"The Ambassadors,\n\n\nby\n\nHenry James.\n\n\n\nNew York Edition (1909).\n\n\n\n\nVolume I\n\n\n\nPreface\n\n\nNothing is more easy than to state the subject of \"The Ambassadors,\"\nwhich first appeared in twelve numbers of _The North American Review_\n(1903) and was published as a whole the same year. The situation\ninvolved is gathered up betimes, that is in the second chapter of Book\nFifth, for the reader's benefit, into as few words as possible--planted\nor \"sunk,\" stiffly and saliently, in the centre of the current, almost\nperhaps to the obstruction of traffic.  Never can a composition of this\nsort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of suggestion, and\nnever can that grain, developed, overgrown and smothered, have yet\nlurked more in the mass as an independent particle.  The whole case, in\nfine, is in Lambert Strether's irrepressible outbreak to little Bilham\non the Sunday afternoon in Gloriani's garden, the candour with which he\nyields, for his young friend's enlightenment, to the charming\nadmonition of that crisis.  The idea of the tale resides indeed in the\nvery fact that an hour of such unprecedented ease should have been felt\nby him AS a crisis, and he is at pains to express it for us as neatly\nas we could desire.  The remarks to which he thus gives utterance\ncontain the essence of \"The Ambassadors,\" his fingers close, before he\nhas done, round the stem of the full-blown flower; which, after that\nfashion, he continues officiously to present to us.  \"Live all you can;\nit's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in\nparticular so long as you have your life.  If you haven't had that what\nHAVE you had?  I'm too old--too old at any rate for what I see.  What\none loses one loses; make no mistake about that.  Still, we have the\nillusion of freedom; therefore don't, like me to-day, be without the\nmemory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or\ntoo intelligent to have it, and now I'm a case of reaction against the\nmistake.  Do what you like so long as you don't make it.  For it WAS a\nmistake.  Live, live!\" Such is the gist of Strether's appeal to the\nimpressed youth, whom he likes and whom he desires to befriend; the\nword \"mistake\" occurs several times, it will be seen, in the course of\nhis remarks--which gives the measure of the signal warning he feels\nattached to his case.  He has accordingly missed too much, though\nperhaps after all constitutionally qualified for a better part, and he\nwakes up to it in conditions that press the spring of a terrible\nquestion. WOULD there yet perhaps be time for reparation?--reparation,\nthat is, for the injury done his character; for the affront, he is\nquite ready to say, so stupidly put upon it and in which he has even\nhimself had so clumsy a hand?  The answer to which is that he now at\nall events SEES; so that the business of my tale and the march of my\naction, not to say the precious moral of everything, is just my\ndemonstration of this process of vision.\n\nNothing can exceed the closeness with which the whole fits again into\nits germ.  That had been given me bodily, as usual, by the spoken word,\nfor I was to take the image over exactly as I happened to have met it.\nA friend had repeated to me, with great appreciation, a thing or two\nsaid to him by a man of distinction, much his senior, and to which a\nsense akin to that of Strether's melancholy eloquence might be\nimputed--said as chance would have, and so easily might, in Paris, and\nin a charming old garden attached to a house of art, and on a Sunday\nafternoon of summer, many persons of great interest being present.  The\nobservation there listened to and gathered up had contained part of the\n\"note\" that I was to recognise on the spot as to my purpose--had\ncontained in fact the greater part; the rest was in the place and the\ntime and the scene they sketched: these constituents clustered and\ncombined to give me further support, to give me what I may call the\nnote absolute.  There it stands, accordingly, full in the tideway;\ndriven in, with hard taps, like some strong stake for the noose of a\ncable, the swirl of the current roundabout it.  What amplified the hint\nto more than the bulk of hints in general was the gift with it of the\nold Paris garden, for in that token were sealed up values infinitely\nprecious.  There was of course the seal to break and each item of the\npacket to count over and handle and estimate; but somehow, in the light\nof the hint, all the elements of a situation of the sort most to my\ntaste were there.  I could even remember no occasion on which, so\nconfronted, I had found it of a livelier interest to take stock, in\nthis fashion, of suggested wealth.  For I think, verily, that there are\ndegrees of merit in subjects--in spite of the fact that to treat even\none of the most ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for\nthe feverish and prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its\ndignity as POSSIBLY absolute.  What it comes to, doubtless, is that\neven among the supremely good--since with such alone is it one's theory\nof one's honour to be concerned--there is an ideal BEAUTY of goodness\nthe invoked action of which is to raise the artistic faith to its\nmaximum.  Then truly, I hold, one's theme may be said to shine, and\nthat of \"The Ambassadors,\" I confess, wore this glow for me from\nbeginning to end.  Fortunately thus I am able to estimate this as,\nfrankly, quite the best, \"all round,\" of all my productions; any\nfailure of that justification would have made such an extreme of\ncomplacency publicly fatuous.\n\nI recall then in this connexion no moment of subjective intermittence,\nnever one of those alarms as for a suspected hollow beneath one's feet,\na felt ingratitude in the scheme adopted, under which confidence fails\nand opportunity seems but to mock. If the motive of \"The Wings of the\nDove,\" as I have noted, was to worry me at moments by a sealing-up of\nits face--though without prejudice to its again, of a sudden, fairly\ngrimacing with expression--so in this other business I had absolute\nconviction and constant clearness to deal with; it had been a frank\nproposition, the whole bunch of data, installed on my premises like a\nmonotony of fine weather.  (The order of composition, in these things,\nI may mention, was reversed by the order of publication; the earlier\nwritten of the two books having appeared as the later.) Even under the\nweight of my hero's years I could feel my postulate firm; even under\nthe strain of the difference between those of Madame de Vionnet and\nthose of Chad Newsome, a difference liable to be denounced as shocking,\nI could still feel it serene.  Nothing resisted, nothing betrayed, I\nseem to make out, in this full and sound sense of the matter; it shed\nfrom any side I could turn it to the same golden glow.  I rejoiced in\nthe promise of a hero so mature, who would give me thereby the more to\nbite into--since it's only into thickened motive and accumulated\ncharacter, I think, that the painter of life bites more than a little.\nMy poor friend should have accumulated character, certainly; or rather\nwould be quite naturally and handsomely possessed of it, in the sense\nthat he would have, and would always have felt he had, imagination\ngalore, and that this yet wouldn't have wrecked him.  It was\nimmeasurable, the opportunity to \"do\" a man of imagination, for if\nTHERE mightn't be a chance to \"bite,\" where in the world might it be?\nThis personage of course, so enriched, wouldn't give me, for his type,\nimagination in PREDOMINANCE or as his prime faculty, nor should I, in\nview of other matters, have found that convenient.  So particular a\nluxury--some occasion, that is, for study of the high gift in SUPREME\ncommand of a case or of a career--would still doubtless come on the day\nI should be ready to pay for it; and till then might, as from far back,\nremain hung up well in view and just out of reach. The comparative case\nmeanwhile would serve--it was only on the minor scale that I had\ntreated myself even to comparative cases.\n\nI was to hasten to add however that, happy stopgaps as the minor scale\nhad thus yielded, the instance in hand should enjoy the advantage of\nthe full range of the major; since most immediately to the point was\nthe question of that SUPPLEMENT of situation logically involved in our\ngentleman's impulse to deliver himself in the Paris garden on the\nSunday afternoon--or if not involved by strict logic then all ideally\nand enchantingly implied in it.  (I say \"ideally,\" because I need\nscarce mention that for development, for expression of its maximum, my\nglimmering story was, at the earliest stage, to have nipped the thread\nof connexion with the possibilities of the actual reported speaker.  HE\nremains but the happiest of accidents; his actualities, all too\ndefinite, precluded any range of possibilities; it had only been his\ncharming office to project upon that wide field of the artist's\nvision--which hangs there ever in place like the white sheet suspended\nfor the figures of a child's magic-lantern--a more fantastic and more\nmoveable shadow.)  No privilege of the teller of tales and the handler\nof puppets is more delightful, or has more of the suspense and the\nthrill of a game of difficulty breathlessly played, than just this\nbusiness of looking for the unseen and the occult, in a scheme\nhalf-grasped, by the light or, so to speak, by the clinging scent, of\nthe gage already in hand. No dreadful old pursuit of the hidden slave\nwith bloodhounds and the rag of association can ever, for \"excitement,\"\nI judge, have bettered it at its best.  For the dramatist always, by\nthe very law of his genius, believes not only in a possible right issue\nfrom the rightly-conceived tight place; he does much more than this--he\nbelieves, irresistibly, in the necessary, the precious \"tightness\" of\nthe place (whatever the issue) on the strength of any respectable hint.\nIt being thus the respectable hint that I had with such avidity picked\nup, what would be the story to which it would most inevitably form the\ncentre?  It is part of the charm attendant on such questions that the\n\"story,\" with the omens true, as I say, puts on from this stage the\nauthenticity of concrete existence.  It then is, essentially--it begins\nto be, though it may more or less obscurely lurk, so that the point is\nnot in the least what to make of it, but only, very delightfully and\nvery damnably, where to put one's hand on it.\n\nIn which truth resides surely much of the interest of that admirable\nmixture for salutary application which we know as art. Art deals with\nwhat we see, it must first contribute full-handed that ingredient; it\nplucks its material, otherwise expressed, in the garden of life--which\nmaterial elsewhere grown is stale and uneatable.  But it has no sooner\ndone this than it has to take account of a PROCESS--from which only\nwhen it's the basest of the servants of man, incurring ignominious\ndismissal with no \"character,\" does it, and whether under some muddled\npretext of morality or on any other, pusillanimously edge away.  The\nprocess, that of the expression, the literal squeezing-out, of value is\nanother affair--with which the happy luck of mere finding has little to\ndo.  The joys of finding, at this stage, are pretty well over; that\nquest of the subject as a whole by \"matching,\" as the ladies say at the\nshops, the big piece with the snippet, having ended, we assume, with a\ncapture.  The subject is found, and if the problem is then transferred\nto the ground of what to do with it the field opens out for any amount\nof doing.  This is precisely the infusion that, as I submit, completes\nthe strong mixture.  It is on the other hand the part of the business\nthat can least be likened to the chase with horn and hound.  It's all a\nsedentary part--involves as much ciphering, of sorts, as would merit\nthe highest salary paid to a chief accountant.  Not, however, that the\nchief accountant hasn't HIS gleams of bliss; for the felicity, or at\nleast the equilibrium of the artist's state dwells less, surely, in the\nfurther delightful complications he can smuggle in than in those he\nsucceeds in keeping out.  He sows his seed at the risk of too thick a\ncrop; wherefore yet again, like the gentlemen who audit ledgers, he\nmust keep his head at any price.  In consequence of all which, for the\ninterest of the matter, I might seem here to have my choice of\nnarrating my \"hunt\" for Lambert Strether, of describing the capture of\nthe shadow projected by my friend's anecdote, or of reporting on the\noccurrences subsequent to that triumph.  But I had probably best\nattempt a little to glance in each direction; since it comes to me\nagain and again, over this licentious record, that one's bag of\nadventures, conceived or conceivable, has been only half-emptied by the\nmere telling of one's story.  It depends so on what one means by that\nequivocal quantity.  There is the story of one's hero, and then, thanks\nto the intimate connexion of things, the story of one's story itself. I\nblush to confess it, but if one's a dramatist one's a dramatist, and\nthe latter imbroglio is liable on occasion to strike me as really the\nmore objective of the two.\n\nThe philosophy imputed to him in that beautiful outbreak, the hour\nthere, amid such happy provision, striking for him, would have been\nthen, on behalf of my man of imagination, to be logically and, as the\nartless craft of comedy has it, \"led up\" to; the probable course to\nsuch a goal, the goal of so conscious a predicament, would have in\nshort to be finely calculated.  Where has he come from and why has he\ncome, what is he doing (as we Anglo-Saxons, and we only, say, in our\nforedoomed clutch of exotic aids to expression) in that galere?  To\nanswer these questions plausibly, to answer them as under\ncross-examination in the witness-box by counsel for the prosecution, in\nother words satisfactorily to account for Strether and for his\n\"peculiar tone,\" was to possess myself of the entire fabric.  At the\nsame time the clue to its whereabouts would lie in a certain principle\nof probability: he wouldn't have indulged in his peculiar tone without\na reason; it would take a felt predicament or a false position to give\nhim so ironic an accent.  One hadn't been noting \"tones\" all one's life\nwithout recognising when one heard it the voice of the false position.\nThe dear man in the Paris garden was then admirably and unmistakeably\nIN one--which was no small point gained; what next accordingly\nconcerned us was the determination of THIS identity.  One could only go\nby probabilities, but there was the advantage that the most general of\nthe probabilities were virtual certainties.  Possessed of our friend's\nnationality, to start with, there was a general probability in his\nnarrower localism; which, for that matter, one had really but to keep\nunder the lens for an hour to see it give up its secrets.  He would\nhave issued, our rueful worthy, from the very heart of New England--at\nthe heels of which matter of course a perfect train of secrets tumbled\nfor me into the light.  They had to be sifted and sorted, and I shall\nnot reproduce the detail of that process; but unmistakeably they were\nall there, and it was but a question, auspiciously, of picking among\nthem.  What the \"position\" would infallibly be, and why, on his hands,\nit had turned \"false\"--these inductive steps could only be as rapid as\nthey were distinct.  I accounted for everything--and \"everything\" had\nby this time become the most promising quantity--by the view that he\nhad come to Paris in some state of mind which was literally undergoing,\nas a result of new and unexpected assaults and infusions, a change\nalmost from hour to hour.  He had come with a view that might have been\nfigured by a clear green liquid, say, in a neat glass phial; and the\nliquid, once poured into the open cup of APPLICATION, once exposed to\nthe action of another air, had begun to turn from green to red, or\nwhatever, and might, for all he knew, be on its way to purple, to\nblack, to yellow.  At the still wilder extremes represented perhaps,\nfor all he could say to the contrary, by a variability so violent, he\nwould at first, naturally, but have gazed in surprise and alarm;\nwhereby the SITUATION clearly would spring from the play of wildness\nand the development of extremes.  I saw in a moment that, should this\ndevelopment proceed both with force and logic, my \"story\" would leave\nnothing to be desired.  There is always, of course, for the\nstory-teller, the irresistible determinant and the incalculable\nadvantage of his interest in the story AS SUCH; it is ever, obviously,\noverwhelmingly, the prime and precious thing (as other than this I have\nnever been able to see it); as to which what makes for it, with\nwhatever headlong energy, may be said to pale before the energy with\nwhich it simply makes for itself.  It rejoices, none the less, at its\nbest, to seem to offer itself in a light, to seem to know, and with the\nvery last knowledge, what it's about--liable as it yet is at moments to\nbe caught by us with its tongue in its cheek and absolutely no warrant\nbut its splendid impudence.  Let us grant then that the impudence is\nalways there--there, so to speak, for grace and effect and ALLURE;\nthere, above all, because the Story is just the spoiled child of art,\nand because, as we are always disappointed when the pampered don't\n\"play up,\" we like it, to that extent, to look all its character.  It\nprobably does so, in truth, even when we most flatter ourselves that we\nnegotiate with it by treaty.\n\nAll of which, again, is but to say that the STEPS, for my fable, placed\nthemselves with a prompt and, as it were, functional assurance--an air\nquite as of readiness to have dispensed with logic had I been in fact\ntoo stupid for my clue.  Never, positively, none the less, as the links\nmultiplied, had I felt less stupid than for the determination of poor\nStrether's errand and for the apprehension of his issue.  These things\ncontinued to fall together, as by the neat action of their own weight\nand form, even while their commentator scratched his head about them;\nhe easily sees now that they were always well in advance of him.  As\nthe case completed itself he had in fact, from a good way behind, to\ncatch up with them, breathless and a little flurried, as he best could.\nTHE false position, for our belated man of the world--belated because\nhe had endeavoured so long to escape being one, and now at last had\nreally to face his doom--the false position for him, I say, was\nobviously to have presented himself at the gate of that boundless\nmenagerie primed with a moral scheme of the most approved pattern which\nwas yet framed to break down on any approach to vivid facts; that is to\nany at all liberal appreciation of them.  There would have been of\ncourse the case of the Strether prepared, wherever presenting himself,\nonly to judge and to feel meanly; but HE would have moved for me, I\nconfess, enveloped in no legend whatever.  The actual man's note, from\nthe first of our seeing it struck, is the note of discrimination, just\nas his drama is to become, under stress, the drama of discrimination.\nIt would have been his blest imagination, we have seen, that had\nalready helped him to discriminate; the element that was for so much of\nthe pleasure of my cutting thick, as I have intimated, into his\nintellectual, into his moral substance. Yet here it was, at the same\ntime, just here, that a shade for a moment fell across the scene.\n\nThere was the dreadful little old tradition, one of the platitudes of\nthe human comedy, that people's moral scheme DOES break down in Paris;\nthat nothing is more frequently observed; that hundreds of thousands of\nmore or less hypocritical or more or less cynical persons annually\nvisit the place for the sake of the probable catastrophe, and that I\ncame late in the day to work myself up about it.  There was in fine the\nTRIVIAL association, one of the vulgarest in the world; but which give\nme pause no longer, I think, simply because its vulgarity is so\nadvertised.  The revolution performed by Strether under the influence\nof the most interesting of great cities was to have nothing to do with\nany betise of the imputably \"tempted\" state; he was to be thrown\nforward, rather, thrown quite with violence, upon his lifelong trick of\nintense reflexion: which friendly test indeed was to bring him out,\nthrough winding passages, through alternations of darkness and light,\nvery much IN Paris, but with the surrounding scene itself a minor\nmatter, a mere symbol for more things than had been dreamt of in the\nphilosophy of Woollett.  Another surrounding scene would have done as\nwell for our show could it have represented a place in which Strether's\nerrand was likely to lie and his crisis to await him.  The LIKELY place\nhad the great merit of sparing me preparations; there would have been\ntoo many involved--not at all impossibilities, only rather worrying and\ndelaying difficulties--in positing elsewhere Chad Newsome's interesting\nrelation, his so interesting complexity of relations. Strether's\nappointed stage, in fine, could be but Chad's most luckily selected\none.  The young man had gone in, as they say, for circumjacent charm;\nand where he would have found it, by the turn of his mind, most\n\"authentic,\" was where his earnest friend's analysis would most find\nHIM; as well as where, for that matter, the former's whole analytic\nfaculty would be led such a wonderful dance.\n\n\"The Ambassadors\" had been, all conveniently, \"arranged for\"; its first\nappearance was from month to month, in the _North American Review_\nduring 1903, and I had been open from far back to any pleasant\nprovocation for ingenuity that might reside in one's actively\nadopting--so as to make it, in its way, a small compositional\nlaw--recurrent breaks and resumptions.  I had made up my mind here\nregularly to exploit and enjoy these often rather rude jolts--having\nfound, as I believed an admirable way to it; yet every question of form\nand pressure, I easily remember, paled in the light of the major\npropriety, recognised as soon as really weighed; that of employing but\none centre and keeping it all within my hero's compass. The thing was\nto be so much this worthy's intimate adventure that even the projection\nof his consciousness upon it from beginning to end without intermission\nor deviation would probably still leave a part of its value for him,\nand a fortiori for ourselves, unexpressed. I might, however, express\nevery grain of it that there would be room for--on condition of\ncontriving a splendid particular economy. Other persons in no small\nnumber were to people the scene, and each with his or her axe to grind,\nhis or her situation to treat, his or her coherency not to fail of, his\nor her relation to my leading motive, in a word, to establish and carry\non.  But Strether's sense of these things, and Strether's only, should\navail me for showing them; I should know them but through his more or\nless groping knowledge of them, since his very gropings would figure\namong his most interesting motions, and a full observance of the rich\nrigour I speak of would give me more of the effect I should be most\n\"after\" than all other possible observances together.  It would give me\na large unity, and that in turn would crown me with the grace to which\nthe enlightened story-teller will at any time, for his interest,\nsacrifice if need be all other graces whatever.  I refer of course to\nthe grace of intensity, which there are ways of signally achieving and\nways of signally missing--as we see it, all round us, helplessly and\nwoefully missed.  Not that it isn't, on the other hand, a virtue\neminently subject to appreciation--there being no strict, no absolute\nmeasure of it; so that one may hear it acclaimed where it has quite\nescaped one's perception, and see it unnoticed where one has gratefully\nhailed it.  After all of which I am not sure, either, that the immense\namusement of the whole cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not\noperate, for the fond fabulist, when judicious not less than fond, as\nhis best of determinants.  That charming principle is always there, at\nall events, to keep interest fresh: it is a principle, we remember,\nessentially ravenous, without scruple and without mercy, appeased with\nno cheap nor easy nourishment.  It enjoys the costly sacrifice and\nrejoices thereby in the very odour of difficulty--even as ogres, with\ntheir \"Fee-faw-fum!\" rejoice in the smell of the blood of Englishmen.\n\nThus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so\nspeedy, definition of my gentleman's job--his coming out, all solemnly\nappointed and deputed, to \"save\" Chad, and his then finding the young\nman so disobligingly and, at first, so bewilderingly not lost that a\nnew issue altogether, in the connexion, prodigiously faces them, which\nhas to be dealt with in a new light--promised as many calls on\ningenuity and on the higher branches of the compositional art as one\ncould possibly desire. Again and yet again, as, from book to book, I\nproceed with my survey, I find no source of interest equal to this\nverification after the fact, as I may call it, and the more in detail\nthe better, of the scheme of consistency \"gone in\" for.  As\nalways--since the charm never fails--the retracing of the process from\npoint to point brings back the old illusion.  The old intentions bloom\nagain and flower--in spite of all the blossoms they were to have\ndropped by the way.  This is the charm, as I say, of adventure\nTRANSPOSED--the thrilling ups and downs, the intricate ins and outs of\nthe compositional problem, made after such a fashion admirably\nobjective, becoming the question at issue and keeping the author's\nheart in his mouth.  Such an element, for instance, as his intention\nthat Mrs. Newsome, away off with her finger on the pulse of\nMassachusetts, should yet be no less intensely than circuitously\npresent through the whole thing, should be no less felt as to be\nreckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest portrayal at\nfirst hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good faith, I say,\nonce it's unmistakeably there, takes on again an actuality not too much\nimpaired by the comparative dimness of the particular success.\nCherished intention too inevitably acts and operates, in the book,\nabout fifty times as little as I had fondly dreamt it might; but that\nscarce spoils for me the pleasure of recognising the fifty ways in\nwhich I had sought to provide for it.  The mere charm of seeing such an\nidea constituent, in its degree; the fineness of the measures taken--a\nreal extension, if successful, of the very terms and possibilities of\nrepresentation and figuration--such things alone were, after this\nfashion, inspiring, such things alone were a gage of the probable\nsuccess of that dissimulated calculation with which the whole effort\nwas to square.  But oh the cares begotten, none the less, of that same\n\"judicious\" sacrifice to a particular form of interest!  One's work\nshould have composition, because composition alone is positive beauty;\nbut all the while--apart from one's inevitable consciousness too of the\ndire paucity of readers ever recognising or ever missing positive\nbeauty--how, as to the cheap and easy, at every turn, how, as to\nimmediacy and facility, and even as to the commoner vivacity, positive\nbeauty might have to be sweated for and paid for!  Once achieved and\ninstalled it may always be trusted to make the poor seeker feel he\nwould have blushed to the roots of his hair for failing of it; yet,\nhow, as its virtue can be essentially but the virtue of the whole, the\nwayside traps set in the interest of muddlement and pleading but the\ncause of the moment, of the particular bit in itself, have to be kicked\nout of the path!  All the sophistications in life, for example, might\nhave appeared to muster on behalf of the menace--the menace to a bright\nvariety--involved in Strether's having all the subjective \"say,\" as it\nwere, to himself.\n\nHad I, meanwhile, made him at once hero and historian, endowed him with\nthe romantic privilege of the \"first person\"--the darkest abyss of\nromance this, inveterately, when enjoyed on the grand scale--variety,\nand many other queer matters as well, might have been smuggled in by a\nback door.  Suffice it, to be brief, that the first person, in the long\npiece, is a form foredoomed to looseness and that looseness, never much\nmy affair, had never been so little so as on this particular occasion.\nAll of which reflexions flocked to the standard from the moment--a very\nearly one--the question of how to keep my form amusing while sticking\nso close to my central figure and constantly taking its pattern from\nhim had to be faced. He arrives (arrives at Chester) as for the\ndreadful purpose of giving his creator \"no end\" to tell about\nhim--before which rigorous mission the serenest of creators might well\nhave quailed. I was far from the serenest; I was more than agitated\nenough to reflect that, grimly deprived of one alternative or one\nsubstitute for \"telling,\" I must address myself tooth and nail to\nanother.  I couldn't, save by implication, make other persons tell EACH\nOTHER about him--blest resource, blest necessity, of the drama, which\nreaches its effects of unity, all remarkably, by paths absolutely\nopposite to the paths of the novel: with other persons, save as they\nwere primarily HIS persons (not he primarily but one of theirs), I had\nsimply nothing to do.  I had relations for him none the less, by the\nmercy of Providence, quite as much as if my exhibition was to be a\nmuddle; if I could only by implication and a show of consequence make\nother persons tell each other about him, I could at least make him tell\nTHEM whatever in the world he must; and could so, by the same\ntoken--which was a further luxury thrown in--see straight into the deep\ndifferences between what that could do for me, or at all events for\nHIM, and the large ease of \"autobiography.\"  It may be asked why, if\none so keeps to one's hero, one shouldn't make a single mouthful of\n\"method,\" shouldn't throw the reins on his neck and, letting them flap\nthere as free as in \"Gil Blas\" or in \"David Copperfield,\" equip him\nwith the double privilege of subject and object--a course that has at\nleast the merit of brushing away questions at a sweep.  The answer to\nwhich is, I think, that one makes that surrender only if one is\nprepared NOT to make certain precious discriminations.\n\nThe \"first person\" then, so employed, is addressed by the author\ndirectly to ourselves, his possible readers, whom he has to reckon\nwith, at the best, by our English tradition, so loosely and vaguely\nafter all, so little respectfully, on so scant a presumption of\nexposure to criticism.  Strether, on the other hand, encaged and\nprovided for as \"The Ambassadors\" encages and provides, has to keep in\nview proprieties much stiffer and more salutary than any our straight\nand credulous gape are likely to bring home to him, has exhibitional\nconditions to meet, in a word, that forbid the terrible FLUIDITY of\nself-revelation.  I may seem not to better the case for my\ndiscrimination if I say that, for my first care, I had thus inevitably\nto set him up a confidant or two, to wave away with energy the custom\nof the seated mass of explanation after the fact, the inserted block of\nmerely referential narrative, which flourishes so, to the shame of the\nmodern impatience, on the serried page of Balzac, but which seems\nsimply to appal our actual, our general weaker, digestion. \"Harking\nback to make up\" took at any rate more doing, as the phrase is, not\nonly than the reader of to-day demands, but than he will tolerate at\nany price any call upon him either to understand or remotely to\nmeasure; and for the beauty of the thing when done the current\neditorial mind in particular appears wholly without sense.  It is not,\nhowever, primarily for either of these reasons, whatever their weight,\nthat Strether's friend Waymarsh is so keenly clutched at, on the\nthreshold of the book, or that no less a pounce is made on Maria\nGostrey--without even the pretext, either, of HER being, in essence,\nStrether's friend.  She is the reader's friend much rather--in\nconsequence of dispositions that make him so eminently require one; and\nshe acts in that capacity, and REALLY in that capacity alone, with\nexemplary devotion from beginning to and of the book.  She is an\nenrolled, a direct, aid to lucidity; she is in fine, to tear off her\nmask, the most unmitigated and abandoned of ficelles.  Half the\ndramatist's art, as we well know--since if we don't it's not the fault\nof the proofs that lie scattered about us--is in the use of ficelles;\nby which I mean in a deep dissimulation of his dependence on them.\nWaymarsh only to a slighter degree belongs, in the whole business, less\nto my subject than to my treatment of it; the interesting proof, in\nthese connexions, being that one has but to take one's subject for the\nstuff of drama to interweave with enthusiasm as many Gostreys as need\nbe.\n\nThe material of \"The Ambassadors,\" conforming in this respect exactly\nto that of \"The Wings of the Dove,\" published just before it, is taken\nabsolutely for the stuff of drama; so that, availing myself of the\nopportunity given me by this edition for some prefatory remarks on the\nlatter work, I had mainly to make on its behalf the point of its scenic\nconsistency.  It disguises that virtue, in the oddest way in the world,\nby just LOOKING, as we turn its pages, as little scenic as possible;\nbut it sharply divides itself, just as the composition before us does,\ninto the parts that prepare, that tend in fact to over-prepare, for\nscenes, and the parts, or otherwise into the scenes, that justify and\ncrown the preparation.  It may definitely be said, I think, that\neverything in it that is not scene (not, I of course mean, complete and\nfunctional scene, treating ALL the submitted matter, as by logical\nstart, logical turn, and logical finish) is discriminated preparation,\nis the fusion and synthesis of picture. These alternations propose\nthemselves all recogniseably, I think, from an early stage, as the very\nform and figure of \"The Ambassadors\"; so that, to repeat, such an agent\nas Miss Gostrey pre-engaged at a high salary, but waits in the draughty\nwing with her shawl and her smelling-salts.  Her function speaks at\nonce for itself, and by the time she has dined with Strether in London\nand gone to a play with him her intervention as a ficelle is, I hold,\nexpertly justified.  Thanks to it we have treated scenically, and\nscenically alone, the whole lumpish question of Strether's \"past,\"\nwhich has seen us more happily on the way than anything else could have\ndone; we have strained to a high lucidity and vivacity (or at least we\nhope we have) certain indispensable facts; we have seen our two or\nthree immediate friends all conveniently and profitably in \"action\"; to\nsay nothing of our beginning to descry others, of a remoter intensity,\ngetting into motion, even if a bit vaguely as yet, for our further\nenrichment.  Let my first point be here that the scene in question,\nthat in which the whole situation at Woollett and the complex forces\nthat have propelled my hero to where this lively extractor of his value\nand distiller of his essence awaits him, is normal and entire, is\nreally an excellent STANDARD scene; copious, comprehensive, and\naccordingly never short, but with its office as definite as that of the\nhammer on the gong of the clock, the office of expressing ALL THAT IS\nIN the hour.\n\nThe \"ficelle\" character of the subordinate party is as artfully\ndissimulated, throughout, as may be, and to that extent that, with the\nseams or joints of Maria Gostrey's ostensible connectedness taken\nparticular care of, duly smoothed over, that is, and anxiously kept\nfrom showing as \"pieced on;\" this figure doubtless achieves, after a\nfashion, something of the dignity of a prime idea: which circumstance\nbut shows us afresh how many quite incalculable but none the less clear\nsources of enjoyment for the infatuated artist, how many copious\nsprings of our never-to-be-slighted \"fun\" for the reader and critic\nsusceptible of contagion, may sound their incidental plash as soon as\nan artistic process begins to enjoy free development.  Exquisite--in\nillustration of this--the mere interest and amusement of such at once\n\"creative\" and critical questions as how and where and why to make Miss\nGostrey's false connexion carry itself, under a due high polish, as a\nreal one. Nowhere is it more of an artful expedient for mere\nconsistency of form, to mention a case, than in the last \"scene\" of the\nbook, where its function is to give or to add nothing whatever, but\nonly to express as vividly as possible certain things quite other than\nitself and that are of the already fixed and appointed measure.  Since,\nhowever, all art is EXPRESSION, and is thereby vividness, one was to\nfind the door open here to any amount of delightful dissimulation.\nThese verily are the refinements and ecstasies of method--amid which,\nor certainly under the influence of any exhilarated demonstration of\nwhich, one must keep one's head and not lose one's way.  To cultivate\nan adequate intelligence for them and to make that sense operative is\npositively to find a charm in any produced ambiguity of appearance that\nis not by the same stroke, and all helplessly, an ambiguity of sense.\nTo project imaginatively, for my hero, a relation that has nothing to\ndo with the matter (the matter of my subject) but has everything to do\nwith the manner (the manner of my presentation of the same) and yet to\ntreat it, at close quarters and for fully economic expression's\npossible sake, as if it were important and essential--to do that sort\nof thing and yet muddle nothing may easily become, as one goes, a\nsignally attaching proposition; even though it all remains but part and\nparcel, I hasten to recognise, of the merely general and related\nquestion of expressional curiosity and expressional decency.\n\nI am moved to add after so much insistence on the scenic side of my\nlabour that I have found the steps of re-perusal almost as much waylaid\nhere by quite another style of effort in the same signal interest--or\nhave in other words not failed to note how, even so associated and so\ndiscriminated, the finest proprieties and charms of the non-scenic may,\nunder the right hand for them, still keep their intelligibility and\nassert their office.  Infinitely suggestive such an observation as this\nlast on the whole delightful head, where representation is concerned,\nof possible variety, of effective expressional change and contrast. One\nwould like, at such an hour as this, for critical licence, to go into\nthe matter of the noted inevitable deviation (from too fond an original\nvision) that the exquisite treachery even of the straightest execution\nmay ever be trusted to inflict even on the most mature plan--the case\nbeing that, though one's last reconsidered production always seems to\nbristle with that particular evidence, \"The Ambassadors\" would place a\nflood of such light at my service.  I must attach to my final remark\nhere a different import; noting in the other connexion I just glanced\nat that such passages as that of my hero's first encounter with Chad\nNewsome, absolute attestations of the non-scenic form though they be,\nyet lay the firmest hand too--so far at least as intention goes--on\nrepresentational effect.  To report at all closely and completely of\nwhat \"passes\" on a given occasion is inevitably to become more or less\nscenic; and yet in the instance I allude to, WITH the conveyance,\nexpressional curiosity and expressional decency are sought and arrived\nat under quite another law.  The true inwardness of this may be at\nbottom but that one of the suffered treacheries has consisted\nprecisely, for Chad's whole figure and presence, of a direct\npresentability diminished and compromised--despoiled, that is, of its\nPROPORTIONAL advantage; so that, in a word, the whole economy of his\nauthor's relation to him has at important points to be redetermined.\nThe book, however, critically viewed, is touchingly full of these\ndisguised and repaired losses, these insidious recoveries, these\nintensely redemptive consistencies. The pages in which Mamie Pocock\ngives her appointed and, I can't but think, duly felt lift to the whole\naction by the so inscrutably-applied side-stroke or short-cut of our\njust watching and as quite at an angle of vision as yet untried, her\nsingle hour of suspense in the hotel salon, in our partaking of her\nconcentrated study of the sense of matters bearing on her own case, all\nthe bright warm Paris afternoon, from the balcony that overlooks the\nTuileries garden--these are as marked an example of the\nrepresentational virtue that insists here and there on being, for the\ncharm of opposition and renewal, other than the scenic.  It wouldn't\ntake much to make me further argue that from an equal play of such\noppositions the book gathers an intensity that fairly adds to the\ndramatic--though the latter is supposed to be the sum of all\nintensities; or that has at any rate nothing to fear from juxtaposition\nwith it.  I consciously fail to shrink in fact from that\nextravagance--I risk it rather, for the sake of the moral involved;\nwhich is not that the particular production before us exhausts the\ninteresting questions it raises, but that the Novel remains still,\nunder the right persuasion, the most independent, most elastic, most\nprodigious of literary forms.\n\n\nHENRY JAMES.\n\n\n\n\n\nBook First\n\n\n\nI\n\nStrether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his\nfriend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive\ntill evening he was not wholly disconcerted.  A telegram from him\nbespeaking a room \"only if not noisy,\" reply paid, was produced for the\nenquirer at the office, so that the understanding they should meet at\nChester rather than at Liverpool remained to that extent sound.  The\nsame secret principle, however, that had prompted Strether not\nabsolutely to desire Waymarsh's presence at the dock, that had led him\nthus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of it, now operated to\nmake him feel he could still wait without disappointment.  They would\ndine together at the worst, and, with all respect to dear old\nWaymarsh--if not even, for that matter, to himself--there was little\nfear that in the sequel they shouldn't see enough of each other.  The\nprinciple I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most\nnewly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive--the fruit of a\nsharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking,\nafter so much separation, into his comrade's face, his business would\nbe a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to\npresent itself to the nearing steamer as the first \"note,\" of Europe.\nMixed with everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether's\npart, that it would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in\nquite a sufficient degree.\n\nThat note had been meanwhile--since the previous afternoon, thanks to\nthis happier device--such a consciousness of personal freedom as he\nhadn't known for years; such a deep taste of change and of having above\nall for the moment nobody and nothing to consider, as promised already,\nif headlong hope were not too foolish, to colour his adventure with\ncool success.  There were people on the ship with whom he had easily\nconsorted--so far as ease could up to now be imputed to him--and who\nfor the most part plunged straight into the current that set from the\nlanding-stage to London; there were others who had invited him to a\ntryst at the inn and had even invoked his aid for a \"look round\" at the\nbeauties of Liverpool; but he had stolen away from every one alike, had\nkept no appointment and renewed no acquaintance, had been indifferently\naware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves fortunate in\nbeing, unlike himself, \"met,\" and had even independently, unsociably,\nalone, without encounter or relapse and by mere quiet evasion, given\nhis afternoon and evening to the immediate and the sensible.  They\nformed a qualified draught of Europe, an afternoon and an evening on\nthe banks of the Mersey, but such as it was he took his potion at least\nundiluted.  He winced a little, truly, at the thought that Waymarsh\nmight be already at Chester; he reflected that, should he have to\ndescribe himself there as having \"got in\" so early, it would be\ndifficult to make the interval look particularly eager; but he was like\na man who, elatedly finding in his pocket more money than usual,\nhandles it a while and idly and pleasantly chinks it before addressing\nhimself to the business of spending.  That he was prepared to be vague\nto Waymarsh about the hour of the ship's touching, and that he both\nwanted extremely to see him and enjoyed extremely the duration of\ndelay--these things, it is to be conceived, were early signs in him\nthat his relation to his actual errand might prove none of the\nsimplest.  He was burdened, poor Strether--it had better be confessed\nat the outset--with the oddity of a double consciousness.  There was\ndetachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference.\n\nAfter the young woman in the glass cage had held up to him across her\ncounter the pale-pink leaflet bearing his friend's name, which she\nneatly pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall, facing\na lady who met his eyes as with an intention suddenly determined, and\nwhose features--not freshly young, not markedly fine, but on happy\nterms with each other--came back to him as from a recent vision.  For a\nmoment they stood confronted; then the moment placed her:  he had\nnoticed her the day before, noticed her at his previous inn,\nwhere--again in the hall--she had been briefly engaged with some people\nof his own ship's company.  Nothing had actually passed between them,\nand he would as little have been able to say what had been the sign of\nher face for him on the first occasion as to name the ground of his\npresent recognition. Recognition at any rate appeared to prevail on her\nown side as well--which would only have added to the mystery.  All she\nnow began by saying to him nevertheless was that, having chanced to\ncatch his enquiry, she was moved to ask, by his leave, if it were\npossibly a question of Mr. Waymarsh of Milrose Connecticut--Mr.\nWaymarsh the American lawyer.\n\n\"Oh yes,\" he replied, \"my very well-known friend.  He's to meet me\nhere, coming up from Malvern, and I supposed he'd already have arrived.\nBut he doesn't come till later, and I'm relieved not to have kept him.\nDo you know him?\" Strether wound up.\n\nIt wasn't till after he had spoken that he became aware of how much\nthere had been in him of response; when the tone of her own rejoinder,\nas well as the play of something more in her face--something more, that\nis, than its apparently usual restless light--seemed to notify him.\n\"I've met him at Milrose--where I used sometimes, a good while ago, to\nstay; I had friends there who were friends of his, and I've been at his\nhouse.  I won't answer for it that he would know me,\" Strether's new\nacquaintance pursued; \"but I should be delighted to see him.  Perhaps,\"\nshe added, \"I shall--for I'm staying over.\"  She paused while our\nfriend took in these things, and it was as if a good deal of talk had\nalready passed. They even vaguely smiled at it, and Strether presently\nobserved that Mr. Waymarsh would, no doubt, be easily to be seen. This,\nhowever, appeared to affect the lady as if she might have advanced too\nfar.  She appeared to have no reserves about anything. \"Oh,\" she said,\n\"he won't care!\"--and she immediately thereupon remarked that she\nbelieved Strether knew the Munsters; the Munsters being the people he\nhad seen her with at Liverpool.\n\nBut he didn't, it happened, know the Munsters well enough to give the\ncase much of a lift; so that they were left together as if over the\nmere laid table of conversation.  Her qualification of the mentioned\nconnexion had rather removed than placed a dish, and there seemed\nnothing else to serve.  Their attitude remained, none the less, that of\nnot forsaking the board; and the effect of this in turn was to give\nthem the appearance of having accepted each other with an absence of\npreliminaries practically complete.  They moved along the hall\ntogether, and Strether's companion threw off that the hotel had the\nadvantage of a garden.  He was aware by this time of his strange\ninconsequence:  he had shirked the intimacies of the steamer and had\nmuffled the shock of Waymarsh only to find himself forsaken, in this\nsudden case, both of avoidance and of caution.  He passed, under this\nunsought protection and before he had so much as gone up to his room,\ninto the garden of the hotel, and at the end of ten minutes had agreed\nto meet there again, as soon as he should have made himself tidy, the\ndispenser of such good assurances.  He wanted to look at the town, and\nthey would forthwith look together.  It was almost as if she had been\nin possession and received him as a guest.  Her acquaintance with the\nplace presented her in a manner as a hostess, and Strether had a rueful\nglance for the lady in the glass cage.  It was as if this personage had\nseen herself instantly superseded.\n\nWhen in a quarter of an hour he came down, what his hostess saw, what\nshe might have taken in with a vision kindly adjusted, was the lean,\nthe slightly loose figure of a man of the middle height and something\nmore perhaps than the middle age--a man of five-and-fifty, whose most\nimmediate signs were a marked bloodless brownness of face, a thick dark\nmoustache, of characteristically American cut, growing strong and\nfalling low, a head of hair still abundant but irregularly streaked\nwith grey, and a nose of bold free prominence, the even line, the high\nfinish, as it might have been called, of which, had a certain effect of\nmitigation.  A perpetual pair of glasses astride of this fine ridge,\nand a line, unusually deep and drawn, the prolonged pen-stroke of time,\naccompanying the curve of the moustache from nostril to chin, did\nsomething to complete the facial furniture that an attentive observer\nwould have seen catalogued, on the spot, in the vision of the other\nparty to Strether's appointment.  She waited for him in the garden, the\nother party, drawing on a pair of singularly fresh soft and elastic\nlight gloves and presenting herself with a superficial readiness which,\nas he approached her over the small smooth lawn and in the watery\nEnglish sunshine, he might, with his rougher preparation, have marked\nas the model for such an occasion.  She had, this lady, a perfect plain\npropriety, an expensive subdued suitability, that her companion was not\nfree to analyse, but that struck him, so that his consciousness of it\nwas instantly acute, as a quality quite new to him.  Before reaching\nher he stopped on the grass and went through the form of feeling for\nsomething, possibly forgotten, in the light overcoat he carried on his\narm; yet the essence of the act was no more than the impulse to gain\ntime.  Nothing could have been odder than Strether's sense of himself\nas at that moment launched in something of which the sense would be\nquite disconnected from the sense of his past and which was literally\nbeginning there and then. It had begun in fact already upstairs and\nbefore the dressing glass that struck him as blocking further, so\nstrangely, the dimness of the window of his dull bedroom; begun with a\nsharper survey of the elements of Appearance than he had for a long\ntime been moved to make.  He had during those moments felt these\nelements to be not so much to his hand as he should have liked, and\nthen had fallen back on the thought that they were precisely a matter\nas to which help was supposed to come from what he was about to do.  He\nwas about to go up to London, so that hat and necktie might wait.  What\nhad come as straight to him as a ball in a well-played game--and caught\nmoreover not less neatly--was just the air, in the person of his\nfriend, of having seen and chosen, the air of achieved possession of\nthose vague qualities and quantities that collectively figured to him\nas the advantage snatched from lucky chances.  Without pomp or\ncircumstance, certainly, as her original address to him, equally with\nhis own response, had been, he would have sketched to himself his\nimpression of her as:  \"Well, she's more thoroughly civilized--!\" If\n\"More thoroughly than WHOM?\" would not have been for him a sequel to\nthis remark, that was just by reason of his deep consciousness of the\nbearing of his comparison.\n\nThe amusement, at all events, of a civilisation intenser was\nwhat--familiar compatriot as she was, with the full tone of the\ncompatriot and the rattling link not with mystery but only with dear\ndyspeptic Waymarsh--she appeared distinctly to promise.  His pause\nwhile he felt in his overcoat was positively the pause of confidence,\nand it enabled his eyes to make out as much of a case for her, in\nproportion, as her own made out for himself.  She affected him as\nalmost insolently young; but an easily carried five-and-thirty could\nstill do that.  She was, however, like himself marked and wan; only it\nnaturally couldn't have been known to him how much a spectator looking\nfrom one to the other might have discerned that they had in common.  It\nwouldn't for such a spectator have been altogether insupposable that,\neach so finely brown and so sharply spare, each confessing so to dents\nof surface and aids to sight, to a disproportionate nose and a head\ndelicately or grossly grizzled, they might have been brother and\nsister.  On this ground indeed there would have been a residuum of\ndifference; such a sister having surely known in respect to such a\nbrother the extremity of separation, and such a brother now feeling in\nrespect to such a sister the extremity of surprise.  Surprise, it was\ntrue, was not on the other hand what the eyes of Strether's friend most\nshowed him while she gave him, stroking her gloves smoother, the time\nhe appreciated.  They had taken hold of him straightway measuring him\nup and down as if they knew how; as if he were human material they had\nalready in some sort handled.  Their possessor was in truth, it may be\ncommunicated, the mistress of a hundred cases or categories,\nreceptacles of the mind, subdivisions for convenience, in which, from a\nfull experience, she pigeon-holed her fellow mortals with a hand as\nfree as that of a compositor scattering type.  She was as equipped in\nthis particular as Strether was the reverse, and it made an opposition\nbetween them which he might well have shrunk from submitting to if he\nhad fully suspected it.  So far as he did suspect it he was on the\ncontrary, after a short shake of his consciousness, as pleasantly\npassive as might be.  He really had a sort of sense of what she knew.\nHe had quite the sense that she knew things he didn't, and though this\nwas a concession that in general he found not easy to make to women, he\nmade it now as good-humouredly as if it lifted a burden.  His eyes were\nso quiet behind his eternal nippers that they might almost have been\nabsent without changing his face, which took its expression mainly, and\nnot least its stamp of sensibility, from other sources, surface and\ngrain and form.  He joined his guide in an instant, and then felt she\nhad profited still better than he by his having been for the moments\njust mentioned, so at the disposal of her intelligence.  She knew even\nintimate things about him that he hadn't yet told her and perhaps never\nwould.  He wasn't unaware that he had told her rather remarkably many\nfor the time, but these were not the real ones.  Some of the real ones,\nhowever, precisely, were what she knew.\n\nThey were to pass again through the hall of the inn to get into the\nstreet, and it was here she presently checked him with a question.\n\"Have you looked up my name?\"\n\nHe could only stop with a laugh.  \"Have you looked up mine?\"\n\n\"Oh dear, yes--as soon as you left me.  I went to the office and asked.\nHadn't YOU better do the same?\"\n\nHe wondered.  \"Find out who you are?--after the uplifted young woman\nthere has seen us thus scrape acquaintance!\"\n\nShe laughed on her side now at the shade of alarm in his amusement.\n\"Isn't it a reason the more?  If what you're afraid of is the injury\nfor me--my being seen to walk off with a gentleman who has to ask who I\nam--I assure you I don't in the least mind.  Here, however,\" she\ncontinued, \"is my card, and as I find there's something else again I\nhave to say at the office, you can just study it during the moment I\nleave you.\"\n\nShe left him after he had taken from her the small pasteboard she had\nextracted from her pocket-book, and he had extracted another from his\nown, to exchange with it, before she came back.  He read thus the\nsimple designation \"Maria Gostrey,\" to which was attached, in a corner\nof the card, with a number, the name of a street, presumably in Paris,\nwithout other appreciable identity than its foreignness.  He put the\ncard into his waistcoat pocket, keeping his own meanwhile in evidence;\nand as he leaned against the door-post he met with the smile of a\nstraying thought what the expanse before the hotel offered to his view.\nIt was positively droll to him that he should already have Maria\nGostrey, whoever she was--of which he hadn't really the least idea--in\na place of safe keeping.  He had somehow an assurance that he should\ncarefully preserve the little token he had just tucked in.  He gazed\nwith unseeing lingering eyes as he followed some of the implications of\nhis act, asking himself if he really felt admonished to qualify it as\ndisloyal.  It was prompt, it was possibly even premature, and there was\nlittle doubt of the expression of face the sight of it would have\nproduced in a certain person.  But if it was \"wrong\"--why then he had\nbetter not have come out at all.  At this, poor man, had he\nalready--and even before meeting Waymarsh--arrived.  He had believed he\nhad a limit, but the limit had been transcended within thirty-six\nhours.  By how long a space on the plane of manners or even of morals,\nmoreover, he felt still more sharply after Maria Gostrey had come back\nto him and with a gay decisive \"So now--!\" led him forth into the\nworld. This counted, it struck him as he walked beside her with his\novercoat on an arm, his umbrella under another and his personal\npasteboard a little stiffly retained between forefinger and thumb, this\nstruck him as really, in comparison his introduction to things.  It\nhadn't been \"Europe\" at Liverpool no--not even in the dreadful\ndelightful impressive streets the night before--to the extent his\npresent companion made it so.  She hadn't yet done that so much as\nwhen, after their walk had lasted a few minutes and he had had time to\nwonder if a couple of sidelong glances from her meant that he had best\nhave put on gloves she almost pulled him up with an amused challenge.\n\"But why--fondly as it's so easy to imagine your clinging to it--don't\nyou put it away?  Or if it's an inconvenience to you to carry it, one's\noften glad to have one's card back.  The fortune one spends in them!\"\n\nThen he saw both that his way of marching with his own prepared tribute\nhad affected her as a deviation in one of those directions he couldn't\nyet measure, and that she supposed this emblem to be still the one he\nhad received from her.  He accordingly handed her the card as if in\nrestitution, but as soon as she had it she felt the difference and,\nwith her eyes on it, stopped short for apology. \"I like,\" she observed,\n\"your name.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he answered, \"you won't have heard of it!\" Yet he had his reasons\nfor not being sure but that she perhaps might.\n\nAh it was but too visible!  She read it over again as one who had never\nseen it.  \"'Mr. Lewis Lambert Strether'\"--she sounded it almost as\nfreely as for any stranger.  She repeated however that she liked\nit--\"particularly the Lewis Lambert.  It's the name of a novel of\nBalzac's.\"\n\n\"Oh I know that!\" said Strether.\n\n\"But the novel's an awfully bad one.\"\n\n\"I know that too,\" Strether smiled.  To which he added with an\nirrelevance that was only superficial:  \"I come from Woollett\nMassachusetts.\"  It made her for some reason--the irrelevance or\nwhatever--laugh.  Balzac had described many cities, but hadn't\ndescribed Woollett Massachusetts.  \"You say that,\" she returned, \"as if\nyou wanted one immediately to know the worst.\"\n\n\"Oh I think it's a thing,\" he said, \"that you must already have made\nout.  I feel it so that I certainly must look it, speak it, and, as\npeople say there, 'act' it.  It sticks out of me, and you knew surely\nfor yourself as soon as you looked at me.\"\n\n\"The worst, you mean?\"\n\n\"Well, the fact of where I come from.  There at any rate it IS; so that\nyou won't be able, if anything happens, to say I've not been straight\nwith you.\"\n\n\"I see\"--and Miss Gostrey looked really interested in the point he had\nmade.  \"But what do you think of as happening?\"\n\nThough he wasn't shy--which was rather anomalous--Strether gazed about\nwithout meeting her eyes; a motion that was frequent with him in talk,\nyet of which his words often seemed not at all the effect. \"Why that\nyou should find me too hopeless.\"  With which they walked on again\ntogether while she answered, as they went, that the most \"hopeless\" of\nher countryfolk were in general precisely those she liked best.  All\nsorts of other pleasant small things-small things that were yet large\nfor him--flowered in the air of the occasion, but the bearing of the\noccasion itself on matters still remote concerns us too closely to\npermit us to multiply our illustrations. Two or three, however, in\ntruth, we should perhaps regret to lose. The tortuous wall--girdle,\nlong since snapped, of the little swollen city, half held in place by\ncareful civic hands--wanders in narrow file between parapets smoothed\nby peaceful generations, pausing here and there for a dismantled gate\nor a bridged gap, with rises and drops, steps up and steps down, queer\ntwists, queer contacts, peeps into homely streets and under the brows\nof gables, views of cathedral tower and waterside fields, of huddled\nEnglish town and ordered English country.  Too deep almost for words\nwas the delight of these things to Strether; yet as deeply mixed with\nit were certain images of his inward picture.  He had trod this walks\nin the far-off time, at twenty-five; but that, instead of spoiling it,\nonly enriched it for present feeling and marked his renewal as a thing\nsubstantial enough to share.  It was with Waymarsh he should have\nshared it, and he was now accordingly taking from him something that\nwas his due.  He looked repeatedly at his watch, and when he had done\nso for the fifth time Miss Gostrey took him up.\n\n\"You're doing something that you think not right.\"\n\nIt so touched the place that he quite changed colour and his laugh grew\nalmost awkward.  \"Am I enjoying it as much as THAT?\"\n\n\"You're not enjoying it, I think, so much as you ought.\"\n\n\"I see\"--he appeared thoughtfully to agree.  \"Great is my privilege.\"\n\n\"Oh it's not your privilege!  It has nothing to do with me.  It has to\ndo with yourself.  Your failure's general.\"\n\n\"Ah there you are!\" he laughed.  \"It's the failure of Woollett. THAT'S\ngeneral.\"\n\n\"The failure to enjoy,\" Miss Gostrey explained, \"is what I mean.\"\n\n\"Precisely.  Woollett isn't sure it ought to enjoy.  If it were it\nwould.  But it hasn't, poor thing,\" Strether continued, \"any one to\nshow it how.  It's not like me.  I have somebody.\"\n\nThey had stopped, in the afternoon sunshine--constantly pausing, in\ntheir stroll, for the sharper sense of what they saw--and Strether\nrested on one of the high sides of the old stony groove of the little\nrampart.  He leaned back on this support with his face to the tower of\nthe cathedral, now admirably commanded by their station, the high\nred-brown mass, square and subordinately spired and crocketed,\nretouched and restored, but charming to his long-sealed eyes and with\nthe first swallows of the year weaving their flight all round it.  Miss\nGostrey lingered near him, full of an air, to which she more and more\njustified her right, of understanding the effect of things.  She quite\nconcurred.  \"You've indeed somebody.\" And she added:  \"I wish you WOULD\nlet me show you how!\"\n\n\"Oh I'm afraid of you!\" he cheerfully pleaded.\n\nShe kept on him a moment, through her glasses and through his own, a\ncertain pleasant pointedness.  \"Ah no, you're not! You're not in the\nleast, thank goodness!  If you had been we shouldn't so soon have found\nourselves here together.  I think,\" she comfortably concluded, \"you\ntrust me.\"\n\n\"I think I do!--but that's exactly what I'm afraid of.  I shouldn't\nmind if I didn't.  It's falling thus in twenty minutes so utterly into\nyour hands.  I dare say,\" Strether continued, \"it's a sort of thing\nyou're thoroughly familiar with; but nothing more extraordinary has\never happened to me.\"\n\nShe watched him with all her kindness.  \"That means simply that you've\nrecognised me--which IS rather beautiful and rare.  You see what I am.\"\nAs on this, however, he protested, with a good-humoured headshake, a\nresignation of any such claim, she had a moment of explanation.  \"If\nyou'll only come on further as you HAVE come you'll at any rate make\nout.  My own fate has been too many for me, and I've succumbed to it.\nI'm a general guide--to 'Europe,' don't you know?  I wait for people--I\nput them through.  I pick them up--I set them down.  I'm a sort of\nsuperior 'courier-maid.' I'm a companion at large.  I take people, as\nI've told you, about.  I never sought it--it has come to me.  It has\nbeen my fate, and one's fate one accepts.  It's a dreadful thing to\nhave to say, in so wicked a world, but I verily believe that, such as\nyou see me, there's nothing I don't know.  I know all the shops and the\nprices--but I know worse things still.  I bear on my back the huge load\nof our national consciousness, or, in other words--for it comes to\nthat--of our nation itself.  Of what is our nation composed but of the\nmen and women individually on my shoulders?  I don't do it, you know,\nfor any particular advantage.  I don't do it, for instance--some people\ndo, you know--for money.\"\n\nStrether could only listen and wonder and weigh his chance.  \"And yet,\naffected as you are then to so many of your clients, you can scarcely\nbe said to do it for love.\"  He waited a moment.  \"How do we reward\nyou?\"\n\nShe had her own hesitation, but \"You don't!\" she finally returned,\nsetting him again in motion.  They went on, but in a few minutes,\nthough while still thinking over what she had said, he once more took\nout his watch; mechanically, unconsciously and as if made nervous by\nthe mere exhilaration of what struck him as her strange and cynical\nwit.  He looked at the hour without seeing it, and then, on something\nagain said by his companion, had another pause. \"You're really in\nterror of him.\"\n\nHe smiled a smile that he almost felt to be sickly.  \"Now you can see\nwhy I'm afraid of you.\"\n\n\"Because I've such illuminations?  Why they're all for your help! It's\nwhat I told you,\" she added, \"just now.  You feel as if this were\nwrong.\"\n\nHe fell back once more, settling himself against the parapet as if to\nhear more about it.  \"Then get me out!\"\n\nHer face fairly brightened for the joy of the appeal, but, as if it\nwere a question of immediate action, she visibly considered.  \"Out of\nwaiting for him?--of seeing him at all?\"\n\n\"Oh no--not that,\" said poor Strether, looking grave.  \"I've got to\nwait for him--and I want very much to see him.  But out of the terror.\nYou did put your finger on it a few minutes ago.  It's general, but it\navails itself of particular occasions.  That's what it's doing for me\nnow.  I'm always considering something else; something else, I mean,\nthan the thing of the moment.  The obsession of the other thing is the\nterror.  I'm considering at present for instance something else than\nYOU.\"\n\nShe listened with charming earnestness.  \"Oh you oughtn't to do that!\"\n\n\"It's what I admit.  Make it then impossible.\"\n\nShe continued to think.  \"Is it really an 'order' from you?--that I\nshall take the job?  WILL you give yourself up?\"\n\nPoor Strether heaved his sigh.  \"If I only could! But that's the deuce\nof it--that I never can.  No--I can't.\"\n\nShe wasn't, however, discouraged.  \"But you want to at least?\"\n\n\"Oh unspeakably!\"\n\n\"Ah then, if you'll try!\"--and she took over the job, as she had called\nit, on the spot.  \"Trust me!\" she exclaimed, and the action of this, as\nthey retraced their steps, was presently to make him pass his hand into\nher arm in the manner of a benign dependent paternal old person who\nwishes to be \"nice\" to a younger one.  If he drew it out again indeed\nas they approached the inn this may have been because, after more talk\nhad passed between them, the relation of age, or at least of\nexperience--which, for that matter, had already played to and fro with\nsome freedom--affected him as incurring a readjustment.  It was at all\nevents perhaps lucky that they arrived in sufficiently separate fashion\nwithin range of the hotel-door.  The young lady they had left in the\nglass cage watched as if she had come to await them on the threshold.\nAt her side stood a person equally interested, by his attitude, in\ntheir return, and the effect of the sight of whom was instantly to\ndetermine for Strether another of those responsive arrests that we have\nhad so repeatedly to note.  He left it to Miss Gostrey to name, with\nthe fine full bravado as it almost struck him, of her \"Mr. Waymarsh!\"\nwhat was to have been, what--he more than ever felt as his short stare\nof suspended welcome took things in--would have been, but for herself,\nhis doom.  It was already upon him even at that distance--Mr. Waymarsh\nwas for HIS part joyless.\n\n\n\nII\n\nHe had none the less to confess to this friend that evening that he\nknew almost nothing about her, and it was a deficiency that Waymarsh,\neven with his memory refreshed by contact, by her own prompt and lucid\nallusions and enquiries, by their having publicly partaken of dinner in\nher company, and by another stroll, to which she was not a stranger,\nout into the town to look at the cathedral by moonlight--it was a blank\nthat the resident of Milrose, though admitting acquaintance with the\nMunsters, professed himself unable to fill.  He had no recollection of\nMiss Gostrey, and two or three questions that she put to him about\nthose members of his circle had, to Strether's observation, the same\neffect he himself had already more directly felt--the effect of\nappearing to place all knowledge, for the time, on this original\nwoman's side.  It interested him indeed to mark the limits of any such\nrelation for her with his friend as there could possibly be a question\nof, and it particularly struck him that they were to be marked\naltogether in Waymarsh's quarter.  This added to his own sense of\nhaving gone far with her-gave him an early illustration of a much\nshorter course.  There was a certitude he immediately grasped--a\nconviction that Waymarsh would quite fail, as it were, and on whatever\ndegree of acquaintances to profit by her.\n\nThere had been after the first interchange among the three a talk of\nsome five minutes in the hall, and then the two men had adjourned to\nthe garden, Miss Gostrey for the time disappearing. Strether in due\ncourse accompanied his friend to the room he had bespoken and had,\nbefore going out, scrupulously visited; where at the end of another\nhalf-hour he had no less discreetly left him. On leaving him he\nrepaired straight to his own room, but with the prompt effect of\nfeeling the compass of that chamber resented by his condition.  There\nhe enjoyed at once the first consequence of their reunion.  