of
+the obvious, and what feature of Chad's situation was more eminent
+than the fact that he had created for himself a new set of
+circumstances?  Unless she hid herself altogether she could show but
+as one of these, an illustration of his domiciled and indeed of his
+confirmed condition.  And the consciousness of all this in her
+charming eyes was so clear and fine that as she thus publicly drew
+him into her boat she produced in him such a silent agitation as he
+was not to fail afterwards to denounce as pusillanimous.  "Ah don't
+be so charming to me!--for it makes us intimate, and after all what
+IS between us when I've been so tremendously on my guard and have
+seen you but half a dozen times?"  He recognised once more the
+perverse law that so inveterately governed his poor personal
+aspects:  it would be exactly LIKE the way things always turned out
+for him that he should affect Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh as launched
+in a relation in which he had really never been launched at all.
+They were at this very moment--they could only be--attributing to
+him the full licence of it, and all by the operation of her own
+tone with him; whereas his sole licence had been to cling with
+intensity to the brink, not to dip so much as a toe into the flood.
+But the flicker of his fear on this occasion was not, as may be
+added, to repeat itself; it sprang up, for its moment, only to die
+down and then go out for ever.  To meet his fellow visitor's
+invocation and, with Sarah's brilliant eyes on him, answer, WAS
+quite sufficiently to step into her boat.  During the rest of the
+time her visit lasted he felt himself proceed to each of the proper
+offices, successively, for helping to keep the adventurous skiff
+afloat.  It rocked beneath him, but he settled himself in his place.
+He took up an oar and, since he was to have the credit of pulling,
+pulled.
+
+"That will make it all the pleasanter if it so happens that we DO
+meet," Madame de Vionnet had further observed in reference to Mrs.
+Pocock's mention of her initiated state; and she had immediately
+added that, after all, her hostess couldn't be in need with the
+good offices of Mr. Strether so close at hand.  "It's he, I gather,
+who has learnt to know his Paris, and to love it, better than any
+one ever before in so short a time; so that between him and your
+brother, when it comes to the point, how can you possibly want for
+good guidance?  The great thing, Mr. Strether will show you," she
+smiled, "is just to let one's self go."
+
+"Oh I've not let myself go very far," Strether answered, feeling
+quite as if he had been called upon to hint to Mrs. Pocock how
+Parisians could talk.  "I'm only afraid of showing I haven't let
+myself go far enough.  I've taken a good deal of time, but I must
+quite have had the air of not budging from one spot." He looked at
+Sarah in a manner that he thought she might take as engaging, and
+he made, under Madame de Vionnet's protection, as it were, his
+first personal point.  "What has really happened has been that, all
+the while, I've done what I came out for."
+
+Yet it only at first gave Madame de Vionnet a chance immediately to
+take him up.  "You've renewed acquaintance with your friend--you've
+learnt to know him again." She spoke with such cheerful helpfulness
+that they might, in a common cause, have been calling together and
+pledged to mutual aid.
+
+Waymarsh, at this, as if he had been in question, straightway
+turned from the window.  "Oh yes, Countess--he has renewed
+acquaintance with ME, and he HAS, I guess, learnt something about
+me, though I don't know how much he has liked it.  It's for Strether
+himself to say whether he has felt it justifies his course."
+
+"Oh but YOU," said the Countess gaily, "are not in the least what
+he came out for--is he really, Strether? and I hadn't you at all in
+my mind.  I was thinking of Mr. Newsome, of whom we think so much
+and with whom, precisely, Mrs. Pocock has given herself the
+opportunity to take up threads.  What a pleasure for you both!"
+Madame de Vionnet, with her eyes on Sarah, bravely continued.
+
+Mrs. Pocock met her handsomely, but Strether quickly saw she meant
+to accept no version of her movements or plans from any other lips.
+She required no patronage and no support, which were but other
+names for a false position; she would show in her own way what she
+chose to show, and this she expressed with a dry glitter that
+recalled to him a fine Woollett winter morning.  "I've never wanted
+for opportunities to see my brother.  We've many things to think of
+at home, and great responsibilities and occupations, and our home's
+not an impossible place.  We've plenty of reasons," Sarah continued
+a little piercingly, "for everything we do"--and in short she
+wouldn't give herself the least little scrap away.  But she added as
+one who was always bland and who could afford a concession:  "I've
+come because--well, because we do come."
+
+"Ah then fortunately!"--Madame de Vionnet breathed it to the air.
+Five minutes later they were on their feet for her to take leave,
+standing together in an affability that had succeeded in surviving
+a further exchange of remarks; only with the emphasised appearance
+on Waymarsh's part of a tendency to revert, in a ruminating manner
+and as with an instinctive or a precautionary lightening of his
+tread, to an open window and his point of vantage.  The glazed and
+gilded room, all red damask, ormolu, mirrors, clocks, looked south,
+and the shutters were bowed upon the summer morning; but the
+Tuileries garden and what was beyond it, over which the whole place
+hung, were things visible through gaps; so that the far-spreading
+presence of Paris came up in coolness, dimness and invitation, in
+the twinkle of gilt-tipped palings, the crunch of gravel, the click
+of hoofs, the crack of whips, things that suggested some parade of
+the circus.  "I think it probable," said Mrs. Pocock, "that I shall
+have the opportunity of going to my brother's I've no doubt it's
+very pleasant indeed." She spoke as to Strether, but her face was
+turned with an intensity of brightness to Madame de Vionnet, and
+there was a moment during which, while she thus fronted her, our
+friend expected to hear her add:  "I'm much obliged to you, I'm
+sure, for inviting me there." He guessed that for five seconds
+these words were on the point of coming; he heard them as clearly
+as if they had been spoken; but he presently knew they had just
+failed--knew it by a glance, quick and fine, from Madame de
+Vionnet, which told him that she too had felt them in the air, but
+that the point had luckily not been made in any manner requiring
+notice.  This left her free to reply only to what had been said.
+
+"That the Boulevard Malesherbes may be common ground for us offers
+me the best prospect I see for the pleasure of meeting you again."
+
+"Oh I shall come to see you, since you've been so good":  and Mrs.
+Pocock looked her invader well in the eyes.  The flush in Sarah's
+cheeks had by this time settled to a small definite crimson spot
+that was not without its own bravery; she held her head a good deal
+up, and it came to Strether that of the two, at this moment, she
+was the one who most carried out the idea of a Countess.  He quite
+took in, however, that she would really return her visitor's
+civility:  she wouldn't report again at Woollett without at least so
+much producible history as that in her pocket.
+
+"I want extremely to be able to show you my little daughter."
+Madame de Vionnet went on; "and I should have brought her with me
+if I hadn't wished first to ask your leave.  I was in hopes I should
+perhaps find Miss Pocock, of whose being with you I've heard from
+Mr. Newsome and whose acquaintance I should so much like my child
+to make.  If I have the pleasure of seeing her and you do permit it
+I shall venture to ask her to be kind to Jeanne.  Mr. Strether will
+tell you"--she beautifully kept it up--"that my poor girl is gentle
+and good and rather lonely.  They've made friends, he and she, ever
+so happily, and he doesn't, I believe, think ill of her.  As for
+Jeanne herself he has had the same success with her that I know he
+has had here wherever he has turned." She seemed to ask him for
+permission to say these things, or seemed rather to take it, softly
+and happily, with the ease of intimacy, for granted, and he had
+quite the consciousness now that not to meet her at any point more
+than halfway would be odiously, basely to abandon her.  Yes, he was
+WITH her, and, opposed even in this covert, this semi-safe fashion
+to those who were not, he felt, strangely and confusedly, but
+excitedly, inspiringly, how much and how far.  It was as if he had
+positively waited in suspense for something from her that would let
+him in deeper, so that he might show her how he could take it.  And
+what did in fact come as she drew out a little her farewell served
+sufficiently the purpose.  "As his success is a matter that I'm sure
+he'll never mention for himself, I feel, you see, the less scruple;
+which it's very good of me to say, you know, by the way," she added
+as she addressed herself to him; "considering how little direct
+advantage I've gained from your triumphs with ME.  When does one
+ever see you?  I wait at home and I languish.  You'll have rendered
+me the service, Mrs. Pocock, at least," she wound up, "of giving me
+one of my much-too-rare glimpses of this gentleman."
+
+"I certainly should be sorry to deprive you of anything that seems
+so much, as you describe it, your natural due.  Mr. Strether and I
+are very old friends," Sarah allowed, "but the privilege of his
+society isn't a thing I shall quarrel about with any one."
+
+"And yet, dear Sarah," he freely broke in, "I feel, when I hear you
+say that, that you don't quite do justice to the important truth of
+the extent to which--as you're also mine--I'm your natural due.  I
+should like much better," he laughed, "to see you fight for me."
+
+She met him, Mrs. Pocock, on this, with an arrest of speech--with a
+certain breathlessness, as he immediately fancied, on the score of
+a freedom for which she wasn't quite prepared.  It had flared up--
+for all the harm he had intended by it--because, confoundedly, he
+didn't want any more to be afraid about her than he wanted to be
+afraid about Madame de Vionnet.  He had never, naturally, called her
+anything but Sarah at home, and though he had perhaps never quite
+so markedly invoked her as his "dear," that was somehow partly
+because no occasion had hitherto laid so effective a trap for it.
+But something admonished him now that it was too late--unless
+indeed it were possibly too early; and that he at any rate
+shouldn't have pleased Mrs. Pocock the more by it.  "Well, Mr.
+Strether--!" she murmured with vagueness, yet with sharpness, while
+her crimson spot burned a trifle brighter and he was aware that
+this must be for the present the limit of her response.  Madame de
+Vionnet had already, however, come to his aid, and Waymarsh, as if
+for further participation, moved again back to them.  It was true
+that the aid rendered by Madame de Vionnet was questionable; it was
+a sign that, for all one might confess to with her, and for all she
+might complain of not enjoying, she could still insidiously show
+how much of the material of conversation had accumulated between
+them.
+
+"The real truth is, you know, that you sacrifice one without mercy
+to dear old Maria.  She leaves no room in your life for anybody
+else.  Do you know," she enquired of Mrs. Pocock, "about dear old
+Maria?  The worst is that Miss Gostrey is really a wonderful woman."
+
+"Oh yes indeed," Strether answered for her, "Mrs. Pocock knows
+about Miss Gostrey.  Your mother, Sarah, must have told you about
+her; your mother knows everything," he sturdily pursued.  "And I
+cordially admit," he added with his conscious gaiety of courage,
+"that she's as wonderful a woman as you like."
+
+"Ah it isn't I who 'like,' dear Mr. Strether, anything to do with
+the matter!" Sarah Pocock promptly protested; "and I'm by no means
+sure I have--from my mother or from any one else--a notion of whom
+you're talking about."
+
+"Well, he won't let you see her, you know," Madame de Vionnet
+sympathetically threw in.  "He never lets me--old friends as we are:
+I mean as I am with Maria.  He reserves her for his best hours;
+keeps her consummately to himself; only gives us others the crumbs
+of the feast."
+
+"Well, Countess, I'VE had some of the crumbs," Waymarsh observed
+with weight and covering her with his large look; which led her to
+break in before he could go on.
+
+"Comment donc, he shares her with YOU?" she exclaimed in droll
+stupefaction.  "Take care you don't have, before you go much
+further, rather more of all ces dames than you may know what to do
+with!"
+
+But he only continued in his massive way.  "I can post you about the
+lady, Mrs. Pocock, so far as you may care to hear.  I've seen her
+quite a number of times, and I was practically present when they
+made acquaintance.  I've kept my eye on her right along, but I don't
+know as there's any real harm in her."
+
+"'Harm'?" Madame de Vionnet quickly echoed.  "Why she's the dearest
+and cleverest of all the clever and dear."
+
+"Well, you run her pretty close, Countess," Waymarsh returned with
+spirit; "though there's no doubt she's pretty well up in things.
+She knows her way round Europe.  Above all there's no doubt she does
+love Strether."
+
+"Ah but we all do that--we all love Strether:  it isn't a merit!"
+their fellow visitor laughed, keeping to her idea with a good
+conscience at which our friend was aware that he marvelled, though
+he trusted also for it, as he met her exquisitely expressive eyes,
+to some later light.
+
+The prime effect of her tone, however--and it was a truth which his
+own eyes gave back to her in sad ironic play--could only be to make
+him feel that, to say such things to a man in public, a woman must
+practically think of him as ninety years old.  He had turned
+awkwardly, responsively red, he knew, at her mention of Maria
+Gostrey; Sarah Pocock's presence--the particular quality of it--had
+made this inevitable; and then he had grown still redder in
+proportion as he hated to have shown anything at all.  He felt
+indeed that he was showing much, as, uncomfortably and almost in
+pain, he offered up his redness to Waymarsh, who, strangely enough,
+seemed now to be looking at him with a certain explanatory
+yearning.  Something deep--something built on their old old
+relation--passed, in this complexity, between them; he got the
+side-wind of a loyalty that stood behind all actual queer
+questions.  Waymarsh's dry bare humour--as it gave itself to be
+taken--gloomed out to demand justice.  "Well, if you talk of Miss
+Barrace I've MY chance too," it appeared stiffly to nod, and it
+granted that it was giving him away, but struggled to add that it
+did so only to save him.  The sombre glow stared it at him till it
+fairly sounded out--"to save you, poor old man, to save you; to
+save you in spite of yourself." Yet it was somehow just this
+communication that showed him to himself as more than ever lost.
+Still another result of it was to put before him as never yet that
+between his comrade and the interest represented by Sarah there was
+already a basis.  Beyond all question now, yes:  Waymarsh had been in
+occult relation with Mrs. Newsome--out, out it all came in the very
+effort of his face.  "Yes, you're feeling my hand"--he as good as
+proclaimed it; "but only because this at least I SHALL have got out
+of the damned Old World:  that I shall have picked up the pieces
+into which it has caused you to crumble." It was as if in short,
+after an instant, Strether had not only had it from him, but had
+recognised that so far as this went the instant had cleared the
+air.  Our friend understood and approved; he had the sense that they
+wouldn't otherwise speak of it.  This would be all, and it would
+mark in himself a kind of intelligent generosity.  It was with grim
+Sarah then--Sarah grim for all her grace--that Waymarsh had begun
+at ten o'clock in the morning to save him.  Well--if he COULD, poor
+dear man, with his big bleak kindness!  The upshot of which crowded
+perception was that Strether, on his own side, still showed no more
+than he absolutely had to.  He showed the least possible by saying
+to Mrs. Pocock after an interval much briefer than our glance at
+the picture reflected in him:  "Oh it's as true as they please!--
+There's no Miss Gostrey for any one but me--not the least little
+peep.  I keep her to myself."
+
+"Well, it's very good of you to notify me," Sarah replied without
+looking at him and thrown for a moment by this discrimination, as
+the direction of her eyes showed, upon a dimly desperate little
+community with Madame de Vionnet.  "But I hope I shan't miss her too
+much."
+
+Madame de Vionnet instantly rallied.  "And you know--though it might
+occur to one--it isn't in the least that he's ashamed of her.
+She's really--in a way--extremely good-looking."
+
+"Ah but extremely!" Strether laughed while he wondered at the odd
+part he found thus imposed on him.
+
+It continued to be so by every touch from Madame de Vionnet.  "Well,
+as I say, you know, I wish you would keep ME a little more to
+yourself.  Couldn't you name some day for me, some hour--and better
+soon than late?  I'll be at home whenever it best suits you.
+There--I can't say fairer."
+
+Strether thought a moment while Waymarsh and Mrs. Pocock affected
+him as standing attentive.  "I did lately call on you.  Last week--
+while Chad was out of town."
+
+"Yes--and I was away, as it happened, too.  You choose your moments
+well.  But don't wait for my next absence, for I shan't make
+another," Madame de Vionnet declared, "while Mrs. Pocock's here."
+
+"That vow needn't keep you long, fortunately," Sarah observed with
+reasserted suavity.  "I shall be at present but a short time in
+Paris.  I have my plans for other countries.  I meet a number of
+charming friends"--and her voice seemed to caress that description
+of these persons.
+
+"Ah then," her visitor cheerfully replied, "all the more reason!
+To-morrow, for instance, or next day?" she continued to Strether.
+"Tuesday would do for me beautifully."
+
+"Tuesday then with pleasure."
+
+"And at half-past five?--or at six?"
+
+It was ridiculous, but Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh struck him as
+fairly waiting for his answer.  It was indeed as if they were
+arranged, gathered for a performance, the performance of "Europe"
+by his confederate and himself.  Well, the performance could only
+go on.  "Say five forty-five."
+
+"Five forty-five--good." And now at last Madame de Vionnet must
+leave them, though it carried, for herself, the performance a
+little further.  "I DID hope so much also to see Miss Pocock.
+Mayn't I still?"
+
+Sarah hesitated, but she rose equal.  "She'll return your visit with
+me.  She's at present out with Mr. Pocock and my brother."
+
+"I see--of course Mr. Newsome has everything to show them.  He has
+told me so much about her.  My great desire's to give my daughter
+the opportunity of making her acquaintance.  I'm always on the
+lookout for such chances for her.  If I didn't bring her to-day it
+was only to make sure first that you'd let me." After which the
+charming woman risked a more intense appeal.  "It wouldn't suit you
+also to mention some near time, so that we shall be sure not to
+lose you?"  Strether on his side waited, for Sarah likewise had,
+after all, to perform; and it occupied him to have been thus
+reminded that she had stayed at home--and on her first morning of
+Paris--while Chad led the others forth.  Oh she was up to her eyes;
+if she had stayed at home she had stayed by an understanding,
+arrived at the evening before, that Waymarsh would come and find
+her alone.  This was beginning well--for a first day in Paris; and
+the thing might be amusing yet.  But Madame de Vionnet's earnestness
+was meanwhile beautiful.  "You may think me indiscreet, but I've
+SUCH a desire my Jeanne shall know an American girl of the really
+delightful kind.  You see I throw myself for it on your charity."
+
+The manner of this speech gave Strether such a sense of depths
+below it and behind it as he hadn't yet had--ministered in a way
+that almost frightened him to his dim divinations of reasons; but
+if Sarah still, in spite of it, faltered, this was why he had time
+for a sign of sympathy with her petitioner.  "Let me say then, dear
+lady, to back your plea, that Miss Mamie is of the most delightful
+kind of all--is charming among the charming."
+
+Even Waymarsh, though with more to produce on the subject, could
+get into motion in time.  "Yes, Countess, the American girl's a
+thing that your country must at least allow ours the privilege to
+say we CAN show you.  But her full beauty is only for those who know
+how to make use of her."
+
+"Ah then," smiled Madame de Vionnet, "that's exactly what I want to
+do.  I'm sure she has much to teach us."
+
+It was wonderful, but what was scarce less so was that Strether
+found himself, by the quick effect of it, moved another way.  "Oh
+that may be!  But don't speak of your own exquisite daughter, you
+know, as if she weren't pure perfection.  I at least won't take that
+from you.  Mademoiselle de Vionnet," he explained, in considerable
+form, to Mrs. Pocock, "IS pure perfection.  Mademoiselle de Vionnet
+IS exquisite."
+
+It had been perhaps a little portentous, but "Ah?" Sarah simply
+glittered.
+
+Waymarsh himself, for that matter, apparently recognised, in
+respect to the facts, the need of a larger justice, and he had with
+it an inclination to Sarah.  "Miss Jane's strikingly handsome--
+in the regular French style."
+
+It somehow made both Strether and Madame de Vionnet laugh out,
+though at the very moment he caught in Sarah's eyes, as glancing at
+the speaker, a vague but unmistakeable "You too?"  It made Waymarsh
+in fact look consciously over her head.  Madame de Vionnet
+meanwhile, however, made her point in her own way.  "I wish indeed I
+could offer you my poor child as a dazzling attraction:  it would
+make one's position simple enough!  She's as good as she can be, but
+of course she's different, and the question is now--in the light of
+the way things seem to go--if she isn't after all TOO different:
+too different I mean from the splendid type every one is so agreed
+that your wonderful country produces.  On the other hand of course
+Mr. Newsome, who knows it so well, has, as a good friend, dear kind
+man that he is, done everything he can--to keep us from fatal
+benightedness--for my small shy creature.  Well," she wound up after
+Mrs. Pocock had signified, in a murmur still a little stiff, that
+she would speak to her own young charge on the question--"well, we
+shall sit, my child and I, and wait and wait and wait for you." But
+her last fine turn was for Strether.  "Do speak of us in such a way--!"
+
+"As that something can't but come of it?  Oh something SHALL come of
+it!  I take a great interest!" he further declared; and in proof of
+it, the next moment, he had gone with her down to her carriage.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Ninth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"The difficulty is," Strether said to Madame de Vionnet a couple of
+days later, "that I can't surprise them into the smallest sign of
+his not being the same old Chad they've been for the last three
+years glowering at across the sea.  They simply won't give any, and
+as a policy, you know--what you call a parti pris, a deep game--
+that's positively remarkable."
+
+It was so remarkable that our friend had pulled up before his
+hostess with the vision of it; he had risen from his chair at the
+end of ten minutes and begun, as a help not to worry, to move about
+before her quite as he moved before Maria.  He had kept his
+appointment with her to the minute and had been intensely impatient,
+though divided in truth between the sense of having everything
+to tell her and the sense of having nothing at all.  The short
+interval had, in the face of their complication, multiplied his
+impressions--it being meanwhile to be noted, moreover, that he
+already frankly, already almost publicly, viewed the complication
+as common to them.  If Madame de Vionnet, under Sarah's eyes, had
+pulled him into her boat, there was by this time no doubt whatever
+that he had remained in it and that what he had really most been
+conscious of for many hours together was the movement of the vessel
+itself.  They were in it together this moment as they hadn't yet
+been, and he hadn't at present uttered the least of the words of
+alarm or remonstrance that had died on his lips at the hotel.  He
+had other things to say to her than that she had put him in a
+position; so quickly had his position grown to affect him as quite
+excitingly, altogether richly, inevitable.  That the outlook,
+however--given the point of exposure--hadn't cleared up half so
+much as he had reckoned was the first warning she received from him
+on his arrival.  She had replied with indulgence that he was in too
+great a hurry, and had remarked soothingly that if she knew how to
+be patient surely HE might be.  He felt her presence, on the spot,
+he felt her tone and everything about her, as an aid to that effort;
+and it was perhaps one of the proofs of her success with him
+that he seemed so much to take his ease while they talked.
+By the time he had explained to her why his impressions, though
+multiplied, still baffled him, it was as if he had been familiarly
+talking for hours.  They baffled him because Sarah--well, Sarah was
+deep, deeper than she had ever yet had a chance to show herself.
+He didn't say that this was partly the effect of her opening so
+straight down, as it were, into her mother, and that, given
+Mrs. Newsome's profundity, the shaft thus sunk might well have a reach;
+but he wasn't without a resigned apprehension that, at such a rate
+of confidence between the two women, he was likely soon to be moved
+to show how already, at moments, it had been for him as if he were
+dealing directly with Mrs. Newsome.  Sarah, to a certainty, would
+have begun herself to feel it in him--and this naturally put it in
+her power to torment him the more.  From the moment she knew he
+COULD be tormented--!
+
+"But WHY can you be?"--his companion was surprised at his use of
+the word.
+
+"Because I'm made so--I think of everything."
+
+"Ah one must never do that," she smiled.  "One must think of as few
+things as possible."
+
+"Then," he answered, "one must pick them out right.  But all I mean
+is--for I express myself with violence--that she's in a position to
+watch me.  There's an element of suspense for me, and she can see me
+wriggle.  But my wriggling doesn't matter," he pursued.  "I can bear
+it.  Besides, I shall wriggle out."
+
+The picture at any rate stirred in her an appreciation that he felt
+to be sincere.  "I don't see how a man can be kinder to a woman than
+you are to me."
+
+Well, kind was what he wanted to be; yet even while her charming
+eyes rested on him with the truth of this he none the less had his
+humour of honesty.  "When I say suspense I mean, you know," he
+laughed, "suspense about my own case too!"
+
+"Oh yes--about your own case too!"  It diminished his magnanimity,
+but she only looked at him the more tenderly.
+
+"Not, however," he went on, "that I want to talk to you about that.
+It's my own little affair, and I mentioned it simply as part of
+Mrs. Pocock's advantage." No, no; though there was a queer present
+temptation in it, and his suspense was so real that to fidget was a
+relief, he wouldn't talk to her about Mrs. Newsome, wouldn't work
+off on her the anxiety produced in him by Sarah's calculated
+omissions of reference.  The effect she produced of representing her
+mother had been produced--and that was just the immense, the
+uncanny part of it--without her having so much as mentioned that
+lady.  She had brought no message, had alluded to no question, had
+only answered his enquiries with hopeless limited propriety.  She
+had invented a way of meeting them--as if he had been a polite
+perfunctory poor relation, of distant degree--that made them almost
+ridiculous in him.  He couldn't moreover on his own side ask much
+without appearing to publish how he had lately lacked news;
+a circumstance of which it was Sarah's profound policy not to betray
+a suspicion.  These things, all the same, he wouldn't breathe to
+Madame de Vionnet--much as they might make him walk up and down.
+And what he didn't say--as well as what SHE didn't, for she had
+also her high decencies--enhanced the effect of his being there
+with her at the end of ten minutes more intimately on the basis of
+saving her than he had yet had occasion to be.  It ended in fact by
+being quite beautiful between them, the number of things they had a
+manifest consciousness of not saying.  He would have liked to turn
+her, critically, to the subject of Mrs. Pocock, but he so stuck to
+the line he felt to be the point of honour and of delicacy that he
+scarce even asked her what her personal impression had been.
+He knew it, for that matter, without putting her to trouble:
+that she wondered how, with such elements, Sarah could still have
+no charm, was one of the principal things she held her tongue about.
+Strether would have been interested in her estimate of the elements--
+indubitably there, some of them, and to be appraised according to
+taste--but he denied himself even the luxury of this diversion.  The
+way Madame de Vionnet affected him to-day was in itself a kind of
+demonstration of the happy employment of gifts.  How could a woman
+think Sarah had charm who struck one as having arrived at it
+herself by such different roads?  On the other hand of course Sarah
+wasn't obliged to have it.  He felt as if somehow Madame de Vionnet
+WAS.  The great question meanwhile was what Chad thought of his
+sister; which was naturally ushered in by that of Sarah's
+apprehension of Chad.  THAT they could talk of, and with a freedom
+purchased by their discretion in other senses.  The difficulty
+however was that they were reduced as yet to conjecture.  He had
+given them in the day or two as little of a lead as Sarah, and
+Madame de Vionnet mentioned that she hadn't seen him since his
+sister's arrival.
+
+"And does that strike you as such an age?"
+
+She met it in all honesty.  "Oh I won't pretend I don't miss him.
+Sometimes I see him every day.  Our friendship's like that.  Make
+what you will of it!" she whimsically smiled; a little flicker of
+the kind, occasional in her, that had more than once moved him to
+wonder what he might best make of HER.  "But he's perfectly right,"
+she hastened to add, "and I wouldn't have him fail in any way at
+present for the world.  I'd sooner not see him for three months.
+I begged him to be beautiful to them, and he fully feels it for
+himself."
+
+Strether turned away under his quick perception; she was so odd a
+mixture of lucidity and mystery.  She fell in at moments with the
+theory about her he most cherished, and she seemed at others to
+blow it into air.  She spoke now as if her art were all an
+innocence, and then again as if her innocence were all an art.
+"Oh he's giving himself up, and he'll do so to the end.  How can he
+but want, now that it's within reach, his full impression?--which is
+much more important, you know, than either yours or mine.  But he's
+just soaking," Strether said as he came back; "he's going in
+conscientiously for a saturation.  I'm bound to say he IS very good."
+
+"Ah," she quietly replied, "to whom do you say it?"  And then more
+quietly still:  "He's capable of anything."
+
+Strether more than reaffirmed--"Oh he's excellent.  I more and more
+like," he insisted, "to see him with them;" though the oddity of
+this tone between them grew sharper for him even while they spoke.
+It placed the young man so before them as the result of her
+interest and the product of her genius, acknowledged so her part in
+the phenomenon and made the phenomenon so rare, that more than ever
+yet he might have been on the very point of asking her for some
+more detailed account of the whole business than he had yet
+received from her.  The occasion almost forced upon him some
+question as to how she had managed and as to the appearance such
+miracles presented from her own singularly close place of survey.
+The moment in fact however passed, giving way to more present
+history, and he continued simply to mark his appreciation of the
+happy truth.  "It's a tremendous comfort to feel how one can trust
+him." And then again while for a little she said nothing--as if
+after all to HER trust there might be a special limit:  "I mean for
+making a good show to them."
+
+"Yes," she thoughtfully returned--"but if they shut their eyes
+to it!"
+
+Strether for an instant had his own thought.  "Well perhaps that
+won't matter!"
+
+"You mean because he probably--do what they will--won't like them?"
+
+"Oh 'do what they will'--!  They won't do much; especially if Sarah
+hasn't more--well, more than one has yet made out--to give."
+
+Madame de Vionnet weighed it.  "Ah she has all her grace!"  It was a
+statement over which, for a little, they could look at each other
+sufficiently straight, and though it produced no protest from
+Strether the effect was somehow as if he had treated it as a joke.
+"She may be persuasive and caressing with him; she may be eloquent
+beyond words.  She may get hold of him," she wound up--"well, as
+neither you nor I have."
+
+"Yes, she MAY"--and now Strether smiled.  "But he has spent all his
+time each day with Jim.  He's still showing Jim round."
+
+She visibly wondered.  "Then how about Jim?"
+
+Strether took a turn before he answered.  "Hasn't he given you Jim?
+Hasn't he before this 'done' him for you?"  He was a little at a
+loss.  "Doesn't he tell you things?"
+
+She hesitated.  "No"--and their eyes once more gave and took.
+"Not as you do.  You somehow make me see them--or at least feel them.
+And I haven't asked too much," she added; "I've of late wanted so
+not to worry him."
+
+"Ah for that, so have I," he said with encouraging assent; so that--
+as if she had answered everything--they were briefly sociable on it.
+It threw him back on his other thought, with which he took another
+turn; stopping again, however, presently with something of a glow.
+"You see Jim's really immense.  I think it will be Jim who'll do it."
+
+She wondered.  "Get hold of him?"
+
+"No--just the other thing.  Counteract Sarah's spell." And he
+showed now, our friend, how far he had worked it out.  "Jim's
+intensely cynical."
+
+"Oh dear Jim!" Madame de Vionnet vaguely smiled.
+
+"Yes, literally--dear Jim!  He's awful.  What HE wants, heaven
+forgive him, is to help us."
+
+"You mean"--she was eager--"help ME?"
+
+"Well, Chad and me in the first place.  But he throws you in too,
+though without as yet seeing you much.  Only, so far as he does see
+you--if you don't mind--he sees you as awful."
+
+"'Awful'?"--she wanted it all.
+
+"A regular bad one--though of course of a tremendously superior kind.
+Dreadful, delightful, irresistible."
+
+"Ah dear Jim!  I should like to know him.  I MUST."
+
+"Yes, naturally.  But will it do?  You may, you know," Strether
+suggested, "disappoint him."
+
+She was droll and humble about it.  "I can but try.  But my
+wickedness then," she went on, "is my recommendation for him?"
+
+"Your wickedness and the charms with which, in such a degree as
+yours, he associates it.  He understands, you see, that Chad and I
+have above all wanted to have a good time, and his view is simple
+and sharp.  Nothing will persuade him--in the light, that is, of my
+behaviour--that I really didn't, quite as much as Chad, come over
+to have one before it was too late.  He wouldn't have expected it of
+me; but men of my age, at Woollett--and especially the least likely
+ones--have been noted as liable to strange outbreaks, belated
+uncanny clutches at the unusual, the ideal.  It's an effect that a
+lifetime of Woollett has quite been observed as having; and I thus
+give it to you, in Jim's view, for what it's worth.  Now his wife
+and his mother-in-law," Strether continued to explain, "have, as in
+honour bound, no patience with such phenomena, late or early--which
+puts Jim, as against his relatives, on the other side.  Besides," he
+added, "I don't think he really wants Chad back.  If Chad doesn't
+come--"
+
+"He'll have"--Madame de Vionnet quite apprehended--"more of the
+free hand?"
+
+"Well, Chad's the bigger man."
+
+"So he'll work now, en dessous, to keep him quiet?"
+
+"No--he won't 'work' at all, and he won't do anything en dessous.
+He's very decent and won't be a traitor in the camp.  But he'll be
+amused with his own little view of our duplicity, he'll sniff up
+what he supposes to be Paris from morning till night, and he'll be,
+as to the rest, for Chad--well, just what he is."
+
+She thought it over.  "A warning?"
+
+He met it almost with glee.  "You ARE as wonderful as everybody
+says!"  And then to explain all he meant:  "I drove him about for his
+first hour, and do you know what--all beautifully unconscious--he
+most put before me?  Why that something like THAT is at bottom, as
+an improvement to his present state, as in fact the real redemption
+of it, what they think it may not be too late to make of our
+friend." With which, as, taking it in, she seemed, in her recurrent
+alarm, bravely to gaze at the possibility, he completed his
+statement.  "But it IS too late.  Thanks to you!"
+
+It drew from her again one of her indefinite reflexions.  "Oh 'me'--
+after all!"
+
+He stood before her so exhilarated by his demonstration that he
+could fairly be jocular.  "Everything's comparative.  You're better
+than THAT."
+
+"You"--she could but answer him--"are better than anything." But
+she had another thought.  "WILL Mrs. Pocock come to me?"
+
+"Oh yes--she'll do that.  As soon, that is, as my friend Waymarsh--
+HER friend now--leaves her leisure."
+
+She showed an interest.  "Is he so much her friend as that?"
+
+"Why, didn't you see it all at the hotel?"
+
+"Oh"--she was amused--"'all' is a good deal to say.  I don't know--
+I forget.  I lost myself in HER."
+
+"You were splendid," Strether returned--"but 'all' isn't a good
+deal to say:  it's only a little.  Yet it's charming so far as it
+goes.  She wants a man to herself."
+
+"And hasn't she got you?"
+
+"Do you think she looked at me--or even at you--as if she had?"
+Strether easily dismissed that irony.  "Every one, you see, must
+strike her as having somebody.  You've got Chad--and Chad has
+got you."
+
+"I see"--she made of it what she could.  "And you've got Maria."
+
+Well, he on his side accepted that.  "I've got Maria.  And Maria has
+got me.  So it goes."
+
+"But Mr. Jim--whom has he got?"
+
+"Oh he has got--or it's as IF he had--the whole place."
+
+"But for Mr. Waymarsh"--she recalled--"isn't Miss Barrace before
+any one else?"
+
+He shook his head.  "Miss Barrace is a raffinee, and her amusement
+won't lose by Mrs. Pocock.  It will gain rather--especially if Sarah
+triumphs and she comes in for a view of it."
+
+"How well you know us!" Madame de Vionnet, at this, frankly sighed.
+
+"No--it seems to me it's we that I know.  I know Sarah--it's perhaps
+on that ground only that my feet are firm.  Waymarsh will take her
+round while Chad takes Jim--and I shall be, I assure you delighted
+for both of them.  Sarah will have had what she requires--she will
+have paid her tribute to the ideal; and he will have done about the
+same.  In Paris it's in the air--so what can one do less?  If there's
+a point that, beyond any other, Sarah wants to make, it's that she
+didn't come out to be narrow.  We shall feel at least that."
+
+"Oh," she sighed, "the quantity we seem likely to 'feel'!  But what
+becomes, in these conditions, of the girl?"
+
+"Of Mamie--if we're all provided?  Ah for that," said Strether,
+"you can trust Chad."
+
+"To be, you mean, all right to her?"
+
+"To pay her every attention as soon as he has polished off Jim.
+He wants what Jim can give him--and what Jim really won't--though he
+has had it all, and more than all, from me.  He wants in short his
+own personal impression, and he'll get it--strong.  But as soon as
+he has got it Mamie won't suffer."
+
+"Oh Mamie mustn't SUFFER!" Madame de Vionnet soothingly emphasised.
+
+But Strether could reassure her.  "Don't fear.  As soon as he has
+done with Jim, Jim will fall to me.  And then you'll see."
+
+It was as if in a moment she saw already; yet she still waited.
+Then "Is she really quite charming?" she asked.
+
+He had got up with his last words and gathered in his hat and gloves.
+"I don't know; I'm watching.  I'm studying the case, as it were--
+and I dare say I shall be able to tell you."
+
+She wondered.  "Is it a case?"
+
+"Yes--I think so.  At any rate I shall see.'
+
+"But haven't you known her before?"
+
+"Yes," he smiled--"but somehow at home she wasn't a case.
+She has become one since." It was as if he made it out for himself.
+"She has become one here."
+
+"So very very soon?"
+
+He measured it, laughing.  "Not sooner than I did."
+
+"And you became one--?"
+
+"Very very soon.  The day I arrived."
+
+Her intelligent eyes showed her thought of it.  "Ah but the day you
+arrived you met Maria.  Whom has Miss Pocock met?"
+
+He paused again, but he brought it out.  "Hasn't she met Chad?"
+
+"Certainly--but not for the first time.  He's an old friend." At
+which Strether had a slow amused significant headshake that made
+her go on:  "You mean that for HER at least he's a new person--
+that she sees him as different?"
+
+"She sees him as different."
+
+"And how does she see him?"
+
+Strether gave it up.  "How can one tell how a deep little girl sees
+a deep young man?"
+
+"Is every one so deep?  Is she too?"
+
+"So it strikes me deeper than I thought.  But wait a little--between
+us we'll make it out.  You'll judge for that matter yourself."
+
+Madame de Vionnet looked for the moment fairly bent on the chance.
+"Then she WILL come with her?--I mean Mamie with Mrs. Pocock?"
+
+"Certainly.  Her curiosity, if nothing else, will in any case work
+that.  But leave it all to Chad."
+
+"Ah," wailed Madame de Vionnet, turning away a little wearily, "the
+things I leave to Chad!"
+
+The tone of it made him look at her with a kindness that showed his
+vision of her suspense.  But he fell back on his confidence.
+"Oh well--trust him.  Trust him all the way." He had indeed no sooner
+so spoken than the queer displacement of his point of view appeared
+again to come up for him in the very sound, which drew from him a
+short laugh, immediately checked.  He became still more advisory.
+"When they do come give them plenty of Miss Jeanne.  Let Mamie see
+her well."
+
+She looked for a moment as if she placed them face to face.
+"For Mamie to hate her?"
+
+He had another of his corrective headshakes.  "Mamie won't.
+Trust THEM."
+
+She looked at him hard, and then as if it were what she must always
+come back to:  "It's you I trust.  But I was sincere," she said, "at
+the hotel.  I did, I do, want my child--"
+
+"Well?"--Strether waited with deference while she appeared to hesitate
+as to how to put it.
+
+"Well, to do what she can for me."
+
+Strether for a little met her eyes on it; after which something
+that might have been unexpected to her came from him.  "Poor little
+duck!"
+
+Not more expected for himself indeed might well have been her echo
+of it.  "Poor little duck!  But she immensely wants herself," she
+said, "to see our friend's cousin."
+
+"Is that what she thinks her?"
+
+"It's what we call the young lady."
+
+He thought again; then with a laugh:  "Well, your daughter will
+help you."
+
+And now at last he took leave of her, as he had been intending for
+five minutes.  But she went part of the way with him, accompanying
+him out of the room and into the next and the next.  Her noble old
+apartment offered a succession of three, the first two of which
+indeed, on entering, smaller than the last, but each with its faded
+and formal air, enlarged the office of the antechamber and enriched
+the sense of approach.  Strether fancied them, liked them, and,
+passing through them with her more slowly now, met a sharp renewal
+of his original impression.  He stopped, he looked back; the whole
+thing made a vista, which he found high melancholy and sweet--full,
+once more, of dim historic shades, of the faint faraway cannon-roar
+of the great Empire.  It was doubtless half the projection of his
+mind, but his mind was a thing that, among old waxed parquets, pale
+shades of pink and green, pseudo-classic candelabra, he had always
+needfully to reckon with.  They could easily make him irrelevant.
+The oddity, the originality, the poetry--he didn't know what to
+call it--of Chad's connexion reaffirmed for him its romantic side.
+"They ought to see this, you know.  They MUST."
+
+"The Pococks?"--she looked about in deprecation; she seemed to see
+gaps he didn't.
+
+"Mamie and Sarah--Mamie in particular."
+
+"My shabby old place?  But THEIR things--!"
+
+"Oh their things!  You were talking of what will do something for
+you--"
+
+"So that it strikes you," she broke in, "that my poor place may?
+Oh," she ruefully mused, "that WOULD be desperate!"
+
+"Do you know what I wish?" he went on.  "I wish Mrs. Newsome herself
+could have a look."
+
+She stared, missing a little his logic.  "It would make a
+difference?"
+
+Her tone was so earnest that as he continued to look about he
+laughed.  "It might!"
+
+"But you've told her, you tell me--"
+
+"All about you?  Yes, a wonderful story.  But there's all the
+indescribable--what one gets only on the spot."
+
+"Thank you!" she charmingly and sadly smiled.
+
+"It's all about me here," he freely continued.  "Mrs. Newsome feels
+things."
+
+But she seemed doomed always to come back to doubt.  "No one feels
+so much as YOU.  No--not any one."
+
+"So much the worse then for every one.  It's very easy."
+
+They were by this time in the antechamber, still alone together, as
+she hadn't rung for a servant.  The antechamber was high and square,
+grave and suggestive too, a little cold and slippery even in
+summer, and with a few old prints that were precious, Strether
+divined, on the walls.  He stood in the middle, slightly lingering,
+vaguely directing his glasses, while, leaning against the door-post
+of the room, she gently pressed her cheek to the side of the
+recess.  "YOU would have been a friend."
+
+"I?"--it startled him a little.
+
+"For the reason you say.  You're not stupid." And then abruptly, as
+if bringing it out were somehow founded on that fact:
+"We're marrying Jeanne."
+
+It affected him on the spot as a move in a game, and he was even
+then not without the sense that that wasn't the way Jeanne should
+be married.  But he quickly showed his interest, though--as quickly
+afterwards struck him--with an absurd confusion of mind.  "'You'?
+You and--a--not Chad?"  Of course it was the child's father who made
+the 'we,' but to the child's father it would have cost him an
+effort to allude.  Yet didn't it seem the next minute that Monsieur
+de Vionnet was after all not in question?--since she had gone on to
+say that it was indeed to Chad she referred and that he had been in
+the whole matter kindness itself.
+
+"If I must tell you all, it is he himself who has put us in the
+way.  I mean in the way of an opportunity that, so far as I can yet
+see, is all I could possibly have dreamed of.  For all the trouble
+Monsieur de Vionnet will ever take!"  It was the first time she had
+spoken to him of her husband, and he couldn't have expressed how
+much more intimate with her it suddenly made him feel.  It wasn't
+much, in truth--there were other things in what she was saying that
+were far more; but it was as if, while they stood there together so
+easily in these cold chambers of the past, the single touch had
+shown the reach of her confidence.  "But our friend," she asked,
+"hasn't then told you?"
+
+"He has told me nothing."
+
+"Well, it has come with rather a rush--all in a very few days; and
+hasn't moreover yet taken a form that permits an announcement.  It's
+only for you--absolutely you alone--that I speak; I so want you to
+know." The sense he had so often had, since the first hour of his
+disembarkment, of being further and further "in," treated him again
+at this moment to another twinge; but in this wonderful way of her
+putting him in there continued to be something exquisitely
+remorseless.  "Monsieur de Vionnet will accept what he MUST accept.
+He has proposed half a dozen things--each one more impossible than
+the other; and he wouldn't have found this if he lives to a hundred.
+Chad found it," she continued with her lighted, faintly flushed,
+her conscious confidential face, "in the quietest way in the world.
+Or rather it found HIM--for everything finds him; I mean finds
+him right.  You'll think we do such things strangely--but at my age,"
+she smiled, "one has to accept one's conditions.  Our young man's people
+had seen her; one of his sisters, a charming woman--we know all
+about them--had observed her somewhere with me.  She had spoken
+to her brother--turned him on; and we were again observed, poor Jeanne
+and I, without our in the least knowing it.  It was at the beginning
+of the winter; it went on for some time; it outlasted our absence; it
+began again on our return; and it luckily seems all right.  The
+young man had met Chad, and he got a friend to approach him--as
+having a decent interest in us.  Mr. Newsome looked well before he
+leaped; he kept beautifully quiet and satisfied himself fully; then
+only he spoke.  It's what has for some time past occupied us.  It
+seems as if it were what would do; really, really all one could
+wish.  There are only two or three points to be settled--they depend
+on her father.  But this time I think we're safe."
+
+Strether, consciously gaping a little, had fairly hung upon her
+lips.  "I hope so with all my heart." And then he permitted himself:
+"Does nothing depend on HER?"
+
+"Ah naturally; everything did.  But she's pleased comme tout.  She
+has been perfectly free; and he--our young friend--is really a
+combination.  I quite adore him."
+
+Strether just made sure.  "You mean your future son-in-law?"
+
+"Future if we all bring it off."
+
+"Ah well," said Strether decorously, "I heartily hope you may."
+There seemed little else for him to say, though her communication
+had the oddest effect on him.  Vaguely and confusedly he was
+troubled by it; feeling as if he had even himself been concerned in
+something deep and dim.  He had allowed for depths, but these were
+greater:  and it was as if, oppressively--indeed absurdly--he was
+responsible for what they had now thrown up to the surface.  It was--
+through something ancient and cold in it--what he would have
+called the real thing.  In short his hostess's news, though he
+couldn't have explained why, was a sensible shock, and his
+oppression a weight he felt he must somehow or other immediately
+get rid of.  There were too many connexions missing to make it
+tolerable he should do anything else.  He was prepared to suffer--
+before his own inner tribunal--for Chad; he was prepared to suffer
+even for Madame de Vionnet.  But he wasn't prepared to suffer for
+the little girl So now having said the proper thing, he wanted to
+get away.  She held him an instant, however, with another appeal.
+
+"Do I seem to you very awful?"
+
+"Awful?  Why so?"  But he called it to himself, even as he spoke, his
+biggest insincerity yet.
+
+"Our arrangements are so different from yours."
+
+"Mine?"  Oh he could dismiss that too!  "I haven't any arrangements."
+
+"Then you must accept mine; all the more that they're excellent.
+They're founded on a vieille sagesse.  There will be much more, if
+all goes well, for you to hear and to know, and everything, believe
+me, for you to like.  Don't be afraid; you'll be satisfied." Thus
+she could talk to him of what, of her innermost life--for that was
+what it came to--he must "accept"; thus she could extraordinarily
+speak as if in such an affair his being satisfied had an
+importance.  It was all a wonder and made the whole case larger.  He
+had struck himself at the hotel, before Sarah and Waymarsh, as
+being in her boat; but where on earth was he now?  This question was
+in the air till her own lips quenched it with another.   "And do you
+suppose HE--who loves her so--would do anything reckless or cruel?"
+
+He wondered what he supposed.  "Do you mean your young man--?"
+
+"I mean yours.  I mean Mr. Newsome." It flashed for Strether the
+next moment a finer light, and the light deepened as she went on.
+"He takes, thank God, the truest tenderest interest in her."
+
+It deepened indeed.  "Oh I'm sure of that!"
+
+"You were talking," she said, "about one's trusting him.  You see
+then how I do."
+
+He waited a moment--it all came.  "I see--I see." He felt he really
+did see.
+
+"He wouldn't hurt her for the world, nor--assuming she marries at
+all--risk anything that might make against her happiness.  And--
+willingly, at least--he would never hurt ME."
+
+Her face, with what he had by this time grasped, told him more than
+her words; whether something had come into it, or whether he only read
+clearer, her whole story--what at least he then took for such--reached
+out to him from it.  With the initiative she now attributed to Chad
+it all made a sense, and this sense--a light, a lead, was what had
+abruptly risen before him.  He wanted, once more, to get off with
+these things; which was at last made easy, a servant having, for
+his assistance, on hearing voices in the hall, just come forward.
+All that Strether had made out was, while the man opened the door
+and impersonally waited, summed up in his last word.  "I don't
+think, you know, Chad will tell me anything."
+
+"No--perhaps not yet."
+
+"And I won't as yet speak to him."
+
+"Ah that's as you'll think best.  You must judge."
+
+She had finally given him her hand, which he held a moment.  "How
+MUCH I have to judge!"
+
+"Everything," said Madame de Vionnet:  a remark that was indeed--
+with the refined disguised suppressed passion of her face--what he
+most carried away.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+So far as a direct approach was concerned Sarah had neglected him,
+for the week now about to end, with a civil consistency of chill
+that, giving him a higher idea of her social resource, threw him
+back on the general reflexion that a woman could always be amazing.
+It indeed helped a little to console him that he felt sure she had
+for the same period also left Chad's curiosity hanging; though on
+the other hand, for his personal relief, Chad could at least go
+through the various motions--and he made them extraordinarily
+numerous--of seeing she had a good time.  There wasn't a motion on
+which, in her presence, poor Strether could so much as venture, and
+all he could do when he was out of it was to walk over for a talk
+with Maria.  He walked over of course much less than usual, but he
+found a special compensation in a certain half-hour during which,
+toward the close of a crowded empty expensive day, his several
+companions seemed to him so disposed of as to give his forms and
+usages a rest.  He had been with them in the morning and had
+nevertheless called on the Pococks in the afternoon; but their
+whole group, he then found, had dispersed after a fashion of which
+it would amuse Miss Gostrey to hear.  He was sorry again, gratefully
+sorry she was so out of it--she who had really put him in; but she
+had fortunately always her appetite for news.  The pure flame of the
+disinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a lamp in a
+Byzantine vault.  It was just now, as happened, that for so fine a
+sense as hers a near view would have begun to pay.  Within three
+days, precisely, the situation on which he was to report had shown
+signs of an equilibrium; the effect of his look in at the hotel was
+to confirm this appearance.  If the equilibrium might only prevail!
+Sarah was out with Waymarsh, Mamie was out with Chad, and Jim was
+out alone.  Later on indeed he himself was booked to Jim, was to
+take him that evening to the Varieties--which Strether was careful
+to pronounce as Jim pronounced them.
+
+Miss Gostrey drank it in.  "What then to-night do the others do?"
+
+"Well, it has been arranged.  Waymarsh takes Sarah to dine at
+Bignons.
+
+She wondered.  "And what do they do after?  They can't come straight
+home."
+
+"No, they can't come straight home--at least Sarah can't.
+It's their secret, but I think I've guessed it." Then as she waited:
+"The circus."
+
+It made her stare a moment longer, then laugh almost to
+extravagance.  "There's no one like you!"
+
+"Like ME?"--he only wanted to understand.
+
+"Like all of you together--like all of us:  Woollett, Milrose and
+their products.  We're abysmal--but may we never be less so!
+Mr. Newsome," she continued, "meanwhile takes Miss Pocock--?"
+
+"Precisely--to the Francais:  to see what you took Waymarsh and me
+to, a family-bill."
+
+"Ah then may Mr. Chad enjoy it as I did!"  But she saw so much in
+things.  "Do they spend their evenings, your young people, like
+that, alone together?"
+
+"Well, they're young people--but they're old friends."
+
+"I see, I see.  And do THEY dine--for a difference--at Brebant's?"
+
+"Oh where they dine is their secret too.  But I've my idea that it
+will be, very quietly, at Chad's own place."
+
+"She'll come to him there alone?"
+
+They looked at each other a moment.  "He has known her from a child.
+Besides," said Strether with emphasis, "Mamie's remarkable.  She's
+splendid."
+
+She wondered.  "Do you mean she expects to bring it off?"
+
+"Getting hold of him?  No--I think not."
+
+"She doesn't want him enough?--or doesn't believe in her power?"
+On which as he said nothing she continued:  "She finds she doesn't
+care for him?"
+
+"No--I think she finds she does.  But that's what I mean by so
+describing her.  It's IF she does that she's splendid.  But we'll
+see," he wound up, "where she comes out."
+
+"You seem to show me sufficiently," Miss Gostrey laughed, "where
+she goes in!  But is her childhood's friend," she asked, "permitting
+himself recklessly to flirt with her?"
+
+"No--not that.  Chad's also splendid.  They're ALL splendid!" he
+declared with a sudden strange sound of wistfulness and envy.
+"They're at least HAPPY."
+
+"Happy?"--it appeared, with their various difficulties, to surprise
+her.
+
+"Well--I seem to myself among them the only one who isn't."
+
+She demurred.  "With your constant tribute to the ideal?"
+
+He had a laugh at his tribute to the ideal, but he explained after
+a moment his impression.  "I mean they're living.  They're rushing
+about.  I've already had my rushing.  I'm waiting."
+
+"But aren't you," she asked by way of cheer, "waiting with ME?"
+
+He looked at her in all kindness.  "Yes--if it weren't for that!"
+
+"And you help me to wait," she said.  "However," she went on, "I've
+really something for you that will help you to wait and which you
+shall have in a minute.  Only there's something more I want from you
+first.  I revel in Sarah."
+
+"So do I.  If it weren't," he again amusedly sighed, "for THAT--!"
+
+"Well, you owe more to women than any man I ever saw.  We do seem to
+keep you going.  Yet Sarah, as I see her, must be great,"
+
+"She IS "Strether fully assented:  "great!  Whatever happens, she
+won't, with these unforgettable days, have lived in vain."
+
+Miss Gostrey had a pause.  "You mean she has fallen in love?"
+
+"I mean she wonders if she hasn't--and it serves all her purpose."
+
+"It has indeed," Maria laughed, "served women's purposes before!"
+
+"Yes--for giving in.  But I doubt if the idea--as an idea--has ever
+up to now answered so well for holding out.  That's HER tribute to
+the ideal--we each have our own.  It's her romance--and it seems to
+me better on the whole than mine.  To have it in Paris too," he
+explained--"on this classic ground, in this charged infectious air,
+with so sudden an intensity:  well, it's more than she expected.  She
+has had in short to recognise the breaking out for her of a real
+affinity--and with everything to enhance the drama."
+
+Miss Gostrey followed.  "Jim for instance?"
+
+"Jim.  Jim hugely enhances.  Jim was made to enhance.  And then
+Mr. Waymarsh.  It's the crowning touch--it supplies the colour.
+He's positively separated."
+
+"And she herself unfortunately isn't--that supplies the colour
+too." Miss Gostrey was all there.  But somehow--!  "Is HE in love?"
+
+Strether looked at her a long time; then looked all about the room;
+then came a little nearer.  "Will you never tell any one in the
+world as long as ever you live?"
+
+"Never." It was charming.
+
+"He thinks Sarah really is.  But he has no fear," Strether hastened
+to add.
+
+"Of her being affected by it?"
+
+"Of HIS being.  He likes it, but he knows she can hold out.  He's
+helping her, he's floating her over, by kindness."
+
+Maria rather funnily considered it.  "Floating her over in
+champagne?  The kindness of dining her, nose to nose, at the hour
+when all Paris is crowding to profane delights, and in the--well,
+in the great temple, as one hears of it, of pleasure?"
+
+"That's just IT, for both of them," Strether insisted--"and all of
+a supreme innocence.  The Parisian place, the feverish hour, the
+
+putting before her of a hundred francs' worth of food and drink,
+which they'll scarcely touch--all that's the dear man's own
+romance; the expensive kind, expensive in francs and centimes, in
+which he abounds.  And the circus afterwards--which is cheaper, but
+which he'll find some means of making as dear as possible--that's
+also HIS tribute to the ideal.  It does for him.  He'll see her
+through.  They won't talk of anything worse than you and me."
+
+"Well, we're bad enough perhaps, thank heaven," she laughed.  "to
+upset them!  Mr. Waymarsh at any rate is a hideous old coquette."
+And the next moment she had dropped everything for a different
+pursuit.  "What you don't appear to know is that Jeanne de Vionnet
+has become engaged.  She's to marry--it has been definitely
+arranged--young Monsieur de Montbron."
+
+He fairly blushed.  "Then--if you know it--it's 'out'?"
+
+"Don't I often know things that are NOT out?  However," she said,
+"this will be out to-morrow.  But I see I've counted too much on
+your possible ignorance.  You've been before me, and I don't make
+you jump as I hoped."
+
+He gave a gasp at her insight.  "You never fail!  I've HAD my jump.
+I had it when I first heard."
+
+"Then if you knew why didn't you tell me as soon as you came in?"
+
+"Because I had it from her as a thing not yet to be spoken of."
+
+Miss Gostrey wondered.  "From Madame de Vionnet herself?"
+
+"As a probability--not quite a certainty:  a good cause in which
+Chad has been working.  So I've waited."
+
+"You need wait no longer," she returned.  "It reached me yesterday--
+roundabout and accidental, but by a person who had had it from one
+of the young man's own people--as a thing quite settled.  I was only
+keeping it for you."
+
+"You thought Chad wouldn't have told me?"
+
+She hesitated.  "Well, if he hasn't--"
+
+"He hasn't.  And yet the thing appears to have been practically his
+doing.  So there we are."
+
+"There we are!" Maria candidly echoed.
+
+"That's why I jumped.  I jumped," he continued to explain, "because
+it means, this disposition of the daughter, that there's now
+nothing else:  nothing else but him and the mother."
+
+"Still--it simplifies."
+
+"It simplifies"--he fully concurred.  "But that's precisely where we
+are.  It marks a stage in his relation.  The act is his answer to
+Mrs. Newsome's demonstration."
+
+"It tells," Maria asked, "the worst?"
+
+"The worst."
+
+"But is the worst what he wants Sarah to know?"
+
+"He doesn't care for Sarah."
+
+At which Miss Gostrey's eyebrows went up.  "You mean she has already
+dished herself?"
+
+Strether took a turn about; he had thought it out again and again
+before this, to the end; but the vista seemed each time longer.  "He
+wants his good friend to know the best.  I mean the measure of his
+attachment.  She asked for a sign, and he thought of that one.  There
+it is."
+
+"A concession to her jealousy?"
+
+Strether pulled up.  "Yes--call it that.  Make it lurid--for that
+makes my problem richer."
+
+"Certainly, let us have it lurid--for I quite agree with you that
+we want none of our problems poor.  But let us also have it clear.
+Can he, in the midst of such a preoccupation, or on the heels of
+it, have seriously cared for Jeanne?--cared, I mean, as a young man
+at liberty would have cared?"
+
+Well, Strether had mastered it.  "I think he can have thought it
+would be charming if he COULD care.  It would be nicer."
+
+"Nicer than being tied up to Marie?"
+
+"Yes--than the discomfort of an attachment to a person he can never
+hope, short of a catastrophe, to marry.  And he was quite right,"
+said Strether.  "It would certainly have been nicer.  Even when a
+thing's already nice there mostly is some other thing that would
+have been nicer--or as to which we wonder if it wouldn't.  But his
+question was all the same a dream.  He COULDn't care in that way.  He
+IS tied up to Marie.  The relation is too special and has gone too
+far.  It's the very basis, and his recent lively contribution toward
+establishing Jeanne in life has been his definite and final
+acknowledgement to Madame de Vionnet that he has ceased squirming.
+I doubt meanwhile," he went on, "if Sarah has at all directly
+attacked him."
+
+His companion brooded.  "But won't he wish for his own satisfaction
+to make his ground good to her?"
+
+"No--he'll leave it to me, he'll leave everything to me.  I 'sort
+of' feel"--he worked it out--"that the whole thing will come upon
+me.  Yes, I shall have every inch and every ounce of it.  I shall be
+USED for it--!"  And Strether lost himself in the prospect.  Then he
+fancifully expressed the issue.  "To the last drop of my blood."
+
+Maria, however, roundly protested.  "Ah you'll please keep a drop
+for ME.  I shall have a use for it!"--which she didn't however
+follow up.  She had come back the next moment to another matter.
+"Mrs. Pocock, with her brother, is trusting only to her general
+charm?"
+
+"So it would seem."
+
+"And the charm's not working?"
+
+Well, Strether put it otherwise, "She's sounding the note of home--
+which is the very best thing she can do."
+
+"The best for Madame de Vionnet?"
+
+"The best for home itself.  The natural one; the right one."
+
+"Right," Maria asked, "when it fails?"
+
+Strether had a pause.  "The difficulty's Jim.  Jim's the note of
+home."
+
+She debated.  "Ah surely not the note of Mrs. Newsome."
+
+But he had it all.  "The note of the home for which Mrs. Newsome
+wants him--the home of the business.  Jim stands, with his little
+legs apart, at the door of THAT tent; and Jim is, frankly speaking,
+extremely awful."
+
+Maria stared.  "And you in, you poor thing, for your evening with
+him?"
+
+"Oh he's all right for ME!" Strether laughed.  "Any one's good
+enough for ME.  But Sarah shouldn't, all the same, have brought him.
+She doesn't appreciate him."
+
+His friend was amused with this statement of it.  "Doesn't know, you
+mean, how bad he is?"
+
+Strether shook his head with decision.  "Not really."
+
+She wondered.  "Then doesn't Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+It made him frankly do the same.  "Well, no--since you ask me."
+
+Maria rubbed it in.  "Not really either?"
+
+"Not at all.  She rates him rather high." With which indeed,
+immediately, he took himself up.  "Well, he IS good too, in his way.
+It depends on what you want him for."
+
+Miss Gostrey, however, wouldn't let it depend on anything--wouldn't
+have it, and wouldn't want him, at any price.  "It suits my book,"
+she said, "that he should be impossible; and it suits it still
+better," she more imaginatively added, "that Mrs. Newsome doesn't
+know he is."
+
+Strether, in consequence, had to take it from her, but he fell back
+on something else.  "I'll tell you who does really know."
+
+"Mr. Waymarsh?  Never!"
+
+"Never indeed.  I'm not ALWAYS thinking of Mr. Waymarsh; in fact I
+find now I never am." Then he mentioned the person as if there were
+a good deal in it.  "Mamie."
+
+"His own sister?"  Oddly enough it but let her down.  "What good will
+that do?"
+
+"None perhaps.  But there--as usual--we are!"
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+There they were yet again, accordingly, for two days more; when
+Strether, on being, at Mrs. Pocock's hotel, ushered into that
+lady's salon, found himself at first assuming a mistake on the part
+of the servant who had introduced him and retired.  The occupants
+hadn't come in, for the room looked empty as only a room can look
+in Paris, of a fine afternoon when the faint murmur of the huge
+collective life, carried on out of doors, strays among scattered
+objects even as a summer air idles in a lonely garden.  Our friend
+looked about and hesitated; observed, on the evidence of a table
+charged with purchases and other matters, that Sarah had become
+possessed--by no aid from HIM--of the last number of the
+salmon-coloured Revue; noted further that Mamie appeared to have
+received a present of Fromentin's "Maitres d'Autrefois" from Chad,
+who had written her name on the cover; and pulled up at the sight of
+a heavy letter addressed in a hand he knew.  This letter, forwarded
+by a banker and arriving in Mrs. Pocock's absence, had been placed
+in evidence, and it drew from the fact of its being unopened a sudden
+queer power to intensify the reach of its author.  It brought home
+to him the scale on which Mrs. Newsome--for she had been copious
+indeed this time--was writing to her daughter while she kept HIM in
+durance; and it had altogether such an effect upon him as made him
+for a few minutes stand still and breathe low.  In his own room, at
+his own hotel, he had dozens of well-filled envelopes superscribed
+in that character; and there was actually something in the renewal
+of his interrupted vision of the character that played straight
+into the so frequent question of whether he weren't already
+disinherited beyond appeal.  It was such an assurance as the sharp
+downstrokes of her pen hadn't yet had occasion to give him; but
+they somehow at the present crisis stood for a probable
+absoluteness in any decree of the writer.  He looked at Sarah's name
+and address, in short, as if he had been looking hard into her
+mother's face, and then turned from it as if the face had declined
+to relax.  But since it was in a manner as if Mrs. Newsome were
+thereby all the more, instead of the less, in the room, and were
+conscious, sharply and sorely conscious, of himself, so he felt
+both held and hushed, summoned to stay at least and take his
+punishment.  By staying, accordingly, he took it--creeping softly
+and vaguely about and waiting for Sarah to come in.  She WOULD come
+in if he stayed long enough, and he had now more than ever the
+sense of her success in leaving him a prey to anxiety.  It wasn't to
+be denied that she had had a happy instinct, from the point of view
+of Woollett, in placing him thus at the mercy of her own initiative.
+It was very well to try to say he didn't care--that she might
+break ground when she would, might never break it at all if she
+wouldn't, and that he had no confession whatever to wait upon her
+with:  he breathed from day to day an air that damnably required
+clearing, and there were moments when he quite ached to precipitate
+that process.  He couldn't doubt that, should she only oblige him by
+surprising him just as he then was, a clarifying scene of some sort
+would result from the concussion.
+
+He humbly circulated in this spirit till he suddenly had a fresh
+arrest.  Both the windows of the room stood open to the balcony, but
+it was only now that, in the glass of the leaf of one of them,
+folded back, he caught a reflexion quickly recognised as the colour
+of a lady's dress.  Somebody had been then all the while on the
+balcony, and the person, whoever it might be, was so placed between
+the windows as to be hidden from him; while on the other hand the
+many sounds of the street had covered his own entrance and
+movements.  If the person were Sarah he might on the spot therefore
+be served to his taste.  He might lead her by a move or two up to
+the remedy for his vain tension; as to which, should he get nothing
+else from it, he would at least have the relief of pulling down the
+roof on their heads.  There was fortunately no one at hand to
+observe--in respect to his valour--that even on this completed
+reasoning he still hung fire.  He had been waiting for Mrs. Pocock
+and the sound of the oracle; but he had to gird himself afresh--
+which he did in the embrasure of the window, neither advancing nor
+retreating--before provoking the revelation.  It was apparently for
+Sarah to come more into view; he was in that case there at her
+service.  She did however, as meanwhile happened, come more into
+view; only she luckily came at the last minute as a contradiction
+of Sarah.  The occupant of the balcony was after all quite another
+person, a person presented, on a second look, by a charming back
+and a slight shift of her position, as beautiful brilliant
+unconscious Mamie--Mamie alone at home, Mamie passing her time in
+her own innocent way, Mamie in short rather shabbily used, but
+Mamie absorbed interested and interesting.  With her arms on the
+balustrade and her attention dropped to the street she allowed
+Strether to watch her, to consider several things, without her
+turning round.
+
+But the oddity was that when he HAD so watched and considered he
+simply stepped back into the room without following up his
+advantage.  He revolved there again for several minutes, quite as
+with something new to think of and as if the bearings of the
+possibility of Sarah had been superseded.  For frankly, yes, it HAD
+bearings thus to find the girl in solitary possession.  There was
+something in it that touched him to a point not to have been
+reckoned beforehand, something that softly but quite pressingly
+spoke to him, and that spoke the more each time he paused again at
+the edge of the balcony and saw her still unaware.  Her companions
+were plainly scattered; Sarah would be off somewhere with Waymarsh
+and Chad off somewhere with Jim.  Strether didn't at all mentally
+impute to Chad that he was with his "good friend"; he gave him the
+benefit of supposing him involved in appearances that, had he had
+to describe them--for instance to Maria--he would have conveniently
+qualified as more subtle.  It came to him indeed the next thing that
+there was perhaps almost an excess of refinement in having left
+Mamie in such weather up there alone; however she might in fact
+have extemporised, under the charm of the Rue de Rivoli, a little
+makeshift Paris of wonder arid fancy.  Our friend in any case now
+recognised--and it was as if at the recognition Mrs. Newsome's
+fixed intensity had suddenly, with a deep audible gasp, grown thin
+and vague--that day after day he had been conscious in respect to
+his young lady of something odd and ambiguous, yet something into
+which he could at last read a meaning.  It had been at the most,
+this mystery, an obsession--oh an obsession agreeable; and it had
+just now fallen into its place as at the touch of a spring.  It had
+represented the possibility between them of some communication
+baffled by accident and delay--the possibility even of some
+relation as yet unacknowledged.
+
+There was always their old relation, the fruit of the Woollett
+years; but that--and it was what was strangest--had nothing
+whatever in common with what was now in the air.  As a child, as a
+"bud," and then again as a flower of expansion, Mamie had bloomed
+for him, freely, in the almost incessantly open doorways of home;
+where he remembered her as first very forward, as then very
+backward--for he had carried on at one period, in Mrs. Newsome's
+parlours (oh Mrs. Newsome's phases and his own!) a course of
+English Literature re-enforced by exams and teas--and once more,
+finally, as very much in advance.  But he had kept no great sense of
+points of contact; it not being in the nature of things at Woollett
+that the freshest of the buds should find herself in the same
+basket with the most withered of the winter apples.  The child had
+given sharpness, above all, to his sense of the flight of time; it
+was but the day before yesterday that he had tripped up on her
+hoop, yet his experience of remarkable women--destined, it would
+seem, remarkably to grow--felt itself ready this afternoon, quite
+braced itself, to include her.  She had in fine more to say to him
+than he had ever dreamed the pretty girl of the moment COULD have;
+and the proof of the circumstance was that, visibly, unmistakeably,
+she had been able to say it to no one else.  It was something she
+could mention neither to her brother, to her sister-in-law nor to
+Chad; though he could just imagine that had she still been at home
+she might have brought it out, as a supreme tribute to age,
+authority and attitude, for Mrs. Newsome.  It was moreover something
+in which they all took an interest; the strength of their interest
+was in truth just the reason of her prudence.  All this then, for
+five minutes, was vivid to Strether, and it put before him that,
+poor child, she had now but her prudence to amuse her.  That, for a
+pretty girl in Paris, struck him, with a rush, as a sorry state; so
+that under the impression he went out to her with a step as
+hypocritically alert, he was well aware, as if he had just come
+into the room.  She turned with a start at his voice; preoccupied
+with him though she might be, she was just a scrap disappointed.
+"Oh I thought you were Mr. Bilham!"
+
+The remark had been at first surprising and our friend's private
+thought, under the influence of it, temporarily blighted; yet we
+are able to add that he presently recovered his inward tone and
+that many a fresh flower of fancy was to bloom in the same air.
+Little Bilham--since little Bilham was, somewhat incongruously,
+expected--appeared behindhand; a circumstance by which Strether was
+to profit.  They came back into the room together after a little,
+the couple on the balcony, and amid its crimson-and-gold elegance,
+with the others still absent, Strether passed forty minutes that he
+appraised even at the time as far, in the whole queer connexion,
+from his idlest.  Yes indeed, since he had the other day so agreed
+with Maria about the inspiration of the lurid, here was something
+for his problem that surely didn't make it shrink and that was
+floated in upon him as part of a sudden flood.  He was doubtless not
+to know till afterwards, on turning them over in thought, of how
+many elements his impression was composed; but he none the less
+felt, as he sat with the charming girl, the signal growth of a
+confidence.  For she WAS charming, when all was said--and none the
+less so for the visible habit and practice of freedom and fluency.
+She was charming, he was aware, in spite of the fact that if he
+hadn't found her so he would have found her something he should
+have been in peril of expressing as "funny." Yes, she was funny,
+wonderful Mamie, and without dreaming it; she was bland, she was
+bridal--with never, that he could make out as yet, a bridegroom to
+support it; she was handsome and portly and easy and chatty, soft
+and sweet and almost disconcertingly reassuring.  She was dressed,
+if we might so far discriminate, less as a young lady than as an
+old one--had an old one been supposable to Strether as so committed
+to vanity; the complexities of her hair missed moreover also the
+looseness of youth; and she had a mature manner of bending a
+little, as to encourage and reward, while she held neatly together
+in front of her a pair of strikingly polished hands:  the
+combination of all of which kept up about her the glamour of her
+"receiving," placed her again perpetually between the windows and
+within sound of the ice-cream plates, suggested the enumeration of
+all the names, all the Mr. Brookses and Mr. Snookses, gregarious
+specimens of a single type.  she was happy to "meet." But if all
+this was where she was funny, and if what was funnier than the rest
+was the contrast between her beautiful benevolent patronage--such a
+hint of the polysyllabic as might make her something of a bore
+toward middle age--and her rather flat little voice, the voice,
+naturally, unaffectedly yet, of a girl of fifteen; so Strether,
+none the less, at the end of ten minutes, felt in her a quiet
+dignity that pulled things bravely together.  If quiet dignity,
+almost more than matronly, with voluminous, too voluminous clothes,
+was the effect she proposed to produce, that was an ideal one could
+like in her when once one had got into relation.  The great thing
+now for her visitor was that this was exactly what he had done; it
+made so extraordinary a mixture of the brief and crowded hour.  It
+was the mark of a relation that he had begun so quickly to find
+himself sure she was, of all people, as might have been said, on
+the side and of the party of Mrs. Newsome's original ambassador.
+She was in HIS interest and not in Sarah's, and some sign of that
+was precisely what he had been feeling in her, these last days, as
+imminent.  Finally placed, in Paris, in immediate presence of the
+situation and of the hero of it--by whom Strether was incapable of
+meaning any one but Chad--she had accomplished, and really in a
+manner all unexpected to herself, a change of base; deep still
+things had come to pass within her, and by the time she had grown
+sure of them Strether had become aware of the little drama.  When
+she knew where she was, in short, he had made it out; and he made
+it out at present still better; though with never a direct word
+passing between them all the while on the subject of his own
+predicament.  There had been at first, as he sat there with her, a
+moment during which he wondered if she meant to break ground in
+respect to his prime undertaking.  That door stood so strangely ajar
+that he was half-prepared to be conscious, at any juncture, of her
+having, of any one's having, quite bounced in.  But, friendly,
+familiar, light of touch and happy of tact, she exquisitely stayed
+out; so that it was for all the world as if to show she could deal
+with him without being reduced to--well, scarcely anything.