A place was\ntoo small for him after it that had seemed large enough before.  He had\nawaited it with something he would have been sorry, have been almost\nashamed not to recognise as emotion, yet with a tacit assumption at the\nsame time that emotion would in the event find itself relieved.  The\nactual oddity was that he was only more excited; and his excitement-to\nwhich indeed he would have found it difficult instantly to give a\nname--brought him once more downstairs and caused him for some minutes\nvaguely to wander.  He went once more to the garden; he looked into the\npublic room, found Miss Gostrey writing letters and backed out; he\nroamed, fidgeted and wasted time; but he was to have his more intimate\nsession with his friend before the evening closed.\n\nIt was late--not till Strether had spent an hour upstairs with\nhim--that this subject consented to betake himself to doubtful rest.\nDinner and the subsequent stroll by moonlight--a dream, on Strether's\npart, of romantic effects rather prosaically merged in a mere missing\nof thicker coats--had measurably intervened, and this midnight\nconference was the result of Waymarsh's having (when they were free, as\nhe put it, of their fashionable friend) found the smoking-room not\nquite what he wanted, and yet bed what he wanted less.  His most\nfrequent form of words was that he knew himself, and they were applied\non this occasion to his certainty of not sleeping.  He knew himself\nwell enough to know that he should have a night of prowling unless he\nshould succeed, as a preliminary, in getting prodigiously tired.  If\nthe effort directed to this end involved till a late hour the presence\nof Strether--consisted, that is, in the detention of the latter for\nfull discourse--there was yet an impression of minor discipline\ninvolved for our friend in the picture Waymarsh made as he sat in\ntrousers and shirt on the edge of his couch.  With his long legs\nextended and his large back much bent, he nursed alternately, for an\nalmost incredible time, his elbows and his beard.  He struck his\nvisitor as extremely, as almost wilfully uncomfortable; yet what had\nthis been for Strether, from that first glimpse of him disconcerted in\nthe porch of the hotel, but the predominant notes.  The discomfort was\nin a manner contagious, as well as also in a manner inconsequent and\nunfounded; the visitor felt that unless he should get used to it--or\nunless Waymarsh himself should--it would constitute a menace for his\nown prepared, his own already confirmed, consciousness of the\nagreeable.  On their first going up together to the room Strether had\nselected for him Waymarsh had looked it over in silence and with a sigh\nthat represented for his companion, if not the habit of disapprobation,\nat least the despair of felicity; and this look had recurred to\nStrether as the key of much he had since observed. \"Europe,\" he had\nbegun to gather from these things, had up to now rather failed of its\nmessage to him; he hadn't got into tune with it and had at the end of\nthree months almost renounced any such expectation.\n\nHe really appeared at present to insist on that by just perching there\nwith the gas in his eyes.  This of itself somehow conveyed the futility\nof single rectifications in a multiform failure.  He had a large\nhandsome head and a large sallow seamed face--a striking significant\nphysiognomic total, the upper range of which, the great political brow,\nthe thick loose hair, the dark fuliginous eyes, recalled even to a\ngeneration whose standard had dreadfully deviated the impressive image,\nfamiliar by engravings and busts, of some great national worthy of the\nearlier part of the mid-century. He was of the personal type--and it\nwas an element in the power and promise that in their early time\nStrether had found in him--of the American statesman, the statesman\ntrained in \"Congressional halls,\" of an elder day.  The legend had been\nin later years that as the lower part of his face, which was weak, and\nslightly crooked, spoiled the likeness, this was the real reason for\nthe growth of his beard, which might have seemed to spoil it for those\nnot in the secret.  He shook his mane; he fixed, with his admirable\neyes, his auditor or his observer; he wore no glasses and had a way,\npartly formidable, yet also partly encouraging, as from a\nrepresentative to a constituent, of looking very hard at those who\napproached him. He met you as if you had knocked and he had bidden you\nenter. Strether, who hadn't seen him for so long an interval,\napprehended him now with a freshness of taste, and had perhaps never\ndone him such ideal justice.  The head was bigger, the eyes finer, than\nthey need have been for the career; but that only meant, after all,\nthat the career was itself expressive.  What it expressed at midnight\nin the gas-glaring bedroom at Chester was that the subject of it had,\nat the end of years, barely escaped, by flight in time, a general\nnervous collapse.  But this very proof of the full life, as the full\nlife was understood at Milrose, would have made to Strether's\nimagination an element in which Waymarsh could have floated easily had\nhe only consented to float.  Alas nothing so little resembled floating\nas the rigour with which, on the edge of his bed, he hugged his posture\nof prolonged impermanence.  It suggested to his comrade something that\nalways, when kept up, worried him--a person established in a\nrailway-coach with a forward inclination.  It represented the angle at\nwhich poor Waymarsh was to sit through the ordeal of Europe.\n\nThanks to the stress of occupation, the strain of professions, the\nabsorption and embarrassment of each, they had not, at home, during\nyears before this sudden brief and almost bewildering reign of\ncomparative ease, found so much as a day for a meeting; a fact that was\nin some degree an explanation of the sharpness with which most of his\nfriend's features stood out to Strether.  Those he had lost sight of\nsince the early time came back to him; others that it was never\npossible to forget struck him now as sitting, clustered and expectant,\nlike a somewhat defiant family-group, on the doorstep of their\nresidence.  The room was narrow for its length, and the occupant of the\nbed thrust so far a pair of slippered feet that the visitor had almost\nto step over them in his recurrent rebounds from his chair to fidget\nback and forth.  There were marks the friends made on things to talk\nabout, and on things not to, and one of the latter in particular fell\nlike the tap of chalk on the blackboard. Married at thirty, Waymarsh\nhad not lived with his wife for fifteen years, and it came up vividly\nbetween them in the glare of the gas that Strether wasn't to ask about\nher.  He knew they were still separate and that she lived at hotels,\ntravelled in Europe, painted her face and wrote her husband abusive\nletters, of not one of which, to a certainty, that sufferer spared\nhimself the perusal; but he respected without difficulty the cold\ntwilight that had settled on this side of his companion's life.  It was\na province in which mystery reigned and as to which Waymarsh had never\nspoken the informing word.  Strether, who wanted to do him the highest\njustice wherever he COULD do it, singularly admired him for the dignity\nof this reserve, and even counted it as one of the grounds--grounds all\nhandled and numbered--for ranking him, in the range of their\nacquaintance, as a success.  He WAS a success, Waymarsh, in spite of\noverwork, or prostration, of sensible shrinkage, of his wife's letters\nand of his not liking Europe.  Strether would have reckoned his own\ncareer less futile had he been able to put into it anything so handsome\nas so much fine silence.  One might one's self easily have left Mrs.\nWaymarsh; and one would assuredly have paid one's tribute to the ideal\nin covering with that attitude the derision of having been left by her.\nHer husband had held his tongue and had made a large income; and these\nwere in especial the achievements as to which Strether envied him.  Our\nfriend had had indeed on his side too a subject for silence, which he\nfully appreciated; but it was a matter of a different sort, and the\nfigure of the income he had arrived at had never been high enough to\nlook any one in the face.\n\n\"I don't know as I quite see what you require it for.  You don't appear\nsick to speak of.\"  It was of Europe Waymarsh thus finally spoke.\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether, who fell as much as possible into step, \"I guess\nI don't FEEL sick now that I've started.  But I had pretty well run\ndown before I did start.\"\n\nWaymarsh raised his melancholy look.  \"Ain't you about up to your usual\naverage?\"\n\nIt was not quite pointedly sceptical, but it seemed somehow a plea for\nthe purest veracity, and it thereby affected our friend as the very\nvoice of Milrose.  He had long since made a mental distinction--though\nnever in truth daring to betray it--between the voice of Milrose and\nthe voice even of Woollett.  It was the former he felt, that was most\nin the real tradition.  There had been occasions in his past when the\nsound of it had reduced him to temporary confusion, and the present,\nfor some reason, suddenly became such another.  It was nevertheless no\nlight matter that the very effect of his confusion should be to make\nhim again prevaricate.  \"That description hardly does justice to a man\nto whom it has done such a lot of good to see YOU.\"\n\nWaymarsh fixed on his washing-stand the silent detached stare with\nwhich Milrose in person, as it were, might have marked the\nunexpectedness of a compliment from Woollett, and Strether for his\npart, felt once more like Woollett in person.  \"I mean,\" his friend\npresently continued, \"that your appearance isn't as bad as I've seen\nit:  it compares favourably with what it was when I last noticed it.\"\nOn this appearance Waymarsh's eyes yet failed to rest; it was almost as\nif they obeyed an instinct of propriety, and the effect was still\nstronger when, always considering the basin and jug, he added:  \"You've\nfilled out some since then.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I have,\" Strether laughed:  \"one does fill out some with\nall one takes in, and I've taken in, I dare say, more than I've natural\nroom for.  I was dog-tired when I sailed.\"  It had the oddest sound of\ncheerfulness.\n\n\"I was dog-tired,\" his companion returned, \"when I arrived, and it's\nthis wild hunt for rest that takes all the life out of me.  The fact\nis, Strether--and it's a comfort to have you here at last to say it to;\nthough I don't know, after all, that I've really waited; I've told it\nto people I've met in the cars--the fact is, such a country as this\nain't my KIND of country anyway.  There ain't a country I've seen over\nhere that DOES seem my kind.  Oh I don't say but what there are plenty\nof pretty places and remarkable old things; but the trouble is that I\ndon't seem to feel anywhere in tune.  That's one of the reasons why I\nsuppose I've gained so little.  I haven't had the first sign of that\nlift I was led to expect.\"  With this he broke out more earnestly.\n\"Look here--I want to go back.\"\n\nHis eyes were all attached to Strether's now, for he was one of the men\nwho fully face you when they talk of themselves.  This enabled his\nfriend to look at him hard and immediately to appear to the highest\nadvantage in his eyes by doing so.  \"That's a genial thing to say to a\nfellow who has come out on purpose to meet you!\"\n\nNothing could have been finer, on this, than Waymarsh's sombre glow.\n\"HAVE you come out on purpose?\"\n\n\"Well--very largely.\"\n\n\"I thought from the way you wrote there was something back of it.\"\n\nStrether hesitated.  \"Back of my desire to be with you?\"\n\n\"Back of your prostration.\"\n\nStrether, with a smile made more dim by a certain consciousness, shook\nhis head.  \"There are all the causes of it!\"\n\n\"And no particular cause that seemed most to drive you?\"\n\nOur friend could at last conscientiously answer.  \"Yes.  One.  There IS\na matter that has had much to do with my coming out.\"\n\nWaymarsh waited a little.  \"Too private to mention?\"\n\n\"No, not too private--for YOU.  Only rather complicated.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Waymarsh, who had waited again, \"I MAY lose my mind over\nhere, but I don't know as I've done so yet.\"\n\n\"Oh you shall have the whole thing.  But not tonight.\"\n\nWaymarsh seemed to sit stiffer and to hold his elbows tighter.  \"Why\nnot--if I can't sleep?\"\n\n\"Because, my dear man, I CAN!\"\n\n\"Then where's your prostration?\"\n\n\"Just in that--that I can put in eight hours.\"  And Strether brought it\nout that if Waymarsh didn't \"gain\" it was because he didn't go to bed:\nthe result of which was, in its order, that, to do the latter justice,\nhe permitted his friend to insist on his really getting settled.\nStrether, with a kind coercive hand for it, assisted him to this\nconsummation, and again found his own part in their relation\nauspiciously enlarged by the smaller touches of lowering the lamp and\nseeing to a sufficiency of blanket.  It somehow ministered for him to\nindulgence to feel Waymarsh, who looked unnaturally big and black in\nbed, as much tucked in as a patient in a hospital and, with his\ncovering up to his chin, as much simplified by it He hovered in vague\npity, to be brief, while his companion challenged him out of the\nbedclothes.  \"Is she really after you?  Is that what's behind?\"\n\nStrether felt an uneasiness at the direction taken by his companion's\ninsight, but he played a little at uncertainty.  \"Behind my coming out?\"\n\n\"Behind your prostration or whatever.  It's generally felt, you know,\nthat she follows you up pretty close.\"\n\nStrether's candour was never very far off.  \"Oh it has occurred to you\nthat I'm literally running away from Mrs. Newsome?\"\n\n\"Well, I haven't KNOWN but what you are.  You're a very attractive man,\nStrether.  You've seen for yourself,\" said Waymarsh \"what that lady\ndownstairs makes of it.  Unless indeed,\" he rambled on with an effect\nbetween the ironic and the anxious, \"it's you who are after HER.  IS\nMrs. Newsome OVER here?\"  He spoke as with a droll dread of her.\n\nIt made his friend--though rather dimly--smile.  \"Dear no she's safe,\nthank goodness--as I think I more and more feel--at home.  She thought\nof coming, but she gave it up.  I've come in a manner instead of her;\nand come to that extent--for you're right in your inference--on her\nbusiness.  So you see there IS plenty of connexion.\"\n\nWaymarsh continued to see at least all there was.  \"Involving\naccordingly the particular one I've referred to?\"\n\nStrether took another turn about the room, giving a twitch to his\ncompanion's blanket and finally gaining the door.  His feeling was that\nof a nurse who had earned personal rest by having made everything\nstraight.  \"Involving more things than I can think of breaking ground\non now.  But don't be afraid--you shall have them from me:  you'll\nprobably find yourself having quite as much of them as you can do with.\nI shall--if we keep together--very much depend on your impression of\nsome of them.\"\n\nWaymarsh's acknowledgement of this tribute was characteristically\nindirect.  \"You mean to say you don't believe we WILL keep together?\"\n\n\"I only glance at the danger,\" Strether paternally said, \"because when\nI hear you wail to go back I seem to see you open up such possibilities\nof folly.\"\n\nWaymarsh took it--silent a little--like a large snubbed child \"What are\nyou going to do with me?\"\n\nIt was the very question Strether himself had put to Miss Gostrey, and\nhe wondered if he had sounded like that.  But HE at least could be more\ndefinite.  \"I'm going to take you right down to London.\"\n\n\"Oh I've been down to London!\" Waymarsh more softly moaned.  \"I've no\nuse, Strether, for anything down there.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether, good-humouredly, \"I guess you've some use for\nme.\"\n\n\"So I've got to go?\"\n\n\"Oh you've got to go further yet.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Waymarsh sighed, \"do your damnedest! Only you WILL tell me\nbefore you lead me on all the way--?\"\n\nOur friend had again so lost himself, both for amusement and for\ncontrition, in the wonder of whether he had made, in his own challenge\nthat afternoon, such another figure, that he for an instant missed the\nthread.  \"Tell you--?\"\n\n\"Why what you've got on hand.\"\n\nStrether hesitated.  \"Why it's such a matter as that even if I\npositively wanted I shouldn't be able to keep it from you.\"\n\nWaymarsh gloomily gazed.  \"What does that mean then but that your trip\nis just FOR her?\"\n\n\"For Mrs. Newsome?  Oh it certainly is, as I say.  Very much.\"\n\n\"Then why do you also say it's for me?\"\n\nStrether, in impatience, violently played with his latch.  \"It's simple\nenough.  It's for both of you.\"\n\nWaymarsh at last turned over with a groan.  \"Well, I won't marry you!\"\n\n\"Neither, when it comes to that--!\" But the visitor had already laughed\nand escaped.\n\n\n\nIII\n\nHe had told Miss Gostrey he should probably take, for departure with\nWaymarsh, some afternoon train, and it thereupon in the morning\nappeared that this lady had made her own plan for an earlier one.  She\nhad breakfasted when Strether came into the coffee-room; but, Waymarsh\nnot having yet emerged, he was in time to recall her to the terms of\ntheir understanding and to pronounce her discretion overdone.  She was\nsurely not to break away at the very moment she had created a want.  He\nhad met her as she rose from her little table in a window, where, with\nthe morning papers beside her, she reminded him, as he let her know, of\nMajor Pendennis breakfasting at his club--a compliment of which she\nprofessed a deep appreciation; and he detained her as pleadingly as if\nhe had already--and notably under pressure of the visions of the\nnight--learned to be unable to do without her.  She must teach him at\nall events, before she went, to order breakfast as breakfast was\nordered in Europe, and she must especially sustain him in the problem\nof ordering for Waymarsh.  The latter had laid upon his friend, by\ndesperate sounds through the door of his room, dreadful divined\nresponsibilities in respect to beefsteak and oranges--responsibilities\nwhich Miss Gostrey took over with an alertness of action that matched\nher quick intelligence.  She had before this weaned the expatriated\nfrom traditions compared with which the matutinal beefsteak was but the\ncreature of an hour, and it was not for her, with some of her memories,\nto falter in the path though she freely enough declared, on reflexion,\nthat there was always in such cases a choice of opposed policies.\n\"There are times when to give them their head, you know--!\"\n\nThey had gone to wait together in the garden for the dressing of the\nmeal, and Strether found her more suggestive than ever \"Well, what?\"\n\n\"Is to bring about for them such a complexity of relations-unless\nindeed we call it a simplicity!--that the situation HAS to wind itself\nup.  They want to go back.\"\n\n\"And you want them to go!\" Strether gaily concluded.\n\n\"I always want them to go, and I send them as fast as I can.'\n\n\"Oh I know--you take them to Liverpool.\"\n\n\"Any port will serve in a storm.  I'm--with all my other functions--an\nagent for repatriation.  I want to re-people our stricken country. What\nwill become of it else?  I want to discourage others.\"\n\nThe ordered English garden, in the freshness of the day,  was\ndelightful to Strether, who liked the sound, under his feet, of the\ntight fine gravel, packed with the chronic damp, and who had the idlest\neye for the deep smoothness of turf and the clean curves of paths.\n\"Other people?\"\n\n\"Other countries.  Other people--yes.  I want to encourage our own.\"\n\nStrether wondered.  \"Not to come?  Why then do you 'meet'  them--since\nit doesn't appear to be to stop them?\"\n\n\"Oh that they shouldn't come is as yet too much to ask.  What I attend\nto is that they come quickly and return still more so.  I meet them to\nhelp it to be over as soon as possible,  and though I don't stop them\nI've my way of putting them through.  That's my little system; and, if\nyou want to know,\"  said Maria Gostrey, \"it's my real secret, my\ninnermost mission and use.  I only seem, you see, to beguile and\napprove; but I've thought it all out and I'm working all the while\nunderground.  I can't perhaps quite give you my formula, but I think\nthat practically I succeed.  I send you back spent.  So you stay back.\nPassed through my hands--\"\n\n\"We don't turn up again?\"  The further she went the further he always\nsaw himself able to follow.  \"I don't want your formula--I feel quite\nenough, as I hinted yesterday, your abysses.  Spent!\" he echoed.  \"If\nthat's how you're arranging so subtly to send me I thank you for the\nwarning.\"\n\nFor a minute, amid the pleasantness--poetry in tariffed items, but all\nthe more, for guests already convicted, a challenge to consumption--they\nsmiled at each other in confirmed fellowship.  \"Do you call it subtly?\nIt's a plain poor tale.  Besides, you're a special case.\"\n\n\"Oh special cases--that's weak!\" She was weak enough, further still, to\ndefer her journey and agree to accompany the gentlemen on their own,\nmight a separate carriage mark her independence; though it was in spite\nof this to befall after luncheon that she went off alone and that, with\na tryst taken for a day of her company in London, they lingered another\nnight.  She had, during the morning--spent in a way that he was to\nremember later on as the very climax of his foretaste, as warm with\npresentiments, with what he would have called collapses--had all sorts\nof things out with Strether; and among them the fact that though there\nwas never a moment of her life when she wasn't \"due\" somewhere, there\nwas yet scarce a perfidy to others of which she wasn't capable for his\nsake.  She explained moreover that wherever she happened to be she\nfound a dropped thread to pick up, a ragged edge to repair, some\nfamiliar appetite in ambush, jumping out as she approached, yet\nappeasable with a temporary biscuit.  It became, on her taking the risk\nof the deviation imposed on him by her insidious arrangement of his\nmorning meal, a point of honour for her not to fail with Waymarsh of\nthe larger success too; and her subsequent boast to Strether was that\nshe had made their friend fare--and quite without his knowing what was\nthe matter--as Major Pendennis would have fared at the Megatherium. She\nhad made him breakfast like a gentleman, and it was nothing, she\nforcibly asserted, to what she would yet make him do.  She made him\nparticipate in the slow reiterated ramble with which, for Strether, the\nnew day amply filled itself; and it was by her art that he somehow had\nthe air, on the ramparts and in the Rows, of carrying a point of his\nown.\n\nThe three strolled and stared and gossiped, or at least the two did;\nthe case really yielding for their comrade, if analysed, but the\nelement of stricken silence.  This element indeed affected Strether as\ncharged with audible rumblings, but he was conscious of the care of\ntaking it explicitly as a sign of pleasant peace.  He wouldn't appeal\ntoo much, for that provoked stiffness; yet he wouldn't be too freely\ntacit, for that suggested giving up. Waymarsh himself adhered to an\nambiguous dumbness that might have represented either the growth of a\nperception or the despair of one; and at times and in places--where the\nlow-browed galleries were darkest, the opposite gables queerest, the\nsolicitations of every kind densest--the others caught him fixing hard\nsome object of minor interest, fixing even at moments nothing\ndiscernible, as if he were indulging it with a truce.  When he met\nStrether's eye on such occasions he looked guilty and furtive, fell the\nnext minute into some attitude of retractation.  Our friend couldn't\nshow him the right things for fear of provoking some total\nrenouncement, and was tempted even to show him the wrong in order to\nmake him differ with triumph.  There were moments when he himself felt\nshy of professing the full sweetness of the taste of leisure, and there\nwere others when he found himself feeling as if his passages of\ninterchange with the lady at his side might fall upon the third member\nof their party very much as Mr. Burchell, at Dr. Primrose's fireside,\nwas influenced by the high flights of the visitors from London.  The\nsmallest things so arrested and amused him that he repeatedly almost\napologised--brought up afresh in explanation his plea of a previous\ngrind.  He was aware at the same time that his grind had been as\nnothing to Waymarsh's, and he repeatedly confessed that, to cover his\nfrivolity, he was doing his best for his previous virtue.  Do what he\nmight, in any case, his previous virtue was still there, and it seemed\nfairly to stare at him out of the windows of shops that were not as the\nshops of Woollett, fairly to make him want things that he shouldn't\nknow what to do with.  It was by the oddest, the least admissible of\nlaws demoralising him now; and the way it boldly took was to make him\nwant more wants. These first walks in Europe were in fact a kind of\nfinely lurid intimation of what one might find at the end of that\nprocess.  Had he come back after long years, in something already so\nlike the evening of life, only to be exposed to it?  It was at all\nevents over the shop-windows that he made, with Waymarsh, most free;\nthough it would have been easier had not the latter most sensibly\nyielded to the appeal of the merely useful trades.  He pierced with his\nsombre detachment the plate-glass of ironmongers and saddlers, while\nStrether flaunted an affinity with the dealers in stamped letter-paper\nand in smart neckties.  Strether was in fact recurrently shameless in\nthe presence of the tailors, though it was just over the heads of the\ntailors that his countryman most loftily looked.  This gave Miss\nGostrey a grasped opportunity to back up Waymarsh at his expense.  The\nweary lawyer--it was unmistakeable--had a conception of dress; but\nthat, in view of some of the features of the effect produced, was just\nwhat made the danger of insistence on it.  Strether wondered if he by\nthis time thought Miss Gostrey less fashionable or Lambert Strether\nmore so; and it appeared probable that most of the remarks exchanged\nbetween this latter pair about passers, figures, faces, personal types,\nexemplified in their degree the disposition to talk as \"society\" talked.\n\nWas what was happening to himself then, was what already HAD happened,\nreally that a woman of fashion was floating him into society and that\nan old friend deserted on the brink was watching the force of the\ncurrent?  When the woman of fashion permitted Strether--as she\npermitted him at the most--the purchase of a pair of gloves, the terms\nshe made about it, the prohibition of neckties and other items till she\nshould be able to guide him through the Burlington Arcade, were such as\nto fall upon a sensitive ear as a challenge to just imputations.  Miss\nGostrey was such a woman of fashion as could make without a symptom of\nvulgar blinking an appointment for the Burlington Arcade.  Mere\ndiscriminations about a pair of gloves could thus at any rate\nrepresent--always for such sensitive ears as were in\nquestion--possibilities of something that Strether could make a mark\nagainst only as the peril of apparent wantonness.  He had quite the\nconsciousness of his new friend, for their companion, that he might\nhave had of a Jesuit in petticoats, a representative of the recruiting\ninterests of the Catholic Church.  The Catholic Church, for\nWaymarsh-that was to say the enemy, the monster of bulging eyes and\nfar-reaching quivering groping tentacles--was exactly society, exactly\nthe multiplication of shibboleths, exactly the discrimination of types\nand tones, exactly the wicked old Rows of Chester, rank with feudalism;\nexactly in short Europe.\n\nThere was light for observation, however, in an incident that occurred\njust before they turned back to luncheon.  Waymarsh had been for a\nquarter of an hour exceptionally mute and distant, and something, or\nother--Strether was never to make out exactly what--proved, as it were,\ntoo much for him after his comrades had stood for three minutes taking\nin, while they leaned on an old balustrade that guarded the edge of the\nRow, a particularly crooked and huddled street-view.  \"He thinks us\nsophisticated, he thinks us worldly, he thinks us wicked, he thinks us\nall sorts of queer things,\" Strether reflected; for wondrous were the\nvague quantities our friend had within a couple of short days acquired\nthe habit of conveniently and conclusively lumping together. There\nseemed moreover a direct connexion between some such inference and a\nsudden grim dash taken by Waymarsh to the opposite side.  This movement\nwas startlingly sudden, and his companions at first supposed him to\nhave espied, to be pursuing, the glimpse of an acquaintance. They next\nmade out, however, that an open door had instantly received him, and\nthey then recognised him as engulfed in the establishment of a\njeweller, behind whose glittering front he was lost to view.  The fact\nhad somehow the note of a demonstration, and it left each of the others\nto show a face almost of fear.  But Miss Gostrey broke into a laugh.\n\"What's the matter with him?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether, \"he can't stand it.\"\n\n\"But can't stand what?\"\n\n\"Anything.  Europe.\"\n\n\"Then how will that jeweller help him?\"\n\nStrether seemed to make it out, from their position, between the\ninterstices of arrayed watches, of close-hung dangling gewgaws. \"You'll\nsee.\"\n\n\"Ah that's just what--if he buys anything--I'm afraid of:  that I shall\nsee something rather dreadful.\"\n\nStrether studied the finer appearances.  \"He may buy everything.\"\n\n\"Then don't you think we ought to follow him?\"\n\n\"Not for worlds.  Besides we can't.  We're paralysed.  We exchange a\nlong scared look, we publicly tremble.  The thing is, you see, we\n'realise.' He has struck for freedom.\"\n\nShe wondered but she laughed.  \"Ah what a price to pay! And I was\npreparing some for him so cheap.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" Strether went on, frankly amused now; \"don't call it that:\nthe kind of freedom you deal in is dear.\"  Then as to justify himself:\n\"Am I not in MY way trying it?  It's this.\"\n\n\"Being here, you mean, with me?\"\n\n\"Yes, and talking to you as I do.  I've known you a few hours, and I've\nknown HIM all my life; so that if the ease I thus take with you about\nhim isn't magnificent\"--and the thought of it held him a moment--\"why\nit's rather base.\"\n\n\"It's magnificent!\" said Miss Gostrey to make an end of it.  \"And you\nshould hear,\" she added, \"the ease I take--and I above all intend to\ntake--with Mr. Waymarsh.\"\n\nStrether thought.  \"About ME?  Ah that's no equivalent. The equivalent\nwould be Waymarsh's himself serving me up--his remorseless analysis of\nme.  And he'll never do that\"--he was sadly clear.  \"He'll never\nremorselessly analyse me.\" He quite held her with the authority of\nthis.  \"He'll never say a word to you about me.\"\n\nShe took it in; she did it justice; yet after an instant her reason,\nher restless irony, disposed of it.  \"Of course he won't. For what do\nyou take people, that they're able to say words about anything, able\nremorselessly to analyse?  There are not many like you and me.  It will\nbe only because he's too stupid.\"\n\nIt stirred in her friend a sceptical echo which was at the same time\nthe protest of the faith of years.  \"Waymarsh stupid?\"\n\n\"Compared with you.\"\n\nStrether had still his eyes on the jeweller's front, and he waited a\nmoment to answer.  \"He's a success of a kind that I haven't approached.\"\n\n\"Do you mean he has made money?\"\n\n\"He makes it--to my belief.  And I,\" said Strether, \"though with a back\nquite as bent, have never made anything.  I'm a perfectly equipped\nfailure.\"\n\nHe feared an instant she'd ask him if he meant he was poor; and he was\nglad she didn't, for he really didn't know to what the truth on this\nunpleasant point mightn't have prompted her.  She only, however,\nconfirmed his assertion.  \"Thank goodness you're a failure--it's why I\nso distinguish you! Anything else to-day is too hideous.  Look about\nyou--look at the successes.  Would you BE one, on your honour?  Look,\nmoreover,\" she continued, \"at me.\"\n\nFor a little accordingly their eyes met.  \"I see,\" Strether returned.\n\"You too are out of it.\"\n\n\"The superiority you discern in me,\" she concurred, \"announces my\nfutility.  If you knew,\" she sighed, \"the dreams of my youth! But our\nrealities are what has brought us together.  We're beaten brothers in\narms.\"\n\nHe smiled at her kindly enough, but he shook his head.  \"It doesn't\nalter the fact that you're expensive.  You've cost me already--!\"\n\nBut he had hung fire.  \"Cost you what?\"\n\n\"Well, my past--in one great lump.  But no matter,\" he laughed: \"I'll\npay with my last penny.\"\n\nHer attention had unfortunately now been engaged by their comrade's\nreturn, for Waymarsh met their view as he came out of his shop.  \"I\nhope he hasn't paid,\" she said, \"with HIS last; though I'm convinced he\nhas been splendid, and has been so for you.\"\n\n\"Ah no--not that!\"\n\n\"Then for me?\"\n\n\"Quite as little.\"  Waymarsh was by this time near enough to show signs\nhis friend could read, though he seemed to look almost carefully at\nnothing in particular.\n\n\"Then for himself?\"\n\n\"For nobody.  For nothing.  For freedom.\"\n\n\"But what has freedom to do with it?\"\n\nStrether's answer was indirect.  \"To be as good as you and me.  But\ndifferent.\"\n\nShe had had time to take in their companion's face; and with it, as\nsuch things were easy for her, she took in all.  \"Different--yes. But\nbetter!\"\n\nIf Waymarsh was sombre he was also indeed almost sublime.  He told them\nnothing, left his absence unexplained, and though they were convinced\nhe had made some extraordinary purchase they were never to learn its\nnature.  He only glowered grandly at the tops of the old gables.  \"It's\nthe sacred rage,\" Strether had had further time to say; and this sacred\nrage was to become between them, for convenient comprehension, the\ndescription of one of his periodical necessities.  It was Strether who\neventually contended that it did make him better than they.  But by\nthat time Miss Gostrey was convinced that she didn't want to be better\nthan Strether.\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Second\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nThose occasions on which Strether was, in association with the exile\nfrom Milrose, to see the sacred rage glimmer through would doubtless\nhave their due periodicity; but our friend had meanwhile to find names\nfor many other matters.  On no evening of his life perhaps, as he\nreflected, had he had to supply so many as on the third of his short\nstay in London; an evening spent by Miss Gostrey's side at one of the\ntheatres, to which he had found himself transported, without his own\nhand raised, on the mere expression of a conscientious wonder.  She\nknew her theatre, she knew her play, as she had triumphantly known,\nthree days running, everything else, and the moment filled to the brim,\nfor her companion, that apprehension of the interesting which, whether\nor no the interesting happened to filter through his guide, strained\nnow to its limits his brief opportunity.  Waymarsh hadn't come with\nthem; he had seen plays enough, he signified, before Strether had\njoined him--an affirmation that had its full force when his friend\nascertained by questions that he had seen two and a circus. Questions\nas to what he had seen had on him indeed an effect only less favourable\nthan questions as to what he hadn't.  He liked the former to be\ndiscriminated; but how could it be done, Strether asked of their\nconstant counsellor, without discriminating the latter?\n\nMiss Gostrey had dined with him at his hotel, face to face over a small\ntable on which the lighted candles had rose-coloured shades; and the\nrose-coloured shades and the small table and the soft fragrance of the\nlady--had anything to his mere sense ever been so soft?--were so many\ntouches in he scarce knew what positive high picture.  He had been to\nthe theatre, even to the opera, in Boston, with Mrs. Newsome, more than\nonce acting as her only escort; but there had been no little confronted\ndinner, no pink lights, no whiff of vague sweetness, as a preliminary:\none of the results of which was that at present, mildly rueful, though\nwith a sharpish accent, he actually asked himself WHY there hadn't.\nThere was much the same difference in his impression of the noticed\nstate of his companion, whose dress was \"cut down,\" as he believed the\nterm to be, in respect to shoulders and bosom, in a manner quite other\nthan Mrs. Newsome's, and who wore round her throat a broad red velvet\nband with an antique jewel--he was rather complacently sure it was\nantique--attached to it in front.  Mrs. Newsome's dress was never in\nany degree \"cut down,\" and she never wore round her throat a broad red\nvelvet band:  if she had, moreover, would it ever have served so to\ncarry on and complicate, as he now almost felt, his vision?\n\nIt would have been absurd of him to trace into ramifications the effect\nof the ribbon from which Miss Gostrey's trinket depended, had he not\nfor the hour, at the best, been so given over to uncontrolled\nperceptions.  What was it but an uncontrolled perception that his\nfriend's velvet band somehow added, in her appearance, to the value of\nevery other item--to that of her smile and of the way she carried her\nhead, to that of her complexion, of her lips, her teeth, her eyes, her\nhair?  What, certainly, had a man conscious of a man's work in the\nworld to do with red velvet bands? He wouldn't for anything have so\nexposed himself as to tell Miss Gostrey how much he liked hers, yet he\nHAD none the less not only caught himself in the act--frivolous, no\ndoubt, idiotic, and above all unexpected--of liking it:  he had in\naddition taken it as a starting-point for fresh backward, fresh\nforward, fresh lateral flights.  The manner in which Mrs. Newsome's\nthroat WAS encircled suddenly represented for him, in an alien order,\nalmost as many things as the manner in which Miss Gostrey's was.  Mrs.\nNewsome wore, at operatic hours, a black silk dress--very handsome, he\nknew it was \"handsome\"--and an ornament that his memory was able\nfurther to identify as a ruche.  He had his association indeed with the\nruche, but it was rather imperfectly romantic.  He had once said to the\nwearer--and it was as \"free\" a remark as he had ever made to her--that\nshe looked, with her ruff and other matters, like Queen Elizabeth; and\nit had after this in truth been his fancy that, as a consequence of\nthat tenderness and an acceptance of the idea, the form of this special\ntribute to the \"frill\" had grown slightly more marked.  The connexion,\nas he sat there and let his imagination roam, was to strike him as\nvaguely pathetic; but there it all was, and pathetic was doubtless in\nthe conditions the best thing it could possibly be.  It had assuredly\nexisted at any rate; for it seemed now to come over him that no\ngentleman of his age at Woollett could ever, to a lady of Mrs.\nNewsome's, which was not much less than his, have embarked on such a\nsimile.\n\nAll sorts of things in fact now seemed to come over him, comparatively\nfew of which his chronicler can hope for space to mention.  It came\nover him for instance that Miss Gostrey looked perhaps like Mary\nStuart:  Lambert Strether had a candour of fancy which could rest for\nan instant gratified in such an antithesis.  It came over him that\nnever before--no, literally never--had a lady dined with him at a\npublic place before going to the play.  The publicity of the place was\njust, in the matter, for Strether, the rare strange thing; it affected\nhim almost as the achievement of privacy might have affected a man of a\ndifferent experience.  He had married, in the far-away years, so young\nas to have missed the time natural in Boston for taking girls to the\nMuseum; and it was absolutely true of hint that--even after the close\nof the period of conscious detachment occupying the centre of his life,\nthe grey middle desert of the two deaths, that of his wife and that,\nten years later, of his boy--he had never taken any one anywhere.  It\ncame over him in especial--though the monition had, as happened,\nalready sounded, fitfully gleamed, in other forms--that the business he\nhad come out on hadn't yet been so brought home to him as by the sight\nof the people about him.  She gave him the impression, his friend, at\nfirst, more straight than he got it for himself--gave it simply by\nsaying with off-hand illumination:  \"Oh yes, they're types!\"--but after\nhe had taken it he made to the full his own use of it; both while he\nkept silence for the four acts and while he talked in the intervals. It\nwas an evening, it was a world of types, and this was a connexion above\nall in which the figures and faces in the stalls were interchangeable\nwith those on the stage.\n\nHe felt as if the play itself penetrated him with the naked elbow of\nhis neighbour, a great stripped handsome red-haired lady who conversed\nwith a gentleman on her other side in stray dissyllables which had for\nhis ear, in the oddest way in the world, so much sound that he wondered\nthey hadn't more sense; and he recognised by the same law, beyond the\nfootlights, what he was pleased to take for the very flush of English\nlife.  He had distracted drops in which he couldn't have said if it\nwere actors or auditors who were most true, and the upshot of which,\neach time, was the consciousness of new contacts.  However he viewed\nhis job it was \"types\" he should have to tackle.  Those before him and\naround him were not as the types of Woollett, where, for that matter,\nit had begun to seem to him that there must only have been the male and\nthe female. These made two exactly, even with the individual varieties.\nHere, on the other hand, apart from the personal and the sexual\nrange--which might be greater or less--a series of strong stamps had\nbeen applied, as it were, from without; stamps that his observation\nplayed with as, before a glass case on a table, it might have passed\nfrom medal to medal and from copper to gold.  It befell that in the\ndrama precisely there was a bad woman in a yellow frock who made a\npleasant weak good-looking young man in perpetual evening dress do the\nmost dreadful things.  Strether felt himself on the whole not afraid of\nthe yellow frock, but he was vaguely anxious over a certain kindness\ninto which he found himself drifting for its victim.  He hadn't come\nout, he reminded himself, to be too kind, or indeed to be kind at all,\nto Chadwick Newsome.  Would Chad also be in perpetual evening dress?\nHe somehow rather hoped it--it seemed so to add to THIS young man's\ngeneral amenability; though he wondered too if, to fight him with his\nown weapons, he himself (a thought almost startling) would have\nlikewise to be.  This young man furthermore would have been much more\neasy to handle--at least for HIM--than appeared probable in respect to\nChad.\n\nIt came up for him with Miss Gostrey that there were things of which\nshe would really perhaps after all have heard, and she admitted when a\nlittle pressed that she was never quite sure of what she heard as\ndistinguished from things such as, on occasions like the present, she\nonly extravagantly guessed.  \"I seem with this freedom, you see, to\nhave guessed Mr. Chad.  He's a young man on whose head high hopes are\nplaced at Woollett; a young man a wicked woman has got hold of and whom\nhis family over there have sent you out to rescue.  You've accepted the\nmission of separating him from the wicked woman.  Are you quite sure\nshe's very bad for him?\"\n\nSomething in his manner showed it as quite pulling him up.  \"Of course\nwe are.  Wouldn't YOU be?\"\n\n\"Oh I don't know.  One never does--does one?--beforehand.  One can only\njudge on the facts.  Yours are quite new to me; I'm really not in the\nleast, as you see, in possession of them:  so it will be awfully\ninteresting to have them from you.  If you're satisfied, that's all\nthat's required.  I mean if you're sure you ARE sure: sure it won't do.\"\n\n\"That he should lead such a life?  Rather!\"\n\n\"Oh but I don't know, you see, about his life; you've not told me about\nhis life.  She may be charming--his life!\"\n\n\"Charming?\"--Strether stared before him.  \"She's base, venal-out of the\nstreets.\"\n\n\"I see.  And HE--?\"\n\n\"Chad, wretched boy?\"\n\n\"Of what type and temper is he?\" she went on as Strether had lapsed.\n\n\"Well--the obstinate.\"  It was as if for a moment he had been going to\nsay more and had then controlled himself.\n\nThat was scarce what she wished.  \"Do you like him?\"\n\nThis time he was prompt.  \"No.  How CAN I?\"\n\n\"Do you mean because of your being so saddled with him?\"\n\n\"I'm thinking of his mother,\" said Strether after a moment.  \"He has\ndarkened her admirable life.\"  He spoke with austerity.  \"He has\nworried her half to death.\"\n\n\"Oh that's of course odious.\"  She had a pause as if for renewed\nemphasis of this truth, but it ended on another note.  \"Is her life\nvery admirable?\"\n\n\"Extraordinarily.\"\n\nThere was so much in the tone that Miss Gostrey had to devote another\npause to the appreciation of it.  \"And has he only HER?  I don't mean\nthe bad woman in Paris,\" she quickly added--\"for I assure you I\nshouldn't even at the best be disposed to allow him more than one.  But\nhas he only his mother?\"\n\n\"He has also a sister, older than himself and married; and they're both\nremarkably fine women.\"\n\n\"Very handsome, you mean?\"\n\nThis promptitude--almost, as he might have thought, this precipitation,\ngave him a brief drop; but he came up again. \"Mrs. Newsome, I think, is\nhandsome, though she's not of course, with a son of twenty-eight and a\ndaughter of thirty, in her very first youth.  She married, however,\nextremely young.\"\n\n\"And is wonderful,\" Miss Gostrey asked, \"for her age?\"\n\nStrether seemed to feel with a certain disquiet the pressure of it. \"I\ndon't say she's wonderful.  Or rather,\" he went on the next moment, \"I\ndo say it.  It's exactly what she IS--wonderful.  But I wasn't thinking\nof her appearance,\" he explained--\"striking as that doubtless is.  I\nwas thinking--well, of many other things.\"  He seemed to look at these\nas if to mention some of them; then took, pulling himself up, another\nturn.  \"About Mrs. Pocock people may differ.\"\n\n\"Is that the daughter's name--'Pocock'?\"\n\n\"That's the daughter's name,\" Strether sturdily confessed.\n\n\"And people may differ, you mean, about HER beauty?\"\n\n\"About everything.\"\n\n\"But YOU admire her?\"\n\nHe gave his friend a glance as to show how he could bear this \"I'm\nperhaps a little afraid of her.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Miss Gostrey, \"I see her from here! You may say then I see\nvery fast and very far, but I've already shown you I do.  The young man\nand the two ladies,\" she went on, \"are at any rate all the family?\"\n\n\"Quite all.  His father has been dead ten years, and there's no\nbrother, nor any other sister.  They'd do,\" said Strether, \"anything in\nthe world for him.\"\n\n\"And you'd do anything in the world for THEM?\"\n\nHe shifted again; she had made it perhaps just a shade too affirmative\nfor his nerves.  \"Oh I don't know!\"\n\n\"You'd do at any rate this, and the 'anything' they'd do is represented\nby their MAKING you do it.\"\n\n\"Ah they couldn't have come--either of them.  They're very busy people\nand Mrs. Newsome in particular has a large full life.  She's moreover\nhighly nervous--and not at all strong.\"\n\n\"You mean she's an American invalid?\"\n\nHe carefully distinguished.  \"There's nothing she likes less than to be\ncalled one, but she would consent to be one of those things, I think,\"\nhe laughed, \"if it were the only way to be the other.\"\n\n\"Consent to be an American in order to be an invalid?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Strether, \"the other way round.  She's at any rate delicate\nsensitive high-strung.  She puts so much of herself into everything--\"\n\nAh Maria knew these things!  \"That she has nothing left for anything\nelse?  Of course she hasn't.  To whom do you say it?  High-strung?\nDon't I spend my life, for them, jamming down the pedal?  I see\nmoreover how it has told on you.\"\n\nStrether took this more lightly.  \"Oh I jam down the pedal too!\"\n\n\"Well,\" she lucidly returned, \"we must from this moment bear on it\ntogether with all our might.\"  And she forged ahead.  \"Have they money?\"\n\nBut it was as if, while her energetic image still held him, her enquiry\nfell short.  \"Mrs. Newsome,\" he wished further to explain, \"hasn't\nmoreover your courage on the question of contact.  If she had come it\nwould have been to see the person herself.\"\n\n\"The woman?  Ah but that's courage.\"\n\n\"No--it's exaltation, which is a very different thing.  Courage,\" he,\nhowever, accommodatingly threw out, \"is what YOU have.\"\n\nShe shook her head.  \"You say that only to patch me up--to cover the\nnudity of my want of exaltation.  I've neither the one nor the other.\nI've mere battered indifference.  I see that what you mean,\" Miss\nGostrey pursued, \"is that if your friend HAD come she would take great\nviews, and the great views, to put it simply, would be too much for\nher.\"\n\nStrether looked amused at her notion of the simple, but he adopted her\nformula.  \"Everything's too much for her.\"\n\n\"Ah then such a service as this of yours--\"\n\n\"Is more for her than anything else?  Yes--far more.  But so long as it\nisn't too much for ME--!\"\n\n\"Her condition doesn't matter?  Surely not; we leave her condition out;\nwe take it, that is, for granted.  I see it, her condition, as behind\nand beneath you; yet at the same time I see it as bearing you up.\"\n\n\"Oh it does bear me up!\" Strether laughed.\n\n\"Well then as yours bears ME nothing more's needed.\"  With which she\nput again her question.  \"Has Mrs. Newsome money?\"\n\nThis time he heeded.  \"Oh plenty.  That's the root of the evil. There's\nmoney, to very large amounts, in the concern.  Chad has had the free\nuse of a great deal.  But if he'll pull himself together and come home,\nall the same, he'll find his account in it.\"\n\nShe had listened with all her interest.  \"And I hope to goodness you'll\nfind yours!\"\n\n\"He'll take up his definite material reward,\" said Strether without\nacknowledgement of this.  \"He's at the parting of the ways.  He can\ncome into the business now--he can't come later.\"\n\n\"Is there a business?\"\n\n\"Lord, yes--a big brave bouncing business.  A roaring trade.\"\n\n\"A great shop?\"\n\n\"Yes--a workshop; a great production, a great industry.  The concern's\na manufacture--and a manufacture that, if it's only properly looked\nafter, may well be on the way to become a monopoly. It's a little thing\nthey make--make better, it appears, than other people can, or than\nother people, at any rate, do.  Mr. Newsome, being a man of ideas, at\nleast in that particular line,\" Strether explained, \"put them on it\nwith great effect, and gave the place altogether, in his time, an\nimmense lift.\"\n\n\"It's a place in itself?\"\n\n\"Well, quite a number of buildings; almost a little industrial colony.\nBut above all it's a thing.  The article produced.\"\n\n\"And what IS the article produced?\"\n\nStrether looked about him as in slight reluctance to say; then the\ncurtain, which he saw about to rise, came to his aid.  \"I'll tell you\nnext time.\"  But when the next time came he only said he'd tell her\nlater on--after they should have left the theatre; for she had\nimmediately reverted to their topic, and even for himself the picture\nof the stage was now overlaid with another image.  His postponements,\nhowever, made her wonder--wonder if the article referred to were\nanything bad.  And she explained that she meant improper or ridiculous\nor wrong.  But Strether, so far as that went, could satisfy her.\n\"Unmentionable?  Oh no, we constantly talk of it; we are quite familiar\nand brazen about it.  Only, as a small, trivial, rather ridiculous\nobject of the commonest domestic use, it's just wanting in-what shall I\nsay?  Well, dignity, or the least approach to distinction.  Right here\ntherefore, with everything about us so grand--!\" In short he shrank.\n\n\"It's a false note?\"\n\n\"Sadly.  It's vulgar.\"\n\n\"But surely not vulgarer than this.\"  Then on his wondering as she\nherself had done:  \"Than everything about us.\"  She seemed a trifle\nirritated.  \"What do you take this for?\"\n\n\"Why for--comparatively--divine!\"\n\n\"This dreadful London theatre?  It's impossible, if you really want to\nknow.\"\n\n\"Oh then,\" laughed Strether, \"I DON'T really want to know!\"\n\nIt made between them a pause, which she, however, still fascinated by\nthe mystery of the production at Woollett, presently broke. \"'Rather\nridiculous'?  Clothes-pins?  Saleratus?  Shoe-polish?\"\n\nIt brought him round.  \"No--you don't even 'burn.'  I don't think, you\nknow, you'll guess it.\"\n\n\"How then can I judge how vulgar it is?\"\n\n\"You'll judge when I do tell you\"--and he persuaded her to patience.\nBut it may even now frankly be mentioned that he in the sequel never\nWAS to tell her.  He actually never did so, and it moreover oddly\noccurred that by the law, within her, of the incalculable, her desire\nfor the information dropped and her attitude to the question converted\nitself into a positive cultivation of ignorance.  In ignorance she\ncould humour her fancy, and that proved a useful freedom.  She could\ntreat the little nameless object as indeed unnameable--she could make\ntheir abstention enormously definite.  There might indeed have been for\nStrether the portent of this in what she next said.\n\n\"Is it perhaps then because it's so bad--because your industry as you\ncall it, IS so vulgar--that Mr. Chad won't come back?  Does he feel the\ntaint?  Is he staying away not to be mixed up in it?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Strether laughed, \"it wouldn't appear--would it?--that he feels\n'taints'! He's glad enough of the money from it, and the money's his\nwhole basis.  There's appreciation in that--I mean as to the allowance\nhis mother has hitherto made him.  She has of course the resource of\ncutting this allowance off; but even then he has unfortunately, and on\nno small scale, his independent supply--money left him by his\ngrandfather, her own father.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't the fact you mention then,\" Miss Gostrey asked, \"make it just\nmore easy for him to be particular?  Isn't he conceivable as fastidious\nabout the source--the apparent and public source--of his income?\"\n\nStrether was able quite good-humouredly to entertain the proposition.\n\"The source of his grandfather's wealth--and thereby of his own share\nin it--was not particularly noble.\"\n\n\"And what source was it?\"\n\nStrether cast about.  \"Well--practices.\"\n\n\"In business?  Infamies?  He was an old swindler?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he said with more emphasis than spirit, \"I shan't describe HIM\nnor narrate his exploits.\"\n\n\"Lord, what abysses! And the late Mr. Newsome then?\"\n\n\"Well, what about him?\"\n\n\"Was he like the grandfather?\"\n\n\"No--he was on the other side of the house.  And he was different.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey kept it up.  \"Better?\"\n\nHer friend for a moment hung fire.  \"No.\"\n\nHer comment on his hesitation was scarce the less marked for being\nmute.  \"Thank you.  NOW don't you see,\" she went on, \"why the boy\ndoesn't come home?  He's drowning his shame.\"\n\n\"His shame?  What shame?\"\n\n\"What shame?  Comment donc?  THE shame.\"\n\n\"But where and when,\" Strether asked, \"is 'THE shame'--where is any\nshame--to-day?  The men I speak of--they did as every one does; and\n(besides being ancient history) it was all a matter of appreciation.\"\n\nShe showed how she understood.  \"Mrs. Newsome has appreciated?\"\n\n\"Ah I can't speak for HER!\"\n\n\"In the midst of such doings--and, as I understand you, profiting by\nthem, she at least has remained exquisite?\"\n\n\"Oh I can't talk of her!\" Strether said.\n\n\"I thought she was just what you COULD talk of.  You DON'T trust me,\"\nMiss Gostrey after a moment declared.\n\nIt had its effect.  \"Well, her money is spent, her life conceived and\ncarried on with a large beneficence--\"\n\n\"That's a kind of expiation of wrongs?  Gracious,\" she added before he\ncould speak, \"how intensely you make me see her!\"\n\n\"If you see her,\" Strether dropped, \"it's all that's necessary.\"\n\nShe really seemed to have her.  \"I feel that.  She IS, in spite of\neverything, handsome.\"\n\nThis at least enlivened him.  \"What do you mean by everything?\"\n\n\"Well, I mean YOU.\"  With which she had one of her swift changes of\nground.  \"You say the concern needs looking after;  but doesn't Mrs.\nNewsome look after it?\"\n\n\"So far as possible.  She's wonderfully able, but it's not her affair,\nand her life's a good deal overcharged.  She has many, many things.\"\n\n\"And you also?\"\n\n\"Oh yes--I've many too, if you will.\"\n\n\"I see.  But what I mean is,\" Miss Gostrey amended, \"do you also look\nafter the business?\"\n\n\"Oh no, I don't touch the business.\"\n\n\"Only everything else?\"\n\n\"Well, yes--some things.\"\n\n\"As for instance--?\"\n\nStrether obligingly thought.  \"Well, the Review.\"\n\n\"The Review?--you have a Review?\"\n\n\"Certainly.  Woollett has a Review--which Mrs. Newsome, for the most\npart, magnificently pays for and which I, not at all magnificently,\nedit.  My name's on the cover,\" Strether pursued, \"and I'm really\nrather disappointed and hurt that you seem never to have heard of it.\"\n\nShe neglected for a moment this grievance.  \"And what kind of a Review\nis it?\"\n\nHis serenity was now completely restored.  \"Well, it's green.\"\n\n\"Do you mean in political colour as they say here--in thought?\"\n\n\"No; I mean the cover's green--of the most lovely shade.\"\n\n\"And with Mrs. Newsome's name on it too?\"\n\nHe waited a little.  \"Oh as for that you must judge if she peeps out.\nShe's behind the whole thing; but she's of a delicacy and a\ndiscretion--!\"\n\nMiss Gostrey took it all.  \"I'm sure.  She WOULD be.  I don't underrate\nher.  She must be rather a swell.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, she's rather a swell!\"\n\n\"A Woollett swell--bon! I like the idea of a Woollett swell.  And you\nmust be rather one too, to be so mixed up with her.\"\n\n\"Ah no,\" said Strether, \"that's not the way it works.\"\n\nBut she had already taken him up.  \"The way it works--you needn't tell\nme!--is of course that you efface yourself.\"\n\n\"With my name on the cover?\" he lucidly objected.\n\n\"Ah but you don't put it on for yourself.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon--that's exactly what I do put it on for.  It's\nexactly the thing that I'm reduced to doing for myself.  It seems to\nrescue a little, you see, from the wreck of hopes and ambitions, the\nrefuse-heap of disappointments and failures,  my one presentable little\nscrap of an identity.\"\n\nOn this she looked at him as to say many things, but what she at last\nsimply said was:  \"She likes to see it there.  You're the bigger swell\nof the two,\" she immediately continued,  \"because you think you're not\none.  She thinks she IS one.  However,\" Miss Gostrey added, \"she\nthinks you're one too.  You're at all events the biggest she can get\nhold of.\"  She embroidered, she abounded. \"I don't say it to interfere\nbetween you, but on the day she gets hold of a bigger one--!\"  Strether\nhad thrown back his head as in silent mirth over something that struck\nhim in her audacity or felicity, and her flight meanwhile was already\nhigher.  \"Therefore close with her--!\"\n\n\"Close with her?\" he asked as she seemed to hang poised.\n\n\"Before you lose your chance.\"\n\nTheir eyes met over it.  \"What do you mean by closing?\"\n\n\"And what do I mean by your chance?  I'll tell you when you tell me all\nthe things YOU don't.  Is it her GREATEST fad?\" she briskly pursued.\n\n\"The Review?\"  He seemed to wonder how he could best describe it. This\nresulted however but in a sketch.  \"It's her tribute to the ideal.\"\n\n\"I see.  You go in for tremendous things.\"\n\n\"We go in for the unpopular side--that is so far as we dare.\"\n\n\"And how far DO you dare?\"\n\n\"Well, she very far.  I much less.  I don't begin to have her faith.\nShe provides,\" said Strether, \"three fourths of that.  And she\nprovides, as I've confided to you, ALL the money.\"\n\nIt evoked somehow a vision of gold that held for a little Miss\nGostrey's eyes, and she looked as if she heard the bright dollars\nshovelled in.  \"I hope then you make a good thing--\"\n\n\"I NEVER made a good thing!\" he at once returned.\n\nShe just waited.  \"Don't you call it a good thing to be loved?\"\n\n\"Oh we're not loved.  We're not even hated.  We're only just sweetly\nignored.\"\n\nShe had another pause.  \"You don't trust me!\" she once more repeated.\n\n\"Don't I when I lift the last veil?--tell you the very secret of the\nprison-house?\"\n\nAgain she met his eyes, but to the result that after an instant her own\nturned away with impatience.  \"You don't sell?  Oh I'm glad of THAT!\"\nAfter which however, and before he could protest, she was off again.\n\"She's just a MORAL swell.\"\n\nHe accepted gaily enough the definition.  \"Yes--I really think that\ndescribes her.\"\n\nBut it had for his friend the oddest connexion.  \"How does she do her\nhair?\"\n\nHe laughed out.  \"Beautifully!\"\n\n\"Ah that doesn't tell me.  However, it doesn't matter--I know.  It's\ntremendously neat--a real reproach; quite remarkably thick and without,\nas yet, a single strand of white.  There!\"\n\nHe blushed for her realism, but gaped at her truth.  \"You're the very\ndeuce.\"\n\n\"What else SHOULD I be?  It was as the very deuce I pounced on you. But\ndon't let it trouble you, for everything but the very deuce--at our\nage--is a bore and a delusion, and even he himself, after all, but half\na joy.\"  With which, on a single sweep of her wing, she resumed.  \"You\nassist her to expiate--which is rather hard when you've yourself not\nsinned.\"\n\n\"It's she who hasn't sinned,\" Strether replied.  \"I've sinned the most.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Miss Gostrey cynically laughed, \"what a picture of HER! Have you\nrobbed the widow and the orphan?\"\n\n\"I've sinned enough,\" said Strether.\n\n\"Enough for whom?  Enough for what?\"\n\n\"Well, to be where I am.\"\n\n\"Thank you!\" They were disturbed at this moment by the passage between\ntheir knees and the back of the seats before them of a gentleman who\nhad been absent during a part of the performance and who now returned\nfor the close; but the interruption left Miss Gostrey time, before the\nsubsequent hush, to express as a sharp finality her sense of the moral\nof all their talk.  \"I knew you had something up your sleeve!\"  This\nfinality, however, left them in its turn, at the end of the play, as\ndisposed to hang back as if they had still much to say; so that they\neasily agreed to let every one go before them--they found an interest\nin waiting.  They made out from the lobby that the night had turned to\nrain; yet Miss Gostrey let her friend know that he wasn't to see her\nhome.  He was simply to put her, by herself, into a four-wheeler; she\nliked so in London, of wet nights after wild pleasures, thinking things\nover, on the return, in lonely four-wheelers.  This was her great time,\nshe intimated, for pulling herself together.  The delays caused by the\nweather, the struggle for vehicles at the door, gave them occasion to\nsubside on a divan at the back of the vestibule and just beyond the\nreach of the fresh damp gusts from the street.  Here Strether's comrade\nresumed that free handling of the subject to which his own imagination\nof it already owed so much.  \"Does your young friend in Paris like you?\"\n\nIt had almost, after the interval, startled him.  \"Oh I hope not! Why\nSHOULD he?\"\n\n\"Why shouldn't he?\" Miss Gostrey asked.  \"That you're coming down on\nhim need have nothing to do with it.\"\n\n\"You see more in it,\" he presently returned, \"than I.\"\n\n\"Of course I see you in it.\"\n\n\"Well then you see more in 'me'!\"\n\n\"Than you see in yourself?  Very likely.  That's always one's right.\nWhat I was thinking of,\" she explained, \"is the possible particular\neffect on him of his milieu.\"\n\n\"Oh his milieu--!\"  Strether really felt he could imagine it better now\nthan three hours before.\n\n\"Do you mean it can only have been so lowering?\"\n\n\"Why that's my very starting-point.\"\n\n\"Yes, but you start so far back.  What do his letters say?\"\n\n\"Nothing.  He practically ignores us--or spares us.  He doesn't write.\"\n\n\"I see.  But there are all the same,\" she went on, \"two quite distinct\nthings that--given the wonderful place he's in--may have happened to\nhim.  One is that he may have got brutalised.  The other is that he may\nhave got refined.\"\n\nStrether stared--this WAS a novelty.  \"Refined?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she said quietly, \"there ARE refinements.\"\n\nThe way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh. \"YOU\nhave them!\"\n\n\"As one of the signs,\" she continued in the same tone, \"they constitute\nperhaps the worst.\"\n\nHe thought it over and his gravity returned.  \"Is it a refinement not\nto answer his mother's letters?\"\n\nShe appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out.  \"Oh I should\nsay the greatest of all.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether, \"I'M quite content to let it, as one of the\nsigns, pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do what he\nlikes with me.\"\n\nThis appeared to strike her.  \"How do you know it?\"\n\n\"Oh I'm sure of it.  I feel it in my bones.\"\n\n\"Feel he CAN do it?\"\n\n\"Feel that he believes he can.  It may come to the same thing!\"\nStrether laughed.\n\nShe wouldn't, however, have this.  \"Nothing for you will ever come to\nthe same thing as anything else.\"  And she understood what she meant,\nit seemed, sufficiently to go straight on.  \"You say that if he does\nbreak he'll come in for things at home?\"\n\n\"Quite positively.  He'll come in for a particular chance--a chance\nthat any properly constituted young man would jump at.  The business\nhas so developed that an opening scarcely apparent three years ago, but\nwhich his father's will took account of as in certain conditions\npossible and which, under that will, attaches to Chad's availing\nhimself of it a large contingent advantage--this opening, the\nconditions having come about, now simply awaits him.  His mother has\nkept it for him, holding out against strong pressure, till the last\npossible moment.  It requires, naturally, as it carries with it a\nhandsome 'part,' a large share in profits, his being on the spot and\nmaking a big effort for a big result. That's what I mean by his chance.\nIf he misses it he comes in, as you say, for nothing.  And to see that\nhe doesn't miss it is, in a word, what I've come out for.\"\n\nShe let it all sink in.  \"What you've come out for then is simply to\nrender him an immense service.\"\n\nWell, poor Strether was willing to take it so.  \"Ah if you like.\"\n\n\"He stands, as they say, if you succeed with him, to gain--\"\n\n\"Oh a lot of advantages.\"  Strether had them clearly at his fingers'\nends.\n\n\"By which you mean of course a lot of money.\"\n\n\"Well, not only.  I'm acting with a sense for him of other things too.\nConsideration and comfort and security--the general safety of being\nanchored by a strong chain.  He wants, as I see him, to be protected.\nProtected I mean from life.\"\n\n\"Ah voila!\"--her thought fitted with a click.  \"From life.  What you\nREALLY want to get him home for is to marry him.\"\n\n\"Well, that's about the size of it.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" she said, \"it's rudimentary.  But to any one in\nparticular?\"\n\nHe smiled at this, looking a little more conscious.  \"You get\neverything out.\"\n\nFor a moment again their eyes met.  \"You put everything in!\"\n\nHe acknowledged the tribute by telling her.  \"To Mamie Pocock.\"\n\nShe wondered; then gravely, even exquisitely, as if to make the oddity\nalso fit:  \"His own niece?\"\n\n\"Oh you must yourself find a name for the relation.  His\nbrother-in-law's sister.  Mrs. Jim's sister-in-law.\"\n\nIt seemed to have on Miss Gostrey a certain hardening effect.  \"And who\nin the world's Mrs. Jim?\"\n\n\"Chad's sister--who was Sarah Newsome.  She's married--didn't I mention\nit?--to Jim Pocock.\"\n\n\"Ah yes,\" she tacitly replied; but he had mentioned things--! Then,\nhowever, with all the sound it could have, \"Who in the world's Jim\nPocock?\" she asked.\n\n\"Why Sally's husband.  That's the only way we distinguish people at\nWoollett,\" he good-humoredly explained.\n\n\"And is it a great distinction--being Sally's husband?\"\n\nHe considered.  \"I think there can be scarcely a greater--unless it may\nbecome one, in the future, to be Chad's wife.\"\n\n\"Then how do they distinguish YOU?\"\n\n\"They DON'T--except, as I've told you, by the green cover.\"\n\nOnce more their eyes met on it, and she held him an instant.  \"The\ngreen cover won't--nor will ANY cover--avail you with ME.  You're of a\ndepth of duplicity!\"  Still, she could in her own large grasp of the\nreal condone it.  \"Is Mamie a great parti?\"\n\n\"Oh the greatest we have--our prettiest brightest girl.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey seemed to fix the poor child.  \"I know what they CAN be.\nAnd with money?\"\n\n\"Not perhaps with a great deal of that--but with so much of everything\nelse that we don't miss it.  We DON'T miss money much, you know,\"\nStrether added, \"in general, in America, in pretty girls.\"\n\n\"No,\" she conceded; \"but I know also what you do sometimes miss. And do\nyou,\" she asked, \"yourself admire her?\"\n\nIt was a question, he indicated, that there might be several ways of\ntaking; but he decided after an instant for the humorous. \"Haven't I\nsufficiently showed you how I admire ANY pretty girl?\"\n\nHer interest in his problem was by this time such that it scarce left\nher freedom, and she kept close to the facts.  \"I supposed that at\nWoollett you wanted them--what shall I call it?--blameless.  I mean\nyour young men for your pretty girls.\"\n\n\"So did I!\" Strether confessed.  \"But you strike there a curious\nfact--the fact that Woollett too accommodates itself to the spirit of\nthe age and the increasing mildness of manners.  Everything changes,\nand I hold that our situation precisely marks a date.  We SHOULD prefer\nthem blameless, but we have to make the best of them as we find them.\nSince the spirit of the age and the increasing mildness send them so\nmuch more to Paris--\"\n\n\"You've to take them back as they come.  When they DO come.  Bon!\" Once\nmore she embraced it all, but she had a moment of thought. \"Poor Chad!\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Strether cheerfully \"Mamie will save him!\"\n\nShe was looking away, still in her vision, and she spoke with\nimpatience and almost as if he hadn't understood her.  \"YOU'LL save\nhim.  That's who'll save him.\"\n\n\"Oh but with Mamie's aid.  Unless indeed you mean,\" he added, \"that I\nshall effect so much more with yours!\"\n\nIt made her at last again look at him.  \"You'll do more--as you're so\nmuch better--than all of us put together.\"\n\n\"I think I'm only better since I've known YOU!\" Strether bravely\nreturned.\n\nThe depletion of the place, the shrinkage of the crowd and now\ncomparatively quiet withdrawal of its last elements had already brought\nthem nearer the door and put them in relation with a messenger of whom\nhe bespoke Miss Gostrey's cab.  