+
+It fully came up for them then, by means of their talking of
+everything BUT Chad, that Mamie, unlike Sarah, unlike Jim, knew
+perfectly what had become of him.  It fully came up that she had
+taken to the last fraction of an inch the measure of the change in
+him, and that she wanted Strether to know what a secret she
+proposed to make of it.  They talked most conveniently--as if they
+had had no chance yet--about Woollett; and that had virtually the
+effect of their keeping the secret more close.  The hour took on for
+Strether, little by little, a queer sad sweetness of quality, he
+had such a revulsion in Mamie's favour and on behalf of her social
+value as might have come from remorse at some early injustice.  She
+made him, as under the breath of some vague western whiff, homesick
+and freshly restless; he could really for the time have fancied
+himself stranded with her on a far shore, during an ominous calm,
+in a quaint community of shipwreck.  Their little interview was like
+a picnic on a coral strand; they passed each other, with melancholy
+smiles and looks sufficiently allusive, such cupfuls of water as
+they had saved.  Especially sharp in Strether meanwhile was the
+conviction that his companion really knew, as we have hinted, where
+she had come out.  It was at a very particular place--only THAT she
+would never tell him; it would be above all what he should have to
+puzzle for himself.  This was what he hoped for, because his interest
+in the girl wouldn't be complete without it.  No more would the
+appreciation to which she was entitled--so assured was he that
+the more he saw of her process the more he should see of her pride.
+She saw, herself, everything; but she knew what she didn't want,
+and that it was that had helped her.  What didn't she want?--there
+was a pleasure lost for her old friend in not yet knowing, as there
+would doubtless be a thrill in getting a glimpse.  Gently and
+sociably she kept that dark to him, and it was as if she soothed
+and beguiled him in other ways to make up for it.  She came out with
+her impression of Madame de Vionnet--of whom she had "heard so
+much"; she came out with her impression of Jeanne, whom she had
+been "dying to see":  she brought it out with a blandness by which
+her auditor was really stirred that she had been with Sarah early
+that very afternoon, and after dreadful delays caused by all sorts
+of things, mainly, eternally, by the purchase of clothes--clothes
+that unfortunately wouldn't be themselves eternal--to call in the
+Rue de Bellechasse.
+
+At the sound of these names Strether almost blushed to feel that he
+couldn't have sounded them first--and yet couldn't either have
+justified his squeamishness.  Mamie made them easy as he couldn't
+have begun to do, and yet it could only have cost her more than he
+should ever have had to spend.  It was as friends of Chad's, friends
+special, distinguished, desirable, enviable, that she spoke of
+them, and she beautifully carried it off that much as she had heard
+of them--though she didn't say how or where, which was a touch of
+her own--she had found them beyond her supposition.  She abounded in
+praise of them, and after the manner of Woollett--which made the
+manner of Woollett a loveable thing again to Strether.  He had never
+so felt the true inwardness of it as when his blooming companion
+pronounced the elder of the ladies of the Rue de Bellechasse too
+fascinating for words and declared of the younger that she was
+perfectly ideal, a real little monster of charm.  "Nothing," she said
+of Jeanne, "ought ever to happen to her--she's so awfully right as
+she is.  Another touch will spoil her--so she oughtn't to BE touched."
+
+"Ah but things, here in Paris," Strether observed, "do happen to
+little girls." And then for the joke's and the occasion's sake:
+"Haven't you found that yourself?"
+
+"That things happen--?  Oh I'm not a little girl.  I'm a big
+battered blowsy one.  I don't care," Mamie laughed, "WHAT happens."
+
+Strether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn't happen that
+he should give her the pleasure of learning that he found her nicer
+than he had really dreamed--a pause that ended when he had said to
+himself that, so far as it at all mattered for her, she had in fact
+perhaps already made this out.  He risked accordingly a different
+question--though conscious, as soon as he had spoken, that he
+seemed to place it in relation to her last speech.  "But that
+Mademoiselle de Vionnet is to be married--I suppose you've heard of
+THAT."
+For all, he then found, he need fear!  "Dear, yes; the gentleman
+was there:  Monsieur de Montbron, whom Madame de Vionnet
+presented to us."
+
+"And was he nice?"
+
+Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner.  "Any
+man's nice when he's in love."
+
+It made Strether laugh.  "But is Monsieur de Montbron in love--
+already--with YOU?"
+
+"Oh that's not necessary--it's so much better he should be so with
+HER:  which, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for
+myself.  He's perfectly gone--and I couldn't have borne it for her
+if he hadn't been.  She's just too sweet."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "And through being in love too?"
+
+On which with a smile that struck him as wonderful Mamie had a
+wonderful answer.  "She doesn't know if she is or not."
+
+It made him again laugh out.  "Oh but YOU do!"
+
+She was willing to take it that way.  "Oh yes, I know everything."
+And as she sat there rubbing her polished hands and making the best
+of it--only holding her elbows perhaps a little too much out--the
+momentary effect for Strether was that every one else, in all their
+affair, seemed stupid.
+
+"Know that poor little Jeanne doesn't know what's the matter with
+her?"
+
+It was as near as they came to saying that she was probably in love
+with Chad; but it was quite near enough for what Strether wanted;
+which was to be confirmed in his certitude that, whether in love or
+not, she appealed to something large and easy in the girl before
+him.  Mamie would be fat, too fat, at thirty; but she would always
+be the person who, at the present sharp hour, had been
+disinterestedly tender.  "If I see a little more of her, as I hope
+I shall, I think she'll like me enough--for she seemed to like me
+to-day--to want me to tell her."
+
+"And SHALL you?"
+
+"Perfectly.  I shall tell her the matter with her is that she wants
+only too much to do right.  To do right for her, naturally," said
+Mamie, "is to please."
+
+"Her mother, do you mean?"
+
+"Her mother first."
+
+Strether waited.  "And then?"
+
+"Well, 'then'--Mr. Newsome."
+
+There was something really grand for him in the serenity of this
+reference.  "And last only Monsieur de Montbron?"
+
+"Last only"--she good-humouredly kept it up.
+
+Strether considered.  "So that every one after all then will be
+suited?"
+
+She had one of her few hesitations, but it was a question only of a
+moment; and it was her nearest approach to being explicit with him
+about what was between them.  "I think I can speak for myself.  I
+shall be."
+
+It said indeed so much, told such a story of her being ready to
+help him, so committed to him that truth, in short, for such use as
+he might make of it toward those ends of his own with which,
+patiently and trustfully, she had nothing to do--it so fully
+achieved all this that he appeared to himself simply to meet it in
+its own spirit by the last frankness of admiration.  Admiration was
+of itself almost accusatory, but nothing less would serve to show
+her how nearly he understood.  He put out his hand for good-bye
+with a "Splendid, splendid, splendid!"  And he left her, in her
+splendour, still waiting for little Bilham.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Tenth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Strether occupied beside little Bilham, three evenings after his
+interview with Mamie Pocock, the same deep divan they had enjoyed
+together on the first occasion of our friend's meeting Madame de
+Vionnet and her daughter in the apartment of the Boulevard
+Malesherbes, where his position affirmed itself again as ministering
+to an easy exchange of impressions.  The present evening had a
+different stamp; if the company was much more numerous, so,
+inevitably, were the ideas set in motion.  It was on the other
+hand, however, now strongly marked that the talkers moved,
+in respect to such matters, round an inner, a protected circle.
+They knew at any rate what really concerned them to-night, and
+Strether had begun by keeping his companion close to it.
+Only a few of Chad's guests had dined--that is fifteen or twenty,
+a few compared with the large concourse offered to sight by eleven
+o'clock; but number and mass, quantity and quality, light,
+fragrance, sound, the overflow of hospitality meeting the high tide
+of response, had all from the first pressed upon Strether's
+consciousness, and he felt himself somehow part and parcel of the
+most festive scene, as the term was, in which he had ever in his
+life been engaged.  He had perhaps seen, on Fourths of July and on
+dear old domestic Commencements, more people assembled, but he had
+never seen so many in proportion to the space, or had at all events
+never known so great a promiscuity to show so markedly as picked.
+Numerous as was the company, it had still been made so by
+selection, and what was above all rare for Strether was that, by no
+fault of his own, he was in the secret of the principle that had
+worked.  He hadn't enquired, he had averted his head, but Chad had
+put him a pair of questions that themselves smoothed the ground.
+He hadn't answered the questions, he had replied that they were
+the young man's own affair; and he had then seen perfectly that the
+latter's direction was already settled.
+
+Chad had applied for counsel only by way of intimating that he knew
+what to do; and he had clearly never known it better than in now
+presenting to his sister the whole circle of his society.  This was
+all in the sense and the spirit of the note struck by him on that
+lady's arrival; he had taken at the station itself a line that led
+him without a break, and that enabled him to lead the Pococks--
+though dazed a little, no doubt, breathless, no doubt, and
+bewildered--to the uttermost end of the passage accepted by them
+perforce as pleasant.  He had made it for them violently pleasant
+and mercilessly full; the upshot of which was, to Strether's
+vision, that they had come all the way without discovering it to be
+really no passage at all.  It was a brave blind alley, where to
+pass was impossible and where, unless they stuck fast, they would
+have--which was always awkward--publicly to back out.  They were
+touching bottom assuredly tonight; the whole scene represented the
+terminus of the cul-de-sac.  So could things go when there was a
+hand to keep them consistent--a hand that pulled the wire with a
+skill at which the elder man more and more marvelled.  The elder
+man felt responsible, but he also felt successful, since what had
+taken place was simply the issue of his own contention, six weeks
+before, that they properly should wait to see what their friends
+would have really to say.  He had determined Chad to wait, he had
+determined him to see; he was therefore not to quarrel with the
+time given up to the business.  As much as ever, accordingly, now
+that a fortnight had elapsed, the situation created for Sarah, and
+against which she had raised no protest, was that of her having
+accommodated herself to her adventure as to a pleasure-party
+surrendered perhaps even somewhat in excess to bustle and to
+"pace." If her brother had been at any point the least bit open to
+criticism it might have been on the ground of his spicing the
+draught too highly and pouring the cup too full.  Frankly treating
+the whole occasion of the presence of his relatives as an
+opportunity for amusement, he left it, no doubt, but scant margin
+as an opportunity for anything else.  He suggested, invented,
+abounded--yet all the while with the loosest easiest rein.
+Strether, during his own weeks, had gained a sense of knowing
+Paris; but he saw it afresh, and with fresh emotion, in the form of
+the knowledge offered to his colleague.
+
+A thousand unuttered thoughts hummed for him in the air of these
+observations; not the least frequent of which was that Sarah might
+well of a truth not quite know whither she was drifting.  She was
+in no position not to appear to expect that Chad should treat her
+handsomely; yet she struck our friend as privately stiffening a
+little each time she missed the chance of marking the great nuance.
+The great nuance was in brief that of course her brother must treat
+her handsomely--she should like to see him not; but that treating
+her handsomely, none the less, wasn't all in all--treating her
+handsomely buttered no parsnips; and that in fine there were
+moments when she felt the fixed eyes of their admirable absent
+mother fairly screw into the flat of her back.  Strether, watching,
+after his habit, and overscoring with thought, positively had
+moments of his own in which he found himself sorry for her--
+occasions on which she affected him as a person seated in a runaway
+vehicle and turning over the question of a possible jump.  WOULD
+she jump, could she, would THAT be a safe placed--this question, at
+such instants, sat for him in her lapse into pallor, her tight
+lips, her conscious eyes.  It came back to the main point at issue:
+would she be, after all, to be squared?  He believed on the whole
+she would jump; yet his alternations on this subject were the more
+especial stuff of his suspense.  One thing remained well before
+him--a conviction that was in fact to gain sharpness from the
+impressions of this evening:  that if she SHOULD gather in her
+skirts, close her eyes and quit the carriage while in motion, he
+would promptly enough become aware.  She would alight from her
+headlong course more or less directly upon him; it would be
+appointed to him, unquestionably, to receive her entire weight.
+Signs and portents of the experience thus in reserve for him had as
+it happened, multiplied even through the dazzle of Chad's party.
+It was partly under the nervous consciousness of such a prospect
+that, leaving almost every one in the two other rooms, leaving
+those of the guests already known to him as well as a mass of
+brilliant strangers of both sexes and of several varieties of
+speech, he had desired five quiet minutes with little Bilham, whom
+he always found soothing and even a little inspiring, and to whom
+he had actually moreover something distinct and important to say.
+
+He had felt of old--for it already seemed long ago--rather
+humiliated at discovering he could learn in talk with a personage
+so much his junior the lesson of a certain moral ease; but he had
+now got used to that--whether or no the mixture of the fact with
+other humiliations had made it indistinct, whether or no directly
+from little Bilham's example, the example of his being contentedly
+just the obscure and acute little Bilham he was.  It worked so for
+him, Strether seemed to see; and our friend had at private hours a
+wan smile over the fact that he himself, after so many more years,
+was still in search of something that would work.  However, as we
+have said, it worked just now for them equally to have found a
+corner a little apart.  What particularly kept it apart was the
+circumstance that the music in the salon was admirable, with two or
+three such singers as it was a privilege to hear in private.  Their
+presence gave a distinction to Chad's entertainment, and the
+interest of calculating their effect on Sarah was actually so sharp
+as to be almost painful.  Unmistakeably, in her single person, the
+motive of the composition and dressed in a splendour of crimson
+which affected Strether as the sound of a fall through a skylight,
+she would now be in the forefront of the listening circle and
+committed by it up to her eyes.  Those eyes during the wonderful
+dinner itself he hadn't once met; having confessedly--perhaps a
+little pusillanimously--arranged with Chad that he should be on the
+same side of the table.  But there was no use in having arrived now
+with little Bilham at an unprecedented point of intimacy unless he
+could pitch everything into the pot.  "You who sat where you could
+see her, what does she make of it all?  By which I mean on what
+terms does she take it?"
+
+"Oh she takes it, I judge, as proving that the claim of his family
+is more than ever justified "
+
+"She isn't then pleased with what he has to show?"
+
+"On the contrary; she's pleased with it as with his capacity to do
+this kind of thing--more than she has been pleased with anything
+for a long time.  But she wants him to show it THERE.  He has no
+right to waste it on the likes of us."
+
+Strether wondered.  "She wants him to move the whole thing over?"
+
+"The whole thing--with an important exception.  Everything he has
+'picked up'--and the way he knows how.  She sees no difficulty in
+that.  She'd run the show herself, and she'll make the handsome
+concession that Woollett would be on the whole in some ways the
+better for it.  Not that it wouldn't be also in some ways the
+better for Woollett.  The people there are just as good."
+
+"Just as good as you and these others?  Ah that may be.  But such
+an occasion as this, whether or no," Strether said, "isn't the
+people.  It's what has made the people possible."
+
+"Well then," his friend replied, "there you are; I give you my
+impression for what it's worth.  Mrs. Pocock has SEEN, and that's
+to-night how she sits there.  If you were to have a glimpse of her
+face you'd understand me.  She has made up her mind--to the sound
+of expensive music."
+
+Strether took it freely in.  "Ah then I shall have news of her."
+
+"I don't want to frighten you, but I think that likely.  However,"
+
+little Bilham continued, "if I'm of the least use to you to hold on
+by--!"
+
+"You're not of the least!"--and Strether laid an appreciative hand
+on him to say it.  "No one's of the least." With which, to mark how
+gaily he could take it, he patted his companion's knee.  "I must
+meet my fate alone, and I SHALL--oh you'll see!  And yet," he
+pursued the next moment, "you CAN help me too.  You once said to
+me"--he followed this further--"that you held Chad should marry.
+I didn't see then so well as I know now that you meant he should
+marry Miss Pocock.  Do you still consider that he should?  Because
+if you do"--he kept it up--"I want you immediately to change your
+mind.  You can help me that way."
+
+"Help you by thinking he should NOT marry?"
+
+"Not marry at all events Mamie."
+
+"And who then?"
+
+"Ah," Strether returned, "that I'm not obliged to say.  But Madame
+de Vionnet--I suggest--when he can.'
+
+"Oh!" said little Bilham with some sharpness.
+
+"Oh precisely!  But he needn't marry at all--I'm at any rate not
+obliged to provide for it.  Whereas in your case I rather feel that
+I AM."
+
+Little Bilham was amused.  "Obliged to provide for my marrying?"
+
+"Yes--after all I've done to you!"
+
+The young man weighed it.  "Have you done as much as that?"
+
+"Well," said Strether, thus challenged, "of course I must remember
+what you've also done to ME.  We may perhaps call it square.  But
+all the same," he went on, "I wish awfully you'd marry Mamie Pocock
+yourself."
+
+Little Bilham laughed out.  "Why it was only the other night, in
+this very place, that you were proposing to me a different union
+altogether."
+
+''Mademoiselle de Vionnet?"  Well, Strether easily confessed it.
+"That, I admit, was a vain image.  THIS is practical politics.
+I want to do something good for both of you--I wish you each so well;
+and you can see in a moment the trouble it will save me to polish
+you off by the same stroke.  She likes you, you know.  You console
+her.  And she's splendid."
+
+Little Bilham stared as a delicate appetite stares at an overheaped
+plate.  "What do I console her for?"
+
+It just made his friend impatient.  "Oh come, you knows"
+
+"And what proves for you that she likes me?"
+
+"Why the fact that I found her three days ago stopping at home
+alone all the golden afternoon on the mere chance that you'd come
+to her, and hanging over her balcony on that of seeing your cab
+drive up.  I don't know what you want more."
+
+Little Bilham after a moment found it.  "Only just to know what
+proves to you that I like HER."
+
+"Oh if what I've just mentioned isn't enough to make you do it,
+you're a stony-hearted little fiend.  Besides"--Strether encouraged
+his fancy's flight--"you showed your inclination in the way you
+kept her waiting, kept her on purpose to see if she cared enough
+for you."
+
+His companion paid his ingenuity the deference of a pause.  "I didn't
+keep her waiting.  I came at the hour.  I wouldn't have kept her
+waiting for the world," the young man honourably declared.
+
+"Better still--then there you are!"  And Strether, charmed, held
+him the faster.  "Even if you didn't do her justice, moreover," he
+continued, "I should insist on your immediately coming round to it.
+I want awfully to have worked it.  I want"--and our friend spoke
+now with a yearning that was really earnest--"at least to have done
+THAT."
+
+"To have married me off--without a penny?"
+
+"Well, I shan't live long; and I give you my word, now and here,
+that I'll leave you every penny of my own.  I haven't many,
+unfortunately, but you shall have them all.  And Miss Pocock, I
+think, has a few.  I want," Strether went on, "to have been at
+least to that extent constructive even expiatory.  I've been
+sacrificing so to strange gods that I feel I want to put on record,
+somehow, my fidelity--fundamentally unchanged after all--to our
+own.  I feel as if my hands were embrued with the blood of
+monstrous alien altars--of another faith altogether.  There it is--
+it's done." And then he further explained.  "It took hold of me
+because the idea of getting her quite out of the way for Chad
+helps to clear my ground."
+
+The young man, at this, bounced about, and it brought them face to
+face in admitted amusement.  "You want me to marry as a convenience
+to Chad?"
+
+"No," Strether debated--"HE doesn't care whether you marry or not.
+It's as a convenience simply to my own plan FOR him."
+
+"'Simply'!"--and little Bilham's concurrence was in itself a lively
+comment.  "Thank you.  But I thought," he continued, "you had
+exactly NO plan 'for' him."
+
+"Well then call it my plan for myself--which may be well, as you
+say, to have none.  His situation, don't you see? is reduced now to
+the bare facts one has to recognise.  Mamie doesn't want him, and
+he doesn't want Mamie:  so much as that these days have made
+clear.  It's a thread we can wind up and tuck in."
+
+But little Bilham still questioned.  "YOU can--since you seem so
+much to want to.  But why should I?"
+
+Poor Strether thought it over, but was obliged of course to admit
+that his demonstration did superficially fail.  "Seriously, there
+is no reason.  It's my affair--I must do it alone.  I've only my
+fantastic need of making my dose stiff."
+
+Little Bilham wondered.  "What do you call your dose?"
+
+"Why what I have to swallow.  I want my conditions unmitigated."
+
+He had spoken in the tone of talk for talk's sake, and yet with an
+obscure truth lurking in the loose folds; a circumstance presently
+not without its effect on his young friend.  Little Bilham's eyes
+rested on him a moment with some intensity; then suddenly, as if
+everything had cleared up, he gave a happy laugh.  It seemed to say
+that if pretending, or even trying, or still even hoping, to be
+able to care for Mamie would be of use, he was all there for the
+job.  "I'll do anything in the world for you!"
+
+"Well," Strether smiled, "anything in the world is all I want.  I
+don't know anything that pleased me in her more," he went on, "than
+the way that, on my finding her up there all alone, coming on her
+unawares and feeling greatly for her being so out of it, she
+knocked down my tall house of cards with her instant and cheerful
+allusion to the next young man.  It was somehow so the note I
+needed--her staying at home to receive him."
+
+"It was Chad of course," said little Bilham, "who asked the next
+young man--I like your name for me!--to call."
+
+"So I supposed--all of which, thank God, is in our innocent and
+natural manners.  But do you know," Strether asked, "if Chad
+knows--?"  And then as this interlocutor seemed at a loss:
+"Why where she has come out."
+
+Little Bilham, at this, met his face with a conscious look--it was
+as if, more than anything yet, the allusion had penetrated.  "Do
+you know yourself?"
+
+Strether lightly shook his head.  "There I stop.  Oh, odd as it may
+appear to you, there ARE things I don't know.  I only got the sense
+from her of something very sharp, and yet very deep down, that she
+was keeping all to herself.  That is I had begun with the belief
+that she HAD kept it to herself; but face to face with her there
+I soon made out that there was a person with whom she would have
+shared it.  I had thought she possibly might with ME--but I saw
+then that I was only half in her confidence.  When, turning to me
+to greet me--for she was on the balcony and I had come in without
+her knowing it--she showed me she had been expecting YOU and was
+proportionately disappointed, I got hold of the tail of my
+conviction.  Half an hour later I was in possession of all the rest
+of it.  You know what has happened." He looked at his young friend
+hard--then he felt sure.  "For all you say, you're up to your eyes.
+So there you are."
+
+Little Bilham after an instant pulled half round.  "I assure you
+she hasn't told me anything."
+
+"Of course she hasn't.  For what do you suggest that I suppose her
+to take you?  But you've been with her every day, you've seen her
+freely, you've liked her greatly--I stick to that--and you've made
+your profit of it.  You know what she has been through as well as
+you know that she has dined here to-night--which must have put her,
+by the way, through a good deal more."
+
+The young man faced this blast; after which he pulled round the
+rest of the way.  "I haven't in the least said she hasn't been
+nice to me.  But she's proud."
+
+"And quite properly.  But not too proud for that."
+
+"It's just her pride that has made her.  Chad," little Bilham
+loyally went on, "has really been as kind to her as possible.
+It's awkward for a man when a girl's in love with him."
+
+"Ah but she isn't--now."
+
+Little Bilham sat staring before him; then he sprang up as if his
+friend's penetration, recurrent and insistent, made him really
+after all too nervous.  "No--she isn't now.  It isn't in the
+least," he went on, "Chad's fault.  He's really all right.  I mean
+he would have been willing.  But she came over with ideas.  Those
+she had got at home.  They had been her motive and support in
+joining her brother and his wife.  She was to SAVE our friend."
+
+"Ah like me, poor thing?"  Strether also got to his feet.
+
+"Exactly--she had a bad moment.  It was very soon distinct to her,
+to pull her up, to let her down, that, alas, he was, he IS, saved.
+There's nothing left for her to do."
+
+"Not even to love him?"
+
+"She would have loved him better as she originally believed him."
+
+Strether wondered "Of course one asks one's self what notion a
+little girl forms, where a young man's in question, of such a
+history and such a state."
+
+"Well, this little girl saw them, no doubt, as obscure, but she saw
+them practically as wrong.  The wrong for her WAS the obscure.
+Chad turns out at any rate right and good and disconcerting, while
+what she was all prepared for, primed and girded and wound up for,
+was to deal with him as the general opposite."
+
+"Yet wasn't her whole point"--Strether weighed it--"that he was to
+be, that he COULD be, made better, redeemed?"
+
+Little Bilham fixed it all a moment, and then with a small
+headshake that diffused a tenderness:  "She's too late.  Too late
+for the miracle."
+
+"Yes"--his companion saw enough.  "Still, if the worst fault of his
+condition is that it may be all there for her to profit by--?"
+
+"Oh she doesn't want to 'profit,' in that flat way.  She doesn't
+want to profit by another woman's work--she wants the miracle to
+have been her own miracle.  THAT'S what she's too late for."
+
+Strether quite felt how it all fitted, yet there seemed one loose
+piece.  "I'm bound to say, you know, that she strikes one, on these
+lines, as fastidious--what you call here difficile."
+
+Little Bilham tossed up his chin.  "Of course she's difficile--on
+any lines!  What else in the world ARE our Mamies--the real, the
+right ones?"
+
+"I see, I see," our friend repeated, charmed by the responsive
+wisdom he had ended by so richly extracting.  "Mamie is one of the
+real and the right."
+
+"The very thing itself."
+
+"And what it comes to then," Strether went on, "is that poor awful
+Chad is simply too good for her."
+
+"Ah too good was what he was after all to be; but it was she
+herself, and she herself only, who was to have made him so."
+
+It hung beautifully together, but with still a loose end.  "Wouldn't
+he do for her even if he should after all break--"
+
+"With his actual influence?"  Oh little Bilham had for this
+enquiry the sharpest of all his controls.  "How can he 'do'--on any
+terms whatever--when he's flagrantly spoiled?"
+
+Strether could only meet the question with his passive, his
+receptive pleasure.  "Well, thank goodness, YOU'RE not!  You
+remain for her to save, and I come back, on so beautiful and full a
+demonstration, to my contention of just now--that of your showing
+distinct signs of her having already begun."
+
+The most he could further say to himself--as his young friend turned
+away--was that the charge encountered for the moment no renewed
+denial.  Little Bilham, taking his course back to the music, only
+shook his good-natured ears an instant, in the manner of a terrier
+who has got wet; while Strether relapsed into the sense--which had
+for him in these days most of comfort--that he was free to believe
+in anything that from hour to hour kept him going.  He had
+positively motions and flutters of this conscious hour-to-hour
+kind, temporary surrenders to irony, to fancy, frequent instinctive
+snatches at the growing rose of observation, constantly stronger
+for him, as he felt, in scent and colour, and in which he could
+bury his nose even to wantonness.  This last resource was offered
+him, for that matter, in the very form of his next clear
+perception--the vision of a prompt meeting, in the doorway of the
+room, between little Bilham and brilliant Miss Barrace, who was
+entering as Bilham withdrew.  She had apparently put him a
+question, to which he had replied by turning to indicate his late
+interlocutor; toward whom, after an interrogation further aided by
+a resort to that optical machinery which seemed, like her other
+ornaments, curious and archaic, the genial lady, suggesting more
+than ever for her fellow guest the old French print, the historic
+portrait, directed herself with an intention that Strether
+instantly met.  He knew in advance the first note she would sound,
+and took in as she approached all her need of sounding it.  Nothing
+yet had been so "wonderful" between them as the present occasion;
+and it was her special sense of this quality in occasions that she
+was there, as she was in most places, to feed.  That sense had
+already been so well fed by the situation about them that she had
+quitted the other room, forsaken the music, dropped out of the
+play, abandoned, in a word, the stage itself, that she might stand
+a minute behind the scenes with Strether and so perhaps figure as
+one of the famous augurs replying, behind the oracle, to the wink
+of the other.  Seated near him presently where little Bilham had
+sat, she replied in truth to many things; beginning as soon as he
+had said to her--what he hoped he said without fatuity--"All you
+ladies are extraordinarily kind to me."
+
+She played her long handle, which shifted her observation; she saw
+in an instant all the absences that left them free.  "How can we be
+anything else?  But isn't that exactly your plight?  'We ladies'--
+oh we're nice, and you must be having enough of us!  As one of us,
+you know, I don't pretend I'm crazy about us.  But Miss Gostrey at
+least to-night has left you alone, hasn't she?"  With which she
+again looked about as if Maria might still lurk.
+
+"Oh yes," said Strether; "she's only sitting up for me at home."
+And then as this elicited from his companion her gay "Oh, oh, oh!"
+he explained that he meant sitting up in suspense and prayer.  "We
+thought it on the whole better she shouldn't be present; and
+either way of course it's a terrible worry for her." He abounded in
+the sense of his appeal to the ladies, and they might take their
+choice of his doing so from humility or from pride.  "Yet she
+inclines to believe I shall come out."
+
+"Oh I incline to believe too you'll come out!"--Miss Barrace, with
+her laugh, was not to be behind.  "Only the question's about WHERE,
+isn't it?  However," she happily continued, "if it's anywhere at
+all it must be very far on, mustn't it?  To do us justice, I
+think, you know," she laughed, "we do, among us all, want you
+rather far on.  Yes, yes," she repeated in her quick droll way;
+"we want you very, VERY far on!"  After which she wished to know
+why he had thought it better Maria shouldn't be present.
+
+"Oh," he replied, "it was really her own idea.  I should have
+wished it.  But she dreads responsibility."
+
+"And isn't that a new thing for her?"
+
+"To dread it?  No doubt--no doubt.  But her nerve has given way."
+
+Miss Barrace looked at him a moment.  "She has too much at stake."
+Then less gravely:  "Mine, luckily for me, holds out."
+
+"Luckily for me too"--Strether came back to that.  "My own isn't
+so firm, MY appetite for responsibility isn't so sharp, as that I
+haven't felt the very principle of this occasion to be 'the more
+the merrier.' If we ARE so merry it's because Chad has understood
+so well."
+
+"He has understood amazingly," said Miss Barrace.
+
+"It's wonderful--Strether anticipated for her.
+
+"It's wonderful!" she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face to
+face over it, they largely and recklessly laughed.  But she
+presently added:  "Oh I see the principle.  If one didn't one
+would be lost.  But when once one has got hold of it--"
+
+"It's as simple as twice two!  From the moment he had to do
+something--"
+
+"A crowd"--she took him straight up--"was the only thing?  Rather,
+rather:  a rumpus of sound," she laughed, "or nothing.  Mrs.
+Pocock's built in, or built out--whichever you call it; she's
+packed so tight she can't move.  She's in splendid isolation"--
+Miss Barrace embroidered the theme.
+
+Strether followed, but scrupulous of justice.  "Yet with every one
+in the place successively introduced to her."
+
+"Wonderfully--but just so that it does build her out.  She's
+bricked up, she's buried alive!"
+
+Strether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him to
+a sigh.  "Oh but she's not dead!  It will take more than this to
+kill her."
+
+His companion had a pause that might have been for pity.  "No, I
+can't pretend I think she's finished--or that it's for more than
+to-night." She remained pensive as if with the same compunction.
+"It's only up to her chin." Then again for the fun of it:  "She
+can breathe."
+
+"She can breathe!"--he echoed it in the same spirit.  "And do you
+know," he went on, "what's really all this time happening to me?--
+through the beauty of music, the gaiety of voices, the uproar in
+short of our revel and the felicity of your wit?  The sound of
+Mrs. Pocock's respiration drowns for me, I assure you, every other.
+It's literally all I hear."
+
+She focussed him with her clink of chains.  "Well--!" she breathed
+ever so kindly.
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+"She IS free from her chin up," she mused; "and that WILL be enough
+for her."
+
+"It will be enough for me!" Strether ruefully laughed.  "Waymarsh
+has really," he then asked, "brought her to see you?"
+
+"Yes--but that's the worst of it.  I could do you no good.  And yet
+I tried hard."
+
+Strether wondered.  "And how did you try?"
+
+"Why I didn't speak of you."
+
+"I see.  That was better."
+
+"Then what would have been worse?  For speaking or silent," she
+lightly wailed, "I somehow 'compromise.' And it has never been any
+one but you."
+
+"That shows"--he was magnanimous--"that it's something not in you,
+but in one's self.  It's MY fault."
+
+She was silent a little.  "No, it's Mr. Waymarsh's.  It's the fault
+of his having brought her."
+
+"Ah then," said Strether good-naturedly, "why DID he bring her?"
+
+"He couldn't afford not to."
+
+"Oh you were a trophy--one of the spoils of conquest?  But why in
+that case, since you do 'compromise'--"
+
+"Don't I compromise HIM as well?  I do compromise him as well,"
+Miss Barrace smiled.  "I compromise him as hard as I can.  But for
+Mr. Waymarsh it isn't fatal.  It's--so far as his wonderful
+relation with Mrs. Pocock is concerned--favourable." And then, as
+he still seemed slightly at sea:  "The man who had succeeded with
+ME, don't you see?  For her to get him from me was such an added
+incentive."
+
+Strether saw, but as if his path was still strewn with surprises.
+"It's 'from' you then that she has got him?"
+
+She was amused at his momentary muddle.  "You can fancy my fight!
+She believes in her triumph.  I think it has been part of her joy.
+
+"Oh her joy!" Strether sceptically murmured.
+
+"Well, she thinks she has had her own way.  And what's to-night for
+her but a kind of apotheosis?  Her frock's really good."
+
+"Good enough to go to heaven in?  For after a real apotheosis,"
+Strether went on, "there's nothing BUT heaven.  For Sarah there's
+only to-morrow."
+
+"And you mean that she won't find to-morrow heavenly?"
+
+"Well, I mean that I somehow feel to-night--on her behalf--too good
+to be true.  She has had her cake; that is she's in the act now of
+having it, of swallowing the largest and sweetest piece.  There
+won't be another left for her.  Certainly I haven't one.  It can
+only, at the best, be Chad." He continued to make it out as for
+their common entertainment.  "He may have one, as it were.  up his
+sleeve; yet it's borne in upon me that if he had--"
+
+"He wouldn't"--she quite understood--"have taken all THIS trouble?
+I dare say not, and, if I may be quite free and dreadful, I very
+much hope he won't take any more.  Of course I won't pretend now,"
+she added, "not to know what it's a question of."
+
+"Oh every one must know now," poor Strether thoughtfully admitted;
+"and it's strange enough and funny enough that one should feel
+everybody here at this very moment to be knowing and watching and
+waiting."
+
+"Yes--isn't it indeed funny?"  Miss Barrace quite rose to it.
+"That's the way we ARE in Paris." She was always pleased with a new
+contribution to that queerness.  "It's wonderful!  But, you know,"
+she declared, "it all depends on you.  I don't want to turn the
+knife in your vitals, but that's naturally what you just now meant
+by our all being on top of you.  We know you as the hero of the
+drama, and we're gathered to see what you'll do."
+
+Strether looked at her a moment with a light perhaps slightly
+obscured.  "I think that must be why the hero has taken refuge in
+this corner.  He's scared at his heroism--he shrinks from his
+part."
+
+"Ah but we nevertheless believe he'll play it.  That's why,"
+Miss Barrace kindly went on, "we take such an interest in you.
+We feel you'll come up to the scratch." And then as he seemed
+perhaps not quite to take fire:  "Don't let him do it."
+
+"Don't let Chad go?"
+
+"Yes, keep hold of him.  With all this"--and she indicated the
+general tribute--"he has done enough.  We love him here--
+he's charming."
+
+"It's beautiful," said Strether, "the way you all can simplify
+when you will."
+
+But she gave it to him back.  "It's nothing to the way you will
+when you must."
+
+He winced at it as at the very voice of prophecy, and it kept him
+a moment quiet.  He detained her, however, on her appearing about
+to leave him alone in the rather cold clearance their talk had
+made.  "There positively isn't a sign of a hero to-night; the
+hero's dodging and shirking, the hero's ashamed.  Therefore, you
+know, I think, what you must all REALLY be occupied with is the
+heroine."
+
+Miss Barrace took a minute.  "The heroine?"
+
+"The heroine.  I've treated her," said Strether, "not a bit like a
+hero.  Oh," he sighed, "I don't do it well!"
+
+She eased him off.  "You do it as you can."  And then after another
+hesitation:  "I think she's satisfied."
+
+But he remained compunctious.  "I haven't been near her.  I haven't
+looked at her."
+
+"Ah then you've lost a good deal!"
+
+He showed he knew it.  "She's more wonderful than ever?"
+
+"Than ever.  With Mr. Pocock."
+
+Strether wondered.  "Madame de Vionnet--with Jim?"
+
+"Madame de Vionnet--with 'Jim.' " Miss Barrace was historic.
+
+"And what's she doing with him?"
+
+"Ah you must ask HIM!"
+
+Strether's face lighted again at the prospect.  "It WILL be amusing
+to do so."  Yet he continued to wonder.  "But she must have some
+idea."
+
+"Of course she has--she has twenty ideas.  She has in the first
+place," said Miss Barrace, swinging a little her tortoise-shell,
+"that of doing her part.  Her part is to help YOU."
+
+It came out as nothing had come yet; links were missing and
+connexions unnamed, but it was suddenly as if they were at the
+heart of their subject.  "Yes; how much more she does it," Strether
+gravely reflected, "than I help HER!"  It all came over him as with
+the near presence of the beauty, the grace, the intense,
+dissimulated spirit with which he had, as he said, been putting off
+contact.  "SHE has courage."
+
+"Ah she has courage!" Miss Barrace quite agreed; and it was as if
+for a moment they saw the quantity in each other's face.
+
+But indeed the whole thing was present.  "How much she must care!"
+
+"Ah there it is.  She does care.  But it isn't, is it," Miss
+Barrace considerately added, "as if you had ever had any doubt of
+that?"
+
+Strether seemed suddenly to like to feel that he really never had.
+"Why of course it's the whole point."
+
+"Voila!" Miss Barrace smiled.
+
+"It's why one came out," Strether went on.  "And it's why one has
+stayed so long.  And it's also"--he abounded--"why one's going
+home.  It's why, it's why--"
+
+"It's why everything!" she concurred.  "It's why she might be
+to-night--for all she looks and shows, and for all your friend 'Jim'
+does--about twenty years old.  That's another of her ideas; to be
+for him, and to be quite easily and charmingly, as young as a
+little girl."
+
+Strether assisted at his distance.  "'For him'?  For Chad--?"
+
+"For Chad, in a manner, naturally, always.  But in particular
+to-night for Mr.  Pocock."  And then as her friend still stared:
+"Yes, it IS of a bravery But that's what she has:  her high sense
+of duty."  It was more than sufficiently before them.  "When Mr.
+Newsome has his hands so embarrassed with his sister--"
+
+"It's quite the least"--Strether filled it out--"that she should
+take his sister's husband?  Certainly--quite the least.  So she has
+taken him."
+
+"She has taken him."  It was all Miss Barrace had meant.
+
+Still it remained enough.  "It must be funny."
+
+"Oh it IS funny."  That of course essentially went with it.
+
+But it brought them back.  "How indeed then she must cared In
+answer to which Strether's entertainer dropped a comprehensive
+"Ah!" expressive perhaps of some impatience for the time he took to
+get used to it.  She herself had got used to it long before.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+When one morning within the week he perceived the whole thing to be
+really at last upon him Strether's immediate feeling was all
+relief.  He had known this morning that something was about to
+happen--known it, in a moment, by Waymarsh's manner when Waymarsh
+appeared before him during his brief consumption of coffee and a
+roll in the small slippery salle-a-manger so associated with rich
+rumination.  Strether had taken there of late various lonely and
+absent-minded meals; he communed there, even at the end of June,
+with a suspected chill, the air of old shivers mixed with old
+savours, the air in which so many of his impressions had perversely
+matured; the place meanwhile renewing its message to him by the
+very circumstance of his single state.  He now sat there, for the
+most part, to sigh softly, while he vaguely tilted his carafe, over
+the vision of how much better Waymarsh was occupied.  That was
+really his success by the common measure--to have led this
+companion so on and on.  He remembered how at first there had been
+scarce a squatting-place he could beguile him into passing;
+the actual outcome of which at last was that there was scarce one
+that could arrest him in his rush.  His rush--as Strether vividly and
+amusedly figured it--continued to be all with Sarah, and contained
+perhaps moreover the word of the whole enigma, whipping up in its
+fine full-flavoured froth the very principle, for good or for ill,
+of his own, of Strether's destiny.  It might after all, to the end,
+only be that they had united to save him, and indeed, so far as
+Waymarsh was concerned, that HAD to be the spring of action.
+Strether was glad at all events, in connexion with the case, that
+the saving he required was not more scant; so constituted a luxury
+was it in certain lights just to lurk there out of the full glare.
+He had moments of quite seriously wondering whether Waymarsh wouldn't
+in fact, thanks to old friendship and a conceivable indulgence,
+make about as good terms for him as he might make for himself.
+They wouldn't be the same terms of course; but they might have the
+advantage that he himself probably should be able to make none at
+all.
+
+He was never in the morning very late, but Waymarsh had already
+been out, and, after a peep into the dim refectory, he presented
+himself with much less than usual of his large looseness.  He had
+made sure, through the expanse of glass exposed to the court, that
+they would be alone; and there was now in fact that about him that
+pretty well took up the room.  He was dressed in the garments of
+summer; and save that his white waistcoat was redundant and bulging
+these things favoured, they determined, his expression.  He wore a
+straw hat such as his friend hadn't yet seen in Paris, and he
+showed a buttonhole freshly adorned with a magnificent rose.
+Strether read on the instant his story--how, astir for the previous
+hour, the sprinkled newness of the day, so pleasant at that season
+in Paris, he was fairly panting with the pulse of adventure and had
+been with Mrs. Pocock, unmistakeably, to the Marche aux Fleurs.
+Strether really knew in this vision of him a joy that was akin to
+envy; so reversed as he stood there did their old positions seem;
+so comparatively doleful now showed, by the sharp turn of the
+wheel, the posture of the pilgrim from Woollett.  He wondered, this
+pilgrim, if he had originally looked to Waymarsh so brave and well,
+so remarkably launched, as it was at present the latter's privilege
+to appear.  He recalled that his friend had remarked to him even at
+Chester that his aspect belied his plea of prostration; but there
+certainly couldn't have been, for an issue, an aspect less
+concerned than Waymarsh's with the menace of decay.  Strether had
+at any rate never resembled a Southern planter of the great days--
+which was the image picturesquely suggested by the happy relation
+between the fuliginous face and the wide panama of his visitor.
+This type, it further amused him to guess, had been, on Waymarsh's
+part, the object of Sarah's care; he was convinced that her taste
+had not been a stranger to the conception and purchase of the hat,
+any more than her fine fingers had been guiltless of the bestowal
+of the rose.  It came to him in the current of thought, as things
+so oddly did come, that HE had never risen with the lark to attend
+a brilliant woman to the Marche aux Fleurs; this could be fastened
+on him in connexion neither with Miss Gostrey nor with Madame de
+Vionnet; the practice of getting up early for adventures could
+indeed in no manner be fastened on him.  It came to him in fact
+that just here was his usual case:  he was for ever missing things
+through his general genius for missing them, while others were for
+ever picking them up through a contrary bent.  And it was others
+who looked abstemious and he who looked greedy; it was he somehow
+who finally paid, and it was others who mainly partook.  Yes, he
+should go to the scaffold yet for he wouldn't know quite whom.  He
+almost, for that matter, felt on the scaffold now and really quite
+enjoying it.  It worked out as BECAUSE he was anxious there--it
+worked out as for this reason that Waymarsh was so blooming.  It
+was HIS trip for health, for a change, that proved the success--
+which was just what Strether, planning and exerting himself, had
+desired it should be.  That truth already sat full-blown on his
+companion's lips; benevolence breathed from them as with the warmth
+of active exercise, and also a little as with the bustle of haste.
+
+"Mrs. Pocock, whom I left a quarter of an hour ago at her hotel,
+has asked me to mention to you that she would like to find you at
+home here in about another hour.  She wants to see you; she has
+something to say--or considers, I believe, that you may have:  so
+that I asked her myself why she shouldn't come right round.  She
+hasn't BEEN round yet--to see our place; and I took upon myself to
+say that I was sure you'd be glad to have her.  The thing's
+therefore, you see, to keep right here till she comes."
+
+The announcement was sociably, even though, after Waymarsh's wont,
+somewhat solemnly made; but Strether quickly felt other things in
+it than these light features.  It was the first approach, from that
+quarter, to admitted consciousness; it quickened his pulse; it
+simply meant at last that he should have but himself to thank if he
+didn't know where he was.  He had finished his breakfast; he
+pushed it away and was on his feet.  There were plenty of elements
+of surprise, but only one of doubt.  "The thing's for YOU to keep
+here too?"  Waymarsh had been slightly ambiguous.
+
+He wasn't ambiguous, however, after this enquiry; and Strether's
+understanding had probably never before opened so wide and
+effective a mouth as it was to open during the next five minutes.
+It was no part of his friend's wish, as appeared, to help to
+receive Mrs. Pocock; he quite understood the spirit in which she
+was to present herself, but his connexion with her visit was
+limited to his having--well, as he might say--perhaps a little
+promoted it.  He had thought, and had let her know it, that
+Strether possibly would think she might have been round before.  At
+any rate, as turned out, she had been wanting herself, quite a
+while, to come.  "I told her," said Waymarsh, "that it would have
+been a bright idea if she had only carried it out before."
+
+Strether pronounced it so bright as to be almost dazzling.  "But
+why HASn't she carried it out before?  She has seen me every day--
+she had only to name her hour.  I've been waiting and waiting."
+
+"Well, I told her you had.  And she has been waiting too."  It was,
+in the oddest way in the world, on the showing of this tone, a
+genial new pressing coaxing Waymarsh; a Waymarsh conscious with a
+different consciousness from any he had yet betrayed, and actually
+rendered by it almost insinuating.  He lacked only time for full
+persuasion, and Strether was to see in a moment why.  Meantime,
+however, our friend perceived, he was announcing a step of some
+magnanimity on Mrs. Pocock's part, so that he could deprecate a
+sharp question.  It was his own high purpose in fact to have
+smoothed sharp questions to rest.  He looked his old comrade very
+straight in the eyes, and he had never conveyed to him in so mute a
+manner so much kind confidence and so much good advice.  Everything
+that was between them was again in his face, but matured and
+shelved and finally disposed of.  "At any rate," he added, "she's
+coming now."
+
+Considering how many pieces had to fit themselves, it all fell, in
+Strether's brain, into a close rapid order.  He saw on the spot
+what had happened, and what probably would yet; and it was all
+funny enough.  It was perhaps just this freedom of appreciation
+that wound him up to his flare of high spirits.  "What is she
+coming FOR?--to kill me?"
+
+"She's coming to be very VERY kind to you, and you must let me say
+that I greatly hope you'll not be less so to herself."
+
+This was spoken by Waymarsh with much gravity of admonition, and as
+Strether stood there he knew he had but to make a movement to take
+the attitude of a man gracefully receiving a present.  The present
+was that of the opportunity dear old Waymarsh had flattered himself
+he had divined in him the slight soreness of not having yet
+thoroughly enjoyed; so he had brought it to him thus, as on a
+little silver breakfast-tray, familiarly though delicately--without
+oppressive pomp; and he was to bend and smile and acknowledge, was
+to take and use and be grateful.  He was not--that was the beauty
+of it--to be asked to deflect too much from his dignity.  No wonder
+the old boy bloomed in this bland air of his own distillation.
+Strether felt for a moment as if Sarah were actually walking up and
+down outside.  Wasn't she hanging about the porte-cochere while
+her friend thus summarily opened a way?  Strether would meet her
+but to take it, and everything would be for the best in the best of
+possible worlds.  He had never so much known what any one meant as,
+in the light of this demonstration, he knew what Mrs. Newsome did.
+It had reached Waymarsh from Sarah, but it had reached Sarah from
+her mother, and there was no break in the chain by which it reached
+HIM.  "Has anything particular happened," he asked after a minute--
+"so suddenly to determine her?  Has she heard anything unexpected
+from home?"
+
+Waymarsh, on this, it seemed to him, looked at him harder than
+ever.  "'Unexpected'?"  He had a brief hesitation; then, however,
+he was firm.  "We're leaving Paris."
+
+"Leaving?  That IS sudden."
+
+Waymarsh showed a different opinion.  "Less so than it may seem.
+The purpose of Mrs. Pocock's visit is to explain to you in fact
+that it's NOT."
+
+Strether didn't at all know if he had really an advantage--
+anything that would practically count as one; but he enjoyed for
+the moment--as for the first time in his life--the sense of so
+carrying it off.  He wondered--it was amusing--if he felt as the
+impudent feel.  "I shall take great pleasure, I assure you, in any
+explanation.  I shall be delighted to receive Sarah."
+
+The sombre glow just darkened in his comrade's eyes; but he was
+struck with the way it died out again.  It was too mixed with
+another consciousness--it was too smothered, as might be said, in
+flowers.  He really for the time regretted it--poor dear old sombre
+glow! Something straight and simple, something heavy and empty, had
+been eclipsed in its company; something by which he had best known
+his friend.  Waymarsh wouldn't BE his friend, somehow, without the
+occasional ornament of the sacred rage, and the right to the sacred
+rage--inestimably precious for Strether's charity--he also seemed
+in a manner, and at Mrs. Pocock's elbow, to have forfeited.
+Strether remembered the occasion early in their stay when on that
+very spot he had come out with his earnest, his ominous "Quit it!"--
+and, so remembering, felt it hang by a hair that he didn't
+himself now utter the same note.  Waymarsh was having a good time--
+this was the truth that was embarrassing for him, and he was having
+it then and there, he was having it in Europe, he was having it
+under the very protection of circumstances of which he didn't in
+the least approve; all of which placed him in a false position,
+with no issue possible--none at least by the grand manner.  It was
+practically in the manner of any one--it was all but in poor
+Strether's own--that instead of taking anything up he merely made
+the most of having to be himself explanatory.  "I'm not leaving for
+the United States direct.  Mr. and Mrs. Pocock and Miss Mamie are
+thinking of a little trip before their own return, and we've been
+talking for some days past of our joining forces.  We've settled it
+that we do join and that we sail together the end of next month.
+But we start to-morrow for Switzerland.  Mrs. Pocock wants some
+scenery.  She hasn't had much yet."
+
+He was brave in his way too, keeping nothing back, confessing all
+there was, and only leaving Strether to make certain connexions.
+"Is what Mrs. Newsome had cabled her daughter an injunction to
+break off short?"
+
+The grand manner indeed at this just raised its head a little.
+"I know nothing about Mrs. Newsome's cables."
+
+Their eyes met on it with some intensity--during the few seconds of
+which something happened quite out of proportion to the time.
+It happened that Strether, looking thus at his friend, didn't take
+his answer for truth--and that something more again occurred in
+consequence of THAT.  Yes--Waymarsh just DID know about
+Mrs. Newsome's cables:  to what other end than that had they dined
+together at Bignon's?  Strether almost felt for the instant that it
+was to Mrs. Newsome herself the dinner had been given; and, for
+that matter, quite felt how she must have known about it and, as he
+might think, protected and consecrated it.  He had a quick blurred
+view of daily cables, questions, answers, signals:  clear enough
+was his vision of the expense that, when so wound up, the lady at
+home was prepared to incur.  Vivid not less was his memory of what,
+during his long observation of her, some of her attainments of that
+high pitch had cost her.  Distinctly she was at the highest now,
+and Waymarsh, who imagined himself an independent performer, was
+really, forcing his fine old natural voice, an overstrained
+accompanist.  The whole reference of his errand seemed to mark her
+for Strether as by this time consentingly familiar to him, and
+nothing yet had so despoiled her of a special shade of
+consideration.  "You don't know," he asked, "whether Sarah has been
+directed from home to try me on the matter of my also going to
+Switzerland?"
+
+"I know," said Waymarsh as manfully as possible, "nothing whatever
+about her private affairs; though I believe her to be acting in
+conformity with things that have my highest respect."  It was as
+manful as possible, but it was still the false note--as it had to
+be to convey so sorry a statement.  He knew everything, Strether
+more and more felt, that he thus disclaimed, and his little
+punishment was just in this doom to a second fib.  What falser
+position--given the man--could the most vindictive mind impose?
+He ended by squeezing through a passage in which three months before
+he would certainly have stuck fast.  "Mrs Pocock will probably be
+ready herself to answer any enquiry you may put to her.  But,"
+he continued, "BUT--!"  He faltered on it.
+
+"But what?  Don't put her too many?"
+
+Waymarsh looked large, but the harm was done; he couldn't, do what
+he would, help looking rosy.  "Don't do anything you'll be sorry for."
+
+It was an attenuation, Strether guessed, of something else that had
+been on his lips; it was a sudden drop to directness, and was
+thereby the voice of sincerity.  He had fallen to the supplicating
+note, and that immediately, for our friend, made a difference and
+reinstated him.  They were in communication as they had been, that
+first morning, in Sarah's salon and in her presence and Madame de
+Vionnet's; and the same recognition of a great good will was again,
+after all, possible.  Only the amount of response Waymarsh had then
+taken for granted was doubled, decupled now.  This came out when he
+presently said:  "Of course I needn't assure you I hope you'll
+come with us."  Then it was that his implications and expectations
+loomed up for Strether as almost pathetically gross.
+
+The latter patted his shoulder while he thanked him, giving the
+go-by to the question of joining the Pococks; he expressed the joy he
+felt at seeing him go forth again so brave and free, and he in fact
+almost took leave of him on the spot.  "I shall see you again of
+course before you go; but I'm meanwhile much obliged to you for
+arranging so conveniently for what you've told me.  I shall walk up
+and down in the court there--dear little old court which we've each
+bepaced so, this last couple of months, to the tune of our flights
+and our drops, our hesitations and our plunges:  I shall hang about
+there, all impatience and excitement, please let Sarah know, till
+she graciously presents herself.  Leave me with her without fear,"
+he laughed; "I assure you I shan't hurt her.  I don't think either
+she'll hurt ME:  I'm in a situation in which damage was some time
+ago discounted.  Besides, THAT isn't what worries you--but don't,
+don't explain! We're all right as we are:  which was the degree of
+success our adventure was pledged to for each of us.  We weren't,
+it seemed, all right as we were before; and we've got over the
+ground, all things considered, quickly.  I hope you'll have a
+lovely time in the Alps."
+
+Waymarsh fairly looked up at him as from the foot of them.  "I
+don't know as I OUGHT really to go."
+
+It was the conscience of Milrose in the very voice of Milrose, but,
+oh it was feeble and flat! Strether suddenly felt quite ashamed for
+him; he breathed a greater boldness.  "LET yourself, on the
+contrary, go--in all agreeable directions.  These are precious
+hours--at our age they mayn't recur.  Don't have it to say to
+yourself at Milrose, next winter, that you hadn't courage for
+them."  And then as his comrade queerly stared:  "Live up to Mrs.
+Pocock."
+
+"Live up to her?"
+
+"You're a great help to her."
+
+Waymarsh looked at it as at one of the uncomfortable things that
+were certainly true and that it was yet ironical to say.  "It's
+more then than you are."
+
+"That's exactly your own chance and advantage.  Besides," said
+Strether, "I do in my way contribute.  I know what I'm about."
+
+Waymarsh had kept on his great panama, and, as he now stood nearer
+the door, his last look beneath the shade of it had turned again to
+darkness and warning.  "So do I!  See here, Strether."
+
+"I know what you're going to say.  'Quit this'?"
+
+"Quit this!"  But it lacked its old intensity; nothing of it
+remained; it went out of the room with him.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Almost the first thing, strangely enough, that, about an hour
+later, Strether found himself doing in Sarah's presence was to
+remark articulately on this failure, in their friend, of what had
+been superficially his great distinction.  It was as if--he alluded
+of course to the grand manner--the dear man had sacrificed it to
+some other advantage; which would be of course only for himself to
+measure.  It might be simply that he was physically so much more
+sound than on his first coming out; this was all prosaic,
+comparatively cheerful and vulgar.  And fortunately, if one came to
+that, his improvement in health was really itself grander than any
+manner it could be conceived as having cost him.  "You yourself
+alone, dear Sarah"--Strether took the plunge--"have done him, it
+strikes me, in these three weeks, as much good as all the rest of
+his time together."
+
+It was a plunge because somehow the range of reference was, in the
+conditions, "funny," and made funnier still by Sarah's attitude, by
+the turn the occasion had, with her appearance, so sensibly taken.
+Her appearance was really indeed funnier than anything else--the
+spirit in which he felt her to be there as soon as she was there,
+the shade of obscurity that cleared up for him as soon as he was
+seated with her in the small salon de lecture that had, for the
+most part, in all the weeks, witnessed the wane of his early
+vivacity of discussion with Waymarsh.  It was an immense thing,
+quite a tremendous thing, for her to have come:  this truth opened
+out to him in spite of his having already arrived for himself at a
+fairly vivid view of it.  He had done exactly what he had given
+Waymarsh his word for--had walked and re-walked the court while he
+awaited her advent; acquiring in this exercise an amount of light
+that affected him at the time as flooding the scene.  She had
+decided upon the step in order to give him the benefit of a doubt,
+in order to be able to say to her mother that she had, even to
+abjectness, smoothed the way for him.  The doubt had been as to
+whether he mightn't take her as not having smoothed it--and the
+admonition had possibly come from Waymarsh's more detached spirit.
+Waymarsh had at any rate, certainly, thrown his weight into the
+scale--he had pointed to the importance of depriving their friend
+of a grievance.  She had done justice to the plea, and it was to
+set herself right with a high ideal that she actually sat there in
+her state.  Her calculation was sharp in the immobility with which
+she held her tall parasol-stick upright and at arm's length, quite
+as if she had struck the place to plant her flag; in the separate
+precautions she took not to show as nervous; in the aggressive
+repose in which she did quite nothing but wait for him.  Doubt
+ceased to be possible from the moment he had taken in that she had
+arrived with no proposal whatever; that her concern was simply to
+show what she had come to receive.  She had come to receive his
+submission, and Waymarsh was to have made it plain to him that she
+would expect nothing less.  He saw fifty things, her host, at this
+convenient stage; but one of those he most saw was that their
+anxious friend hadn't quite had the hand required of him.
+Waymarsh HAD, however, uttered the request that she might find him
+mild, and while hanging about the court before her arrival he had
+turned over with zeal the different ways in which he could be so.
+The difficulty was that if he was mild he wasn't, for her purpose,
+conscious.  If she wished him conscious--as everything about her
+cried aloud that she did--she must accordingly be at costs to make
+him so.  Conscious he was, for himself--but only of too many
+things; so she must choose the one she required.
+
+Practically, however, it at last got itself named, and when once
+that had happened they were quite at the centre of their situation.
+One thing had really done as well as another; when Strether had
+spoken of Waymarsh's leaving him, and that had necessarily brought
+on a reference to Mrs. Pocock's similar intention, the jump was but
+short to supreme lucidity.  Light became indeed after that so
+intense that Strether would doubtless have but half made out, in
+the prodigious glare, by which of the two the issue had been in
+fact precipitated.  It was, in their contracted quarters, as much
+there between them as if it had been something suddenly spilled
+with a crash and a splash on the floor.  The form of his submission
+was to be an engagement to acquit himself within the twenty-four
+hours.  "He'll go in a moment if you give him the word--he assures
+me on his honour he'll do that":  this came in its order, out of
+its order, in respect to Chad, after the crash had occurred.  It
+came repeatedly during the time taken by Strether to feel that he
+was even more fixed in his rigour than he had supposed--the time he
+was not above adding to a little by telling her that such a way of
+putting it on her brother's part left him sufficiently surprised.
+She wasn't at all funny at last--she was really fine; and he felt
+easily where she was strong--strong for herself.  It hadn't yet so
+come home to him that she was nobly and appointedly officious.
+She was acting in interests grander and clearer than that of her
+poor little personal, poor little Parisian equilibrium, and all his
+consciousness of her mother's moral pressure profited by this proof
+of its sustaining force.  She would be held up; she would be
+strengthened; he needn't in the least be anxious for her.
+What would once more have been distinct to him had he tried to
+make it so was that, as Mrs. Newsome was essentially all moral pressure,
+the presence of this element was almost identical with her own presence.
+It wasn't perhaps that he felt he was dealing with her straight,
+but it was certainly as if she had been dealing straight with HIM.
+She was reaching him somehow by the lengthened arm of the spirit,
+and he was having to that extent to take her into account;
+but he wasn't reaching her in turn, not making her take HIM;
+he was only reaching Sarah, who appeared to take so little of him.
+"Something has clearly passed between you and Chad," he presently said,
+"that I think I ought to know something more about.  Does he put it all,"
+he smiled, "on me?"
+
+"Did you come out," she asked, "to put it all on HIM?"
+
+But he replied to this no further than, after an instant, by
+saying:  "Oh it's all right.  Chad I mean's all right in having
+said to you--well anything he may have said.  I'll TAKE it all--
+what he does put on me.  Only I must see him before I see you
+again."
+
+She hesitated, but she brought it out.  "Is it absolutely necessary
+you should see me again?"
+
+"Certainly, if I'm to give you any definite word about anything."
+
+"Is it your idea then," she returned, "that I shall keep on meeting
+you only to be exposed to fresh humiliation?"
+
+He fixed her a longer time.  "Are your instructions from
+Mrs. Newsome that you shall, even at the worst, absolutely and
+irretrievably break with me?"
+
+"My instructions from Mrs. Newsome are, if you please, my affair.
+You know perfectly what your own were, and you can judge for
+yourself of what it can do for you to have made what you have of
+them.  You can perfectly see, at any rate, I'll go so far as to
+say, that if I wish not to expose myself I must wish still less to
+expose HER."  She had already said more than she had quite
+expected; but, though she had also pulled up, the colour in her
+face showed him he should from one moment to the other have it all.
+He now indeed felt the high importance of his having it.  "What is
+your conduct," she broke out as if to explain--"what is your
+conduct but an outrage to women like US?  I mean your acting as if
+there can be a doubt--as between us and such another--of his duty?"
+
+He thought a moment.  It was rather much to deal with at once; not
+only the question itself, but the sore abysses it revealed.
+"Of course they're totally different kinds of duty."
+
+"And do you pretend that he has any at all--to such another?"
+
+"Do you mean to Madame de Vionnet?"  He uttered the name not to
+affront her, but yet again to gain time--time that he needed for
+taking in something still other and larger than her demand of a
+moment before.  It wasn't at once that he could see all that was
+in her actual challenge; but when he did he found himself just
+checking a low vague sound, a sound which was perhaps the nearest
+approach his vocal chords had ever known to a growl.  Everything
+Mrs. Pocock had failed to give a sign of recognising in Chad as a
+particular part of a transformation--everything that had lent
+intention to this particular failure--affected him as gathered into
+a large loose bundle and thrown, in her words, into his face.  The
+missile made him to that extent catch his breath; which however he
+presently recovered.  "Why when a woman's at once so charming and
+so beneficent--"
+
+"You can sacrifice mothers and sisters to her without a blush and
+can make them cross the ocean on purpose to feel the more and take
+from you the straighter, HOW you do it?"
+
+Yes, she had taken him up as short and as sharply as that, but he
+tried not to flounder in her grasp.  "I don't think there's
+anything I've done in any such calculated way as you describe.
+Everything has come as a sort of indistinguishable part of
+everything else.  Your coming out belonged closely to my having
+come before you, and my having come was a result of our general
+state of mind.  Our general state of mind had proceeded, on its
+side, from our queer ignorance, our queer misconceptions and
+confusions--from which, since then, an inexorable tide of light
+seems to have floated us into our perhaps still queerer knowledge.
+Don't you LIKE your brother as he is," he went on, "and haven't
+you given your mother an intelligible account of all that that
+comes to?"
+
+It put to her also, doubtless, his own tone, too many things, this
+at least would have been the case hadn't his final challenge
+directly helped her.  Everything, at the stage they had reached,
+directly helped her, because everything betrayed in him such a
+basis of intention.  He saw--the odd way things came out!--that he
+would have been held less monstrous had he only been a little
+wilder.  What exposed him was just his poor old trick of quiet
+inwardness, what exposed him was his THINKING such offence.  He hadn't
+in the least however the desire to irritate that Sarah imputed to him,
+and he could only at last temporise, for the moment, with her
+indignant view.  She was altogether more inflamed than he had
+expected, and he would probably understand this better when he
+should learn what had occurred for her with Chad.  Till then her
+view of his particular blackness, her clear surprise at his not
+clutching the pole she held out, must pass as extravagant.  "I
+leave you to flatter yourself," she returned, "that what you speak
+of is what YOU'VE beautifully done.  When a thing has been already
+described in such a lovely way--!"  But she caught herself up, and
+her comment on his description rang out sufficiently loud.  "Do you
+consider her even an apology for a decent woman?"
+
+Ah there it was at last! She put the matter more crudely than, for
+his own mixed purposes, he had yet had to do; but essentially it
+was all one matter.  It was so much--so much; and she treated it,
+poor lady, as so little.  He grew conscious, as he was now apt to
+do, of a strange smile, and the next moment he found himself
+talking like Miss Barrace.  "She has struck me from the first as
+wonderful.  I've been thinking too moreover that, after all, she
+would probably have represented even for yourself something rather
+new and rather good."
+
+He was to have given Mrs. Pocock with this, however, but her best
+opportunity for a sound of derision.  "Rather new?  I hope so with
+all my heart!"
+
+"I mean," he explained, "that she might have affected you by her
+exquisite amiability--a real revelation, it has seemed to myself;
+her high rarity, her distinction of every sort."
+
+He had been, with these words, consciously a little "precious"; but
+he had had to be--he couldn't give her the truth of the case
+without them; and it seemed to him moreover now that he didn't
+care.  He had at all events not served his cause, for she sprang at
+its exposed side.  "A 'revelation'--to ME:  I've come to such a
+woman for a revelation?  You talk to me about 'distinction'--
+YOU, you who've had your privilege?--when the most distinguished woman
+we shall either of us have seen in this world sits there insulted,
+in her loneliness, by your incredible comparison!"
+
+Strether forbore, with an effort, from straying; but he looked all
+about him.  "Does your mother herself make the point that she
+sits insulted?"
+
+Sarah's answer came so straight, so "pat," as might have been said,
+that he felt on the instant its origin.  "She has confided to my
+judgement and my tenderness the expression of her personal sense of
+everything, and the assertion of her personal dignity."
+
+They were the very words of the lady of Woollett--he would have
+known them in a thousand; her parting charge to her child.  Mrs.
+Pocock accordingly spoke to this extent by book, and the fact
+immensely moved him.  "If she does really feel as you say it's of
+course very very dreadful.  I've given sufficient proof, one would
+have thought," he added, "of my deep admiration for Mrs. Newsome."
+
+"And pray what proof would one have thought you'd CALL sufficient?
+That of thinking this person here so far superior to her?"
+
+He wondered again; he waited.  "Ah dear Sarah, you must LEAVE me
+this person here!"
+
+In his desire to avoid all vulgar retorts, to show how, even
+perversely, he clung to his rag of reason, he had softly almost
+wailed this plea.  Yet he knew it to be perhaps the most positive
+declaration he had ever made in his life, and his visitor's
+reception of it virtually gave it that importance.  "That's exactly
+what I'm delighted to do.  God knows WE don't want her! You take
+good care not to meet," she observed in a still higher key,
+"my question about their life.  If you do consider it a thing
+one can even SPEAK of, I congratulate you on your taste!"
+
+The life she alluded to was of course Chad's and Madame de Vionnet's,
+which she thus bracketed together in a way that made him wince
+a little; there being nothing for him but to take home her
+full intention.  It was none the less his inconsequence that while
+he had himself been enjoying for weeks the view of the brilliant
+woman's specific action, he just suffered from any characterisation
+of it by other lips.  "I think tremendously well of her, at the
+same time that I seem to feel her 'life' to be really none of my
+business.  It's my business, that is, only so far as Chad's own
+life is affected by it; and what has happened, don't you see? is
+that Chad's has been affected so beautifully.  The proof of the
+pudding's in the eating"--he tried, with no great success, to help
+it out with a touch of pleasantry, while she let him go on as if to
+sink and sink.  He went on however well enough, as well as he could
+do without fresh counsel; he indeed shouldn't stand quite firm, he
+felt, till he should have re-established his communications with
+Chad.  Still, he could always speak for the woman he had so
+definitely promised to "save."  This wasn't quite for her the air
+of salvation; but as that chill fairly deepened what did it become
+but a reminder that one might at the worst perish WITH her?  And it
+was simple enough--it was rudimentary:  not, not to give her away.
+"I find in her more merits than you would probably have patience
+with my counting over.  And do you know," he enquired, "the effect
+you produce on me by alluding to her in such terms?  It's as if you
+had some motive in not recognising all she has done for your
+brother, and so shut your eyes to each side of the matter, in
+order, whichever side comes up, to get rid of the other.  I don't,
+you must allow me to say, see how you can with any pretence to
+candour get rid of the side nearest you."
+
+"Near me--THAT sort of thing?"  And Sarah gave a jerk back of her
+head that well might have nullified any active proximity.
+
+It kept her friend himself at his distance, and he respected for a
+moment the interval.  Then with a last persuasive effort he bridged
+it.  "You don't, on your honour, appreciate Chad's fortunate
+development?"
+
+"Fortunate?" she echoed again.  And indeed she was prepared.
+"I call it hideous."
+
+Her departure had been for some minutes marked as imminent, and she
+was already at the door that stood open to the court, from the
+threshold of which she delivered herself of this judgement.  It
+rang out so loud as to produce for the time the hush of everything
+else.  Strether quite, as an effect of it, breathed less bravely;
+he could acknowledge it, but simply enough.  "Oh if you think THAT--!"
+
+"Then all's at an end?  So much the better.  I do think that!"  She
+passed out as she spoke and took her way straight across the court,
+beyond which, separated from them by the deep arch of the
+porte-cochere the low victoria that had conveyed her from her own hotel
+was drawn up.  She made for it with decision, and the manner of her
+break, the sharp shaft of her rejoinder, had an intensity by which
+Strether was at first kept in arrest.  She had let fly at him as
+from a stretched cord, and it took him a minute to recover from the
+sense of being pierced.  It was not the penetration of surprise;
+it was that, much more, of certainty; his case being put for him as
+he had as yet only put it to himself.  She was away at any rate;
+she had distanced him--with rather a grand spring, an effect of pride
+and ease, after all; she had got into her carriage before he could
+overtake her, and the vehicle was already in motion.  He stopped
+halfway; he stood there in the court only seeing her go and noting
+that she gave him no other look.  The way he had put it to himself
+was that all quite MIGHT be at an end.  Each of her movements,
+in this resolute rupture, reaffirmed, re-enforced that idea.
+Sarah passed out of sight in the sunny street while, planted there
+in the centre of the comparatively grey court, he continued merely
+to look before him.  It probably WAS all at an end.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Eleventh
+
+[Note:  In the 1909 New York Edition the following two chapters were placed
+in the reverse of the order appearing below.  Since 1950, most scholars have
+agreed, because of the internal evidence of the two chapters, that an
+editorial error caused them to be printed in reverse order.  This Etext,
+like other editions of the past four decades, corrects the apparent error.
+          -- Richard D. Hathaway, preparer of this electronic text]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+He went late that evening to the Boulevard Malesherbes, having his
+impression that it would be vain to go early, and having also, more
+than once in the course of the day, made enquiries of the concierge.
+Chad hadn't come in and had left no intimation; he had affairs,
+apparently, at this juncture--as it occurred to Strether he so well
+might have--that kept him long abroad.  Our friend asked once for
+him at the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli, but the only contribution
+offered there was the fact that every one was out.  It was with
+the idea that he would have to come home to sleep that Strether
+went up to his rooms, from which however he was still absent, though,
+from the balcony, a few moments later, his visitor heard eleven
+o'clock strike.  Chad's servant had by this time answered for his
+reappearance; he HAD, the visitor learned, come quickly in to dress
+for dinner and vanish again.  Strether spent an hour in waiting
+for him--an hour full of strange suggestions, persuasions, recognitions;
+one of those that he was to recall, at the end of his adventure, as
+the particular handful that most had counted.  The mellowest lamplight
+and the easiest chair had been placed at his disposal by Baptiste,
+subtlest of servants; the novel half-uncut, the novel lemon-coloured
+and tender, with the ivory knife athwart it like the dagger in a
+contadina's hair, had been pushed within the soft circle--a circle
+which, for some reason, affected Strether as softer still after
+the same Baptiste had remarked that in the absence of a further need
+of anything by Monsieur he would betake himself to bed.  The night
+was hot and heavy and the single lamp sufficient; the great flare
+of the lighted city, rising high, spending itself afar, played up
+from the Boulevard and, through the vague vista of the successive
+rooms, brought objects into view and added to their dignity.
+Strether found himself in possession as he never yet had been;
+he had been there alone, had turned over books and prints,
+had invoked, in Chad's absence, the spirit of the place,
+but never at the witching hour and never with a relish quite
+so like a pang.