But this left them a few minutes more,\nwhich she was clearly in no mood not to use.  \"You've spoken to me of\nwhat--by your success--Mr. Chad stands to gain.  But you've not spoken\nto me of what you do.\"\n\n\"Oh I've nothing more to gain,\" said Strether very simply.\n\nShe took it as even quite too simple.  \"You mean you've got it all\n'down'?  You've been paid in advance?\"\n\n\"Ah don't talk about payment!\" he groaned.\n\nSomething in the tone of it pulled her up, but as their messenger still\ndelayed she had another chance and she put it in another way. \"What--by\nfailure--do you stand to lose?\"\n\nHe still, however, wouldn't have it.  \"Nothing!\" he exclaimed, and on\nthe messenger's at this instant reappearing he was able to sink the\nsubject in their responsive advance.  When, a few steps up the street,\nunder a lamp, he had put her into her four-wheeler and she had asked\nhim if the man had called for him no second conveyance, he replied\nbefore the door was closed.  \"You won't take me with you?\"\n\n\"Not for the world.\"\n\n\"Then I shall walk.\"\n\n\"In the rain?\"\n\n\"I like the rain,\" said Strether.  \"Good-night!\"\n\nShe kept him a moment, while his hand was on the door, by not\nanswering; after which she answered by repeating her question. \"What do\nyou stand to lose?\"\n\nWhy the question now affected him as other he couldn't have said; he\ncould only this time meet it otherwise.  \"Everything.\"\n\n\"So I thought.  Then you shall succeed.  And to that end I'm yours--\"\n\n\"Ah, dear lady!\" he kindly breathed.\n\n\"Till death!\" said Maria Gostrey.  \"Good-night.\"\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nStrether called, his second morning in Paris, on the bankers of the Rue\nScribe to whom his letter of credit was addressed, and he made this\nvisit attended by Waymarsh, in whose company he had crossed from London\ntwo days before.  They had hastened to the Rue Scribe on the morrow of\ntheir arrival, but Strether had not then found the letters the hope of\nwhich prompted this errand.  He had had as yet none at all; hadn't\nexpected them in London, but had counted on several in Paris, and,\ndisconcerted now, had presently strolled back to the Boulevard with a\nsense of injury that he felt himself taking for as good a start as any\nother.  It would serve, this spur to his spirit, he reflected, as,\npausing at the top of the street, he looked up and down the great\nforeign avenue, it would serve to begin business with.  His idea was to\nbegin business immediately, and it did much for him the rest of his day\nthat the beginning of business awaited him.  He did little else till\nnight but ask himself what he should do if he hadn't fortunately had so\nmuch to do; but he put himself the question in many different\nsituations and connexions.  What carried him hither and yon was an\nadmirable theory that nothing he could do wouldn't be in some manner\nrelated to what he fundamentally had on hand, or WOULD be--should he\nhappen to have a scruple--wasted for it.  He did happen to have a\nscruple--a scruple about taking no definite step till he should get\nletters; but this reasoning carried it off.  A single day to feel his\nfeet--he had felt them as yet only at Chester and in London--was he\ncould consider, none too much; and having, as he had often privately\nexpressed it, Paris to reckon with, he threw these hours of freshness\nconsciously into the reckoning.  They made it continually greater, but\nthat was what it had best be if it was to be anything at all, and he\ngave himself up till far into the evening, at the theatre and on the\nreturn, after the theatre, along the bright congested Boulevard, to\nfeeling it grow.  Waymarsh had accompanied him this time to the play,\nand the two men had walked together, as a first stage, from the Gymnase\nto the Cafe Riche, into the crowded \"terrace\" of which\nestablishment--the night, or rather the morning, for midnight had\nstruck, being bland and populous--they had wedged themselves for\nrefreshment. Waymarsh, as a result of some discussion with his friend,\nhad made a marked virtue of his having now let himself go; and there\nhad been elements of impression in their half-hour over their watered\nbeer-glasses that gave him his occasion for conveying that he held this\ncompromise with his stiffer self to have become extreme.  He conveyed\nit--for it was still, after all, his stiffer self who gloomed out of\nthe glare of the terrace--in solemn silence; and there was indeed a\ngreat deal of critical silence, every way, between the companions, even\ntill they gained the Place de l'Opera, as to the character of their\nnocturnal progress.\n\nThis morning there WERE letters--letters which had reached London,\napparently all together, the day of Strether's journey, and had taken\ntheir time to follow him; so that, after a controlled impulse to go\ninto them in the reception-room of the bank, which, reminding him of\nthe post-office at Woollett, affected him as the abutment of some\ntransatlantic bridge, he slipped them into the pocket of his loose grey\novercoat with a sense of the felicity of carrying them off.  Waymarsh,\nwho had had letters yesterday, had had them again to-day, and Waymarsh\nsuggested in this particular no controlled impulses.  The last one he\nwas at all events likely to be observed to struggle with was clearly\nthat of bringing to a premature close any visit to the Rue Scribe.\nStrether had left him there yesterday; he wanted to see the papers, and\nhe had spent, by what his friend could make out, a succession of hours\nwith the papers.  He spoke of the establishment, with emphasis, as a\npost of superior observation; just as he spoke generally of his actual\ndamnable doom as a device for hiding from him what was going on. Europe\nwas best described, to his mind, as an elaborate engine for\ndissociating the confined American from that indispensable knowledge,\nand was accordingly only rendered bearable by these occasional stations\nof relief, traps for the arrest of wandering western airs.  Strether,\non his side, set himself to walk again--he had his relief in his\npocket; and indeed, much as he had desired his budget, the growth of\nrestlessness might have been marked in him from the moment he had\nassured himself of the superscription of most of the missives it\ncontained.  This restlessness became therefore his temporary law; he\nknew he should recognise as soon as see it the best place of all for\nsettling down with his chief correspondent.  He had for the next hour\nan accidental air of looking for it in the windows of shops; he came\ndown the Rue de la Paix in the sun and, passing across the Tuileries\nand the river, indulged more than once--as if on finding himself\ndetermined--in a sudden pause before the book-stalls of the opposite\nquay.  In the garden of the Tuileries he had lingered, on two or three\nspots, to look; it was as if the wonderful Paris spring had stayed him\nas he roamed.  The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes--in a\nsoft breeze and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the\ngarden-floor, of bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong\nboxes, in the type of ancient thrifty persons basking betimes where\nterrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism\nof humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references of a\nstraight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged\nsoldier.  He watched little brisk figures, figures whose movement was\nas the tick of the great Paris clock, take their smooth diagonal from\npoint to point; the air had a taste as of something mixed with art,\nsomething that presented nature as a white-capped master-chef.  The\npalace was gone, Strether remembered the palace; and when he gazed into\nthe irremediable void of its site the historic sense in him might have\nbeen freely at play--the play under which in Paris indeed it so often\nwinces like a touched nerve.  He filled out spaces with dim symbols of\nscenes; he caught the gleam of white statues at the base of which, with\nhis letters out, he could tilt back a straw-bottomed chair.  But his\ndrift was, for reasons, to the other side, and it floated him unspent\nup the Rue de Seine and as far as the Luxembourg.  In the Luxembourg\nGardens he pulled up; here at last he found his nook, and here, on a\npenny chair from which terraces, alleys, vistas, fountains, little\ntrees in green tubs, little women in white caps and shrill little girls\nat play all sunnily \"composed\" together, he passed an hour in which the\ncup of his impressions seemed truly to overflow. But a week had elapsed\nsince he quitted the ship, and there were more things in his mind than\nso few days could account for.  More than once, during the time, he had\nregarded himself as admonished; but the admonition this morning was\nformidably sharp.  It took as it hadn't done yet the form of a\nquestion--the question of what he was doing with such an extraordinary\nsense of escape.  This sense was sharpest after he had read his\nletters, but that was also precisely why the question pressed.  Four of\nthe letters were from Mrs. Newsome and none of them short; she had lost\nno time, had followed on his heels while he moved, so expressing\nherself that he now could measure the probable frequency with which he\nshould hear.  They would arrive, it would seem, her communications, at\nthe rate of several a week; he should be able to count, it might even\nprove, on more than one by each mail.  If he had begun yesterday with a\nsmall grievance he had therefore an opportunity to begin to-day with\nits opposite.  He read the letters successively and slowly, putting\nothers back into his pocket but keeping these for a long time\nafterwards gathered in his lap.  He held them there, lost in thought,\nas if to prolong the presence of what they gave him; or as if at the\nleast to assure them their part in the constitution of some lucidity.\nHis friend wrote admirably, and her tone was even more in her style\nthan in her voice--he might almost, for the hour, have had to come this\ndistance to get its full carrying quality; yet the plentitude of his\nconsciousness of difference consorted perfectly with the deepened\nintensity of the connexion.  It was the difference, the difference of\nbeing just where he was and AS he was, that formed the escape--this\ndifference was so much greater than he had dreamed it would be; and\nwhat he finally sat there turning over was the strange logic of his\nfinding himself so free.  He felt it in a manner his duty to think out\nhis state, to approve the process, and when he came in fact to trace\nthe steps and add up the items they sufficiently accounted for the sum.\nHe had never expected--that was the truth of it--again to find himself\nyoung, and all the years and other things it had taken to make him so\nwere exactly his present arithmetic.  He had to make sure of them to\nput his scruple to rest.\n\nIt all sprang at bottom from the beauty of Mrs. Newsome's desire that\nhe should be worried with nothing that was not of the essence of his\ntask; by insisting that he should thoroughly intermit and break she had\nso provided for his freedom that she would, as it were, have only\nherself to thank.  Strether could not at this point indeed have\ncompleted his thought by the image of what she might have to thank\nherself FOR:  the image, at best, of his own likeness-poor Lambert\nStrether washed up on the sunny strand by the waves of a single day,\npoor Lambert Strether thankful for breathing-time and stiffening\nhimself while he gasped.  There he was, and with nothing in his aspect\nor his posture to scandalise: it was only true that if he had seen Mrs.\nNewsome coming he would instinctively have jumped up to walk away a\nlittle.  He would have come round and back to her bravely, but he would\nhave had first to pull himself together.  She abounded in news of the\nsituation at home, proved to him how perfectly she was arranging for\nhis absence, told him who would take up this and who take up that\nexactly where he had left it, gave him in fact chapter and verse for\nthe moral that nothing would suffer.  It filled for him, this tone of\nhers, all the air; yet it struck him at the same time as the hum of\nvain things.  This latter effect was what he tried to justify--and with\nthe success that, grave though the appearance, he at last lighted on a\nform that was happy.  He arrived at it by the inevitable recognition of\nhis having been a fortnight before one of the weariest of men.  If ever\na man had come off tired Lambert Strether was that man; and hadn't it\nbeen distinctly on the ground of his fatigue that his wonderful friend\nat home had so felt for him and so contrived?  It seemed to him somehow\nat these instants that, could he only maintain with sufficient firmness\nhis grasp of that truth, it might become in a manner his compass and\nhis helm.  What he wanted most was some idea that would simplify, and\nnothing would do this so much as the fact that he was done for and\nfinished.  If it had been in such a light that he had just detected in\nhis cup the dregs of youth, that was a mere flaw of the surface of his\nscheme.  He was so distinctly fagged-out that it must serve precisely\nas his convenience, and if he could but consistently be good for little\nenough he might do everything he wanted.\n\nEverything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon--the\ncommon unattainable art of taking things as they came.  He appeared to\nhimself to have given his best years to an active appreciation of the\nway they didn't come; but perhaps--as they would seemingly here be\nthings quite other--this long ache might at last drop to rest.  He\ncould easily see that from the moment he should accept the notion of\nhis foredoomed collapse the last thing he would lack would be reasons\nand memories.  Oh if he SHOULD do the sum no slate would hold the\nfigures! The fact that he had failed, as he considered, in everything,\nin each relation and in half a dozen trades, as he liked luxuriously to\nput it, might have made, might still make, for an empty present; but it\nstood solidly for a crowded past.  It had not been, so much achievement\nmissed, a light yoke nor a short load.  It was at present as if\nthe backward picture had hung there, the long crooked course, grey in\nthe shadow of his solitude.  It had been a dreadful cheerful sociable\nsolitude, a solitude of life or choice, of community; but though there\nhad been people enough all round it there had been but three or four\npersons IN it.  Waymarsh was one of these, and the fact struck him just\nnow as marking the record.  Mrs. Newsome was another, and Miss Gostrey\nhad of a sudden shown signs of becoming a third.  Beyond, behind them\nwas the pale figure of his real youth, which held against its breast\nthe two presences paler than itself--the young wife he had early lost\nand the young son he had stupidly sacrificed.  He had again and again\nmade out for himself that he might have kept his little boy, his little\ndull boy who had died at school of rapid diphtheria, if he had not in\nthose years so insanely given himself to merely missing the mother.  It\nwas the soreness of his remorse that the child had in all likelihood\nnot really been dull--had been dull, as he had been banished and\nneglected, mainly because the father had been unwittingly selfish. This\nwas doubtless but the secret habit of sorrow, which had slowly given\nway to time; yet there remained an ache sharp enough to make the\nspirit, at the sight now and again of some fair young man just growing\nup, wince with the thought of an opportunity lost.  Had ever a man, he\nhad finally fallen into the way of asking himself, lost so much and\neven done so much for so little?  There had been particular reasons why\nall yesterday, beyond other days, he should have had in one ear this\ncold enquiry.  His name on the green cover, where he had put it for\nMrs. Newsome, expressed him doubtless just enough to make the\nworld--the world as distinguished, both for more and for less, from\nWoollett--ask who he was.  He had incurred the ridicule of having to\nhave his explanation explained.  He was Lambert Strether because he was\non the cover, whereas it should have been, for anything like glory,\nthat he was on the cover because he was Lambert Strether.  He would\nhave done anything for Mrs. Newsome, have been still more\nridiculous--as he might, for that matter, have occasion to be yet;\nwhich came to saying that this acceptance of fate was all he had to\nshow at fifty-five.\n\nHe judged the quantity as small because it WAS small, and all the more\negregiously since it couldn't, as he saw the case, so much as thinkably\nhave been larger.  He hadn't had the gift of making the most of what he\ntried, and if he had tried and tried again--no one but himself knew how\noften--it appeared to have been that he might demonstrate what else, in\ndefault of that, COULD be made.  Old ghosts of experiments came back to\nhim, old drudgeries and delusions, and disgusts, old recoveries with\ntheir relapses, old fevers with their chills, broken moments of good\nfaith, others of still better doubt; adventures, for the most part, of\nthe sort qualified as lessons.  The special spring that had constantly\nplayed for him the day before was the recognition--frequent enough to\nsurprise him--of the promises to himself that he had after his other\nvisit never kept.  The reminiscence to-day most quickened for him was\nthat of the vow taken in the course of the pilgrimage that,\nnewly-married, with the War just over, and helplessly young in spite of\nit, he had recklessly made with the creature who was so much younger\nstill.  It had been a bold dash, for which they had taken money set\napart for necessities, but kept sacred at the moment in a hundred ways,\nand in none more so than by this private pledge of his own to treat the\noccasion as a relation formed with the higher culture and see that, as\nthey said at Woollett, it should bear a good harvest.  He had believed,\nsailing home again, that he had gained something great, and his\ntheory--with an elaborate innocent plan of reading, digesting, coming\nback even, every few years--had then been to preserve, cherish and\nextend it. As such plans as these had come to nothing, however, in\nrespect to acquisitions still more precious, it was doubtless little\nenough of a marvel that he should have lost account of that handful of\nseed.  Buried for long years in dark corners at any rate these few\ngerms had sprouted again under forty-eight hours of Paris.  The process\nof yesterday had really been the process of feeling the general stirred\nlife of connexions long since individually dropped.  Strether had\nbecome acquainted even on this ground with short gusts of\nspeculation--sudden flights of fancy in Louvre galleries, hungry gazes\nthrough clear plates behind which lemon-coloured volumes were as fresh\nas fruit on the tree.\n\nThere were instants at which he could ask whether, since there had been\nfundamentally so little question of his keeping anything, the fate\nafter all decreed for him hadn't been only to BE kept.  Kept for\nsomething, in that event, that he didn't pretend, didn't possibly dare\nas yet to divine; something that made him hover and wonder and laugh\nand sigh, made him advance and retreat, feeling half ashamed of his\nimpulse to plunge and more than half afraid of his impulse to wait.  He\nremembered for instance how he had gone back in the sixties with\nlemon-coloured volumes in general on the brain as well as with a\ndozen--selected for his wife too--in his trunk; and nothing had at the\nmoment shown more confidence than this invocation of the finer taste.\nThey were still somewhere at home, the dozen--stale and soiled and\nnever sent to the binder; but what had become of the sharp initiation\nthey represented?  They represented now the mere sallow paint on the\ndoor of the temple of taste that he had dreamed of raising up--a\nstructure he had practically never carried further.  Strether's present\nhighest flights were perhaps those in which this particular lapse\nfigured to him as a symbol, a symbol of his long grind and his want of\nodd moments, his want moreover of money, of opportunity, of positive\ndignity.  That the memory of the vow of his youth should, in order to\nthrob again, have had to wait for this last, as he felt it, of all his\naccidents--that was surely proof enough of how his conscience had been\nencumbered.  If any further proof were needed it would have been to be\nfound in the fact that, as he perfectly now saw, he had ceased even to\nmeasure his meagreness, a meagreness that sprawled, in this retrospect,\nvague and comprehensive, stretching back like some unmapped Hinterland\nfrom a rough coast-settlement.  His conscience had been amusing itself\nfor the forty-eight hours by forbidding him the purchase of a book; he\nheld off from that, held off from everything; from the moment he didn't\nyet call on Chad he wouldn't for the world have taken any other step.\nOn this evidence, however, of the way they actually affected him he\nglared at the lemon-coloured covers in confession of the\nsubconsciousness that, all the same, in the great desert of the years,\nhe must have had of them.  The green covers at home comprised, by the\nlaw of their purpose, no tribute to letters; it was of a mere rich\nkernel of economics, politics, ethics that, glazed and, as Mrs. Newsome\nmaintained rather against HIS view, pre-eminently pleasant to touch,\nthey formed the specious shell.  Without therefore any needed\ninstinctive knowledge of what was coming out, in Paris, on the bright\nhighway, he struck himself at present as having more than once flushed\nwith a suspicion:  he couldn't otherwise at present be feeling so many\nfears confirmed.  There were \"movements\" he was too late for: weren't\nthey, with the fun of them, already spent?  There were sequences he had\nmissed and great gaps in the procession:  he might have been watching\nit all recede in a golden cloud of dust.  If the playhouse wasn't\nclosed his seat had at least fallen to somebody else.  He had had an\nuneasy feeling the night before that if he was at the theatre at\nall--though he indeed justified the theatre, in the specific sense, and\nwith a grotesqueness to which his imagination did all honour, as\nsomething he owed poor Waymarsh--he should have been there with, and as\nmight have been said, FOR Chad.\n\nThis suggested the question of whether he could properly have taken him\nto such a play, and what effect--it was a point that suddenly rose--his\npeculiar responsibility might be held in general to have on his choice\nof entertainment.  It had literally been present to him at the\nGymnase--where one was held moreover comparatively safe--that having\nhis young friend at his side would have been an odd feature of the work\nof redemption; and this quite in spite of the fact that the picture\npresented might well, confronted with Chad's own private stage, have\nseemed the pattern of propriety.  He clearly hadn't come out in the\nname of propriety but to visit unattended equivocal performances; yet\nstill less had he done so to undermine his authority by sharing them\nwith the graceless youth.  Was he to renounce all amusement for the\nsweet sake of that authority? and WOULD such renouncement give him for\nChad a moral glamour?  The little problem bristled the more by reason\nof poor Strether's fairly open sense of the irony of things.  Were\nthere then sides on which his predicament threatened to look rather\ndroll to him?  Should he have to pretend to believe--either to himself\nor the wretched boy--that there was anything that could make the latter\nworse?  Wasn't some such pretence on the other hand involved in the\nassumption of possible processes that would make him better?  His\ngreatest uneasiness seemed to peep at him out of the imminent\nimpression that almost any acceptance of Paris might give one's\nauthority away.  It hung before him this morning, the vast bright\nBabylon, like some huge iridescent object, a jewel brilliant and hard,\nin which parts were not to be discriminated nor differences comfortably\nmarked.  It twinkled and trembled and melted together, and what seemed\nall surface one moment seemed all depth the next.  It was a place of\nwhich, unmistakeably, Chad was fond; wherefore if he, Strether, should\nlike it too much, what on earth, with such a bond, would become of\neither of them?  It all depended of course--which was a gleam of\nlight--on how the \"too much\" was measured; though indeed our friend\nfairly felt, while he prolonged the meditation I describe, that for\nhimself even already a certain measure had been reached. It will have\nbeen sufficiently seen that he was not a man to neglect any good chance\nfor reflexion.  Was it at all possible for instance to like Paris\nenough without liking it too much?  He luckily however hadn't promised\nMrs. Newsome not to like it at all.  He was ready to recognise at this\nstage that such an engagement WOULD have tied his hands.  The\nLuxembourg Gardens were incontestably just so adorable at this hour by\nreason--in addition to their intrinsic charm--of his not having taken\nit.  The only engagement he had taken, when he looked the thing in the\nface, was to do what he reasonably could.\n\nIt upset him a little none the less and after a while to find himself\nat last remembering on what current of association he had been floated\nso far.  Old imaginations of the Latin Quarter had played their part\nfor him, and he had duly recalled its having been with this scene of\nrather ominous legend that, like so many young men in fiction as well\nas in fact, Chad had begun.  He was now quite out of it, with his\n\"home,\" as Strether figured the place, in the Boulevard Malesherbes;\nwhich was perhaps why, repairing, not to fail of justice either, to the\nelder neighbourhood, our friend had felt he could allow for the element\nof the usual, the immemorial, without courting perturbation.  He was\nnot at least in danger of seeing the youth and the particular Person\nflaunt by together; and yet he was in the very air of which--just to\nfeel what the early natural note must have been--he wished most to take\ncounsel.  It became at once vivid to him that he had originally had,\nfor a few days, an almost envious vision of the boy's romantic\nprivilege.  Melancholy Murger, with Francine and Musette and Rodolphe,\nat home, in the company of the tattered, one--if he not in his single\nself two or three--of the unbound, the paper-covered dozen on the\nshelf; and when Chad had written, five years ago, after a sojourn then\nalready prolonged to six months, that he had decided to go in for\neconomy and the real thing, Strether's fancy had quite fondly\naccompanied him in this migration, which was to convey him, as they\nsomewhat confusedly learned at Woollett, across the bridges and up the\nMontagne Sainte-Genevieve.  This was the region--Chad had been quite\ndistinct about it--in which the best French, and many other things,\nwere to be learned at least cost, and in which all sorts of clever\nfellows, compatriots there for a purpose, formed an awfully pleasant\nset.  The clever fellows, the friendly countrymen were mainly young\npainters, sculptors, architects, medical students; but they were, Chad\nsagely opined, a much more profitable lot to be with--even on the\nfooting of not being quite one of them--than the \"terrible toughs\"\n(Strether remembered the edifying discrimination) of the American bars\nand banks roundabout the Opera.  Chad had thrown out, in the\ncommunications following this one--for at that time he did once in a\nwhile communicate--that several members of a band of earnest workers\nunder one of the great artists had taken him right in, making him dine\nevery night, almost for nothing, at their place, and even pressing him\nnot to neglect the hypothesis of there being as much \"in him\" as in any\nof them.  There had been literally a moment at which it appeared there\nmight be something in him; there had been at any rate a moment at which\nhe had written that he didn't know but what a month or two more might\nsee him enrolled in some atelier.  The season had been one at which\nMrs. Newsome was moved to gratitude for small mercies; it had broken on\nthem all as a blessing that their absentee HAD perhaps a\nconscience--that he was sated in fine with idleness, was ambitious of\nvariety.  The exhibition was doubtless as yet not brilliant, but\nStrether himself, even by that time much enlisted and immersed, had\ndetermined, on the part of the two ladies, a temperate approval and in\nfact, as he now recollected, a certain austere enthusiasm.\n\nBut the very next thing that happened had been a dark drop of the\ncurtain.  The son and brother had not browsed long on the Montagne\nSainte-Genevieve--his effective little use of the name of which, like\nhis allusion to the best French, appeared to have been but one of the\nnotes of his rough cunning.  The light refreshment of these vain\nappearances had not accordingly carried any of them very far.  On the\nother hand it had gained Chad time; it had given him a chance,\nunchecked, to strike his roots, had paved the way for initiations more\ndirect and more deep.  It was Strether's belief that he had been\ncomparatively innocent before this first migration, and even that the\nfirst effects of the migration would not have been, without some\nparticular bad accident, to have been deplored.  There had been three\nmonths--he had sufficiently figured it out--in which Chad had wanted to\ntry.  He HAD tried, though not very hard--he had had his little hour of\ngood faith.  The weakness of this principle in him was that almost any\naccident attestedly bad enough was stronger.  Such had at any rate\nmarkedly been the case for the precipitation of a special series of\nimpressions. They had proved, successively, these impressions--all of\nMusette and Francine, but Musette and Francine vulgarised by the larger\nevolution of the type--irresistibly sharp:  he had \"taken up,\" by what\nwas at the time to be shrinkingly gathered, as it was scantly\nmentioned, with one ferociously \"interested\" little person after\nanother.  Strether had read somewhere of a Latin motto, a description\nof the hours, observed on a clock by a traveller in Spain; and he had\nbeen led to apply it in thought to Chad's number one, number two,\nnumber three.  Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat--they had all morally\nwounded, the last had morally killed.  The last had been longest in\npossession--in possession, that is, of whatever was left of the poor\nboy's finer mortality.  And it hadn't been she, it had been one of her\nearly predecessors, who had determined the second migration, the\nexpensive return and relapse, the exchange again, as was fairly to be\npresumed, of the vaunted best French for some special variety of the\nworst.\n\nHe pulled himself then at last together for his own progress back; not\nwith the feeling that he had taken his walk in vain.  He prolonged it a\nlittle, in the immediate neighbourhood, after he had quitted his chair;\nand the upshot of the whole morning for him was that his campaign had\nbegun.  He had wanted to put himself in relation, and he would be\nhanged if he were NOT in relation.  He was that at no moment so much as\nwhile, under the old arches of the Odeon, he lingered before the\ncharming open-air array of literature classic and casual.  He found the\neffect of tone and tint, in the long charged tables and shelves,\ndelicate and appetising; the impression--substituting one kind of\nlow-priced consommation for another--might have been that of one of the\npleasant cafes that overlapped, under an awning, to the pavement; but\nhe edged along, grazing the tables, with his hands firmly behind him.\nHe wasn't there to dip, to consume--he was there to reconstruct.  He\nwasn't there for his own profit--not, that is, the direct; he was there\non some chance of feeling the brush of the wing of the stray spirit of\nyouth.  He felt it in fact, he had it beside him; the old arcade\nindeed, as his inner sense listened, gave out the faint sound, as from\nfar off, of the wild waving of wings.  They were folded now over the\nbreasts of buried generations; but a flutter or two lived again in the\nturned page of shock-headed slouch-hatted loiterers whose young\nintensity of type, in the direction of pale acuteness, deepened his\nvision, and even his appreciation, of racial differences, and whose\nmanipulation of the uncut volume was too often, however, but a\nlistening at closed doors.  He reconstructed a possible groping Chad of\nthree or four years before, a Chad who had, after all, simply--for that\nwas the only way to see it--been too vulgar for his privilege.  Surely\nit WAS a privilege to have been young and happy just there.  Well, the\nbest thing Strether knew of him was that he had had such a dream.\n\nBut his own actual business half an hour later was with a third floor\non the Boulevard Malesherbes--so much as that was definite; and the\nfact of the enjoyment by the third-floor windows of a continuous\nbalcony, to which he was helped by this knowledge, had perhaps\nsomething to do with his lingering for five minutes on the opposite\nside of the street.  There were points as to which he had quite made up\nhis mind, and one of these bore precisely on the wisdom of the\nabruptness to which events had finally committed him, a policy that he\nwas pleased to find not at all shaken as he now looked at his watch and\nwondered.  He HAD announced himself--six months before; had written out\nat least that Chad wasn't to be surprised should he see him some day\nturn up.  Chad had thereupon, in a few words of rather carefully\ncolourless answer, offered him a general welcome; and Strether,\nruefully reflecting that he might have understood the warning as a hint\nto hospitality, a bid for an invitation, had fallen back upon silence\nas the corrective most to his own taste.  He had asked Mrs. Newsome\nmoreover not to announce him again; he had so distinct an opinion on\nhis attacking his job, should he attack it at all, in his own way.  Not\nthe least of this lady's high merits for him was that he could\nabsolutely rest on her word.  She was the only woman he had known, even\nat Woollett, as to whom his conviction was positive that to lie was\nbeyond her art. Sarah Pocock, for instance, her own daughter, though\nwith social ideals, as they said, in some respects different--Sarah who\nWAS, in her way, aesthetic, had never refused to human commerce that\nmitigation of rigour; there were occasions when he had distinctly seen\nher apply it.  Since, accordingly, at all events, he had had it from\nMrs. Newsome that she had, at whatever cost to her more strenuous view,\nconformed, in the matter of preparing Chad, wholly to his restrictions,\nhe now looked up at the fine continuous balcony with a safe sense that\nif the case had been bungled the mistake was at least his property. Was\nthere perhaps just a suspicion of that in his present pause on the edge\nof the Boulevard and well in the pleasant light?\n\nMany things came over him here, and one of them was that he should\ndoubtless presently know whether he had been shallow or sharp. Another\nwas that the balcony in question didn't somehow show as a convenience\neasy to surrender.  Poor Strether had at this very moment to recognise\nthe truth that wherever one paused in Paris the imagination reacted\nbefore one could stop it.  This perpetual reaction put a price, if one\nwould, on pauses; but it piled up consequences till there was scarce\nroom to pick one's steps among them.  What call had he, at such a\njuncture, for example, to like Chad's very house?  High broad clear--he\nwas expert enough to make out in a moment that it was admirably\nbuilt--it fairly embarrassed our friend by the quality that, as he\nwould have said, it \"sprang\" on him.  He had struck off the fancy that\nit might, as a preliminary, be of service to him to be seen, by a happy\naccident, from the third-story windows, which took all the March sun,\nbut of what service was it to find himself making out after a moment\nthat the quality \"sprung,\" the quality produced by measure and balance,\nthe fine relation of part to part and space to space, was\nprobably--aided by the presence of ornament as positive as it was\ndiscreet, and by the complexion of the stone, a cold fair grey, warmed\nand polished a little by life--neither more nor less than a case of\ndistinction, such a case as he could only feel unexpectedly as a sort\nof delivered challenge? Meanwhile, however, the chance he had allowed\nfor--the chance of being seen in time from the balcony--had become a\nfact.  Two or three of the windows stood open to the violet air; and,\nbefore Strether had cut the knot by crossing, a young man had come out\nand looked about him, had lighted a cigarette and tossed the match\nover, and then, resting on the rail, had given himself up to watching\nthe life below while he smoked.  His arrival contributed, in its order,\nto keeping Strether in position; the result of which in turn was that\nStrether soon felt himself noticed.  The young man began to look at him\nas in acknowledgement of his being himself in observation.\n\nThis was interesting so far as it went, but the interest was affected\nby the young man's not being Chad.  Strether wondered at first if he\nwere perhaps Chad altered, and then saw that this was asking too much\nof alteration.  The young man was light bright and alert--with an air\ntoo pleasant to have been arrived at by patching.  Strether had\nconceived Chad as patched, but not beyond recognition.  He was in\npresence, he felt, of amendments enough as they stood; it was a\nsufficient amendment that the gentleman up there should be Chad's\nfriend.  He was young too then, the gentleman up there--he was very\nyoung; young enough apparently to be amused at an elderly watcher, to\nbe curious even to see what the elderly watcher would do on finding\nhimself watched.  There was youth in that, there was youth in the\nsurrender to the balcony, there was youth for Strether at this moment\nin everything but his own business; and Chad's thus pronounced\nassociation with youth had given the next instant an extraordinary\nquick lift to the issue. The balcony, the distinguished front,\ntestified suddenly, for Strether's fancy, to something that was up and\nup; they placed the whole case materially, and as by an admirable\nimage, on a level that he found himself at the end of another moment\nrejoicing to think he might reach.  The young man looked at him still,\nhe looked at the young man; and the issue, by a rapid process, was that\nthis knowledge of a perched privacy appeared to him the last of\nluxuries.  To him too the perched privacy was open, and he saw it now\nbut in one light--that of the only domicile, the only fireside, in the\ngreat ironic city, on which he had the shadow of a claim. Miss Gostrey\nhad a fireside; she had told him of it, and it was something that\ndoubtless awaited him; but Miss Gostrey hadn't yet arrived--she\nmightn't arrive for days; and the sole attenuation of his excluded\nstate was his vision of the small, the admittedly secondary hotel in\nthe bye-street from the Rue de la Paix, in which her solicitude for his\npurse had placed him, which affected him somehow as all indoor chill,\nglass-roofed court and slippery staircase, and which, by the same\ntoken, expressed the presence of Waymarsh even at times when Waymarsh\nmight have been certain to be round at the bank.  It came to pass\nbefore he moved that Waymarsh, and Waymarsh alone, Waymarsh not only\nundiluted but positively strengthened, struck him as the present\nalternative to the young man in the balcony.  When he did move it was\nfairly to escape that alternative.  Taking his way over the street at\nlast and passing through the porte-cochere of the house was like\nconsciously leaving Waymarsh out.  However, he would tell him all about\nit.\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Third\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nStrether told Waymarsh all about it that very evening, on their dining\ntogether at the hotel; which needn't have happened, he was all the\nwhile aware, hadn't he chosen to sacrifice to this occasion a rarer\nopportunity.  The mention to his companion of the sacrifice was\nmoreover exactly what introduced his recital--or, as he would have\ncalled it with more confidence in his interlocutor, his confession. His\nconfession was that he had been captured and that one of the features\nof the affair had just failed to be his engaging himself on the spot to\ndinner.  As by such a freedom Waymarsh would have lost him he had\nobeyed his scruple; and he had likewise obeyed another scruple--which\nbore on the question of his himself bringing a guest.\n\nWaymarsh looked gravely ardent, over the finished soup, at this array\nof scruples; Strether hadn't yet got quite used to being so unprepared\nfor the consequences of the impression he produced.  It was\ncomparatively easy to explain, however, that he hadn't felt sure his\nguest would please.  The person was a young man whose acquaintance he\nhad made but that afternoon in the course of rather a hindered enquiry\nfor another person--an enquiry his new friend had just prevented in\nfact from being vain.  \"Oh,\" said Strether, \"I've all sorts of things\nto tell you!\"--and he put it in a way that was a virtual hint to\nWaymarsh to help him to enjoy the telling.  He waited for his fish, he\ndrank of his wine, he wiped his long moustache, he leaned back in his\nchair, he took in the two English ladies who had just creaked past them\nand whom he would even have articulately greeted if they hadn't rather\nchilled the impulse; so that all he could do was--by way of doing\nsomething--to say \"Merci, Francois!\" out quite loud when his fish was\nbrought. Everything was there that he wanted, everything that could\nmake the moment an occasion, that would do beautifully--everything but\nwhat Waymarsh might give.  The little waxed salle-a-manger was sallow\nand sociable; Francois, dancing over it, all smiles, was a man and a\nbrother; the high-shouldered patronne, with her high-held, much-rubbed\nhands, seemed always assenting exuberantly to something unsaid; the\nParis evening in short was, for Strether, in the very taste of the\nsoup, in the goodness, as he was innocently pleased to think it, of the\nwine, in the pleasant coarse texture of the napkin and the crunch of\nthe thick-crusted bread.  These all were things congruous with his\nconfession, and his confession was that he HAD--it would come out\nproperly just there if Waymarsh would only take it properly--agreed to\nbreakfast out, at twelve literally, the next day.  He didn't quite know\nwhere; the delicacy of the case came straight up in the remembrance of\nhis new friend's \"We'll see; I'll take you somewhere!\"--for it had\nrequired little more than that, after all, to let him right in.  He was\naffected after a minute, face to face with his actual comrade, by the\nimpulse to overcolour. There had already been things in respect to\nwhich he knew himself tempted by this perversity.  If Waymarsh thought\nthem bad he should at least have his reason for his discomfort; so\nStrether showed them as worse.  Still, he was now, in his way,\nsincerely perplexed.\n\nChad had been absent from the Boulevard Malesherbes--was absent from\nParis altogether; he had learned that from the concierge, but had\nnevertheless gone up, and gone up--there were no two ways about\nit--from an uncontrollable, a really, if one would, depraved curiosity.\nThe concierge had mentioned to him that a friend of the tenant of the\ntroisieme was for the time in possession; and this had been Strether's\npretext for a further enquiry, an experiment carried on, under Chad's\nroof, without his knowledge.  \"I found his friend in fact there keeping\nthe place warm, as he called it, for him; Chad himself being, as\nappears, in the south.  He went a month ago to Cannes and though his\nreturn begins to be looked for it can't be for some days.  I might, you\nsee, perfectly have waited a week; might have beaten a retreat as soon\nas I got this essential knowledge.  But I beat no retreat; I did the\nopposite; I stayed, I dawdled, I trifled; above all I looked round.  I\nsaw, in fine; and--I don't know what to call it--I sniffed.  It's a\ndetail, but it's as if there were something--something very good--TO\nsniff.\"\n\nWaymarsh's face had shown his friend an attention apparently so remote\nthat the latter was slightly surprised to find it at this point abreast\nwith him.  \"Do you mean a smell? What of?\"\n\n\"A charming scent.  But I don't know.\"\n\nWaymarsh gave an inferential grunt.  \"Does he live there with a woman?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\nWaymarsh waited an instant for more, then resumed.  \"Has he taken her\noff with him?\"\n\n\"And will he bring her back?\"--Strether fell into the enquiry.  But he\nwound it up as before.  \"I don't know.\"\n\nThe way he wound it up, accompanied as this was with another drop back,\nanother degustation of the Leoville, another wipe of his moustache and\nanother good word for Francois, seemed to produce in his companion a\nslight irritation.  \"Then what the devil DO you know?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether almost gaily, \"I guess I don't know anything!\"\nHis gaiety might have been a tribute to the fact that the state he had\nbeen reduced to did for him again what had been done by his talk of the\nmatter with Miss Gostrey at the London theatre.  It was somehow\nenlarging; and the air of that amplitude was now doubtless more or\nless--and all for Waymarsh to feel--in his further response.  \"That's\nwhat I found out from the young man.\"\n\n\"But I thought you said you found out nothing.\"\n\n\"Nothing but that--that I don't know anything.\"\n\n\"And what good does that do you?\"\n\n\"It's just,\" said Strether, \"what I've come to you to help me to\ndiscover.  I mean anything about anything over here.  I FELT that, up\nthere.  It regularly rose before me in its might.  The young man\nmoreover--Chad's friend--as good as told me so.\"\n\n\"As good as told you you know nothing about anything?\"  Waymarsh\nappeared to look at some one who might have as good as told HIM. \"How\nold is he?\"\n\n\"Well, I guess not thirty.\"\n\n\"Yet you had to take that from him?\"\n\n\"Oh I took a good deal more--since, as I tell you, I took an invitation\nto dejeuner.\"\n\n\"And are you GOING to that unholy meal?\"\n\n\"If you'll come with me.  He wants you too, you know.  I told him about\nyou.  He gave me his card,\" Strether pursued, \"and his name's rather\nfunny.  It's John Little Bilham, and he says his two surnames are, on\naccount of his being small, inevitably used together.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Waymarsh asked with due detachment from these details, \"what's\nhe doing up there?\"\n\n\"His account of himself is that he's 'only a little artist-man.' That\nseemed to me perfectly to describe him.  But he's yet in the phase of\nstudy; this, you know, is the great art-school--to pass a certain\nnumber of years in which he came over.  And he's a great friend of\nChad's, and occupying Chad's rooms just now because they're so\npleasant.  HE'S very pleasant and curious too,\" Strether added--\"though\nhe's not from Boston.\"\n\nWaymarsh looked already rather sick of him.  \"Where is he from?\"\n\nStrether thought.  \"I don't know that, either.  But he's 'notoriously,'\nas he put it himself, not from Boston.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Waymarsh moralised from dry depths, \"every one can't\nnotoriously be from Boston.  Why,\" he continued, \"is he curious?\"\n\n\"Perhaps just for THAT--for one thing! But really,\" Strether added,\n\"for everything.  When you meet him you'll see.\"\n\n\"Oh I don't want to meet him,\" Waymarsh impatiently growled.  \"Why\ndon't he go home?\"\n\nStrether hesitated.  \"Well, because he likes it over here.\"\n\nThis appeared in particular more than Waymarsh could bear.  \"He ought\nthen to be ashamed of himself, and, as you admit that you think so too,\nwhy drag him in?\"\n\nStrether's reply again took time.  \"Perhaps I do think so\nmyself--though I don't quite yet admit it.  I'm not a bit sure--it's\nagain one of the things I want to find out.  I liked him, and CAN you\nlike people--? But no matter.\"  He pulled himself up.  \"There's no\ndoubt I want you to come down on me and squash me.\"\n\nWaymarsh helped himself to the next course, which, however proving not\nthe dish he had just noted as supplied to the English ladies, had the\neffect of causing his imagination temporarily to wander. But it\npresently broke out at a softer spot.  \"Have they got a handsome place\nup there?\"\n\n\"Oh a charming place; full of beautiful and valuable things.  I never\nsaw such a place\"--and Strether's thought went back to it. \"For a\nlittle artist-man--!\"  He could in fact scarce express it.\n\nBut his companion, who appeared now to have a view, insisted. \"Well?\"\n\n\"Well, life can hold nothing better.  Besides, they're things of which\nhe's in charge.\"\n\n\"So that he does doorkeeper for your precious pair? Can life,\" Waymarsh\nenquired, \"hold nothing better than THAT?\"  Then as Strether, silent,\nseemed even yet to wonder, \"Doesn't he know what SHE is?\" he went on.\n\n\"I don't know.  I didn't ask him.  I couldn't.  It was impossible.  You\nwouldn't either.  Besides I didn't want to.  No more would you.\"\nStrether in short explained it at a stroke.  \"You can't make out over\nhere what people do know.\"\n\n\"Then what did you come over for?\"\n\n\"Well, I suppose exactly to see for myself--without their aid.\"\n\n\"Then what do you want mine for?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Strether laughed, \"you're not one of THEM!  I do know what you\nknow.\"\n\nAs, however, this last assertion caused Waymarsh again to look at him\nhard--such being the latter's doubt of its implications--he felt his\njustification lame.  Which was still more the case when Waymarsh\npresently said:  \"Look here, Strether.  Quit this.\"\n\nOur friend smiled with a doubt of his own.  \"Do you mean my tone?\"\n\n\"No--damn your tone.  I mean your nosing round.  Quit the whole job.\nLet them stew in their juice.  You're being used for a thing you ain't\nfit for.  People don't take a fine-tooth comb to groom a horse.\"\n\n\"Am I a fine-tooth comb?\" Strether laughed.  \"It's something I never\ncalled myself!\"\n\n\"It's what you are, all the same.  You ain't so young as you were, but\nyou've kept your teeth.\"\n\nHe acknowledged his friend's humour.  \"Take care I don't get them into\nYOU! You'd like them, my friends at home, Waymarsh,\" he declared;\n\"you'd really particularly like them.  And I know\"--it was slightly\nirrelevant, but he gave it sudden and singular force--\"I know they'd\nlike you!\"\n\n\"Oh don't work them off on ME!\" Waymarsh groaned.\n\nYet Strether still lingered with his hands in his pockets.  \"It's\nreally quite as indispensable as I say that Chad should be got back.\"\n\n\"Indispensable to whom? To you?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Strether presently said.\n\n\"Because if you get him you also get Mrs. Newsome?\"\n\nStrether faced it.  \"Yes.\"\n\n\"And if you don't get him you don't get her?\"\n\nIt might be merciless, but he continued not to flinch.  \"I think it\nmight have some effect on our personal understanding.  Chad's of real\nimportance--or can easily become so if he will--to the business.\"\n\n\"And the business is of real importance to his mother's husband?\"\n\n\"Well, I naturally want what my future wife wants.  And the thing will\nbe much better if we have our own man in it.\"\n\n\"If you have your own man in it, in other words,\" Waymarsh said,\n\"you'll marry--you personally--more money.  She's already rich, as I\nunderstand you, but she'll be richer still if the business can be made\nto boom on certain lines that you've laid down.\"\n\n\"I haven't laid them down,\" Strether promptly returned.  \"Mr.\nNewsome--who knew extraordinarily well what he was about--laid them\ndown ten years ago.\"\n\nOh well, Waymarsh seemed to indicate with a shake of his mane, THAT\ndidn't matter! \"You're fierce for the boom anyway.\"\n\nHis friend weighed a moment in silence the justice of the charge. \"I\ncan scarcely be called fierce, I think, when I so freely take my chance\nof the possibility, the danger, of being influenced in a sense counter\nto Mrs. Newsome's own feelings.\"\n\nWaymarsh gave this proposition a long hard look.  \"I see.  You're\nafraid yourself of being squared.  But you're a humbug,\" he added, \"all\nthe same.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" Strether quickly protested.\n\n\"Yes, you ask me for protection--which makes you very interesting; and\nthen you won't take it.  You say you want to be squashed--\"\n\n\"Ah but not so easily! Don't you see,\" Strether demanded \"where my\ninterest, as already shown you, lies? It lies in my not being squared.\nIf I'm squared where's my marriage? If I miss my errand I miss that;\nand if I miss that I miss everything--I'm nowhere.\"\n\nWaymarsh--but all relentlessly--took this in.  \"What do I care where\nyou are if you're spoiled?\"\n\nTheir eyes met on it an instant.  \"Thank you awfully,\" Strether at last\nsaid.  \"But don't you think HER judgement of that--?\"\n\n\"Ought to content me? No.\"\n\nIt kept them again face to face, and the end of this was that Strether\nagain laughed.  \"You do her injustice.  You really MUST know her.\nGood-night.\"\n\nHe breakfasted with Mr. Bilham on the morrow, and, as inconsequently\nbefell, with Waymarsh massively of the party.  The latter announced, at\nthe eleventh hour and much to his friend's surprise, that, damn it, he\nwould as soon join him as do anything else; on which they proceeded\ntogether, strolling in a state of detachment practically luxurious for\nthem to the Boulevard Malesherbes, a couple engaged that day with the\nsharp spell of Paris as confessedly, it might have been seen, as any\ncouple among the daily thousands so compromised.  They walked,\nwandered, wondered and, a little, lost themselves; Strether hadn't had\nfor years so rich a consciousness of time--a bag of gold into which he\nconstantly dipped for a handful.  It was present to him that when the\nlittle business with Mr. Bilham should be over he would still have\nshining hours to use absolutely as he liked.  There was no great pulse\nof haste yet in this process of saving Chad; nor was that effect a bit\nmore marked as he sat, half an hour later, with his legs under Chad's\nmahogany, with Mr. Bilham on one side, with a friend of Mr. Bilham's on\nthe other, with Waymarsh stupendously opposite, and with the great hum\nof Paris coming up in softness, vagueness-for Strether himself indeed\nalready positive sweetness--through the sunny windows toward which, the\nday before, his curiosity had raised its wings from below.  The feeling\nstrongest with him at that moment had borne fruit almost faster than he\ncould taste it, and Strether literally felt at the present hour that\nthere was a precipitation in his fate.  He had known nothing and nobody\nas he stood in the street; but hadn't his view now taken a bound in the\ndirection of every one and of every thing?\n\n\"What's he up to, what's he up to?\"--something like that was at the\nback of his head all the while in respect to little Bilham; but\nmeanwhile, till he should make out, every one and every thing were as\ngood as represented for him by the combination of his host and the lady\non his left.  The lady on his left, the lady thus promptly and\ningeniously invited to \"meet\" Mr. Strether and Mr. Waymarsh--it was the\nway she herself expressed her case--was a very marked person, a person\nwho had much to do with our friend's asking himself if the occasion\nweren't in its essence the most baited, the most gilded of traps.\nBaited it could properly be called when the repast was of so wise a\nsavour, and gilded surrounding objects seemed inevitably to need to be\nwhen Miss Barrace--which was the lady's name--looked at them with\nconvex Parisian eyes and through a glass with a remarkably long\ntortoise-shell handle.  Why Miss Barrace, mature meagre erect and\neminently gay, highly adorned, perfectly familiar, freely\ncontradictions and reminding him of some last-century portrait of a\nclever head without powder--why Miss Barrace should have been in\nparticular the note of a \"trap\" Strether couldn't on the spot have\nexplained; he blinked in the light of a conviction that he should know\nlater on, and know well--as it came over him, for that matter, with\nforce, that he should need to.  He wondered what he was to think\nexactly of either of his new friends; since the young man, Chad's\nintimate and deputy, had, in thus constituting the scene, practised so\nmuch more subtly than he had been prepared for, and since in especial\nMiss Barrace, surrounded clearly by every consideration, hadn't\nscrupled to figure as a familiar object.  It was interesting to him to\nfeel that he was in the presence of new measures, other standards, a\ndifferent scale of relations, and that evidently here were a happy pair\nwho didn't think of things at all as he and Waymarsh thought.  Nothing\nwas less to have been calculated in the business than that it should\nnow be for him as if he and Waymarsh were comparatively quite at one.\n\nThe latter was magnificent--this at least was an assurance privately\ngiven him by Miss Barrace.  \"Oh your friend's a type, the grand old\nAmerican--what shall one call it? The Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel,\nJeremiah, who used when I was a little girl in the Rue Montaigne to\ncome to see my father and who was usually the American Minister to the\nTuileries or some other court.  I haven't seen one these ever so many\nyears; the sight of it warms my poor old chilled heart; this specimen\nis wonderful; in the right quarter, you know, he'll have a succes fou.\"\nStrether hadn't failed to ask what the right quarter might be, much as\nhe required his presence of mind to meet such a change in their scheme.\n\"Oh the artist-quarter and that kind of thing; HERE already, for\ninstance, as you see.\"  He had been on the point of echoing\n\"'Here'?--is THIS the artist-quarter?\" but she had already disposed of\nthe question with a wave of all her tortoise-shell and an easy \"Bring\nhim to ME!\"  He knew on the spot how little he should be able to bring\nhim, for the very air was by this time, to his sense, thick and hot\nwith poor Waymarsh's judgement of it. He was in the trap still more\nthan his companion and, unlike his companion, not making the best of\nit; which was precisely what doubtless gave him his admirable sombre\nglow.  Little did Miss Barrace know that what was behind it was his\ngrave estimate of her own laxity. The general assumption with which our\ntwo friends had arrived had been that of finding Mr. Bilham ready to\nconduct them to one or other of those resorts of the earnest, the\naesthetic fraternity which were shown among the sights of Paris.  In\nthis character it would have justified them in a proper insistence on\ndischarging their score.  Waymarsh's only proviso at the last had been\nthat nobody should pay for him; but he found himself, as the occasion\ndeveloped, paid for on a scale as to which Strether privately made out\nthat he already nursed retribution.  Strether was conscious across the\ntable of what worked in him, conscious when they passed back to the\nsmall salon to which, the previous evening, he himself had made so rich\na reference; conscious most of all as they stepped out to the balcony\nin which one would have had to be an ogre not to recognise the perfect\nplace for easy aftertastes.  These things were enhanced for Miss\nBarrace by a succession of excellent cigarettes--acknowledged,\nacclaimed, as a part of the wonderful supply left behind him by\nChad--in an almost equal absorption of which Strether found himself\nblindly, almost wildly pushing forward.  He might perish by the sword\nas well as by famine, and he knew that his having abetted the lady by\nan excess that was rare with him would count for little in the sum--as\nWaymarsh might so easily add it up--of her licence.  Waymarsh had\nsmoked of old, smoked hugely; but Waymarsh did nothing now, and that\ngave him his advantage over people who took things up lightly just when\nothers had laid them heavily down.  Strether had never smoked, and he\nfelt as if he flaunted at his friend that this had been only because of\na reason.  The reason, it now began to appear even to himself, was that\nhe had never had a lady to smoke with.\n\nIt was this lady's being there at all, however, that was the strange\nfree thing; perhaps, since she WAS there, her smoking was the least of\nher freedoms.  If Strether had been sure at each juncture of what--with\nBilham in especial--she talked about, he might have traced others and\nwinced at them and felt Waymarsh wince; but he was in fact so often at\nsea that his sense of the range of reference was merely general and\nthat he on several different occasions guessed and interpreted only to\ndoubt.  He wondered what they meant, but there were things he scarce\nthought they could be supposed to mean, and \"Oh no--not THAT!\" was at\nthe end of most of his ventures.  This was the very beginning with him\nof a condition as to which, later on, it will be seen, he found cause\nto pull himself up; and he was to remember the moment duly as the first\nstep in a process.  The central fact of the place was neither more nor\nless, when analysed--and a pressure superficial sufficed--than the\nfundamental impropriety of Chad's situation, round about which they\nthus seemed cynically clustered. Accordingly, since they took it for\ngranted, they took for granted all that was in connexion with it taken\nfor granted at Woollett--matters as to which, verily, he had been\nreduced with Mrs. Newsome to the last intensity of silence.  That was\nthe consequence of their being too bad to be talked about, and was the\naccompaniment, by the same token, of a deep conception of their\nbadness.  It befell therefore that when poor Strether put it to himself\nthat their badness was ultimately, or perhaps even insolently, what\nsuch a scene as the one before him was, so to speak, built upon, he\ncould scarce shirk the dilemma of reading a roundabout echo of them\ninto almost anything that came up.  This, he was well aware, was a\ndreadful necessity; but such was the stern logic, he could only gather,\nof a relation to the irregular life.\n\nIt was the way the irregular life sat upon Bilham and Miss Barrace that\nwas the insidious, the delicate marvel.  He was eager to concede that\ntheir relation to it was all indirect, for anything else in him would\nhave shown the grossness of bad manners; but the indirectness was none\nthe less consonant--THAT was striking-with a grateful enjoyment of\neverything that was Chad's.  They spoke of him repeatedly, invoking his\ngood name and good nature, and the worst confusion of mind for Strether\nwas that all their mention of him was of a kind to do him honour. They\ncommended his munificence and approved his taste, and in doing so sat\ndown, as it seemed to Strether, in the very soil out of which these\nthings flowered.  Our friend's final predicament was that he himself\nwas sitting down, for the time, WITH them, and there was a supreme\nmoment at which, compared with his collapse, Waymarsh's erectness\naffected him as really high.  One thing was certain--he saw he must\nmake up his mind.  He must approach Chad, must wait for him, deal with\nhim, master him, but he mustn't dispossess himself of the faculty of\nseeing things as they were.  He must bring him to HIM--not go himself,\nas it were, so much of the way.  He must at any rate be clearer as to\nwhat--should he continue to do that for convenience--he was still\ncondoning.  It was on the detail of this quantity--and what could the\nfact be but mystifying?-that Bilham and Miss Barrace threw so little\nlight.  So there they were.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nWhen Miss Gostrey arrived, at the end of a week, she made him a sign;\nhe went immediately to see her, and it wasn't till then that he could\nagain close his grasp on the idea of a corrective. This idea however\nwas luckily all before him again from the moment he crossed the\nthreshold of the little entresol of the Quartier Marboeuf into which\nshe had gathered, as she said, picking them up in a thousand flights\nand funny little passionate pounces, the makings of a final nest.  He\nrecognised in an instant that there really, there only, he should find\nthe boon with the vision of which he had first mounted Chad's stairs.\nHe might have been a little scared at the picture of how much more, in\nthis place, he should know himself \"in\" hadn't his friend been on the\nspot to measure the amount to his appetite.  Her compact and crowded\nlittle chambers, almost dusky, as they at first struck him, with\naccumulations, represented a supreme general adjustment to\nopportunities and conditions.  Wherever he looked he saw an old ivory\nor an old brocade, and he scarce knew where to sit for fear of a\nmisappliance.  The life of the occupant struck him of a sudden as more\ncharged with possession even than Chad's or than Miss Barrace's; wide\nas his glimpse had lately become of the empire of \"things,\" what was\nbefore him still enlarged it; the lust of the eyes and the pride of\nlife had indeed thus their temple.  It was the innermost nook of the\nshrine--as brown as a pirate's cave.  In the brownness were glints of\ngold; patches of purple were in the gloom; objects all that caught,\nthrough the muslin, with their high rarity, the light of the low\nwindows. Nothing was clear about them but that they were precious, and\nthey brushed his ignorance with their contempt as a flower, in a\nliberty taken with him, might have been whisked under his nose. But\nafter a full look at his hostess he knew none the less what most\nconcerned him.  The circle in which they stood together was warm with\nlife, and every question between them would live there as nowhere else.\nA question came up as soon as they had spoken, for his answer, with a\nlaugh, was quickly:  \"Well, they've got hold of me!\"  Much of their\ntalk on this first occasion was his development of that truth.  He was\nextraordinarily glad to see her, expressing to her frankly what she\nmost showed him, that one might live for years without a blessing\nunsuspected, but that to know it at last for no more than three days\nwas to need it or miss it for ever.  She was the blessing that had now\nbecome his need, and what could prove it better than that without her\nhe had lost himself?\n\n\"What do you mean?\" she asked with an absence of alarm that, correcting\nhim as if he had mistaken the \"period\" of one of her pieces, gave him\nafresh a sense of her easy movement through the maze he had but begun\nto tread.  \"What in the name of all the Pococks have you managed to do?\"\n\n\"Why exactly the wrong thing.  I've made a frantic friend of little\nBilham.\"\n\n\"Ah that sort of thing was of the essence of your case and to have been\nallowed for from the first.\"  And it was only after this that, quite as\na minor matter, she asked who in the world little Bilham might be. When\nshe learned that he was a friend of Chad's and living for the time in\nChad's rooms in Chad's absence, quite as if acting in Chad's spirit and\nserving Chad's cause, she showed, however, more interest.  \"Should you\nmind my seeing him? Only once, you know,\" she added.\n\n\"Oh the oftener the better:  he's amusing--he's original.\"\n\n\"He doesn't shock you?\" Miss Gostrey threw out.\n\n\"Never in the world! We escape that with a perfection--! I feel it to\nbe largely, no doubt, because I don't half-understand him; but our\nmodus vivendi isn't spoiled even by that.  You must dine with me to\nmeet him,\" Strether went on.  \"Then you'll see.'\n\n\"Are you giving dinners?\"\n\n\"Yes--there I am.  That's what I mean.\"\n\nAll her kindness wondered.  \"That you're spending too much money?\"\n\n\"Dear no--they seem to cost so little.  But that I do it to THEM. I\nought to hold off.\"\n\nShe thought again--she laughed.  \"The money you must be spending to\nthink it cheap! But I must be out of it--to the naked eye.\"\n\nHe looked for a moment as if she were really failing him.  \"Then you\nwon't meet them?\"  It was almost as if she had developed an unexpected\npersonal prudence.\n\nShe hesitated.  \"Who are they--first?\"\n\n\"Why little Bilham to begin with.\"  He kept back for the moment Miss\nBarrace.  \"And Chad--when he comes--you must absolutely see.\"\n\n\"When then does he come?\"\n\n\"When Bilham has had time to write him, and hear from him about me.\nBilham, however,\" he pursued, \"will report favourably--favourably for\nChad.  That will make him not afraid to come.  I want you the more\ntherefore, you see, for my bluff.\"\n\n\"Oh you'll do yourself for your bluff.\"  She was perfectly easy. \"At\nthe rate you've gone I'm quiet.\"\n\n\"Ah but I haven't,\" said Strether, \"made one protest.\"\n\nShe turned it over.  \"Haven't you been seeing what there's to protest\nabout?\"\n\nHe let her, with this, however ruefully, have the whole truth.  \"I\nhaven't yet found a single thing.\"\n\n\"Isn't there any one WITH him then?\"\n\n\"Of the sort I came out about?\"  Strether took a moment.  \"How do I\nknow? And what do I care?\"\n\n\"Oh oh!\"--and her laughter spread.  He was struck in fact by the effect\non her of his joke.  He saw now how he meant it as a joke. SHE saw,\nhowever, still other things, though in an instant she had hidden them.\n\"You've got at no facts at all?\"\n\nHe tried to muster them.  \"Well, he has a lovely home.\"\n\n\"Ah that, in Paris,\" she quickly returned, \"proves nothing.  That is\nrather it DISproves nothing.  They may very well, you see, the people\nyour mission is concerned with, have done it FOR him.\"\n\n\"Exactly.  And it was on the scene of their doings then that Waymarsh\nand I sat guzzling.\"\n\n\"Oh if you forbore to guzzle here on scenes of doings,\" she replied,\n\"you might easily die of starvation.\"  With which she smiled at him.\n\"You've worse before you.\"\n\n\"Ah I've EVERYTHING before me.  But on our hypothesis, you know, they\nmust be wonderful.\"\n\n\"They ARE!\" said Miss Gostrey.  \"You're not therefore, you see,\" she\nadded, \"wholly without facts.  They've BEEN, in effect, wonderful.\"\n\nTo have got at something comparatively definite appeared at last a\nlittle to help--a wave by which moreover, the next moment, recollection\nwas washed.  \"My young man does admit furthermore that they're our\nfriend's great interest.\"\n\n\"Is that the expression he uses?\"\n\nStrether more exactly recalled.  \"No--not quite.\"\n\n\"Something more vivid?  Less?\"\n\nHe had bent, with neared glasses, over a group of articles on a small\nstand; and at this he came up.  \"It was a mere allusion, but, on the\nlookout as I was, it struck me.  'Awful, you know, as Chad is'--those\nwere Bilham's words.\"\n\n\"'Awful, you know'--?  Oh!\"--and Miss Gostrey turned them over.  She\nseemed, however, satisfied.  \"Well, what more do you want?\"\n\nHe glanced once more at a bibelot or two, and everything sent him back.\n\"But it is all the same as if they wished to let me have it between the\neyes.\"\n\nShe wondered.  \"Quoi donc?\"\n\n\"Why what I speak of.  The amenity.  They can stun you with that as\nwell as with anything else.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she answered, \"you'll come round! I must see them each,\" she went\non, \"for myself.  I mean Mr. Bilham and Mr. Newsome--Mr. Bilham\nnaturally first.  Once only--once for each; that will do. But face to\nface--for half an hour.  What's Mr. Chad,\" she immediately pursued,\n\"doing at Cannes?  Decent men don't go to Cannes with the--well, with\nthe kind of ladies you mean.\"\n\n\"Don't they?\"  Strether asked with an interest in decent men that\namused her.\n\n\"No, elsewhere, but not to Cannes.  Cannes is different.  Cannes is\nbetter.  Cannes is best.  I mean it's all people you know--when you do\nknow them.  And if HE does, why that's different too.  He must have\ngone alone.  She can't be with him.\"\n\n\"I haven't,\" Strether confessed in his weakness, \"the least idea.