+
+He spent a long time on the balcony; he hung over it as he had seen
+little Bilham hang the day of his first approach, as he had seen
+Mamie hang over her own the day little Bilham himself might have
+seen her from below; he passed back into the rooms, the three that
+occupied the front and that communicated by wide doors; and, while
+he circulated and rested, tried to recover the impression that they
+had made on him three months before, to catch again the voice in
+which they had seemed then to speak to him.  That voice, he had to
+note, failed audibly to sound; which he took as the proof of all
+the change in himself.  He had heard, of old, only what he COULD
+then hear; what he could do now was to think of three months ago as
+a point in the far past.  All voices had grown thicker and meant
+more things; they crowded on him as he moved about--it was the way
+they sounded together that wouldn't let him be still.  He felt,
+strangely, as sad as if he had come for some wrong, and yet as
+excited as if he had come for some freedom.  But the freedom was
+what was most in the place and the hour, it was the freedom that
+most brought him round again to the youth of his own that he had
+long ago missed.  He could have explained little enough to-day
+either why he had missed it or why, after years and years, he
+should care that he had; the main truth of the actual appeal of
+everything was none the less that everything represented the
+substance of his loss put it within reach, within touch, made it,
+to a degree it had never been, an affair of the senses.  That was
+what it became for him at this singular time, the youth he had long
+ago missed--a queer concrete presence, full of mystery, yet full of
+reality, which he could handle, taste, smell, the deep breathing of
+which he could positively hear.  It was in the outside air as well
+as within; it was in the long watch, from the balcony, in the
+summer night, of the wide late life of Paris, the unceasing soft
+quick rumble, below, of the little lighted carriages that, in the
+press, always suggested the gamblers he had seen of old at Monte
+Carlo pushing up to the tables.  This image was before him when he
+at last became aware that Chad was behind.
+
+"She tells me you put it all on ME"--he had arrived after this
+promptly enough at that information; which expressed the case
+however quite as the young man appeared willing for the moment to
+leave it.  Other things, with this advantage of their virtually
+having the night before them, came up for them, and had, as well,
+the odd effect of making the occasion, instead of hurried and
+feverish, one of the largest, loosest and easiest to which
+Strether's whole adventure was to have treated him.  He had been
+pursuing Chad from an early hour and had overtaken him only now;
+but now the delay was repaired by their being so exceptionally
+confronted.  They had foregathered enough of course in all the
+various times; they had again and again, since that first night at
+the theatre, been face to face over their question; but they had
+never been so alone together as they were actually alone--their
+talk hadn't yet been so supremely for themselves.  And if many
+things moreover passed before them, none passed more distinctly for
+Strether than that striking truth about Chad of which he had been
+so often moved to take note:  the truth that everything came
+happily back with him to his knowing how to live.  It had been
+seated in his pleased smile--a smile that pleased exactly in the
+right degree--as his visitor turned round, on the balcony, to greet
+his advent; his visitor in fact felt on the spot that there was
+nothing their meeting would so much do as bear witness to that
+facility.  He surrendered himself accordingly to so approved a
+gift; for what was the meaning of the facility but that others DID
+surrender themselves?  He didn't want, luckily, to prevent Chad
+from living; but he was quite aware that even if he had he would
+himself have thoroughly gone to pieces.  It was in truth
+essentially by bringing down his personal life to a function all
+subsidiary to the young man's own that he held together.  And the
+great point, above all, the sign of how completely Chad possessed
+the knowledge in question, was that one thus became, not only with
+a proper cheerfulness, but with wild native impulses, the feeder of
+his stream.  Their talk had accordingly not lasted three minutes
+without Strether's feeling basis enough for the excitement in which
+he had waited.  This overflow fairly deepened, wastefully abounded,
+as he observed the smallness of anything corresponding to it on the
+part of his friend.  That was exactly this friend's happy case; he
+"put out" his excitement, or whatever other emotion the matter
+involved, as he put out his washing; than which no arrangement
+could make more for domestic order.  It was quite for Strether
+himself in short to feel a personal analogy with the laundress
+bringing home the triumphs of the mangle.
+
+When he had reported on Sarah's visit, which he did very fully,
+Chad answered his question with perfect candour.  "I positively
+referred her to you--told her she must absolutely see you.  This was
+last night, and it all took place in ten minutes.  It was our first
+free talk--really the first time she had tackled me.  She knew I
+also knew what her line had been with yourself; knew moreover how
+little you had been doing to make anything difficult for her.
+So I spoke for you frankly--assured her you were all at her service.
+I assured her I was too," the young man continued; "and I pointed out
+how she could perfectly, at any time, have got at me.  Her difficulty
+has been simply her not finding the moment she fancied."
+
+"Her difficulty," Strether returned, "has been simply that she
+finds she's afraid of you.  She's not afraid of ME, Sarah, one
+little scrap; and it was just because she has seen how I can fidget
+when I give my mind to it that she has felt her best chance,
+rightly enough to be in making me as uneasy as possible.  I think
+she's at bottom as pleased to HAVE you put it on me as you yourself
+can possibly be to put it."
+
+"But what in the world, my dear man," Chad enquired in objection to
+this luminosity, "have I done to make Sally afraid?"
+
+"You've been 'wonderful, wonderful,' as we say--we poor people who
+watch the play from the pit; and that's what has, admirably, made
+her.  Made her all the more effectually that she could see you didn't
+set about it on purpose--I mean set about affecting her as with fear."
+
+Chad cast a pleasant backward glance over his possibilities of
+motive.  "I've only wanted to be kind and friendly, to be decent
+and attentive--and I still only want to be."
+
+Strether smiled at his comfortable clearness.  "Well, there can
+certainly be no way for it better than by my taking the onus.  It
+reduces your personal friction and your personal offence to almost
+nothing."
+
+Ah but Chad, with his completer conception of the friendly, wouldn't
+quite have this!  They had remained on the balcony, where, after their
+day of great and premature heat, the midnight air was delicious;
+and they leaned back in turn against the balustrade, all in harmony with
+the chairs and the flower-pots, the cigarettes and the starlight.
+"The onus isn't REALLY yours--after our agreeing so to wait together
+and judge together.  That was all my answer to Sally," Chad pursued--
+"that we have been, that we are, just judging together."
+
+"I'm not afraid of the burden," Strether explained; "I haven't
+come in the least that you should take it off me.  I've come very
+much, it seems to me, to double up my fore legs in the manner of
+the camel when he gets down on his knees to make his back convenient.
+But I've supposed you all this while to have been doing a lot of
+special and private judging--about which I haven't troubled you;
+and I've only wished to have your conclusion first from you.
+I don't ask more than that; I'm quite ready to take it as it has come."
+
+Chad turned up his face to the sky with a slow puff of his smoke.
+"Well, I've seen."
+
+Strether waited a little.  "I've left you wholly alone; haven't, I
+think I may say, since the first hour or two--when I merely
+preached patience--so much as breathed on you."
+
+"Oh you've been awfully good!"
+
+"We've both been good then--we've played the game.  We've given
+them the most liberal conditions."
+
+"Ah," said Chad, "splendid conditions!  It was open to them, open
+to them"--he seemed to make it out, as he smoked, with his eyes
+still on the stars.  He might in quiet sport have been reading
+their horoscope.  Strether wondered meanwhile what had been open to
+them, and he finally let him have it.  "It was open to them simply
+to let me alone; to have made up their minds, on really seeing me
+for themselves, that I could go on well enough as I was."
+
+Strether assented to this proposition with full lucidity, his
+companion's plural pronoun, which stood all for Mrs. Newsome and
+her daughter, having no ambiguity for him.  There was nothing,
+apparently, to stand for Mamie and Jim; and this added to our
+friend's sense of Chad's knowing what he thought.  "But they've made
+up their minds to the opposite--that you CAN'T go on as you are."
+
+"No," Chad continued in the same way; "they won't have it for a minute."
+
+Strether on his side also reflectively smoked.  It was as if their
+high place really represented some moral elevation from which they
+could look down on their recent past.  "There never was the
+smallest chance, do you know, that they WOULD have it for a moment."
+
+"Of course not--no real chance.  But if they were willing to think
+there was--!"
+
+"They weren't willing." Strether had worked it all out.  "It wasn't
+for you they came out, but for me.  It wasn't to see for themselves
+what you're doing, but what I'm doing.  The first branch of their
+curiosity was inevitably destined, under my culpable delay, to give way
+to the second; and it's on the second that, if I may use the expression
+and you don't mind my marking the invidious fact, they've been of late
+exclusively perched.  When Sarah sailed it was me, in other words,
+they were after."
+
+Chad took it in both with intelligence and with indulgence.  "It IS
+rather a business then--what I've let you in for!"
+
+Strether had again a brief pause; which ended in a reply that
+seemed to dispose once for all of this element of compunction.
+Chad was to treat it, at any rate, so far as they were again
+together, as having done so.  "I was 'in' when you found me."
+
+"Ah but it was you," the young man laughed, "who found ME."
+
+"I only found you out.  It was you who found me in.  It was all in
+the day's work for them, at all events, that they should come.  And
+they've greatly enjoyed it," Strether declared.
+
+"Well, I've tried to make them," said Chad.
+
+His companion did himself presently the same justice.  "So have I.
+I tried even this very morning--while Mrs. Pocock was with me.  She
+enjoys for instance, almost as much as anything else, not being, as
+I've said, afraid of me; and I think I gave her help in that."
+
+Chad took a deeper interest.  "Was she very very nasty?"
+
+Strether debated.  "Well, she was the most important thing--she was
+definite.  She was--at last--crystalline.  And I felt no remorse.
+I saw that they must have come."
+
+"Oh I wanted to see them for myself; so that if it were only for
+THAT--!"  Chad's own remorse was as small.
+
+This appeared almost all Strether wanted.  "Isn't your having seen
+them for yourself then THE thing, beyond all others, that has come
+of their visit?"
+
+Chad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it
+so.  "Don't you count it as anything that you're dished--if you ARE
+dished?  Are you, my dear man, dished?"
+
+It sounded as if he were asking if he had caught cold or hurt his
+foot, and Strether for a minute but smoked and smoked.  "I want to
+see her again.  I must see her."
+
+"Of course you must." Then Chad hesitated.  "Do you mean--a--Mother
+herself?"
+
+"Oh your mother--that will depend."
+
+It was as if Mrs. Newsome had somehow been placed by the words
+very far off.  Chad however endeavoured in spite of this to reach
+the place.  "What do you mean it will depend on?"
+
+Strether, for all answer, gave him a longish look.  "I was speaking
+of Sarah.  I must positively--though she quite cast me off--see HER
+again.  I can't part with her that way."
+
+"Then she was awfully unpleasant?"
+
+Again Strether exhaled.  "She was what she had to be.  I mean that
+from the moment they're not delighted they can only be--well what I
+admit she was.  We gave them," he went on, "their chance to be
+delighted, and they've walked up to it, and looked all round it,
+and not taken it."
+
+"You can bring a horse to water--!" Chad suggested.
+
+"Precisely.  And the tune to which this morning Sarah wasn't
+delighted--the tune to which, to adopt your metaphor, she refused
+to drink--leaves us on that side nothing more to hope."
+
+Chad had a pause, and then as if consolingly:  "It was never of
+course really the least on the cards that they would be 'delighted.'"
+
+"Well, I don't know, after all," Strether mused.  "I've had to come
+as far round.  However"--he shook it off--"it's doubtless MY
+performance that's absurd."
+
+"There are certainly moments," said Chad, "when you seem to me too
+good to be true.  Yet if you are true," he added, "that seems to be
+all that need concern me."
+
+"I'm true, but I'm incredible.  I'm fantastic and ridiculous--
+I don't explain myself even TO myself.  How can they then,"
+Strether asked, "understand me?  So I don't quarrel with them."
+
+"I see.  They quarrel," said Chad rather comfortably, "with US."
+Strether noted once more the comfort, but his young friend had
+already gone on.  "I should feel greatly ashamed, all the same,
+if I didn't put it before you again that you ought to think,
+after all, tremendously well.  I mean before giving up beyond recall--"
+With which insistence, as from a certain delicacy, dropped.
+
+Ah but Strether wanted it.  "Say it all, say it all."
+
+"Well, at your age, and with what--when all's said and done--
+Mother might do for you and be for you."
+
+Chad had said it all, from his natural scruple, only to that
+extent; so that Strether after an instant himself took a hand.
+"My absence of an assured future.  The little I have to show toward
+the power to take care of myself.  The way, the wonderful way,
+she would certainly take care of me.  Her fortune, her kindness,
+and the constant miracle of her having been disposed to go even so far.
+Of course, of course"--he summed it up.  "There are those sharp facts."
+
+Chad had meanwhile thought of another still.  "And don't you really
+care--?"
+
+His friend slowly turned round to him.  "Will you go?"
+
+"I'll go if you'll say you now consider I should.  You know," he
+went on, "I was ready six weeks ago."
+
+"Ah," said Strether, "that was when you didn't know I wasn't!
+You're ready at present because you do know it."
+
+"That may be," Chad returned; "but all the same I'm sincere.  You
+talk about taking the whole thing on your shoulders, but in what
+light do you regard me that you think me capable of letting you
+pay?"  Strether patted his arm, as they stood together against the
+parapet, reassuringly--seeming to wish to contend that he HAD the
+wherewithal; but it was again round this question of purchase and
+price that the young man's sense of fairness continued to hover.
+"What it literally comes to for you, if you'll pardon my putting it
+so, is that you give up money.  Possibly a good deal of money."
+
+"Oh," Strether laughed, "if it were only just enough you'd still be
+justified in putting it so!  But I've on my side to remind you too
+that YOU give up money; and more than 'possibly'--quite certainly,
+as I should suppose--a good deal."
+
+"True enough; but I've got a certain quantity," Chad returned after
+a moment.  "Whereas you, my dear man, you--"
+
+"I can't be at all said"--Strether took him up--"to have a 'quantity'
+certain or uncertain?  Very true.  Still, I shan't starve."
+
+"Oh you mustn't STARVE!" Chad pacifically emphasised; and so, in
+the pleasant conditions, they continued to talk; though there was,
+for that matter, a pause in which the younger companion might have
+been taken as weighing again the delicacy of his then and there
+promising the elder some provision against the possibility just
+mentioned.  This, however, he presumably thought best not to do,
+for at the end of another minute they had moved in quite a different
+direction.  Strether had broken in by returning to the subject of
+Chad's passage with Sarah and enquiring if they had arrived, in the
+event, at anything in the nature of a "scene."  To this Chad replied
+that they had on the contrary kept tremendously polite; adding moreover
+that Sally was after all not the woman to have made the mistake of
+not being.  "Her hands are a good deal tied, you see.  I got so,
+from the first," he sagaciously observed, "the start of her."
+
+"You mean she has taken so much from you?"
+
+"Well, I couldn't of course in common decency give less:  only she
+hadn't expected, I think, that I'd give her nearly so much.  And
+she began to take it before she knew it."
+
+"And she began to like it," said Strether, "as soon as she began to
+take it!"
+
+"Yes, she has liked it--also more than she expected." After which
+Chad observed:  "But she doesn't like ME.  In fact she hates me."
+
+Strether's interest grew.  "Then why does she want you at home?"
+
+"Because when you hate you want to triumph, and if she should get
+me neatly stuck there she WOULD triumph."
+
+Strether followed afresh, but looking as he went.  "Certainly--in a
+manner.  But it would scarce be a triumph worth having if, once
+entangled, feeling her dislike and possibly conscious in time of a
+certain quantity of your own, you should on the spot make yourself
+unpleasant to her."
+
+"Ah," said Chad, "she can bear ME--could bear me at least at home.
+It's my being there that would be her triumph.  She hates me in Paris."
+
+"She hates in other words--"
+
+"Yes, THAT'S it!"--Chad had quickly understood this understanding;
+which formed on the part of each as near an approach as they had
+yet made to naming Madame de Vionnet.  The limitations of their
+distinctness didn't, however, prevent its fairly lingering in the
+air that it was this lady Mrs. Pocock hated.  It added one more
+touch moreover to their established recognition of the rare intimacy
+of Chad's association with her.  He had never yet more twitched away
+the last light veil from this phenomenon than in presenting himself
+as confounded and submerged in the feeling she had created at Woollett.
+"And I'll tell you who hates me too," he immediately went on.
+
+Strether knew as immediately whom he meant, but with as prompt a
+protest.  "Ah no!  Mamie doesn't hate--well," he caught himself in
+time--"anybody at all.  Mamie's beautiful."
+
+Chad shook his head.  "That's just why I mind it.  She certainly
+doesn't like me."
+
+"How much do you mind it?  What would you do for her?"
+
+"Well, I'd like her if she'd like me.  Really, really," Chad declared.
+
+It gave his companion a moment's pause.  "You asked me just now if
+I don't, as you said, 'care' about a certain person.  You rather
+tempt me therefore to put the question in my turn.  Don't YOU care
+about a certain other person?"
+
+Chad looked at him hard in the lamplight of the window.  "The
+difference is that I don't want to."
+
+Strether wondered.  "'Don't want' to?"
+
+"I try not to--that is I HAVE tried.  I've done my best.  You can't
+be surprised," the young man easily went on, "when you yourself set
+me on it.  I was indeed," he added, "already on it a little; but you
+set me harder.  It was six weeks ago that I thought I had come out."
+
+Strether took it well in.  "But you haven't come out!"
+
+"I don't know--it's what I WANT to know," said Chad.  "And if I
+could have sufficiently wanted--by myself--to go back, I think I
+might have found out."
+
+"Possibly"--Strether considered.  "But all you were able to achieve
+was to want to want to!  And even then," he pursued, "only till our
+friends there came.  Do you want to want to still?"  As with a
+sound half-dolorous, half-droll and all vague and equivocal, Chad
+buried his face for a little in his hands, rubbing it in a
+whimsical way that amounted to an evasion, he brought it out more
+sharply:  "DO you?"
+
+Chad kept for a time his attitude, but at last he looked up, and
+then abruptly, "Jim IS a damned dose!" he declared.
+
+"Oh I don't ask you to abuse or describe or in any way pronounce on
+your relatives; I simply put it to you once more whether you're NOW
+ready.  You say you've 'seen.' Is what you've seen that you can't
+resist?"
+
+Chad gave him a strange smile--the nearest approach he had ever
+shown to a troubled one.  "Can't you make me NOT resist?"
+
+"What it comes to," Strether went on very gravely now and as if he
+hadn't heard him, "what it comes to is that more has been done for
+you, I think, than I've ever seen done--attempted perhaps, but
+never so successfully done--by one human being for another."
+
+"Oh an immense deal certainly"--Chad did it full justice.  "And you
+yourself are adding to it."
+
+It was without heeding this either that his visitor continued.
+"And our friends there won't have it."
+
+"No, they simply won't."
+
+"They demand you on the basis, as it were, of repudiation and
+ingratitude; and what has been the matter with me," Strether went
+on, "is that I haven't seen my way to working with you for
+repudiation."
+
+Chad appreciated this.  "Then as you haven't seen yours you
+naturally haven't seen mine.  There it is." After which he
+proceeded, with a certain abruptness, to a sharp interrogation.
+"NOW do you say she doesn't hate me?"
+
+Strether hesitated.  "'She'--?"
+
+"Yes--Mother.  We called it Sarah, but it comes to the same thing."
+
+"Ah," Strether objected, "not to the same thing as her hating YOU."
+
+On which--though as if for an instant it had hung fire--Chad
+remarkably replied:  "Well, if they hate my good friend, THAT comes
+to the same thing." It had a note of inevitable truth that made
+Strether take it as enough, feel he wanted nothing more.  The young
+man spoke in it for his "good friend" more than he had ever yet
+directly spoken, confessed to such deep identities between them as
+he might play with the idea of working free from, but which at a
+given moment could still draw him down like a whirlpool.  And
+meanwhile he had gone on.  "Their hating you too moreover--that
+also comes to a good deal."
+
+"Ah," said Strether, "your mother doesn't."
+
+Chad, however, loyally stuck to it--loyally, that is, to Strether.
+"She will if you don't look out."
+
+"Well, I do look out.  I am, after all, looking out.  That's just
+why," our friend explained, "I want to see her again."
+
+It drew from Chad again the same question.  "To see Mother?"
+
+"To see--for the present--Sarah."
+
+"Ah then there you are!  And what I don't for the life of me make
+out," Chad pursued with resigned perplexity, "is what you GAIN by it."
+
+Oh it would have taken his companion too long to say!  "That's
+because you have, I verily believe, no imagination.  You've other
+qualities.  But no imagination, don't you see? at all."
+
+"I dare say.  I do see." It was an idea in which Chad showed
+interest.  "But haven't you yourself rather too much?"
+
+"Oh RATHER--!"  So that after an instant, under this reproach and
+as if it were at last a fact really to escape from, Strether made
+his move for departure.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+One of the features of the restless afternoon passed by him after
+Mrs. Pocock's visit was an hour spent, shortly before dinner, with
+Maria Gostrey, whom of late, in spite of so sustained a call on his
+attention from other quarters, he had by no means neglected.  And
+that he was still not neglecting her will appear from the fact that
+he was with her again at the same hour on the very morrow--with no
+less fine a consciousness moreover of being able to hold her ear.
+It continued inveterately to occur, for that matter, that whenever
+he had taken one of his greater turns he came back to where she so
+faithfully awaited him.  None of these excursions had on the whole
+been livelier than the pair of incidents--the fruit of the short
+interval since his previous visit--on which he had now to report to
+her.  He had seen Chad Newsome late the night before, and he had
+had that morning, as a sequel to this conversation, a second
+interview with Sarah.  "But they're all off," he said, "at last."
+
+It puzzled her a moment.  "All?--Mr. Newsome with them?"
+
+"Ah not yet!  Sarah and Jim and Mamie.  But Waymarsh with them--
+for Sarah.  It's too beautiful," Strether continued; "I find I don't
+get over that--it's always a fresh joy.  But it's a fresh joy too,"
+he added, "that--well, what do you think?  Little Bilham also goes.
+But he of course goes for Mamie."
+
+Miss Gostrey wondered.  "'For' her?  Do you mean they're already
+engaged?"
+
+"Well," said Strether, "say then for ME.  He'll do anything for me;
+just as I will, for that matter--anything I can--for him.  Or for
+Mamie either.  SHE'LL do anything for me."
+
+Miss Gostrey gave a comprehensive sigh.  "The way you reduce people
+to subjection!"
+
+"It's certainly, on one side, wonderful.  But it's quite equalled,
+on another, by the way I don't.  I haven't reduced Sarah, since
+yesterday; though I've succeeded in seeing her again, as I'll
+presently tell you.  The others however are really all right.
+Mamie, by that blessed law of ours, absolutely must have a young
+man."
+
+"But what must poor Mr. Bilham have?  Do you mean they'll MARRY
+for you?"
+
+"I mean that, by the same blessed law, it won't matter a grain if
+they don't--I shan't have in the least to worry."
+
+She saw as usual what he meant.  "And Mr. Jim?--who goes for him?"
+
+"Oh," Strether had to admit, "I couldn't manage THAT.  He's
+thrown, as usual, on the world; the world which, after all, by his
+account--for he has prodigious adventures--seems very good to him.
+He fortunately--'over here,' as he says--finds the world
+everywhere; and his most prodigious adventure of all," he went on,
+"has been of course of the last few days."
+
+Miss Gostrey, already knowing, instantly made the connexion.  "He
+has seen Marie de Vionnet again?"
+
+"He went, all by himself, the day after Chad's party--didn't I
+tell you?--to tea with her.  By her invitation--all alone."
+
+"Quite like yourself!" Maria smiled.
+
+"Oh but he's more wonderful about her than I am!"  And then as his
+friend showed how she could believe it, filling it out, fitting it
+on to old memories of the wonderful woman:  "What I should have
+liked to manage would have been HER going."
+
+"To Switzerland with the party?"
+
+"For Jim--and for symmetry.  If it had been workable moreover for
+a fortnight she'd have gone.  She's ready"--he followed up his
+renewed vision of her--"for anything."
+
+Miss Gostrey went with him a minute.  "She's too perfect!"
+
+"She WILL, I think," he pursued, "go to-night to the station."
+
+"To see him off?"
+
+"With Chad--marvellously--as part of their general attention.  And
+she does it"--it kept before him--"with a light, light grace, a
+free, free gaiety, that may well softly bewilder Mr. Pocock."
+
+It kept her so before him that his companion had after an instant a
+friendly comment.  "As in short it has softly bewildered a saner
+man.  Are you really in love with her?" Maria threw off.
+
+"It's of no importance I should know," he replied.  "It matters so
+little--has nothing to do, practically, with either of us."
+
+"All the same"--Maria continued to smile--"they go, the five, as I
+understand you, and you and Madame de Vionnet stay."
+
+"Oh and Chad." To which Strether added:  "And you."
+
+"Ah 'me'!"--she gave a small impatient wail again, in which
+something of the unreconciled seemed suddenly to break out.  "I
+don't stay, it somehow seems to me, much to my advantage.  In the
+presence of all you cause to pass before me I've a tremendous sense
+of privation."
+
+Strether hesitated.  "But your privation, your keeping out of
+everything, has been--hasn't it?--by your own choice."
+
+"Oh yes; it has been necessary--that is it has been better for you.
+What I mean is only that I seem to have ceased to serve you."
+
+"How can you tell that?" he asked.  "You don't know how you serve me.
+When you cease--"
+
+"Well?" she said as he dropped.
+
+"Well, I'll LET you know.  Be quiet till then."
+
+She thought a moment.  "Then you positively like me to stay?"
+
+"Don't I treat you as if I did?"
+
+"You're certainly very kind to me.  But that," said Maria, "is for
+myself.  It's getting late, as you see, and Paris turning rather
+hot and dusty.  People are scattering, and some of them, in other
+places want me.  But if you want me here--!"
+
+She had spoken as resigned to his word, but he had of a sudden a
+still sharper sense than he would have expected of desiring not to
+lose her.  "I want you here."
+
+She took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they
+brought her, gave her something that was the compensation of her
+case.  "Thank you," she simply answered.  And then as he looked at
+her a little harder, "Thank you very much," she repeated.
+
+It had broken as with a slight arrest into the current of their
+talk, and it held him a moment longer.  "Why, two months, or
+whatever the time was, ago, did you so suddenly dash off?  The
+reason you afterwards gave me for having kept away three weeks wasn't
+the real one."
+
+She recalled.  "I never supposed you believed it was.  Yet," she
+continued, "if you didn't guess it that was just what helped you."
+
+He looked away from her on this; he indulged, so far as space
+permitted, in one of his slow absences.  "I've often thought of it,
+but never to feel that I could guess it.  And you see the
+consideration with which I've treated you in never asking till now."
+
+"Now then why DO you ask?"
+
+"To show you how I miss you when you're not here, and what it does
+for me."
+
+"It doesn't seem to have done," she laughed, "all it might!
+However," she added, "if you've really never guessed the truth I'll
+tell it you."
+
+"I've never guessed it," Strether declared.
+
+"Never?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Well then I dashed off, as you say, so as not to have the
+confusion of being there if Marie de Vionnet should tell you
+anything to my detriment."
+
+He looked as if he considerably doubted.  "You even then would have
+had to face it on your return."
+
+"Oh if I had found reason to believe it something very bad I'd have
+left you altogether."
+
+"So then," he continued, "it was only on guessing she had been on
+the whole merciful that you ventured back?"
+
+Maria kept it together.  "I owe her thanks.  Whatever her temptation
+she didn't separate us.  That's one of my reasons," she went on
+"for admiring her so."
+
+"Let it pass then," said Strether, "for one of mine as well.  But
+what would have been her temptation?"
+
+"What are ever the temptations of women?"
+
+He thought--but hadn't, naturally, to think too long.  "Men?"
+
+"She would have had you, with it, more for herself.  But she saw
+she could have you without it."
+
+"Oh 'have' me!" Strether a trifle ambiguously sighed.  "YOU," he
+handsomely declared, "would have had me at any rate WITH it."
+
+"Oh 'have' you!"--she echoed it as he had done.  "I do have you,
+however," she less ironically said, "from the moment you express a
+wish."
+
+He stopped before her, full of the disposition.  "I'll express fifty."
+
+Which indeed begot in her, with a certain inconsequence, a return
+of her small wail.  "Ah there you are!"
+
+There, if it were so, he continued for the rest of the time to be,
+and it was as if to show her how she could still serve him that,
+coming back to the departure of the Pococks, he gave her the view,
+vivid with a hundred more touches than we can reproduce, of what
+had happened for him that morning.  He had had ten minutes with
+Sarah at her hotel, ten minutes reconquered, by irresistible pressure,
+from the time over which he had already described her to Miss Gostrey
+as having, at the end of their interview on his own premises, passed
+the great sponge of the future.  He had caught her by not announcing
+himself, had found her in her sitting-room with a dressmaker and a
+lingere whose accounts she appeared to have been more or less
+ingenuously settling and who soon withdrew.  Then he had explained
+to her how he had succeeded, late the night before, in keeping
+his promise of seeing Chad.  "I told her I'd take it all."
+
+"You'd 'take' it?"
+
+"Why if he doesn't go."
+
+Maria waited.  "And who takes it if he does?" she enquired with a
+certain grimness of gaiety.
+
+"Well," said Strether, "I think I take, in any event, everything."
+
+"By which I suppose you mean," his companion brought out after a
+moment, "that you definitely understand you now lose everything."
+
+He stood before her again.  "It does come perhaps to the same
+thing.  But Chad, now that he has seen, doesn't really want it."
+
+She could believe that, but she made, as always, for clearness.
+"Still, what, after all, HAS he seen?"
+
+"What they want of him.  And it's enough."
+
+"It contrasts so unfavourably with what Madame de Vionnet wants?"
+
+"It contrasts--just so; all round, and tremendously."
+
+"Therefore, perhaps, most of all with what YOU want?"
+
+"Oh," said Strether, "what I want is a thing I've ceased to measure
+or even to understand."
+
+But his friend none the less went on.  "Do you want Mrs. Newsome--
+after such a way of treating you?"
+
+It was a straighter mode of dealing with this lady than they had as
+yet--such was their high form--permitted themselves; but it seemed
+not wholly for this that he delayed a moment.  "I dare say it has
+been, after all, the only way she could have imagined."
+
+"And does that make you want her any more?"
+
+"I've tremendously disappointed her," Strether thought it worth
+while to mention.
+
+"Of course you have.  That's rudimentary; that was plain to us long
+ago.  But isn't it almost as plain," Maria went on, "that you've
+even yet your straight remedy?  Really drag him away, as I believe
+you still can, and you'd cease to have to count with her
+disappointment."
+
+"Ah then," he laughed, "I should have to count with yours!"
+
+But this barely struck her now.  "What, in that case, should you
+call counting?  You haven't come out where you are, I think, to
+please ME."
+
+"Oh," he insisted, "that too, you know, has been part of it.
+I can't separate--it's all one; and that's perhaps why, as I say,
+I don't understand." But he was ready to declare again that this
+didn't in the least matter; all the more that, as he affirmed,
+he HADn't really as yet "come out." "She gives me after all, on
+its coming to the pinch, a last mercy, another chance.  They don't
+sail, you see, for five or six weeks more, and they haven't--she
+admits that--expected Chad would take part in their tour.  It's
+still open to him to join them, at the last, at Liverpool."
+
+Miss Gostrey considered.  "How in the world is it 'open' unless you
+open it?  How can he join them at Liverpool if he but sinks deeper
+into his situation here?"
+
+"He has given her--as I explained to you that she let me know
+yesterday--his word of honour to do as I say."
+
+Maria stared.  "But if you say nothing!"
+
+Well, he as usual walked about on it.  "I did say something this
+morning.  I gave her my answer--the word I had promised her after
+hearing from himself what HE had promised.  What she demanded of
+me yesterday, you'll remember, was the engagement then and there to
+make him take up this vow."
+
+"Well then," Miss Gostrey enquired, "was the purpose of your visit
+to her only to decline?"
+
+"No; it was to ask, odd as that may seem to you, for another delay."
+
+"Ah that's weak!"
+
+"Precisely!"   She had spoken with impatience, but, so far as that
+at least, he knew where he was.  "If I AM weak I want to find it
+out.  If I don't find it out I shall have the comfort, the little
+glory, of thinking I'm strong."
+
+"It's all the comfort, I judge," she returned, "that you WILL have!"
+
+"At any rate," he said, "it will have been a month more.  Paris may
+grow, from day to day, hot and dusty, as you say; but there are
+other things that are hotter and dustier.  I'm not afraid to stay
+on; the summer here must be amusing in a wild--if it isn't a tame--
+way of its own; the place at no time more picturesque.  I think I
+shall like it.  And then," he benevolently smiled for her, "there
+will be always you."
+
+"Oh," she objected, "it won't be as a part of the picturesqueness
+that I shall stay, for I shall be the plainest thing about you.
+You may, you see, at any rate," she pursued, "have nobody else.
+Madame de Vionnet may very well be going off, mayn't she?--and
+Mr. Newsome by the same stroke:  unless indeed you've had an assurance
+from them to the contrary.  So that if your idea's to stay for them"--
+it was her duty to suggest it--"you may be left in the lurch.
+Of course if they do stay"--she kept it up--"they would be part of
+the picturesqueness.  Or else indeed you might join them somewhere."
+
+Strether seemed to face it as if it were a happy thought; but the
+next moment he spoke more critically.  "Do you mean that they'll
+probably go off together?"
+
+She just considered.  "I think it will be treating you quite
+without ceremony if they do; though after all," she added, "it
+would be difficult to see now quite what degree of ceremony properly
+meets your case."
+
+"Of course," Strether conceded, "my attitude toward them is extraordinary."
+
+"Just so; so that one may ask one's self what style of proceeding
+on their own part can altogether match it.  The attitude of their
+own that won't pale in its light they've doubtless still to work
+out.  The really handsome thing perhaps," she presently threw off,
+"WOULD be for them to withdraw into more secluded conditions,
+offering at the same time to share them with you." He looked at
+her, on this, as if some generous irritation--all in his interest--
+had suddenly again flickered in her; and what she next said indeed
+half-explained it.  "Don't really be afraid to tell me if what now
+holds you IS the pleasant prospect of the empty town, with plenty
+of seats in the shade, cool drinks, deserted museums, drives to the
+Bois in the evening, and our wonderful woman all to yourself." And
+she kept it up still more.  "The handsomest thing of ALL, when one
+makes it out, would, I dare say, be that Mr. Chad should for a
+while go off by himself.  It's a pity, from that point of view,"
+she wound up, "that he doesn't pay his mother a visit.  It would
+at least occupy your interval." The thought in fact held her a
+moment.  "Why doesn't he pay his mother a visit?  Even a week, at
+this good moment, would do."
+
+"My dear lady," Strether replied--and he had it even to himself
+surprisingly ready--"my dear lady, his mother has paid HIM a visit.
+Mrs. Newsome has been with him, this month, with an intensity that
+I'm sure he has thoroughly felt; he has lavishly entertained her,
+and she has let him have her thanks.  Do you suggest he shall go
+back for more of them?"
+
+Well, she succeeded after a little in shaking it off.  "I see.
+It's what you don't suggest--what you haven't suggested.
+And you know."
+
+"So would you, my dear," he kindly said, "if you had so much as
+seen her."
+
+"As seen Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+"No, Sarah--which, both for Chad and for myself, has served all
+the purpose."
+
+"And served it in a manner," she responsively mused, "so extraordinary!"
+
+"Well, you see," he partly explained, "what it comes to is that she's
+all cold thought--which Sarah could serve to us cold without its
+really losing anything.  So it is that we know what she thinks of us."
+
+Maria had followed, but she had an arrest.  "What I've never made
+out, if you come to that, is what you think--I mean you personally--
+of HER.  Don't you so much, when all's said, as care a little?"
+
+"That," he answered with no loss of promptness, "is what even Chad
+himself asked me last night.  He asked me if I don't mind the loss--
+well, the loss of an opulent future.  Which moreover," he hastened
+to add, "was a perfectly natural question."
+
+"I call your attention, all the same," said Miss Gostrey, "to the
+fact that I don't ask it.  What I venture to ask is whether it's to
+Mrs. Newsome herself that you're indifferent."
+
+"I haven't been so"--he spoke with all assurance.  "I've been the
+very opposite.  I've been, from the first moment, preoccupied with
+the impression everything might be making on her--quite oppressed,
+haunted, tormented by it.  I've been interested ONLY in her seeing
+what I've seen.  And I've been as disappointed in her refusal to
+see it as she has been in what has appeared to her the perversity
+of my insistence."
+
+"Do you mean that she has shocked you as you've shocked her?"
+
+Strether weighed it.  "I'm probably not so shockable.  But on the
+other hand I've gone much further to meet her.  She, on her side,
+hasn't budged an inch."
+
+"So that you're now at last"--Maria pointed the moral--"in the sad
+stage of recriminations."