\"\nThere seemed much in what she said, but he was able after a little to\nhelp her to a nearer impression.  The meeting with little Bilham took\nplace, by easy arrangement, in the great gallery of the Louvre; and\nwhen, standing with his fellow visitor before one of the splendid\nTitians--the overwhelming portrait of the young man with the\nstrangely-shaped glove and the blue-grey eyes--he turned to see the\nthird member of their party advance from the end of the waxed and\ngilded vista, he had a sense of having at last taken hold.  He had\nagreed with Miss Gostrey--it dated even from Chester--for a morning at\nthe Louvre, and he had embraced independently the same idea as thrown\nout by little Bilham, whom he had already accompanied to the museum of\nthe Luxembourg.  The fusion of these schemes presented no difficulty,\nand it was to strike him again that in little Bilham's company\ncontrarieties in general dropped.\n\n\"Oh he's all right--he's one of US!\" Miss Gostrey, after the first\nexchange, soon found a chance to murmur to her companion; and Strether,\nas they proceeded and paused and while a quick unanimity between the\ntwo appeared to have phrased itself in half a dozen remarks--Strether\nknew that he knew almost immediately what she meant, and took it as\nstill another sign that he had got his job in hand.  This was the more\ngrateful to him that he could think of the intelligence now serving him\nas an acquisition positively new. He wouldn't have known even the day\nbefore what she meant--that is if she meant, what he assumed, that they\nwere intense Americans together.  He had just worked round--and with a\nsharper turn of the screw than any yet--to the conception of an\nAmerican intense as little Bilham was intense.  The young man was his\nfirst specimen; the specimen had profoundly perplexed him; at present\nhowever there was light.  It was by little Bilham's amazing serenity\nthat he had at first been affected, but he had inevitably, in his\ncircumspection, felt it as the trail of the serpent, the corruption, as\nhe might conveniently have said, of Europe; whereas the promptness with\nwhich it came up for Miss Gostrey but as a special little form of the\noldest thing they knew justified it at once to his own vision as well.\nHe wanted to be able to like his specimen with a clear good conscience,\nand this fully permitted it.  What had muddled him was precisely the\nsmall artist-man's way--it was so complete--of being more American than\nanybody.  But it now for the time put Strether vastly at his ease to\nhave this view of a new way.\n\nThe amiable youth then looked out, as it had first struck Strether, at\na world in respect to which he hadn't a prejudice. The one our friend\nmost instantly missed was the usual one in favour of an occupation\naccepted.  Little Bilham had an occupation, but it was only an\noccupation declined; and it was by his general exemption from alarm,\nanxiety or remorse on this score that the impression of his serenity\nwas made.  He had come out to Paris to paint--to fathom, that is, at\nlarge, that mystery; but study had been fatal to him so far as anything\nCOULD be fatal, and his productive power faltered in proportion as his\nknowledge grew. Strether had gathered from him that at the moment of\nhis finding him in Chad's rooms he hadn't saved from his shipwreck a\nscrap of anything but his beautiful intelligence and his confirmed\nhabit of Paris.  He referred to these things with an equal fond\nfamiliarity, and it was sufficiently clear that, as an outfit, they\nstill served him.  They were charming to Strether through the hour\nspent at the Louvre, where indeed they figured for him as an\nunseparated part of the charged iridescent air, the glamour of the\nname, the splendour of the space, the colour of the masters.  Yet they\nwere present too wherever the young man led, and the day after the\nvisit to the Louvre they hung, in a different walk, about the steps of\nour party.  He had invited his companions to cross the river with him,\noffering to show them his own poor place; and his own poor place, which\nwas very poor, gave to his idiosyncrasies, for Strether--the small\nsublime indifference and independences that had struck the latter as\nfresh--an odd and engaging dignity. He lived at the end of an alley\nthat went out of an old short cobbled street, a street that went in\nturn out of a new long smooth avenue--street and avenue and alley\nhaving, however, in common a sort of social shabbiness; and he\nintroduced them to the rather cold and blank little studio which he had\nlent to a comrade for the term of his elegant absence.  The comrade was\nanother ingenuous compatriot, to whom he had wired that tea was to\nawait them \"regardless,\" and this reckless repast, and the second\ningenuous compatriot, and the faraway makeshift life, with its jokes\nand its gaps, its delicate daubs and its three or four chairs, its\noverflow of taste and conviction and its lack of nearly all else--these\nthings wove round the occasion a spell to which our hero unreservedly\nsurrendered.\n\nHe liked the ingenuous compatriots--for two or three others soon\ngathered; he liked the delicate daubs and the free\ndiscriminations--involving references indeed, involving enthusiasms and\nexecrations that made him, as they said, sit up; he liked above all the\nlegend of good-humoured poverty, of mutual accommodation fairly raised\nto the romantic, that he soon read into the scene.  The ingenuous\ncompatriots showed a candour, he thought, surpassing even the candour\nof Woollett; they were red-haired and long-legged, they were quaint and\nqueer and dear and droll; they made the place resound with the\nvernacular, which he had never known so marked as when figuring for the\nchosen language, he must suppose, of contemporary art.  They twanged\nwith a vengeance the aesthetic lyre--they drew from it wonderful airs.\nThis aspect of their life had an admirable innocence; and he looked on\noccasion at Maria Gostrey to see to what extent that element reached\nher.  She gave him however for the hour, as she had given him the\nprevious day, no further sign than to show how she dealt with boys;\nmeeting them with the air of old Parisian practice that she had for\nevery one, for everything, in turn. Wonderful about the delicate daubs,\nmasterful about the way to make tea, trustful about the legs of chairs\nand familiarly reminiscent of those, in the other time, the named, the\nnumbered or the caricatured, who had flourished or failed, disappeared\nor arrived, she had accepted with the best grace her second course of\nlittle Bilham, and had said to Strether, the previous afternoon on his\nleaving them, that, since her impression was to be renewed, she would\nreserve judgement till after the new evidence.\n\nThe new evidence was to come, as it proved, in a day or two.  He soon\nhad from Maria a message to the effect that an excellent box at the\nFrancais had been lent her for the following night; it seeming on such\noccasions not the least of her merits that she was subject to such\napproaches.  The sense of how she was always paying for something in\nadvance was equalled on Strether's part only by the sense of how she\nwas always being paid; all of which made for his consciousness, in the\nlarger air, of a lively bustling traffic, the exchange of such values\nas were not for him to handle.  She hated, he knew, at the French play,\nanything but a box--just as she hated at the English anything but a\nstall; and a box was what he was already in this phase girding himself\nto press upon her. But she had for that matter her community with\nlittle Bilham:  she too always, on the great issues, showed as having\nknown in time. It made her constantly beforehand with him and gave him\nmainly the chance to ask himself how on the day of their settlement\ntheir account would stand.  He endeavoured even now to keep it a little\nstraight by arranging that if he accepted her invitation she should\ndine with him first; but the upshot of this scruple was that at eight\no'clock on the morrow he awaited her with Waymarsh under the pillared\nportico.  She hadn't dined with him, and it was characteristic of their\nrelation that she had made him embrace her refusal without in the least\nunderstanding it.  She ever caused her rearrangements to affect him as\nher tenderest touches.  It was on that principle for instance that,\ngiving him the opportunity to be amiable again to little Bilham, she\nhad suggested his offering the young man a seat in their box.  Strether\nhad dispatched for this purpose a small blue missive to the Boulevard\nMalesherbes, but up to the moment of their passing into the theatre he\nhad received no response to his message.  He held, however, even after\nthey had been for some time conveniently seated, that their friend, who\nknew his way about, would come in at his own right moment.  His\ntemporary absence moreover seemed, as never yet, to make the right\nmoment for Miss Gostrey.  Strether had been waiting till tonight to get\nback from her in some mirrored form her impressions and conclusions.\nShe had elected, as they said, to see little Bilham once; but now she\nhad seen him twice and had nevertheless not said more than a word.\n\nWaymarsh meanwhile sat opposite him with their hostess between; and\nMiss Gostrey spoke of herself as an instructor of youth introducing her\nlittle charges to a work that was one of the glories of literature. The\nglory was happily unobjectionable, and the little charges were candid;\nfor herself she had travelled that road and she merely waited on their\ninnocence.  But she referred in due time to their absent friend, whom\nit was clear they should have to give up.  \"He either won't have got\nyour note,\" she said, \"or you won't have got his:  he has had some kind\nof hindrance, and, of course, for that matter, you know, a man never\nwrites about coming to a box.\"  She spoke as if, with her look, it\nmight have been Waymarsh who had written to the youth, and the latter's\nface showed a mixture of austerity and anguish.  She went on however as\nif to meet this.  \"He's far and away, you know, the best of them.\"\n\n\"The best of whom, ma'am?\"\n\n\"Why of all the long procession--the boys, the girls, or the old men\nand old women as they sometimes really are; the hope, as one may say,\nof our country.  They've all passed, year after year; but there has\nbeen no one in particular I've ever wanted to stop.  I feel--don't\nYOU?--that I want to stop little Bilham; he's so exactly right as he\nis.\"  She continued to talk to Waymarsh.  \"He's too delightful.  If\nhe'll only not spoil it! But they always WILL; they always do; they\nalways have.\"\n\n\"I don't think Waymarsh knows,\" Strether said after a moment, \"quite\nwhat it's open to Bilham to spoil.\"\n\n\"It can't be a good American,\" Waymarsh lucidly enough replied; \"for it\ndidn't strike me the young man had developed much in THAT shape.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Miss Gostrey sighed, \"the name of the good American is as easily\ngiven as taken away! What IS it, to begin with, to BE one, and what's\nthe extraordinary hurry?  Surely nothing that's so pressing was ever so\nlittle defined.  It's such an order, really, that before we cook you\nthe dish we must at least have your receipt.  Besides the poor chicks\nhave time! What I've seen so often spoiled,\" she pursued, \"is the happy\nattitude itself, the state of faith and--what shall I call it?--the\nsense of beauty. You're right about him\"--she now took in Strether;\n\"little Bilham has them to a charm, we must keep little Bilham along.\"\nThen she was all again for Waymarsh.  \"The others have all wanted so\ndreadfully to do something, and they've gone and done it in too many\ncases indeed.  It leaves them never the same afterwards; the charm's\nalways somehow broken.  Now HE, I think, you know, really won't.  He\nwon't do the least dreadful little thing.  We shall continue to enjoy\nhim just as he is.  No--he's quite beautiful.  He sees everything.  He\nisn't a bit ashamed.  He has every scrap of the courage of it that one\ncould ask.  Only think what he MIGHT do. One wants really--for fear of\nsome accident--to keep him in view. At this very moment perhaps what\nmayn't he be up to?  I've had my disappointments--the poor things are\nnever really safe; or only at least when you have them under your eye.\nOne can never completely trust them.  One's uneasy, and I think that's\nwhy I most miss him now.\"\n\nShe had wound up with a laugh of enjoyment over her embroidery of her\nidea--an enjoyment that her face communicated to Strether, who almost\nwished none the less at this moment that she would let poor Waymarsh\nalone.  HE knew more or less what she meant; but the fact wasn't a\nreason for her not pretending to Waymarsh that he didn't.  It was\ncraven of him perhaps, but he would, for the high amenity of the\noccasion, have liked Waymarsh not to be so sure of his wit.  Her\nrecognition of it gave him away and, before she had done with him or\nwith that article, would give him worse.  What was he, all the same, to\ndo?  He looked across the box at his friend; their eyes met; something\nqueer and stiff, something that bore on the situation but that it was\nbetter not to touch, passed in silence between them.  Well, the effect\nof it for Strether was an abrupt reaction, a final impatience of his\nown tendency to temporise.  Where was that taking him anyway?  It was\none of the quiet instants that sometimes settle more matters than the\noutbreaks dear to the historic muse.  The only qualification of the\nquietness was the synthetic \"Oh hang it!\" into which Strether's share\nof the silence soundlessly flowered.  It represented, this mute\nejaculation, a final impulse to burn his ships.  These ships, to the\nhistoric muse, may seem of course mere cockles, but when he presently\nspoke to Miss Gostrey it was with the sense at least of applying the\ntorch.  \"Is it then a conspiracy?\"\n\n\"Between the two young men?  Well, I don't pretend to be a seer or a\nprophetess,\" she presently replied; \"but if I'm simply a woman of sense\nhe's working for you to-night.  I don't quite know how--but it's in my\nbones.\"  And she looked at him at last as if, little material as she\nyet gave him, he'd really understand.  \"For an opinion THAT'S my\nopinion.  He makes you out too well not to.\"\n\n\"Not to work for me to-night?\"  Strether wondered.  \"Then I hope he\nisn't doing anything very bad.\"\n\n\"They've got you,\" she portentously answered.\n\n\"Do you mean he IS--?\"\n\n\"They've got you,\" she merely repeated.  Though she disclaimed the\nprophetic vision she was at this instant the nearest approach he had\never met to the priestess of the oracle.  The light was in her eyes.\n\"You must face it now.\"\n\nHe faced it on the spot.  \"They HAD arranged--?\"\n\n\"Every move in the game.  And they've been arranging ever since.  He\nhas had every day his little telegram from Cannes.\"\n\nIt made Strether open his eyes.  \"Do you KNOW that?\"\n\n\"I do better.  I see it.  This was, before I met him, what I wondered\nwhether I WAS to see.  But as soon as I met him I ceased to wonder, and\nour second meeting made me sure.  I took him all in. He was acting--he\nis still--on his daily instructions.\"\n\n\"So that Chad has done the whole thing?\"\n\n\"Oh no--not the whole.  WE'VE done some of it.  You and I and 'Europe.'\"\n\n\"Europe--yes,\" Strether mused.\n\n\"Dear old Paris,\" she seemed to explain.  But there was more, and, with\none of her turns, she risked it.  \"And dear old Waymarsh. You,\" she\ndeclared, \"have been a good bit of it.\"\n\nHe sat massive.  \"A good bit of what, ma'am?\"\n\n\"Why of the wonderful consciousness of our friend here.  You've helped\ntoo in your way to float him to where he is.\"\n\n\"And where the devil IS he?\"\n\nShe passed it on with a laugh.  \"Where the devil, Strether, are you?\"\n\nHe spoke as if he had just been thinking it out.  \"Well, quite already\nin Chad's hands, it would seem.\"  And he had had with this another\nthought.  \"Will that be--just all through Bilham--the way he's going to\nwork it?  It would be, for him, you know, an idea. And Chad with an\nidea--!\"\n\n\"Well?\" she asked while the image held him.\n\n\"Well, is Chad--what shall I say?--monstrous?\"\n\n\"Oh as much as you like! But the idea you speak of,\" she said, \"won't\nhave been his best.  He'll have a better.  It won't be all through\nlittle Bilham that he'll work it.\"\n\nThis already sounded almost like a hope destroyed.  \"Through whom else\nthen?\"\n\n\"That's what we shall see!\"  But quite as she spoke she turned, and\nStrether turned; for the door of the box had opened, with the click of\nthe ouvreuse,  from the lobby, and a gentleman, a stranger to them, had\ncome in with a quick step.  The door closed behind him, and, though\ntheir faces showed him his mistake, his air, which was striking, was\nall good confidence.  The curtain had just again arisen, and, in the\nhush of the general attention, Strether's challenge was tacit, as was\nalso the greeting, with a quickly deprecating hand and smile, of the\nunannounced visitor.  He discreetly signed that he would wait, would\nstand, and these things and his face, one look from which she had\ncaught, had suddenly worked for Miss Gostrey.  She fitted to them all\nan answer for Strether's last question.  The solid stranger was simply\nthe answer--as she now, turning to her friend, indicated.  She brought\nit straight out for him--it presented the intruder.  \"Why, through this\ngentleman!\"  The gentleman indeed, at the same time, though sounding\nfor Strether a very short name, did practically as much to explain.\nStrether gasped the name back--then only had he seen Miss Gostrey had\nsaid more than she knew.  They were in presence of Chad himself.\n\nOur friend was to go over it afterwards again and again--he was going\nover it much of the time that they were together, and they were\ntogether constantly for three or four days:  the note had been so\nstrongly struck during that first half-hour that everything happening\nsince was comparatively a minor development.  The fact was that his\nperception of the young man's identity--so absolutely checked for a\nminute--had been quite one of the sensations that count in life; he\ncertainly had never known one that had acted, as he might have said,\nwith more of a crowded rush.  And the rush though both vague and\nmultitudinous, had lasted a long time, protected, as it were, yet at\nthe same time aggravated, by the circumstance of its coinciding with a\nstretch of decorous silence. They couldn't talk without disturbing the\nspectators in the part of the balcony just below them; and it, for that\nmatter, came to Strether--being a thing of the sort that did come to\nhim--that these were the accidents of a high civilisation; the imposed\ntribute to propriety, the frequent exposure to conditions, usually\nbrilliant, in which relief has to await its time.  Relief was never\nquite near at hand for kings, queens, comedians and other such people,\nand though you might be yourself not exactly one of those, you could\nyet, in leading the life of high pressure, guess a little how they\nsometimes felt.  It was truly the life of high pressure that Strether\nhad seemed to feel himself lead while he sat there, close to Chad,\nduring the long tension of the act.  He was in presence of a fact that\noccupied his whole mind, that occupied for the half-hour his senses\nthemselves all together; but he couldn't without inconvenience show\nanything--which moreover might count really as luck.  What he might\nhave shown, had he shown at all, was exactly the kind of emotion--the\nemotion of bewilderment--that he had proposed to himself from the\nfirst, whatever should occur, to show least.  The phenomenon that had\nsuddenly sat down there with him was a phenomenon of change so complete\nthat his imagination, which had worked so beforehand, felt itself, in\nthe connexion, without margin or allowance.  It had faced every\ncontingency but that Chad should not BE Chad, and this was what it now\nhad to face with a mere strained smile and an uncomfortable flush.\n\nHe asked himself if, by any chance, before he should have in some way\nto commit himself, he might feel his mind settled to the new vision,\nmight habituate it, so to speak, to the remarkable truth. But oh it was\ntoo remarkable, the truth; for what could be more remarkable than this\nsharp rupture of an identity?  You could deal with a man as\nhimself--you couldn't deal with him as somebody else.  It was a small\nsource of peace moreover to be reduced to wondering how little he might\nknow in such an event what a sum he was setting you.  He couldn't\nabsolutely not know, for you couldn't absolutely not let him.  It was a\nCASE then simply, a strong case, as people nowadays called such\nthings,' a case of transformation unsurpassed, and the hope was but in\nthe general law that strong cases were liable to control from without.\nPerhaps he, Strether himself, was the only person after all aware of\nit. Even Miss Gostrey, with all her science, wouldn't be, would\nshe?--and he had never seen any one less aware of anything than\nWaymarsh as he glowered at Chad.  The social sightlessness of his old\nfriend's survey marked for him afresh, and almost in an humiliating\nway, the inevitable limits of direct aid from this source.  He was not\ncertain, however, of not drawing a shade of compensation from the\nprivilege, as yet untasted, of knowing more about something in\nparticular than Miss Gostrey did.  His situation too was a case, for\nthat matter, and he was now so interested, quite so privately agog,\nabout it, that he had already an eye to the fun it would be to open up\nto her afterwards.  He derived during his half-hour no assistance from\nher, and just this fact of her not meeting his eyes played a little, it\nmust be confessed, into his predicament.\n\nHe had introduced Chad, in the first minutes, under his breath, and\nthere was never the primness in her of the person unacquainted; but she\nhad none the less betrayed at first no vision but of the stage, where\nshe occasionally found a pretext for an appreciative moment that she\ninvited Waymarsh to share.  The latter's faculty of participation had\nnever had, all round, such an assault to meet; the pressure on him\nbeing the sharper for this chosen attitude in her, as Strether judged\nit, of isolating, for their natural intercourse, Chad and himself. This\nintercourse was meanwhile restricted to a frank friendly look from the\nyoung man, something markedly like a smile, but falling far short of a\ngrin, and to the vivacity of Strether's private speculation as to\nwhether HE carried himself like a fool.  He didn't quite see how he\ncould so feel as one without somehow showing as one.  The worst of that\nquestion moreover was that he knew it as a symptom the sense of which\nannoyed him.  \"If I'm going to be odiously conscious of how I may\nstrike the fellow,\" he reflected, \"it was so little what I came out for\nthat I may as well stop before I begin.\"  This sage consideration too,\ndistinctly, seemed to leave untouched the fact that he WAS going to be\nconscious.  He was conscious of everything but of what would have\nserved him.\n\nHe was to know afterwards, in the watches of the night, that nothing\nwould have been more open to him than after a minute or two to propose\nto Chad to seek with him the refuge of the lobby. He hadn't only not\nproposed it, but had lacked even the presence of mind to see it as\npossible.  He had stuck there like a schoolboy wishing not to miss a\nminute of the show; though for that portion of the show then presented\nhe hadn't had an instant's real attention.  He couldn't when the\ncurtain fell have given the slightest account of what had happened.  He\nhad therefore, further, not at that moment acknowledged the amenity\nadded by this acceptance of his awkwardness to Chad's general patience.\nHadn't he none the less known at the very time--known it stupidly and\nwithout reaction--that the boy was accepting something?  He was\nmodestly benevolent, the boy--that was at least what he had been\ncapable of the superiority of making out his chance to be; and one had\none's self literally not had the gumption to get in ahead of him.  If\nwe should go into all that occupied our friend in the watches of the\nnight we should have to mend our pen; but an instance or two may mark\nfor us the vividness with which he could remember.  He remembered the\ntwo absurdities that, if his presence of mind HAD failed, were the\nthings that had had most to do with it.  He had never in his life seen\na young man come into a box at ten o'clock at night, and would, if\nchallenged on the question in advance, have scarce been ready to\npronounce as to different ways of doing so.  But it was in spite of\nthis definite to him that Chad had had a way that was wonderful:  a\nfact carrying with it an implication that, as one might imagine it, he\nknew, he had learned, how.\n\nHere already then were abounding results; he had on the spot and\nwithout the least trouble of intention taught Strether that even in so\nsmall a thing as that there were different ways.  He had done in the\nsame line still more than this; had by a mere shake or two of the head\nmade his old friend observe that the change in him was perhaps more\nthan anything else, for the eye, a matter of the marked streaks of\ngrey, extraordinary at his age, in his thick black hair; as well as\nthat this new feature was curiously becoming to him, did something for\nhim, as characterisation, also even--of all things in the world--as\nrefinement, that had been a good deal wanted.  Strether felt, however,\nhe would have had to confess, that it wouldn't have been easy just now,\non this and other counts, in the presence of what had been supplied, to\nbe quite clear as to what had been missed.  A reflexion a candid critic\nmight have made of old, for instance, was that it would have been\nhappier for the son to look more like the mother; but this was a\nreflexion that at present would never occur.  The ground had quite\nfallen away from it, yet no resemblance whatever to the mother had\nsupervened.  It would have been hard for a young man's face and air to\ndisconnect themselves more completely than Chad's at this juncture from\nany discerned, from any imaginable aspect of a New England female\nparent.  That of course was no more than had been on the cards; but it\nproduced in Strether none the less one of those frequent phenomena of\nmental reference with which all judgement in him was actually beset.\n\nAgain and again as the days passed he had had a sense of the pertinence\nof communicating quickly with Woollett--communicating with a quickness\nwith which telegraphy alone would rhyme; the fruit really of a fine\nfancy in him for keeping things straight, for the happy forestalment of\nerror.  No one could explain better when needful, nor put more\nconscience into an account or a report; which burden of conscience is\nperhaps exactly the reason why his heart always sank when the clouds of\nexplanation gathered.  His highest ingenuity was in keeping the sky of\nlife clear of them. Whether or no he had a grand idea of the lucid, he\nheld that nothing ever was in fact--for any one else--explained.  One\nwent through the vain motions, but it was mostly a waste of life.  A\npersonal relation was a relation only so long as people either\nperfectly understood or, better still, didn't care if they didn't. From\nthe moment they cared if they didn't it was living by the sweat of\none's brow; and the sweat of one's brow was just what one might buy\none's self off from by keeping the ground free of the wild weed of\ndelusion.  It easily grew too fast, and the Atlantic cable now alone\ncould race with it.  That agency would each day have testified for him\nto something that was not what Woollett had argued.  He was not at this\nmoment absolutely sure that the effect of the morrow's--or rather of\nthe night's--appreciation of the crisis wouldn't be to determine some\nbrief missive.  \"Have at last seen him, but oh dear!\"--some temporary\nrelief of that sort seemed to hover before him.  It hovered somehow as\npreparing them all--yet preparing them for what?  If he might do so\nmore luminously and cheaply he would tick out in four words:  \"Awfully\nold--grey hair.\" To this particular item in Chad's appearance he\nconstantly, during their mute half-hour, reverted; as if so very much\nmore than he could have said had been involved in it.  The most he\ncould have said would have been:  \"If he's going to make me feel\nyoung--!\" which indeed, however, carried with it quite enough.  If\nStrether was to feel young, that is, it would be because Chad was to\nfeel old; and an aged and hoary sinner had been no part of the scheme.\n\nThe question of Chadwick's true time of life was, doubtless, what came\nup quickest after the adjournment of the two, when the play was over,\nto a cafe in the Avenue de l'Opera.  Miss Gostrey had in due course\nbeen perfect for such a step; she had known exactly what they\nwanted--to go straight somewhere and talk; and Strether had even felt\nshe had known what he wished to say and that he was arranging\nimmediately to begin.  She hadn't pretended this, as she HAD pretended\non the other hand, to have divined Waymarsh's wish to extend to her an\nindependent protection homeward; but Strether nevertheless found how,\nafter he had Chad opposite to him at a small table in the brilliant\nhalls that his companion straightway selected, sharply and easily\ndiscriminated from others, it was quite, to his mind, as if she heard\nhim speak; as if, sitting up, a mile away, in the little apartment he\nknew, she would listen hard enough to catch.  He found too that he\nliked that idea, and he wished that, by the same token, Mrs. Newsome\nmight have caught as well.  For what had above all been determined in\nhim as a necessity of the first order was not to lose another hour, nor\na fraction of one; was to advance, to overwhelm, with a rush.  This was\nhow he would anticipate--by a night-attack, as might be--any forced\nmaturity that a crammed consciousness of Paris was likely to take upon\nitself to assert on behalf of the boy.  He knew to the full, on what he\nhad just extracted from Miss Gostrey, Chad's marks of alertness; but\nthey were a reason the more for not dawdling.  If he was himself\nmoreover to be treated as young he wouldn't at all events be so treated\nbefore he should have struck out at least once.  His arms might be\npinioned afterwards, but it would have been left on record that he was\nfifty.  The importance of this he had indeed begun to feel before they\nleft the theatre; it had become a wild unrest, urging him to seize his\nchance.  He could scarcely wait for it as they went; he was on the\nverge of the indecency of bringing up the question in the street; he\nfairly caught himself going on--so he afterwards invidiously named\nit--as if there would be for him no second chance should the present be\nlost.  Not till, on the purple divan before the perfunctory bock, he\nhad brought out the words themselves, was he sure, for that matter,\nthat the present would be saved.\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Fourth\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\n\"I've come, you know, to make you break with everything, neither more\nnor less, and take you straight home; so you'll be so good as\nimmediately and favourably to consider it!\"--Strether, face to face\nwith Chad after the play, had sounded these words almost breathlessly,\nand with an effect at first positively disconcerting to himself alone.\nFor Chad's receptive attitude was that of a person who had been\ngracefully quiet while the messenger at last reaching him has run a\nmile through the dust.  During some seconds after he had spoken\nStrether felt as if HE had made some such exertion; he was not even\ncertain that the perspiration wasn't on his brow.  It was the kind of\nconsciousness for which he had to thank the look that, while the strain\nlasted, the young man's eyes gave him.  They reflected--and the deuce\nof the thing was that they reflected really with a sort of shyness of\nkindness--his momentarily disordered state; which fact brought on in\nits turn for our friend the dawn of a fear that Chad might simply \"take\nit out\"--take everything out--in being sorry for him.  Such a fear, any\nfear, was unpleasant.  But everything was unpleasant; it was odd how\neverything had suddenly turned so.  This however was no reason for\nletting the least thing go.  Strether had the next minute proceeded as\nroundly as if with an advantage to follow up. \"Of course I'm a\nbusybody, if you want to fight the case to the death; but after all\nmainly in the sense of having known you and having given you such\nattention as you kindly permitted when you were in jackets and\nknickerbockers.  Yes--it was knickerbockers, I'm busybody enough to\nremember that; and that you had, for your age--I speak of the first\nfar-away time--tremendously stout legs. Well, we want you to break.\nYour mother's heart's passionately set upon it, but she has above and\nbeyond that excellent arguments and reasons.  I've not put them into\nher head--I needn't remind you how little she's a person who needs\nthat.  But they exist--you must take it from me as a friend both of\nhers and yours--for myself as well.  I didn't invent them, I didn't\noriginally work them out; but I understand them, I think I can explain\nthem--by which I mean make you actively do them justice; and that's why\nyou see me here. You had better know the worst at once.  It's a\nquestion of an immediate rupture and an immediate return.  I've been\nconceited enough to dream I can sugar that pill.  I take at any rate\nthe greatest interest in the question.  I took it already before I left\nhome, and I don't mind telling you that, altered as you are, I take it\nstill more now that I've seen you.  You're older and--I don't know what\nto call it!--more of a handful; but you're by so much the more, I seem\nto make out, to our purpose.\"\n\n\"Do I strike you as improved?\"  Strether was to recall that Chad had at\nthis point enquired.\n\nHe was likewise to recall--and it had to count for some time as his\ngreatest comfort--that it had been \"given\" him, as they said at\nWoollett, to reply with some presence of mind:  \"I haven't the least\nidea.\"  He was really for a while to like thinking he had been\npositively hard.  On the point of conceding that Chad had improved in\nappearance, but that to the question of appearance the remark must be\nconfined, he checked even that compromise and left his reservation\nbare.  Not only his moral, but also, as it were, his aesthetic sense\nhad a little to pay for this, Chad being unmistakeably--and wasn't it a\nmatter of the confounded grey hair again?--handsomer than he had ever\npromised.  That however fell in perfectly with what Strether had said.\nThey had no desire to keep down his proper expansion, and he wouldn't\nbe less to their purpose for not looking, as he had too often done of\nold, only bold and wild.  There was indeed a signal particular in which\nhe would distinctly be more so.  Strether didn't, as he talked,\nabsolutely follow himself; he only knew he was clutching his thread and\nthat he held it from moment to moment a little tighter; his mere\nuninterruptedness during the few minutes helped him to do that.  He had\nfrequently for a month, turned over what he should say on this very\noccasion, and he seemed at last to have said nothing he had thought\nof--everything was so totally different.\n\nBut in spite of all he had put the flag at the window.  This was what\nhe had done, and there was a minute during which he affected himself as\nhaving shaken it hard, flapped it with a mighty flutter, straight in\nfront of his companion's nose.  It gave him really almost the sense of\nhaving already acted his part.  The momentary relief--as if from the\nknowledge that nothing of THAT at least could be undone--sprang from a\nparticular cause, the cause that had flashed into operation, in Miss\nGostrey's box, with direct apprehension, with amazed recognition, and\nthat had been concerned since then in every throb of his consciousness.\nWhat it came to was that with an absolutely new quantity to deal with\none simply couldn't know.  The new quantity was represented by the fact\nthat Chad had been made over.  That was all; whatever it was it was\neverything.  Strether had never seen the thing so done before--it was\nperhaps a speciality of Paris.  If one had been present at the process\none might little by little have mastered the result; but he was face to\nface, as matters stood, with the finished business. It had freely been\nnoted for him that he might be received as a dog among skittles, but\nthat was on the basis of the old quantity. He had originally thought of\nlines and tones as things to be taken, but these possibilities had now\nquite melted away.  There was no computing at all what the young man\nbefore him would think or feel or say on any subject whatever.  This\nintelligence Strether had afterwards, to account for his nervousness,\nreconstituted as he might, just as he had also reconstituted the\npromptness with which Chad had corrected his uncertainty.  An\nextraordinarily short time had been required for the correction, and\nthere had ceased to be anything negative in his companion's face and\nair as soon as it was made.  \"Your engagement to my mother has become\nthen what they call here a fait accompli?\"--it had consisted, the\ndeterminant touch, in nothing more than that.\n\nWell, that was enough, Strether had felt while his answer hung fire. He\nhad felt at the same time, however, that nothing could less become him\nthan that it should hang fire too long.  \"Yes,\" he said brightly, \"it\nwas on the happy settlement of the question that I started.  You see\ntherefore to what tune I'm in your family. Moreover,\" he added, \"I've\nbeen supposing you'd suppose it.\"\n\n\"Oh I've been supposing it for a long time, and what you tell me helps\nme to understand that you should want to do something.  To do\nsomething, I mean,\" said Chad, \"to commemorate an event so--what do\nthey call it?--so auspicious.  I see you make out, and not\nunnaturally,\" he continued, \"that bringing me home in triumph as a sort\nof wedding-present to Mother would commemorate it better than anything\nelse.  You want to make a bonfire in fact,\" he laughed, \"and you pitch\nme on.  Thank you, thank you!\" he laughed again.\n\nHe was altogether easy about it, and this made Strether now see how at\nbottom, and in spite of the shade of shyness that really cost him\nnothing, he had from the first moment been easy about everything.  The\nshade of shyness was mere good taste.  People with manners formed could\napparently have, as one of their best cards, the shade of shyness too.\nHe had leaned a little forward to speak; his elbows were on the table;\nand the inscrutable new face that he had got somewhere and somehow was\nbrought by the movement nearer to his critics There was a fascination\nfor that critic in its not being, this ripe physiognomy, the face that,\nunder observation at least, he had originally carried away from\nWoollett.  Strether found a certain freedom on his own side in defining\nit as that of a man of the world--a formula that indeed seemed to come\nnow in some degree to his relief; that of a man to whom things had\nhappened and were variously known.  In gleams, in glances, the past did\nperhaps peep out of it; but such lights were faint and instantly\nmerged.  Chad was brown and thick and strong, and of old Chad had been\nrough.  Was all the difference therefore that he was actually smooth?\nPossibly; for that he WAS smooth was as marked as in the taste of a\nsauce or in the rub of a hand.  The effect of it was general--it had\nretouched his features, drawn them with a cleaner line.  It had cleared\nhis eyes and settled his colour and polished his fine square teeth--the\nmain ornament of his face; and at the same time that it had given him a\nform and a surface, almost a design, it had toned his voice,\nestablished his accent, encouraged his smile to more play and his other\nmotions to less. He had formerly, with a great deal of action,\nexpressed very little; and he now expressed whatever was necessary with\nalmost none at all.  It was as if in short he had really, copious\nperhaps but shapeless, been put into a firm mould and turned\nsuccessfully out.  The phenomenon--Strether kept eyeing it as a\nphenomenon, an eminent case--was marked enough to be touched by the\nfinger.  He finally put his hand across the table and laid it on Chad's\narm. \"If you'll promise me--here on the spot and giving me your word of\nhonour--to break straight off, you'll make the future the real right\nthing for all of us alike.  You'll ease off the strain of this decent\nbut none the less acute suspense in which I've for so many days been\nwaiting for you, and let me turn in to rest.  I shall leave you with my\nblessing and go to bed in peace.\"\n\nChad again fell back at this and, his hands pocketed, settled himself a\nlittle; in which posture he looked, though he rather anxiously smiled,\nonly the more earnest.  Then Strether seemed to see that he was really\nnervous, and he took that as what he would have called a wholesome\nsign.  The only mark of it hitherto had been his more than once taking\noff and putting on his wide-brimmed crush hat.  He had at this moment\nmade the motion again to remove it, then had only pushed it back, so\nthat it hung informally on his strong young grizzled crop.  It was a\ntouch that gave the note of the familiar--the intimate and the\nbelated--to their quiet colloquy; and it was indeed by some such\ntrivial aid that Strether became aware at the same moment of something\nelse.  The observation was at any rate determined in him by some light\ntoo fine to distinguish from so many others, but it was none the less\nsharply determined.  Chad looked unmistakeably during these\ninstants--well, as Strether put it to himself, all he was worth.  Our\nfriend had a sudden apprehension of what that would on certain sides\nbe. He saw him in a flash as the young man marked out by women; and for\na concentrated minute the dignity, the comparative austerity, as he\nfunnily fancied it, of this character affected him almost with awe.\nThere was an experience on his interlocutor's part that looked out at\nhim from under the displaced hat, and that looked out moreover by a\nforce of its own, the deep fact of its quantity and quality, and not\nthrough Chad's intending bravado or swagger. That was then the way men\nmarked out by women WERE--and also the men by whom the women were\ndoubtless in turn sufficiently distinguished.  It affected Strether for\nthirty seconds as a relevant truth, a truth which, however, the next\nminute, had fallen into its relation.  \"Can't you imagine there being\nsome questions,\" Chad asked, \"that a fellow--however much impressed by\nyour charming way of stating things--would like to put to you first?\"\n\n\"Oh yes--easily.  I'm here to answer everything.  I think I can even\ntell you things, of the greatest interest to you, that you won't know\nenough to ask me.  We'll take as many days to it as you like. But I\nwant,\" Strether wound up, \"to go to bed now.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\nChad had spoken in such surprise that he was amused.  \"Can't you\nbelieve it?--with what you put me through?\"\n\nThe young man seemed to consider.  \"Oh I haven't put you through\nmuch--yet.\"\n\n\"Do you mean there's so much more to come?\"  Strether laughed.  \"All\nthe more reason then that I should gird myself.\"  And as if to mark\nwhat he felt he could by this time count on he was already on his feet.\n\nChad, still seated, stayed him, with a hand against him, as he passed\nbetween their table and the next.  \"Oh we shall get on!\"\n\nThe tone was, as who should say, everything Strether could have\ndesired; and quite as good the expression of face with which the\nspeaker had looked up at him and kindly held him.  All these things\nlacked was their not showing quite so much as the fruit of experience.\nYes, experience was what Chad did play on him, if he didn't play any\ngrossness of defiance.  Of course experience was in a manner defiance;\nbut it wasn't, at any rate--rather indeed quite the\ncontrary!--grossness; which was so much gained.  He fairly grew older,\nStrether thought, while he himself so reasoned.  Then with his mature\npat of his visitor's arm he also got up; and there had been enough of\nit all by this time to make the visitor feel that something WAS\nsettled.  Wasn't it settled that he had at least the testimony of\nChad's own belief in a settlement?  Strether found himself treating\nChad's profession that they would get on as a sufficient basis for\ngoing to bed.  He hadn't nevertheless after this gone to bed directly;\nfor when they had again passed out together into the mild bright night\na check had virtually sprung from nothing more than a small\ncircumstance which might have acted only as confirming quiescence.\nThere were people, expressive sound, projected light, still abroad, and\nafter they had taken in for a moment, through everything, the great\nclear architectural street, they turned off in tacit union to the\nquarter of Strether's hotel.  \"Of course,\" Chad here abruptly began,\n\"of course Mother's making things out with you about me has been\nnatural--and of course also you've had a good deal to go upon. Still,\nyou must have filled out.\"\n\nHe had stopped, leaving his friend to wonder a little what point he\nwished to make; and this it was that enabled Strether meanwhile to make\none.  \"Oh we've never pretended to go into detail.  We weren't in the\nleast bound to THAT.  It was 'filling out' enough to miss you as we\ndid.\"\n\nBut Chad rather oddly insisted, though under the high lamp at their\ncorner, where they paused, he had at first looked as if touched by\nStrether's allusion to the long sense, at home, of his absence.  \"What\nI mean is you must have imagined.\"\n\n\"Imagined what?\"\n\n\"Well--horrors.\"\n\nIt affected Strether:  horrors were so little--superficially at\nleast--in this robust and reasoning image.  But he was none the less\nthere to be veracious.  \"Yes, I dare say we HAVE imagined horrors.  But\nwhere's the harm if we haven't been wrong?\"\n\nChad raised his face to the lamp, and it was one of the moments at\nwhich he had, in his extraordinary way, most his air of designedly\nshowing himself.  It was as if at these instants he just presented\nhimself, his identity so rounded off, his palpable presence and his\nmassive young manhood, as such a link in the chain as might practically\namount to a kind of demonstration.  It was as if--and how but\nanomalously?--he couldn't after all help thinking sufficiently well of\nthese things to let them go for what they were worth.  What could there\nbe in this for Strether but the hint of some self-respect, some sense\nof power, oddly perverted; something latent and beyond access, ominous\nand perhaps enviable? The intimation had the next thing, in a flash,\ntaken on a name--a name on which our friend seized as he asked himself\nif he weren't perhaps really dealing with an irreducible young Pagan.\nThis description--he quite jumped at it--had a sound that gratified his\nmental ear, so that of a sudden he had already adopted it.  Pagan--yes,\nthat was, wasn't it?  what Chad WOULD logically be.  It was what he\nmust be.  It was what he was.  The idea was a clue and, instead of\ndarkening the prospect, projected a certain clearness. Strether made\nout in this quick ray that a Pagan was perhaps, at the pass they had\ncome to, the thing most wanted at Woollett. They'd be able to do with\none--a good one; he'd find an opening--yes; and Strether's imagination\neven now prefigured and accompanied the first appearance there of the\nrousing personage. He had only the slight discomfort of feeling, as the\nyoung man turned away from the lamp, that his thought had in the\nmomentary silence possibly been guessed.  \"Well, I've no doubt,\" said\nChad, \"you've come near enough.  The details, as you say, don't matter.\nIt HAS been generally the case that I've let myself go.  But I'm coming\nround--I'm not so bad now.\"  With which they walked on again to\nStrether's hotel.\n\n\"Do you mean,\" the latter asked as they approached the door, \"that\nthere isn't any woman with you now?\"\n\n\"But pray what has that to do with it?\"\n\n\"Why it's the whole question.\"\n\n\"Of my going home?\"  Chad was clearly surprised.  \"Oh not much! Do you\nthink that when I want to go any one will have any power--\"\n\n\"To keep you\"--Strether took him straight up--\"from carrying out your\nwish?  Well, our idea has been that somebody has hitherto--or a good\nmany persons perhaps--kept you pretty well from 'wanting.' That's\nwhat--if you're in anybody's hands--may again happen.  You don't answer\nmy question\"--he kept it up; \"but if you aren't in anybody's hands so\nmuch the better.  There's nothing then but what makes for your going.\"\n\nChad turned this over.  \"I don't answer your question?\"  He spoke quite\nwithout resenting it.  \"Well, such questions have always a rather\nexaggerated side.  One doesn't know quite what you mean by being in\nwomen's 'hands.' It's all so vague.  One is when one isn't.  One isn't\nwhen one is.  And then one can't quite give people away.\"  He seemed\nkindly to explain.  \"I've NEVER got stuck--so very hard; and, as\nagainst anything at any time really better, I don't think I've ever\nbeen afraid.\"  There was something in it that held Strether to wonder,\nand this gave him time to go on.  He broke out as with a more helpful\nthought.  \"Don't you know how I like Paris itself?\"\n\nThe upshot was indeed to make our friend marvel.  \"Oh if THAT'S all\nthat's the matter with you--!\"  It was HE who almost showed resentment.\n\nChad's smile of a truth more than met it.  \"But isn't that enough?\"\n\nStrether hesitated, but it came out.  \"Not enough for your mother!\"\nSpoken, however, it sounded a trifle odd--the effect of which was that\nChad broke into a laugh.  Strether, at this, succumbed as well, though\nwith extreme brevity.  \"Permit us to have still our theory.  But if you\nARE so free and so strong you're inexcusable. I'll write in the\nmorning,\" he added with decision.  \"I'll say I've got you.\"\n\nThis appeared to open for Chad a new interest.  \"How often do you\nwrite?\"\n\n\"Oh perpetually.\"\n\n\"And at great length?\"\n\nStrether had become a little impatient.  \"I hope it's not found too\ngreat.\"\n\n\"Oh I'm sure not.  And you hear as often?\"\n\nAgain Strether paused.  \"As often as I deserve.\"\n\n\"Mother writes,\" said Chad, \"a lovely letter.\"\n\nStrether, before the closed porte-cochere, fixed him a moment. \"It's\nmore, my boy, than YOU do!  But our suppositions don't matter,\" he\nadded, \"if you're actually not entangled.\"\n\nChad's pride seemed none the less a little touched.  \"I never WAS\nthat--let me insist.  I always had my own way.\"  With which he pursued:\n\"And I have it at present.\"\n\n\"Then what are you here for?  What has kept you,\" Strether asked, \"if\nyou HAVE been able to leave?\"\n\nIt made Chad, after a stare, throw himself back.  \"Do you think one's\nkept only by women?\"  His surprise and his verbal emphasis rang out so\nclear in the still street that Strether winced till he remembered the\nsafety of their English speech.  \"Is that,\" the young man demanded,\n\"what they think at Woollett?\"  At the good faith in the question\nStrether had changed colour, feeling that, as he would have said, he\nhad put his foot in it.  He had appeared stupidly to misrepresent what\nthey thought at Woollett; but before he had time to rectify Chad again\nwas upon him.  \"I must say then you show a low mind!\"\n\nIt so fell in, unhappily for Strether, with that reflexion of his own\nprompted in him by the pleasant air of the Boulevard Malesherbes, that\nits disconcerting force was rather unfairly great.  It was a dig that,\nadministered by himself--and administered even to poor Mrs.\nNewsome--was no more than salutary; but administered by Chad--and quite\nlogically--it came nearer drawing blood.  They HADn't a low mind--nor\nany approach to one; yet incontestably they had worked, and with a\ncertain smugness, on a basis that might be turned against them.  Chad\nhad at any rate pulled his visitor up; he had even pulled up his\nadmirable mother; he had absolutely, by a turn of the wrist and a jerk\nof the far-flung noose, pulled up, in a bunch, Woollett browsing in its\npride.  There was no doubt Woollett HAD insisted on his coarseness; and\nwhat he at present stood there for in the sleeping street was, by his\nmanner of striking the other note, to make of such insistence a\npreoccupation compromising to the insisters.  It was exactly as if they\nhad imputed to him a vulgarity that he had by a mere gesture caused to\nfall from him.  The devil of the case was that Strether felt it, by the\nsame stroke, as falling straight upon himself.  He had been wondering a\nminute ago if the boy weren't a Pagan, and he found himself wondering\nnow if he weren't by chance a gentleman.  It didn't in the least, on\nthe spot, spring up helpfully for him that a person couldn't at the\nsame time be both. There was nothing at this moment in the air to\nchallenge the combination; there was everything to give it on the\ncontrary something of a flourish.  It struck Strether into the bargain\nas doing something to meet the most difficult of the questions; though\nperhaps indeed only by substituting another.  Wouldn't it be precisely\nby having learned to be a gentleman that he had mastered the consequent\ntrick of looking so well that one could scarce speak to him straight?\nBut what in the world was the clue to such a prime producing cause?\nThere were too many clues then that Strether still lacked, and these\nclues to clues were among them. What it accordingly amounted to for him\nwas that he had to take full in the face a fresh attribution of\nignorance.  He had grown used by this time to reminders, especially\nfrom his own lips, of what he didn't know; but he had borne them\nbecause in the first place they were private and because in the second\nthey practically conveyed a tribute.  He didn't know what was bad,\nand--as others didn't know how little he knew it--he could put up with\nhis state. But if he didn't know, in so important a particular, what\nwas good, Chad at least was now aware he didn't; and that, for some\nreason, affected our friend as curiously public.  It was in fact an\nexposed condition that the young man left him in long enough for him to\nfeel its chill--till he saw fit, in a word, generously again to cover\nhim.  This last was in truth what Chad quite gracefully did.  But he\ndid it as with a simple thought that met the whole of the case.  \"Oh\nI'm all right!\"  It was what Strether had rather bewilderedly to go to\nbed on.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nIt really looked true moreover from the way Chad was to behave after\nthis.  He was full of attentions to his mother's ambassador; in spite\nof which, all the while, the latter's other relations rather remarkably\ncontrived to assert themselves.  Strether's sittings pen in hand with\nMrs. Newsome up in his own room were broken, yet they were richer; and\nthey were more than ever interspersed with the hours in which he\nreported himself, in a different fashion, but with scarce less\nearnestness and fulness, to Maria Gostrey.  Now that, as he would have\nexpressed it, he had really something to talk about he found himself,\nin respect to any oddity that might reside for him in the double\nconnexion, at once more aware and more indifferent.  He had been fine\nto Mrs. Newsome about his useful friend, but it had begun to haunt his\nimagination that Chad, taking up again for her benefit a pen too long\ndisused, might possibly be finer.  It wouldn't at all do, he saw, that\nanything should come up for him at Chad's hand but what specifically\nwas to have come; the greatest divergence from which would be precisely\nthe element of any lubrication of their intercourse by levity It was\naccordingly to forestall such an accident that he frankly put before\nthe young man the several facts, just as they had occurred, of his\nfunny alliance.  He spoke of these facts, pleasantly and obligingly, as\n\"the whole story,\" and felt that he might qualify the alliance as funny\nif he remained sufficiently grave about it.  He flattered himself that\nhe even exaggerated the wild freedom of his original encounter with the\nwonderful lady; he was scrupulously definite about the absurd\nconditions in which they had made acquaintance--their having picked\neach other up almost in the street; and he had (finest inspiration of\nall!) a conception of carrying the war into the enemy's country by\nshowing surprise at the enemy's ignorance.\n\nHe had always had a notion that this last was the grand style of\nfighting; the greater therefore the reason for it, as he couldn't\nremember that he had ever before fought in the grand style.  Every one,\naccording to this, knew Miss Gostrey:  how came it Chad didn't know\nher?  The difficulty, the impossibility, was really to escape it;\nStrether put on him, by what he took for granted, the burden of proof\nof the contrary.  This tone was so far successful as that Chad quite\nappeared to recognise her as a person whose fame had reached him, but\nagainst his acquaintance with whom much mischance had worked.  He made\nthe point at the same time that his social relations, such as they\ncould be called, were perhaps not to the extent Strether supposed with\nthe rising flood of their compatriots.  He hinted at his having more\nand more given way to a different principle of selection; the moral of\nwhich seemed to be that he went about little in the \"colony.\"  For the\nmoment certainly he had quite another interest.  It was deep, what he\nunderstood, and Strether, for himself, could only so observe it. He\ncouldn't see as yet how deep.  Might he not all too soon! For there was\nreally too much of their question that Chad had already committed\nhimself to liking.  He liked, to begin with, his prospective\nstepfather; which was distinctly what had not been on the cards.  His\nhating him was the untowardness for which Strether had been best\nprepared; he hadn't expected the boy's actual form to give him more to\ndo than his imputed.  It gave him more through suggesting that he must\nsomehow make up to himself for not being sure he was sufficiently\ndisagreeable.  That had really been present to him as his only way to\nbe sure he was sufficiently thorough.  The point was that if Chad's\ntolerance of his thoroughness were insincere, were but the best of\ndevices for gaining time, it none the less did treat everything as\ntacitly concluded.\n\nThat seemed at the end of ten days the upshot of the abundant, the\nrecurrent talk through which Strether poured into him all it concerned\nhim to know, put him in full possession of facts and figures.  Never\ncutting these colloquies short by a minute, Chad behaved, looked and\nspoke as if he were rather heavily, perhaps even a trifle gloomily, but\nnone the less fundamentally and comfortably free.  He made no crude\nprofession of eagerness to yield, but he asked the most intelligent\nquestions, probed, at moments, abruptly, even deeper than his friend's\nlayer of information, justified by these touches the native estimate of\nhis latent stuff, and had in every way the air of trying to live,\nreflectively, into the square bright picture.  He walked up and down in\nfront of this production, sociably took Strether's arm at the points at\nwhich he stopped, surveyed it repeatedly from the right and from the\nleft, inclined a critical head to either quarter, and, while he puffed\na still more critical cigarette, animadverted to his companion on this\npassage and that.  Strether sought relief--there were hours when he\nrequired it--in repeating himself; it was in truth not to be blinked\nthat Chad had a way. The main question as yet was of what it was a way\nTO.  It made vulgar questions no more easy; but that was unimportant\nwhen all questions save those of his own asking had dropped.  That he\nwas free was answer enough, and it wasn't quite ridiculous that this\nfreedom should end by presenting itself as what was difficult to move.\nHis changed state, his lovely home, his beautiful things, his easy\ntalk, his very appetite for Strether, insatiable and, when all was\nsaid, flattering--what were such marked matters all but the notes of\nhis freedom?  He had the effect of making a sacrifice of it just in\nthese handsome forms to his visitor; which was mainly the reason the\nvisitor was privately, for the time, a little out of countenance.\nStrether was at this period again and again thrown back on a felt need\nto remodel somehow his plan.  He fairly caught himself shooting rueful\nglances, shy looks of pursuit, toward the embodied influence, the\ndefinite adversary, who had by a stroke of her own failed him and on a\nfond theory of whose palpable presence he had, under Mrs. Newsome's\ninspiration, altogether proceeded.  He had once or twice, in secret,\nliterally expressed the irritated wish that SHE would come out and find\nher.\n\nHe couldn't quite yet force it upon Woollett that such a career, such a\nperverted young life, showed after all a certain plausible side, DID in\nthe case before them flaunt something like an impunity for the social\nman; but he could at least treat himself to the statement that would\nprepare him for the sharpest echo. This echo--as distinct over there in\nthe dry thin air as some shrill \"heading\" above a column of\nprint--seemed to reach him even as he wrote.  \"He says there's no\nwoman,\" he could hear Mrs. Newsome report, in capitals almost of\nnewspaper size, to Mrs. Pocock; and he could focus in Mrs. Pocock the\nresponse of the reader of the journal.  He could see in the younger\nlady's face the earnestness of her attention and catch the full\nscepticism of her but slightly delayed \"What is there then?\"  Just so\nhe could again as little miss the mother's clear decision:  \"There's\nplenty of disposition, no doubt, to pretend there isn't.\"  Strether\nhad, after posting his letter, the whole scene out; and it was a scene\nduring which, coming and going, as befell, he kept his eye not least\nupon the daughter.  He had his fine sense of the conviction Mrs. Pocock\nwould take occasion to reaffirm--a conviction bearing, as he had from\nthe first deeply divined it to bear, on Mr. Strether's essential\ninaptitude.  She had looked him in his conscious eyes even before he\nsailed, and that she didn't believe HE would find the woman had been\nwritten in her book. Hadn't she at the best but a scant faith in\nhis ability to find women? It wasn't even as if he had found her\nmother--so much more, to her discrimination, had her mother performed\nthe finding.  Her mother had, in a case her private judgement of which\nremained educative of Mrs. Pocock's critical sense, found the man.  The\nman owed his unchallenged state, in general, to the fact that Mrs.\nNewsome's discoveries were accepted at Woollett; but he knew in his\nbones, our friend did, how almost irresistibly Mrs. Pocock would now be\nmoved to show what she thought of his own.  Give HER a free hand, would\nbe the moral, and the woman would soon be found.\n\nHis impression of Miss Gostrey after her introduction to Chad was\nmeanwhile an impression of a person almost unnaturally on her guard. He\nstruck himself as at first unable to extract from her what he wished;\nthough indeed OF what he wished at this special juncture he would\ndoubtless have contrived to make but a crude statement.  It sifted and\nsettled nothing to put to her, tout betement, as she often said, \"Do\nyou like him, eh?\"--thanks to his feeling it actually the least of his\nneeds to heap up the evidence in the young man's favour. He repeatedly\nknocked at her door to let her have it afresh that Chad's\ncase--whatever else of minor interest it might yield--was first and\nforemost a miracle almost monstrous.  It was the alteration of the\nentire man, and was so signal an instance that nothing else, for the\nintelligent observer, could--COULD it?--signify.  \"It's a plot,\" he\ndeclared--\"there's more in it than meets the eye.\"  He gave the rein to\nhis fancy.  \"It's a plant!\"\n\nHis fancy seemed to please her.  \"Whose then?\"\n\n\"Well, the party responsible is, I suppose, the fate that waits for\none, the dark doom that rides.  What I mean is that with such elements\none can't count.  I've but my poor individual, my modest human means.\nIt isn't playing the game to turn on the uncanny.  All one's energy\ngoes to facing it, to tracking it.  One wants, confound it, don't you\nsee?\" he confessed with a queer face--\"one wants to enjoy anything so\nrare.  Call it then life\"--he puzzled it out--\"call it poor dear old\nlife simply that springs the surprise. Nothing alters the fact that the\nsurprise is paralysing, or at any rate engrossing--all, practically,\nhang it, that one sees, that one CAN see.\"\n\nHer silences were never barren, nor even dull.  \"Is that what you've\nwritten home?\"\n\nHe tossed it off.  \"Oh dear, yes!\"\n\nShe had another pause while, across her carpets, he had another walk.\n\"If you don't look out you'll have them straight over.\"\n\n\"Oh but I've said he'll go back.\"\n\n\"And WILL he?\" Miss Gostrey asked.\n\nThe special tone of it made him, pulling up, look at her long. \"What's\nthat but just the question I've spent treasures of patience and\ningenuity in giving you, by the sight of him--after everything had led\nup--every facility to answer?  What is it but just the thing I came\nhere to-day to get out of you?  Will he?\"\n\n\"No--he won't,\" she said at last.  \"He's not free.\"\n\nThe air of it held him.  \"Then you've all the while known--?\"\n\n\"I've known nothing but what I've seen; and I wonder,\" she declared\nwith some impatience, \"that you didn't see as much.  It was enough to be\nwith him there--\"\n\n\"In the box?  Yes,\" he rather blankly urged.\n\n\"Well--to feel sure.\"\n\n\"Sure of what?\"\n\nShe got up from her chair, at this, with a nearer approach than she had\never yet shown to dismay at his dimness.  She even, fairly pausing for\nit, spoke with a shade of pity.  \"Guess!\"\n\nIt was a shade, fairly, that brought a flush into his face; so that for\na moment, as they waited together, their difference was between them.\n\"You mean that just your hour with him told you so much of his story?\nVery good; I'm not such a fool, on my side, as that I don't understand\nyou, or as that I didn't in some degree understand HIM.  That he has\ndone what he liked most isn't, among any of us, a matter the least in\ndispute.  There's equally little question at this time of day of what\nit is he does like most.  But I'm not talking,\" he reasonably\nexplained, \"of any mere wretch he may still pick up.  I'm talking of\nsome person who in his present situation may have held her own, may\nreally have counted.\"\n\n\"That's exactly what I am!\" said Miss Gostrey.  But she as quickly made\nher point.  \"I thought you thought--or that they think at\nWoollett--that that's what mere wretches necessarily do.  Mere wretches\nnecessarily DON'T!\" she declared with spirit.  \"There must, behind\nevery appearance to the contrary, still be somebody--somebody who's not\na mere wretch, since we accept the miracle. What else but such a\nsomebody can such a miracle be?\"\n\nHe took it in.  \"Because the fact itself IS the woman?\"\n\n\"A woman.  Some woman or other.  It's one of the things that HAVE to\nbe.\"\n\n\"But you mean then at least a good one.\"\n\n\"A good woman?\"  She threw up her arms with a laugh.  \"I should call\nher excellent!\"\n\n\"Then why does he deny her?\"\n\nMiss Gostrey thought a moment.  \"Because she's too good to admit! Don't\nyou see,\" she went on, \"how she accounts for him?\"\n\nStrether clearly, more and more, did see; yet it made him also see\nother things.  \"But isn't what we want that he shall account for HER?\"\n\n\"Well, he does.  What you have before you is his way.  You must forgive\nhim if it isn't quite outspoken.  In Paris such debts are tacit.\"\n\nStrether could imagine; but still--! \"Even when the woman's good?\"\n\nAgain she laughed out.  \"Yes, and even when the man is! There's always\na caution in such cases,\" she more seriously explained--\"for what it\nmay seem to show.  There's nothing that's taken as showing so much here\nas sudden unnatural goodness.\"\n\n\"Ah then you're speaking now,\" Strether said, \"of people who are NOT\nnice.\"\n\n\"I delight,\" she replied, \"in your classifications.  But do you want\nme,\" she asked, \"to give you in the matter, on this ground, the wisest\nadvice I'm capable of?  Don't consider her, don't judge her at all in\nherself.  Consider her and judge her only in Chad.\"\n\nHe had the courage at least of his companion's logic.  \"Because then I\nshall like her?\"  He almost looked, with his quick imagination as if he\nalready did, though seeing at once also the full extent of how little\nit would suit his book.  \"But is that what I came out for?\"\n\nShe had to confess indeed that it wasn't.  But there was something\nelse.  \"Don't make up your mind.  There are all sorts of things.  You\nhaven't seen him all.\"\n\nThis on his side Strether recognised; but his acuteness none the less\nshowed him the danger.  \"Yes, but if the more I see the better he\nseems?\"\n\nWell, she found something.  \"That may be--but his disavowal of her\nisn't, all the same, pure consideration.  There's a hitch.\"  She made\nit out.  \"It's the effort to sink her.\"\n\nStrether winced at the image.  \"To 'sink'--?\"\n\n\"Well, I mean there's a struggle, and a part of it is just what he\nhides.  Take time--that's the only way not to make some mistake that\nyou'll regret.  Then you'll see.  He does really want to shake her off.\"\n\nOur friend had by this time so got into the vision that he almost\ngasped.  \"After all she has done for him?\"\n\nMiss Gostrey gave him a look which broke the next moment into a\nwonderful smile.  \"He's not so good as you think!\"\n\nThey remained with him, these words, promising him, in their character\nof warning, considerable help; but the support he tried to draw from\nthem found itself on each renewal of contact with Chad defeated by\nsomething else.  What could it be, this disconcerting force, he asked\nhimself, but the sense, constantly renewed, that Chad WAS--quite in\nfact insisted on being--as good as he thought?  It seemed somehow as if\nhe couldn't BUT be as good from the moment he wasn't as bad.  There was\na succession of days at all events when contact with him--and in its\nimmediate effect, as if it could produce no other--elbowed out of\nStrether's consciousness everything but itself.  Little Bilham once\nmore pervaded the scene, but little Bilham became even in a higher\ndegree than he had originally been one of the numerous forms of the\ninclusive relation; a consequence promoted, to our friend's sense, by\ntwo or three incidents with which we have yet to make acquaintance.\nWaymarsh himself, for the occasion, was drawn into the eddy; it\nabsolutely, though but temporarily, swallowed him down, and there were\ndays when Strether seemed to bump against him as a sinking swimmer\nmight brush a submarine object.  The fathomless medium held\nthem--Chad's manner was the fathomless medium; and our friend felt as\nif they passed each other, in their deep immersion, with the round\nimpersonal eye of silent fish.  It was practically produced between\nthem that Waymarsh was giving him then his chance; and the shade of\ndiscomfort that Strether drew from the allowance resembled not a little\nthe embarrassment he had known at school, as a boy, when members of his\nfamily had been present at exhibitions.  He could perform before\nstrangers, but relatives were fatal, and it was now as if,\ncomparatively, Waymarsh were a relative.  He seemed to hear him say\n\"Strike up then!\" and to enjoy a foretaste of conscientious domestic\ncriticism.  He HAD struck up, so far as he actually could; Chad knew by\nthis time in profusion what he wanted; and what vulgar violence did his\nfellow pilgrim expect of him when he had really emptied his mind?  It\nwent somehow to and fro that what poor Waymarsh meant was \"I told you\nso--that you'd lose your immortal soul!\" but it was also fairly\nexplicit that Strether had his own challenge and that, since they must\ngo to the bottom of things, he wasted no more virtue in watching Chad\nthan Chad wasted in watching him.  His dip for duty's sake--where was\nit worse than Waymarsh's own?  For HE needn't have stopped resisting\nand refusing, needn't have parleyed, at that rate, with the foe.\n\nThe strolls over Paris to see something or call somewhere were\naccordingly inevitable and natural, and the late sessions in the\nwondrous troisieme, the lovely home, when men dropped in and the\npicture composed more suggestively through the haze of tobacco, of\nmusic more or less good and of talk more or less polyglot, were on a\nprinciple not to be distinguished from that of the mornings and the\nafternoons.  Nothing, Strether had to recognise as he leaned back and\nsmoked, could well less resemble a scene of violence than even the\nliveliest of these occasions.  They were occasions of discussion, none\nthe less, and Strether had never in his life heard so many opinions on\nso many subjects.  There were opinions at Woollett, but only on three\nor four.  The differences were there to match; if they were doubtless\ndeep, though few, they were quiet--they were, as might be said, almost\nas shy as if people had been ashamed of them.  People showed little\ndiffidence about such things, on the other hand, in the Boulevard\nMalesherbes, and were so far from being ashamed of them--or indeed of\nanything else--that they often seemed to have invented them to avert\nthose agreements that destroy the taste of talk.  No one had ever done\nthat at Woollett, though Strether could remember times when he himself\nhad been tempted to it without quite knowing why.  He saw why at\npresent--he had but wanted to promote intercourse.\n\nThese, however, were but parenthetic memories, and the turn taken by\nhis affair on the whole was positively that if his nerves were on the\nstretch it was because he missed violence.  When he asked himself if\nnone would then, in connexion with it, ever come at all, he might\nalmost have passed as wondering how to provoke it. It would be too\nabsurd if such a vision as THAT should have to be invoked for relief;\nit was already marked enough as absurd that he should actually have\nbegun with flutters and dignities on the score of a single accepted\nmeal.  What sort of a brute had he expected Chad to be,\nanyway?--Strether had occasion to make the enquiry but was careful to\nmake it in private.  He could himself, comparatively recent as it\nwas--it was truly but the fact of a few days since--focus his primal\ncrudity; but he would on the approach of an observer, as if handling an\nillicit possession, have slipped the reminiscence out of sight.  There\nwere echoes of it still in Mrs. Newsome's letters, and there were\nmoments when these echoes made him exclaim on her want of tact.  He\nblushed of course, at once, still more for the explanation than for the\nground of it:  it came to him in time to save his manners that she\ncouldn't at the best become tactful as quickly as he.  Her tact had to\nreckon with the Atlantic Ocean, the General Post-Office and the\nextravagant curve of the globe.  Chad had one day offered tea at the\nBoulevard Malesherbes to a chosen few, a group again including the\nunobscured Miss Barrace; and Strether had on coming out walked away\nwith the acquaintance whom in his letters to Mrs. Newsome he always\nspoke of as the little artist-man.  He had had full occasion to mention\nhim as the other party, so oddly, to the only close personal alliance\nobservation had as yet detected in Chad's existence.  Little Bilham's\nway this afternoon was not Strether's, but he had none the less kindly\ncome with him, and it was somehow a part of his kindness that as it had\nsadly begun to rain they suddenly found themselves seated for\nconversation at a cafe in which they had taken refuge.  He had passed\nno more crowded hour in Chad's society than the one just ended; he had\ntalked with Miss Barrace, who had reproached him with not having come\nto see her, and he had above all hit on a happy thought for causing\nWaymarsh's tension to relax.  Something might possibly be extracted for\nthe latter from the idea of his success with that lady, whose quick\napprehension of what might amuse her had given Strether a free hand.\nWhat had she meant if not to ask whether she couldn't help him with his\nsplendid encumbrance, and mightn't the sacred rage at any rate be kept\na little in abeyance by thus creating for his comrade's mind even in a\nworld of irrelevance the possibility of a relation?  What was it but a\nrelation to be regarded as so decorative and, in especial, on the\nstrength of it, to be whirled away, amid flounces and feathers, in a\ncoupe lined, by what Strether could make out, with dark blue brocade?\nHe himself had never been whirled away--never at least in a coupe and\nbehind a footman; he had driven with Miss Gostrey in cabs, with Mrs.\nPocock, a few times, in an open buggy, with Mrs. Newsome in a\nfour-seated cart and, occasionally up at the mountains, on a buckboard;\nbut his friend's actual adventure transcended his personal experience.\nHe now showed his companion soon enough indeed how inadequate, as a\ngeneral monitor, this last queer quantity could once more feel itself.\n\n\"What game under the sun is he playing?\"  He signified the next moment\nthat his allusion was not to the fat gentleman immersed in dominoes on\nwhom his eyes had begun by resting, but to their host of the previous\nhour, as to whom, there on the velvet bench, with a final collapse of\nall consistency, he treated himself to the comfort of indiscretion.\n\"Where do you see him come out?\"\n\nLittle Bilham, in meditation, looked at him with a kindness almost\npaternal. \"Don't you like it over here?\"\n\nStrether laughed out--for the tone was indeed droll; he let himself go.\n\"What has that to do with it?  The only thing I've any business to like\nis to feel that I'm moving him.  That's why I ask you whether you\nbelieve I AM?  Is the creature\"--and he did his best to show that he\nsimply wished to ascertain--\"honest?\"\n\nHis companion looked responsible, but looked it through a small dim\nsmile.  \"What creature do you mean?\"\n\nIt was on this that they did have for a little a mute interchange. \"Is\nit untrue that he's free?  How then,\" Strether asked wondering \"does he\narrange his life?\"\n\n\"Is the creature you mean Chad himself?\" little Bilham said.\n\nStrether here, with a rising hope, just thought, \"We must take one of\nthem at a time.\"  But his coherence lapsed.  \"IS there some woman?  Of\nwhom he's really afraid of course I mean--or who does with him what she\nlikes.\"\n\n\"It's awfully charming of you,\" Bilham presently remarked, \"not to have\nasked me that before.\"\n\n\"Oh I'm not fit for my job!\"\n\nThe exclamation had escaped our friend, but it made little Bilham more\ndeliberate.  \"Chad's a rare case!\" he luminously observed. \"He's\nawfully changed,\" he added.\n\n\"Then you see it too?\"\n\n\"The way he has improved?  Oh yes--I think every one must see it. But\nI'm not sure,\" said little Bilham, \"that I didn't like him about as\nwell in his other state.\"\n\n\"Then this IS really a new state altogether?\"\n\n\"Well,\" the young man after a moment returned, \"I'm not sure he was\nreally meant by nature to be quite so good.  It's like the new edition\nof an old book that one has been fond of--revised and amended, brought\nup to date, but not quite the thing one knew and loved.  However that\nmay be at all events,\" he pursued, \"I don't think, you know, that he's\nreally playing, as you call it, any game.  I believe he really wants to\ngo back and take up a career. He's capable of one, you know, that will\nimprove and enlarge him still more.  He won't then,\" little Bilham\ncontinued to remark, \"be my pleasant well-rubbed old-fashioned volume\nat all.  But of course I'm beastly immoral.  I'm afraid it would be a\nfunny world altogether--a world with things the way I like them.  I\nought, I dare say, to go home and go into business myself.  Only I'd\nsimply rather die--simply.  And I've not the least difficulty in making\nup my mind not to, and in knowing exactly why, and in defending my\nground against all comers.  All the same,\" he wound up, \"I assure you I\ndon't say a word against it--for himself, I mean--to Chad.  I seem to\nsee it as much the best thing for him.  You see he's not happy.\"\n\n\"DO I?\"--Strether stared.  \"I've been supposing I see just the\nopposite--an extraordinary case of the equilibrium arrived at and\nassured.\"\n\n\"Oh there's a lot behind it.\"\n\n\"Ah there you are!\" Strether exclaimed.  \"That's just what I want to\nget at.  You speak of your familiar volume altered out of recognition.\nWell, who's the editor?\"\n\nLittle Bilham looked before him a minute in silence.  \"He ought to get\nmarried.  THAT would do it.  And he wants to.\"\n\n\"Wants to marry her?\"\n\nAgain little Bilham waited, and, with a sense that he had information,\nStrether scarce knew what was coming.  \"He wants to be free.  He isn't\nused, you see,\" the young man explained in his lucid way, \"to being so\ngood.\"\n\nStrether hesitated.  \"Then I may take it from you that he IS good?\"\n\nHis companion matched his pause, but making it up with a quiet fulness.\n\"DO take it from me.\"\n\n\"Well then why isn't he free?  He swears to me he is, but meanwhile\ndoes nothing--except of course that he's so kind to me--to prove it;\nand couldn't really act much otherwise if he weren't.  My question to\nyou just now was exactly on this queer impression of his diplomacy:  as\nif instead of really giving ground his line were to keep me on here and\nset me a bad example.\"\n\nAs the half-hour meanwhile had ebbed Strether paid his score, and the\nwaiter was presently in the act of counting out change.  Our friend\npushed back to him a fraction of it, with which, after an emphatic\nrecognition, the personage in question retreated.  \"You give too much,\"\nlittle Bilham permitted himself benevolently to observe.\n\n\"Oh I always give too much!\" Strether helplessly sighed.  \"But you\ndon't,\" he went on as if to get quickly away from the contemplation of\nthat doom, \"answer my question.  Why isn't he free?\"\n\nLittle Bilham had got up as if the transaction with the waiter had been\na signal, and had already edged out between the table and the divan.\nThe effect of this was that a minute later they had quitted the place,\nthe gratified waiter alert again at the open door. Strether had found\nhimself deferring to his companion's abruptness as to a hint that he\nshould be answered as soon as they were more isolated.  This happened\nwhen after a few steps in the outer air they had turned the next comer.\nThere our friend had kept it up. \"Why isn't he free if he's good?\"\n\nLittle Bilham looked him full in the face.  \"Because it's a virtuous\nattachment.\"\n\nThis had settled the question so effectually for the time--that is for\nthe next few days--that it had given Strether almost a new lease of\nlife.  It must be added however that, thanks to his constant habit of\nshaking the bottle in which life handed him the wine of experience, he\npresently found the taste of the lees rising as usual into his draught.\nHis imagination had in other words already dealt with his young\nfriend's assertion; of which it had made something that sufficiently\ncame out on the very next occasion of his seeing Maria Gostrey.  This\noccasion moreover had been determined promptly by a new circumstance--a\ncircumstance he was the last man to leave her for a day in ignorance\nof.  \"When I said to him last night,\" he immediately began, \"that\nwithout some definite word from him now that will enable me to speak to\nthem over there of our sailing--or at least of mine, giving them some\nsort of date--my responsibility becomes uncomfortable and my situation\nawkward; when I said that to him what do you think was his reply?\"  And\nthen as she this time gave it up:  \"Why that he has two particular\nfriends, two ladies, mother and daughter, about to arrive in\nParis--coming back from an absence; and that he wants me so furiously\nto meet them, know them and like them, that I shall oblige him by\nkindly not bringing our business to a crisis till he has had a chance\nto see them again himself.  Is that,\" Strether enquired, \"the way he's\ngoing to try to get off?  These are the people,\" he explained, \"that he\nmust have gone down to see before I arrived.  They're the best friends\nhe has in the world, and they take more interest than any one else in\nwhat concerns him.  As I'm his next best he sees a thousand reasons why\nwe should comfortably meet.  He hasn't broached the question sooner\nbecause their return was uncertain--seemed in fact for the present\nimpossible.  But he more than intimates that--if you can believe\nit--their desire to make my acquaintance has had to do with their\nsurmounting difficulties.\"\n\n\"They're dying to see you?\" Miss Gostrey asked.\n\n\"Dying.  Of course,\" said Strether, \"they're the virtuous attachment.\"\nHe had already told her about that--had seen her the day after his talk\nwith little Bilham; and they had then threshed out together the bearing\nof the revelation.  She had helped him to put into it the logic in\nwhich little Bilham had left it slightly deficient Strether hadn't\npressed him as to the object of the preference so unexpectedly\ndescribed; feeling in the presence of it, with one of his irrepressible\nscruples, a delicacy from which he had in the quest of the quite other\narticle worked himself sufficiently free.  He had held off, as on a\nsmall principle of pride, from permitting his young friend to mention a\nname; wishing to make with this the great point that Chad's virtuous\nattachments were none of his business.  He had wanted from the first\nnot to think too much of his dignity, but that was no reason for not\nallowing it any little benefit that might turn up.  He had often enough\nwondered to what degree his interference might pass for interested; so\nthat there was no want of luxury in letting it be seen whenever he\ncould that he didn't interfere.  That had of course at the same time\nnot deprived him of the further luxury of much private astonishment;\nwhich however he had reduced to some order before communicating his\nknowledge.  When he had done this at last it was with the remark that,\nsurprised as Miss Gostrey might, like himself, at first be, she would\nprobably agree with him on reflexion that such an account of the matter\ndid after all fit the confirmed appearances.  Nothing certainly, on all\nthe indications, could have been a greater change for him than a\nvirtuous attachment, and since they had been in search of the \"word\" as\nthe French called it, of that change, little Bilham's\nannouncement--though so long and so oddly delayed--would serve as well\nas another. She had assured Strether in fact after a pause that the\nmore she thought of it the more it did serve; and yet her assurance\nhadn't so weighed with him as that before they parted he hadn't\nventured to challenge her sincerity.  Didn't she believe the attachment\nwas virtuous?--he had made sure of her again with the aid of that\nquestion. The tidings he brought her on this second occasion were\nmoreover such as would help him to make surer still.\n\nShe showed at first none the less as only amused.  \"You say there are\ntwo?  An attachment to them both then would, I suppose, almost\nnecessarily be innocent.\"\n\nOur friend took the point, but he had his clue.  \"Mayn't he be still in\nthe stage of not quite knowing which of them, mother or daughter, he\nlikes best?\"\n\nShe gave it more thought.  \"Oh it must be the daughter--at his age.\"\n\n\"Possibly.  Yet what do we know,\" Strether asked, \"about hers?  She may\nbe old enough.\"\n\n\"Old enough for what?\"\n\n\"Why to marry Chad.  That may be, you know, what they want.  And if\nChad wants it too, and little Bilham wants it, and even we, at a pinch,\ncould do with it--that is if she doesn't prevent repatriation--why it\nmay be plain sailing yet.\"\n\nIt was always the case for him in these counsels that each of his\nremarks, as it came, seemed to drop into a deeper well.  He had at all\nevents to wait a moment to hear the slight splash of this one. \"I don't\nsee why if Mr. Newsome wants to marry the young lady he hasn't already\ndone it or hasn't been prepared with some statement to you about it.\nAnd if he both wants to marry her and is on good terms with them why\nisn't he 'free'?\"\n\nStrether, responsively, wondered indeed.  \"Perhaps the girl herself\ndoesn't like him.\"\n\n\"Then why does he speak of them to you as he does?\"\n\nStrether's mind echoed the question, but also again met it.  \"Perhaps\nit's with the mother he's on good terms.\"\n\n\"As against the daughter?\"\n\n\"Well, if she's trying to persuade the daughter to consent to him, what\ncould make him like the mother more?  Only,\" Strether threw out, \"why\nshouldn't the daughter consent to him?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Miss Gostrey, \"mayn't it be that every one else isn't quite\nso struck with him as you?\"\n\n\"Doesn't regard him you mean as such an 'eligible' young man?  Is that\nwhat I've come to?\" he audibly and rather gravely sought to know.\n\"However,\" he went on, \"his marriage is what his mother most\ndesires--that is if it will help.  And oughtn't ANY marriage to help?\nThey must want him\"--he had already worked it out--\"to be better off.\nAlmost any girl he may marry will have a direct interest in his taking\nup his chances.  It won't suit HER at least that he shall miss them.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey cast about.  \"No--you reason well! But of course on the\nother hand there's always dear old Woollett itself.\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" he mused--\"there's always dear old Woollett itself.\"\n\nShe waited a moment.  \"The young lady mayn't find herself able to\nswallow THAT quantity.  She may think it's paying too much; she may\nweigh one thing against another.\"\n\nStrether, ever restless in such debates, took a vague turn \"It will all\ndepend on who she is.  That of course--the proved ability to deal with\ndear old Woollett, since I'm sure she does deal with it--is what makes\nso strongly for Mamie.\"\n\n\"Mamie?\"\n\nHe stopped short, at her tone, before her; then, though seeing that it\nrepresented not vagueness, but a momentary embarrassed fulness, let his\nexclamation come.  \"You surely haven't forgotten about Mamie!\"\n\n\"No, I haven't forgotten about Mamie,\" she smiled.  \"There's no doubt\nwhatever that there's ever so much to be said for her. Mamie's MY\ngirl!\" she roundly declared.\n\nStrether resumed for a minute his walk.  \"She's really perfectly\nlovely, you know.  Far prettier than any girl I've seen over here yet.\"\n\n\"That's precisely on what I perhaps most build.\"  And she mused a\nmoment in her friend's way.  \"I should positively like to take her in\nhand!\"\n\nHe humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it.  \"Oh but\ndon't, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and can't, you\nknow, be left.\"\n\nBut she kept it up.  \"I wish they'd send her out to me!\"\n\n\"If they knew you,\" he returned, \"they would.\"\n\n\"Ah but don't they?--after all that, as I've understood you you've told\nthem about me?\"\n\nHe had paused before her again, but he continued his course \"They\nWILL--before, as you say, I've done.\"  Then he came out with the point\nhe had wished after all most to make.  \"It seems to give away now his\ngame.  This is what he has been doing--keeping me along for.  He has\nbeen waiting for them.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey drew in her lips.  \"You see a good deal in it!\"\n\n\"I doubt if I see as much as you.  Do you pretend,\" he went on, \"that\nyou don't see--?\"\n\n\"Well, what?\"--she pressed him as he paused.\n\n\"Why that there must be a lot between them--and that it has been going\non from the first; even from before I came.\"\n\nShe took a minute to answer.  \"Who are they then--if it's so grave?\"\n\n\"It mayn't be grave--it may be gay.  But at any rate it's marked. Only\nI don't know,\" Strether had to confess, \"anything about them. Their\nname for instance was a thing that, after little Bilham's information,\nI found it a kind of refreshment not to feel obliged to follow up.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she returned, \"if you think you've got off--!\"\n\nHer laugh produced in him a momentary gloom.  \"I don't think I've got\noff.  I only think I'm breathing for about five minutes.  I dare say I\nSHALL have, at the best, still to get on.\"  A look, over it all, passed\nbetween them, and the next minute he had come back to good humour.  \"I\ndon't meanwhile take the smallest interest in their name.\"\n\n\"Nor in their nationality?--American, French, English, Polish?\"\n\n\"I don't care the least little 'hang,'\" he smiled, \"for their\nnationality.  It would be nice if they're Polish!\" he almost\nimmediately added.\n\n\"Very nice indeed.\"  The transition kept up her spirits.  \"So you see\nyou do care.\"\n\nHe did this contention a modified justice.  \"I think I should if they\nWERE Polish.  Yes,\" he thought--\"there might be joy in THAT.\"\n\n\"Let us then hope for it.\"  But she came after this nearer to the\nquestion.  \"If the girl's of the right age of course the mother can't\nbe.  I mean for the virtuous attachment.  If the girl's twenty--and she\ncan't be less--the mother must be at least forty. So it puts the mother\nout.  SHE'S too old for him.\"\n\nStrether, arrested again, considered and demurred.  \"Do you think so?\nDo you think any one would be too old for him?  I'M eighty, and I'm too\nyoung.  But perhaps the girl,\" he continued, \"ISn't twenty. Perhaps\nshe's only ten--but such a little dear that Chad finds himself counting\nher in as an attraction of the acquaintance. Perhaps she's only five.\nPerhaps the mother's but five-and-twenty--a charming young widow.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey entertained the suggestion.  \"She IS a widow then?\"\n\n\"I haven't the least idea!\"  They once more, in spite of this\nvagueness, exchanged a look--a look that was perhaps the longest yet.\nIt seemed in fact, the next thing, to require to explain itself; which\nit did as it could.  \"I only feel what I've told you--that he has some\nreason.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey's imagination had taken its own flight.  \"Perhaps she's\nNOT a widow.\"\n\nStrether seemed to accept the possibility with reserve.  Still he\naccepted it.  \"Then that's why the attachment--if it's to her--is\nvirtuous.\"\n\nBut she looked as if she scarce followed.  \"Why is it virtuous\nif--since she's free--there's nothing to impose on it any condition?\"\n\nHe laughed at her question.  \"Oh I perhaps don't mean as virtuous as\nTHAT! Your idea is that it can be virtuous--in any sense worthy of the\nname--only if she's NOT free?  But what does it become then,\" he asked,\n\"for HER?\"\n\n\"Ah that's another matter.\"  He said nothing for a moment, and she soon\nwent on.  \"I dare say you're right, at any rate, about Mr. Newsome's\nlittle plan.  He HAS been trying you--has been reporting on you to\nthese friends.\"\n\nStrether meanwhile had had time to think more.  \"Then where's his\nstraightness?\"\n\n\"Well, as we say, it's struggling up, breaking out, asserting itself as\nit can.  We can be on the side, you see, of his straightness. We can\nhelp him.  But he has made out,\" said Miss Gostrey, \"that you'll do.\"\n\n\"Do for what?\"\n\n\"Why, for THEM--for ces dames.  He has watched you, studied you, liked\nyou--and recognised that THEY must.  It's a great compliment to you, my\ndear man; for I'm sure they're particular.  You came out for a success.\nWell,\" she gaily declared, \"you're having it!\"\n\nHe took it from her with momentary patience and then turned abruptly\naway.  It was always convenient to him that there were so many fine\nthings in her room to look at.  But the examination of two or three of\nthem appeared soon to have determined a speech that had little to do\nwith them.  \"You don't believe in it!\"\n\n\"In what?\"\n\n\"In the character of the attachment.  In its innocence.\"\n\nBut she defended herself.  \"I don't pretend to know anything about it.\nEverything's possible.  We must see.\"\n\n\"See?\" he echoed with a groan.  \"Haven't we seen enough?\"\n\n\"I haven't,\" she smiled.\n\n\"But do you suppose then little Bilham has lied?\"\n\n\"You must find out.\"\n\nIt made him almost turn pale.  \"Find out any MORE?\"\n\nHe had dropped on a sofa for dismay; but she seemed, as she stood over\nhim, to have the last word.  \"Wasn't what you came out for to find out\nALL?\"\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Fifth\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nThe Sunday of the next week was a wonderful day, and Chad Newsome had\nlet his friend know in advance that he had provided for it. There had\nalready been a question of his taking him to see the great Gloriani,\nwho was at home on Sunday afternoons and at whose house, for the most\npart, fewer bores were to be met than elsewhere; but the project,\nthrough some accident, had not had instant effect, and now revived in\nhappier conditions.  Chad had made the point that the celebrated\nsculptor had a queer old garden, for which the weather--spring at last\nfrank and fair--was propitious; and two or three of his other allusions\nhad confirmed for Strether the expectation of something special.  He\nhad by this time, for all introductions and adventures, let himself\nrecklessly go, cherishing the sense that whatever the young man showed\nhim he was showing at least himself.  He could have wished indeed, so\nfar as this went, that Chad were less of a mere cicerone; for he was\nnot without the impression--now that the vision of his game, his plan,\nhis deep diplomacy, did recurrently assert itself--of his taking refuge\nfrom the realities of their intercourse in profusely dispensing, as our\nfriend mentally phrased et panem et circenses. Our friend continued to\nfeel rather smothered in flowers, though he made in his other moments\nthe almost angry inference that this was only because of his odious\nascetic suspicion of any form of beauty.  He periodically assured\nhimself--for his reactions were sharp--that he shouldn't reach the\ntruth of anything till he had at least got rid of that.\n\nHe had known beforehand that Madame de Vionnet and her daughter would\nprobably be on view, an intimation to that effect having constituted\nthe only reference again made by Chad to his good friends from the\nsouth.  The effect of Strether's talk about them with Miss Gostrey had\nbeen quite to consecrate his reluctance to pry; something in the very\nair of Chad's silence--judged in the light of that talk--offered it to\nhim as a reserve he could markedly match.  It shrouded them about with\nhe scarce knew what, a consideration, a distinction; he was in presence\nat any rate--so far as it placed him there--of ladies; and the one\nthing that was definite for him was that they themselves should be, to\nthe extent of his responsibility, in presence of a gentleman.  Was it\nbecause they were very beautiful, very clever, or even very good--was\nit for one of these reasons that Chad was, so to speak, nursing his\neffect?  Did he wish to spring them, in the Woollett phrase, with a\nfuller force--to confound his critic, slight though as yet the\ncriticism, with some form of merit exquisitely incalculable? The most\nthe critic had at all events asked was whether the persons in question\nwere French; and that enquiry had been but a proper comment on the\nsound of their name.  \"Yes.  That is no!\" had been Chad's reply; but he\nhad immediately added that their English was the most charming in the\nworld, so that if Strether were wanting an excuse for not getting on\nwith them he wouldn't in the least find one.  Never in fact had\nStrether--in the mood into which the place had quickly launched\nhim--felt, for himself, less the need of an excuse.  Those he might\nhave found would have been, at the worst, all for the others, the\npeople before him, in whose liberty to be as they were he was aware\nthat he positively rejoiced.  His fellow guests were multiplying, and\nthese things, their liberty, their intensity, their variety, their\nconditions at large, were in fusion in the admirable medium of the\nscene.\n\nThe place itself was a great impression--a small pavilion, clear-faced\nand sequestered, an effect of polished parquet, of fine white panel and\nspare sallow gilt, of decoration delicate and rare, in the heart of the\nFaubourg Saint-Germain and on the edge of a cluster of gardens attached\nto old noble houses.  Far back from streets and unsuspected by crowds,\nreached by a long passage and a quiet court, it was as striking to the\nunprepared mind, he immediately saw, as a treasure dug up; giving him\ntoo, more than anything yet, the note of the range of the immeasurable\ntown and sweeping away, as by a last brave brush, his usual landmarks\nand terms. It was in the garden, a spacious cherished remnant, out of\nwhich a dozen persons had already passed, that Chad's host presently\nmet them while the tall bird-haunted trees, all of a twitter with the\nspring and the weather, and the high party-walls, on the other side of\nwhich grave hotels stood off for privacy, spoke of survival,\ntransmission, association, a strong indifferent persistent order.  The\nday was so soft that the little party had practically adjourned to the\nopen air but the open air was in such conditions all a chamber of\nstate.  Strether had presently the sense of a great convent, a convent\nof missions, famous for he scarce knew what, a nursery of young\npriests, of scattered shade, of straight alleys and chapel-bells, that\nspread its mass in one quarter; he had the sense of names in the air,\nof ghosts at the windows, of signs and tokens, a whole range of\nexpression, all about him, too thick for prompt discrimination.\n\nThis assault of images became for a moment, in the address of the\ndistinguished sculptor, almost formidable:  Gloriani showed him, in\nsuch perfect confidence, on Chad's introduction of him, a fine worn\nhandsome face, a face that was like an open letter in a foreign tongue.\nWith his genius in his eyes, his manners on his lips, his long career\nbehind him and his honours and rewards all round, the great artist, in\nthe course of a single sustained look and a few words of delight at\nreceiving him, affected our friend as a dazzling prodigy of type.\nStrether had seen in museums--in the Luxembourg as well as, more\nreverently, later on, in the New York of the billionaires--the work of\nhis hand; knowing too that after an earlier time in his native Rome he\nhad migrated, in mid-career, to Paris, where, with a personal lustre\nalmost violent, he shone in a constellation:  all of which was more\nthan enough to crown him, for his guest, with the light, with the\nromance, of glory.  Strether, in contact with that element as he had\nnever yet so intimately been, had the consciousness of opening to it,\nfor the happy instant, all the windows of his mind, of letting this\nrather grey interior drink in for once the sun of a clime not marked in\nhis old geography.  He was to remember again repeatedly the medal-like\nItalian face, in which every line was an artist's own, in which time\ntold only as tone and consecration; and he was to recall in especial,\nas the penetrating radiance, as the communication of the illustrious\nspirit itself, the manner in which, while they stood briefly, in\nwelcome and response, face to face, he was held by the sculptor's eyes.\nHe wasn't soon to forget them, was to think of them, all unconscious,\nunintending, preoccupied though they were, as the source of the deepest\nintellectual sounding to which he had ever been exposed.  He was in\nfact quite to cherish his vision of it, to play with it in idle hours;\nonly speaking of it to no one and quite aware he couldn't have spoken\nwithout appearing to talk nonsense.  Was what it had told him or what\nit had asked him the greater of the mysteries? Was it the most special\nflare, unequalled, supreme, of the aesthetic torch, lighting that\nwondrous world for ever, or was it above all the long straight shaft\nsunk by a personal acuteness that life had seasoned to steel?  Nothing\non earth could have been stranger and no one doubtless more surprised\nthan the artist himself, but it was for all the world to Strether just\nthen as if in the matter of his accepted duty he had positively been on\ntrial. The deep human expertness in Gloriani's charming smile--oh the\nterrible life behind it!--was flashed upon him as a test of his stuff.\n\nChad meanwhile, after having easily named his companion, had still more\neasily turned away and was already greeting other persons present. He\nwas as easy, clever Chad, with the great artist as with his obscure\ncompatriot, and as easy with every one else as with either: this fell\ninto its place for Strether and made almost a new light, giving him, as\na concatenation, something more he could enjoy. He liked Gloriani, but\nshould never see him again; of that he was sufficiently sure.  Chad\naccordingly, who was wonderful with both of them, was a kind of link\nfor hopeless fancy, an implication of possibilities--oh if everything\nhad been different! Strether noted at all events that he was thus on\nterms with illustrious spirits, and also that--yes, distinctly--he\nhadn't in the least swaggered about it.  Our friend hadn't come there\nonly for this figure of Abel Newsome's son, but that presence\nthreatened to affect the observant mind as positively central. Gloriani\nindeed, remembering something and excusing himself, pursued Chad to\nspeak to him, and Strether was left musing on many things.  One of them\nwas the question of whether, since he had been tested, he had passed.\nDid the artist drop him from having made out that he wouldn't do? He\nreally felt just to-day that he might do better than usual. Hadn't he\ndone well enough, so far as that went, in being exactly so dazzled? and\nin not having too, as he almost believed, wholly hidden from his host\nthat he felt the latter's plummet?  Suddenly, across the garden, he saw\nlittle Bilham approach, and it was a part of the fit that was on him\nthat as their eyes met he guessed also HIS knowledge. If he had said to\nhim on the instant what was uppermost he would have said:  \"HAVE I\npassed?--for of course I know one has to pass here.\" Little Bilham\nwould have reassured him, have told him that he exaggerated, and have\nadduced happily enough the argument of little Bilham's own very\npresence; which, in truth, he could see, was as easy a one as\nGloriani's own or as Chad's.  He himself would perhaps then after a\nwhile cease to be frightened, would get the point of view for some of\nthe faces--types tremendously alien, alien to Woollett--that he had\nalready begun to take in.  Who were they all, the dispersed groups and\ncouples, the ladies even more unlike those of Woollett than the\ngentlemen?--this was the enquiry that, when his young friend had\ngreeted him, he did find himself making.\n\n\"Oh they're every one--all sorts and sizes; of course I mean within\nlimits, though limits down perhaps rather more than limits up.  There\nare always artists--he's beautiful and inimitable to the cher confrere;\nand then gros bonnets of many kinds--ambassadors, cabinet ministers,\nbankers, generals, what do I know? even Jews. Above all always some\nawfully nice women--and not too many; sometimes an actress, an artist,\na great performer--but only when they're not monsters; and in\nparticular the right femmes du monde. You can fancy his history on that\nside--I believe it's fabulous: they NEVER give him up.  Yet he keeps\nthem down:  no one knows how he manages; it's too beautiful and bland.\nNever too many--and a mighty good thing too; just a perfect choice. But\nthere are not in any way many bores; it has always been so; he has some\nsecret. It's extraordinary.  And you don't find it out.  He's the same\nto every one.  He doesn't ask questions.'\n\n\"Ah doesn't he?\" Strether laughed.\n\nBilham met it with all his candour.  \"How then should I be here?\n\n\"Oh for what you tell me.  You're part of the perfect choice.\"\n\nWell, the young man took in the scene.  \"It seems rather good to-day.\"\n\nStrether followed the direction of his eyes.  \"Are they all, this time,\nfemmes du monde?\"\n\nLittle Bilham showed his competence.  \"Pretty well.\"\n\nThis was a category our friend had a feeling for; a light, romantic and\nmysterious, on the feminine element, in which he enjoyed for a little\nwatching it.  \"Are there any Poles?\"\n\nHis companion considered.  \"I think I make out a 'Portuguee.' But I've\nseen Turks.\"\n\nStrether wondered, desiring justice.  \"They seem--all the women--very\nharmonious.\"\n\n\"Oh in closer quarters they come out!\" And then, while Strether was\naware of fearing closer quarters, though giving himself again to the\nharmonies, \"Well,\" little Bilham went on, \"it IS at the worst rather\ngood, you know.  If you like it, you feel it, this way, that shows\nyou're not in the least out But you always know things,\" he handsomely\nadded, \"immediately.\"\n\nStrether liked it and felt it only too much; so \"I say, don't lay traps\nfor me!\" he rather helplessly murmured.\n\n\"Well,\" his companion returned, \"he's wonderfully kind to us.\"\n\n\"To us Americans you mean?\"\n\n\"Oh no--he doesn't know anything about THAT.  That's half the battle\nhere--that you can never hear politics.  We don't talk them. I mean to\npoor young wretches of all sorts.  And yet it's always as charming as\nthis; it's as if, by something in the air, our squalor didn't show.  It\nputs us all back--into the last century.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid,\" Strether said, amused, \"that it puts me rather forward:\noh ever so far!\"\n\n\"Into the next? But isn't that only,\" little Bilham asked, \"because\nyou're really of the century before?\"\n\n\"The century before the last? Thank you!\" Strether laughed.  \"If I ask\nyou about some of the ladies it can't be then that I may hope, as such\na specimen of the rococo, to please them.\"\n\n\"On the contrary they adore--we all adore here--the rococo, and where\nis there a better setting for it than the whole thing, the pavilion and\nthe garden, together? There are lots of people with collections,\"\nlittle Bilham smiled as he glanced round.  \"You'll be secured!\"\n\nIt made Strether for a moment give himself again to contemplation.\nThere were faces he scarce knew what to make of.  Were they charming or\nwere they only strange? He mightn't talk politics, yet he suspected a\nPole or two.  The upshot was the question at the back of his head from\nthe moment his friend had joined him.  \"Have Madame de Vionnet and her\ndaughter arrived?\"\n\n\"I haven't seen them yet, but Miss Gostrey has come.  She's in the\npavilion looking at objects.  One can see SHE'S a collector,\" little\nBilham added without offence.\n\n\"Oh yes, she's a collector, and I knew she was to come.  Is Madame de\nVionnet a collector?\" Strether went on.\n\n\"Rather, I believe; almost celebrated.\"  The young man met, on it, a\nlittle, his friend's eyes.  \"I happen to know--from Chad, whom I saw\nlast night--that they've come back; but only yesterday. He wasn't\nsure--up to the last.  This, accordingly,\" little Bilham went on, \"will\nbe--if they ARE here--their first appearance after their return.\"\n\nStrether, very quickly, turned these things over.  \"Chad told you last\nnight? To me, on our way here, he said nothing about it.\"\n\n\"But did you ask him?\"\n\nStrether did him the justice.  \"I dare say not.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said little Bilham, \"you're not a person to whom it's easy to\ntell things you don't want to know.  Though it is easy, I admit--it's\nquite beautiful,\" he benevolently added, \"when you do want to.\"\n\nStrether looked at him with an indulgence that matched his\nintelligence.  \"Is that the deep reasoning on which--about these\nladies--you've been yourself so silent?\"\n\nLittle Bilham considered the depth of his reasoning.  \"I haven't been\nsilent.  I spoke of them to you the other day, the day we sat together\nafter Chad's tea-party.\"\n\nStrether came round to it.  \"They then are the virtuous attachment?\"\n\n\"I can only tell you that it's what they pass for.  But isn't that\nenough? What more than a vain appearance does the wisest of us know? I\ncommend you,\" the young man declared with a pleasant emphasis, \"the\nvain appearance.\"\n\nStrether looked more widely round, and what he saw, from face to face,\ndeepened the effect of his young friend's words.  \"Is it so good?\"\n\n\"Magnificent.\"\n\nStrether had a pause.  \"The husband's dead?\"\n\n\"Dear no.  Alive.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Strether.  After which, as his companion laughed: \"How then\ncan it be so good?\"\n\n\"You'll see for yourself.  One does see.\"\n\n\"Chad's in love with the daughter?\"\n\n\"That's what I mean.\"\n\nStrether wondered.  \"Then where's the difficulty?\"\n\n\"Why, aren't you and I--with our grander bolder ideas?\"\n\n\"Oh mine--!\" Strether said rather strangely.  But then as if to\nattenuate:  \"You mean they won't hear of Woollett?\"\n\nLittle Bilham smiled.  \"Isn't that just what you must see about?\"\n\nIt had brought them, as she caught the last words, into relation with\nMiss Barrace, whom Strether had already observed--as he had never\nbefore seen a lady at a party--moving about alone.  Coming within sound\nof them she had already spoken, and she took again, through her\nlong-handled glass, all her amused and amusing possession.  \"How much,\npoor Mr. Strether, you seem to have to see about! But you can't say,\"\nshe gaily declared, \"that I don't do what I can to help you.  Mr.\nWaymarsh is placed.  I've left him in the house with Miss Gostrey.\"\n\n\"The way,\" little Bilham exclaimed, \"Mr. Strether gets the ladies to\nwork for him! He's just preparing to draw in another; to pounce--don't\nyou see him?--on Madame de Vionnet.\"\n\n\"Madame de Vionnet?  Oh, oh, oh!\" Miss Barrace cried in a wonderful\ncrescendo.  There was more in it, our friend made out, than met the\near.  Was it after all a joke that he should be serious about anything?\nHe envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not being.  She seemed,\nwith little cries and protests and quick recognitions, movements like\nthe darts of some fine high-feathered free-pecking bird, to stand\nbefore life as before some full shop-window.  You could fairly hear, as\nshe selected and pointed, the tap of her tortoise-shell against the\nglass.  \"It's certain that we do need seeing about; only I'm glad it's\nnot I who have to do it. One does, no doubt, begin that way; then\nsuddenly one finds that one has given it up.  It's too much, it's too\ndifficult.  You're wonderful, you people,\" she continued to Strether,\n\"for not feeling those things--by which I mean impossibilities.  You\nnever feel them. You face them with a fortitude that makes it a lesson\nto watch you.\"\n\n\"Ah but\"--little Bilham put it with discouragement--\"what do we achieve\nafter all? We see about you and report--when we even go so far as\nreporting.  But nothing's done.\"\n\n\"Oh you, Mr. Bilham,\" she replied as with an impatient rap on the\nglass, \"you're not worth sixpence! You come over to convert the\nsavages--for I know you verily did, I remember you--and the savages\nsimply convert YOU.\"\n\n\"Not even!\" the young man woefully confessed:  \"they haven't gone\nthrough that form.  They've simply--the cannibals!--eaten me; converted\nme if you like, but converted me into food.  I'm but the bleached bones\nof a Christian.\"\n\n\"Well then there we are!  Only\"--and Miss Barrace appealed again to\nStrether--\"don't let it discourage you.  You'll break down soon enough,\nbut you'll meanwhile have had your moments.  Il faut en avoir.  I\nalways like to see you while you last.  And I'll tell you who WILL\nlast.\"\n\n\"Waymarsh?\"--he had already taken her up.\n\nShe laughed out as at the alarm of it.  \"He'll resist even Miss\nGostrey:  so grand is it not to understand.  He's wonderful.\"\n\n\"He is indeed,\" Strether conceded.  \"He wouldn't tell me of this\naffair--only said he had an engagement; but with such a gloom, you must\nlet me insist, as if it had been an engagement to be hanged. Then\nsilently and secretly he turns up here with you.  Do you call THAT\n'lasting'?\"\n\n\"Oh I hope it's lasting!\" Miss Barrace said.  \"But he only, at the\nbest, bears with me.  He doesn't understand--not one little scrap. He's\ndelightful.  He's wonderful,\" she repeated.\n\n\"Michelangelesque!\"--little Bilham completed her meaning.  \"He IS a\nsuccess.  Moses, on the ceiling, brought down to the floor;\noverwhelming, colossal, but somehow portable.\"\n\n\"Certainly, if you mean by portable,\" she returned, \"looking so well in\none's carriage.  He's too funny beside me in his comer; he looks like\nsomebody, somebody foreign and famous, en exil; so that people\nwonder--it's very amusing--whom I'm taking about.  I show him Paris,\nshow him everything, and he never turns a hair.  He's like the Indian\nchief one reads about, who, when he comes up to Washington to see the\nGreat Father, stands wrapt in his blanket and gives no sign.  I might\nbe the Great Father--from the way he takes everything.\"  She was\ndelighted at this hit of her identity with that personage--it fitted so\nher character; she declared it was the title she meant henceforth to\nadopt.  \"And the way he sits, too, in the corner of my room, only\nlooking at my visitors very hard and as if he wanted to start\nsomething! They wonder what he does want to start.  But he's\nwonderful,\" Miss Barrace once more insisted.  \"He has never started\nanything yet.\"\n\nIt presented him none the less, in truth, to her actual friends, who\nlooked at each other in intelligence, with frank amusement on Bilham's\npart and a shade of sadness on Strether's.  Strether's sadness\nsprang--for the image had its grandeur--from his thinking how little he\nhimself was wrapt in his blanket, how little, in marble halls, all too\noblivious of the Great Father, he resembled a really majestic\naboriginal.  But he had also another reflexion. \"You've all of you here\nso much visual sense that you've somehow all 'run' to it.  There are\nmoments when it strikes one that you haven't any other.\"\n\n\"Any moral,\" little Bilham explained, watching serenely, across the\ngarden, the several femmes du monde.  \"But Miss Barrace has a moral\ndistinction,\" he kindly continued; speaking as if for Strether's\nbenefit not less than for her own.\n\n\"HAVE you?\" Strether, scarce knowing what he was about, asked of her\nalmost eagerly.\n\n\"Oh not a distinction\"--she was mightily amused at his tone--\"Mr.\nBilham's too good.  But I think I may say a sufficiency.  Yes, a\nsufficiency. Have you supposed strange things of me?\"--and she fixed\nhim again, through all her tortoise-shell, with the droll interest of\nit. \"You ARE all indeed wonderful.  I should awfully disappoint you. I\ndo take my stand on my sufficiency.  But I know, I confess,\" she went\non, \"strange people.  I don't know how it happens; I don't do it on\npurpose; it seems to be my doom--as if I were always one of their\nhabits:  it's wonderful! I dare say moreover,\" she pursued with an\ninterested gravity, \"that I do, that we all do here, run too much to\nmere eye.  But how can it be helped? We're all looking at each\nother--and in the light of Paris one sees what things resemble.  That's\nwhat the light of Paris seems always to show.  It's the fault of the\nlight of Paris--dear old light!\"\n\n\"Dear old Paris!\" little Bilham echoed.\n\n\"Everything, every one shows,\" Miss Barrace went on.\n\n\"But for what they really are?\" Strether asked.\n\n\"Oh I like your Boston 'reallys'!  But sometimes--yes.\"\n\n\"Dear old Paris then!\" Strether resignedly sighed while for a moment\nthey looked at each other.  Then he broke out:  \"Does Madame de Vionnet\ndo that? I mean really show for what she is?\"\n\nHer answer was prompt.  \"She's charming.  She's perfect.\"\n\n\"Then why did you a minute ago say 'Oh, oh, oh!' at her name?\"\n\nShe easily remembered.  \"Why just because--!  She's wonderful.\"\n\n\"Ah she too?\"--Strether had almost a groan.\n\nBut Miss Barrace had meanwhile perceived relief.  \"Why not put your\nquestion straight to the person who can answer it best?\"\n\n\"No,\" said little Bilham; \"don't put any question; wait, rather--it\nwill be much more fun--to judge for yourself.  He has come to take you\nto her.\"\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nOn which Strether saw that Chad was again at hand, and he afterwards\nscarce knew, absurd as it may seem, what had then quickly occurred. The\nmoment concerned him, he felt, more deeply than he could have\nexplained, and he had a subsequent passage of speculation as to\nwhether, on walking off with Chad, he hadn't looked either pale or red.\nThe only thing he was clear about was that, luckily, nothing indiscreet\nhad in fact been said and that Chad himself was more than ever, in Miss\nBarrace's great sense, wonderful.  It was one of the connexions--though\nreally why it should be, after all, was none so apparent--in which the\nwhole change in him came out as most striking.  Strether recalled as\nthey approached the house that he had impressed him that first night as\nknowing how to enter a box.  Well, he impressed him scarce less now as\nknowing how to make a presentation.  It did something for Strether's\nown quality--marked it as estimated; so that our poor friend, conscious\nand passive, really seemed to feel himself quite handed over and\ndelivered; absolutely, as he would have said, made a present of, given\naway.  As they reached the house a young woman, about to come forth,\nappeared, unaccompanied, on the steps; at the exchange with whom of a\nword on Chad's part Strether immediately perceived that, obligingly,\nkindly, she was there to meet them. Chad had left her in the house, but\nshe had afterwards come halfway and then the next moment had joined\nthem in the garden. Her air of youth, for Strether, was at first almost\ndisconcerting, while his second impression was, not less sharply, a\ndegree of relief at there not having just been, with the others, any\nfreedom used about her.  It was upon him at a touch that she was no\nsubject for that, and meanwhile, on Chad's introducing him, she had\nspoken to him, very simply and gently, in an English clearly of the\neasiest to her, yet unlike any other he had ever heard.  It wasn't as\nif she tried; nothing, he could see after they had been a few minutes\ntogether, was as if she tried; but her speech, charming correct and\nodd, was like a precaution against her passing for a Pole.  There were\nprecautions, he seemed indeed to see, only when there were really\ndangers.\n\nLater on he was to feel many more of them, but by that time he was to\nfeel other things besides.  She was dressed in black, but in black that\nstruck him as light and transparent; she was exceedingly fair, and,\nthough she was as markedly slim, her face had a roundness, with eyes\nfar apart and a little strange. Her smile was natural and dim; her hat\nnot extravagant; he had only perhaps a sense of the clink, beneath her\nfine black sleeves, of more gold bracelets and bangles than he had ever\nseen a lady wear. Chad was excellently free and light about their\nencounter; it was one of the occasions on which Strether most wished he\nhimself might have arrived at such ease and such humour:  \"Here you are\nthen, face to face at last; you're made for each other--vous allez\nvoir; and I bless your union.\"  It was indeed, after he had gone off,\nas if he had been partly serious too.  This latter motion had been\ndetermined by an enquiry from him about \"Jeanne\"; to which her mother\nhad replied that she was probably still in the house with Miss Gostrey,\nto whom she had lately committed her.  \"Ah but you know,\" the young man\nhad rejoined, \"he must see her\"; with which, while Strether pricked up\nhis ears, he had started as if to bring her, leaving the other objects\nof his interest together. Strether wondered to find Miss Gostrey\nalready involved, feeling that he missed a link; but feeling also, with\nsmall delay, how much he should like to talk with her of Madame de\nVionnet on this basis of evidence.\n\nThe evidence as yet in truth was meagre; which, for that matter, was\nperhaps a little why his expectation had had a drop.  There was somehow\nnot quite a wealth in her; and a wealth was all that, in his\nsimplicity, he had definitely prefigured.  Still, it was too much to be\nsure already that there was but a poverty.  They moved away from the\nhouse, and, with eyes on a bench at some distance, he proposed that\nthey should sit down.  \"I've heard a great deal about you,\" she said as\nthey went; but he had an answer to it that made her stop short.  \"Well,\nabout YOU, Madame de Vionnet, I've heard, I'm bound to say, almost\nnothing\"--those struck him as the only words he himself could utter\nwith any lucidity; conscious as he was, and as with more reason, of the\ndetermination to be in respect to the rest of his business perfectly\nplain and go perfectly straight.  It hadn't at any rate been in the\nleast his idea to spy on Chad's proper freedom.  It was possibly,\nhowever, at this very instant and under the impression of Madame de\nVionnet's pause, that going straight began to announce itself as a\nmatter for care.  She had only after all to smile at him ever so gently\nin order to make him ask himself if he weren't already going crooked.\nIt might be going crooked to find it of a sudden just only clear that\nshe intended very definitely to be what he would have called nice to\nhim.  This was what passed between them while, for another instant,\nthey stood still; he couldn't at least remember afterwards what else it\nmight have been.  The thing indeed really unmistakeable was its rolling\nover him as a wave that he had been, in conditions incalculable and\nunimaginable, a subject of discussion.  He had been, on some ground\nthat concerned her, answered for; which gave her an advantage he should\nnever be able to match.\n\n\"Hasn't Miss Gostrey,\" she asked, \"said a good word for me?\"\n\nWhat had struck him first was the way he was bracketed with that lady;\nand he wondered what account Chad would have given of their\nacquaintance.  Something not as yet traceable, at all events, had\nobviously happened.  \"I didn't even know of her knowing you.\"\n\n\"Well, now she'll tell you all.  I'm so glad you're in relation with\nher.\"\n\nThis was one of the things--the \"all\" Miss Gostrey would now tell\nhim--that, with every deference to present preoccupation, was uppermost\nfor Strether after they had taken their seat.  One of the others was,\nat the end of five minutes, that she--oh incontestably, yes--DIFFERED\nless; differed, that is, scarcely at all--well, superficially speaking,\nfrom Mrs. Newsome or even from Mrs. Pocock. She was ever so much\nyounger than the one and not so young as the other; but what WAS there\nin her, if anything, that would have made it impossible he should meet\nher at Woollett? And wherein was her talk during their moments on the\nbench together not the same as would have been found adequate for a\nWoollett garden-party?--unless perhaps truly in not being quite so\nbright.  She observed to him that Mr. Newsome had, to her knowledge,\ntaken extraordinary pleasure in his visit; but there was no good lady\nat Woollett who wouldn't have been at least up to that. Was there in\nChad, by chance, after all, deep down, a principle of aboriginal\nloyalty that had made him, for sentimental ends, attach himself to\nelements, happily encountered, that would remind him most of the old\nair and the old soil? Why accordingly be in a flutter--Strether could\neven put it that way--about this unfamiliar phenomenon of the femme du\nmonde?  On these terms Mrs. Newsome herself was as much of one.  Little\nBilham verily had testified that they came out, the ladies of the type,\nin close quarters; but it was just in these quarters--now comparatively\nclose--that he felt Madame de Vionnet's common humanity.  She did come\nout, and certainly to his relief, but she came out as the usual thing.\nThere might be motives behind, but so could there often be even at\nWoollett.  The only thing was that if she showed him she wished to like\nhim--as the motives behind might conceivably prompt--it would possibly\nhave been more thrilling for him that she should have shown as more\nvividly alien.  Ah she was neither Turk nor Pole!--which would be\nindeed flat once more for Mrs. Newsome and Mrs. Pocock.  A lady and two\ngentlemen had meanwhile, however, approached their bench, and this\naccident stayed for the time further developments.\n\nThey presently addressed his companion, the brilliant strangers; she\nrose to speak to them, and Strether noted how the escorted lady, though\nmature and by no means beautiful, had more of the bold high look, the\nrange of expensive reference, that he had, as might have been said,\nmade his plans for.  Madame de Vionnet greeted her as \"Duchesse\" and\nwas greeted in turn, while talk started in French, as \"Ma toute-belle\";\nlittle facts that had their due, their vivid interest for Strether.\nMadame de Vionnet didn't, none the less, introduce him--a note he was\nconscious of as false to the Woollett scale and the Woollett humanity;\nthough it didn't prevent the Duchess, who struck him as confident and\nfree, very much what he had obscurely supposed duchesses, from looking\nat him as straight and as hard--for it WAS hard--as if she would have\nliked, all the same, to know him.  \"Oh yes, my dear, it's all right,\nit's ME; and who are YOU, with your interesting wrinkles and your most\neffective (is it the handsomest, is it the ugliest?) of noses?\"--some\nsuch loose handful of bright flowers she seemed, fragrantly enough, to\nfling at him.  Strether almost wondered--at such a pace was he\ngoing--if some divination of the influence of either party were what\ndetermined Madame de Vionnet's abstention.  One of the gentlemen, in\nany case, succeeded in placing himself in close relation with our\nfriend's companion; a gentleman rather stout and importantly short, in\na hat with a wonderful wide curl to its brim and a frock coat buttoned\nwith an effect of superlative decision.  His French had quickly turned\nto equal English, and it occurred to Strether that he might well be one\nof the ambassadors.  His design was evidently to assert a claim to\nMadame de Vionnet's undivided countenance, and he made it good in the\ncourse of a minute--led her away with a trick of three words; a trick\nplayed with a social art of which Strether, looking after them as the\nfour, whose backs were now all turned, moved off, felt himself no\nmaster.\n\nHe sank again upon his bench and, while his eyes followed the party,\nreflected, as he had done before, on Chad's strange communities.  He\nsat there alone for five minutes, with plenty to think of; above all\nwith his sense of having suddenly been dropped by a charming woman\noverlaid now by other impressions and in fact quite cleared and\nindifferent.  He hadn't yet had so quiet a surrender; he didn't in the\nleast care if nobody spoke to him more.  He might have been, by his\nattitude, in for something of a march so broad that the want of\nceremony with which he had just been used could fall into its place as\nbut a minor incident of the procession.  Besides, there would be\nincidents enough, as he felt when this term of contemplation was closed\nby the reappearance of little Bilham, who stood before him a moment\nwith a suggestive \"Well?\" in which he saw himself reflected as\ndisorganised, as possibly floored.  He replied with a \"Well!\" intended\nto show that he wasn't floored in the least.  No indeed; he gave it\nout, as the young man sat down beside him, that if, at the worst, he\nhad been overturned at all, he had been overturned into the upper air,\nthe sublimer element with which he had an affinity and in which he\nmight be trusted a while to float.  It wasn't a descent to earth to say\nafter an instant and in sustained response to the reference: \"You're\nquite sure her husband's living?\"\n\n\"Oh dear, yes.\"\n\n\"Ah then--!\"\n\n\"Ah then what?\"\n\nStrether had after all to think.  \"Well, I'm sorry for them.\"  But it\ndidn't for the moment matter more than that.  He assured his young\nfriend he was quite content.  They wouldn't stir; were all right as\nthey were.  He didn't want to be introduced; had been introduced\nalready about as far as he could go.  He had seen moreover an\nimmensity; liked Gloriani, who, as Miss Barrace kept saying, was\nwonderful; had made out, he was sure, the half-dozen other 'men who\nwere distinguished, the artists, the critics and oh the great\ndramatist--HIM it was easy to spot; but wanted--no, thanks, really--to\ntalk with none of them; having nothing at all to say and finding it\nwould do beautifully as it was; do beautifully because what it\nwas--well, was just simply too late. And when after this little Bilham,\nsubmissive and responsive, but with an eye to the consolation nearest,\neasily threw off some \"Better late than never!\" all he got in return\nfor it was a sharp \"Better early than late!\"  This note indeed the next\nthing overflowed for Strether into a quiet stream of demonstration that\nas soon as he had let himself go he felt as the real relief.  It had\nconsciously gathered to a head, but the reservoir had filled sooner\nthan he knew, and his companion's touch was to make the waters spread.\nThere were some things that had to come in time if they were to come at\nall.  If they didn't come in time they were lost for ever.  It was the\ngeneral sense of them that had overwhelmed him with its long slow rush.\n\n\"It's not too late for YOU, on any side, and you don't strike me as in\ndanger of missing the train; besides which people can be in general\npretty well trusted, of course--with the clock of their freedom ticking\nas loud as it seems to do here--to keep an eye on the fleeting hour.\nAll the same don't forget that you're young--blessedly young; be glad\nof it on the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can; it's a\nmistake not to.  It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular,\nso long as you have your life.  If you haven't had that what HAVE you\nhad? This place and these impressions--mild as you may find them to\nwind a man up so; all my impressions of Chad and of people I've seen at\nHIS place--well, have had their abundant message for me, have just\ndropped THAT into my mind.  I see it now.  I haven't done so enough\nbefore--and now I'm old; too old at any rate for what I see.  Oh I DO\nsee, at least; and more than you'd believe or I can express.  It's too\nlate. And it's as if the train had fairly waited at the station for me\nwithout my having had the gumption to know it was there. Now I hear its\nfaint receding whistle miles and miles down the line. What one loses\none loses; make no mistake about that.  The affair--I mean the affair\nof life--couldn't, no doubt, have been different for me; for it's at\nthe best a tin mould, either fluted and embossed, with ornamental\nexcrescences, or else smooth and dreadfully plain, into which, a\nhelpless jelly, one's consciousness is poured--so that one 'takes' the\nform as the great cook says, and is more or less compactly held by it:\none lives in fine as one can. Still, one has the illusion of freedom;\ntherefore don't be, like me, without the memory of that illusion.  I\nwas either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have\nit; I don't quite know which. Of course at present I'm a case of\nreaction against the mistake; and the voice of reaction should, no\ndoubt, always be taken with an allowance.  But that doesn't affect the\npoint that the right time is now yours.  The right time is ANY time\nthat one is still so lucky as to have.  You've plenty; that's the great\nthing; you're, as I say, damn you, so happily and hatefully young.\nDon't at any rate miss things out of stupidity.  Of course I don't take\nyou for a fool, or I shouldn't be addressing you thus awfully.  Do what\nyou like so long as you don't make MY mistake.  For it was a mistake.\nLive!\" ... Slowly and sociably, with full pauses and straight\ndashes, Strether had so delivered himself; holding little Bilham from\nstep to step deeply and gravely attentive.  The end of all was that the\nyoung man had turned quite solemn, and that this was a contradiction of\nthe innocent gaiety the speaker had wished to promote.  He watched for\na moment the consequence of his words, and then, laying a hand on his\nlistener's knee and as if to end with the proper joke:  \"And now for\nthe eye I shall keep on you!\"\n\n\"Oh but I don't know that I want to be, at your age, too different from\nyou!\"\n\n\"Ah prepare while you're about it,\" said Strether, \"to be more amusing.\"\n\nLittle Bilham continued to think, but at last had a smile.  \"Well, you\nARE amusing--to ME.\"\n\n\"Impayable, as you say, no doubt.  But what am I to myself?\" Strether\nhad risen with this, giving his attention now to an encounter that, in\nthe middle of the garden, was in the act of taking place between their\nhost and the lady at whose side Madame de Vionnet had quitted him. This\nlady, who appeared within a few minutes to have left her friends,\nawaited Gloriani's eager approach with words on her lips that Strether\ncouldn't catch, but of which her interesting witty face seemed to give\nhim the echo. He was sure she was prompt and fine, but also that she\nhad met her match, and he liked--in the light of what he was quite sure\nwas the Duchess's latent insolence--the good humour with which the\ngreat artist asserted equal resources.  Were they, this pair, of the\n\"great world\"?--and was he himself, for the moment and thus related to\nthem by his observation, IN it? Then there was something in the great\nworld covertly tigerish, which came to him across the lawn and in the\ncharming air as a waft from the jungle. Yet it made him admire most of\nthe two, made him envy, the glossy male tiger, magnificently marked.\nThese absurdities of the stirred sense, fruits of suggestion ripening\non the instant, were all reflected in his next words to little Bilham.\n\"I know--if we talk of that--whom I should enjoy being like!\"\n\nLittle Bilham followed his eyes; but then as with a shade of knowing\nsurprise:  \"Gloriani?\"\n\nOur friend had in fact already hesitated, though not on the hint of his\ncompanion's doubt, in which there were depths of critical reserve.  He\nhad just made out, in the now full picture, something and somebody\nelse; another impression had been superimposed.  A young girl in a\nwhite dress and a softly plumed white hat had suddenly come into view,\nand what was presently clear was that her course was toward them.  What\nwas clearer still was that the handsome young man at her side was Chad\nNewsome, and what was clearest of all was that she was therefore\nMademoiselle de Vionnet, that she was unmistakeably pretty--bright\ngentle shy happy wonderful--and that Chad now, with a consummate\ncalculation of effect, was about to present her to his old friend's\nvision. What was clearest of all indeed was something much more than\nthis, something at the single stroke of which--and wasn't it simply\njuxtaposition?--all vagueness vanished.  It was the click of a\nspring--he saw the truth.  He had by this time also met Chad's look;\nthere was more of it in that; and the truth, accordingly, so far as\nBilham's enquiry was concerned, had thrust in the answer. \"Oh\nChad!\"--it was that rare youth he should have enjoyed being \"like.\" The\nvirtuous attachment would be all there before him; the virtuous\nattachment would be in the very act of appeal for his blessing; Jeanne\nde Vionnet, this charming creature, would be exquisitely, intensely\nnow--the object of it.  Chad brought her straight up to him, and Chad\nwas, oh yes, at this moment--for the glory of Woollett or\nwhatever--better still even than Gloriani.  He had plucked this\nblossom; he had kept it over-night in water; and at last as he held it\nup to wonder he did enjoy his effect.  That was why Strether had felt\nat first the breath of calculation--and why moreover, as he now knew,\nhis look at the girl would be, for the young man, a sign of the\nlatter's success.  What young man had ever paraded about that way,\nwithout a reason, a maiden in her flower?  And there was nothing in his\nreason at present obscure.  Her type sufficiently told of it--they\nwouldn't, they couldn't, want her to go to Woollett.  Poor Woollett,\nand what it might miss!--though brave Chad indeed too, and what it\nmight gain! Brave Chad however had just excellently spoken.  \"This is a\ngood little friend of mine who knows all about you and has moreover a\nmessage for you.  And this, my dear\"--he had turned to the child\nherself--\"is the best man in the world, who has it in his power to do a\ngreat deal for us and whom I want you to like and revere as nearly as\npossible as much as I do.\"\n\nShe stood there quite pink, a little frightened, prettier and prettier\nand not a bit like her mother.  There was in this last particular no\nresemblance but that of youth to youth; and here was in fact suddenly\nStrether's sharpest impression.  It went wondering, dazed, embarrassed,\nback to the woman he had just been talking with; it was a revelation in\nthe light of which he already saw she would become more interesting. So\nslim and fresh and fair, she had yet put forth this perfection; so that\nfor really believing it of her, for seeing her to any such developed\ndegree as a mother, comparison would be urgent.  Well, what was it now\nbut fairly thrust upon him?  \"Mamma wishes me to tell you before we\ngo,\" the girl said, \"that she hopes very much you'll come to see us\nvery soon. She has something important to say to you.\"\n\n\"She quite reproaches herself,\" Chad helpfully explained:  \"you were\ninteresting her so much when she accidentally suffered you to be\ninterrupted.\"\n\n\"Ah don't mention it!\" Strether murmured, looking kindly from one to\nthe other and wondering at many things.\n\n\"And I'm to ask you for myself,\" Jeanne continued with her hands\nclasped together as if in some small learnt prayer--\"I'm to ask you for\nmyself if you won't positively come.\"\n\n\"Leave it to me, dear--I'll take care of it!\" Chad genially declared in\nanswer to this, while Strether himself almost held his breath.  What\nwas in the girl was indeed too soft, too unknown for direct dealing; so\nthat one could only gaze at it as at a picture, quite staying one's own\nhand.  But with Chad he was now on ground--Chad he could meet; so\npleasant a confidence in that and in everything did the young man\nfreely exhale.  There was the whole of a story in his tone to his\ncompanion, and he spoke indeed as if already of the family.  It made\nStrether guess the more quickly what it might be about which Madame de\nVionnet was so urgent.  Having seen him then she had found him easy;\nshe wished to have it out with him that some way for the young people\nmust be discovered, some way that would not impose as a condition the\ntransplantation of her daughter.  He already saw himself discussing\nwith this lady the attractions of Woollett as a residence for Chad's\ncompanion. Was that youth going now to trust her with the affair--so\nthat it would be after all with one of his \"lady-friends\" that his\nmother's missionary should be condemned to deal?  It was quite as if\nfor an instant the two men looked at each other on this question.  But\nthere was no mistaking at last Chad's pride in the display of such a\nconnexion.  This was what had made him so carry himself while, three\nminutes before, he was bringing it into view; what had caused his\nfriend, first catching sight of him, to be so struck with his air.  It\nwas, in a word, just when he thus finally felt Chad putting things\nstraight off on him that he envied him, as he had mentioned to little\nBilham, most.  The whole exhibition however was but a matter of three\nor four minutes, and the author of it had soon explained that, as\nMadame de Vionnet was immediately going \"on,\" this could be for Jeanne\nbut a snatch.  