+
+"No--it's only to you I speak.  I've been like a lamb to Sarah.
+I've only put my back to the wall.  It's to THAT one naturally
+staggers when one has been violently pushed there."
+
+She watched him a moment.  "Thrown over?"
+
+"Well, as I feel I've landed somewhere I think I must have been thrown."
+
+She turned it over, but as hoping to clarify much rather than to
+harmonise.  "The thing is that I suppose you've been disappointing--"
+
+"Quite from the very first of my arrival?  I dare say.  I admit I
+was surprising even to myself."
+
+"And then of course," Maria went on, "I had much to do with it."
+
+"With my being surprising--?"
+
+"That will do," she laughed, "if you're too delicate to call it MY
+being!  Naturally," she added, "you came over more or less for
+surprises."
+
+"Naturally!"--he valued the reminder.
+
+"But they were to have been all for you"--she continued to piece it
+out--"and none of them for HER."
+
+Once more he stopped before her as if she had touched the point.
+"That's just her difficulty--that she doesn't admit surprises.
+It's a fact that, I think, describes and represents her; and it
+falls in with what I tell you--that she's all, as I've called it,
+fine cold thought.  She had, to her own mind, worked the whole
+thing out in advance, and worked it out for me as well as for
+herself.  Whenever she has done that, you see, there's no room
+left; no margin, as it were, for any alteration.  She's filled as
+full, packed as tight, as she'll hold and if you wish to get
+anything more or different either out or in--"
+
+"You've got to make over altogether the woman herself?"
+
+"What it comes to," said Strether, "is that you've got morally and
+intellectually to get rid of her."
+
+"Which would appear," Maria returned, "to be practically what
+you've done."
+
+But her friend threw back his head.  "I haven't touched her.  She
+won't BE touched.  I see it now as I've never done; and she hangs
+together with a perfection of her own," he went on, "that does
+suggest a kind of wrong in ANY change of her composition.  It was
+at any rate," he wound up, "the woman herself, as you call her the
+whole moral and intellectual being or block, that Sarah brought me
+over to take or to leave."
+
+It turned Miss Gostrey to deeper thought.  "Fancy having to take at the
+point of the bayonet a whole moral and intellectual being or block!"
+
+"It was in fact," said Strether, "what, at home, I HAD done.
+But somehow over there I didn't quite know it."
+
+"One never does, I suppose," Miss Gostrey concurred, "realise in
+advance, in such a case, the size, as you may say, of the block.
+Little by little it looms up.  It has been looming for you more and
+more till at last you see it all."
+
+"I see it all," he absently echoed, while his eyes might have been
+fixing some particularly large iceberg in a cool blue northern sea.
+"It's magnificent!" he then rather oddly exclaimed.
+
+But his friend, who was used to this kind of inconsequence in him,
+kept the thread.  "There's nothing so magnificent--for making
+others feel you--as to have no imagination."
+
+It brought him straight round.  "Ah there you are! It's what I said
+last night to Chad.  That he himself, I mean, has none."
+
+"Then it would appear," Maria suggested, "that he has, after all,
+something in common with his mother."
+
+"He has in common that he makes one, as you say, 'feel' him.  And
+yet," he added, as if the question were interesting, "one feels
+others too, even when they have plenty."
+
+Miss Gostrey continued suggestive.  "Madame de Vionnet?"
+
+"SHE has plenty."
+
+"Certainly--she had quantities of old.  But there are different
+ways of making one's self felt."
+
+"Yes, it comes, no doubt, to that.  You now--'
+
+He was benevolently going on, but she wouldn't have it.
+"Oh I DON'T make myself felt; so my quantity needn't be settled.
+Yours, you know," she said, "is monstrous.  No one has ever had so much."
+
+It struck him for a moment.  "That's what Chad also thinks."
+
+"There YOU are then--though it isn't for him to complain of it!"
+
+"Oh he doesn't complain of it," said Strether.
+
+"That's all that would be wanting! But apropos of what," Maria went
+on, "did the question come up?"
+
+"Well, of his asking me what it is I gain."
+
+She had a pause.  "Then as I've asked you too it settles my case.
+Oh you HAVE," she repeated, "treasures of imagination."
+
+But he had been for an instant thinking away from this, and he came
+up in another place.  "And yet Mrs. Newsome--it's a thing to
+remember--HAS imagined, did, that is, imagine, and apparently still
+does, horrors about what I should have found.  I was booked, by her
+vision--extraordinarily intense, after all--to find them; and that
+I didn't, that I couldn't, that, as she evidently felt, I wouldn't--
+this evidently didn't at all, as they say, 'suit' her book.
+It was more than she could bear.  That was her disappointment."
+
+"You mean you were to have found Chad himself horrible?"
+
+"I was to have found the woman."
+
+"Horrible?"
+
+"Found her as she imagined her."  And Strether paused as if for his
+own expression of it he could add no touch to that picture.
+
+His companion had meanwhile thought.  "She imagined stupidly--so it
+comes to the same thing."
+
+"Stupidly?  Oh!" said Strether.
+
+But she insisted.  "She imagined meanly."
+
+He had it, however, better.  "It couldn't but be ignorantly."
+
+"Well, intensity with ignorance--what do you want worse?"
+
+This question might have held him, but he let it pass.  "Sarah
+isn't ignorant--now; she keeps up the theory of the horrible."
+
+"Ah but she's intense--and that by itself will do sometimes as
+well.  If it doesn't do, in this case, at any rate, to deny that
+Marie's charming, it will do at least to deny that she's good."
+
+"What I claim is that she's good for Chad."
+
+"You don't claim"--she seemed to like it clear--"that she's good
+for YOU."
+
+But he continued without heeding.  "That's what I wanted them to
+come out for--to see for themselves if she's bad for him."
+
+"And now that they've done so they won't admit that she's good even
+for anything?"
+
+"They do think," Strether presently admitted, "that she's on the
+whole about as bad for me.  But they're consistent of course,
+inasmuch as they've their clear view of what's good for both of us."
+
+"For you, to begin with"--Maria, all responsive, confined the
+question for the moment--"to eliminate from your existence and if
+possible even from your memory the dreadful creature that I must
+gruesomely shadow forth for them, even more than to eliminate the
+distincter evil--thereby a little less portentous--of the person
+whose confederate you've suffered yourself to become.  However,
+that's comparatively simple.  You can easily, at the worst, after
+all, give me up."
+
+"I can easily at the worst, after all, give you up." The irony was
+so obvious that it needed no care.  "I can easily at the worst,
+after all, even forget you."
+
+"Call that then workable.  But Mr. Newsome has much more to forget.
+How can HE do it?"
+
+"Ah there again we are! That's just what I was to have made him do;
+just where I was to have worked with him and helped."
+
+She took it in silence and without attenuation--as if perhaps from
+very familiarity with the facts; and her thought made a connexion
+without showing the links.  "Do you remember how we used to talk at
+Chester and in London about my seeing you through?"   She spoke as
+of far-off things and as if they had spent weeks at the places
+she named.
+
+"It's just what you ARE doing."
+
+"Ah but the worst--since you've left such a margin--may be still
+to come.  You may yet break down."
+
+"Yes, I may yet break down.  But will you take me--?"
+
+He had hesitated, and she waited.  "Take you?"
+
+"For as long as I can bear it."
+
+She also debated "Mr. Newsome and Madame de Vionnet may, as we were
+saying, leave town.  How long do you think you can bear it without them?"
+
+Strether's reply to this was at first another question.  "Do you mean
+in order to get away from me?"
+
+Her answer had an abruptness.  "Don't find me rude if I say I should
+think they'd want to!"
+
+He looked at her hard again--seemed even for an instant to have an
+intensity of thought under which his colour changed.  But he
+smiled.  "You mean after what they've done to me?"
+
+"After what SHE has."
+
+At this, however, with a laugh, he was all right again.  "Ah but
+she hasn't done it yet!"
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+He had taken the train a few days after this from a station--
+as well as to a station--selected almost at random; such days,
+whatever should happen, were numbered, and he had gone forth under
+the impulse--artless enough, no doubt--to give the whole of one of
+them to that French ruralism, with its cool special green, into
+which he had hitherto looked only through the little oblong window
+of the picture-frame.  It had been as yet for the most part but a
+land of fancy for him--the background of fiction, the medium of
+art, the nursery of letters; practically as distant as Greece, but
+practically also well-nigh as consecrated.  Romance could weave
+itself, for Strether's sense, out of elements mild enough; and even
+after what he had, as he felt, lately "been through," he could
+thrill a little at the chance of seeing something somewhere that
+would remind him of a certain small Lambinet that had charmed him,
+long years before, at a Boston dealer's and that he had quite
+absurdly never forgotten.  It had been offered, he remembered, at a
+price he had been instructed to believe the lowest ever named for a
+Lambinet, a price he had never felt so poor as on having to recognise,
+all the same, as beyond a dream of possibility.  He had dreamed--
+had turned and twisted possibilities for an hour:  it had been
+the only adventure of his life in connexion with the purchase
+of a work of art.  The adventure, it will be perceived, was modest;
+but the memory, beyond all reason and by some accident of
+association, was sweet.  The little Lambinet abode with him as the
+picture he WOULD have bought--the particular production that had
+made him for the moment overstep the modesty of nature.  He was
+quite aware that if he were to see it again he should perhaps have
+a drop or a shock, and he never found himself wishing that the
+wheel of time would turn it up again, just as he had seen it in the
+maroon-coloured, sky-lighted inner shrine of Tremont Street.
+It would be a different thing, however, to see the remembered mixture
+resolved back into its elements--to assist at the restoration to
+nature of the whole far-away hour:  the dusty day in Boston, the
+background of the Fitchburg Depot, of the maroon-coloured sanctum,
+the special-green vision, the ridiculous price, the poplars, the
+willows, the rushes, the river, the sunny silvery sky, the shady
+woody horizon.
+
+He observed in respect to his train almost no condition save that
+it should stop a few times after getting out of the banlieue;
+he threw himself on the general amiability of the day for the hint of
+where to alight.  His theory of his excursion was that he could
+alight anywhere--not nearer Paris than an hour's run--on catching a
+suggestion of the particular note required.  It made its sign, the
+suggestion--weather, air, light, colour and his mood all favouring--
+at the end of some eighty minutes; the train pulled up just at the
+right spot, and he found himself getting out as securely as if to
+keep an appointment.  It will be felt of him that he could amuse
+himself, at his age, with very small things if it be again noted
+that his appointment was only with a superseded Boston fashion.  He
+hadn't gone far without the quick confidence that it would be
+quite sufficiently kept.  The oblong gilt frame disposed its
+enclosing lines; the poplars and willows, the reeds and river--
+a river of which he didn't know, and didn't want to know, the name--
+fell into a composition, full of felicity, within them; the sky
+was silver and turquoise and varnish; the village on the left was
+white and the church on the right was grey; it was all there, in
+short--it was what he wanted:  it was Tremont Street, it was France,
+it was Lambinet.  Moreover he was freely walking about in it.
+He did this last, for an hour, to his heart's content, making
+for the shady woody horizon and boring so deep into his impression
+and his idleness that he might fairly have got through them again
+and reached the maroon-coloured wall.  It was a wonder, no doubt,
+that the taste of idleness for him shouldn't need more time to
+sweeten; but it had in fact taken the few previous days; it had
+been sweetening in truth ever since the retreat of the Pococks.
+He walked and walked as if to show himself how little he had now to do;
+he had nothing to do but turn off to some hillside where he might
+stretch himself and hear the poplars rustle, and whence--in the
+course of an afternoon so spent, an afternoon richly suffused too
+with the sense of a book in his pocket--he should sufficiently
+command the scene to be able to pick out just the right little
+rustic inn for an experiment in respect to dinner.  There was a
+train back to Paris at 9.20, and he saw himself partaking, at the
+close of the day, with the enhancements of a coarse white cloth and
+a sanded door, of something fried and felicitous, washed down with
+authentic wine; after which he might, as he liked, either stroll
+back to his station in the gloaming or propose for the local
+carriole and converse with his driver, a driver who naturally wouldn't
+fail of a stiff clean blouse, of a knitted nightcap and of the genius
+of response--who, in fine, would sit on the shafts, tell him what
+the French people were thinking, and remind him, as indeed the whole
+episode would incidentally do, of Maupassant.  Strether heard his lips,
+for the first time in French air, as this vision assumed consistency,
+emit sounds of expressive intention without fear of his company.
+He had been afraid of Chad and of Maria and of Madame de Vionnet;
+he had been most of all afraid of Waymarsh, in whose presence,
+so far as they had mixed together in the light of the town, he had
+never without somehow paying for it aired either his vocabulary
+or his accent.  He usually paid for it by meeting immediately
+afterwards Waymarsh's eye.
+
+Such were the liberties with which his fancy played after he had
+turned off to the hillside that did really and truly, as well as
+most amiably, await him beneath the poplars, the hillside that made
+him feel, for a murmurous couple of hours, how happy had been his
+thought.  He had the sense of success, of a finer harmony in
+things; nothing but what had turned out as yet according to his plan.
+It most of all came home to him, as he lay on his back on the grass,
+that Sarah had really gone, that his tension was really relaxed;
+the peace diffused in these ideas might be delusive, but it hung about
+him none the less for the time.  It fairly, for half an hour,
+sent him to sleep; he pulled his straw hat over his eyes--
+he had bought it the day before with a reminiscence of Waymarsh's--
+and lost himself anew in Lambinet.  It was as if he had found out
+he was tired--tired not from his walk, but from that inward
+exercise which had known, on the whole, for three months, so little
+intermission.  That was it--when once they were off he had dropped;
+this moreover was what he had dropped to, and now he was touching
+bottom.  He was kept luxuriously quiet, soothed and amused by the
+consciousness of what he had found at the end of his descent.  It
+was very much what he had told Maria Gostrey he should like to stay
+on for, the hugely-distributed Paris of summer, alternately
+dazzling and dusky, with a weight lifted for him off its columns
+and cornices and with shade and air in the flutter of awnings as
+wide as avenues.  It was present to him without attenuation that,
+reaching out, the day after making the remark, for some proof of
+his freedom, he had gone that very afternoon to see Madame de Vionnet.
+He had gone again the next day but one, and the effect of the two
+visits, the after-sense of the couple of hours spent with her,
+was almost that of fulness and frequency.  The brave intention of
+frequency, so great with him from the moment of his finding himself
+unjustly suspected at Woollett, had remained rather theoretic,
+and one of the things he could muse about under his poplars was
+the source of the special shyness that had still made him careful.
+He had surely got rid of it now, this special shyness; what had become
+of it if it hadn't precisely, within the week, rubbed off?
+
+It struck him now in fact as sufficiently plain that if he had
+still been careful he had been so for a reason.  He had really
+feared, in his behaviour, a lapse from good faith; if there was a
+danger of one's liking such a woman too much one's best safety was
+in waiting at least till one had the right to do so.  In the light
+of the last few days the danger was fairly vivid; so that it was
+proportionately fortunate that the right was likewise established.
+It seemed to our friend that he had on each occasion profited to
+the utmost by the latter:  how could he have done so more, he at
+all events asked himself, than in having immediately let her know
+that, if it was all the same to her, he preferred not to talk about
+anything tiresome?  He had never in his life so sacrificed an
+armful of high interests as in that remark; he had never so prepared
+the way for the comparatively frivolous as in addressing it to
+Madame de Vionnet's intelligence.  It hadn't been till later that
+he quite recalled how in conjuring away everything but the pleasant
+he had conjured away almost all they had hitherto talked about;
+it was not till later even that he remembered how, with their new tone,
+they hadn't so much as mentioned the name of Chad himself.
+One of the things that most lingered with him on his hillside was
+this delightful facility, with such a woman, of arriving at a new tone;
+he thought, as he lay on his back, of all the tones she might make
+possible if one were to try her, and at any rate of the probability
+that one could trust her to fit them to occasions.  He had wanted her
+to feel that, as he was disinterested now, so she herself should be,
+and she had showed she felt it, and he had showed he was grateful,
+and it had been for all the world as if he were calling for
+the first time.  They had had other, but irrelevant, meetings;
+it was quite as if, had they sooner known how much they REALLY
+had in common, there were quantities of comparatively dull matters
+they might have skipped.  Well, they were skipping them now,
+even to graceful gratitude, even to handsome "Don't mention it!"--
+and it was amazing what could still come up without reference to
+what had been going on between them.  It might have been, on analysis,
+nothing more than Shakespeare and the musical glasses; but it had
+served all the purpose of his appearing to have said to her:
+"Don't like me, if it's a question of liking me, for anything obvious
+and clumsy that I've, as they call it, 'done' for you:  like me--
+well, like me, hang it, for anything else you choose.  So, by
+the same propriety, don't be for me simply the person I've come to know
+through my awkward connexion with Chad--was ever anything, by the way,
+MORE awkward?  Be for me, please, with all your admirable tact and trust,
+just whatever I may show you it's a present pleasure to me to think you."
+It had been a large indication to meet; but if she hadn't met it
+what HAD she done, and how had their time together slipped along
+so smoothly, mild but not slow, and melting, liquefying, into his
+happy illusion of idleness?  He could recognise on the other hand
+that he had probably not been without reason, in his prior, his
+restricted state, for keeping an eye on his liability to lapse
+from good faith.
+
+He really continued in the picture--that being for himself his
+situation--all the rest of this rambling day; so that the charm was
+still, was indeed more than ever upon him when, toward six o'clock
+he found himself amicably engaged with a stout white-capped
+deep-voiced woman at the door of the auberge of the biggest village,
+a village that affected him as a thing of whiteness, blueness and
+crookedness, set in coppery green, and that had the river flowing
+behind or before it--one couldn't say which; at the bottom, in
+particular, of the inn-garden.  He had had other adventures before this;
+had kept along the height, after shaking off slumber; had admired,
+had almost coveted, another small old church, all steep roof and
+dim slate-colour without and all whitewash and paper flowers within;
+had lost his way and had found it again; had conversed with rustics
+who struck him perhaps a little more as men of the world than he had
+expected; had acquired at a bound a fearless facility in French;
+had had, as the afternoon waned, a watery bock, all pale and Parisian,
+in the cafe of the furthest village, which was not the biggest;
+and had meanwhile not once overstepped the oblong gilt frame.
+The frame had drawn itself out for him, as much as you please;
+but that was just his luck.  He had finally come down again to the
+valley, to keep within touch of stations and trains, turning his face
+to the quarter from which he had started; and thus it was that he had
+at last pulled up before the hostess of the Cheval Blanc, who met him,
+with a rough readiness that was like the clatter of sabots over stones,
+on their common ground of a cotelette de veau a l'oseille and a
+subsequent lift.  He had walked many miles and didn't know he was tired;
+but he still knew he was amused, and even that, though he had been
+alone all day, he had never yet so struck himself as engaged with
+others and in midstream of his drama.  It might have passed for
+finished his drama, with its catastrophe all but reached:  it had,
+however, none the less been vivid again for him as he thus gave it
+its fuller chance.  He had only had to be at last well out of it to
+feel it, oddly enough, still going on.
+
+For this had been all day at bottom the spell of the picture--that
+it was essentially more than anything else a scene and a stage,
+that the very air of the play was in the rustle of the willows and
+the tone of the sky.  The play and the characters had, without his
+knowing it till now, peopled all his space for him, and it seemed
+somehow quite happy that they should offer themselves, in the
+conditions so supplied, with a kind of inevitability.  It was as if
+the conditions made them not only inevitable, but so much more
+nearly natural and right as that they were at least easier,
+pleasanter, to put up with.  The conditions had nowhere so asserted
+their difference from those of Woollett as they appeared to him to
+assert it in the little court of the Cheval Blanc while he arranged
+with his hostess for a comfortable climax.  They were few and
+simple, scant and humble, but they were THE THING, as he would have
+called it, even to a greater degree than Madame de Vionnet's old
+high salon where the ghost of the Empire walked.  "The" thing was
+the thing that implied the greatest number of other things of the
+sort he had had to tackle; and it was queer of course, but so it
+was--the implication here was complete.  Not a single one of his
+observations but somehow fell into a place in it; not a breath of
+the cooler evening that wasn't somehow a syllable of the text.
+The text was simply, when condensed, that in THESE places such
+things were, and that if it was in them one elected to move about
+one had to make one's account with what one lighted on.  Meanwhile
+at all events it was enough that they did affect one--so far as the
+village aspect was concerned--as whiteness, crookedness and
+blueness set in coppery green; there being positively, for that
+matter, an outer wall of the White Horse that was painted the most
+improbable shade.  That was part of the amusement--as if to show
+that the fun was harmless; just as it was enough, further, that the
+picture and the play seemed supremely to melt together in the good
+woman's broad sketch of what she could do for her visitor's
+appetite.  He felt in short a confidence, and it was general, and
+it was all he wanted to feel.  It suffered no shock even on her
+mentioning that she had in fact just laid the cloth for two persons
+who, unlike Monsieur, had arrived by the river--in a boat of their
+own; who had asked her, half an hour before, what she could do for
+them, and had then paddled away to look at something a little
+further up--from which promenade they would presently return.
+Monsieur might meanwhile, if he liked, pass into the garden, such
+as it was, where she would serve him, should he wish it--for there
+were tables and benches in plenty--a "bitter" before his repast.
+Here she would also report to him on the possibility of a
+conveyance to his station, and here at any rate he would have the
+agrement of the river .
+
+It may be mentioned without delay that Monsieur had the agrement of
+everything, and in particular, for the next twenty minutes,
+of a small and primitive pavilion that, at the garden's edge, almost
+overhung the water, testifying, in its somewhat battered state, to
+much fond frequentation.  It consisted of little more than a
+platform, slightly raised, with a couple of benches and a table, a
+protecting rail and a projecting roof; but it raked the full
+grey-blue stream, which, taking a turn a short distance above,
+passed out of sight to reappear much higher up; and it was clearly
+in esteemed requisition for Sundays and other feasts.  Strether sat
+there and, though hungry, felt at peace; the confidence that had so
+gathered for him deepened with the lap of the water, the ripple of
+the surface, the rustle of the reeds on the opposite bank, the
+faint diffused coolness and the slight rock of a couple of small
+boats attached to a rough landing-place hard by.  The valley on the
+further side was all copper-green level and glazed pearly sky, a
+sky hatched across with screens of trimmed trees, which looked
+flat, like espaliers; and though the rest of the village straggled
+away in the near quarter the view had an emptiness that made one of
+the boats suggestive.  Such a river set one afloat almost before
+one could take up the oars--the idle play of which would be
+moreover the aid to the full impression.  This perception went so
+far as to bring him to his feet; but that movement, in turn, made
+him feel afresh that he was tired, and while he leaned against a
+post and continued to look out he saw something that gave him a
+sharper arrest.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+What he saw was exactly the right thing--a boat advancing round the
+bend and containing a man who held the paddles and a lady, at the
+stern, with a pink parasol.  It was suddenly as if these figures,
+or something like them, had been wanted in the picture, had been
+wanted more or less all day, and had now drifted into sight, with
+the slow current, on purpose to fill up the measure.  They came
+slowly, floating down, evidently directed to the landing-place near
+their spectator and presenting themselves to him not less clearly
+as the two persons for whom his hostess was already preparing a
+meal.  For two very happy persons he found himself straightway
+taking them--a young man in shirt-sleeves, a young woman easy and
+fair, who had pulled pleasantly up from some other place and, being
+acquainted with the neighbourhood, had known what this particular
+retreat could offer them.  The air quite thickened, at their
+approach, with further intimations; the intimation that they were
+expert, familiar, frequent--that this wouldn't at all events be
+the first time.  They knew how to do it, he vaguely felt--and it
+made them but the more idyllic, though at the very moment
+of the impression, as happened, their boat seemed to have begun to
+drift wide, the oarsman letting it go.   It had by this time none
+the less come much nearer--near enough for Strether to dream the
+lady in the stern had for some reason taken account of his being
+there to watch them.  She had remarked on it sharply, yet her
+companion hadn't turned round; it was in fact almost as if our
+friend had felt her bid him keep still.  She had taken in something
+as a result of which their course had wavered, and it continued to
+waver while they just stood off.  This little effect was sudden and
+rapid, so rapid that Strether's sense of it was separate only for
+an instant from a sharp start of his own.  He too had within the
+minute taken in something, taken in that he knew the lady whose
+parasol, shifting as if to hide her face, made so fine a pink point
+in the shining scene.  It was too prodigious, a chance in a million,
+but, if he knew the lady, the gentleman, who still presented his back
+and kept off, the gentleman, the coatless hero of the idyll,
+who had responded to her start, was, to match the marvel, none other
+than Chad.
+
+Chad and Madame de Vionnet were then like himself taking a day in
+the country--though it was as queer as fiction, as farce, that
+their country could happen to be exactly his; and she had been the
+first at recognition, the first to feel, across the water, the shock--
+for it appeared to come to that--of their wonderful accident.
+Strether became aware, with this, of what was taking place--
+that her recognition had been even stranger for the pair in the boat,
+that her immediate impulse had been to control it, and that she was
+quickly and intensely debating with Chad the risk of betrayal.
+He saw they would show nothing if they could feel sure he hadn't
+made them out; so that he had before him for a few seconds his
+own hesitation.  It was a sharp fantastic crisis that had popped up
+as if in a dream, and it had had only to last the few seconds to
+make him feel it as quite horrible.  They were thus, on either side,
+TRYING the other side, and all for some reason that broke the stillness
+like some unprovoked harsh note.  It seemed to him again, within the
+limit, that he had but one thing to do--to settle their common question
+by some sign of surprise and joy.  He hereupon gave large play to
+these things, agitating his hat and his stick and loudly calling out--
+a demonstration that brought him relief as soon as he had seen it
+answered.  The boat, in mid-stream, still went a little wild--
+which seemed natural, however, while Chad turned round, half
+springing up; and his good friend, after blankness and wonder,
+began gaily to wave her parasol.  Chad dropped afresh to his paddles
+and the boat headed round, amazement and pleasantry filling the air
+meanwhile, and relief, as Strether continued to fancy, superseding
+mere violence.  Our friend went down to the water under this odd
+impression as of violence averted--the violence of their having
+"cut" him, out there in the eye of nature, on the assumption that
+he wouldn't know it.  He awaited them with a face from which he
+was conscious of not being able quite to banish this idea that they
+would have gone on, not seeing and not knowing, missing their dinner
+and disappointing their hostess, had he himself taken a line to match.
+That at least was what darkened his vision for the moment.  Afterwards,
+after they had bumped at the landing-place and he had assisted their
+getting ashore, everything found itself sponged over by the mere
+miracle of the encounter.
+
+They could so much better at last, on either side, treat it as a
+wild extravagance of hazard, that the situation was made elastic by
+the amount of explanation called into play.  Why indeed--apart from
+oddity--the situation should have been really stiff was a question
+naturally not practical at the moment, and in fact, so far as we
+are concerned, a question tackled, later on and in private, only by
+Strether himself.  He was to reflect later on and in private that
+it was mainly HE who had explained--as he had had moreover
+comparatively little difficulty in doing.  He was to have at all
+events meanwhile the worrying thought of their perhaps secretly
+suspecting him of having plotted this coincidence, taking such
+pains as might be to give it the semblance of an accident.  That
+possibility--as their imputation--didn't of course bear looking
+into for an instant; yet the whole incident was so manifestly,
+arrange it as they would, an awkward one, that he could scarce keep
+disclaimers in respect to his own presence from rising to his lips.
+Disclaimers of intention would have been as tactless as his
+presence was practically gross; and the narrowest escape they
+either of them had was his lucky escape, in the event, from making
+any.  Nothing of the sort, so far as surface and sound were
+involved, was even in question; surface and sound all made for
+their common ridiculous good fortune, for the general
+invraisemblance of the occasion, for the charming chance that they
+had, the others, in passing, ordered some food to be ready, the
+charming chance that he had himself not eaten, the charming chance,
+even more, that their little plans, their hours, their train, in
+short, from la-bas, would all match for their return together to
+Paris.  The chance that was most charming of all, the chance that
+drew from Madame de Vionnet her clearest, gayest "Comme cela se
+trouve!" was the announcement made to Strether after they were
+seated at table, the word given him by their hostess in respect to
+his carriage for the station, on which he might now count.  It
+settled the matter for his friends as well; the conveyance--
+it WAS all too lucky!--would serve for them; and nothing was more
+delightful than his being in a position to make the train so definite.
+It might have been, for themselves--to hear Madame de Vionnet--
+almost unnaturally vague, a detail left to be fixed; though Strether
+indeed was afterwards to remember that Chad had promptly enough
+intervened to forestall this appearance, laughing at his companion's
+flightiness and making the point that he had after all, in spite of
+the bedazzlement of a day out with her, known what he was about.
+
+Strether was to remember afterwards further that this had had for
+him the effect of forming Chad's almost sole intervention; and
+indeed he was to remember further still, in subsequent meditation,
+many things that, as it were, fitted together.  Another of them was
+for instance that the wonderful woman's overflow of surprise and
+amusement was wholly into French, which she struck him as speaking
+with an unprecedented command of idiomatic turns, but in which she
+got, as he might have said, somewhat away from him, taking all at
+once little brilliant jumps that he could but lamely match.  The
+question of his own French had never come up for them; it was the
+one thing she wouldn't have permitted--it belonged, for a person
+who had been through much, to mere boredom; but the present result
+was odd, fairly veiling her identity, shifting her back into a mere
+voluble class or race to the intense audibility of which he was by
+this time inured.  When she spoke the charming slightly strange
+English he best knew her by he seemed to feel her as a creature,
+among all the millions, with a language quite to herself, the real
+monopoly of a special shade of speech, beautifully easy for her,
+yet of a colour and a cadence that were both inimitable and matters
+of accident.  She came back to these things after they had shaken
+down in the inn-parlour and knew, as it were, what was to become of
+them; it was inevitable that loud ejaculation over the prodigy of
+their convergence should at last wear itself out.  Then it was that
+his impression took fuller form--the impression, destined only to
+deepen, to complete itself, that they had something to put a face
+upon, to carry off and make the best of, and that it was she who,
+admirably on the whole, was doing this.  It was familiar to him of
+course that they had something to put a face upon; their
+friendship, their connexion, took any amount of explaining--that
+would have been made familiar by his twenty minutes with Mrs. Pocock
+if it hadn't already been so.  Yet his theory, as we know, had
+bountifully been that the facts were specifically none of his
+business, and were, over and above, so far as one had to do with
+them, intrinsically beautiful; and this might have prepared him for
+anything, as well as rendered him proof against mystification.
+When he reached home that night, however, he knew he had been, at
+bottom, neither prepared nor proof; and since we have spoken of
+what he was, after his return, to recall and interpret, it may as
+well immediately be said that his real experience of these few
+hours put on, in that belated vision--for he scarce went to bed
+till morning--the aspect that is most to our purpose.
+
+He then knew more or less how he had been affected--he but half
+knew at the time.  There had been plenty to affect him even after,
+as has been said, they had shaken down; for his consciousness,
+though muffled, had its sharpest moments during this passage, a
+marked drop into innocent friendly Bohemia.  They then had put
+their elbows on the table, deploring the premature end of their two
+or three dishes; which they had tried to make up with another
+bottle while Chad joked a little spasmodically, perhaps even a
+little irrelevantly, with the hostess.  What it all came to had
+been that fiction and fable WERE, inevitably, in the air, and not
+as a simple term of comparison, but as a result of things said;
+also that they were blinking it, all round, and that they yet needn't,
+so much as that, have blinked it--though indeed if they hadn't
+Strether didn't quite see what else they could have done.
+Strether didn't quite see THAT even at an hour or two past midnight,
+even when he had, at his hotel, for a long time, without a light
+and without undressing, sat back on his bedroom sofa and stared
+straight before him.  He was, at that point of vantage, in full
+possession, to make of it all what he could.  He kept making of it
+that there had been simply a LIE in the charming affair--a lie
+on which one could now, detached and deliberate, perfectly put
+one's finger.  It was with the lie that they had eaten and drunk
+and talked and laughed, that they had waited for their carriole
+rather impatiently, and had then got into the vehicle and, sensibly
+subsiding, driven their three or four miles through the darkening
+summer night.  The eating and drinking, which had been a resource,
+had had the effect of having served its turn; the talk and laughter
+had done as much; and it was during their somewhat tedious progress
+to the station, during the waits there, the further delays, their
+submission to fatigue, their silences in the dim compartment of the
+much-stopping train, that he prepared himself for reflexions to come.
+It had been a performance, Madame de Vionnet's manner, and though
+it had to that degree faltered toward the end, as through her ceasing
+to believe in it, as if she had asked herself, or Chad had found
+a moment surreptitiously to ask her, what after all was the use,
+a performance it had none the less quite handsomely remained,
+with the final fact about it that it was on the whole easier to
+keep up than to abandon.
+
+From the point of view of presence of mind it had been very
+wonderful indeed, wonderful for readiness, for beautiful assurance,
+for the way her decision was taken on the spot, without time to
+confer with Chad, without time for anything.  Their only conference
+could have been the brief instants in the boat before they confessed
+to recognising the spectator on the bank, for they hadn't been alone
+together a moment since and must have communicated all in silence.
+It was a part of the deep impression for Strether, and not the least
+of the deep interest, that they COULD so communicate--that Chad
+in particular could let her know he left it to her.  He habitually
+left things to others, as Strether was so well aware, and it in fact
+came over our friend in these meditations that there had been as yet
+no such vivid illustration of his famous knowing how to live.
+It was as if he had humoured her to the extent of letting her lie
+without correction--almost as if, really, he would be coming round
+in the morning to set the matter, as between Strether and himself,
+right.  Of course he couldn't quite come; it was a case in which
+a man was obliged to accept the woman's version, even when fantastic;
+if she had, with more flurry than she cared to show, elected,
+as the phrase was, to represent that they had left Paris that morning,
+and with no design but of getting back within the day--if she had
+so sized-up, in the Woollett phrase, their necessity, she knew best
+her own measure.  There were things, all the same, it was impossible
+to blink and which made this measure an odd one--the too evident fact
+for instance that she hadn't started out for the day dressed and hatted
+and shod, and even, for that matter, pink parasol'd, as she had been
+in the boat.  From what did the drop in her assurance proceed as the
+tension increased--from what did this slightly baffled ingenuity spring
+but from her consciousness of not presenting, as night closed in,
+with not so much as a shawl to wrap her round, an appearance that
+matched her story?  She admitted that she was cold, but only to
+blame her imprudence which Chad suffered her to give such account
+of as she might.  Her shawl and Chad's overcoat and her other
+garments, and his, those they had each worn the day before, were at
+the place, best known to themselves--a quiet retreat enough, no
+doubt--at which they had been spending the twenty-four hours, to
+which they had fully meant to return that evening, from which they
+had so remarkably swum into Strether's ken, and the tacit
+repudiation of which had been thus the essence of her comedy.
+Strether saw how she had perceived in a flash that they couldn't
+quite look to going back there under his nose; though, honestly,
+as he gouged deeper into the matter, he was somewhat surprised, as
+Chad likewise had perhaps been, at the uprising of this scruple.
+He seemed even to divine that she had entertained it rather for
+Chad than for herself, and that, as the young man had lacked the
+chance to enlighten her, she had had to go on with it, he meanwhile
+mistaking her motive.
+
+He was rather glad, none the less, that they had in point of fact
+not parted at the Cheval Blanc, that he hadn't been reduced to
+giving them his blessing for an idyllic retreat down the river.
+He had had in the actual case to make-believe more than he liked,
+but this was nothing, it struck him, to what the other event
+would have required.  Could he, literally, quite have faced the
+other event?  Would he have been capable of making the best of it
+with them?  This was what he was trying to do now; but with the
+advantage of his being able to give more time to it a good deal
+counteracted by his sense of what, over and above the central fact
+itself, he had to swallow.  It was the quantity of make-believe
+involved and so vividly exemplified that most disagreed with his
+spiritual stomach.  He moved, however, from the consideration of
+that quantity--to say nothing of the consciousness of that organ--
+back to the other feature of the show, the deep, deep truth of
+the intimacy revealed.  That was what, in his vain vigil, he oftenest
+reverted to:  intimacy, at such a point, was LIKE that--and what in
+the world else would one have wished it to be like?  It was all
+very well for him to feel the pity of its being so much like lying;
+he almost blushed, in the dark, for the way he had dressed the
+possibility in vagueness, as a little girl might have dressed her doll.