They would all meet again soon, and Strether was\nmeanwhile to stay and amuse himself--\"I'll pick you up again in plenty\nof time.\" He took the girl off as he had brought her, and Strether,\nwith the faint sweet foreignness of her \"Au revoir, monsieur!\" in his\nears as a note almost unprecedented, watched them recede side by side\nand felt how, once more, her companion's relation to her got an accent\nfrom it.  They disappeared among the others and apparently into the\nhouse; whereupon our friend turned round to give out to little Bilham\nthe conviction of which he was full.  But there was no little Bilham\nany more; little Bilham had within the few moments, for reasons of his\nown, proceeded further:  a circumstance by which, in its order,\nStrether was also sensibly affected.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nChad was not in fact on this occasion to keep his promise of coming\nback; but Miss Gostrey had soon presented herself with an explanation\nof his failure.  There had been reasons at the last for his going off\nwith ces dames; and he had asked her with much instance to come out and\ntake charge of their friend.  She did so, Strether felt as she took her\nplace beside him, in a manner that left nothing to desire.  He had\ndropped back on his bench, alone again for a time, and the more\nconscious for little Bilham's defection of his unexpressed thought; in\nrespect to which however this next converser was a still more capacious\nvessel.  \"It's the child!\" he had exclaimed to her almost as soon as\nshe appeared; and though her direct response was for some time delayed\nhe could feel in her meanwhile the working of this truth.  It might\nhave been simply, as she waited, that they were now in presence\naltogether of truth spreading like a flood and not for the moment to be\noffered her in the mere cupful; inasmuch as who should ces dames prove\nto be but persons about whom--once thus face to face with them--she\nfound she might from the first have told him almost everything? This\nwould have freely come had he taken the simple precaution of giving her\ntheir name.  There could be no better example--and she appeared to note\nit with high amusement--than the way, making things out already so much\nfor himself, he was at last throwing precautions to the winds.  They\nwere neither more nor less, she and the child's mother, than old\nschool-friends--friends who had scarcely met for years but whom this\nunlooked-for chance had brought together with a rush.  It was a relief,\nMiss Gostrey hinted, to feel herself no longer groping; she was\nunaccustomed to grope and as a general thing, he might well have seen,\nmade straight enough for her clue.  With the one she had now picked up\nin her hands there need be at least no waste of wonder.  \"She's coming\nto see me--that's for YOU,\" Strether's counsellor continued; \"but I\ndon't require it to know where I am.\"\n\nThe waste of wonder might be proscribed; but Strether,\ncharacteristically, was even by this time in the immensity of space.\n\"By which you mean that you know where SHE is?\"\n\nShe just hesitated.  \"I mean that if she comes to see me I shall--now\nthat I've pulled myself round a bit after the shock--not be at home.\"\n\nStrether hung poised.  \"You call it--your recognition--a shock?\"\n\nShe gave one of her rare flickers of impatience.  \"It was a surprise,\nan emotion.  Don't be so literal.  I wash my hands of her.\"\n\nPoor Strether's face lengthened.  \"She's impossible--?\"\n\n\"She's even more charming than I remembered her.\"\n\n\"Then what's the matter?\"\n\nShe had to think how to put it.  \"Well, I'M impossible.  It's\nimpossible.  Everything's impossible.\"\n\nHe looked at her an instant.  \"I see where you're coming out.\nEverything's possible.\" Their eyes had on it in fact an exchange of\nsome duration; after which he pursued:  \"Isn't it that beautiful\nchild?\" Then as she still said nothing:  \"Why don't you mean to receive\nher?\"\n\nHer answer in an instant rang clear.  \"Because I wish to keep out of\nthe business.\"\n\nIt provoked in him a weak wail.  \"You're going to abandon me NOW?\"\n\n\"No, I'm only going to abandon HER.  She'll want me to help her with\nyou.  And I won't.\"\n\n\"You'll only help me with her?  Well then--!\"  Most of the persons\npreviously gathered had, in the interest of tea, passed into the house,\nand they had the gardens mainly to themselves.  The shadows were long,\nthe last call of the birds, who had made a home of their own in the\nnoble interspaced quarter, sounded from the high trees in the other\ngardens as well, those of the old convent and of the old hotels; it was\nas if our friends had waited for the full charm to come out. Strether's\nimpressions were still present; it was as if something had happened\nthat \"nailed\" them, made them more intense; but he was to ask himself\nsoon afterwards, that evening, what really HAD happened--conscious as\nhe could after all remain that for a gentleman taken, and taken the\nfirst time, into the \"great world,\" the world of ambassadors and\nduchesses, the items made a meagre total.  It was nothing new to him,\nhowever, as we know, that a man might have--at all events such a man as\nhe--an amount of experience out of any proportion to his adventures; so\nthat, though it was doubtless no great adventure to sit on there with\nMiss Gostrey and hear about Madame de Vionnet, the hour, the picture,\nthe immediate, the recent, the possible--as well as the communication\nitself, not a note of which failed to reverberate--only gave the\nmoments more of the taste of history.\n\nIt was history, to begin with, that Jeanne's mother had been\nthree-and-twenty years before, at Geneva, schoolmate and good\ngirlfriend to Maria Gostrey, who had moreover enjoyed since then,\nthough interruptedly and above all with a long recent drop, other\nglimpses of her.  Twenty-three years put them both on, no doubt; and\nMadame de Vionnet--though she had married straight after\nschool--couldn't be today an hour less than thirty-eight. This made her\nten years older than Chad--though ten years, also, if Strether liked,\nolder than she looked; the least, at any rate, that a prospective\nmother-in-law could be expected to do with.  She would be of all\nmothers-in-law the most charming; unless indeed, through some\nperversity as yet insupposeable, she should utterly belie herself in\nthat relation.  There was none surely in which, as Maria remembered\nher, she mustn't be charming; and this frankly in spite of the stigma\nof failure in the tie where failure always most showed.  It was no test\nthere--when indeed WAS it a test there?--for Monsieur de Vionnet had\nbeen a brute.  She had lived for years apart from him--which was of\ncourse always a horrid position; but Miss Gostrey's impression of the\nmatter had been that she could scarce have made a better thing of it\nhad she done it on purpose to show she was amiable.  She was so amiable\nthat nobody had had a word to say; which was luckily not the case for\nher husband.  He was so impossible that she had the advantage of all\nher merits.\n\nIt was still history for Strether that the Comte de Vionnet--it being\nalso history that the lady in question was a Countess--should now,\nunder Miss Gostrey's sharp touch, rise before him as a high\ndistinguished polished impertinent reprobate, the product of a\nmysterious order; it was history, further, that the charming girl so\nfreely sketched by his companion should have been married out of hand\nby a mother, another figure of striking outline, full of dark personal\nmotive; it was perhaps history most of all that this company was, as a\nmatter of course, governed by such considerations as put divorce out of\nthe question.  \"Ces gens-la don't divorce, you know, any more than they\nemigrate or abjure--they think it impious and vulgar\"; a fact in the\nlight of which they seemed but the more richly special.  It was all\nspecial; it was all, for Strether's imagination, more or less rich. The\ngirl at the Genevese school, an isolated interesting attaching\ncreature, then both sensitive and violent, audacious but always\nforgiven, was the daughter of a French father and an English mother\nwho, early left a widow, had married again--tried afresh with a\nforeigner; in her career with whom she had apparently given her child\nno example of comfort.  All these people--the people of the English\nmother's side--had been of condition more or less eminent; yet with\noddities and disparities that had often since made Maria, thinking them\nover, wonder what they really quite rhymed to.  It was in any case her\nbelief that the mother, interested and prone to adventure, had been\nwithout conscience, had only thought of ridding herself most quickly of\na possible, an actual encumbrance.  The father, by her impression, a\nFrenchman with a name one knew, had been a different matter, leaving\nhis child, she clearly recalled, a memory all fondness, as well as an\nassured little fortune which was unluckily to make her more or less of\na prey later on.  She had been in particular, at school, dazzlingly,\nthough quite booklessly, clever; as polyglot as a little Jewess (which\nshe wasn't, oh no!) and chattering French, English, German, Italian,\nanything one would, in a way that made a clean sweep, if not of prizes\nand parchments, at least of every \"part,\" whether memorised or\nimprovised, in the curtained costumed school repertory, and in especial\nof all mysteries of race and vagueness of reference, all swagger about\n\"home,\" among their variegated mates.\n\nIt would doubtless be difficult to-day, as between French and English,\nto name her and place her; she would certainly show, on knowledge, Miss\nGostrey felt, as one of those convenient types who don't keep you\nexplaining--minds with doors as numerous as the many-tongued cluster of\nconfessionals at Saint Peter's.  You might confess to her with\nconfidence in Roumelian, and even Roumelian sins.  Therefore--! But\nStrether's narrator covered her implication with a laugh; a laugh by\nwhich his betrayal of a sense of the lurid in the picture was also\nperhaps sufficiently protected.  He had a moment of wondering, while\nhis friend went on, what sins might be especially Roumelian.  She went\non at all events to the mention of her having met the young\nthing--again by some Swiss lake--in her first married state, which had\nappeared for the few intermediate years not at least violently\ndisturbed.  She had been lovely at that moment, delightful to HER, full\nof responsive emotion, of amused recognitions and amusing reminders,\nand then once more, much later, after a long interval, equally but\ndifferently charming--touching and rather mystifying for the five\nminutes of an encounter at a railway-station en province, during which\nit had come out that her life was all changed.  Miss Gostrey had\nunderstood enough to see, essentially, what had happened, and yet had\nbeautifully dreamed that she was herself faultless.  There were\ndoubtless depths in her, but she was all right; Strether would see if\nshe wasn't.  She was another person however--that had been promptly\nmarked--from the small child of nature at the Geneva school, a little\nperson quite made over (as foreign women WERE, compared with American)\nby marriage.  Her situation too had evidently cleared itself up; there\nwould have been--all that was possible--a judicial separation.  She had\nsettled in Paris, brought up her daughter, steered her boat.  It was no\nvery pleasant boat--especially there--to be in; but Marie de Vionnet\nwould have headed straight.  She would have friends, certainly--and\nvery good ones.  There she was at all events--and it was very\ninteresting.  Her knowing Mr. Chad didn't in the least prove she hadn't\nfriends; what it proved was what good ones HE had. \"I saw that,\" said\nMiss Gostrey, \"that night at the Francais; it came out for me in three\nminutes.  I saw HER--or somebody like her. And so,\" she immediately\nadded, \"did you.\"\n\n\"Oh no--not anybody like her!\" Strether laughed.  \"But you mean,\" he as\npromptly went on, \"that she has had such an influence on him?\"\n\nMiss Gostrey was on her feet; it was time for them to go.  \"She has\nbrought him up for her daughter.\"\n\nTheir eyes, as so often, in candid conference, through their settled\nglasses, met over it long; after which Strether's again took in the\nwhole place.  They were quite alone there now.  \"Mustn't she rather--in\nthe time then--have rushed it?\"\n\n\"Ah she won't of course have lost an hour.  But that's just the good\nmother--the good French one.  You must remember that of her--that as a\nmother she's French, and that for them there's a special providence. It\nprecisely however--that she mayn't have been able to begin as far back\nas she'd have liked--makes her grateful for aid.\"\n\nStrether took this in as they slowly moved to the house on their way\nout.  \"She counts on me then to put the thing through?\"\n\n\"Yes--she counts on you.  Oh and first of all of course,\" Miss Gostrey\nadded, \"on her--well, convincing you.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" her friend returned, \"she caught Chad young!\"\n\n\"Yes, but there are women who are for all your 'times of life.' They're\nthe most wonderful sort.\"\n\nShe had laughed the words out, but they brought her companion, the next\nthing, to a stand.  \"Is what you mean that she'll try to make a fool of\nme?\"\n\n\"Well, I'm wondering what she WILL--with an opportunity--make.\"\n\n\"What do you call,\" Strether asked, \"an opportunity?  My going to see\nher?\"\n\n\"Ah you must go to see her\"--Miss Gostrey was a trifle evasive. \"You\ncan't not do that.  You'd have gone to see the other woman.  I mean if\nthere had been one--a different sort.  It's what you came out for.\"\n\nIt might be; but Strether distinguished.  \"I didn't come out to see\nTHIS sort.\"\n\nShe had a wonderful look at him now.  \"Are you disappointed she isn't\nworse?\"\n\nHe for a moment entertained the question, then found for it the\nfrankest of answers.  \"Yes.  If she were worse she'd be better for our\npurpose.  It would be simpler.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" she admitted.  \"But won't this be pleasanter?\"\n\n\"Ah you know,\" he promptly replied, \"I didn't come out--wasn't that\njust what you originally reproached me with?--for the pleasant.\"\n\n\"Precisely.  Therefore I say again what I said at first.  You must take\nthings as they come.  Besides,\" Miss Gostrey added, \"I'm not afraid for\nmyself.\"\n\n\"For yourself--?\"\n\n\"Of your seeing her.  I trust her.  There's nothing she'll say about\nme.  In fact there's nothing she CAN.\"\n\nStrether wondered--little as he had thought of this.  Then he broke\nout.  \"Oh you women!\"\n\nThere was something in it at which she flushed.  \"Yes--there we are.\nWe're abysses.\" At last she smiled.  \"But I risk her!\"\n\nHe gave himself a shake.  \"Well then so do I!\"  But he added as they\npassed into the house that he would see Chad the first thing in the\nmorning.\n\nThis was the next day the more easily effected that the young man, as\nit happened, even before he was down, turned up at his hotel. Strether\ntook his coffee, by habit, in the public room; but on his descending\nfor this purpose Chad instantly proposed an adjournment to what he\ncalled greater privacy.  He had himself as yet had nothing--they would\nsit down somewhere together; and when after a few steps and a turn into\nthe Boulevard they had, for their greater privacy, sat down among\ntwenty others, our friend saw in his companion's move a fear of the\nadvent of Waymarsh.  It was the first time Chad had to that extent\ngiven this personage \"away\"; and Strether found himself wondering of\nwhat it was symptomatic.  He made out in a moment that the youth was in\nearnest as he hadn't yet seen him; which in its turn threw a ray\nperhaps a trifle startling on what they had each up to that time been\ntreating as earnestness. It was sufficiently flattering however that\nthe real thing--if this WAS at last the real thing--should have been\ndetermined, as appeared, precisely by an accretion of Strether's\nimportance.  For this was what it quickly enough came to--that Chad,\nrising with the lark, had rushed down to let him know while his morning\nconsciousness was yet young that he had literally made the afternoon\nbefore a tremendous impression.  Madame de Vionnet wouldn't, couldn't\nrest till she should have some assurance from him that he WOULD consent\nagain to see her.  The announcement was made, across their\nmarble-topped table, while the foam of the hot milk was in their cups\nand its plash still in the air, with the smile of Chad's easiest\nurbanity; and this expression of his face caused our friend's doubts to\ngather on the spot into a challenge of the lips.  \"See here\"--that was\nall; he only for the moment said again \"See here.\" Chad met it with all\nhis air of straight intelligence, while Strether remembered again that\nfancy of the first impression of him, the happy young Pagan, handsome\nand hard but oddly indulgent, whose mysterious measure he had under the\nstreet-lamp tried mentally to take.  The young Pagan, while a long look\npassed between them, sufficiently understood.  Strether scarce needed\nat last to say the rest--\"I want to know where I am.\" But he said it,\nadding before any answer something more.  \"Are you engaged to be\nmarried--is that your secret?--to the young lady?\"\n\nChad shook his head with the slow amenity that was one of his ways of\nconveying that there was time for everything.  \"I have no\nsecret--though I may have secrets! I haven't at any rate that one.\nWe're not engaged.  No.\"\n\n\"Then where's the hitch?\"\n\n\"Do you mean why I haven't already started with you?\" Chad, beginning\nhis coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to explain. \"Nothing\nwould have induced me--nothing will still induce me--not to try to keep\nyou here as long as you can be made to stay. It's too visibly good for\nyou.\" Strether had himself plenty to say about this, but it was amusing\nalso to measure the march of Chad's tone.  He had never been more a man\nof the world, and it was always in his company present to our friend\nthat one was seeing how in successive connexions a man of the world\nacquitted himself.  Chad kept it up beautifully. \"My idea--voyons!--is\nsimply that you should let Madame de Vionnet know you, simply that you\nshould consent to know HER.  I don't in the least mind telling you\nthat, clever and charming as she is, she's ever so much in my\nconfidence. All I ask of you is to let her talk to you. You've asked me\nabout what you call my hitch, and so far as it goes she'll explain it\nto you.  She's herself my hitch, hang it--if you must really have it\nall out.  But in a sense,\" he hastened in the most wonderful manner to\nadd, \"that you'll quite make out for yourself. She's too good a friend,\nconfound her.  Too good, I mean, for me to leave without--without--\" It\nwas his first hesitation.\n\n\"Without what?\"\n\n\"Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms of my\nsacrifice.\"\n\n\"It WILL be a sacrifice then?\"\n\n\"It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered.  I owe her so much.\"\n\nIt was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was now\nconfessedly--oh quite flagrantly and publicly--interesting.  The moment\nreally took on for Strether an intensity.  Chad owed Madame de Vionnet\nso much?  What DID that do then but clear up the whole mystery?  He was\nindebted for alterations, and she was thereby in a position to have\nsent in her bill for expenses incurred in reconstruction.  What was\nthis at bottom but what had been to be arrived at?  Strether sat there\narriving at it while he munched toast and stirred his second cup.  To\ndo this with the aid of Chad's pleasant earnest face was also to do\nmore besides.  No, never before had he been so ready to take him as he\nwas.  What was it that had suddenly so cleared up?  It was just\neverybody's character; that is everybody's but--in a measure--his own.\nStrether felt HIS character receive for the instant a smutch from all\nthe wrong things he had suspected or believed.  The person to whom Chad\nowed it that he could positively turn out such a comfort to other\npersons--such a person was sufficiently raised above any \"breath\" by\nthe nature of her work and the young man's steady light.  All of which\nwas vivid enough to come and go quickly; though indeed in the midst of\nit Strether could utter a question.  \"Have I your word of honour that\nif I surrender myself to Madame de Vionnet you'll surrender yourself to\nme?\"\n\nChad laid his hand firmly on his friend's.  \"My dear man, you have it.\"\n\nThere was finally something in his felicity almost embarrassing and\noppressive--Strether had begun to fidget under it for the open air and\nthe erect posture.  He had signed to the waiter that he wished to pay,\nand this transaction took some moments, during which he thoroughly\nfelt, while he put down money and pretended--it was quite hollow--to\nestimate change, that Chad's higher spirit, his youth, his practice,\nhis paganism, his felicity, his assurance, his impudence, whatever it\nmight be, had consciously scored a success. Well, that was all right so\nfar as it went; his sense of the thing in question covered our friend\nfor a minute like a veil through which--as if he had been muffled--he\nheard his interlocutor ask him if he mightn't take him over about five.\n\"Over\" was over the river, and over the river was where Madame de\nVionnet lived, and five was that very afternoon.  They got at last out\nof the place--got out before he answered.  He lighted, in the street, a\ncigarette, which again gave him more time.  But it was already sharp\nfor him that there was no use in time.  \"What does she propose to do to\nme?\" he had presently demanded.\n\nChad had no delays.  \"Are you afraid of her?\"\n\n\"Oh immensely.  Don't you see it?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Chad, \"she won't do anything worse to you than make you\nlike her.\"\n\n\"It's just of that I'm afraid.\"\n\n\"Then it's not fair to me.\"\n\nStrether cast about.  \"It's fair to your mother.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Chad, \"are you afraid of HER?\"\n\n\"Scarcely less.  Or perhaps even more.  But is this lady against your\ninterests at home?\" Strether went on.\n\n\"Not directly, no doubt; but she's greatly in favour of them here.\"\n\n\"And what--'here'--does she consider them to be?\"\n\n\"Well, good relations!\"\n\n\"With herself?\"\n\n\"With herself.\"\n\n\"And what is it that makes them so good?\"\n\n\"What?  Well, that's exactly what you'll make out if you'll only go, as\nI'm supplicating you, to see her.\"\n\nStrether stared at him with a little of the wanness, no doubt, that the\nvision of more to \"make out\" could scarce help producing.  \"I mean HOW\ngood are they?\"\n\n\"Oh awfully good.\"\n\nAgain Strether had faltered, but it was brief.  It was all very well,\nbut there was nothing now he wouldn't risk.  \"Excuse me, but I must\nreally--as I began by telling you--know where I am.  Is she bad?\"\n\n\"'Bad'?\"--Chad echoed it, but without a shock.  \"Is that what's\nimplied--?\"\n\n\"When relations are good?\" Strether felt a little silly, and was even\nconscious of a foolish laugh, at having it imposed on him to have\nappeared to speak so.  What indeed was he talking about?  His stare had\nrelaxed; he looked now all round him.  But something in him brought him\nback, though he still didn't know quite how to turn it.  The two or\nthree ways he thought of, and one of them in particular, were, even\nwith scruples dismissed, too ugly.  He none the less at last found\nsomething.  \"Is her life without reproach?\"\n\nIt struck him, directly he had found it, as pompous and priggish; so\nmuch so that he was thankful to Chad for taking it only in the right\nspirit.  The young man spoke so immensely to the point that the effect\nwas practically of positive blandness.  \"Absolutely without reproach. A\nbeautiful life.  Allez donc voir!\"\n\nThese last words were, in the liberality of their confidence, so\nimperative that Strether went through no form of assent; but before\nthey separated it had been confirmed that he should be picked up at a\nquarter to five.\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Sixth\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nIt was quite by half-past five--after the two men had been together in\nMadame de Vionnet's drawing-room not more than a dozen minutes--that\nChad, with a look at his watch and then another at their hostess, said\ngenially, gaily:  \"I've an engagement, and I know you won't complain if\nI leave him with you.  He'll interest you immensely; and as for her,\"\nhe declared to Strether, \"I assure you, if you're at all nervous, she's\nperfectly safe.\"\n\nHe had left them to be embarrassed or not by this guarantee, as they\ncould best manage, and embarrassment was a thing that Strether wasn't\nat first sure Madame de Vionnet escaped.  He escaped it himself, to his\nsurprise; but he had grown used by this time to thinking of himself as\nbrazen.  She occupied, his hostess, in the Rue de Bellechasse, the\nfirst floor of an old house to which our visitors had had access from\nan old clean court.  The court was large and open, full of revelations,\nfor our friend, of the habit of privacy, the peace of intervals, the\ndignity of distances and approaches; the house, to his restless sense,\nwas in the high homely style of an elder day, and the ancient Paris\nthat he was always looking for--sometimes intensely felt, sometimes\nmore acutely missed--was in the immemorial polish of the wide waxed\nstaircase and in the fine boiseries, the medallions, mouldings,\nmirrors, great clear spaces, of the greyish-white salon into which he\nhad been shown.  He seemed at the very outset to see her in the midst\nof possessions not vulgarly numerous, but hereditary cherished\ncharming.  While his eyes turned after a little from those of his\nhostess and Chad freely talked--not in the least about HIM, but about\nother people, people he didn't know, and quite as if he did know\nthem--he found himself making out, as a background of the occupant,\nsome glory, some prosperity of the First Empire, some Napoleonic\nglamour, some dim lustre of the great legend; elements clinging still\nto all the consular chairs and mythological brasses and sphinxes' heads\nand faded surfaces of satin striped with alternate silk.\n\nThe place itself went further back--that he guessed, and how old Paris\ncontinued in a manner to echo there; but the post-revolutionary period,\nthe world he vaguely thought of as the world of Chateaubriand, of\nMadame de Stael, even of the young Lamartine, had left its stamp of\nharps and urns and torches, a stamp impressed on sundry small objects,\nornaments and relics.  He had never before, to his knowledge, had\npresent to him relics, of any special dignity, of a private\norder--little old miniatures, medallions, pictures, books; books in\nleather bindings, pinkish and greenish, with gilt garlands on the back,\nranged, together with other promiscuous properties, under the glass of\nbrass-mounted cabinets.  His attention took them all tenderly into\naccount. They were among the matters that marked Madame de Vionnet's\napartment as something quite different from Miss Gostrey's little\nmuseum of bargains and from Chad's lovely home; he recognised it as\nfounded much more on old accumulations that had possibly from time to\ntime shrunken than on any contemporary method of acquisition or form of\ncuriosity.  Chad and Miss Gostrey had rummaged and purchased and picked\nup and exchanged, sifting, selecting, comparing; whereas the mistress\nof the scene before him, beautifully passive under the spell of\ntransmission--transmission from her father's line, he quite made up his\nmind--had only received, accepted and been quiet.  When she hadn't been\nquiet she had been moved at the most to some occult charity for some\nfallen fortune.  There had been objects she or her predecessors might\neven conceivably have parted with under need, but Strether couldn't\nsuspect them of having sold old pieces to get \"better\" ones.  They\nwould have felt no difference as to better or worse.  He could but\nimagine their having felt--perhaps in emigration, in proscription, for\nhis sketch was slight and confused--the pressure of want or the\nobligation of sacrifice.\n\nThe pressure of want--whatever might be the case with the other\nforce--was, however, presumably not active now, for the tokens of a\nchastened ease still abounded after all, many marks of a taste whose\ndiscriminations might perhaps have been called eccentric.  He guessed\nat intense little preferences and sharp little exclusions, a deep\nsuspicion of the vulgar and a personal view of the right. The general\nresult of this was something for which he had no name on the spot quite\nready, but something he would have come nearest to naming in speaking\nof it as the air of supreme respectability, the consciousness, small,\nstill, reserved, but none the less distinct and diffused, of private\nhonour.  The air of supreme respectability--that was a strange blank\nwall for his adventure to have brought him to break his nose against.\nIt had in fact, as he was now aware, filled all the approaches, hovered\nin the court as he passed, hung on the staircase as he mounted, sounded\nin the grave rumble of the old bell, as little electric as possible, of\nwhich Chad, at the door, had pulled the ancient but neatly-kept tassel;\nit formed in short the clearest medium of its particular kind that he\nhad ever breathed.  He would have answered for it at the end of a\nquarter of an hour that some of the glass cases contained swords and\nepaulettes of ancient colonels and generals; medals and orders once\npinned over hearts that had long since ceased to beat; snuff-boxes\nbestowed on ministers and envoys; copies of works presented, with\ninscriptions, by authors now classic.  At bottom of it all for him was\nthe sense of her rare unlikeness to the women he had known.  This sense\nhad grown, since the day before, the more he recalled her, and had been\nabove all singularly fed by his talk with Chad in the morning.\nEverything in fine made her immeasurably new, and nothing so new as the\nold house and the old objects.  There were books, two or three, on a\nsmall table near his chair, but they hadn't the lemon-coloured covers\nwith which his eye had begun to dally from the hour of his arrival and\nto the opportunity of a further acquaintance with which he had for a\nfortnight now altogether succumbed.  On another table, across the room,\nhe made out the great _Revue_; but even that familiar face, conspicuous\nin Mrs. Newsome's parlours, scarce counted here as a modern note.  He\nwas sure on the spot--and he afterwards knew he was right--that this\nwas a touch of Chad's own hand.  What would Mrs. Newsome say to the\ncircumstance that Chad's interested \"influence\" kept her paper-knife in\nthe _Revue_?  The interested influence at any rate had, as we say, gone\nstraight to the point--had in fact soon left it quite behind.\n\nShe was seated, near the fire, on a small stuffed and fringed chair one\nof the few modern articles in the room, and she leaned back in it with\nher hands clasped in her lap and no movement, in all her person, but\nthe fine prompt play of her deep young face.  The fire, under the low\nwhite marble, undraped and academic, had burnt down to the silver ashes\nof light wood, one of the windows, at a distance, stood open to the\nmildness and stillness, out of which, in the short pauses, came the\nfaint sound, pleasant and homely, almost rustic, of a plash and a\nclatter of sabots from some coach-house on the other side of the court.\nMadame de Vionnet, while Strether sat there, wasn't to shift her\nposture by an inch. \"I don't think you seriously believe in what you're\ndoing,\" she said; \"but all the same, you know, I'm going to treat you\nquite as if I did.\"\n\n\"By which you mean,\" Strether directly replied, \"quite as if you\ndidn't!  I assure you it won't make the least difference with me how\nyou treat me.\"\n\n\"Well,\" she said, taking that menace bravely and philosophically\nenough, \"the only thing that really matters is that you shall get on\nwith me.\"\n\n\"Ah but I don't!\" he immediately returned.\n\nIt gave her another pause; which, however, she happily enough shook\noff.  \"Will you consent to go on with me a little--provisionally--as if\nyou did?\"\n\nThen it was that he saw how she had decidedly come all the way; and\nthere accompanied it an extraordinary sense of her raising from\nsomewhere below him her beautiful suppliant eyes.  He might have been\nperched at his door-step or at his window and she standing in the road.\nFor a moment he let her stand and couldn't moreover have spoken.  It\nhad been sad, of a sudden, with a sadness that was like a cold breath\nin his face.  \"What can I do,\" he finally asked, \"but listen to you as\nI promised Chadwick?\"\n\n\"Ah but what I'm asking you,\" she quickly said, \"isn't what Mr. Newsome\nhad in mind.\" She spoke at present, he saw, as if to take courageously\nALL her risk.  \"This is my own idea and a different thing.\"\n\nIt gave poor Strether in truth--uneasy as it made him too--something of\nthe thrill of a bold perception justified.  \"Well,\" he answered kindly\nenough, \"I was sure a moment since that some idea of your own had come\nto you.\"\n\nShe seemed still to look up at him, but now more serenely.  \"I made out\nyou were sure--and that helped it to come.  So you see,\" she continued,\n\"we do get on.\"\n\n\"Oh but it appears to me I don't at all meet your request.  How can I\nwhen I don't understand it?\"\n\n\"It isn't at all necessary you should understand; it will do quite well\nenough if you simply remember it.  Only feel I trust you--and for\nnothing so tremendous after all.  Just,\" she said with a wonderful\nsmile, \"for common civility.\"\n\nStrether had a long pause while they sat again face to face, as they\nhad sat, scarce less conscious, before the poor lady had crossed the\nstream.  She was the poor lady for Strether now because clearly she had\nsome trouble, and her appeal to him could only mean that her trouble\nwas deep.  He couldn't help it; it wasn't his fault; he had done\nnothing; but by a turn of the hand she had somehow made their encounter\na relation.  And the relation profited by a mass of things that were\nnot strictly in it or of it; by the very air in which they sat, by the\nhigh cold delicate room, by the world outside and the little plash in\nthe court, by the First Empire and the relics in the stiff cabinets, by\nmatters as far off as those and by others as near as the unbroken clasp\nof her hands in her lap and the look her expression had of being most\nnatural when her eyes were most fixed.  \"You count upon me of course\nfor something really much greater than it sounds.\"\n\n\"Oh it sounds great enough too!\" she laughed at this.\n\nHe found himself in time on the point of telling her that she was, as\nMiss Barrace called it, wonderful; but, catching himself up, he said\nsomething else instead.  \"What was it Chad's idea then that you should\nsay to me?\"\n\n\"Ah his idea was simply what a man's idea always is--to put every\neffort off on the woman.\"\n\n\"The 'woman'--?\" Strether slowly echoed.\n\n\"The woman he likes--and just in proportion as he likes her.  In\nproportion too--for shifting the trouble--as she likes HIM.\"\n\nStrether followed it; then with an abruptness of his own: \"How much do\nyou like Chad?\"\n\n\"Just as much as THAT--to take all, with you, on myself.\" But she got\nat once again away from this.  \"I've been trembling as if we were to\nstand or fall by what you may think of me; and I'm even now,\" she went\non wonderfully, \"drawing a long breath--and, yes, truly taking a great\ncourage--from the hope that I don't in fact strike you as impossible.\"\n\n\"That's at all events, clearly,\" he observed after an instant, \"the way\nI don't strike YOU.\"\n\n\"Well,\" she so far assented, \"as you haven't yet said you WON'T have\nthe little patience with me I ask for--\"\n\n\"You draw splendid conclusions?  Perfectly.  But I don't understand\nthem,\" Strether pursued.  \"You seem to me to ask for much more than you\nneed.  What, at the worst for you, what at the best for myself, can I\nafter all do?  I can use no pressure that I haven't used.  You come\nreally late with your request.  I've already done all that for myself\nthe case admits of.  I've said my say, and here I am.\"\n\n\"Yes, here you are, fortunately!\" Madame de Vionnet laughed.  \"Mrs.\nNewsome,\" she added in another tone, \"didn't think you can do so\nlittle.\"\n\nHe had an hesitation, but he brought the words out.  \"Well, she thinks\nso now.\"\n\n\"Do you mean by that--?\" But she also hung fire.\n\n\"Do I mean what?\"\n\nShe still rather faltered.  \"Pardon me if I touch on it, but if I'm\nsaying extraordinary things, why, perhaps, mayn't I?  Besides, doesn't\nit properly concern us to know?\"\n\n\"To know what?\" he insisted as after thus beating about the bush she\nhad again dropped.\n\nShe made the effort.  \"Has she given you up?\"\n\nHe was amazed afterwards to think how simply and quietly he had met it.\n\"Not yet.\" It was almost as if he were a trifle disappointed--had\nexpected still more of her freedom.  But he went straight on. \"Is that\nwhat Chad has told you will happen to me?\"\n\nShe was evidently charmed with the way he took it.  \"If you mean if\nwe've talked of it--most certainly.  And the question's not what has\nhad least to do with my wishing to see you.\"\n\n\"To judge if I'm the sort of man a woman CAN--?\"\n\n\"Precisely,\" she exclaimed--\"you wonderful gentleman! I do judge--I\nHAVE judged.  A woman can't.  You're safe--with every right to be.\nYou'd be much happier if you'd only believe it.\"\n\nStrether was silent a little; then he found himself speaking with a\ncynicism of confidence of which even at the moment the sources were\nstrange to him.  \"I try to believe it.  But it's a marvel,\" he\nexclaimed, \"how YOU already get at it!\"\n\nOh she was able to say.  \"Remember how much I was on the way to it\nthrough Mr. Newsome--before I saw you.  He thinks everything of your\nstrength.\"\n\n\"Well, I can bear almost anything!\" our friend briskly interrupted.\nDeep and beautiful on this her smile came back, and with the effect of\nmaking him hear what he had said just as she had heard it.  He easily\nenough felt that it gave him away, but what in truth had everything\ndone but that?  It had been all very well to think at moments that he\nwas holding her nose down and that he had coerced her:  what had he by\nthis time done but let her practically see that he accepted their\nrelation?  What was their relation moreover--though light and brief\nenough in form as yet--but whatever she might choose to make it?\nNothing could prevent her--certainly he couldn't--from making it\npleasant.  At the back of his head, behind everything, was the sense\nthat she was--there, before him, close to him, in vivid imperative\nform--one of the rare women he had so often heard of, read of, thought\nof, but never met, whose very presence, look, voice, the mere\ncontemporaneous FACT of whom, from the moment it was at all presented,\nmade a relation of mere recognition.  That was not the kind of woman he\nhad ever found Mrs. Newsome, a contemporaneous fact who had been\ndistinctly slow to establish herself; and at present, confronted with\nMadame de Vionnet, he felt the simplicity of his original impression of\nMiss Gostrey.  She certainly had been a fact of rapid growth; but the\nworld was wide, each day was more and more a new lesson.  There were at\nany rate even among the stranger ones relations and relations. \"Of\ncourse I suit Chad's grand way,\" he quickly added.  \"He hasn't had much\ndifficulty in working me in.\"\n\nShe seemed to deny a little, on the young man's behalf, by the rise of\nher eyebrows, an intention of any process at all inconsiderate. \"You\nmust know how grieved he'd be if you were to lose anything.  He\nbelieves you can keep his mother patient.\"\n\nStrether wondered with his eyes on her.  \"I see.  THAT'S then what you\nreally want of me.  And how am I to do it?  Perhaps you'll tell me\nthat.\"\n\n\"Simply tell her the truth.\"\n\n\"And what do you call the truth?\"\n\n\"Well, any truth--about us all--that you see yourself.  I leave it to\nyou.\"\n\n\"Thank you very much.  I like,\" Strether laughed with a slight\nharshness, \"the way you leave things!\"\n\nBut she insisted kindly, gently, as if it wasn't so bad.  \"Be perfectly\nhonest.  Tell her all.\"\n\n\"All?\" he oddly echoed.\n\n\"Tell her the simple truth,\" Madame de Vionnet again pleaded.\n\n\"But what is the simple truth?  The simple truth is exactly what I'm\ntrying to discover.\"\n\nShe looked about a while, but presently she came back to him.  \"Tell\nher, fully and clearly, about US.\"\n\nStrether meanwhile had been staring.  \"You and your daughter?\"\n\n\"Yes--little Jeanne and me.  Tell her,\" she just slightly quavered,\n\"you like us.\"\n\n\"And what good will that do me?  Or rather\"--he caught himself\nup--\"what good will it do YOU?\"\n\nShe looked graver.  \"None, you believe, really?\"\n\nStrether debated.  \"She didn't send me out to 'like' you.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she charmingly contended, \"she sent you out to face the facts.\"\n\nHe admitted after an instant that there was something in that.  \"But\nhow can I face them till I know what they are?  Do you want him,\" he\nthen braced himself to ask, \"to marry your daughter?\"\n\nShe gave a headshake as noble as it was prompt.  \"No--not that.\"\n\n\"And he really doesn't want to himself?\"\n\nShe repeated the movement, but now with a strange light in her face.\n\"He likes her too much.\"\n\nStrether wondered.  \"To be willing to consider, you mean, the question\nof taking her to America?\"\n\n\"To be willing to do anything with her but be immensely kind and\nnice--really tender of her.  We watch over her, and you must help us.\nYou must see her again.\"\n\nStrether felt awkward.  \"Ah with pleasure--she's so remarkably\nattractive.\"\n\nThe mother's eagerness with which Madame de Vionnet jumped at this was\nto come back to him later as beautiful in its grace.  \"The dear thing\nDID please you?\" Then as he met it with the largest \"Oh!\" of\nenthusiasm:  \"She's perfect.  She's my joy.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm sure that--if one were near her and saw more of her--she'd\nbe mine.\"\n\n\"Then,\" said Madame de Vionnet, \"tell Mrs. Newsome that!\"\n\nHe wondered the more.  \"What good will that do you?\" As she appeared\nunable at once to say, however, he brought out something else.  \"Is\nyour daughter in love with our friend?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" she rather startlingly answered, \"I wish you'd find out!\"\n\nHe showed his surprise.  \"I?  A stranger?\"\n\n\"Oh you won't be a stranger--presently.  You shall see her quite, I\nassure you, as if you weren't.\"\n\nIt remained for him none the less an extraordinary notion.  \"It seems\nto me surely that if her mother can't--\"\n\n\"Ah little girls and their mothers to-day!\" she rather inconsequently\nbroke in.  But she checked herself with something she seemed to give\nout as after all more to the point.  \"Tell her I've been good for him.\nDon't you think I have?\"\n\nIt had its effect on him--more than at the moment he quite measured.\nYet he was consciously enough touched.  \"Oh if it's all you--!\"\n\n\"Well, it may not be 'all,'\" she interrupted, \"but it's to a great\nextent.  Really and truly,\" she added in a tone that was to take its\nplace with him among things remembered.\n\n\"Then it's very wonderful.\"  He smiled at her from a face that he felt\nas strained, and her own face for a moment kept him so.  At last she\nalso got up.  \"Well, don't you think that for that--\"\n\n\"I ought to save you?\"  So it was that the way to meet her--and the\nway, as well, in a manner, to get off--came over him.  He heard himself\nuse the exorbitant word, the very sound of which helped to determine\nhis flight.  \"I'll save you if I can.\"\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nIn Chad's lovely home, however, one evening ten days later, he felt\nhimself present at the collapse of the question of Jeanne de Vionnet's\nshy secret.  He had been dining there in the company of that young lady\nand her mother, as well as of other persons, and he had gone into the\npetit salon, at Chad's request, on purpose to talk with her. The young\nman had put this to him as a favour--\"I should like so awfully to know\nwhat you think of her.  It will really be a chance for you,\" he had\nsaid, \"to see the jeune fille--I mean the type--as she actually is, and\nI don't think that, as an observer of manners, it's a thing you ought\nto miss.  It will be an impression that--whatever else you take--you\ncan carry home with you, where you'll find again so much to compare it\nwith.\"\n\nStrether knew well enough with what Chad wished him to compare it, and\nthough he entirely assented he hadn't yet somehow been so deeply\nreminded that he was being, as he constantly though mutely expressed\nit, used.  He was as far as ever from making out exactly to what end;\nbut he was none the less constantly accompanied by a sense of the\nservice he rendered.  He conceived only that this service was highly\nagreeable to those who profited by it; and he was indeed still waiting\nfor the moment at which he should catch it in the act of proving\ndisagreeable, proving in some degree intolerable, to himself.  He\nfailed quite to see how his situation could clear up at all logically\nexcept by some turn of events that would give him the pretext of\ndisgust.  He was building from day to day on the possibility of\ndisgust, but each day brought forth meanwhile a new and more engaging\nbend of the road.  That possibility was now ever so much further from\nsight than on the eve of his arrival, and he perfectly felt that,\nshould it come at all, it would have to be at best inconsequent and\nviolent.  He struck himself as a little nearer to it only when he asked\nhimself what service, in such a life of utility, he was after all\nrendering Mrs. Newsome.  When he wished to help himself to believe that\nhe was still all right he reflected--and in fact with wonder--on the\nunimpaired frequency of their correspondence; in relation to which what\nwas after all more natural than that it should become more frequent\njust in proportion as their problem became more complicated?\n\nCertain it is at any rate that he now often brought himself balm by the\nquestion, with the rich consciousness of yesterday's letter, \"Well,\nwhat can I do more than that--what can I do more than tell her\neverything?\"  To persuade himself that he did tell her, had told her,\neverything, he used to try to think of particular things he hadn't told\nher.  When at rare moments and in the watches of the night he pounced\non one it generally showed itself to be--to a deeper scrutiny--not\nquite truly of the essence.  When anything new struck him as coming up,\nor anything already noted as reappearing, he always immediately wrote,\nas if for fear that if he didn't he would miss something; and also that\nhe might be able to say to himself from time to time \"She knows it\nNOW--even while I worry.\" It was a great comfort to him in general not\nto have left past things to be dragged to light and explained; not to\nhave to produce at so late a stage anything not produced, or anything\neven veiled and attenuated, at the moment.  She knew it now:  that was\nwhat he said to himself to-night in relation to the fresh fact of\nChad's acquaintance with the two ladies--not to speak of the fresher\none of his own.  Mrs. Newsome knew in other words that very night at\nWoollett that he himself knew Madame de Vionnet and that he had\nconscientiously been to see her; also that he had found her remarkably\nattractive and that there would probably be a good deal more to tell.\nBut she further knew, or would know very soon, that, again\nconscientiously, he hadn't repeated his visit; and that when Chad had\nasked him on the Countess's behalf--Strether made her out vividly, with\na thought at the back of his head, a Countess--if he wouldn't name a\nday for dining with her, he had replied lucidly: \"Thank you very\nmuch--impossible.\"  He had begged the young man would present his\nexcuses and had trusted him to understand that it couldn't really\nstrike one as quite the straight thing.  He hadn't reported to Mrs.\nNewsome that he had promised to \"save\" Madame de Vionnet; but, so far\nas he was concerned with that reminiscence, he hadn't at any rate\npromised to haunt her house.  What Chad had understood could only, in\ntruth, be inferred from Chad's behaviour, which had been in this\nconnexion as easy as in every other.  He was easy, always, when he\nunderstood; he was easier still, if possible, when he didn't; he had\nreplied that he would make it all right; and he had proceeded to do\nthis by substituting the present occasion--as he was ready to\nsubstitute others--for any, for every occasion as to which his old\nfriend should have a funny scruple.\n\n\"Oh but I'm not a little foreign girl; I'm just as English as I can\nbe,\" Jeanne de Vionnet had said to him as soon as, in the petit salon,\nhe sank, shyly enough on his own side, into the place near her vacated\nby Madame Gloriani at his approach.  Madame Gloriani, who was in black\nvelvet, with white lace and powdered hair, and whose somewhat massive\nmajesty melted, at any contact, into the graciousness of some\nincomprehensible tongue, moved away to make room for the vague\ngentleman, after benevolent greetings to him which embodied, as he\nbelieved, in baffling accents, some recognition of his face from a\ncouple of Sundays before.  Then he had remarked--making the most of the\nadvantage of his years--that it frightened him quite enough to find\nhimself dedicated to the entertainment of a little foreign girl.  There\nwere girls he wasn't afraid of--he was quite bold with little\nAmericans.  Thus it was that she had defended herself to the end--\"Oh\nbut I'm almost American too.  That's what mamma has wanted me to be--I\nmean LIKE that; for she has wanted me to have lots of freedom.  She has\nknown such good results from it.\"\n\nShe was fairly beautiful to him--a faint pastel in an oval frame: he\nthought of her already as of some lurking image in a long gallery, the\nportrait of a small old-time princess of whom nothing was known but\nthat she had died young.  Little Jeanne wasn't, doubtless, to die\nyoung, but one couldn't, all the same, bear on her lightly enough.  It\nwas bearing hard, it was bearing as HE, in any case, wouldn't bear, to\nconcern himself, in relation to her, with the question of a young man.\nOdious really the question of a young man; one didn't treat such a\nperson as a maid-servant suspected of a \"follower.\"  And then young\nmen, young men--well, the thing was their business simply, or was at\nall events hers.  She was fluttered, fairly fevered--to the point of a\nlittle glitter that came and went in her eyes and a pair of pink spots\nthat stayed in her cheeks--with the great adventure of dining out and\nwith the greater one still, possibly, of finding a gentleman whom she\nmust think of as very, very old, a gentleman with eye-glasses,\nwrinkles, a long grizzled moustache.  She spoke the prettiest English,\nour friend thought, that he had ever heard spoken, just as he had\nbelieved her a few minutes before to be speaking the prettiest French.\nHe wondered almost wistfully if such a sweep of the lyre didn't react\non the spirit itself; and his fancy had in fact, before he knew it,\nbegun so to stray and embroider that he finally found himself, absent\nand extravagant, sitting with the child in a friendly silence.  Only by\nthis time he felt her flutter to have fortunately dropped and that she\nwas more at her ease.  She trusted him, liked him, and it was to come\nback to him afterwards that she had told him things.  She had dipped\ninto the waiting medium at last and found neither surge nor\nchill--nothing but the small splash she could herself make in the\npleasant warmth, nothing but the safety of dipping and dipping again.\nAt the end of the ten minutes he was to spend with her his\nimpression--with all it had thrown off and all it had taken in--was\ncomplete.  She had been free, as she knew freedom, partly to show him\nthat, unlike other little persons she knew, she had imbibed that ideal.\nShe was delightfully quaint about herself, but the vision of what she\nhad imbibed was what most held him.  It really consisted, he was soon\nenough to feel, in just one great little matter, the fact that,\nwhatever her nature, she was thoroughly--he had to cast about for the\nword, but it came--bred. He couldn't of course on so short an\nacquaintance speak for her nature, but the idea of breeding was what\nshe had meanwhile dropped into his mind.  He had never yet known it so\nsharply presented.  Her mother gave it, no doubt; but her mother, to\nmake that less sensible, gave so much else besides, and on neither of\nthe two previous occasions, extraordinary woman, Strether felt,\nanything like what she was giving tonight.  Little Jeanne was a case,\nan exquisite case of education; whereas the Countess, whom it so amused\nhim to think of by that denomination, was a case, also exquisite,\nof--well, he didn't know what.\n\n\"He has wonderful taste, notre jeune homme\":  this was what Gloriani\nsaid to him on turning away from the inspection of a small picture\nsuspended near the door of the room.  The high celebrity in question\nhad just come in, apparently in search of Mademoiselle de Vionnet, but\nwhile Strether had got up from beside her their fellow guest, with his\neye sharply caught, had paused for a long look.  The thing was a\nlandscape, of no size, but of the French school, as our friend was glad\nto feel he knew, and also of a quality--which he liked to think he\nshould also have guessed; its frame was large out of proportion to the\ncanvas, and he had never seen a person look at anything, he thought,\njust as Gloriani, with his nose very near and quick movements of the\nhead from side to side and bottom to top, examined this feature of\nChad's collection.  The artist used that word the next moment smiling\ncourteously, wiping his nippers and looking round him further--paying\nthe place in short by the very manner of his presence and by something\nStrether fancied he could make out in this particular glance, such a\ntribute as, to the latter's sense, settled many things once for all.\nStrether was conscious at this instant, for that matter, as he hadn't\nyet been, of how, round about him, quite without him, they WERE\nconsistently settled.  Gloriani's smile, deeply Italian, he considered,\nand finely inscrutable, had had for him, during dinner, at which they\nwere not neighbours, an indefinite greeting; but the quality in it was\ngone that had appeared on the other occasion to turn him inside out; it\nwas as if even the momentary link supplied by the doubt between them\nhad snapped.  He was conscious now of the final reality, which was that\nthere wasn't so much a doubt as a difference altogether; all the more\nthat over the difference the famous sculptor seemed to signal almost\ncondolingly, yet oh how vacantly! as across some great flat sheet of\nwater.  He threw out the bridge of a charming hollow civility on which\nStrether wouldn't have trusted his own full weight a moment.  That\nidea, even though but transient and perhaps belated, had performed the\noffice of putting Strether more at his ease, and the blurred picture\nhad already dropped--dropped with the sound of something else said and\nwith his becoming aware, by another quick turn, that Gloriani was now\non the sofa talking with Jeanne, while he himself had in his ears again\nthe familiar friendliness and the elusive meaning of the \"Oh, oh, oh!\"\nthat had made him, a fortnight before, challenge Miss Barrace in vain.\nShe had always the air, this picturesque and original lady, who struck\nhim, so oddly, as both antique and modern--she had always the air of\ntaking up some joke that one had already had out with her.  The point\nitself, no doubt, was what was antique, and the use she made of it what\nwas modern.  He felt just now that her good-natured irony did bear on\nsomething, and it troubled him a little that she wouldn't be more\nexplicit only assuring him, with the pleasure of observation so visible\nin her, that she wouldn't tell him more for the world.  He could take\nrefuge but in asking her what she had done with Waymarsh, though it\nmust be added that he felt himself a little on the way to a clue after\nshe had answered that this personage was, in the other room, engaged in\nconversation with Madame de Vionnet.  He stared a moment at the image\nof such a conjunction; then, for Miss Barrace's benefit, he wondered.\n\"Is she too then under the charm--?\"\n\n\"No, not a bit\"--Miss Barrace was prompt.  \"She makes nothing of him.\nShe's bored.  She won't help you with him.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Strether laughed, \"she can't do everything.\n\n\"Of course not--wonderful as she is.  Besides, he makes nothing of HER.\nShe won't take him from me--though she wouldn't, no doubt, having other\naffairs in hand, even if she could.  I've never,\" said Miss Barrace,\n\"seen her fail with any one before.  And to-night, when she's so\nmagnificent, it would seem to her strange--if she minded.  So at any\nrate I have him all.  Je suis tranquille!\"\n\nStrether understood, so far as that went; but he was feeling for his\nclue.  \"She strikes you to-night as particularly magnificent?\"\n\n\"Surely.  Almost as I've never seen her.  Doesn't she you? Why it's FOR\nyou.\"\n\nHe persisted in his candour.  \"'For' me--?\"\n\n\"Oh, oh, oh!\" cried Miss Barrace, who persisted in the opposite of that\nquality.\n\n\"Well,\" he acutely admitted, \"she IS different.  She's gay.\"\n\n\"She's gay!\" Miss Barrace laughed.  \"And she has beautiful\nshoulders--though there's nothing different in that.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Strether, \"one was sure of her shoulders. It isn't her\nshoulders.\"\n\nHis companion, with renewed mirth and the finest sense,  between the\npuffs of her cigarette, of the drollery of things, appeared to find\ntheir conversation highly delightful.  \"Yes, it isn't her shoulders .\"\n\n\"What then is it?\" Strether earnestly enquired.\n\n\"Why, it's SHE--simply.  It's her mood.  It's her charm.\"\n\n\"Of course it's her charm, but we're speaking of the difference.\"\n\"Well,\" Miss Barrace explained, \"she's just brilliant, as we used to\nsay.  That's all.  She's various.  She's fifty women.\"\n\n\"Ah but only one\"--Strether kept it clear--\"at a time.\"\n\n\"Perhaps.  But in fifty times--!\"\n\n\"Oh we shan't come to that,\" our friend declared; and the next moment\nhe had moved in another direction.  \"Will you answer me a plain\nquestion?  Will she ever divorce?\"\n\nMiss Barrace looked at him through all her tortoise-shell.  \"Why should\nshe?\"\n\nIt wasn't what he had asked for, he signified; but he met it well\nenough.  \"To marry Chad.\"\n\n\"Why should she marry Chad?\"\n\n\"Because I'm convinced she's very fond of him.  She has done wonders\nfor him.\"\n\n\"Well then, how could she do more?  Marrying a man, or woman either,\"\nMiss Barrace sagely went on, \"is never the wonder for any Jack and Jill\ncan bring THAT off.  The wonder is their doing such things without\nmarrying.\"\n\nStrether considered a moment this proposition.  \"You mean it's so\nbeautiful for our friends simply to go on so?\"\n\nBut whatever he said made her laugh.  \"Beautiful.\"\n\nHe nevertheless insisted.  \"And THAT because it's disinterested?\"\n\nShe was now, however, suddenly tired of the question.  \"Yes then--call\nit that.  Besides, she'll never divorce.  Don't, moreover,\" she added,\n\"believe everything you hear about her husband.\"\n\n\"He's not then,\" Strether asked, \"a wretch?\"\n\n\"Oh yes.  But charming.\"\n\n\"Do you know him?\"\n\n\"I've met him.  He's bien aimable.\"\n\n\"To every one but his wife?\"\n\n\"Oh for all I know, to her too--to any, to every woman.  I hope you at\nany rate,\" she pursued with a quick change, \"appreciate the care I take\nof Mr. Waymarsh.\"\n\n\"Oh immensely.\" But Strether was not yet in line.  \"At all events,\" he\nroundly brought out, \"the attachment's an innocent one.\"\n\n\"Mine and his?  Ah,\" she laughed, \"don't rob it of ALL interest!\"\n\n\"I mean our friend's here--to the lady we've been speaking of.\" That\nwas what he had settled to as an indirect but none the less closely\ninvolved consequence of his impression of Jeanne.  That was where he\nmeant to stay.  \"It's innocent,\" he repeated--\"I see the whole thing.\"\n\nMystified by his abrupt declaration, she had glanced over at Gloriani\nas at the unnamed subject of his allusion, but the next moment she had\nunderstood; though indeed not before Strether had noticed her momentary\nmistake and wondered what might possibly be behind that too.  He\nalready knew that the sculptor admired Madame de Vionnet; but did this\nadmiration also represent an attachment of which the innocence was\ndiscussable?  He was moving verily in a strange air and on ground not\nof the firmest.  He looked hard for an instant at Miss Barrace, but she\nhad already gone on.  \"All right with Mr. Newsome?  Why of course she\nis!\"--and she got gaily back to the question of her own good friend. \"I\ndare say you're surprised that I'm not worn out with all I see--it\nbeing so much!--of Sitting Bull.  But I'm not, you know--I don't mind\nhim; I bear up, and we get on beautifully.  I'm very strange; I'm like\nthat; and often I can't explain.  There are people who are supposed\ninteresting or remarkable or whatever, and who bore me to death; and\nthen there are others as to whom nobody can understand what anybody\nsees in them--in whom I see no end of things.\"  Then after she had\nsmoked a moment, \"He's touching, you know,\" she said.\n\n\"'Know'?\" Strether echoed--\"don't I, indeed?  We must move you almost\nto tears.\"\n\n\"Oh but I don't mean YOU!\" she laughed.\n\n\"You ought to then, for the worst sign of all--as I must have it for\nyou--is that you can't help me.  That's when a woman pities.\"\n\n\"Ah but I do help you!\" she cheerfully insisted.\n\nAgain he looked at her hard, and then after a pause:  \"No you don't!\"\n\nHer tortoise-shell, on its long chain, rattled down.  \"I help you with\nSitting Bull.  That's a good deal.\"\n\n\"Oh that, yes.\"  But Strether hesitated.  \"Do you mean he talks of me?\"\n\n\"So that I have to defend you?  No, never.'\n\n\"I see,\" Strether mused.  \"It's too deep.\"\n\n\"That's his only fault,\" she returned--\"that everything, with him, is\ntoo deep.  He has depths of silence--which he breaks only at the\nlongest intervals by a remark.  And when the remark comes it's always\nsomething he has seen or felt for himself--never a bit banal THAT would\nbe what one might have feared and what would kill me But never.\"  She\nsmoked again as she thus, with amused complacency, appreciated her\nacquisition.  \"And never about you.  We keep clear of you.  We're\nwonderful.  But I'll tell you what he does do,\" she continued:  \"he\ntries to make me presents.\"\n\n\"Presents?\" poor Strether echoed, conscious with a pang that HE hadn't\nyet tried that in any quarter.\n\n\"Why you see,\" she explained, \"he's as fine as ever in the victoria; so\nthat when I leave him, as I often do almost for hours--he likes it\nso--at the doors of shops, the sight of him there helps me, when I come\nout, to know my carriage away off in the rank.  But sometimes, for a\nchange, he goes with me into the shops, and then I've all I can do to\nprevent his buying me things.\"\n\n\"He wants to 'treat' you?\"  Strether almost gasped at all he himself\nhadn't thought of.  He had a sense of admiration.  \"Oh he's much more\nin the real tradition than I.  Yes,\" he mused, \"it's the sacred rage.\"\n\n\"The sacred rage, exactly!\"--and Miss Barrace, who hadn't before heard\nthis term applied, recognised its bearing with a clap of her gemmed\nhands.  \"Now I do know why he's not banal.  But I do prevent him all\nthe same--and if you saw what he sometimes selects--from buying.  I\nsave him hundreds and hundreds.  I only take flowers.\"\n\n\"Flowers?\" Strether echoed again with a rueful reflexion.  How many\nnosegays had her present converser sent?\n\n\"Innocent flowers,\" she pursued, \"as much as he likes.  And he sends me\nsplendours; he knows all the best places--he has found them for\nhimself; he's wonderful.\"\n\n\"He hasn't told them to me,\" her friend smiled, \"he has a life of his\nown.\"  But Strether had swung back to the consciousness that for\nhimself after all it never would have done.  Waymarsh hadn't Mrs.\nWaymarsh in the least to consider, whereas Lambert Strether had\nconstantly, in the inmost honour of his thoughts, to consider Mrs.\nNewsome.  He liked moreover to feel how much his friend was in the real\ntradition.  Yet he had his conclusion.  \"WHAT a rage it is!\" He had\nworked it out.  \"It's an opposition.\"\n\nShe followed, but at a distance.  \"That's what I feel.  Yet to what?\"\n\n\"Well, he thinks, you know, that I'VE a life of my own.  And I haven't!\"\n\n\"You haven't?\"  She showed doubt, and her laugh confirmed it. \"Oh, oh,\noh!\"\n\n\"No--not for myself.  I seem to have a life only for other people.\"\n\n\"Ah for them and WITH them! Just now for instance with--\"\n\n\"Well, with whom?\" he asked before she had had time to say.\n\nHis tone had the effect of making her hesitate and even, as he guessed,\nspeak with a difference.  \"Say with Miss Gostrey.  What do you do for\nHER?\"  It really made him wonder.  \"Nothing at all!\"\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nMadame de Vionnet, having meanwhile come in, was at present close to\nthem, and Miss Barrace hereupon, instead of risking a rejoinder, became\nagain with a look that measured her from top to toe all mere\nlong-handled appreciative tortoise-shell.  She had struck our friend,\nfrom the first of her appearing, as dressed for a great occasion, and\nshe met still more than on either of the others the conception\nreawakened in him at their garden-party, the idea of the femme du monde\nin her habit as she lived.  Her bare shoulders and arms were white and\nbeautiful; the materials of her dress, a mixture, as he supposed, of\nsilk and crape, were of a silvery grey so artfully composed as to give\nan impression of warm splendour; and round her neck she wore a collar\nof large old emeralds, the green note of which was more dimly repeated,\nat other points of her apparel, in embroidery, in enamel, in satin, in\nsubstances and textures vaguely rich.  Her head, extremely fair and\nexquisitely festal, was like a happy fancy, a notion of the antique, on\nan old precious medal, some silver coin of the Renaissance; while her\nslim lightness and brightness, her gaiety, her expression, her\ndecision, contributed to an effect that might have been felt by a poet\nas half mythological and half conventional. He could have compared her\nto a goddess still partly engaged in a morning cloud, or to a sea-nymph\nwaist-high in the summer surge. Above all she suggested to him the\nreflexion that the femme du monde--in these finest developments of the\ntype--was, like Cleopatra in the play, indeed various and multifold.\nShe had aspects, characters, days, nights--or had them at least, showed\nthem by a mysterious law of her own, when in addition to everything she\nhappened also to be a woman of genius.  She was an obscure person, a\nmuffled person one day, and a showy person, an uncovered person the\nnext.  He thought of Madame de Vionnet to-night as showy and uncovered,\nthough he felt the formula rough, because, thanks to one of the\nshort-cuts of genius she had taken all his categories by surprise.\nTwice during dinner he had met Chad's eyes in a longish look; but these\ncommunications had in truth only stirred up again old ambiguities--so\nlittle was it clear from them whether they were an appeal or an\nadmonition. \"You see how I'm fixed,\" was what they appeared to convey;\nyet how he was fixed was exactly what Strether didn't see.  However,\nperhaps he should see now.\n\n\"Are you capable of the very great kindness of going to relieve\nNewsome, for a few minutes, of the rather crushing responsibility of\nMadame Gloriani, while I say a word, if he'll allow me, to Mr.\nStrether, of whom I've a question to ask?  Our host ought to talk a bit\nto those other ladies, and I'll come back in a minute to your rescue.\"\nShe made this proposal to Miss Barrace as if her consciousness of a\nspecial duty had just flickered-up, but that lady's recognition of\nStrether's little start at it--as at a betrayal on the speaker's part\nof a domesticated state--was as mute as his own comment; and after an\ninstant, when their fellow guest had good-naturedly left them, he had\nbeen given something else to think of.  \"Why has Maria so suddenly\ngone?  Do you know?\"  That was the question Madame de Vionnet had\nbrought with her.\n\n\"I'm afraid I've no reason to give you but the simple reason I've had\nfrom her in a note--the sudden obligation to join in the south a sick\nfriend who has got worse.\"\n\n\"Ah then she has been writing you?\"\n\n\"Not since she went--I had only a brief explanatory word before she\nstarted.  I went to see her,\" Strether explained--\"it was the day after\nI called on you--but she was already on her way, and her concierge told\nme that in case of my coming I was to be informed she had written to\nme.  I found her note when I got home.\"\n\nMadame de Vionnet listened with interest and with her eyes on\nStrether's face; then her delicately decorated head had a small\nmelancholy motion.  \"She didn't write to ME.  I went to see her,\" she\nadded, \"almost immediately after I had seen you, and as I assured her I\nwould do when I met her at Gloriani's.  She hadn't then told me she was\nto be absent, and I felt at her door as if I understood. She's\nabsent--with all respect to her sick friend, though I know indeed she\nhas plenty--so that I may not see her.  She doesn't want to meet me\nagain.  Well,\" she continued with a beautiful conscious mildness, \"I\nliked and admired her beyond every one in the old time, and she knew\nit--perhaps that's precisely what has made her go--and I dare say I\nhaven't lost her for ever.\"  Strether still said nothing; he had a\nhorror, as he now thought of himself, of being in question between\nwomen--was in fact already quite enough on his way to that, and there\nwas moreover, as it came to him, perceptibly, something behind these\nallusions and professions that, should he take it in, would square but\nill with his present resolve to simplify. It was as if, for him, all\nthe same, her softness and sadness were sincere.  He felt that not less\nwhen she soon went on: \"I'm extremely glad of her happiness.\"  But it\nalso left him mute--sharp and fine though the imputation it conveyed.\nWhat it conveyed was that HE was Maria Gostrey's happiness, and for the\nleast little instant he had the impulse to challenge the thought.  He\ncould have done so however only by saying \"What then do you suppose to\nbe between us?\" and he was wonderfully glad a moment later not to have\nspoken.  He would rather seem stupid any day than fatuous, and he drew\nback as well, with a smothered inward shudder, from the consideration\nof what women--of highly-developed type in particular--might think of\neach other.  Whatever he had come out for he hadn't come to go into\nthat; so that he absolutely took up nothing his interlocutress had now\nlet drop.  Yet, though he had kept away from her for days, had laid\nwholly on herself the burden of their meeting again, she hadn't a gleam\nof irritation to show him.  \"Well, about Jeanne now?\" she smiled--it\nhad the gaiety with which she had originally come in. He felt it on the\ninstant to represent her motive and real errand. But he had been\nschooling her of a truth to say much in proportion to his little.  \"Do\nyou make out that she has a sentiment?  I mean for Mr. Newsome.\"\n\nAlmost resentful, Strether could at last be prompt.  \"How can I make\nout such things?\"\n\nShe remained perfectly good-natured.  \"Ah but they're beautiful little\nthings, and you make out--don't pretend--everything in the world.\nHaven't you,\" she asked, \"been talking with her?\"\n\n\"Yes, but not about Chad.  At least not much.\"\n\n\"Oh you don't require 'much'!\" she reassuringly declared.  But she\nimmediately changed her ground.  \"I hope you remember your promise of\nthe other day.\"\n\n\"To 'save' you, as you called it?\"\n\n\"I call it so still.  You WILL?\" she insisted.  \"You haven't repented?\"\n\nHe wondered.  \"No--but I've been thinking what I meant.\"\n\nShe kept it up.  \"And not, a little, what I did?\"\n\n\"No--that's not necessary.  It will be enough if I know what I meant\nmyself.\"\n\n\"And don't you know,\" she asked, \"by this time?\"\n\nAgain he had a pause.  \"I think you ought to leave it to me. But how\nlong,\" he added, \"do you give me?\"\n\n\"It seems to me much more a question of how long you give ME. Doesn't\nour friend here himself, at any rate,\" she went on, \"perpetually make\nme present to you?\"\n\n\"Not,\" Strether replied, \"by ever speaking of you to me.\"\n\n\"He never does that?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\nShe considered, and, if the fact was disconcerting to her, effectually\nconcealed it.  The next minute indeed she had recovered. \"No, he\nwouldn't.  But do you NEED that?\"\n\nHer emphasis was wonderful, and though his eyes had been wandering he\nlooked at her longer now.  \"I see what you mean.\"\n\n\"Of course you see what I mean.\"\n\nHer triumph was gentle, and she really had tones to make justice weep.\n\"I've before me what he owes you.\"\n\n\"Admit then that that's something,\" she said, yet still with the same\ndiscretion in her pride.\n\nHe took in this note but went straight on.  \"You've made of him what I\nsee, but what I don't see is how in the world you've done it.\"\n\n\"Ah that's another question!\" she smiled.  \"The point is of what use is\nyour declining to know me when to know Mr. Newsome--as you do me the\nhonour to find him--IS just to know me.\"\n\n\"I see,\" he mused, still with his eyes on her.  \"I shouldn't have met\nyou to-night.\"\n\nShe raised and dropped her linked hands.  \"It doesn't matter.  If I\ntrust you why can't you a little trust me too?  And why can't you\nalso,\" she asked in another tone, \"trust yourself?\"  But she gave him\nno time to reply.  \"Oh I shall be so easy for you! And I'm glad at any\nrate you've seen my child.\"\n\n\"I'm glad too,\" he said; \"but she does you no good.\"\n\n\"No good?\"--Madame de Vionnet had a clear stare.  \"Why she's an angel\nof light.\"\n\n\"That's precisely the reason.  Leave her alone.  Don't try to find out.\nI mean,\" he explained, \"about what you spoke to me of--the way she\nfeels.\"\n\nHis companion wondered.  \"Because one really won't?\"\n\n\"Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to.  She's the\nmost charming creature I've ever seen.  Therefore don't touch her.\nDon't know--don't want to know.  And moreover--yes--you won't.\"\n\nIt was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in.  \"As a favour to\nyou?\"\n\n\"Well--since you ask me.\"\n\n\"Anything, everything you ask,\" she smiled.  \"I shan't know\nthen--never. Thank you,\" she added with peculiar gentleness as she\nturned away.\n\nThe sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if he had\nbeen tripped up and had a fall.  In the very act of arranging with her\nfor his independence he had, under pressure from a particular\nperception, inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed himself, and,\nwith her subtlety sensitive on the spot to an advantage, she had driven\nin by a single word a little golden nail, the sharp intention of which\nhe signally felt.  He hadn't detached, he had more closely connected\nhimself, and his eyes, as he considered with some intensity this\ncircumstance, met another pair which had just come within their range\nand which struck him as reflecting his sense of what he had done.  He\nrecognised them at the same moment as those of little Bilham, who had\napparently drawn near on purpose to speak to him, and little Bilham\nwasn't, in the conditions, the person to whom his heart would be most\nclosed. They were seated together a minute later at the angle of the\nroom obliquely opposite the corner in which Gloriani was still engaged\nwith Jeanne de Vionnet, to whom at first and in silence their attention\nhad been benevolently given.  \"I can't see for my life,\" Strether had\nthen observed, \"how a young fellow of any spirit--such a one as you for\ninstance--can be admitted to the sight of that young lady without being\nhard hit.  Why don't you go in, little Bilham?\"  He remembered the tone\ninto which he had been betrayed on the garden-bench at the sculptor's\nreception, and this might make up for that by being much more the right\nsort of thing to say to a young man worthy of any advice at all. \"There\nWOULD be some reason.\"\n\n\"Some reason for what?\"\n\n\"Why for hanging on here.\"\n\n\"To offer my hand and fortune to Mademoiselle de Vionnet?\"\n\n\"Well,\" Strether asked, \"to what lovelier apparition COULD you offer\nthem?  She's the sweetest little thing I've ever seen.\"\n\n\"She's certainly immense.  I mean she's the real thing.  I believe the\npale pink petals are folded up there for some wondrous efflorescence in\ntime; to open, that is, to some great golden sun. I'M unfortunately but\na small farthing candle.  What chance in such a field for a poor little\npainter-man?\"\n\n\"Oh you're good enough,\" Strether threw out.\n\n\"Certainly I'm good enough.  We're good enough, I consider, nous\nautres, for anything.  But she's TOO good.  There's the difference.\nThey wouldn't look at me.\"\n\nStrether, lounging on his divan and still charmed by the young girl,\nwhose eyes had consciously strayed to him, he fancied, with a vague\nsmile--Strether, enjoying the whole occasion as with dormant pulses at\nlast awake and in spite of new material thrust upon him, thought over\nhis companion's words.  \"Whom do you mean by 'they'? She and her\nmother?\"\n\n\"She and her mother.  And she has a father too, who, whatever else he\nmay be, certainly can't be indifferent to the possibilities she\nrepresents.  Besides, there's Chad.\"\n\nStrether was silent a little.  \"Ah but he doesn't care for her--not, I\nmean, it appears, after all, in the sense I'm speaking of.  He's NOT in\nlove with her.\"\n\n\"No--but he's her best friend; after her mother.  He's very fond of\nher.  He has his ideas about what can be done for her.\"\n\n\"Well, it's very strange!\" Strether presently remarked with a sighing\nsense of fulness.\n\n\"Very strange indeed.  That's just the beauty of it.  Isn't it very\nmuch the kind of beauty you had in mind,\" little Bilham went on, \"when\nyou were so wonderful and so inspiring to me the other day? Didn't you\nadjure me, in accents I shall never forget, to see, while I've a\nchance, everything I can?--and REALLY to see, for it must have been\nthat only you meant.  Well, you did me no end of good, and I'm doing my\nbest.  I DO make it out a situation.\"\n\n\"So do I!\" Strether went on after a moment.  But he had the next minute\nan inconsequent question.  \"How comes Chad so mixed up, anyway?\"\n\n\"Ah, ah, ah!\"--and little Bilham fell back on his cushions.\n\nIt reminded our friend of Miss Barrace, and he felt again the brush of\nhis sense of moving in a maze of mystic closed allusions.  Yet he kept\nhold of his thread.  \"Of course I understand really; only the general\ntransformation makes me occasionally gasp.  Chad with such a voice in\nthe settlement of the future of a little countess--no,\" he declared,\n\"it takes more time! You say moreover,\" he resumed, \"that we're\ninevitably, people like you and me, out of the running.  The curious\nfact remains that Chad himself isn't.  The situation doesn't make for\nit, but in a different one he could have her if he would.\"\n\n\"Yes, but that's only because he's rich and because there's a\npossibility of his being richer.  They won't think of anything but a\ngreat name or a great fortune.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether, \"he'll have no great fortune on THESE lines. He\nmust stir his stumps.\"\n\n\"Is that,\" little Bilham enquired, \"what you were saying to Madame de\nVionnet?\"\n\n\"No--I don't say much to her.  Of course, however,\" Strether continued,\n\"he can make sacrifices if he likes.\"\n\nLittle Bilham had a pause.  \"Oh he's not keen for sacrifices; or\nthinks, that is, possibly, that he has made enough.\"\n\n\"Well, it IS virtuous,\" his companion observed with some decision.\n\n\"That's exactly,\" the young man dropped after a moment, \"what I mean.\"\n\nIt kept Strether himself silent a little.  \"I've made it out for\nmyself,\" he then went on; \"I've really, within the last half-hour, got\nhold of it.  I understand it in short at last; which at first--when you\noriginally spoke to me--I didn't.  Nor when Chad originally spoke to me\neither.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said little Bilham, \"I don't think that at that time you believed\nme.\"\n\n\"Yes--I did; and I believed Chad too.  It would have been odious and\nunmannerly--as well as quite perverse--if I hadn't.  What interest have\nyou in deceiving me?\"\n\nThe young man cast about.  \"What interest have I?\"\n\n\"Yes.  Chad MIGHT have.  But you?\"\n\n\"Ah, ah, ah!\" little Bilham exclaimed.\n\nIt might, on repetition, as a mystification, have irritated our friend\na little, but he knew, once more, as we have seen, where he was, and\nhis being proof against everything was only another attestation that he\nmeant to stay there.  \"I couldn't, without my own impression, realise.\nShe's a tremendously clever brilliant capable woman, and with an\nextraordinary charm on top of it all--the charm we surely all of us\nthis evening know what to think of. It isn't every clever brilliant\ncapable woman that has it.  In fact it's rare with any woman.  So there\nyou are,\" Strether proceeded as if not for little Bilham's benefit\nalone.  \"I understand what a relation with such a woman--what such a\nhigh fine friendship--may be.  It can't be vulgar or coarse,\nanyway--and that's the point.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's the point,\" said little Bilham.  \"It can't be vulgar or\ncoarse.  And, bless us and save us, it ISn't!  It's, upon my word, the\nvery finest thing I ever saw in my life, and the most distinguished.\"\n\nStrether, from beside him and leaning back with him as he leaned,\ndropped on him a momentary look which filled a short interval and of\nwhich he took no notice.  He only gazed before him with intent\nparticipation.  \"Of course what it has done for him,\" Strether at all\nevents presently pursued, \"of course what it has done for him--that is\nas to HOW it has so wonderfully worked--isn't a thing I pretend to\nunderstand.  I've to take it as I find it.  There he is.\"\n\n\"There he is!\" little Bilham echoed.  \"And it's really and truly she. I\ndon't understand either, even with my longer and closer opportunity.\nBut I'm like you,\" he added; \"I can admire and rejoice even when I'm a\nlittle in the dark.  You see I've watched it for some three years, and\nespecially for this last.  He wasn't so bad before it as I seem to have\nmade out that you think--\"\n\n\"Oh I don't think anything now!\" Strether impatiently broke in: \"that\nis but what I DO think! I mean that originally, for her to have cared\nfor him--\"\n\n\"There must have been stuff in him?  Oh yes, there was stuff indeed,\nand much more of it than ever showed, I dare say, at home.  Still, you\nknow,\" the young man in all fairness developed, \"there was room for\nher, and that's where she came in.  She saw her chance and took it.\nThat's what strikes me as having been so fine.  But of course,\" he\nwound up, \"he liked her first.\"\n\n\"Naturally,\" said Strether.\n\n\"I mean that they first met somehow and somewhere--I believe in some\nAmerican house--and she, without in the least then intending it, made\nher impression.  Then with time and opportunity he made his; and after\nTHAT she was as bad as he.\"\n\nStrether vaguely took it up.  \"As 'bad'?\"\n\n\"She began, that is, to care--to care very much.  Alone, and in her\nhorrid position, she found it, when once she had started, an interest.\nIt was, it is, an interest, and it did--it continues to do--a lot for\nherself as well.  So she still cares.  She cares in fact,\" said little\nBilham thoughtfully \"more.\"\n\nStrether's theory that it was none of his business was somehow not\ndamaged by the way he took this.  \"More, you mean, than he?\"  On which\nhis companion looked round at him, and now for an instant their eyes\nmet.  \"More than he?\" he repeated.\n\nLittle Bilham, for as long, hung fire.  \"Will you never tell any one?\"\n\nStrether thought.  \"Whom should I tell?\"\n\n\"Why I supposed you reported regularly--\"\n\n\"To people at home?\"--Strether took him up.  \"Well, I won't tell them\nthis.\"\n\nThe young man at last looked away.  \"Then she does now care more than\nhe.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" Strether oddly exclaimed.\n\nBut his companion immediately met it.  \"Haven't you after all had your\nimpression of it?  That's how you've got hold of him.\"\n\n\"Ah but I haven't got hold of him!\"\n\n\"Oh I say!\"  But it was all little Bilham said.\n\n\"It's at any rate none of my business.  I mean,\" Strether explained,\n\"nothing else than getting hold of him is.\"  It appeared, however, to\nstrike him as his business to add:  \"The fact remains nevertheless that\nshe has saved him.\"\n\nLittle Bilham just waited.  \"I thought that was what you were to do.\"\n\nBut Strether had his answer ready.  \"I'm speaking--in connexion with\nher--of his manners and morals, his character and life.  I'm speaking\nof him as a person to deal with and talk with and live with--speaking\nof him as a social animal.\"\n\n\"And isn't it as a social animal that you also want him?\"\n\n\"Certainly; so that it's as if she had saved him FOR us.\"\n\n\"It strikes you accordingly then,\" the young man threw out, \"as for you\nall to save HER?\"\n\n\"Oh for us 'all'--!\" Strether could but laugh at that.  It brought him\nback, however, to the point he had really wished to make. \"They've\naccepted their situation--hard as it is.  They're not free--at least\nshe's not; but they take what's left to them.  It's a friendship, of a\nbeautiful sort; and that's what makes them so strong.  They're\nstraight, they feel; and they keep each other up. It's doubtless she,\nhowever, who, as you yourself have hinted, feels it most.\"\n\nLittle Bilham appeared to wonder what he had hinted.  \"Feels most that\nthey're straight?\"\n\n\"Well, feels that SHE is, and the strength that comes from it.  She\nkeeps HIM up--she keeps the whole thing up.  When people are able to\nit's fine.  She's wonderful, wonderful, as Miss Barrace says; and he\nis, in his way, too; however, as a mere man, he may sometimes rebel and\nnot feel that he finds his account in it.  She has simply given him an\nimmense moral lift, and what that can explain is prodigious. That's why\nI speak of it as a situation.  It IS one, if there ever was.\"  And\nStrether, with his head back and his eyes on the ceiling, seemed to\nlose himself in the vision of it.\n\nHis companion attended deeply.  \"You state it much better than I\ncould.\" \"Oh you see it doesn't concern you.\"\n\nLittle Bilham considered.  \"I thought you said just now that it doesn't\nconcern you either.\"\n\n\"Well, it doesn't a bit as Madame de Vionnet's affair.  But as we were\nagain saying just now, what did I come out for but to save him?\"\n\n\"Yes--to remove him.\"\n\n\"To save him by removal; to win him over to HIMSELF thinking it best he\nshall take up business--thinking he must immediately do therefore\nwhat's necessary to that end.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said little Bilham after a moment, \"you HAVE won him over. He\ndoes think it best.  He has within a day or two again said to me as\nmuch.\"\n\n\"And that,\" Strether asked, \"is why you consider that he cares less\nthan she?\"\n\n\"Cares less for her than she for him?  Yes, that's one of the reasons.\nBut other things too have given me the impression.  A man, don't you\nthink?\" little Bilham presently pursued, \"CAN'T, in such conditions,\ncare so much as a woman.  It takes different conditions to make him,\nand then perhaps he cares more.  Chad,\" he wound up, \"has his possible\nfuture before him.\"\n\n\"Are you speaking of his business future?\"\n\n\"No--on the contrary; of the other, the future of what you so justly\ncall their situation.  M. de Vionnet may live for ever.\"\n\n\"So that they can't marry?\"\n\nThe young man waited a moment.  \"Not being able to marry is all they've\nwith any confidence to look forward to.  A woman--a particular\nwoman--may stand that strain.  But can a man?\" he propounded.\n\nStrether's answer was as prompt as if he had already, for himself,\nworked it out.  \"Not without a very high ideal of conduct.  But that's\njust what we're attributing to Chad.  And how, for that matter,\" he\nmused, \"does his going to America diminish the particular strain?\nWouldn't it seem rather to add to it?\"\n\n\"Out of sight out of mind!\" his companion laughed.  Then more bravely:\n\"Wouldn't distance lessen the torment?\"  But before Strether could\nreply, \"The thing is, you see, Chad ought to marry!\" he wound up.\n\nStrether, for a little, appeared to think of it.  \"If you talk of\ntorments you don't diminish mine!\" he then broke out.  The next moment\nhe was on his feet with a question.  \"He ought to marry whom?\"\n\nLittle Bilham rose more slowly.  \"Well, some one he CAN--some\nthoroughly nice girl.\"\n\nStrether's eyes, as they stood together, turned again to Jeanne. \"Do\nyou mean HER?\"\n\nHis friend made a sudden strange face.  \"After being in love with her\nmother?  No.\"\n\n\"But isn't it exactly your idea that he ISn't in love with her mother?\"\n\nHis friend once more had a pause.  \"Well, he isn't at any rate in love\nwith Jeanne.\"\n\n\"I dare say not.\"\n\n\"How CAN he be with any other woman?\"\n\n\"Oh that I admit.  But being in love isn't, you know, here\"--little\nBilham spoke in friendly reminder--\"thought necessary, in strictness,\nfor marriage.\"\n\n\"And what torment--to call a torment--can there ever possibly be with a\nwoman like that?\"  As if from the interest of his own question Strether\nhad gone on without hearing.  \"Is it for her to have turned a man out\nso wonderfully, too, only for somebody else?\" He appeared to make a\npoint of this, and little Bilham looked at him now.  \"When it's for\neach other that people give things up they don't miss them.\"  Then he\nthrew off as with an extravagance of which he was conscious: \"Let them\nface the future together!\"\n\nLittle Bilham looked at him indeed.  \"You mean that after all he\nshouldn't go back?\"\n\n\"I mean that if he gives her up--!\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself.\"  But Strether spoke with a\nsound that might have passed for a laugh.\n\n\n\n\n\nVolume II\n\nBook Seventh\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nIt wasn't the first time Strether had sat alone in the great dim\nchurch--still less was it the first of his giving himself up, so far as\nconditions permitted, to its beneficent action on his nerves.  He had\nbeen to Notre Dame with Waymarsh, he had been there with Miss Gostrey,\nhe had been there with Chad Newsome, and had found the place, even in\ncompany, such a refuge from the obsession of his problem that, with\nrenewed pressure from that source, he had not unnaturally recurred to a\nremedy meeting the case, for the moment, so indirectly, no doubt, but\nso relievingly.  He was conscious enough that it was only for the\nmoment, but good moments--if he could call them good--still had their\nvalue for a man who by this time struck himself as living almost\ndisgracefully from hand to mouth.  Having so well learnt the way, he\nhad lately made the pilgrimage more than once by himself--had quite\nstolen off, taking an unnoticed chance and making no point of speaking\nof the adventure when restored to his friends.\n\nHis great friend, for that matter, was still absent, as well as\nremarkably silent; even at the end of three weeks Miss Gostrey hadn't\ncome back.  She wrote to him from Mentone, admitting that he must judge\nher grossly inconsequent--perhaps in fact for the time odiously\nfaithless; but asking for patience, for a deferred sentence, throwing\nherself in short on his generosity.  For her too, she could assure him,\nlife was complicated--more complicated than he could have guessed; she\nhad moreover made certain of him--certain of not wholly missing him on\nher return--before her disappearance.  If furthermore she didn't burden\nhim with letters it was frankly because of her sense of the other great\ncommerce he had to carry on.  He himself, at the end of a fortnight,\nhad written twice, to show how his generosity could be trusted; but he\nreminded himself in each case of Mrs. Newsome's epistolary manner at\nthe times when Mrs. Newsome kept off delicate ground.  He sank his\nproblem, he talked of Waymarsh and Miss Barrace, of little Bilham and\nthe set over the river, with whom he had again had tea, and he was\neasy, for convenience, about Chad and Madame de Vionnet and Jeanne.  He\nadmitted that he continued to see them, he was decidedly so confirmed a\nhaunter of Chad's premises and that young man's practical intimacy with\nthem was so undeniably great; but he had his reason for not attempting\nto render for Miss Gostrey's benefit the impression of these last days.\nThat would be to tell her too much about himself--it being at present\njust from himself he was trying to escape.\n\nThis small struggle sprang not a little, in its way, from the same\nimpulse that had now carried him across to Notre Dame; the impulse to\nlet things be, to give them time to justify themselves or at least to\npass.  He was aware of having no errand in such a place but the desire\nnot to be, for the hour, in certain other places; a sense of safety, of\nsimplification, which each time he yielded to it he amused himself by\nthinking of as a private concession to cowardice.  The great church had\nno altar for his worship, no direct voice for his soul; but it was none\nthe less soothing even to sanctity; for he could feel while there what\nhe couldn't elsewhere, that he was a plain tired man taking the holiday\nhe had earned.  He was tired, but he wasn't plain--that was the pity\nand the trouble of it; he was able, however, to drop his problem at the\ndoor very much as if it had been the copper piece that he deposited, on\nthe threshold, in the receptacle of the inveterate blind beggar.  He\ntrod the long dim nave, sat in the splendid choir, paused before the\ncluttered chapels of the east end, and the mighty monument laid upon\nhim its spell.  He might have been a student under the charm of a\nmuseum--which was exactly what, in a foreign town, in the afternoon of\nlife, he would have liked to be free to be.  This form of sacrifice did\nat any rate for the occasion as well as another; it made him quite\nsufficiently understand how, within the precinct, for the real refugee,\nthe things of the world could fall into abeyance.  That was the\ncowardice, probably--to dodge them, to beg the question, not to deal\nwith it in the hard outer light; but his own oblivions were too brief,\ntoo vain, to hurt any one but himself, and he had a vague and fanciful\nkindness for certain persons whom he met, figures of mystery and\nanxiety, and whom, with observation for his pastime, he ranked as those\nwho were fleeing from justice.  Justice was outside, in the hard light,\nand injustice too; but one was as absent as the other from the air of\nthe long aisles and the brightness of the many altars.\n\nThus it was at all events that, one morning some dozen days after the\ndinner in the Boulevard Malesherbes at which Madame de Vionnet had been\npresent with her daughter, he was called upon to play his part in an\nencounter that deeply stirred his imagination.  He had the habit, in\nthese contemplations, of watching a fellow visitant, here and there,\nfrom a respectable distance, remarking some note of behaviour, of\npenitence, of prostration, of the absolved, relieved state; this was\nthe manner in which his vague tenderness took its course, the degree of\ndemonstration to which it naturally had to confine itself.  It hadn't\nindeed so felt its responsibility as when on this occasion he suddenly\nmeasured the suggestive effect of a lady whose supreme stillness, in\nthe shade of one of the chapels, he had two or three times noticed as\nhe made, and made once more, his slow circuit.  She wasn't\nprostrate--not in any degree bowed, but she was strangely fixed, and\nher prolonged immobility showed her, while he passed and paused, as\nwholly given up to the need, whatever it was, that had brought her\nthere.  She only sat and gazed before her, as he himself often sat; but\nshe had placed herself, as he never did, within the focus of the\nshrine, and she had lost herself, he could easily see, as he would only\nhave liked to do. She was not a wandering alien, keeping back more than\nshe gave, but one of the familiar, the intimate, the fortunate, for\nwhom these dealings had a method and a meaning.  She reminded our\nfriend--since it was the way of nine tenths of his current impressions\nto act as recalls of things imagined--of some fine firm concentrated\nheroine of an old story, something he had heard, read, something that,\nhad he had a hand for drama, he might himself have written, renewing\nher courage, renewing her clearness, in splendidly-protected\nmeditation.  Her back, as she sat, was turned to him, but his\nimpression absolutely required that she should be young and\ninteresting, and she carried her head moreover, even in the sacred\nshade, with a discernible faith in herself, a kind of implied\nconviction of consistency, security, impunity.  But what had such a\nwoman come for if she hadn't come to pray?  Strether's reading of such\nmatters was, it must be owned, confused; but he wondered if her\nattitude were some congruous fruit of absolution, of \"indulgence.\"  He\nknew but dimly what indulgence, in such a place, might mean; yet he\nhad, as with a soft sweep, a vision of how it might indeed add to the\nzest of active rites.  All this was a good deal to have been denoted by\na mere lurking figure who was nothing to him; but, the last thing\nbefore leaving the church, he had the surprise of a still deeper\nquickening.\n\nHe had dropped upon a seat halfway down the nave and, again in the\nmuseum mood, was trying with head thrown back and eyes aloft, to\nreconstitute a past, to reduce it in fact to the convenient terms of\nVictor Hugo, whom, a few days before, giving the rein for once in a way\nto the joy of life, he had purchased in seventy bound volumes, a\nmiracle of cheapness, parted with, he was assured by the shopman, at\nthe price of the red-and-gold alone.  He looked, doubtless, while he\nplayed his eternal nippers over Gothic glooms, sufficiently rapt in\nreverence; but what his thought had finally bumped against was the\nquestion of where, among packed accumulations, so multiform a wedge\nwould be able to enter.  Were seventy volumes in red-and-gold to be\nperhaps what he should most substantially have to show at Woollett as\nthe fruit of his mission?  It was a possibility that held him a\nminute--held him till he happened to feel that some one, unnoticed, had\napproached him and paused.  Turning, he saw that a lady stood there as\nfor a greeting, and he sprang up as he next took her, securely, for\nMadame de Vionnet, who appeared to have recognised him as she passed\nnear him on her way to the door.  She checked, quickly and gaily, a\ncertain confusion in him, came to meet it, turned it back, by an art of\nher own; the confusion having threatened him as he knew her for the\nperson he had lately been observing.  She was the lurking figure of the\ndim chapel; she had occupied him more than she guessed; but it came to\nhim in time, luckily, that he needn't tell her and that no harm, after\nall, had been done.  She herself, for that matter, straightway showing\nshe felt their encounter as the happiest of accidents, had for him a\n\"You come here too?\" that despoiled surprise of every awkwardness.\n\n\"I come often,\" she said.  \"I love this place, but I'm terrible, in\ngeneral, for churches.  The old women who live in them all know me; in\nfact I'm already myself one of the old women.  It's like that, at all\nevents, that I foresee I shall end.\"  Looking about for a chair, so\nthat he instantly pulled one nearer, she sat down with him again to the\nsound of an \"Oh, I like so much your also being fond--!\"\n\nHe confessed the extent of his feeling, though she left the object\nvague; and he was struck with the tact, the taste of her vagueness,\nwhich simply took for granted in him a sense of beautiful things. He\nwas conscious of how much it was affected, this sense, by something\nsubdued and discreet in the way she had arranged herself for her\nspecial object and her morning walk--he believed her to have come on\nfoot; the way her slightly thicker veil was drawn--a mere touch, but\neverything; the composed gravity of her dress, in which, here and\nthere, a dull wine-colour seemed to gleam faintly through black; the\ncharming discretion of her small compact head; the quiet note, as she\nsat, of her folded, grey-gloved hands.  It was, to Strether's mind, as\nif she sat on her own ground, the light honours of which, at an open\ngate, she thus easily did him, while all the vastness and mystery of\nthe domain stretched off behind. When people were so completely in\npossession they could be extraordinarily civil; and our friend had\nindeed at this hour a kind of revelation of her heritage.  She was\nromantic for him far beyond what she could have guessed, and again he\nfound his small comfort in the conviction that, subtle though she was,\nhis impression must remain a secret from her.  The thing that, once\nmore, made him uneasy for secrets in general was this particular\npatience she could have with his own want of colour; albeit that on the\nother hand his uneasiness pretty well dropped after he had been for ten\nminutes as colourless as possible and at the same time as responsive.\n\nThe moments had already, for that matter, drawn their deepest tinge\nfrom the special interest excited in him by his vision of his\ncompanion's identity with the person whose attitude before the\nglimmering altar had so impressed him.  This attitude fitted admirably\ninto the stand he had privately taken about her connexion with Chad on\nthe last occasion of his seeing them together.  It helped him to stick\nfast at the point he had then reached; it was there he had resolved\nthat he WOULD stick, and at no moment since had it seemed as easy to do\nso.  Unassailably innocent was a relation that could make one of the\nparties to it so carry herself. If it wasn't innocent why did she haunt\nthe churches?--into which, given the woman he could believe he made\nout, she would never have come to flaunt an insolence of guilt.  She\nhaunted them for continued help, for strength, for peace--sublime\nsupport which, if one were able to look at it so, she found from day to\nday.  They talked, in low easy tones and with lifted lingering looks,\nabout the great monument and its history and its beauty--all of which,\nMadame de Vionnet professed, came to her most in the other, the outer\nview.  \"We'll presently, after we go,\" she said, \"walk round it again\nif you like.  I'm not in a particular hurry, and it will be pleasant to\nlook at it well with you.\"  He had spoken of the great romancer and the\ngreat romance, and of what, to his imagination, they had done for the\nwhole, mentioning to her moreover the exorbitance of his purchase, the\nseventy blazing volumes that were so out of proportion.\n\n\"Out of proportion to what?\"\n\n\"Well, to any other plunge.\"  Yet he felt even as he spoke how at that\ninstant he was plunging.  He had made up his mind and was impatient to\nget into the air; for his purpose was a purpose to be uttered outside,\nand he had a fear that it might with delay still slip away from him.\nShe however took her time; she drew out their quiet gossip as if she\nhad wished to profit by their meeting, and this confirmed precisely an\ninterpretation of her manner, of her mystery.  While she rose, as he\nwould have called it, to the question of Victor Hugo, her voice itself,\nthe light low quaver of her deference to the solemnity about them,\nseemed to make her words mean something that they didn't mean openly.\nHelp, strength, peace, a sublime support--she hadn't found so much of\nthese things as that the amount wouldn't be sensibly greater for any\nscrap his appearance of faith in her might enable her to feel in her\nhand. Every little, in a long strain, helped, and if he happened to\naffect her as a firm object she could hold on by, he wouldn't jerk\nhimself out of her reach.  People in difficulties held on by what was\nnearest, and he was perhaps after all not further off than sources of\ncomfort more abstract.  It was as to this he had made up his mind; he\nhad made it up, that is, to give her a sign.  The sign would be\nthat--though it was her own affair--he understood; the sign would be\nthat--though it was her own affair--she was free to clutch.  Since she\ntook him for a firm object--much as he might to his own sense appear at\ntimes to rock--he would do his best to BE one.\n\nThe end of it was that half an hour later they were seated together for\nan early luncheon at a wonderful, a delightful house of entertainment\non the left bank--a place of pilgrimage for the knowing, they were both\naware, the knowing who came, for its great renown, the homage of\nrestless days, from the other end of the town.  Strether had already\nbeen there three times--first with Miss Gostrey, then with Chad, then\nwith Chad again and with Waymarsh and little Bilham, all of whom he had\nhimself sagaciously entertained; and his pleasure was deep now on\nlearning that Madame de Vionnet hadn't yet been initiated.  When he had\nsaid as they strolled round the church, by the river, acting at last on\nwhat, within, he had made up his mind to, \"Will you, if you have time,\ncome to dejeuner with me somewhere?  For instance, if you know it, over\nthere on the other side, which is so easy a walk\"--and then had named\nthe place; when he had done this she stopped short as for quick\nintensity, and yet deep difficulty, of response.  She took in the\nproposal as if it were almost too charming to be true; and there had\nperhaps never yet been for her companion so unexpected a moment of\npride--so fine, so odd a case, at any rate, as his finding himself thus\nable to offer to a person in such universal possession a new, a rare\namusement.  She had heard of the happy spot, but she asked him in reply\nto a further question how in the world he could suppose her to have\nbeen there.  He supposed himself to have supposed that Chad might have\ntaken her, and she guessed this the next moment to his no small\ndiscomfort.\n\n\"Ah, let me explain,\" she smiled, \"that I don't go about with him in\npublic; I never have such chances--not having them otherwise--and it's\njust the sort of thing that, as a quiet creature living in my hole, I\nadore.\"  It was more than kind of him to have thought of it--though,\nfrankly, if he asked whether she had time she hadn't a single minute.\nThat however made no difference--she'd throw everything over.  Every\nduty at home, domestic, maternal, social, awaited her; but it was a\ncase for a high line.  Her affairs would go to smash, but hadn't one a\nright to one's snatch of scandal when one was prepared to pay?  It was\non this pleasant basis of costly disorder, consequently, that they\neventually seated themselves, on either side of a small table, at a\nwindow adjusted to the busy quay and the shining barge-burdened Seine;\nwhere, for an hour, in the matter of letting himself go, of diving\ndeep, Strether was to feel he had touched bottom.  He was to feel many\nthings on this occasion, and one of the first of them was that he had\ntravelled far since that evening in London, before the theatre, when\nhis dinner with Maria Gostrey, between the pink-shaded candles, had\nstruck him as requiring so many explanations.  He had at that time\ngathered them in, the explanations--he had stored them up; but it was\nat present as if he had either soared above or sunk below them--he\ncouldn't tell which; he could somehow think of none that didn't seem to\nleave the appearance of collapse and cynicism easier for him than\nlucidity.  How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one,\nthat he, for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright\nclean ordered water-side life came in at the open window?--the mere way\nMadame de Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen,\ntheir omelette aux tomates, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis,\nthanked him for everything almost with the smile of a child, while her\ngrey eyes moved in and out of their talk, back to the quarter of the\nwarm spring air, in which early summer had already begun to throb, and\nthen back again to his face and their human questions.\n\nTheir human questions became many before they had done--many more, as\none after the other came up, than our friend's free fancy had at all\nforeseen.  The sense he had had before, the sense he had had\nrepeatedly, the sense that the situation was running away with him, had\nnever been so sharp as now; and all the more that he could perfectly\nput his finger on the moment it had taken the bit in its teeth.  That\naccident had definitely occurred, the other evening, after Chad's\ndinner; it had occurred, as he fully knew, at the moment when he\ninterposed between this lady and her child, when he suffered himself so\nto discuss with her a matter closely concerning them that her own\nsubtlety, marked by its significant \"Thank you!\" instantly sealed the\noccasion in her favour.  Again he had held off for ten days, but the\nsituation had continued out of hand in spite of that; the fact that it\nwas running so fast being indeed just WHY he had held off.  What had\ncome over him as he recognised her in the nave of the church was that\nholding off could be but a losing game from the instant she was worked\nfor not only by her subtlety, but by the hand of fate itself.  If all\nthe accidents were to fight on her side--and by the actual showing they\nloomed large--he could only give himself up.  This was what he had done\nin privately deciding then and there to propose she should breakfast\nwith him. What did the success of his proposal in fact resemble but the\nsmash in which a regular runaway properly ends?  The smash was their\nwalk, their dejeuner, their omelette, the Chablis, the place, the view,\ntheir present talk and his present pleasure in it--to say nothing,\nwonder of wonders, of her own.  To this tune and nothing less,\naccordingly, was his surrender made good.  It sufficiently lighted up\nat least the folly of holding off.  Ancient proverbs sounded, for his\nmemory, in the tone of their words and the clink of their glasses, in\nthe hum of the town and the plash of the river.  It WAS clearly better\nto suffer as a sheep than as a lamb.  One might as well perish by the\nsword as by famine.\n\n\"Maria's still away?\"--that was the first thing she had asked him; and\nwhen he had found the frankness to be cheerful about it in spite of the\nmeaning he knew her to attach to Miss Gostrey's absence, she had gone\non to enquire if he didn't tremendously miss her.  There were reasons\nthat made him by no means sure, yet he nevertheless answered\n\"Tremendously\"; which she took in as if it were all she had wished to\nprove.  Then, \"A man in trouble MUST be possessed somehow of a woman,\"\nshe said; \"if she doesn't come in one way she comes in another.\"\n\n\"Why do you call me a man in trouble?\"\n\n\"Ah because that's the way you strike me.\"  She spoke ever so gently\nand as if with all fear of wounding him while she sat partaking of his\nbounty.  \"AREn't you in trouble?\"\n\nHe felt himself colour at the question, and then hated that--hated to\npass for anything so idiotic as woundable.  Woundable by Chad's lady,\nin respect to whom he had come out with such a fund of\nindifference--was he already at that point?  Perversely, none the less,\nhis pause gave a strange air of truth to her supposition; and what was\nhe in fact but disconcerted at having struck her just in the way he had\nmost dreamed of not doing?  \"I'm not in trouble yet,\" he at last\nsmiled.  \"I'm not in trouble now.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm always so.  But that you sufficiently know.\"  She was a\nwoman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the\ntable.  It was a posture unknown to Mrs. Newsome, but it was easy for a\nfemme du monde.  \"Yes--I am 'now'!\"\n\n\"There was a question you put to me,\" he presently returned, \"the night\nof Chad's dinner.  I didn't answer it then, and it has been very\nhandsome of you not to have sought an occasion for pressing me about it\nsince.\"\n\nShe was instantly all there.  \"Of course I know what you allude to. I\nasked you what you had meant by saying, the day you came to see me,\njust before you left me, that you'd save me.  And you then said--at our\nfriend's--that you'd have really to wait to see, for yourself, what you\ndid mean.\"\n\n\"Yes, I asked for time,\" said Strether.  \"And it sounds now, as you put\nit, like a very ridiculous speech.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" she murmured--she was full of attenuation.  But she had another\nthought.  \"If it does sound ridiculous why do you deny that you're in\ntrouble?\"\n\n\"Ah if I were,\" he replied, \"it wouldn't be the trouble of fearing\nridicule.  I don't fear it.\"\n\n\"What then do you?\"\n\n\"Nothing--now.\"  And he leaned back in his chair.\n\n\"I like your 'now'!\" she laughed across at him.\n\n\"Well, it's precisely that it fully comes to me at present that I've\nkept you long enough.  I know by this time, at any rate, what I meant\nby my speech; and I really knew it the night of Chad's dinner.\"\n\n\"Then why didn't you tell me?\"\n\n\"Because it was difficult at the moment.  I had already at that moment\ndone something for you, in the sense of what I had said the day I went\nto see you; but I wasn't then sure of the importance I might represent\nthis as having.\"\n\nShe was all eagerness.  \"And you're sure now?\"\n\n\"Yes; I see that, practically, I've done for you--had done for you when\nyou put me your question--all that it's as yet possible to me to do.  I\nfeel now,\" he went on, \"that it may go further than I thought.  What I\ndid after my visit to you,\" he explained, \"was to write straight off to\nMrs. Newsome about you, and I'm at last, from one day to the other,\nexpecting her answer.  It's this answer that will represent, as I\nbelieve, the consequences.\"\n\nPatient and beautiful was her interest.  \"I see--the consequences of\nyour speaking for me.\"  And she waited as if not to hustle him.\n\nHe acknowledged it by immediately going on.  \"The question, you\nunderstand, was HOW I should save you.  Well, I'm trying it by thus\nletting her know that I consider you worth saving.\"\n\n\"I see--I see.\"  Her eagerness broke through.\n\n\"How can I thank you enough?\"  He couldn't tell her that, however, and\nshe quickly pursued.  \"You do really, for yourself, consider it?\"\n\nHis only answer at first was to help her to the dish that had been\nfreshly put before them.  \"I've written to her again since then--I've\nleft her in no doubt of what I think.  I've told her all about you.\"\n\n\"Thanks--not so much.  'All about' me,\" she went on--\"yes.\"\n\n\"All it seems to me you've done for him.\"\n\n\"Ah and you might have added all it seems to ME!\"  She laughed again,\nwhile she took up her knife and fork, as in the cheer of these\nassurances.  \"But you're not sure how she'll take it.\"\n\n\"No, I'll not pretend I'm sure.\"\n\n\"Voila.\"  And she waited a moment.  \"I wish you'd tell me about her.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Strether with a slightly strained smile, \"all that need\nconcern you about her is that she's really a grand person.\"\n\nMadame de Vionnet seemed to demur.  \"Is that all that need concern me\nabout her?\"\n\nBut Strether neglected the question.  \"Hasn't Chad talked to you?\"\n\n\"Of his mother?  Yes, a great deal--immensely.  But not from your point\nof view.\"\n\n\"He can't,\" our friend returned, \"have said any ill of her.\"\n\n\"Not the least bit.  He has given me, like you, the assurance that\nshe's really grand.  But her being really grand is somehow just what\nhasn't seemed to simplify our case.  Nothing,\" she continued, \"is\nfurther from me than to wish to say a word against her; but of course I\nfeel how little she can like being told of her owing me anything.  No\nwoman ever enjoys such an obligation to another woman.\"\n\nThis was a proposition Strether couldn't contradict.  \"And yet what\nother way could I have expressed to her what I felt?  It's what there\nwas most to say about you.\"\n\n\"Do you mean then that she WILL be good to me?\"\n\n\"It's what I'm waiting to see.  But I've little doubt she would,\" he\nadded, \"if she could comfortably see you.\"\n\nIt seemed to strike her as a happy, a beneficent thought.  \"Oh then\ncouldn't that be managed?  Wouldn't she come out?  Wouldn't she if you\nso put it to her?  DID you by any possibility?\" she faintly quavered.\n\n\"Oh no\"--he was prompt.  \"Not that.  It would be, much more, to give an\naccount of you that--since there's no question of YOUR paying the\nvisit--I should go home first.\"\n\nIt instantly made her graver.  \"And are you thinking of that?\"\n\n\"Oh all the while, naturally.\"\n\n\"Stay with us--stay with us!\" she exclaimed on this.  \"That's your only\nway to make sure.\"\n\n\"To make sure of what?\"\n\n\"Why that he doesn't break up.  You didn't come out to do that to him.\"\n\n\"Doesn't it depend,\" Strether returned after a moment, \"on what you\nmean by breaking up?\"\n\n\"Oh you know well enough what I mean!\"\n\nHis silence seemed again for a little to denote an understanding. \"You\ntake for granted remarkable things.\"\n\n\"Yes, I do--to the extent that I don't take for granted vulgar ones.\nYou're perfectly capable of seeing that what you came out for wasn't\nreally at all to do what you'd now have to do.\"\n\n\"Ah it's perfectly simple,\" Strether good-humouredly pleaded.  \"I've\nhad but one thing to do--to put our case before him.  To put it as it\ncould only be put here on the spot--by personal pressure.  My dear\nlady,\" he lucidly pursued, \"my work, you see, is really done, and my\nreasons for staying on even another day are none of the best.  Chad's\nin possession of our case and professes to do it full justice.  What\nremains is with himself.  I've had my rest, my amusement and\nrefreshment; I've had, as we say at Woollett, a lovely time.  Nothing\nin it has been more lovely than this happy meeting with you--in these\nfantastic conditions to which you've so delightfully consented.  I've a\nsense of success.  It's what I wanted.  My getting all this good is\nwhat Chad has waited for, and I gather that if I'm ready to go he's the\nsame.\"\n\nShe shook her head with a finer deeper wisdom.  \"You're not ready. If\nyou're ready why did you write to Mrs. Newsome in the sense you've\nmentioned to me?\"\n\nStrether considered.  \"I shan't go before I hear from her.  You're too\nmuch afraid of her,\" he added.\n\nIt produced between them a long look from which neither shrank.  \"I\ndon't think you believe that--believe I've not really reason to fear\nher.\"\n\n\"She's capable of great generosity,\" Strether presently stated.\n\n\"Well then let her trust me a little.  That's all I ask.  Let her\nrecognise in spite of everything what I've done.\"\n\n\"Ah remember,\" our friend replied, \"that she can't effectually\nrecognise it without seeing it for herself.  Let Chad go over and show\nher what you've done, and let him plead with her there for it and, as\nit were, for YOU.\"\n\nShe measured the depth of this suggestion.  \"Do you give me your word\nof honour that if she once has him there she won't do her best to marry\nhim?\"\n\nIt made her companion, this enquiry, look again a while out at the\nview; after which he spoke without sharpness.  \"When she sees for\nherself what he is--\"\n\nBut she had already broken in.  \"It's when she sees for herself what he\nis that she'll want to marry him most.\"\n\nStrether's attitude, that of due deference to what she said, permitted\nhim to attend for a minute to his luncheon.  \"I doubt if that will come\noff.  It won't be easy to make it.\"\n\n\"It will be easy if he remains there--and he'll remain for the money.\nThe money appears to be, as a probability, so hideously much.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Strether presently concluded, \"nothing COULD really hurt you\nbut his marrying.\"\n\nShe gave a strange light laugh.  \"Putting aside what may really hurt\nHIM.\"\n\nBut her friend looked at her as if he had thought of that too. \"The\nquestion will come up, of course, of the future that you yourself offer\nhim.\"\n\nShe was leaning back now, but she fully faced him.  \"Well, let it come\nup!\"\n\n\"The point is that it's for Chad to make of it what he can.  His being\nproof against marriage will show what he does make.\"\n\n\"If he IS proof, yes\"--she accepted the proposition.  \"But for myself,\"\nshe added, \"the question is what YOU make.\"\n\n\"Ah I make nothing.  It's not my affair.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon.  It's just there that, since you've taken it up and\nare committed to it, it most intensely becomes yours.  You're not\nsaving me, I take it, for your interest in myself, but for your\ninterest in our friend.  The one's at any rate wholly dependent on the\nother.  You can't in honour not see me through,\" she wound up, \"because\nyou can't in honour not see HIM.\"\n\nStrange and beautiful to him was her quiet soft acuteness.  The thing\nthat most moved him was really that she was so deeply serious.  She had\nnone of the portentous forms of it, but he had never come in contact,\nit struck him, with a force brought to so fine a head.  Mrs. Newsome,\ngoodness knew, was serious; but it was nothing to this.  He took it all\nin, he saw it all together.  \"No,\" he mused, \"I can't in honour not see\nhim.\"\n\nHer face affected him as with an exquisite light.  \"You WILL then?\"\n\n\"I will.\"\n\nAt this she pushed back her chair and was the next moment on her feet.\n\"Thank you!\" she said with her hand held out to him across the table\nand with no less a meaning in the words than her lips had so\nparticularly given them after Chad's dinner.  The golden nail she had\nthen driven in pierced a good inch deeper.  Yet he reflected that he\nhimself had only meanwhile done what he had made up his mind to on the\nsame occasion.  So far as the essence of the matter went he had simply\nstood fast on the spot on which he had then planted his feet.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nHe received three days after this a communication from America, in the\nform of a scrap of blue paper folded and gummed, not reaching him\nthrough his bankers, but delivered at his hotel by a small boy in\nuniform, who, under instructions from the concierge, approached him as\nhe slowly paced the little court.  It was the evening hour, but\ndaylight was long now and Paris more than ever penetrating.  The scent\nof flowers was in the streets, he had the whiff of violets perpetually\nin his nose; and he had attached himself to sounds and suggestions,\nvibrations of the air, human and dramatic, he imagined, as they were\nnot in other places, that came out for him more and more as the mild\nafternoons deepened--a far-off hum, a sharp near click on the asphalt,\na voice calling, replying, somewhere and as full of tone as an actor's\nin a play.  He was to dine at home, as usual, with Waymarsh--they had\nsettled to that for thrift and simplicity; and he now hung about before\nhis friend came down.\n\nHe read his telegram in the court, standing still a long time where he\nhad opened it and giving five minutes afterwards to the renewed study\nof it.  At last, quickly, he crumpled it up as if to get it out of the\nway; in spite of which, however, he kept it there--still kept it when,\nat the end of another turn, he had dropped into a chair placed near a\nsmall table.  Here, with his scrap of paper compressed in his fist and\nfurther concealed by his folding his arms tight, he sat for some time\nin thought, gazed before him so straight that Waymarsh appeared and\napproached him without catching his eye.  The latter in fact, struck\nwith his appearance, looked at him hard for a single instant and then,\nas if determined to that course by some special vividness in it,\ndropped back into the salon de lecture without addressing him.  But the\npilgrim from Milrose permitted himself still to observe the scene from\nbehind the clear glass plate of that retreat.  Strether ended, as he\nsat, by a fresh scrutiny of his compressed missive, which he smoothed\nout carefully again as he placed it on his table.  There it remained\nfor some minutes, until, at last looking up, he saw Waymarsh watching\nhim from within.  It was on this that their eyes met--met for a moment\nduring which neither moved.  But Strether then got up, folding his\ntelegram more carefully and putting it into his waistcoat pocket.\n\nA few minutes later the friends were seated together at dinner; but\nStrether had meanwhile said nothing about it, and they eventually\nparted, after coffee in the court, with nothing said on either side.\nOur friend had moreover the consciousness that even less than usual was\non this occasion said between them, so that it was almost as if each\nhad been waiting for something from the other.  Waymarsh had always\nmore or less the air of sitting at the door of his tent, and silence,\nafter so many weeks, had come to play its part in their concert.  This\nnote indeed, to Strether's sense, had lately taken a fuller tone, and\nit was his fancy to-night that they had never quite so drawn it out.\nYet it befell, none the less that he closed the door to confidence when\nhis companion finally asked him if there were anything particular the\nmatter with him.  \"Nothing,\" he replied, \"more than usual.\"\n\nOn the morrow, however, at an early hour, he found occasion to give an\nanswer more in consonance with the facts.  What was the matter had\ncontinued to be so all the previous evening, the first hours of which,\nafter dinner, in his room, he had devoted to the copious composition of\na letter.  He had quitted Waymarsh for this purpose, leaving him to his\nown resources with less ceremony than their wont, but finally coming\ndown again with his letter unconcluded and going forth into the streets\nwithout enquiry for his comrade.  He had taken a long vague walk, and\none o'clock had struck before his return and his re-ascent to his room\nby the aid of the glimmering candle-end left for him on the shelf\noutside the porter's lodge.  He had possessed himself, on closing his\ndoor, of the numerous loose sheets of his unfinished composition, and\nthen, without reading them over, had torn them into small pieces.  He\nhad thereupon slept--as if it had been in some measure thanks to that\nsacrifice--the sleep of the just, and had prolonged his rest\nconsiderably beyond his custom.  Thus it was that when, between nine\nand ten, the tap of the knob of a walking-stick sounded on his door, he\nhad not yet made himself altogether presentable.  Chad Newsome's bright\ndeep voice determined quickly enough none the less the admission of the\nvisitor.  The little blue paper of the evening before, plainly an\nobject the more precious for its escape from premature destruction, now\nlay on the sill of the open window, smoothed out afresh and kept from\nblowing away by the superincumbent weight of his watch. Chad, looking\nabout with careless and competent criticism, as he looked wherever he\nwent immediately espied it and permitted himself to fix it for a moment\nrather hard.  After which he turned his eyes to his host.  \"It has come\nthen at last?\"\n\nStrether paused in the act of pinning his necktie.  \"Then you know--?\nYou've had one too?\"\n\n\"No, I've had nothing, and I only know what I see.  I see that thing\nand I guess.  Well,\" he added, \"it comes as pat as in a play, for I've\nprecisely turned up this morning--as I would have done yesterday, but\nit was impossible--to take you.\"\n\n\"To take me?\"  Strether had turned again to his glass.\n\n\"Back, at last, as I promised.  I'm ready--I've really been ready this\nmonth.  I've only been waiting for you--as was perfectly right. But\nyou're better now; you're safe--I see that for myself; you've got all\nyour good.  You're looking, this morning, as fit as a flea.\"\n\nStrether, at his glass, finished dressing; consulting that witness\nmoreover on this last opinion.  WAS he looking preternaturally fit?\nThere was something in it perhaps for Chad's wonderful eye, but he had\nfelt himself for hours rather in pieces.  Such a judgement, however,\nwas after all but a contribution to his resolve; it testified\nunwittingly to his wisdom.  He was still firmer, apparently--since it\nshone in him as a light--than he had flattered himself.  His firmness\nindeed was slightly compromised, as he faced about to his friend, by\nthe way this very personage looked--though the case would of course\nhave been worse hadn't the secret of personal magnificence been at\nevery hour Chad's unfailing possession.  There he was in all the\npleasant morning freshness of it--strong and sleek and gay, easy and\nfragrant and fathomless, with happy health in his colour, and pleasant\nsilver in his thick young hair, and the right word for everything on\nthe lips that his clear brownness caused to show as red.  He had never\nstruck Strether as personally such a success; it was as if now, for his\ndefinite surrender, he had gathered himself vividly together.  This,\nsharply and rather strangely, was the form in which he was to be\npresented to Woollett.  Our friend took him in again--he was always\ntaking him in and yet finding that parts of him still remained out;\nthough even thus his image showed through a mist of other things. \"I've\nhad a cable,\" Strether said, \"from your mother.\"\n\n\"I dare say, my dear man.  I hope she's well.\"\n\nStrether hesitated.  \"No--she's not well, I'm sorry to have to tell\nyou.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Chad, \"I must have had the instinct of it.  All the more\nreason then that we should start straight off.\"\n\nStrether had now got together hat, gloves and stick, but Chad had\ndropped on the sofa as if to show where he wished to make his point. He\nkept observing his companion's things; he might have been judging how\nquickly they could be packed.  He might even have wished to hint that\nhe'd send his own servant to assist.  \"What do you mean,\" Strether\nenquired, \"by 'straight off'?\"\n\n\"Oh by one of next week's boats.  Everything at this season goes out so\nlight that berths will be easy anywhere.\"\n\nStrether had in his hand his telegram, which he had kept there after\nattaching his watch, and he now offered it to Chad, who, however, with\nan odd movement, declined to take it.  \"Thanks, I'd rather not.  Your\ncorrespondence with Mother's your own affair.  I'm only WITH you both\non it, whatever it is.\"  Strether, at this, while their eyes met,\nslowly folded the missive and put it in his pocket; after which, before\nhe had spoken again, Chad broke fresh ground. \"Has Miss Gostrey come\nback?\"\n\nBut when Strether presently spoke it wasn't in answer.  \"It's not, I\ngather, that your mother's physically ill; her health, on the whole,\nthis spring, seems to have been better than usual.  But she's worried,\nshe's anxious, and it appears to have risen within the last few days to\na climax.  We've tired out, between us, her patience.\"\n\n\"Oh it isn't YOU!\" Chad generously protested.\n\n\"I beg your pardon--it IS me.\"  Strether was mild and melancholy, but\nfirm.  He saw it far away and over his companion's head.  \"It's very\nparticularly me.\"\n\n\"Well then all the more reason.  Marchons, marchons!\" said the young\nman gaily.  His host, however, at this, but continued to stand agaze;\nand he had the next thing repeated his question of a moment before.\n\"Has Miss Gostrey come back?\"\n\n\"Yes, two days ago.\"\n\n\"Then you've seen her?\"\n\n\"No--I'm to see her to-day.\"  But Strether wouldn't linger now on Miss\nGostrey.  \"Your mother sends me an ultimatum.  If I can't bring you I'm\nto leave you; I'm to come at any rate myself.\"\n\n\"Ah but you CAN bring me now,\" Chad, from his sofa, reassuringly\nreplied.\n\nStrether had a pause.  \"I don't think I understand you.  Why was it\nthat, more than a month ago, you put it to me so urgently to let Madame\nde Vionnet speak for you?\"\n\n\"'Why'?\"  Chad considered, but he had it at his fingers' ends.  \"Why\nbut because I knew how well she'd do it?  It was the way to keep you\nquiet and, to that extent, do you good.  Besides,\" he happily and\ncomfortably explained, \"I wanted you really to know her and to get the\nimpression of her--and you see the good that HAS done you.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether, \"the way she has spoken for you, all the\nsame--so far as I've given her a chance--has only made me feel how much\nshe wishes to keep you.  If you make nothing of that I don't see why\nyou wanted me to listen to her.\"\n\n\"Why my dear man,\" Chad exclaimed, \"I make everything of it! How can\nyou doubt--?\"\n\n\"I doubt only because you come to me this morning with your signal to\nstart.\"\n\nChad stared, then gave a laugh.  \"And isn't my signal to start just\nwhat you've been waiting for?\"\n\nStrether debated; he took another turn.  \"This last month I've been\nawaiting, I think, more than anything else, the message I have here.\"\n\n\"You mean you've been afraid of it?\"\n\n\"Well, I was doing my business in my own way.  And I suppose your\npresent announcement,\" Strether went on, \"isn't merely the result of\nyour sense of what I've expected.  Otherwise you wouldn't have put me\nin relation--\" But he paused, pulling up.\n\nAt this Chad rose.  \"Ah HER wanting me not to go has nothing to do with\nit! It's only because she's afraid--afraid of the way that, over there,\nI may get caught.  But her fear's groundless.\"\n\nHe had met again his companion's sufficiently searching look.  \"Are you\ntired of her?\"\n\nChad gave him in reply to this, with a movement of the head, the\nstrangest slow smile he had ever had from him.  \"Never.\"\n\nIt had immediately, on Strether's imagination, so deep and soft an\neffect that our friend could only for the moment keep it before him.\n\"Never?\"\n\n\"Never,\" Chad obligingly and serenely repeated.\n\nIt made his companion take several more steps.  \"Then YOU'RE not\nafraid.\"\n\n\"Afraid to go?\"\n\nStrether pulled up again.  \"Afraid to stay.\"\n\nThe young man looked brightly amazed.  \"You want me now to 'stay'?\"\n\n\"If I don't immediately sail the Pococks will immediately come out.\nThat's what I mean,\" said Strether, \"by your mother's ultimatum .\"\n\nChad showed a still livelier, but not an alarmed interest.  \"She has\nturned on Sarah and Jim?\"\n\nStrether joined him for an instant in the vision.  \"Oh and you may be\nsure Mamie.  THAT'S whom she's turning on.\"\n\nThis also Chad saw--he laughed out.  \"Mamie--to corrupt me?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Strether, \"she's very charming.\"\n\n\"So you've already more than once told me.  I should like to see her.\"\n\nSomething happy and easy, something above all unconscious, in the way\nhe said this, brought home again to his companion the facility of his\nattitude and the enviability of his state.  \"See her then by all means.\nAnd consider too,\" Strether went on, \"that you really give your sister\na lift in letting her come to you.  You give her a couple of months of\nParis, which she hasn't seen, if I'm not mistaken, since just after she\nwas married, and which I'm sure she wants but the pretext to visit.\"\n\nChad listened, but with all his own knowledge of the world.  \"She has\nhad it, the pretext, these several years, yet she has never taken it.\"\n\n\"Do you mean YOU?\" Strether after an instant enquired.\n\n\"Certainly--the lone exile.  And whom do you mean?\" said Chad.\n\n\"Oh I mean ME.  I'm her pretext.  That is--for it comes to the same\nthing--I'm your mother's.\"\n\n\"Then why,\" Chad asked, \"doesn't Mother come herself?\"\n\nHis friend gave him a long look.  \"Should you like her to?\"  And as he\nfor the moment said nothing: \"It's perfectly open to you to cable for\nher.\"\n\nChad continued to think.  \"Will she come if I do?\"\n\n\"Quite possibly.  But try, and you'll see.\"\n\n\"Why don't YOU try?\" Chad after a moment asked.\n\n\"Because I don't want to.\"\n\nChad thought.  \"Don't desire her presence here?\"\n\nStrether faced the question, and his answer was the more emphatic.\n\"Don't put it off, my dear boy, on ME!\"\n\n\"Well--I see what you mean.  I'm sure you'd behave beautifully but you\nDON'T want to see her.  So I won't play you that trick.'\n\n\"Ah,\" Strether declared, \"I shouldn't call it a trick.  You've a\nperfect right, and it would be perfectly straight of you.\"  Then he\nadded in a different tone: \"You'd have moreover, in the person of\nMadame de Vionnet, a very interesting relation prepared for her.\"\n\nTheir eyes, on this proposition, continued to meet, but Chad's pleasant\nand bold, never flinched for a moment.  He got up at last and he said\nsomething with which Strether was struck.  \"She wouldn't understand\nher, but that makes no difference.  Madame de Vionnet would like to see\nher.  She'd like to be charming to her.  She believes she could work\nit.\"\n\nStrether thought a moment, affected by this, but finally turning away.\n\"She couldn't!\"\n\n\"You're quite sure?\" Chad asked.\n\n\"Well, risk it if you like!\"\n\nStrether, who uttered this with serenity, had urged a plea for their\nnow getting into the air; but the young man still waited.  \"Have you\nsent your answer?\"\n\n\"No, I've done nothing yet.\"\n\n\"Were you waiting to see me?\"\n\n\"No, not that.\"\n\n\"Only waiting\"--and Chad, with this, had a smile for him--\"to see Miss\nGostrey?\"\n\n\"No--not even Miss Gostrey.  I wasn't waiting to see any one.  I had\nonly waited, till now, to make up my mind--in complete solitude; and,\nsince I of course absolutely owe you the information, was on the point\nof going out with it quite made up.  Have therefore a little more\npatience with me.  Remember,\" Strether went on, \"that that's what you\noriginally asked ME to have.  I've had it, you see, and you see what\nhas come of it.  Stay on with me.\"\n\nChad looked grave.  \"How much longer?\"\n\n\"Well, till I make you a sign.  I can't myself, you know, at the best,\nor at the worst, stay for ever.  Let the Pococks come,\" Strether\nrepeated.\n\n\"Because it gains you time?\"\n\n\"Yes--it gains me time.\"\n\nChad, as if it still puzzled him, waited a minute.  \"You don't want to\nget back to Mother?\"\n\n\"Not just yet.  I'm not ready.\"\n\n\"You feel,\" Chad asked in a tone of his own, \"the charm of life over\nhere?\"\n\n\"Immensely.\"  Strether faced it.  \"You've helped me so to feel it that\nthat surely needn't surprise you.\"\n\n\"No, it doesn't surprise me, and I'm delighted.  But what, my dear\nman,\" Chad went on with conscious queerness, \"does it all lead to for\nyou?\"\n\nThe change of position and of relation, for each, was so oddly betrayed\nin the question that Chad laughed out as soon as he had uttered\nit--which made Strether also laugh.  \"Well, to my having a certitude\nthat has been tested--that has passed through the fire. But oh,\" he\ncouldn't help breaking out, \"if within my first month here you had been\nwilling to move with me--!\"\n\n\"Well?\" said Chad, while he broke down as for weight of thought.\n\n\"Well, we should have been over there by now.\"\n\n\"Ah but you wouldn't have had your fun!\"\n\n\"I should have had a month of it; and I'm having now, if you want to\nknow,\" Strether continued, \"enough to last me for the rest of my days.\"\n\nChad looked amused and interested, yet still somewhat in the dark;\npartly perhaps because Strether's estimate of fun had required of him\nfrom the first a good deal of elucidation.  \"It wouldn't do if I left\nyou--?\"\n\n\"Left me?\"--Strether remained blank.\n\n\"Only for a month or two--time to go and come.  Madame de Vionnet,\"\nChad smiled, \"would look after you in the interval.\"\n\n\"To go back by yourself, I remaining here?\"  Again for an instant their\neyes had the question out; after which Strether said: \"Grotesque!\"\n\n\"But I want to see Mother,\" Chad presently returned.  \"Remember how\nlong it is since I've seen Mother.\"\n\n\"Long indeed; and that's exactly why I was originally so keen for\nmoving you.  Hadn't you shown us enough how beautifully you could do\nwithout it?\"\n\n\"Oh but,\" said Chad wonderfully, \"I'm better now.\"\n\nThere was an easy triumph in it that made his friend laugh out again.\n\"Oh if you were worse I SHOULD know what to do with you.  In that case\nI believe I'd have you gagged and strapped down, carried on board\nresisting, kicking.  How MUCH,\" Strether asked, \"do you want to see\nMother?\"\n\n\"How much?\"--Chad seemed to find it in fact difficult to say.\n\n\"How much.\"\n\n\"Why as much as you've made me.  I'd give anything to see her.  And\nyou've left me,\" Chad went on, \"in little enough doubt as to how much\nSHE wants it.\"\n\nStrether thought a minute.  \"Well then if those things are really your\nmotive catch the French steamer and sail to-morrow.  Of course, when it\ncomes to that, you're absolutely free to do as you choose. From the\nmoment you can't hold yourself I can only accept your flight.\"\n\n\"I'll fly in a minute then,\" said Chad, \"if you'll stay here.\"\n\n\"I'll stay here till the next steamer--then I'll follow you.\"\n\n\"And do you call that,\" Chad asked, \"accepting my flight?\"\n\n\"Certainly--it's the only thing to call it.  The only way to keep me\nhere, accordingly,\" Strether explained, \"is by staying yourself.\"\n\nChad took it in.  \"All the more that I've really dished you, eh?\"\n\n\"Dished me?\" Strether echoed as inexpressively as possible.\n\n\"Why if she sends out the Pococks it will be that she doesn't trust\nyou, and if she doesn't trust you, that bears upon--well, you know\nwhat.\"\n\nStrether decided after a moment that he did know what, and in\nconsonance with this he spoke.  \"You see then all the more what you owe\nme.\"\n\n\"Well, if I do see, how can I pay?\"\n\n\"By not deserting me.  By standing by me.\"\n\n\"Oh I say--!\"  But Chad, as they went downstairs, clapped a firm hand,\nin the manner of a pledge, upon his shoulder.  They descended slowly\ntogether and had, in the court of the hotel, some further talk, of\nwhich the upshot was that they presently separated.  Chad Newsome\ndeparted, and Strether, left alone, looked about, superficially, for\nWaymarsh.  But Waymarsh hadn't yet, it appeared, come down, and our\nfriend finally went forth without sight of him.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nAt four o'clock that afternoon he had still not seen him, but he was\nthen, as to make up for this, engaged in talk about him with Miss\nGostrey.  Strether had kept away from home all day, given himself up to\nthe town and to his thoughts, wandered and mused, been at once restless\nand absorbed--and all with the present climax of a rich little welcome\nin the Quartier Marboeuf.  \"Waymarsh has been, 'unbeknown' to me, I'm\nconvinced\"--for Miss Gostrey had enquired--\"in communication with\nWoollett: the consequence of which was, last night, the loudest\npossible call for me.\"\n\n\"Do you mean a letter to bring you home?\"\n\n\"No--a cable, which I have at this moment in my pocket: a 'Come back by\nthe first ship.'\"\n\nStrether's hostess, it might have been made out, just escaped changing\ncolour.  