+He had made them--and by no fault of their own--momentarily pull it for
+him, the possibility, out of this vagueness; and must he not therefore
+take it now as they had had simply, with whatever thin attenuations,
+to give it to him?  The very question, it may be added, made him feel
+lonely and cold.  There was the element of the awkward all round, but
+Chad and Madame de Vionnet had at least the comfort that they could talk
+it over together.  With whom could HE talk of such things?--unless
+indeed always, at almost any stage, with Maria?  He foresaw that
+Miss Gostrey would come again into requisition on the morrow;
+though it wasn't to be denied that he was already a little afraid
+of her "What on earth--that's what I want to know now--had you
+then supposed?"   He recognised at last that he had really been trying
+all along to suppose nothing.  Verily, verily, his labour had been lost.
+He found himself supposing innumerable and wonderful things.
+
+
+
+
+
+Book Twelfth
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Strether couldn't have said he had during the previous hours
+definitely expected it; yet when.  later on, that morning--though
+no later indeed than for his coming forth at ten o'clock--he saw
+the concierge produce, on his approach, a petit bleu delivered
+since his letters had been sent up, he recognised the appearance as
+the first symptom of a sequel.  He then knew he had been thinking
+of some early sign from Chad as more likely, after all, than not;
+and this would be precisely the early sign.  He took it so for
+granted that he opened the petit bleu just where he had stopped, in
+the pleasant cool draught of the porte-cochere--only curious to see
+where the young man would, at such a juncture, break out.  His
+curiosity, however, was more than gratified; the small missive,
+whose gummed edge he had detached without attention to the address,
+not being from the young man at all, but from the person whom the
+case gave him on the spot as still more worth while.  Worth while
+or not, he went round to the nearest telegraph-office, the big one
+on the Boulevard, with a directness that almost confessed to a fear
+of the danger of delay.  He might have been thinking that if he didn't
+go before he could think he wouldn't perhaps go at all.  He at
+any rate kept, in the lower side-pocket of his morning coat, a very
+deliberate hand on his blue missive, crumpling it up rather tenderly
+than harshly.  He wrote a reply, on the Boulevard, also in the form
+of a petit bleu--which was quickly done, under pressure of the place,
+inasmuch as, like Madame de Vionnet's own communication, it consisted
+of the fewest words.  She had asked him if he could do her the very
+great kindness of coming to see her that evening at half-past nine,
+and he answered, as if nothing were easier, that he would present
+himself at the hour she named.  She had added a line of postscript,
+to the effect that she would come to him elsewhere and at his own hour
+if he preferred; but he took no notice of this, feeling that if he
+saw her at all half the value of it would be in seeing her where he
+had already seen her best.  He mightn't see her at all; that was
+one of the reflexions he made after writing and before he dropped
+his closed card into the box; he mightn't see any one at all
+any more at all; he might make an end as well now as ever,
+leaving things as they were, since he was doubtless not to leave
+them better, and taking his way home so far as should appear that
+a home remained to him.  This alternative was for a few minutes
+so sharp that if he at last did deposit his missive it was perhaps
+because the pressure of the place had an effect.
+
+There was none other, however, than the common and constant pressure,
+familiar to our friend under the rubric of Postes et Telegraphes--
+the something in the air of these establishments; the vibration of
+the vast strange life of the town, the influence of the types,
+the performers concocting their messages; the little prompt Paris women,
+arranging, pretexting goodness knew what, driving the dreadful
+needle-pointed public pen at the dreadful sand-strewn public table:
+implements that symbolised for Strether's too interpretative innocence
+something more acute in manners, more sinister in morals, more fierce
+in the national life.  After he had put in his paper he had ranged
+himself, he was really amused to think, on the side of the fierce,
+the sinister, the acute.  He was carrying on a correspondence,
+across the great city, quite in the key of the Postes et Telegraphes
+in general; and it was fairly as if the acceptance of that fact had
+come from something in his state that sorted with the occupation of
+his neighbours.  He was mixed up with the typical tale of Paris, and so
+were they, poor things--how could they all together help being?
+They were no worse than he, in short, and he no worse than they--
+if, queerly enough, no better; and at all events he had settled his
+hash, so that he went out to begin, from that moment, his day of
+waiting.  The great settlement was, as he felt, in his preference
+for seeing his correspondent in her own best conditions.  THAT was
+part of the typical tale, the part most significant in respect to
+himself.  He liked the place she lived in, the picture that each
+time squared itself, large and high and clear, around her:  every
+occasion of seeing it was a pleasure of a different shade.  Yet
+what precisely was he doing with shades of pleasure now, and why
+hadn't he properly and logically compelled her to commit herself
+to whatever of disadvantage and penalty the situation might throw
+up?  He might have proposed, as for Sarah Pocock, the cold
+hospitality of his own salon de lecture, in which the chill of
+Sarah's visit seemed still to abide and shades of pleasure were
+dim; he might have suggested a stone bench in the dusty Tuileries
+or a penny chair at the back part of the Champs Elysees.  These
+things would have been a trifle stern, and sternness alone now
+wouldn't be sinister.  An instinct in him cast about for some form
+of discipline in which they might meet--some awkwardness they would
+suffer from, some danger, or at least some grave inconvenience,
+they would incur.  This would give a sense--which the spirit
+required, rather ached and sighed in the absence of--that somebody
+was paying something somewhere and somehow, that they were at least
+not all floating together on the silver stream of impunity.  Just
+instead of that to go and see her late in the evening, as if, for
+all the world--well, as if he were as much in the swim as anybody
+else:  this had as little as possible in common with the penal form.
+
+Even when he had felt that objection melt away, however, the
+practical difference was small; the long stretch of his interval
+took the colour it would, and if he lived on thus with the sinister
+from hour to hour it proved an easier thing than one might have
+supposed in advance.  He reverted in thought to his old tradition,
+the one he had been brought up on and which even so many years of
+life had but little worn away; the notion that the state of the
+wrongdoer, or at least this person's happiness, presented some
+special difficulty.  What struck him now rather was the ease of it--
+for nothing in truth appeared easier.  It was an ease he himself
+fairly tasted of for the rest of the day; giving himself quite up;
+not so much as trying to dress it out, in any particular whatever,
+as a difficulty; not after all going to see Maria--which would have
+been in a manner a result of such dressing; only idling, lounging,
+smoking, sitting in the shade, drinking lemonade and consuming
+ices.  The day had turned to heat and eventual thunder, and he now
+and again went back to his hotel to find that Chad hadn't been
+there.  He hadn't yet struck himself, since leaving Woollett, so
+much as a loafer, though there had been times when he believed
+himself touching bottom.  This was a deeper depth than any, and
+with no foresight, scarcely with a care, as to what he should bring
+up.  He almost wondered if he didn't LOOK demoralised and
+disreputable; he had the fanciful vision, as he sat and smoked,
+of some accidental, some motived, return of the Pococks, who would
+be passing along the Boulevard and would catch this view of him.
+They would have distinctly, on his appearance, every ground for scandal.
+But fate failed to administer even that sternness; the Pococks never
+passed and Chad made no sign.  Strether meanwhile continued to hold off
+from Miss Gostrey, keeping her till to-morrow; so that by evening
+his irresponsibility, his impunity, his luxury, had become--there was
+no other word for them--immense.
+
+Between nine and ten, at last, in the high clear picture--he was
+moving in these days, as in a gallery, from clever canvas to clever
+canvas--he drew a long breath:  it was so presented to him from the
+first that the spell of his luxury wouldn't be broken.  He wouldn't
+have, that is, to become responsible--this was admirably in the air:
+she had sent for him precisely to let him feel it, so that he
+might go on with the comfort (comfort already established, hadn't
+it been?) of regarding his ordeal, the ordeal of the weeks of
+Sarah's stay and of their climax, as safely traversed and left
+behind him.  Didn't she just wish to assure him that SHE now took
+it all and so kept it; that he was absolutely not to worry any
+more, was only to rest on his laurels and continue generously to
+help her?  The light in her beautiful formal room was dim, though
+it would do, as everything would always do; the hot night had kept
+out lamps, but there was a pair of clusters of candles that
+glimmered over the chimney-piece like the tall tapers of an altar.
+The windows were all open, their redundant hangings swaying a
+little, and he heard once more, from the empty court, the small
+plash of the fountain.  From beyond this, and as from a great
+distance--beyond the court, beyond the corps de logis forming the
+front--came, as if excited and exciting, the vague voice of Paris.
+Strether had all along been subject to sudden gusts of fancy in
+connexion with such matters as these--odd starts of the historic
+sense, suppositions and divinations with no warrant but their
+intensity.  Thus and so, on the eve of the great recorded dates,
+the days and nights of revolution, the sounds had come in, the
+omens, the beginnings broken out.  They were the smell of
+revolution, the smell of the public temper--or perhaps simply the
+smell of blood.
+
+It was at present queer beyond words, "subtle," he would have
+risked saying, that such suggestions should keep crossing the
+scene; but it was doubtless the effect of the thunder in the air,
+which had hung about all day without release.  His hostess was
+dressed as for thunderous times, and it fell in with the kind of
+imagination we have just attributed to him that she should be in
+simplest coolest white, of a character so old-fashioned, if he were
+not mistaken, that Madame Roland must on the scaffold have worn
+something like it.  This effect was enhanced by a small black fichu
+or scarf, of crape or gauze, disposed quaintly round her bosom and
+now completing as by a mystic touch the pathetic, the noble analogy.
+Poor Strether in fact scarce knew what analogy was evoked for him
+as the charming woman, receiving him and making him, as she could do
+such things, at once familiarly and gravely welcome, moved over her
+great room with her image almost repeated in its polished floor,
+which had been fully bared for summer.  The associations of the place,
+all felt again; the gleam here and there, in the subdued light,
+of glass and gilt and parquet, with the quietness of her own note
+as the centre--these things were at first as delicate as if they
+had been ghostly, and he was sure in a moment that, whatever he should
+find he had come for, it wouldn't be for an impression that had
+previously failed him.  That conviction held him from the outset,
+and, seeming singularly to simplify, certified to him that the objects
+about would help him, would really help them both.  No, he might
+never see them again--this was only too probably the last time;
+and he should certainly see nothing in the least degree like them.
+He should soon be going to where such things were not, and it would be
+a small mercy for memory, for fancy, to have, in that stress,
+a loaf on the shelf.  He knew in advance he should look back on the
+perception actually sharpest with him as on the view of something
+old, old, old, the oldest thing he had ever personally touched;
+and he also knew, even while he took his companion in as the feature
+among features, that memory and fancy couldn't help being enlisted
+for her.  She might intend what she would, but this was beyond anything
+she could intend, with things from far back--tyrannies of history,
+facts of type, values, as the painters said, of expression--
+all working for her and giving her the supreme chance, the chance
+of the happy, the really luxurious few, the chance, on a great
+occasion, to be natural and simple.  She had never, with him,
+been more so; or if it was the perfection of art it would never--
+and that came to the same thing--be proved against her.
+
+What was truly wonderful was her way of differing so from time to
+time without detriment to her simplicity.  Caprices, he was sure
+she felt, were before anything else bad manners, and that judgement
+in her was by itself a thing making more for safety of intercourse
+than anything that in his various own past intercourses he had had
+to reckon on.  If therefore her presence was now quite other than
+the one she had shown him the night before, there was nothing of
+violence in the change--it was all harmony and reason.  It gave him
+a mild deep person, whereas he had had on the occasion to which
+their interview was a direct reference a person committed to
+movement and surface and abounding in them; but she was in either
+character more remarkable for nothing than for her bridging of
+intervals, and this now fell in with what he understood he was to
+leave to her.  The only thing was that, if he was to leave it ALL
+to her, why exactly had she sent for him?  He had had, vaguely, in
+advance, his explanation, his view of the probability of her
+wishing to set something right, to deal in some way with the fraud
+so lately practised on his presumed credulity.  Would she attempt
+to carry it further or would she blot it out?  Would she throw over
+it some more or less happy colour; or would she do nothing about it
+at all?  He perceived soon enough at least that, however reasonable
+she might be, she wasn't vulgarly confused, and it herewith
+pressed upon him that their eminent "lie," Chad's and hers, was
+simply after all such an inevitable tribute to good taste as he
+couldn't have wished them not to render.  Away from them, during
+his vigil, he had seemed to wince at the amount of comedy involved;
+whereas in his present posture he could only ask himself how he
+should enjoy any attempt from her to take the comedy back.  He
+shouldn't enjoy it at all; but, once more and yet once more, he
+could trust her.  That is he could trust her to make deception
+right.  As she presented things the ugliness--goodness knew why--
+went out of them; none the less too that she could present them,
+with an art of her own, by not so much as touching them.  She let
+the matter, at all events, lie where it was--where the previous
+twenty-four hours had placed it; appearing merely to circle about
+it respectfully, tenderly, almost piously, while she took up
+another question.
+
+She knew she hadn't really thrown dust in his eyes; this, the
+previous night, before they separated, had practically passed
+between them; and, as she had sent for him to see what the
+difference thus made for him might amount to, so he was conscious
+at the end of five minutes that he had been tried and tested.  She
+had settled with Chad after he left them that she would, for her
+satisfaction, assure herself of this quantity, and Chad had, as
+usual, let her have her way.  Chad was always letting people have
+their way when he felt that it would somehow turn his wheel for
+him; it somehow always did turn his wheel.  Strether felt, oddly
+enough, before these facts, freshly and consentingly passive; they
+again so rubbed it into him that the couple thus fixing his
+attention were intimate, that his intervention had absolutely aided
+and intensified their intimacy, and that in fine he must accept the
+consequence of that.  He had absolutely become, himself, with his
+perceptions and his mistakes, his concessions and his reserves, the
+droll mixture, as it must seem to them, of his braveries and his
+fears, the general spectacle of his art and his innocence, almost
+an added link and certainly a common priceless ground for them to
+meet upon.  It was as if he had been hearing their very tone when
+she brought out a reference that was comparatively straight.
+"The last twice that you've been here, you know, I never asked you,"
+she said with an abrupt transition--they had been pretending before
+this to talk simply of the charm of yesterday and of the interest
+of the country they had seen.  The effort was confessedly vain; not
+for such talk had she invited him; and her impatient reminder was
+of their having done for it all the needful on his coming to her
+after Sarah's flight.  What she hadn't asked him then was to state
+to her where and how he stood for her; she had been resting on
+Chad's report of their midnight hour together in the Boulevard
+Malesherbes.  The thing therefore she at present desired was
+ushered in by this recall of the two occasions on which,
+disinterested and merciful, she hadn't worried him.  To-night
+truly she WOULD worry him, and this was her appeal to him to let
+her risk it.  He wasn't to mind if she bored him a little:
+she had behaved, after all--hadn't she?--so awfully, awfully well.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"Oh, you're all right, you're all right," he almost impatiently
+declared; his impatience being moreover not for her pressure, but
+for her scruple.  More and more distinct to him was the tune to
+which she would have had the matter out with Chad:  more and more
+vivid for him the idea that she had been nervous as to what he
+might be able to "stand." Yes, it had been a question if he had
+"stood" what the scene on the river had given him, and, though the
+young man had doubtless opined in favour of his recuperation, her
+own last word must have been that she should feel easier in seeing
+for herself.  That was it, unmistakeably; she WAS seeing for
+herself.  What he could stand was thus, in these moments, in the
+balance for Strether, who reflected, as he became fully aware of
+it, that he must properly brace himself.  He wanted fully to appear
+to stand all he might; and there was a certain command of the
+situation for him in this very wish not to look too much at sea.
+She was ready with everything, but so, sufficiently, was he; that
+is he was at one point the more prepared of the two, inasmuch as,
+for all her cleverness, she couldn't produce on the spot--and it
+was surprising--an account of the motive of her note.  He had the
+advantage that his pronouncing her "all right" gave him for an
+enquiry.  "May I ask, delighted as I've been to come, if you've
+wished to say something special?"   He spoke as if she might have
+seen he had been waiting for it--not indeed with discomfort, but
+with natural interest.  Then he saw that she was a little taken
+aback, was even surprised herself at the detail she had neglected--
+the only one ever yet; having somehow assumed he would know, would
+recognise, would leave some things not to be said.  She looked at
+him, however, an instant as if to convey that if he wanted them
+ALL--!
+
+"Selfish and vulgar--that's what I must seem to you.  You've done
+everything for me, and here I am as if I were asking for more.  But
+it isn't," she went on, "because I'm afraid--though I AM of course
+afraid, as a woman in my position always is.  I mean it isn't
+because one lives in terror--it isn't because of that one is
+selfish, for I'm ready to give you my word to-night that I don't
+care; don't care what still may happen and what I may lose.  I don't
+ask you to raise your little finger for me again, nor do I wish
+so much as to mention to you what we've talked of before, either
+my danger or my safety, or his mother, or his sister, or the girl
+he may marry, or the fortune he may make or miss, or the right
+or the wrong, of any kind, he may do.  If after the help one has
+had from you one can't either take care of one's self or simply
+hold one's tongue, one must renounce all claim to be an object of
+interest.  It's in the name of what I DO care about that I've tried
+still to keep hold of you.  How can I be indifferent," she asked,
+"to how I appear to you?"   And as he found himself unable
+immediately to say:  "Why, if you're going, NEED you, after all?
+Is it impossible you should stay on--so that one mayn't lose you?"
+
+"Impossible I should live with you here instead of going home?"
+
+"Not 'with' us, if you object to that, but near enough to us,
+somewhere, for us to see you--well," she beautifully brought out,
+"when we feel we MUST.  How shall we not sometimes feel it?  I've
+wanted to see you often when I couldn't," she pursued, "all these
+last weeks.  How shan't I then miss you now, with the sense of your
+being gone forever?"   Then as if the straightness of this appeal,
+taking him unprepared, had visibly left him wondering:  "Where IS
+your 'home' moreover now--what has become of it?  I've made a
+change in your life, I know I have; I've upset everything in your
+mind as well; in your sense of--what shall I call it?--all the
+decencies and possibilities.  It gives me a kind of detestation--"
+She pulled up short.
+
+Oh but he wanted to hear.  "Detestation of what?"
+
+"Of everything--of life."
+
+"Ah that's too much," he laughed--"or too little!"
+
+"Too little, precisely"--she was eager.  "What I hate is myself--
+when I think that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the
+lives of others, and that one isn't happy even then.  One does it
+to cheat one's self and to stop one's mouth--but that's only at the
+best for a little.  The wretched self is always there, always
+making one somehow a fresh anxiety.  What it comes to is that it's
+not, that it's never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to TAKE.
+The only safe thing is to give.  It's what plays you least false."
+Interesting, touching, strikingly sincere as she let these things
+come from her, she yet puzzled and troubled him--so fine was the
+quaver of her quietness.  He felt what he had felt before with her,
+that there was always more behind what she showed, and more and
+more again behind that.  "You know so, at least," she added, "where
+you are!"
+
+"YOU ought to know it indeed then; for isn't what you've been
+giving exactly what has brought us together this way?  You've been
+making, as I've so fully let you know I've felt," Strether said,
+"the most precious present I've ever seen made, and if you can't
+sit down peacefully on that performance you ARE, no doubt, born to
+torment yourself.  But you ought," he wound up, "to be easy."
+
+"And not trouble you any more, no doubt--not thrust on you even the
+wonder and the beauty of what I've done; only let you regard our
+business as over, and well over, and see you depart in a peace that
+matches my own?  No doubt, no doubt, no doubt," she nervously
+repeated--"all the more that I don't really pretend I believe you
+couldn't, for yourself, NOT have done what you have.  I don't
+pretend you feel yourself victimised, for this evidently is the way
+you live, and it's what--we're agreed--is the best way.  Yes, as
+you say," she continued after a moment, "I ought to be easy and
+rest on my work.  Well then here am I doing so.  I AM easy.  You'll
+have it for your last impression.  When is it you say you go?" she
+asked with a quick change.
+
+He took some time to reply--his last impression was more and more
+so mixed a one.  It produced in him a vague disappointment, a drop
+that was deeper even than the fall of his elation the previous
+night.  The good of what he had done, if he had done so much, wasn't
+there to enliven him quite to the point that would have been ideal
+for a grand gay finale.  Women were thus endlessly absorbent, and
+to deal with them was to walk on water.  What was at bottom the matter
+with her, embroider as she might and disclaim as she might--
+what was at bottom the matter with her was simply Chad himself.
+It was of Chad she was after all renewedly afraid; the strange
+strength of her passion was the very strength of her fear; she clung
+to HIM, Lambert Strether, as to a source of safety she had tested,
+and, generous graceful truthful as she might try to be, exquisite
+as she was, she dreaded the term of his being within reach.
+With this sharpest perception yet, it was like a chill in the air
+to him, it was almost appalling, that a creature so fine could be,
+by mysterious forces, a creature so exploited.  For at the end
+of all things they WERE mysterious:  she had but made Chad what
+he was--so why could she think she had made him infinite?
+She had made him better, she had made him best, she had made him
+anything one would; but it came to our friend with supreme
+queerness that he was none the less only Chad.  Strether had the
+sense that HE, a little, had made him too; his high appreciation
+had as it were, consecrated her work The work, however admirable,
+was nevertheless of the strict human order, and in short it was
+marvellous that the companion of mere earthly joys, of comforts,
+aberrations (however one classed them) within the common experience
+should be so transcendently prized.  It might have made Strether
+hot or shy, as such secrets of others brought home sometimes do
+make us; but he was held there by something so hard that it was
+fairly grim.  This was not the discomposure of last night; that had
+quite passed--such discomposures were a detail; the real coercion
+was to see a man ineffably adored.  There it was again--it took
+women, it took women; if to deal with them was to walk on water
+what wonder that the water rose?  And it had never surely risen
+higher than round this woman.  He presently found himself taking a
+long look from her, and the next thing he knew he had uttered all
+his thought.  "You're afraid for your life!"
+
+It drew out her long look, and he soon enough saw why.  A spasm
+came into her face, the tears she had already been unable to hide
+overflowed at first in silence, and then, as the sound suddenly
+comes from a child, quickened to gasps, to sobs.  She sat and
+covered her face with her hands, giving up all attempt at a manner.
+"It's how you see me, it's how you see me"--she caught her breath
+with it--"and it's as I AM, and as I must take myself, and of
+course it's no matter." Her emotion was at first so incoherent that
+he could only stand there at a loss, stand with his sense of having
+upset her, though of having done it by the truth.  He had to listen
+to her in a silence that he made no immediate effort to attenuate,
+feeling her doubly woeful amid all her dim diffused elegance;
+consenting to it as he had consented to the rest, and even
+conscious of some vague inward irony in the presence of such a fine
+free range of bliss and bale.  He couldn't say it was NOT no
+matter; for he was serving her to the end, he now knew, anyway--
+quite as if what he thought of her had nothing to do with it.
+It was actually moreover as if he didn't think of her at all,
+as if he could think of nothing but the passion, mature, abysmal,
+pitiful, she represented, and the possibilities she betrayed.
+She was older for him to-night, visibly less exempt from the
+touch of time; but she was as much as ever the finest and
+subtlest creature, the happiest apparition, it had been given him,
+in all his years, to meet; and yet he could see her there as
+vulgarly troubled, in very truth, as a maidservant crying for
+her young man.  The only thing was that she judged herself as
+the maidservant wouldn't; the weakness of which wisdom too,
+the dishonour of which judgement, seemed but to sink her lower.
+Her collapse, however, no doubt, was briefer and she had in a
+manner recovered herself before he intervened.  "Of course
+I'm afraid for my life.  But that's nothing.  It isn't that."
+
+He was silent a little longer, as if thinking what it might be.
+"There's something I have in mind that I can still do."
+
+But she threw off at last, with a sharp sad headshake, drying her
+eyes, what he could still do.  "I don't care for that.  Of course,
+as I've said, you're acting, in your wonderful way, for yourself;
+and what's for yourself is no more my business--though I may reach
+out unholy hands so clumsily to touch it--than if it were something
+in Timbuctoo.  It's only that you don't snub me, as you've had
+fifty chances to do--it's only your beautiful patience that makes
+one forget one's manners.  In spite of your patience, all the
+same," she went on, "you'd do anything rather than be with us here,
+even if that were possible.  You'd do everything for us but be
+mixed up with us--which is a statement you can easily answer to the
+advantage of your own manners.  You can say 'What's the use of
+talking of things that at the best are impossible?' What IS of
+course the use?  It's only my little madness.  You'd talk if you
+were tormented.  And I don't mean now about HIM.  Oh for him--!"
+Positively, strangely, bitterly, as it seemed to Strether, she gave
+"him," for the moment, away.  "You don't care what I think of you;
+but I happen to care what you think of me.  And what you MIGHT,"
+she added.  "What you perhaps even did."
+
+He gained time.  "What I did--?"
+
+"Did think before.  Before this.  DIDn't you think--?"
+
+But he had already stopped her.  "I didn't think anything.  I
+never think a step further than I'm obliged to."
+
+"That's perfectly false, I believe," she returned--"except that you
+may, no doubt, often pull up when things become TOO ugly; or even,
+I'll say, to save you a protest, too beautiful.  At any rate, even
+so far as it's true, we've thrust on you appearances that you've
+had to take in and that have therefore made your obligation.  Ugly
+or beautiful--it doesn't matter what we call them--you were
+getting on without them, and that's where we're detestable.  We
+bore you--that's where we are.  And we may well--for what we've
+cost you.  All you can do NOW is not to think at all.  And I who
+should have liked to seem to you--well, sublime!"
+
+He could only after a moment re-echo Miss Barrace.  "You're
+wonderful!"
+
+"I'm old and abject and hideous"--she went on as without hearing
+him.  "Abject above all.  Or old above all.  It's when one's old
+that it's worst.  I don't care what becomes of it--let what WILL;
+there it is.  It's a doom--I know it; you can't see it more than I
+do myself.  Things have to happen as they will." With which she
+came back again to what, face to face with him, had so quite broken
+down.  "Of course you wouldn't, even if possible, and no matter
+what may happen to you, be near us.  But think of me, think of me--!"
+She exhaled it into air.
+
+He took refuge in repeating something he had already said and that
+she had made nothing of.  "There's something I believe I can still
+do." And he put his hand out for good-bye.
+
+She again made nothing of it; she went on with her insistence.
+"That won't help you.  There's nothing to help you."
+
+"Well, it may help YOU," he said.
+
+She shook her head.  "There's not a grain of certainty in my
+future--for the only certainty is that I shall be the loser in the
+end."
+
+She hadn't taken his hand, but she moved with him to the door.
+"That's cheerful," he laughed, "for your benefactor!"
+
+"What's cheerful for ME," she replied, "is that we might, you and
+I, have been friends.  That's it--that's it.  You see how, as I
+say, I want everything.  I've wanted you too."
+
+"Ah but you've HAD me!" he declared, at the door, with an emphasis
+that made an end.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+His purpose had been to see Chad the next day, and he had prefigured
+seeing him by an early call; having in general never stood on ceremony
+in respect to visits at the Boulevard Malesherbes.  It had been
+more often natural for him to go there than for Chad to come to the
+small hotel, the attractions of which were scant; yet it nevertheless,
+just now, at the eleventh hour, did suggest itself to Strether to begin
+by giving the young man a chance.  It struck him that, in the
+inevitable course, Chad would be "round," as Waymarsh used to say--
+Waymarsh who already, somehow, seemed long ago.  He hadn't come the
+day before, because it had been arranged between them that Madame de Vionnet
+should see their friend first; but now that this passage had taken place
+he would present himself, and their friend wouldn't have long to wait.
+Strether assumed, he became aware, on this reasoning, that the
+interesting parties to the arrangement would have met betimes, and
+that the more interesting of the two--as she was after all--would
+have communicated to the other the issue of her appeal.  Chad would
+know without delay that his mother's messenger had been with her,
+and, though it was perhaps not quite easy to see how she could
+qualify what had occurred, he would at least have been sufficiently
+advised to feel he could go on.  The day, however, brought, early
+or late, no word from him, and Strether felt, as a result of this,
+that a change had practically come over their intercourse.  It was
+perhaps a premature judgement; or it only meant perhaps--how could
+he tell?--that the wonderful pair he protected had taken up again
+together the excursion he had accidentally checked.  They might
+have gone back to the country, and gone back but with a long breath drawn;
+that indeed would best mark Chad's sense that reprobation hadn't
+rewarded Madame de Vionnet's request for an interview.  At the end of
+the twenty-four hours, at the end of the forty-eight, there was still
+no overture; so that Strether filled up the time, as he had so often
+filled it before, by going to see Miss Gostrey.
+
+He proposed amusements to her; he felt expert now in proposing
+amusements; and he had thus, for several days, an odd sense of
+leading her about Paris, of driving her in the Bois, of showing her
+the penny steamboats--those from which the breeze of the Seine was
+to be best enjoyed--that might have belonged to a kindly uncle
+doing the honours of the capital to an Intelligent niece from the
+country.  He found means even to take her to shops she didn't
+know, or that she pretended she didn't; while she, on her side,
+was, like the country maiden, all passive modest and grateful--
+going in fact so far as to emulate rusticity in occasional fatigues
+and bewilderments.  Strether described these vague proceedings to
+himself, described them even to her, as a happy interlude; the sign
+of which was that the companions said for the time no further word
+about the matter they had talked of to satiety.  He proclaimed
+satiety at the outset, and she quickly took the hint; as docile
+both in this and in everything else as the intelligent obedient
+niece.  He told her as yet nothing of his late adventure--for as
+an adventure it now ranked with him; he pushed the whole business
+temporarily aside and found his interest in the fact of her
+beautiful assent.  She left questions unasked--she who for so long
+had been all questions; she gave herself up to him with an
+understanding of which mere mute gentleness might have seemed the
+sufficient expression.  She knew his sense of his situation had
+taken still another step--of that he was quite aware; but she
+conveyed that, whatever had thus happened for him, it was thrown
+into the shade by what was happening for herself.  This--though it
+mightn't to a detached spirit have seemed much--was the major
+interest, and she met it with a new directness of response,
+measuring it from hour to hour with her grave hush of acceptance.
+Touched as he had so often been by her before, he was, for his part
+too, touched afresh; all the more that though he could be duly
+aware of the principle of his own mood he couldn't be equally so
+of the principle of hers.  He knew, that is, in a manner--knew
+roughly and resignedly--what he himself was hatching; whereas he
+had to take the chance of what he called to himself Maria's
+calculations.  It was all he needed that she liked him enough for
+what they were doing, and even should they do a good deal more
+would still like him enough for that; the essential freshness of a
+relation so simple was a cool bath to the soreness produced by
+other relations.  These others appeared to him now horribly
+complex; they bristled with fine points, points all unimaginable
+beforehand, points that pricked and drew blood; a fact that gave to
+an hour with his present friend on a bateau-mouche, or in the
+afternoon shade of the Champs Elysees, something of the innocent
+pleasure of handling rounded ivory.  His relation with Chad
+personally--from the moment he had got his point of view--had been
+of the simplest; yet this also struck him as bristling, after a
+third and a fourth blank day had passed.  It was as if at last
+however his care for such indications had dropped; there came a
+fifth blank day and he ceased to enquire or to heed.
+
+They now took on to his fancy, Miss Gostrey and he, the image of
+the Babes in the Wood; they could trust the merciful elements to
+let them continue at peace.  He had been great already, as he knew,
+at postponements; but he had only to get afresh into the rhythm of
+one to feel its fine attraction.  It amused him to say to himself
+that he might for all the world have been going to die--die resignedly;
+the scene was filled for him with so deep a death-bed hush, so
+melancholy a charm.  That meant the postponement of everything else--
+which made so for the quiet lapse of life; and the postponement
+in especial of the reckoning to come--unless indeed the reckoning
+to come were to be one and the same thing with extinction.  It faced
+him, the reckoning, over the shoulder of much interposing experience--
+which also faced him; and one would float to it doubtless duly
+through these caverns of Kubla Khan.  It was really behind everything;
+it hadn't merged in what he had done; his final appreciation of what
+he had done--his appreciation on the spot--would provide it with
+its main sharpness.  The spot so focussed was of course Woollett,
+and he was to see, at the best, what Woollett would be with everything
+there changed for him.  Wouldn't THAT revelation practically amount to
+the wind-up of his career?  Well, the summer's end would show;
+his suspense had meanwhile exactly the sweetness of vain delay;
+and he had with it, we should mention, other pastimes than Maria's
+company--plenty of separate musings in which his luxury failed him
+but at one point.  He was well in port, the outer sea behind him,
+and it was only a matter of getting ashore.  There was a question
+that came and went for him, however, as he rested against the
+side of his ship, and it was a little to get rid of the obsession
+that he prolonged his hours with Miss Gostrey.  It was a question
+about himself, but it could only be settled by seeing Chad again;
+it was indeed his principal reason for wanting to see Chad.
+After that it wouldn't signify--it was a ghost that certain words
+would easily lay to rest.  Only the young man must be there to
+take the words.  Once they were taken he wouldn't have a question left;
+none, that is, in connexion with this particular affair.  It wouldn't
+then matter even to himself that he might now have been guilty of
+speaking BECAUSE of what he had forfeited.  That was the refinement
+of his supreme scruple--he wished so to leave what he had forfeited
+out of account.  He wished not to do anything because he had missed
+something else, because he was sore or sorry or impoverished,
+because he was maltreated or desperate; he wished to do everything
+because he was lucid and quiet, just the same for himself on all
+essential points as he had ever been.  Thus it was that while he
+virtually hung about for Chad he kept mutely putting it:  "You've
+been chucked, old boy; but what has that to do with it?"  It would
+have sickened him to feel vindictive.
+
+These tints of feeling indeed were doubtless but the iridescence of
+his idleness, and they were presently lost in a new light from
+Maria.  She had a fresh fact for him before the week was out, and
+she practically met him with it on his appearing one night.  He hadn't
+on this day seen her, but had planned presenting himself in due course
+to ask her to dine with him somewhere out of doors, on one of the
+terraces, in one of the gardens, of which the Paris of summer was
+profuse.  It had then come on to rain, so that, disconcerted, he changed
+his mind; dining alone at home, a little stuffily and stupidly, and
+waiting on her afterwards to make up his loss.  He was sure within a
+minute that something had happened; it was so in the air of the rich
+little room that he had scarcely to name his thought.  Softly lighted,
+the whole colour of the place, with its vague values, was in cool
+fusion--an effect that made the visitor stand for a little agaze.  It
+was as if in doing so now he had felt a recent presence--his recognition
+of the passage of which his hostess in turn divined.  She had scarcely
+to say it--"Yes, she has been here, and this time I received her." It
+wasn't till a minute later that she added:  "There being, as I
+understand you, no reason NOW--!"
+
+"None for your refusing?"
+
+"No--if you've done what you've had to do."
+
+"I've certainly so far done it," Strether said, "as that you needn't
+fear the effect, or the appearance of coming between us.  There's
+nothing between us now but what we ourselves have put there, and
+not an inch of room for anything else whatever.  Therefore you're
+only beautifully WITH us as always--though doubtless now, if she
+has talked to you, rather more with us than less.  Of course if
+she came," he added, "it was to talk to you."
+
+"It was to talk to me," Maria returned; on which he was further
+sure that she was practically in possession of what he himself hadn't
+yet told her.  He was even sure she was in possession of things
+he himself couldn't have told; for the consciousness of them was
+now all in her face and accompanied there with a shade of sadness
+that marked in her the close of all uncertainties.  It came out for
+him more than ever yet that she had had from the first a knowledge
+she believed him not to have had, a knowledge the sharp acquisition
+of which might be destined to make a difference for him.  The
+difference for him might not inconceivably be an arrest of his
+independence and a change in his attitude--in other words a
+revulsion in favour of the principles of Woollett.  She had really
+prefigured the possibility of a shock that would send him swinging
+back to Mrs. Newsome.  He hadn't, it was true, week after week,
+shown signs of receiving it, but the possibility had been none the
+less in the air.  What Maria accordingly had had now to take in was
+that the shock had descended and that he hadn't, all the same,
+swung back.  He had grown clear, in a flash, on a point long since
+settled for herself; but no reapproximation to Mrs. Newsome had
+occurred in consequence.  Madame de Vionnet had by her visit held
+up the torch to these truths, and what now lingered in poor Maria's
+face was the somewhat smoky light of the scene between them.
+If the light however wasn't, as we have hinted, the glow of joy,
+the reasons for this also were perhaps discernible to Strether even
+through the blur cast over them by his natural modesty.  She had
+held herself for months with a firm hand; she hadn't interfered on
+any chance--and chances were specious enough--that she might
+interfere to her profit.  She had turned her back on the dream that
+Mrs. Newsome's rupture, their friend's forfeiture--the engagement
+the relation itself, broken beyond all mending--might furnish forth
+her advantage; and, to stay her hand from promoting these things,
+she had on private, difficult, but rigid, lines, played strictly
+fair.  She couldn't therefore but feel that, though, as the end of
+all, the facts in question had been stoutly confirmed, her ground
+for personal, for what might have been called interested, elation
+remained rather vague.  Strether might easily have made out that
+she had been asking herself, in the hours she had just sat through,
+if there were still for her, or were only not, a fair shade of
+uncertainty.  Let us hasten to add, however, that what he at first
+made out on this occasion he also at first kept to himself.  He
+only asked what in particular Madame de Vionnet had come for,
+and as to this his companion was ready.
+
+"She wants tidings of Mr. Newsome, whom she appears not to have
+seen for some days."
+
+"Then she hasn't been away with him again?"
+
+"She seemed to think," Maria answered, "that he might have gone
+away with YOU."
+
+"And did you tell her I know nothing of him?"
+
+She had her indulgent headshake.  "I've known nothing of what you
+know.  I could only tell her I'd ask you."
+
+"Then I've not seen him for a week--and of course I've wondered."
+His wonderment showed at this moment as sharper, but he presently
+went on.  "Still, I dare say I can put my hand on him.  Did she
+strike you," he asked, "as anxious?"
+
+"She's always anxious."
+
+"After all I've done for her?"  And he had one of the last flickers
+of his occasional mild mirth.  "To think that was just what I came
+out to prevent!"
+
+She took it up but to reply.  "You don't regard him then as safe?"
+
+"I was just going to ask you how in that respect you regard Madame
+de Vionnet."
+
+She looked at him a little.  "What woman was EVER safe?  She told
+me," she added--and it was as if at the touch of the connexion--
+"of your extraordinary meeting in the country.  After that a quoi
+se fier?"
+
+"It was, as an accident, in all the possible or impossible chapter,"
+Strether conceded, "amazing enough.  But still, but still--!"
+
+"But still she didn't mind?"
+
+"She doesn't mind anything."
+
+"Well, then, as you don't either, we may all sink to rest!"
+
+He appeared to agree with her, but he had his reservation.
+"I do mind Chad's disappearance."
+
+"Oh you'll get him back.  But now you know," she said, "why I went
+to Mentone." He had sufficiently let her see that he had by this
+time gathered things together, but there was nature in her wish to
+make them clearer still.  "I didn't want you to put it to me."
+
+"To put it to you--?"
+
+"The question of what you were at last--a week ago--to see for
+yourself.  I didn't want to have to lie for her.  I felt that to
+be too much for me.  A man of course is always expected to do it--
+to do it, I mean, for a woman; but not a woman for another woman;
+unless perhaps on the tit-for-tat principle, as an indirect way of
+protecting herself.  I don't need protection, so that I was free to
+'funk' you--simply to dodge your test.  The responsibility was too
+much for me.  I gained time, and when I came back the need of a
+test had blown over."
+
+Strether thought of it serenely.  "Yes; when you came back little
+Bilham had shown me what's expected of a gentleman.  Little Bilham
+had lied like one."
+
+"And like what you believed him?"
+
+"Well," said Strether, "it was but a technical lie--he classed the
+attachment as virtuous.  That was a view for which there was much
+to be said--and the virtue came out for me hugely There was of
+course a great deal of it.  I got it full in the face, and I haven't,
+you see, done with it yet."
+
+"What I see, what I saw," Maria returned, "is that you dressed up
+even the virtue.  You were wonderful--you were beautiful, as I've
+had the honour of telling you before; but, if you wish really to
+know," she sadly confessed, "I never quite knew WHERE you were.
+There were moments," she explained, "when you struck me as grandly
+cynical; there were others when you struck me as grandly vague."
+
+Her friend considered.  "I had phases.  I had flights."
+
+"Yes, but things must have a basis."
+
+"A basis seemed to me just what her beauty supplied."
+
+"Her beauty of person?"
+
+"Well, her beauty of everything.  The impression she makes.  She
+has such variety and yet such harmony."
+
+She considered him with one of her deep returns of indulgence--
+returns out of all proportion to the irritations they flooded over.
+"You're complete."
+
+"You're always too personal," he good-humouredly said; "but that's
+precisely how I wondered and wandered."
+
+"If you mean," she went on, "that she was from the first for you
+the most charming woman in the world, nothing's more simple.  Only
+that was an odd foundation."
+
+"For what I reared on it?"
+
+"For what you didn't!"
+
+"Well, it was all not a fixed quantity.  And it had for me--it has
+still--such elements of strangeness.  Her greater age than his, her
+different world, traditions, association; her other opportunities,
+liabilities, standards."
+
+His friend listened with respect to his enumeration of these
+disparities; then she disposed of them at a stroke.  "Those things
+are nothing when a woman's hit.  It's very awful.  She was hit."
+
+Strether, on his side, did justice to that plea.  "Oh of course I
+saw she was hit.  That she was hit was what we were busy with; that
+she was hit was our great affair.  But somehow I couldn't think of
+her as down in the dust.  And as put there by OUR little Chad!"
+
+"Yet wasn't 'your' little Chad just your miracle?"
+
+Strether admitted it.  "Of course I moved among miracles.  It was
+all phantasmagoric.  But the great fact was that so much of it was
+none of my business--as I saw my business.  It isn't even now."
+
+His companion turned away on this, and it might well have been yet
+again with the sharpness of a fear of how little his philosophy
+could bring her personally.  "I wish SHE could hear you!"
+
+"Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+"No--not Mrs. Newsome; since I understand you that it doesn't
+matter now what Mrs. Newsome hears.  Hasn't she heard
+everything?"
+
+"Practically--yes." He had thought a moment, but he went on.  "You
+wish Madame de Vionnet could hear me?"
+
+"Madame de Vionnet." She had come back to him.  "She thinks just
+the contrary of what you say.  That you distinctly judge her."
+
+He turned over the scene as the two women thus placed together for
+him seemed to give it.  "She might have known--!"
+
+"Might have known you don't?" Miss Gostrey asked as he let it drop.
+"She was sure of it at first," she pursued as he said nothing; "she
+took it for granted, at least, as any woman in her position would.
+But after that she changed her mind; she believed you believed--"
+
+"Well?"--he was curious.
+
+"Why in her sublimity.  And that belief had remained with her, I
+make out, till the accident of the other day opened your eyes.  For
+that it did," said Maria, "open them--"
+
+"She can't help"--he had taken it up--"being aware?  No," he mused;
+"I suppose she thinks of that even yet."
+
+"Then they WERE closed?  There you are!  However, if you see her as
+the most charming woman in the world it comes to the same thing.
+And if you'd like me to tell her that you do still so see her--!"
+Miss Gostrey, in short, offered herself for service to the end.
+
+It was an offer he could temporarily entertain; but he decided.
+"She knows perfectly how I see her."
+
+"Not favourably enough, she mentioned to me, to wish ever to see
+her again.  She told me you had taken a final leave of her.  She
+says you've done with her."
+
+"So I have."
+
+Maria had a pause; then she spoke as if for conscience.  "She
+wouldn't have done with YOU.  She feels she has lost you--
+yet that she might have been better for you."
+
+"Oh she has been quite good enough!" Strether laughed.
+
+"She thinks you and she might at any rate have been friends."
+
+"We might certainly.  That's just"--he continued to laugh--
+"why I'm going."
+
+It was as if Maria could feel with this then at last that she had
+done her best for each.  But she had still an idea.  "Shall I tell
+her that?"
+
+"No.  Tell her nothing."
+
+"Very well then." To which in the next breath Miss Gostrey added:
+"Poor dear thing!"
+
+Her friend wondered; then with raised eyebrows:  "Me?"
+
+"Oh no.  Marie de Vionnet."
+
+He accepted the correction, but he wondered still.  "Are you so
+sorry for her as that?"
+
+It made her think a moment--made her even speak with a smile.  But
+she didn't really retract.  "I'm sorry for us all!"
+
+
+
+IV
+
+He was to delay no longer to re-establish communication with Chad,
+and we have just seen that he had spoken to Miss Gostrey of this
+intention on hearing from her of the young man's absence.  It was
+not moreover only the assurance so given that prompted him; it was
+the need of causing his conduct to square with another profession
+still--the motive he had described to her as his sharpest for now
+getting away.  If he was to get away because of some of the
+relations involved in staying, the cold attitude toward them might
+look pedantic in the light of lingering on.  He must do both
+things; he must see Chad, but he must go.  The more he thought of
+the former of these duties the more he felt himself make a subject
+of insistence of the latter.  They were alike intensely present to
+him as he sat in front of a quiet little cafe into which he had
+dropped on quitting Maria's entresol.  The rain that had spoiled
+his evening with her was over; for it was still to him as if his
+evening HAD been spoiled--though it mightn't have been wholly the
+rain.  It was late when he left the cafe, yet not too late; he
+couldn't in any case go straight to bed, and he would walk round
+by the Boulevard Malesherbes--rather far round--on his way home.
+Present enough always was the small circumstance that had
+originally pressed for him the spring of so big a difference--the
+accident of little Bilham's appearance on the balcony of the mystic
+troisieme at the moment of his first visit, and the effect of it on
+his sense of what was then before him.  He recalled his watch, his
+wait, and the recognition that had proceeded from the young
+stranger, that had played frankly into the air and had presently
+brought him up--things smoothing the way for his first straight
+step.  He had since had occasion, a few times, to pass the house
+without going in; but he had never passed it without again feeling
+how it had then spoken to him.  He stopped short to-night on coming
+to sight of it:  it was as if his last day were oddly copying his
+first.  The windows of Chad's apartment were open to the balcony--
+a pair of them lighted; and a figure that had come out and taken up
+little Bilham's attitude, a figure whose cigarette-spark he could
+see leaned on the rail and looked down at him.  It denoted however
+no reappearance of his younger friend; it quickly defined itself in
+the tempered darkness as Chad's more solid shape; so that Chad's
+was the attention that after he had stepped forward into the street
+and signalled, he easily engaged; Chad's was the voice that,
+sounding into the night with promptness and seemingly with joy,
+greeted him and called him up.
+
+That the young man had been visible there just in this position
+expressed somehow for Strether that, as Maria Gostrey had reported,
+he had been absent and silent; and our friend drew breath on each
+landing--the lift, at that hour, having ceased to work--before the
+implications of the fact.  He had been for a week intensely away,
+away to a distance and alone; but he was more back than ever, and
+the attitude in which Strether had surprised him was something more
+than a return--it was clearly a conscious surrender.  He had
+arrived but an hour before, from London, from Lucerne, from Homburg,
+from no matter where--though the visitor's fancy, on the staircase,
+liked to fill it out; and after a bath, a talk with Baptiste and a
+supper of light cold clever French things, which one could see the
+remains of there in the circle of the lamp, pretty and ultra-Parisian,
+he had come into the air again for a smoke, was occupied at the moment
+of Strether's approach in what might have been called taking up
+his life afresh.  His life, his life!--Strether paused anew, on
+the last flight, at this final rather breathless sense of what
+Chad's life was doing with Chad's mother's emissary.  It was
+dragging him, at strange hours, up the staircases of the rich;
+it was keeping him out of bed at the end of long hot days;
+it was transforming beyond recognition the simple, subtle,
+conveniently uniform thing that had anciently passed with him for a
+life of his own.  Why should it concern him that Chad was to be
+fortified in the pleasant practice of smoking on balconies, of
+supping on salads, of feeling his special conditions agreeably
+reaffirm themselves, of finding reassurance in comparisons and
+contrasts?  There was no answer to such a question but that he was
+still practically committed--he had perhaps never yet so much known it.
+It made him feel old, and he would buy his railway-ticket--feeling,
+no doubt, older--the next day; but he had meanwhile come up four
+flights, counting the entresol, at midnight and without a lift, for
+Chad's life.  The young man, hearing him by this time, and with
+Baptiste sent to rest, was already at the door; so that Strether
+had before him in full visibility the cause in which he was labouring
+and even, with the troisieme fairly gained, panting a little.
+
+Chad offered him, as always, a welcome in which the cordial and the
+formal--so far as the formal was the respectful--handsomely met;
+and after he had expressed a hope that he would let him put him up
+for the night Strether was in full possession of the key, as it
+might have been called, to what had lately happened.  If he had
+just thought of himself as old Chad was at sight of him thinking of
+him as older:  he wanted to put him up for the night just because
+he was ancient and weary.  It could never be said the tenant of
+these quarters wasn't nice to him; a tenant who, if he might
+indeed now keep him, was probably prepared to work it all still
+more thoroughly.  Our friend had in fact the impression that with
+the minimum of encouragement Chad would propose to keep him
+indefinitely; an impression in the lap of which one of his own
+possibilities seemed to sit.  Madame de Vionnet had wished him to
+stay--so why didn't that happily fit?  He could enshrine himself
+for the rest of his days in his young host's chambre d'ami and draw
+out these days at his young host's expense:  there could scarce be
+greater logical expression of the countenance he had been moved to
+give.  There was literally a minute--it was strange enough--during
+which he grasped the idea that as he WAS acting, as he could only
+act, he was inconsistent.  The sign that the inward forces he had
+obeyed really hung together would be that--in default always of
+another career--he should promote the good cause by mounting guard
+on it.  These things, during his first minutes, came and went; but
+they were after all practically disposed of as soon as he had
+mentioned his errand.  He had come to say good-bye--yet that was
+only a part; so that from the moment Chad accepted his farewell the
+question of a more ideal affirmation gave way to something else.
+He proceeded with the rest of his business.  "You'll be a brute, you
+know--you'll be guilty of the last infamy--if you ever forsake her."
+
+That, uttered there at the solemn hour, uttered in the place that
+was full of her influence, was the rest of his business; and when
+once he had heard himself say it he felt that his message had never
+before been spoken.  It placed his present call immediately on
+solid ground, and the effect of it was to enable him quite to play
+with what we have called the key.  Chad showed no shade of
+embarrassment, but had none the less been troubled for him after
+their meeting in the country; had had fears and doubts on the
+subject of his comfort.  He was disturbed, as it were, only FOR
+him, and had positively gone away to ease him off, to let him down--
+if it wasn't indeed rather to screw him up--the more gently.
+Seeing him now fairly jaded he had come, with characteristic good
+humour, all the way to meet him, and what Strether thereupon
+supremely made out was that he would abound for him to the end in
+conscientious assurances.  This was what was between them while the
+visitor remained; so far from having to go over old ground he found
+his entertainer keen to agree to everything.  It couldn't be put
+too strongly for him that he'd be a brute.  "Oh rather!--if I should
+do anything of THAT sort.  I hope you believe I really feel it."
+
+"I want it," said Strether, "to be my last word of all to you.
+I can't say more, you know; and I don't see how I can do more,
+in every way, than I've done."
+
+Chad took this, almost artlessly, as a direct allusion.  "You've
+seen her?"
+
+"Oh yes--to say good-bye.  And if I had doubted the truth of what I
+tell you--"
+
+"She'd have cleared up your doubt?"  Chad understood--"rather"--
+again!  It even kept him briefly silent.  But he made that up.
+"She must have been wonderful."
+
+"She WAS," Strether candidly admitted--all of which practically
+told as a reference to the conditions created by the accident of
+the previous week.
+
+They appeared for a little to be looking back at it; and that came
+out still more in what Chad next said.  "I don't know what you've
+really thought, all along; I never did know--for anything, with
+you, seemed to be possible.  But of course--of course--"  Without
+confusion, quite with nothing but indulgence, he broke down, he
+pulled up.  "After all, you understand.  I spoke to you originally
+only as I HAD to speak.  There's only one way--isn't there?--about
+such things.  However," he smiled with a final philosophy, "I see
+it's all right."
+
+Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts.  What
+was it that made him at present, late at night and after journeys,
+so renewedly, so substantially young?  Strether saw in a moment
+what it was--it was that he was younger again than Madame de Vionnet.
+He himself said immediately none of the things that he was thinking;
+he said something quite different.  "You HAVE really been to a distance?"
+
+"I've been to England." Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, but gave
+no further account of it than to say:  "One must sometimes get off."
+
+Strether wanted no more facts--he only wanted to justify, as it
+were, his question.  "Of course you do as you're free to do.  But I
+hope, this time, that you didn't go for ME."
+
+"For very shame at bothering you really too much?  My dear man,"
+Chad laughed, "what WOULDn't I do for you?"
+
+Strether's easy answer for this was that it was a disposition he
+had exactly come to profit by.  "Even at the risk of being in your
+way I've waited on, you know, for a definite reason."
+
+Chad took it in.  "Oh yes--for us to make if possible a still
+better impression." And he stood there happily exhaling his full
+general consciousness.  "I'm delighted to gather that you feel
+we've made it."
+
+There was a pleasant irony in the words, which his guest,
+preoccupied and keeping to the point, didn't take up.  "If I had
+my sense of wanting the rest of the time--the time of their being
+still on this side," he continued to explain--"I know now why I
+wanted it."
+
+He was as grave, as distinct, as a demonstrator before a
+blackboard, and Chad continued to face him like an intelligent
+pupil.  "You wanted to have been put through the whole thing."
+
+Strether again, for a moment, said nothing; he turned his eyes
+away, and they lost themselves, through the open window, in the
+dusky outer air.  "I shall learn from the Bank here where they're
+now having their letters, and my last word, which I shall write in
+the morning and which they're expecting as my ultimatum, will so
+immediately reach them." The light of his plural pronoun was
+sufficiently reflected in his companion's face as he again met it;
+and he completed his demonstration.  He pursued indeed as if for
+himself.  "Of course I've first to justify what I shall do."
+
+"You're justifying it beautifully!" Chad declared.
+
+"It's not a question of advising you not to go," Strether said, "but
+of absolutely preventing you, if possible, from so much as thinking
+of it.  Let me accordingly appeal to you by all you hold sacred."
+
+Chad showed a surprise.  "What makes you think me capable--?"
+
+"You'd not only be, as I say, a brute; you'd be," his companion
+went on in the same way, "a criminal of the deepest dye."
+
+Chad gave a sharper look, as if to gauge a possible suspicion.
+"I don't know what should make you think I'm tired of her."
+
+Strether didn't quite know either, and such impressions, for the
+imaginative mind, were always too fine, too floating, to produce on
+the spot their warrant.  There was none the less for him, in the
+very manner of his host's allusion to satiety as a thinkable
+motive, a slight breath of the ominous.  "I feel how much more she
+can do for you.  She hasn't done it all yet.  Stay with her at
+least till she has."
+
+"And leave her THEN?"
+
+Chad had kept smiling, but its effect in Strether was a shade of
+dryness.  "Don't leave her BEFORE.  When you've got all that can be
+got--I don't say," he added a trifle grimly.  "That will be the
+proper time.  But as, for you, from such a woman, there will always
+be something to be got, my remark's not a wrong to her." Chad let
+him go on, showing every decent deference, showing perhaps also a
+candid curiosity for this sharper accent.  "I remember you, you
+know, as you were."
+
+"An awful ass, wasn't I?"
+
+The response was as prompt as if he had pressed a spring; it had a
+ready abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment
+to meet it.  "You certainly then wouldn't have seemed worth all
+you've let me in for.  You've defined yourself better.  Your value
+has quintupled."
+
+"Well then, wouldn't that be enough--?"
+
+Chad had risked it jocosely, but Strether remained blank.  "Enough?"
+
+"If one SHOULD wish to live on one's accumulations?"  After which,
+however, as his friend appeared cold to the joke, the young man as
+easily dropped it.  "Of course I really never forget, night or day,
+what I owe her.  I owe her everything.  I give you my word of
+honour," he frankly rang out, "that I'm not a bit tired of her."
+Strether at this only gave him a stare:  the way youth could
+express itself was again and again a wonder.  He meant no harm,
+though he might after all be capable of much; yet he spoke of being
+"tired" of her almost as he might have spoken of being tired of
+roast mutton for dinner.  "She has never for a moment yet bored me--
+never been wanting, as the cleverest women sometimes are, in tact.
+She has never talked about her tact--as even they too sometimes talk;
+but she has always had it.  She has never had it more"--he handsomely
+made the point--"than just lately." And he scrupulously went further.
+"She has never been anything I could call a burden."
+
+Strether for a moment said nothing; then he spoke gravely, with his
+shade of dryness deepened.  "Oh if you didn't do her justice--!"
+
+"I SHOULD be a beast, eh?"
+
+Strether devoted no time to saying what he would be; THAT, visibly,
+would take them far.  If there was nothing for it but to repeat,
+however, repetition was no mistake.  "You owe her everything--very
+much more than she can ever owe you.  You've in other words duties
+to her, of the most positive sort; and I don't see what other
+duties--as the others are presented to you--can be held to go
+before them."
+
+Chad looked at him with a smile.  "And you know of course about the
+others, eh?--since it's you yourself who have done the presenting."
+
+"Much of it--yes--and to the best of my ability.  But not all--from
+the moment your sister took my place."
+
+"She didn't," Chad returned.  "Sally took a place, certainly; but
+it was never, I saw from the first moment, to be yours.  No one--
+with us--will ever take yours.  It wouldn't be possible."
+
+"Ah of course," sighed Strether, "I knew it.  I believe you're
+right.  No one in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously
+solemn.  There I am," he added with another sigh, as if weary
+enough, on occasion, of this truth.  "I was made so."
+
+Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made;
+he might for this purpose have measured him up and down.
+His conclusion favoured the fact.  "YOU have never needed any one
+to make you better.  There has never been any one good enough.
+They couldn't," the young man declared.
+
+His friend hesitated.  "I beg your pardon.  They HAVE."
+
+Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt.  "Who then?"
+
+Strether--though a little dimly--smiled at him.  "Women--too."
+
+"'Two'?"--Chad stared and laughed.  "Oh I don't believe, for such
+work, in any more than one!  So you're proving too much.  And what
+IS beastly, at all events," he added, "is losing you."
+
+Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he
+paused.  "Are you afraid?"
+
+"Afraid--?"
+
+"Of doing wrong.  I mean away from my eye." Before Chad could
+speak, however, he had taken himself up.  "I AM, certainly," he
+laughed, "prodigious."
+
+"Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid--!"  This might have been, on
+Chad's part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely
+extravagant; but it was full, plainly enough, of the intention of
+comfort, it carried with it a protest against doubt and a promise,
+positively, of performance.  Picking up a hat in the vestibule he
+came out with his friend, came downstairs, took his arm,
+affectionately, as to help and guide him, treating him if not
+exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a noble eccentric who appealed
+to tenderness, and keeping on with him, while they walked, to the
+next corner and the next.  "You needn't tell me, you needn't tell
+me!"--this again as they proceeded, he wished to make Strether
+feel.  What he needn't tell him was now at last, in the geniality
+of separation, anything at all it concerned him to know.  He knew,
+up to the hilt--that really came over Chad; he understood, felt,
+recorded his vow; and they lingered on it as they had lingered in
+their walk to Strether's hotel the night of their first meeting.
+The latter took, at this hour, all he could get; he had given all
+he had had to give; he was as depleted as if he had spent his last
+sou.  But there was just one thing for which, before they broke
+off, Chad seemed disposed slightly to bargain.  His companion needn't,
+as he said, tell him, but he might himself mention that he had been
+getting some news of the art of advertisement.  He came out quite
+suddenly with this announcement while Strether wondered if his revived
+interest were what had taken him, with strange inconsequence, over
+to London.  He appeared at all events to have been looking into the
+question and had encountered a revelation.  Advertising scientifically
+worked presented itself thus as the great new force.  "It really
+does the thing, you know."
+
+They were face to face under the street-lamp as they had been the
+first night, and Strether, no doubt, looked blank.  "Affects, you
+mean, the sale of the object advertised?"
+
+"Yes--but affects it extraordinarily; really beyond what one had
+supposed.  I mean of course when it's done as one makes out that in
+our roaring age, it CAN be done.  I've been finding out a little,
+though it doubtless doesn't amount to much more than what you
+originally, so awfully vividly--and all, very nearly, that first
+night--put before me.  It's an art like another, and infinite like
+all the arts." He went on as if for the joke of it--almost as if
+his friend's face amused him.  "In the hands, naturally, of a master.
+The right man must take hold.  With the right man to work it
+c'est un monde."
+
+Strether had watched him quite as if, there on the pavement without
+a pretext, he had begun to dance a fancy step.  "Is what you're
+thinking of that you yourself, in the case you have in mind, would
+be the right man?"
+
+Chad had thrown back his light coat and thrust each of his thumbs
+into an armhole of his waistcoat; in which position his fingers
+played up and down.  "Why, what is he but what you yourself, as I
+say, took me for when you first came out?"
+
+Strether felt a little faint, but he coerced his attention.  "Oh
+yes, and there's no doubt that, with your natural parts, you'd have
+much in common with him.  Advertising is clearly at this time of
+day the secret of trade.  It's quite possible it will be open to you--
+giving the whole of your mind to it--to make the whole place hum
+with you.  Your mother's appeal is to the whole of your mind, and
+that's exactly the strength of her case."
+
+Chad's fingers continued to twiddle, but he had something of a drop.
+"Ah we've been through my mother's case!"
+
+"So I thought.  Why then do you speak of the matter?"
+
+"Only because it was part of our original discussion.  To wind up
+where we began, my interest's purely platonic.  There at any rate
+the fact is--the fact of the possible.  I mean the money in it."
+
+"Oh damn the money in it!" said Strether.  And then as the young
+man's fixed smile seemed to shine out more strange:  "Shall you
+give your friend up for the money in it?"
+
+Chad preserved his handsome grimace as well as the rest of his
+attitude.  "You're not altogether--in your so great 'solemnity'--
+kind.  Haven't I been drinking you in--showing you all I feel
+you're worth to me?  What have I done, what am I doing, but cleave
+to her to the death?  The only thing is," he good-humouredly
+explained, "that one can't but have it before one, in the cleaving--
+the point where the death comes in.  Don't be afraid for THAT.
+It's pleasant to a fellow's feelings," he developed, "to 'size-up'
+the bribe he applies his foot to."
+
+"Oh then if all you want's a kickable surface the bribe's enormous."
+
+"Good.  Then there it goes!"  Chad administered his kick with fantastic
+force and sent an imaginary object flying.  It was accordingly as if
+they were once more rid of the question and could come back to what
+really concerned him.  "Of course I shall see you tomorrow."
+
+But Strether scarce heeded the plan proposed for this; he had still
+the impression--not the slighter for the simulated kick--of an
+irrelevant hornpipe or jig.  "You're restless."
+
+"Ah," returned Chad as they parted, "you're exciting."
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+He had, however, within two days, another separation to face.
+He had sent Maria Gostrey a word early, by hand, to ask if he might
+come to breakfast; in consequence of which, at noon, she awaited
+him in the cool shade of her little Dutch-looking dining-room.
+This retreat was at the back of the house, with a view of a scrap
+of old garden that had been saved from modern ravage; and though he
+had on more than one other occasion had his legs under its small
+and peculiarly polished table of hospitality, the place had never
+before struck him as so sacred to pleasant knowledge, to intimate
+charm, to antique order, to a neatness that was almost august.
+To sit there was, as he had told his hostess before, to see life
+reflected for the time in ideally kept pewter; which was somehow
+becoming, improving to life, so that one's eyes were held and
+comforted.  Strether's were comforted at all events now--and the
+more that it was the last time--with the charming effect, on the
+board bare of a cloth and proud of its perfect surface, of the
+small old crockery and old silver, matched by the more substantial
+pieces happily disposed about the room.  The specimens of vivid
+Delf, in particular had the dignity of family portraits; and it was
+in the midst of them that our friend resignedly expressed himself.
+He spoke even with a certain philosophic humour.  "There's nothing
+more to wait for; I seem to have done a good day's work.  I've let
+them have it all round.  I've seen Chad, who has been to London and
+come back.  He tells me I'm 'exciting,' and I seem indeed pretty
+well to have upset every one.  I've at any rate excited HIM.  He's
+distinctly restless."
+
+"You've excited ME," Miss Gostrey smiled.  "I'M distinctly restless."
+
+"Oh you were that when I found you.  It seems to me I've rather got
+you out of it.  What's this," he asked as he looked about him, "but
+a haunt of ancient peace?"
+
+"I wish with all my heart," she presently replied, "I could make
+you treat it as a haven of rest." On which they fronted each other,
+across the table, as if things unuttered were in the air.
+
+Strether seemed, in his way, when he next spoke, to take some of
+them up.  "It wouldn't give me--that would be the trouble--what it
+will, no doubt, still give you.  I'm not," he explained, leaning
+back in his chair, but with his eyes on a small ripe round melon--
+"in real harmony with what surrounds me.  You ARE.  I take it too hard.
+You DON'T.  It makes--that's what it comes to in the end--a fool of me."
+Then at a tangent, "What has he been doing in London?" he demanded.
+
+"Ah one may go to London," Maria laughed.  "You know I did."
+
+Yes--he took the reminder.  "And you brought ME back." He brooded
+there opposite to her, but without gloom.  "Whom has Chad brought?
+He's full of ideas.  And I wrote to Sarah," he added, "the first
+thing this morning.  So I'm square.  I'm ready for them."
+
+She neglected certain parts of this speech in the interest of
+others.  "Marie said to me the other day that she felt him to have
+the makings of an immense man of business."
+
+"There it is.  He's the son of his father!"
+
+"But SUCH a father!"
+
+"Ah just the right one from that point of view!  But it isn't his
+father in him," Strether added, "that troubles me."
+
+"What is it then?"  He came back to his breakfast; he partook
+presently of the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him;
+and it was only after this that he met her question.  Then moreover
+it was but to remark that he'd answer her presently.  She waited,
+she watched, she served him and amused him, and it was perhaps with
+this last idea that she soon reminded him of his having never even
+yet named to her the article produced at Woollett.  "Do you
+remember our talking of it in London--that night at the play?"
+Before he could say yes, however, she had put it to him for other
+matters.  Did he remember, did he remember--this and that of their
+first days?  He remembered everything, bringing up with humour
+even things of which she professed no recollection, things she
+vehemently denied; and falling back above all on the great
+interest of their early time, the curiosity felt by both of them
+as to where he would "come out." They had so assumed it was to be
+in some wonderful place--they had thought of it as so very MUCH
+out.  Well, that was doubtless what it had been--since he had come
+out just there.  He was out, in truth, as far as it was possible
+to be, and must now rather bethink himself of getting in again.
+He found on the spot the image of his recent history; he was like
+one of the figures of the old clock at Berne.  THEY came out, on
+one side, at their hour, jigged along their little course in the
+public eye, and went in on the other side.  He too had jigged his
+little course--him too a modest retreat awaited.  He offered now,
+should she really like to know, to name the great product of
+Woollett.  It would be a great commentary on everything.  At this
+she stopped him off; she not only had no wish to know, but she
+wouldn't know for the world.  She had done with the products of
+Woollett--for all the good she had got from them.  She desired no
+further news of them, and she mentioned that Madame de Vionnet
+herself had, to her knowledge, lived exempt from the information
+he was ready to supply.  She had never consented to receive it,
+though she would have taken it, under stress, from Mrs. Pocock.
+But it was a matter about which Mrs. Pocock appeared to have had
+little to say--never sounding the word--and it didn't signify
+now.  There was nothing clearly for Maria Gostrey that signified
+now--save one sharp point, that is, to which she came in time.
+"I don't know whether it's before you as a possibility that,
+left to himself, Mr. Chad may after all go back.  I judge that it
+IS more or less so before you, from what you just now said of him."
+
+Her guest had his eyes on her, kindly but attentively, as if
+foreseeing what was to follow this.  "I don't think it will be for
+the money." And then as she seemed uncertain:  "I mean I don't
+believe it will be for that he'll give her up."
+
+"Then he WILL give her up?"
+
+Strether waited a moment, rather slow and deliberate now, drawing
+out a little this last soft stage, pleading with her in various
+suggestive and unspoken ways for patience and understanding.
+"What were you just about to ask me?"
+
+"Is there anything he can do that would make you patch it up?"
+
+"With Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+Her assent, as if she had had a delicacy about sounding the name,
+was only in her face; but she added with it:  "Or is there
+anything he can do that would make HER try it?"
+
+"To patch it up with me?"  His answer came at last in a conclusive
+headshake.  "There's nothing any one can do.  It's over.  Over for
+both of us."
+
+Maria wondered, seemed a little to doubt.  "Are you so sure for her?"
+
+"Oh yes--sure now.  Too much has happened.  I'm different for her."
+
+She took it in then, drawing a deeper breath.  "I see.  So that as
+she's different for YOU--"
+
+"Ah but," he interrupted, "she's not."  And as Miss Gostrey wondered
+again:  "She's the same.  She's more than ever the same.
+But I do what I didn't before--I SEE her."
+
+He spoke gravely and as if responsibly--since he had to pronounce;
+and the effect of it was slightly solemn, so that she simply exclaimed
+"Oh!"  Satisfied and grateful, however, she showed in her own next
+words an acceptance of his statement.  "What then do you go home to?"
+
+He had pushed his plate a little away, occupied with another side
+of the matter; taking refuge verily in that side and feeling so
+moved that he soon found himself on his feet.  He was affected in
+advance by what he believed might come from her, and he would have
+liked to forestall it and deal with it tenderly;  yet in the
+presence of it he wished still more to be--though as smoothly as
+possible--deterrent and conclusive.  He put her question by for
+the moment; he told her more about Chad.  "It would have been
+impossible to meet me more than he did last night on the question
+of the infamy of not sticking to her."
+
+"Is that what you called it for him--'infamy'?"
+
+"Oh rather!  I described to him in detail the base creature he'd
+be, and he quite agrees with me about it."
+
+"So that it's really as if you had nailed him?"
+
+"Quite really as if--!  I told him I should curse him."
+
+"Oh," she smiled, "you HAVE done it." And then having thought again:
+"You CAN'T after that propose--!"  Yet she scanned his face.
+
+"Propose again to Mrs. Newsome?"
+
+She hesitated afresh, but she brought it out.  "I've never believed,
+you know, that you did propose.  I always believed it was really she--
+and, so far as that goes, I can understand it.  What I mean is,"
+she explained, "that with such a spirit--the spirit of curses!--
+your breach is past mending.  She has only to know what you've done
+to him never again to raise a finger."
+
+"I've done," said Strether, "what I could--one can't do more.
+He protests his devotion and his horror.  But I'm not sure I've
+saved him.  He protests too much.  He asks how one can dream of
+his being tired.  But he has all life before him."
+
+Maria saw what he meant.  "He's formed to please."
+
+"And it's our friend who has formed him." Strether felt in it the
+strange irony.
+
+"So it's scarcely his fault!"
+
+"It's at any rate his danger.  I mean," said Strether, "it's hers.
+But she knows it."
+
+"Yes, she knows it.  And is your idea," Miss Gostrey asked, "that
+there was some other woman in London?"
+
+"Yes.  No.  That is I HAVE no ideas.  I'm afraid of them.
+I've done with them." And he put out his hand to her.  "Good-bye."
+
+It brought her back to her unanswered question.  "To what do you go
+home?"
+
+"I don't know.  There will always be something."
+
+"To a great difference," she said as she kept his hand.
+
+"A great difference--no doubt.  Yet I shall see what I can make of it."
+
+"Shall you make anything so good--?"  But, as if remembering what
+Mrs. Newsome had done, it was as far as she went.
+
+He had sufficiently understood.  "So good as this place at this
+moment?  So good as what YOU make of everything you touch?"
+He took a moment to say, for, really and truly, what stood about him
+there in her offer--which was as the offer of exquisite service, of
+lightened care, for the rest of his days--might well have tempted.
+It built him softly round, it roofed him warmly over, it rested,
+all so firm, on selection.  And what ruled selection was beauty and
+knowledge.  It was awkward, it was almost stupid, not to seem to
+prize such things; yet, none the less, so far as they made his
+opportunity they made it only for a moment.  She'd moreover
+understand--she always understood.
+
+That indeed might be, but meanwhile she was going on.
+"There's nothing, you know, I wouldn't do for you."
+
+"Oh yes--I know."
+
+"There's nothing," she repeated, "in all the world."
+
+"I know.  I know.  But all the same I must go." He had got it at last.
+"To be right."
+
+"To be right?"
+
+She had echoed it in vague deprecation, but he felt it already
+clear for her.  "That, you see, is my only logic.
+Not, out of the whole affair, to have got anything for myself."
+
+She thought.  "But with your wonderful impressions you'll have
+got a great deal."
+
+"A great deal"--he agreed.  "But nothing like YOU.  It's you who
+would make me wrong!"
+
+Honest and fine, she couldn't greatly pretend she didn't see it.
+Still she could pretend just a little.  "But why should you be so
+dreadfully right?"
+
+"That's the way that--if I must go--you yourself would be the first
+to want me.  And I can't do anything else."
+
+So then she had to take it, though still with her defeated protest.
+"It isn't so much your BEING 'right'--it's your horrible sharp eye
+for what makes you so."
+
+"Oh but you're just as bad yourself.  You can't resist me when I
+point that out."
+
+She sighed it at last all comically, all tragically, away.
+"I can't indeed resist you."
+
+"Then there we are!" said Strether.
+
+
+This is the end of the Project Gutenberg Edition of The Ambassadors,
+by Henry James.
+
+
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