Reflexion arrived but in time and established a provisional\nserenity.  It was perhaps exactly this that enabled her to say with\nduplicity: \"And you're going--?\"\n\n\"You almost deserve it when you abandon me so.\"\n\nShe shook her head as if this were not worth taking up.  \"My absence\nhas helped you--as I've only to look at you to see.  It was my\ncalculation, and I'm justified.  You're not where you were.  And the\nthing,\" she smiled, \"was for me not to be there either.  You can go of\nyourself.\"\n\n\"Oh but I feel to-day,\" he comfortably declared, \"that I shall want you\nyet.\"\n\nShe took him all in again.  \"Well, I promise you not again to leave\nyou, but it will only be to follow you.  You've got your momentum and\ncan toddle alone.\"\n\nHe intelligently accepted it.  \"Yes--I suppose I can toddle.  It's the\nsight of that in fact that has upset Waymarsh.  He can bear it--the way\nI strike him as going--no longer.  That's only the climax of his\noriginal feeling.  He wants me to quit; and he must have written to\nWoollett that I'm in peril of perdition.\"\n\n\"Ah good!\" she murmured.  \"But is it only your supposition?\"\n\n\"I make it out--it explains.\"\n\n\"Then he denies?--or you haven't asked him?\"\n\n\"I've not had time,\" Strether said; \"I made it out but last night,\nputting various things together, and I've not been since then face to\nface with him.\"\n\nShe wondered.  \"Because you're too disgusted?  You can't trust\nyourself?\"\n\nHe settled his glasses on his nose.  \"Do I look in a great rage?\"\n\n\"You look divine!\"\n\n\"There's nothing,\" he went on, \"to be angry about.  He has done me on\nthe contrary a service.\"\n\nShe made it out.  \"By bringing things to a head?\"\n\n\"How well you understand!\" he almost groaned.  \"Waymarsh won't in the\nleast, at any rate, when I have it out with him, deny or extenuate.  He\nhas acted from the deepest conviction, with the best conscience and\nafter wakeful nights.  He'll recognise that he's fully responsible, and\nwill consider that he has been highly successful; so that any\ndiscussion we may have will bring us quite together again--bridge the\ndark stream that has kept us so thoroughly apart.  We shall have at\nlast, in the consequences of his act, something we can definitely talk\nabout.\"\n\nShe was silent a little.  \"How wonderfully you take it! But you're\nalways wonderful.\"\n\nHe had a pause that matched her own; then he had, with an adequate\nspirit, a complete admission.  \"It's quite true.  I'm extremely\nwonderful just now.  I dare say in fact I'm quite fantastic, and I\nshouldn't be at all surprised if I were mad.\"\n\n\"Then tell me!\" she earnestly pressed.  As he, however, for the time\nanswered nothing, only returning the look with which she watched him,\nshe presented herself where it was easier to meet her.  \"What will Mr.\nWaymarsh exactly have done?\"\n\n\"Simply have written a letter.  One will have been quite enough.  He\nhas told them I want looking after.\"\n\n\"And DO you?\"--she was all interest.\n\n\"Immensely.  And I shall get it.\"\n\n\"By which you mean you don't budge?\"\n\n\"I don't budge.\"\n\n\"You've cabled?\"\n\n\"No--I've made Chad do it.\"\n\n\"That you decline to come?\"\n\n\"That HE declines.  We had it out this morning and I brought him round.\nHe had come in, before I was down, to tell me he was ready--ready, I\nmean, to return.  And he went off, after ten minutes with me, to say he\nwouldn't.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey followed with intensity.  \"Then you've STOPPED him?\"\n\nStrether settled himself afresh in his chair.  \"I've stopped him. That\nis for the time.  That\"--he gave it to her more vividly--\"is where I\nam.\"\n\n\"I see, I see.  But where's Mr. Newsome?  He was ready,\" she asked, \"to\ngo?\"\n\n\"All ready.\"\n\n\"And sincerely--believing YOU'D be?\"\n\n\"Perfectly, I think; so that he was amazed to find the hand I had laid\non him to pull him over suddenly converted into an engine for keeping\nhim still.\"\n\nIt was an account of the matter Miss Gostrey could weigh.  \"Does he\nthink the conversion sudden?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether, \"I'm not altogether sure what he thinks.  I'm\nnot sure of anything that concerns him, except that the more I've seen\nof him the less I've found him what I originally expected. He's\nobscure, and that's why I'm waiting.\"\n\nShe wondered.  \"But for what in particular?\"\n\n\"For the answer to his cable.\"\n\n\"And what was his cable?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Strether replied; \"it was to be, when he left me,\naccording to his own taste.  I simply said to him: 'I want to stay, and\nthe only way for me to do so is for you to.' That I wanted to stay\nseemed to interest him, and he acted on that.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey turned it over.  \"He wants then himself to stay.\"\n\n\"He half wants it.  That is he half wants to go.  My original appeal\nhas to that extent worked in him.  Nevertheless,\" Strether pursued, \"he\nwon't go.  Not, at least, so long as I'm here.\"\n\n\"But you can't,\" his companion suggested, \"stay here always.  I wish\nyou could.\"\n\n\"By no means.  Still, I want to see him a little further.  He's not in\nthe least the case I supposed, he's quite another case.  And it's as\nsuch that he interests me.\"  It was almost as if for his own\nintelligence that, deliberate and lucid, our friend thus expressed the\nmatter.  \"I don't want to give him up.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey but desired to help his lucidity.  She had however to be\nlight and tactful.  \"Up, you mean--a--to his mother?\"\n\n\"Well, I'm not thinking of his mother now.  I'm thinking of the plan of\nwhich I was the mouthpiece, which, as soon as we met, I put before him\nas persuasively as I knew how, and which was drawn up, as it were, in\ncomplete ignorance of all that, in this last long period, has been\nhappening to him.  It took no account whatever of the impression I was\nhere on the spot immediately to begin to receive from him--impressions\nof which I feel sure I'm far from having had the last.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey had a smile of the most genial criticism.  \"So your idea\nis--more or less--to stay out of curiosity?\"\n\n\"Call it what you like! I don't care what it's called--\"\n\n\"So long as you do stay?  Certainly not then.  I call it, all the same,\nimmense fun,\" Maria Gostrey declared; \"and to see you work it out will\nbe one of the sensations of my life.  It IS clear you can toddle alone!\"\n\nHe received this tribute without elation.  \"I shan't be alone when the\nPococks have come.\"\n\nHer eyebrows went up.  \"The Pococks are coming?\"\n\n\"That, I mean, is what will happen--and happen as quickly as\npossible--in consequence of Chad's cable.  They'll simply embark. Sarah\nwill come to speak for her mother--with an effect different from MY\nmuddle.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey more gravely wondered.  \"SHE then will take him back?\"\n\n\"Very possibly--and we shall see.  She must at any rate have the\nchance, and she may be trusted to do all she can.\"\n\n\"And do you WANT that?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" said Strether, \"I want it.  I want to play fair.\"\n\nBut she had lost for a moment the thread.  \"If it devolves on the\nPococks why do you stay?\"\n\n\"Just to see that I DO play fair--and a little also, no doubt, that\nthey do.\"  Strether was luminous as he had never been.  \"I came out to\nfind myself in presence of new facts--facts that have kept striking me\nas less and less met by our old reasons.  The matter's perfectly\nsimple.  New reasons--reasons as new as the facts themselves--are\nwanted; and of this our friends at Woollett--Chad's and mine--were at\nthe earliest moment definitely notified.  If any are producible Mrs.\nPocock will produce them; she'll bring over the whole collection.\nThey'll be,\" he added with a pensive smile \"a part of the 'fun' you\nspeak of.\"\n\nShe was quite in the current now and floating by his side.  \"It's\nMamie--so far as I've had it from you--who'll be their great card.\" And\nthen as his contemplative silence wasn't a denial she significantly\nadded: \"I think I'm sorry for her.\"\n\n\"I think I am!\"--and Strether sprang up, moving about a little as her\neyes followed him.  \"But it can't be helped.\"\n\n\"You mean her coming out can't be?\"\n\nHe explained after another turn what he meant.  \"The only way for her\nnot to come is for me to go home--as I believe that on the spot I could\nprevent it.  But the difficulty as to that is that if I do go home--\"\n\n\"I see, I see\"--she had easily understood.  \"Mr. Newsome will do the\nsame, and that's not\"--she laughed out now--\"to be thought of.\"\n\nStrether had no laugh; he had only a quiet comparatively placid look\nthat might have shown him as proof against ridicule.  \"Strange, isn't\nit?\"\n\nThey had, in the matter that so much interested them, come so far as\nthis without sounding another name--to which however their present\nmomentary silence was full of a conscious reference. Strether's\nquestion was a sufficient implication of the weight it had gained with\nhim during the absence of his hostess; and just for that reason a\nsingle gesture from her could pass for him as a vivid answer.  Yet he\nwas answered still better when she said in a moment: \"Will Mr. Newsome\nintroduce his sister--?\"\n\n\"To Madame de Vionnet?\"  Strether spoke the name at last.  \"I shall be\ngreatly surprised if he doesn't.\"\n\nShe seemed to gaze at the possibility.  \"You mean you've thought of it\nand you're prepared.\"\n\n\"I've thought of it and I'm prepared.\"\n\nIt was to her visitor now that she applied her consideration.  \"Bon!\nYou ARE magnificent!\"\n\n\"Well,\" he answered after a pause and a little wearily, but still\nstanding there before her--\"well, that's what, just once in all my dull\ndays, I think I shall like to have been!\"\n\nTwo days later he had news from Chad of a communication from Woollett\nin response to their determinant telegram, this missive being addressed\nto Chad himself and announcing the immediate departure for France of\nSarah and Jim and Mamie.  Strether had meanwhile on his own side\ncabled; he had but delayed that act till after his visit to Miss\nGostrey, an interview by which, as so often before, he felt his sense\nof things cleared up and settled.  His message to Mrs. Newsome, in\nanswer to her own, had consisted of the words: \"Judge best to take\nanother month, but with full appreciation of all re-enforcements.\"  He\nhad added that he was writing, but he was of course always writing; it\nwas a practice that continued, oddly enough, to relieve him, to make\nhim come nearer than anything else to the consciousness of doing\nsomething: so that he often wondered if he hadn't really, under his\nrecent stress, acquired some hollow trick, one of the specious arts of\nmake-believe.  Wouldn't the pages he still so freely dispatched by the\nAmerican post have been worthy of a showy journalist, some master of\nthe great new science of beating the sense out of words? Wasn't he\nwriting against time, and mainly to show he was kind?--since it had\nbecome quite his habit not to like to read himself over.  On those\nlines he could still be liberal, yet it was at best a sort of whistling\nin the dark.  It was unmistakeable moreover that the sense of being in\nthe dark now pressed on him more sharply--creating thereby the need for\na louder and livelier whistle.  He whistled long and hard after sending\nhis message; he whistled again and again in celebration of Chad's news;\nthere was an interval of a fortnight in which this exercise helped him.\nHe had no great notion of what, on the spot, Sarah Pocock would have to\nsay, though he had indeed confused premonitions; but it shouldn't be in\nher power to say--it shouldn't be in any one's anywhere to say--that he\nwas neglecting her mother.  He might have written before more freely,\nbut he had never written more copiously; and he frankly gave for a\nreason at Woollett that he wished to fill the void created there by\nSarah's departure.\n\nThe increase of his darkness, however, and the quickening, as I have\ncalled it, of his tune, resided in the fact that he was hearing almost\nnothing.  He had for some time been aware that he was hearing less than\nbefore, and he was now clearly following a process by which Mrs.\nNewsome's letters could but logically stop. He hadn't had a line for\nmany days, and he needed no proof--though he was, in time, to have\nplenty--that she wouldn't have put pen to paper after receiving the\nhint that had determined her telegram. She wouldn't write till Sarah\nshould have seen him and reported on him.  It was strange, though it\nmight well be less so than his own behaviour appeared at Woollett.  It\nwas at any rate significant, and what WAS remarkable was the way his\nfriend's nature and manner put on for him, through this very drop of\ndemonstration, a greater intensity.  It struck him really that he had\nnever so lived with her as during this period of her silence; the\nsilence was a sacred hush, a finer clearer medium, in which her\nidiosyncrasies showed. He walked about with her, sat with her, drove\nwith her and dined face-to-face with her--a rare treat \"in his life,\"\nas he could perhaps have scarce escaped phrasing it; and if he had\nnever seen her so soundless he had never, on the other hand, felt her\nso highly, so almost austerely, herself: pure and by the vulgar\nestimate \"cold,\" but deep devoted delicate sensitive noble.  Her\nvividness in these respects became for him, in the special conditions,\nalmost an obsession; and though the obsession sharpened his pulses,\nadding really to the excitement of life, there were hours at which, to\nbe less on the stretch, he directly sought forgetfulness.  He knew it\nfor the queerest of adventures--a circumstance capable of playing such\na part only for Lambert Strether--that in Paris itself, of all places,\nhe should find this ghost of the lady of Woollett more importunate than\nany other presence.\n\nWhen he went back to Maria Gostrey it was for the change to something\nelse.  And yet after all the change scarcely operated for he talked to\nher of Mrs. Newsome in these days as he had never talked before.  He\nhad hitherto observed in that particular a discretion and a law;\nconsiderations that at present broke down quite as if relations had\naltered.  They hadn't REALLY altered, he said to himself, so much as\nthat came to; for if what had occurred was of course that Mrs. Newsome\nhad ceased to trust him, there was nothing on the other hand to prove\nthat he shouldn't win back her confidence.  It was quite his present\ntheory that he would leave no stone unturned to do so; and in fact if\nhe now told Maria things about her that he had never told before this\nwas largely because it kept before him the idea of the honour of such a\nwoman's esteem. His relation with Maria as well was, strangely enough,\nno longer quite the same; this truth--though not too\ndisconcertingly--had come up between them on the renewal of their\nmeetings.  It was all contained in what she had then almost immediately\nsaid to him; it was represented by the remark she had needed but ten\nminutes to make and that he hadn't been disposed to gainsay.  He could\ntoddle alone, and the difference that showed was extraordinary.  The\nturn taken by their talk had promptly confirmed this difference; his\nlarger confidence on the score of Mrs. Newsome did the rest; and the\ntime seemed already far off when he had held out his small thirsty cup\nto the spout of her pail.  Her pail was scarce touched now, and other\nfountains had flowed for him; she fell into her place as but one of his\ntributaries; and there was a strange sweetness--a melancholy mildness\nthat touched him--in her acceptance of the altered order.\n\nIt marked for himself the flight of time, or at any rate what he was\npleased to think of with irony and pity as the rush of experience; it\nhaving been but the day before yesterday that he sat at her feet and\nheld on by her garment and was fed by her hand.  It was the proportions\nthat were changed, and the proportions were at all times, he\nphilosophised, the very conditions of perception, the terms of thought.\nIt was as if, with her effective little entresol and and her wide\nacquaintance, her activities, varieties, promiscuities, the duties and\ndevotions that took up nine tenths of her time and of which he got,\nguardedly, but the side-wind--it was as if she had shrunk to a\nsecondary element and had consented to the shrinkage with the\nperfection of tact.  This perfection had never failed her; it had\noriginally been greater than his prime measure for it; it had kept him\nquite apart, kept him out of the shop, as she called her huge general\nacquaintance, made their commerce as quiet, as much a thing of the home\nalone--the opposite of the shop--as if she had never another customer.\nShe had been wonderful to him at first, with the memory of her little\nentresol, the image to which, on most mornings at that time, his eyes\ndirectly opened; but now she mainly figured for him as but part of the\nbristling total--though of course always as a person to whom he should\nnever cease to be indebted.  It would never be given to him certainly\nto inspire a greater kindness.  She had decked him out for others, and\nhe saw at this point at least nothing she would ever ask for. She only\nwondered and questioned and listened, rendering him the homage of a\nwistful speculation.  She expressed it repeatedly; he was already far\nbeyond her, and she must prepare herself to lose him.  There was but\none little chance for her.\n\nOften as she had said it he met it--for it was a touch he liked--each\ntime the same way.  \"My coming to grief?\"\n\n\"Yes--then I might patch you up.\"\n\n\"Oh for my real smash, if it takes place, there will be no patching.\"\n\n\"But you surely don't mean it will kill you.\"\n\n\"No--worse.  It will make me old.\"\n\n\"Ah nothing can do that! The wonderful and special thing about you is\nthat you ARE, at this time of day, youth.\"  Then she always made,\nfurther, one of those remarks that she had completely ceased to adorn\nwith hesitations or apologies, and that had, by the same token, in\nspite of their extreme straightness, ceased to produce in Strether the\nleast embarrassment.  She made him believe them, and they became\nthereby as impersonal as truth itself.  \"It's just your particular\ncharm.\"\n\nHis answer too was always the same.  \"Of course I'm youth--youth for\nthe trip to Europe.  I began to be young, or at least to get the\nbenefit of it, the moment I met you at Chester, and that's what has\nbeen taking place ever since.  I never had the benefit at the proper\ntime--which comes to saying that I never had the thing itself.  I'm\nhaving the benefit at this moment; I had it the other day when I said\nto Chad 'Wait'; I shall have it still again when Sarah Pocock arrives.\nIt's a benefit that would make a poor show for many people; and I don't\nknow who else but you and I, frankly, could begin to see in it what I\nfeel.  I don't get drunk; I don't pursue the ladies; I don't spend\nmoney; I don't even write sonnets.  But nevertheless I'm making up late\nfor what I didn't have early.  I cultivate my little benefit in my own\nlittle way.  It amuses me more than anything that has happened to me in\nall my life.  They may say what they like--it's my surrender, it's my\ntribute, to youth.  One puts that in where one can--it has to come in\nsomewhere, if only out of the lives, the conditions, the feelings of\nother persons. Chad gives me the sense of it, for all his grey hairs,\nwhich merely make it solid in him and safe and serene; and SHE does the\nsame, for all her being older than he, for all her marriageable\ndaughter, her separated husband, her agitated history.  Though they're\nyoung enough, my pair, I don't say they're, in the freshest way, their\nown absolutely prime adolescence; for that has nothing to do with it.\nThe point is that they're mine.  Yes, they're my youth; since somehow\nat the right time nothing else ever was.  What I meant just now\ntherefore is that it would all go--go before doing its work--if they\nwere to fail me.\"\n\nOn which, just here, Miss Gostrey inveterately questioned.  \"What do\nyou, in particular, call its work?\"\n\n\"Well, to see me through.\"\n\n\"But through what?\"--she liked to get it all out of him.\n\n\"Why through this experience.\"  That was all that would come.\n\nIt regularly gave her none the less the last word.  \"Don't you remember\nhow in those first days of our meeting it was I who was to see you\nthrough?\"\n\n\"Remember?  Tenderly, deeply\"--he always rose to it.  \"You're just\ndoing your part in letting me maunder to you thus.\"\n\n\"Ah don't speak as if my part were small; since whatever else fails\nyou--\"\n\n\"YOU won't, ever, ever, ever?\"--he thus took her up.  \"Oh I beg your\npardon; you necessarily, you inevitably WILL.  Your conditions--that's\nwhat I mean--won't allow me anything to do for you.\"\n\n\"Let alone--I see what you mean--that I'm drearily dreadfully old. I\nAM, but there's a service--possible for you to render--that I know, all\nthe same, I shall think of.\"\n\n\"And what will it be?\"\n\nThis, in fine, however, she would never tell him.  \"You shall hear only\nif your smash takes place.  As that's really out of the question, I\nwon't expose myself\"--a point at which, for reasons of his own,\nStrether ceased to press.\n\nHe came round, for publicity--it was the easiest thing--to the idea\nthat his smash WAS out of the question, and this rendered idle the\ndiscussion of what might follow it.  He attached an added importance,\nas the days elapsed, to the arrival of the Pococks; he had even a\nshameful sense of waiting for it insincerely and incorrectly.  He\naccused himself of making believe to his own mind that Sarah's\npresence, her impression, her judgement would simplify and harmonise,\nhe accused himself of being so afraid of what they MIGHT do that he\nsought refuge, to beg the whole question, in a vain fury.  He had\nabundantly seen at home what they were in the habit of doing, and he\nhad not at present the smallest ground.  His clearest vision was when\nhe made out that what he most desired was an account more full and free\nof Mrs. Newsome's state of mind than any he felt he could now expect\nfrom herself; that calculation at least went hand in hand with the\nsharp consciousness of wishing to prove to himself that he was not\nafraid to look his behaviour in the face.  If he was by an inexorable\nlogic to pay for it he was literally impatient to know the cost, and he\nheld himself ready to pay in instalments.  The first instalment would\nbe precisely this entertainment of Sarah; as a consequence of which\nmoreover, he should know vastly better how he stood.\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Eighth\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nStrether rambled alone during these few days, the effect of the\nincident of the previous week having been to simplify in a marked\nfashion his mixed relations with Waymarsh.  Nothing had passed between\nthem in reference to Mrs. Newsome's summons but that our friend had\nmentioned to his own the departure of the deputation actually at\nsea--giving him thus an opportunity to confess to the occult\nintervention he imputed to him.  Waymarsh however in the event\nconfessed to nothing; and though this falsified in some degree\nStrether's forecast the latter amusedly saw in it the same depth of\ngood conscience out of which the dear man's impertinence had originally\nsprung.  He was patient with the dear man now and delighted to observe\nhow unmistakeably he had put on flesh; he felt his own holiday so\nsuccessfully large and free that he was full of allowances and\ncharities in respect to those cabined and confined' his instinct toward\na spirit so strapped down as Waymarsh's was to walk round it on tiptoe\nfor fear of waking it up to a sense of losses by this time\nirretrievable.  It was all very funny he knew, and but the difference,\nas he often said to himself, of tweedledum and tweedledee--an\nemancipation so purely comparative that it was like the advance of the\ndoor-mat on the scraper; yet the present crisis was happily to profit\nby it and the pilgrim from Milrose to know himself more than ever in\nthe right.\n\nStrether felt that when he heard of the approach of the Pococks the\nimpulse of pity quite sprang up in him beside the impulse of triumph.\nThat was exactly why Waymarsh had looked at him with eyes in which the\nheat of justice was measured and shaded.  He had looked very hard, as\nif affectionately sorry for the friend--the friend of fifty-five--whose\nfrivolity had had thus to be recorded; becoming, however, but obscurely\nsententious and leaving his companion to formulate a charge.  It was in\nthis general attitude that he had of late altogether taken refuge; with\nthe drop of discussion they were solemnly sadly superficial; Strether\nrecognised in him the mere portentous rumination to which Miss Barrace\nhad so good-humouredly described herself as assigning a corner of her\nsalon.  It was quite as if he knew his surreptitious step had been\ndivined, and it was also as if he missed the chance to explain the\npurity of his motive; but this privation of relief should be precisely\nhis small penance:  it was not amiss for Strether that he should find\nhimself to that degree uneasy.  If he had been challenged or accused,\nrebuked for meddling or otherwise pulled up, he would probably have\nshown, on his own system, all the height of his consistency, all the\ndepth of his good faith.  Explicit resentment of his course would have\nmade him take the floor, and the thump of his fist on the table would\nhave affirmed him as consciously incorruptible.  Had what now really\nprevailed with Strether been but a dread of that thump--a dread of\nwincing a little painfully at what it might invidiously demonstrate?\nHowever this might be, at any rate, one of the marks of the crisis was\na visible, a studied lapse, in Waymarsh, of betrayed concern.  As if to\nmake up to his comrade for the stroke by which he had played providence\nhe now conspicuously ignored his movements, withdrew himself from the\npretension to share them, stiffened up his sensibility to neglect, and,\nclasping his large empty hands and swinging his large restless foot,\nclearly looked to another quarter for justice.\n\nThis made for independence on Strether's part, and he had in truth at\nno moment of his stay been so free to go and come.  The early summer\nbrushed the picture over and blurred everything but the near; it made a\nvast warm fragrant medium in which the elements floated together on the\nbest of terms, in which rewards were immediate and reckonings\npostponed.  Chad was out of town again, for the first time since his\nvisitor's first view of him; he had explained this necessity--without\ndetail, yet also without embarrassment, the circumstance was one of\nthose which, in the young man's life, testified to the variety of his\nties.  Strether wasn't otherwise concerned with it than for its so\ntestifying--a pleasant multitudinous image in which he took comfort. He\ntook comfort, by the same stroke, in the swing of Chad's pendulum back\nfrom that other swing, the sharp jerk towards Woollett, so stayed by\nhis own hand.  He had the entertainment of thinking that if he had for\nthat moment stopped the clock it was to promote the next minute this\nstill livelier motion.  He himself did what he hadn't done before; he\ntook two or three times whole days off--irrespective of others, of two\nor three taken with Miss Gostrey, two or three taken with little\nBilham:  he went to Chartres and cultivated, before the front of the\ncathedral, a general easy beatitude; he went to Fontainebleau and\nimagined himself on the way to Italy; he went to Rouen with a little\nhandbag and inordinately spent the night.\n\nOne afternoon he did something quite different; finding himself in the\nneighbourhood of a fine old house across the river, he passed under the\ngreat arch of its doorway and asked at the porter's lodge for Madame de\nVionnet.  He had already hovered more than once about that possibility,\nbeen aware of it, in the course of ostensible strolls, as lurking but\nround the corner.  Only it had perversely happened, after his morning\nat Notre Dame, that his consistency, as he considered and intended it,\nhad come back to him; whereby he had reflected that the encounter in\nquestion had been none of his making; clinging again intensely to the\nstrength of his position, which was precisely that there was nothing in\nit for himself.  From the moment he actively pursued the charming\nassociate of his adventure, from that moment his position weakened, for\nhe was then acting in an interested way.  It was only within a few days\nthat he had fixed himself a limit:  he promised himself his consistency\nshould end with Sarah's arrival.  It was arguing correctly to feel the\ntitle to a free hand conferred on him by this event.  If he wasn't to\nbe let alone he should be merely a dupe to act with delicacy.  If he\nwasn't to be trusted he could at least take his ease.  If he was to be\nplaced under control he gained leave to try what his position MIGHT\nagreeably give him.  An ideal rigour would perhaps postpone the trial\ntill after the Pococks had shown their spirit; and it was to an ideal\nrigour that he had quite promised himself to conform.\n\nSuddenly, however, on this particular day, he felt a particular fear\nunder which everything collapsed.  He knew abruptly that he was afraid\nof himself--and yet not in relation to the effect on his sensibilities\nof another hour of Madame de Vionnet.  What he dreaded was the effect\nof a single hour of Sarah Pocock, as to whom he was visited, in\ntroubled nights, with fantastic waking dreams.  She loomed at him\nlarger than life; she increased in volume as she drew nearer; she so\nmet his eyes that, his imagination taking, after the first step, all,\nand more than all, the strides, he already felt her come down on him,\nalready burned, under her reprobation, with the blush of guilt, already\nconsented, by way of penance, to the instant forfeiture of everything.\nHe saw himself, under her direction, recommitted to Woollett as\njuvenile offenders are committed to reformatories.  It wasn't of course\nthat Woollett was really a place of discipline; but he knew in advance\nthat Sarah's salon at the hotel would be.  His danger, at any rate, in\nsuch moods of alarm, was some concession, on this ground, that would\ninvolve a sharp rupture with the actual; therefore if he waited to take\nleave of that actual he might wholly miss his chance.  It was\nrepresented with supreme vividness by Madame de Vionnet, and that is\nwhy, in a word, he waited no longer.  He had seen in a flash that he\nmust anticipate Mrs. Pocock.  He was accordingly much disappointed on\nnow learning from the portress that the lady of his quest was not in\nParis.  She had gone for some days to the country.  There was nothing\nin this accident but what was natural; yet it produced for poor\nStrether a drop of all confidence.  It was suddenly as if he should\nnever see her again, and as if moreover he had brought it on himself by\nnot having been quite kind to her.\n\nIt was the advantage of his having let his fancy lose itself for a\nlittle in the gloom that, as by reaction, the prospect began really to\nbrighten from the moment the deputation from Woollett alighted on the\nplatform of the station.  They had come straight from Havre, having\nsailed from New York to that port, and having also, thanks to a happy\nvoyage, made land with a promptitude that left Chad Newsome, who had\nmeant to meet them at the dock, belated.  He had received their\ntelegram, with the announcement of their immediate further advance,\njust as he was taking the train for Havre, so that nothing had remained\nfor him but to await them in Paris.  He hastily picked up Strether, at\nthe hotel, for this purpose, and he even, with easy pleasantry,\nsuggested the attendance of Waymarsh as well--Waymarsh, at the moment\nhis cab rattled up, being engaged, under Strether's contemplative\nrange, in a grave perambulation of the familiar court.  Waymarsh had\nlearned from his companion, who had already had a note, delivered by\nhand, from Chad, that the Pococks were due, and had ambiguously,\nthough, as always, impressively, glowered at him over the circumstance;\ncarrying himself in a manner in which Strether was now expert enough to\nrecognise his uncertainty, in the premises, as to the best tone.  The\nonly tone he aimed at with confidence was a full tone--which was\nnecessarily difficult in the absence of a full knowledge.  The Pococks\nwere a quantity as yet unmeasured, and, as he had practically brought\nthem over, so this witness had to that extent exposed himself.  He\nwanted to feel right about it, but could only, at the best, for the\ntime, feel vague. \"I shall look to you, you know, immensely,\" our\nfriend had said, \"to help me with them,\" and he had been quite\nconscious of the effect of the remark, and of others of the same sort,\non his comrade's sombre sensibility.  He had insisted on the fact that\nWaymarsh would quite like Mrs. Pocock--one could be certain he would:\nhe would be with her about everything, and she would also be with HIM,\nand Miss Barrace's nose, in short, would find itself out of joint.\n\nStrether had woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in the\ncourt for Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself quiet\nwhile, caged and leonine, his fellow traveller paced and turned before\nhim.  Chad Newsome was doubtless to be struck, when he arrived, with\nthe sharpness of their opposition at this particular hour; he was to\nremember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came with him and with Strether\nto the street and stood there with a face half-wistful and half-rueful.\nThey talked of him, the two others, as they drove, and Strether put\nChad in possession of much of his own strained sense of things.  He had\nalready, a few days before, named to him the wire he was convinced\ntheir friend had pulled--a confidence that had made on the young man's\npart quite hugely for curiosity and diversion.  The action of the\nmatter, moreover, Strether could see, was to penetrate; he saw that is,\nhow Chad judged a system of influence in which Waymarsh had served as a\ndeterminant--an impression just now quickened again; with the whole\nbearing of such a fact on the youth's view of his relatives.  As it\ncame up between them that they might now take their friend for a\nfeature of the control of these latter now sought to be exerted from\nWoollett, Strether felt indeed how it would be stamped all over him,\nhalf an hour later for Sarah Pocock's eyes, that he was as much on\nChad's \"side\" as Waymarsh had probably described him.  He was letting\nhimself at present, go; there was no denying it; it might be\ndesperation, it might be confidence; he should offer himself to the\narriving travellers bristling with all the lucidity he had cultivated.\n\nHe repeated to Chad what he had been saying in the court to Waymarsh;\nhow there was no doubt whatever that his sister would find the latter a\nkindred spirit, no doubt of the alliance, based on an exchange of\nviews, that the pair would successfully strike up.  They would become\nas thick as thieves--which moreover was but a development of what\nStrether remembered to have said in one of his first discussions with\nhis mate, struck as he had then already been with the elements of\naffinity between that personage and Mrs. Newsome herself.  \"I told him,\none day, when he had questioned me on your mother, that she was a\nperson who, when he should know her, would rouse in him, I was sure, a\nspecial enthusiasm; and that hangs together with the conviction we now\nfeel--this certitude that Mrs. Pocock will take him into her boat.  For\nit's your mother's own boat that she's pulling.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Chad, \"Mother's worth fifty of Sally!\"\n\n\"A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same you'll be\nmeeting your mother's representative--just as I shall.  I feel like the\noutgoing ambassador,\" said Strether, \"doing honour to his appointed\nsuccessor.\"  A moment after speaking as he had just done he felt he had\ninadvertently rather cheapened Mrs. Newsome to her son; an impression\naudibly reflected, as at first seen, in Chad's prompt protest.  He had\nrecently rather failed of apprehension of the young man's attitude and\ntemper--remaining principally conscious of how little worry, at the\nworst, he wasted, and he studied him at this critical hour with renewed\ninterest.  Chad had done exactly what he had promised him a fortnight\nprevious--had accepted without another question his plea for delay.  He\nwas waiting cheerfully and handsomely, but also inscrutably and with a\nslight increase perhaps of the hardness originally involved in his\nacquired high polish.  He was neither excited nor depressed; was easy\nand acute and deliberate--unhurried unflurried unworried, only at most\na little less amused than usual.  Strether felt him more than ever a\njustification of the extraordinary process of which his own absurd\nspirit had been the arena; he knew as their cab rolled along, knew as\nhe hadn't even yet known, that nothing else than what Chad had done and\nhad been would have led to his present showing.  They had made him,\nthese things, what he was, and the business hadn't been easy; it had\ntaken time and trouble, it had cost, above all, a price.  The result at\nany rate was now to be offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that\nwas concerned, was glad to be there to witness.  Would she in the least\nmake it out or take it in, the result, or would she in the least care\nfor it if she did?  He scratched his chin as he asked himself by what\nname, when challenged--as he was sure he should be--he could call it\nfor her.  Oh those were determinations she must herself arrive at;\nsince she wanted so much to see, let her see then and welcome.  She had\ncome out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in Strether's\ninner sense that she practically wouldn't see.\n\nThat this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a\nword that next dropped from him.  \"They're children; they play at\nlife!\"--and the exclamation was significant and reassuring.  It implied\nthat he hadn't then, for his companion's sensibility, appeared to give\nMrs. Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend's presently asking him\nif it were his idea that Mrs. Pocock and Madame de Vionnet should\nbecome acquainted.  Strether was still more sharply struck, hereupon,\nwith Chad's lucidity.  \"Why, isn't that exactly--to get a sight of the\ncompany I keep--what she has come out for?\"\n\n\"Yes--I'm afraid it is,\" Strether unguardedly replied.\n\nChad's quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation.  \"Why do you say\nyou're afraid?\"\n\n\"Well, because I feel a certain responsibility.  It's my testimony, I\nimagine, that will have been at the bottom of Mrs. Pocock's curiosity.\nMy letters, as I've supposed you to understand from the beginning, have\nspoken freely.  I've certainly said my little say about Madame de\nVionnet.\"\n\nAll that, for Chad, was beautifully obvious.  \"Yes, but you've only\nspoken handsomely.\"\n\n\"Never more handsomely of any woman.  But it's just that tone--!\"\n\n\"That tone,\" said Chad, \"that has fetched her?  I dare say; but I've no\nquarrel with you about it.  And no more has Madame de Vionnet. Don't\nyou know by this time how she likes you?\"\n\n\"Oh!\"--and Strether had, with his groan, a real pang of melancholy.\n\"For all I've done for her!\"\n\n\"Ah you've done a great deal.\"\n\nChad's urbanity fairly shamed him, and he was at this moment absolutely\nimpatient to see the face Sarah Pocock would present to a sort of\nthing, as he synthetically phrased it to himself, with no adequate\nforecast of which, despite his admonitions, she would certainly arrive.\n\"I've done THIS!\"\n\n\"Well, this is all right.  She likes,\" Chad comfortably remarked,\n \"to be liked.\"\n\nIt gave his companion a moment's thought.  \"And she's sure Mrs. Pocock\nWILL--?\"\n\n\"No, I say that for you.  She likes your liking her; it's so much, as\nit were,\" Chad laughed, \"to the good.  However, she doesn't despair of\nSarah either, and is prepared, on her own side, to go all lengths.\"\n\n\"In the way of appreciation?\"\n\n\"Yes, and of everything else.  In the way of general amiability,\nhospitality and welcome.  She's under arms,\" Chad laughed again; \"she's\nprepared.\"\n\nStrether took it in; then as if an echo of Miss Barrace were in the\nair:  \"She's wonderful.\"\n\n\"You don't begin to know HOW wonderful!\"\n\nThere was a depth in it, to Strether's ear, of confirmed luxury--almost\na kind of unconscious insolence of proprietorship; but the effect of\nthe glimpse was not at this moment to foster speculation: there was\nsomething so conclusive in so much graceful and generous assurance.  It\nwas in fact a fresh evocation; and the evocation had before many\nminutes another consequence.  \"Well, I shall see her oftener now.  I\nshall see her as much as I like--by your leave; which is what I\nhitherto haven't done.\"\n\n\"It has been,\" said Chad, but without reproach, \"only your own fault. I\ntried to bring you together, and SHE, my dear fellow--I never saw her\nmore charming to any man.  But you've got your extraordinary ideas.\"\n\n\"Well, I DID have,\" Strether murmured, while he felt both how they had\npossessed him and how they had now lost their authority.  He couldn't\nhave traced the sequence to the end, but it was all because of Mrs.\nPocock.  Mrs. Pocock might be because of Mrs. Newsome, but that was\nstill to be proved.  What came over him was the sense of having\nstupidly failed to profit where profit would have been precious.  It\nhad been open to him to see so much more of her, and he had but let the\ngood days pass.  Fierce in him almost was the resolve to lose no more\nof them, and he whimsically reflected, while at Chad's side he drew\nnearer to his destination, that it was after all Sarah who would have\nquickened his chance.  What her visit of inquisition might achieve in\nother directions was as yet all obscure--only not obscure that it would\ndo supremely much to bring two earnest persons together.  He had but to\nlisten to Chad at this moment to feel it; for Chad was in the act of\nremarking to him that they of course both counted on him--he himself\nand the other earnest person--for cheer and support.  It was brave to\nStrether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out\nwas to make things ravishing to the Pococks.  No, if Madame de Vionnet\ncompassed THAT, compassed the ravishment of the Pococks, Madame de\nVionnet would be prodigious.  It would be a beautiful plan if it\nsucceeded, and it all came to the question of Sarah's being really\nbribeable.  The precedent of his own case helped Strether perhaps but\nlittle to consider she might prove so; it being distinct that her\ncharacter would rather make for every possible difference.  This idea\nof his own bribeability set him apart for himself; with the further\nmark in fact that his case was absolutely proved.  He liked always,\nwhere Lambert Strether was concerned, to know the worst, and what he\nnow seemed to know was not only that he was bribeable, but that he had\nbeen effectually bribed.  The only difficulty was that he couldn't\nquite have said with what.  It was as if he had sold himself, but\nhadn't somehow got the cash.  That, however, was what,\ncharacteristically, WOULD happen to him.  It would naturally be his\nkind of traffic.  While he thought of these things he reminded Chad of\nthe truth they mustn't lose sight of--the truth that, with all\ndeference to her susceptibility to new interests, Sarah would have come\nout with a high firm definite purpose.  \"She hasn't come out, you know,\nto be bamboozled. We may all be ravishing--nothing perhaps can be more\neasy for us; but she hasn't come out to be ravished.  She has come out\njust simply to take you home.\"\n\n\"Oh well, with HER I'll go,\" said Chad good-humouredly.  \"I suppose\nyou'll allow THAT.\"  And then as for a minute Strether said nothing:\n\"Or is your idea that when I've seen her I shan't want to go?\"  As this\nquestion, however, again left his friend silent he presently went on:\n\"My own idea at any rate is that they shall have while they're here the\nbest sort of time.\"\n\nIt was at this that Strether spoke.  \"Ah there you are! I think if you\nreally wanted to go--!\"\n\n\"Well?\" said Chad to bring it out.\n\n\"Well, you wouldn't trouble about our good time.  You wouldn't care\nwhat sort of a time we have.\"\n\nChad could always take in the easiest way in the world any ingenious\nsuggestion.  \"I see.  But can I help it?  I'm too decent.\"\n\n\"Yes, you're too decent!\" Strether heavily sighed.  And he felt for the\nmoment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission.\n\nIt ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made no\nrejoinder.  But he spoke again as they came in sight of the station.\n\"Do you mean to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?\"\n\nAs to this Strether was ready.  \"No.\"\n\n\"But haven't you told me they know about her?\"\n\n\"I think I've told you your mother knows.\"\n\n\"And won't she have told Sally?\"\n\n\"That's one of the things I want to see.\"\n\n\"And if you find she HAS--?\"\n\n\"Will I then, you mean, bring them together?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Chad with his pleasant promptness:  \"to show her there's\nnothing in it.\"\n\nStrether hesitated.  \"I don't know that I care very much what she may\nthink there's in it.\"\n\n\"Not if it represents what Mother thinks?\"\n\n\"Ah what DOES your mother think?\"  There was in this some sound of\nbewilderment.\n\nBut they were just driving up, and help, of a sort, might after all be\nquite at hand.  \"Isn't that, my dear man, what we're both just going to\nmake out?\"\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nStrether quitted the station half an hour later in different company.\nChad had taken charge, for the journey to the hotel, of Sarah, Mamie,\nthe maid and the luggage, all spaciously installed and conveyed; and it\nwas only after the four had rolled away that his companion got into a\ncab with Jim.  A strange new feeling had come over Strether, in\nconsequence of which his spirits had risen; it was as if what had\noccurred on the alighting of his critics had been something other than\nhis fear, though his fear had vet not been of an instant scene of\nviolence.  His impression had been nothing but what was inevitable--he\nsaid that to himself; yet relief and reassurance had softly dropped\nupon him.  Nothing could be so odd as to be indebted for these things\nto the look of faces and the sound of voices that had been with him to\nsatiety, as he might have said, for years; but he now knew, all the\nsame, how uneasy he had felt; that was brought home to him by his\npresent sense of a respite.  It had come moreover in the flash of an\neye, it had come in the smile with which Sarah, whom, at the window of\nher compartment, they had effusively greeted from the platform, rustled\ndown to them a moment later, fresh and handsome from her cool June\nprogress through the charming land.  It was only a sign, but enough:\nshe was going to be gracious and unallusive, she was going to play the\nlarger game--which was still more apparent, after she had emerged from\nChad's arms, in her direct greeting to the valued friend of her family.\n\nStrether WAS then as much as ever the valued friend of her family, it\nwas something he could at all events go on with; and the manner of his\nresponse to it expressed even for himself how little he had enjoyed the\nprospect of ceasing to figure in that likeness.  He had always seen\nSarah gracious--had in fact rarely seen her shy or dry, her marked\nthin-lipped smile, intense without brightness and as prompt to act as\nthe scrape of a safety-match; the protrusion of her rather remarkably\nlong chin, which in her case represented invitation and urbanity, and\nnot, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance; the penetration of her\nvoice to a distance, the general encouragement and approval of her\nmanner, were all elements with which intercourse had made him familiar,\nbut which he noted today almost as if she had been a new acquaintance.\nThis first glimpse of her had given a brief but vivid accent to her\nresemblance to her mother; he could have taken her for Mrs. Newsome\nwhile she met his eyes as the train rolled into the station.  It was an\nimpression that quickly dropped; Mrs. Newsome was much handsomer, and\nwhile Sarah inclined to the massive her mother had, at an age, still\nthe girdle of a maid; also the latter's chin was rather short, than\nlong, and her smile, by good fortune, much more, oh ever so much more,\nmercifully vague.  Strether had seen Mrs. Newsome reserved; he had\nliterally heard her silent, though he had never known her unpleasant.\nIt was the case with Mrs. Pocock that he had known HER unpleasant, even\nthough he had never known her not affable.  She had forms of affability\nthat were in a high degree assertive; nothing for instance had ever\nbeen more striking than that she was affable to Jim.\n\nWhat had told in any case at the window of the train was her high clear\nforehead, that forehead which her friends, for some reason, always\nthought of as a \"brow\"; the long reach of her eyes--it came out at this\njuncture in such a manner as to remind him, oddly enough, also of that\nof Waymarsh's; and the unusual gloss of her dark hair, dressed and\nhatted, after her mother's refined example, with such an avoidance of\nextremes that it was always spoken of at Woollett as \"their own.\"\nThough this analogy dropped as soon as she was on the platform it had\nlasted long enough to make him feel all the advantage, as it were, of\nhis relief.  The woman at home, the woman to whom he was attached, was\nbefore him just long enough to give him again the measure of the\nwretchedness, in fact really of the shame, of their having to recognise\nthe formation, between them, of a \"split.\"  He had taken this measure\nin solitude and meditation:  but the catastrophe, as Sarah steamed up,\nlooked for its seconds unprecedentedly dreadful--or proved, more\nexactly, altogether unthinkable; so that his finding something free and\nfamiliar to respond to brought with it an instant renewal of his\nloyalty.  He had suddenly sounded the whole depth, had gasped at what\nhe might have lost.\n\nWell, he could now, for the quarter of an hour of their detention hover\nabout the travellers as soothingly as if their direct message to him\nwas that he had lost nothing.  He wasn't going to have Sarah write to\nher mother that night that he was in any way altered or strange.  There\nhad been times enough for a month when it had seemed to him that he was\nstrange, that he was altered, in every way; but that was a matter for\nhimself; he knew at least whose business it was not; it was not at all\nevents such a circumstance as Sarah's own unaided lights would help her\nto.  Even if she had come out to flash those lights more than yet\nappeared she wouldn't make much headway against mere pleasantness.  He\ncounted on being able to be merely pleasant to the end, and if only\nfrom incapacity moreover to formulate anything different.  He couldn't\neven formulate to himself his being changed and queer; it had taken\nplace, the process, somewhere deep down; Maria Gostrey had caught\nglimpses of it; but how was he to fish it up, even if he desired, for\nMrs. Pocock?  This was then the spirit in which he hovered, and with\nthe easier throb in it much indebted furthermore to the impression of\nhigh and established adequacy as a pretty girl promptly produced in him\nby Mamie.  He had wondered vaguely--turning over many things in the\nfidget of his thoughts--if Mamie WERE as pretty as Woollett published\nher; as to which issue seeing her now again was to be so swept away by\nWoollett's opinion that this consequence really let loose for the\nimagination an avalanche of others.  There were positively five minutes\nin which the last word seemed of necessity to abide with a Woollett\nrepresented by a Mamie.  This was the sort of truth the place itself\nwould feel; it would send her forth in confidence; it would point to\nher with triumph; it would take its stand on her with assurance; it\nwould be conscious of no requirements she didn't meet, of no question\nshe couldn't answer.\n\nWell, it was right, Strether slipped smoothly enough into the\ncheerfulness of saying:  granted that a community MIGHT be best\nrepresented by a young lady of twenty-two, Mamie perfectly played the\npart, played it as if she were used to it, and looked and spoke and\ndressed the character.  He wondered if she mightn't, in the high light\nof Paris, a cool full studio-light, becoming yet treacherous, show as\ntoo conscious of these matters; but the next moment he felt satisfied\nthat her consciousness was after all empty for its size, rather too\nsimple than too mixed, and that the kind way with her would be not to\ntake many things out of it, but to put as many as possible in.  She was\nrobust and conveniently tall; just a trifle too bloodlessly fair\nperhaps, but with a pleasant public familiar radiance that affirmed her\nvitality.  She might have been \"receiving\" for Woollett, wherever she\nfound herself, and there was something in her manner, her tone, her\nmotion, her pretty blue eyes, her pretty perfect teeth and her very\nsmall, too small, nose, that immediately placed her, to the fancy,\nbetween the windows of a hot bright room in which voices were high--up\nat that end to which people were brought to be \"presented.\" They were\nthere to congratulate, these images, and Strether's renewed vision, on\nthis hint, completed the idea.  What Mamie was like was the happy\nbride, the bride after the church and just before going away.  She\nwasn't the mere maiden, and yet was only as much married as that\nquantity came to.  She was in the brilliant acclaimed festal stage.\nWell, might it last her long!\n\nStrether rejoiced in these things for Chad, who was all genial\nattention to the needs of his friends, besides having arranged that his\nservant should reinforce him; the ladies were certainly pleasant to\nsee, and Mamie would be at any time and anywhere pleasant to exhibit.\nShe would look extraordinarily like his young wife--the wife of a\nhoneymoon, should he go about with her; but that was his own affair--or\nperhaps it was hers; it was at any rate something she couldn't help.\nStrether remembered how he had seen him come up with Jeanne de Vionnet\nin Gloriani's garden, and the fancy he had had about that--the fancy\nobscured now, thickly overlaid with others; the recollection was during\nthese minutes his only note of trouble.  He had often, in spite of\nhimself, wondered if Chad but too probably were not with Jeanne the\nobject of a still and shaded flame.  It was on the cards that the child\nMIGHT be tremulously in love, and this conviction now flickered up not\na bit the less for his disliking to think of it, for its being, in a\ncomplicated situation, a complication the more, and for something\nindescribable in Mamie, something at all events straightway lent her by\nhis own mind, something that gave her value, gave her intensity and\npurpose, as the symbol of an opposition.  Little Jeanne wasn't really\nat all in question--how COULD she be?--yet from the moment Miss Pocock\nhad shaken her skirts on the platform, touched up the immense bows of\nher hat and settled properly over her shoulder the strap of her\nmorocco-and-gilt travelling-satchel, from that moment little Jeanne was\nopposed.\n\nIt was in the cab with Jim that impressions really crowded on Strether,\ngiving him the strangest sense of length of absence from people among\nwhom he had lived for years.  Having them thus come out to him was as\nif he had returned to find them:  and the droll promptitude of Jim's\nmental reaction threw his own initiation far back into the past.\nWhoever might or mightn't be suited by what was going on among them,\nJim, for one, would certainly be:  his instant recognition--frank and\nwhimsical--of what the affair was for HIM gave Strether a glow of\npleasure.  \"I say, you know, this IS about my shape, and if it hadn't\nbeen for YOU--!\" so he broke out as the charming streets met his\nhealthy appetite; and he wound up, after an expressive nudge, with a\nclap of his companion's knee and an \"Oh you, you--you ARE doing it!\"\nthat was charged with rich meaning. Strether felt in it the intention\nof homage, but, with a curiosity otherwise occupied, postponed taking\nit up.  What he was asking himself for the time was how Sarah Pocock,\nin the opportunity already given her, had judged her brother--from whom\nhe himself, as they finally, at the station, separated for their\ndifferent conveyances, had had a look into which he could read more\nthan one message.  However Sarah was judging her brother, Chad's\nconclusion about his sister, and about her husband and her husband's\nsister, was at the least on the way not to fail of confidence. Strether\nfelt the confidence, and that, as the look between them was an\nexchange, what he himself gave back was relatively vague.  This\ncomparison of notes however could wait; everything struck him as\ndepending on the effect produced by Chad.  Neither Sarah nor Mamie had\nin any way, at the station--where they had had after all ample\ntime--broken out about it; which, to make up for this, was what our\nfriend had expected of Jim as soon as they should find themselves\ntogether.\n\nIt was queer to him that he had that noiseless brush with Chad; an\nironic intelligence with this youth on the subject of his relatives, an\nintelligence carried on under their nose and, as might be said, at\ntheir expense--such a matter marked again for him strongly the number\nof stages he had come; albeit that if the number seemed great the time\ntaken for the final one was but the turn of a hand.  He had before this\nhad many moments of wondering if he himself weren't perhaps changed\neven as Chad was changed.  Only what in Chad was conspicuous\nimprovement--well, he had no name ready for the working, in his own\norganism, of his own more timid dose.  He should have to see first what\nthis action would amount to. And for his occult passage with the young\nman, after all, the directness of it had no greater oddity than the\nfact that the young man's way with the three travellers should have\nbeen so happy a manifestation.  Strether liked him for it, on the spot,\nas he hadn't yet liked him; it affected him while it lasted as he might\nhave been affected by some light pleasant perfect work of art:  to that\ndegree that he wondered if they were really worthy of it, took it in\nand did it justice; to that degree that it would have been scarce a\nmiracle if, there in the luggage-room, while they waited for their\nthings, Sarah had pulled his sleeve and drawn him aside. \"You're right;\nwe haven't quite known what you mean, Mother and I, but now we see.\nChad's magnificent; what can one want more?  If THIS is the kind of\nthing--!\"  On which they might, as it were, have embraced and begun to\nwork together.\n\nAh how much, as it was, for all her bridling brightness--which was\nmerely general and noticed nothing--WOULD they work together? Strether\nknew he was unreasonable; he set it down to his being nervous:  people\ncouldn't notice everything and speak of everything in a quarter of an\nhour.  Possibly, no doubt, also, he made too much of Chad's display.\nYet, none the less, when, at the end of five minutes, in the cab, Jim\nPocock had said nothing either--hadn't said, that is, what Strether\nwanted, though he had said much else--it all suddenly bounced back to\ntheir being either stupid or wilful.  It was more probably on the whole\nthe former; so that that would be the drawback of the bridling\nbrightness.  Yes, they would bridle and be bright; they would make the\nbest of what was before them, but their observation would fail; it\nwould be beyond them; they simply wouldn't understand.  Of what use\nwould it be then that they had come?--if they weren't to be intelligent\nup to THAT point: unless indeed he himself were utterly deluded and\nextravagant?  Was he, on this question of Chad's improvement, fantastic\nand away from the truth?  Did he live in a false world, a world that\nhad grown simply to suit him, and was his present slight irritation--in\nthe face now of Jim's silence in particular--but the alarm of the vain\nthing menaced by the touch of the real?  Was this contribution of the\nreal possibly the mission of the Pococks?--had they come to make the\nwork of observation, as HE had practised observation, crack and\ncrumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms in which honest minds\ncould deal with him?  Had they come in short to be sane where Strether\nwas destined to feel that he himself had only been silly?\n\nHe glanced at such a contingency, but it failed to hold him long when\nonce he had reflected that he would have been silly, in this case, with\nMaria Gostrey and little Bilham, with Madame de Vionnet and little\nJeanne, with Lambert Strether, in fine, and above all with Chad Newsome\nhimself.  Wouldn't it be found to have made more for reality to be\nsilly with these persons than sane with Sarah and Jim?  Jim in fact, he\npresently made up his mind, was individually out of it; Jim didn't\ncare; Jim hadn't come out either for Chad or for him; Jim in short left\nthe moral side to Sally and indeed simply availed himself now, for the\nsense of recreation, of the fact that he left almost everything to\nSally.  He was nothing compared to Sally, and not so much by reason of\nSally's temper and will as by that of her more developed type and\ngreater acquaintance with the world.  He quite frankly and serenely\nconfessed, as he sat there with Strether, that he felt his type hang\nfar in the rear of his wife's and still further, if possible, in the\nrear of his sister's.  Their types, he well knew, were recognised and\nacclaimed; whereas the most a leading Woollett business-man could hope\nto achieve socially, and for that matter industrially, was a certain\nfreedom to play into this general glamour.\n\nThe impression he made on our friend was another of the things that\nmarked our friend's road.  It was a strange impression, especially as\nso soon produced; Strether had received it, he judged, all in the\ntwenty minutes; it struck him at least as but in a minor degree the\nwork of the long Woollett years.  Pocock was normally and consentingly\nthough not quite wittingly out of the question.  It was despite his\nbeing normal; it was despite his being cheerful; it was despite his\nbeing a leading Woollett business-man; and the determination of his\nfate left him thus perfectly usual--as everything else about it was\nclearly, to his sense, not less so.  He seemed to say that there was a\nwhole side of life on which the perfectly usual WAS for leading\nWoollett business-men to be out of the question.  He made no more of it\nthan that, and Strether, so far as Jim was concerned, desired to make\nno more.  Only Strether's imagination, as always, worked, and he asked\nhimself if this side of life were not somehow connected, for those who\nfigured on it with the fact of marriage.  Would HIS relation to it, had\nhe married ten years before, have become now the same as Pocock's?\nMight it even become the same should he marry in a few months?  Should\nhe ever know himself as much out of the question for Mrs. Newsome as\nJim knew himself--in a dim way--for Mrs. Jim?\n\nTo turn his eyes in that direction was to be personally reassured; he\nwas different from Pocock; he had affirmed himself differently and was\nheld after all in higher esteem.  What none the less came home to him,\nhowever, at this hour, was that the society over there, that of which\nSarah and Mamie--and, in a more eminent way, Mrs. Newsome herself--were\nspecimens, was essentially a society of women, and that poor Jim wasn't\nin it.  He himself Lambert Strether, WAS as yet in some degree--which\nwas an odd situation for a man; but it kept coming back to him in a\nwhimsical way that he should perhaps find his marriage had cost him his\nplace.  This occasion indeed, whatever that fancy represented, was not\na time of sensible exclusion for Jim, who was in a state of manifest\nresponse to the charm of his adventure.  Small and fat and constantly\nfacetious, straw-coloured and destitute of marks, he would have been\npractically indistinguishable hadn't his constant preference for\nlight-grey clothes, for white hats, for very big cigars and very little\nstories, done what it could for his identity.  There were signs in him,\nthough none of them plaintive, of always paying for others; and the\nprincipal one perhaps was just this failure of type.  It was with this\nthat he paid, rather than with fatigue or waste; and also doubtless a\nlittle with the effort of humour--never irrelevant to the conditions,\nto the relations, with which he was acquainted.\n\nHe gurgled his joy as they rolled through the happy streets; he\ndeclared that his trip was a regular windfall, and that he wasn't\nthere, he was eager to remark, to hang back from anything:  he didn't\nknow quite what Sally had come for, but HE had come for a good time.\nStrether indulged him even while wondering if what Sally wanted her\nbrother to go back for was to become like her husband. He trusted that\na good time was to be, out and out, the programme for all of them; and\nhe assented liberally to Jim's proposal that, disencumbered and\nirresponsible--his things were in the omnibus with those of the\nothers--they should take a further turn round before going to the\nhotel.  It wasn't for HIM to tackle Chad--it was Sally's job; and as it\nwould be like her, he felt, to open fire on the spot, it wouldn't be\namiss of them to hold off and give her time.  Strether, on his side,\nonly asked to give her time; so he jogged with his companion along\nboulevards and avenues, trying to extract from meagre material some\nforecast of his catastrophe.  He was quick enough to see that Jim\nPocock declined judgement, had hovered quite round the outer edge of\ndiscussion and anxiety, leaving all analysis of their question to the\nladies alone and now only feeling his way toward some small droll\ncynicism.  It broke out afresh, the cynicism--it had already shown a\nflicker--in a but slightly deferred:  \"Well, hanged if I would if I\nwere he!\"\n\n\"You mean you wouldn't in Chad's place--?\"\n\n\"Give up this to go back and boss the advertising!\"  Poor Jim, with his\narms folded and his little legs out in the open fiacre, drank in the\nsparkling Paris noon and carried his eyes from one side of their vista\nto the other.  \"Why I want to come right out and live here myself.  And\nI want to live while I AM here too.  I feel with YOU--oh you've been\ngrand, old man, and I've twigged--that it ain't right to worry Chad.  I\ndon't mean to persecute him; I couldn't in conscience.  It's thanks to\nyou at any rate that I'm here, and I'm sure I'm much obliged.  You're a\nlovely pair.\"\n\nThere were things in this speech that Strether let pass for the time.\n\"Don't you then think it important the advertising should be thoroughly\ntaken in hand?  Chad WILL be, so far as capacity is concerned,\" he went\non, \"the man to do it.\"\n\n\"Where did he get his capacity,\" Jim asked, \"over here?\"\n\n\"He didn't get it over here, and the wonderful thing is that over here\nhe hasn't inevitably lost it.  He has a natural turn for business, an\nextraordinary head.  He comes by that,\" Strether explained, \"honestly\nenough.  He's in that respect his father's son, and also--for she's\nwonderful in her way too--his mother's.  He has other tastes and other\ntendencies; but Mrs. Newsome and your wife are quite right about his\nhaving that.  He's very remarkable.\"\n\n\"Well, I guess he is!\"  Jim Pocock comfortably sighed.  \"But if you've\nbelieved so in his making us hum, why have you so prolonged the\ndiscussion?  Don't you know we've been quite anxious about you?\"\n\nThese questions were not informed with earnestness, but Strether saw he\nmust none the less make a choice and take a line.  \"Because, you see,\nI've greatly liked it.  I've liked my Paris, I dare say I've liked it\ntoo much.\"\n\n\"Oh you old wretch!\" Jim gaily exclaimed.\n\n\"But nothing's concluded,\" Strether went on.  \"The case is more complex\nthan it looks from Woollett.\"\n\n\"Oh well, it looks bad enough from Woollett!\" Jim declared.\n\n\"Even after all I've written?\"\n\nJim bethought himself.  \"Isn't it what you've written that has made\nMrs. Newsome pack us off?  That at least and Chad's not turning up?\"\n\nStrether made a reflexion of his own.  \"I see.  That she should do\nsomething was, no doubt, inevitable, and your wife has therefore of\ncourse come out to act.\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" Jim concurred--\"to act.  But Sally comes out to act, you\nknow,\" he lucidly added, \"every time she leaves the house.  She never\ncomes out but she DOES act.  She's acting moreover now for her mother,\nand that fixes the scale.\" Then he wound up, opening all his senses to\nit, with a renewed embrace of pleasant Paris.  \"We haven't all the same\nat Woollett got anything like this.\"\n\nStrether continued to consider.  \"I'm bound to say for you all that you\nstrike me as having arrived in a very mild and reasonable frame of\nmind.  You don't show your claws.  I felt just now in Mrs. Pocock no\nsymptom of that.  She isn't fierce,\" he went on.  \"I'm such a nervous\nidiot that I thought she might be.\"\n\n\"Oh don't you know her well enough,\" Pocock asked, \"to have noticed\nthat she never gives herself away, any more than her mother ever does?\nThey ain't fierce, either of 'em; they let you come quite close.  They\nwear their fur the smooth side out--the warm side in. Do you know what\nthey are?\" Jim pursued as he looked about him, giving the question, as\nStrether felt, but half his care--\"do you know what they are?  They're\nabout as intense as they can live.\"\n\n\"Yes\"--and Strether's concurrence had a positive precipitation;\n\"they're about as intense as they can live.\"\n\n\"They don't lash about and shake the cage,\" said Jim, who seemed\npleased with his analogy; \"and it's at feeding-time that they're\nquietest.  But they always get there.\"\n\n\"They do indeed--they always get there!\" Strether replied with a laugh\nthat justified his confession of nervousness.  He disliked to be\ntalking sincerely of Mrs.  Newsome with Pocock; he could have talked\ninsincerely.  But there was something he wanted to know, a need created\nin him by her recent intermission, by his having given from the first\nso much, as now more than ever appeared to him, and got so little.  It\nwas as if a queer truth in his companion's metaphor had rolled over him\nwith a rush.  She HAD been quiet at feeding-time; she had fed, and\nSarah had fed with her, out of the big bowl of all his recent free\ncommunication, his vividness and pleasantness, his ingenuity and even\nhis eloquence, while the current of her response had steadily run thin.\nJim meanwhile however, it was true, slipped characteristically into\nshallowness from the moment he ceased to speak out of the experience of\na husband.\n\n\"But of course Chad has now the advantage of being there before her. If\nhe doesn't work that for all it's worth--!\"  He sighed with contingent\npity at his brother-in-law's possible want of resource. \"He has worked\nit on YOU, pretty well, eh?\" and he asked the next moment if there were\nanything new at the Varieties, which he pronounced in the American\nmanner.  They talked about the Varieties--Strether confessing to a\nknowledge which produced again on Pocock's part a play of innuendo as\nvague as a nursery-rhyme, yet as aggressive as an elbow in his side;\nand they finished their drive under the protection of easy themes.\nStrether waited to the end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim\nhad seen Chad as different;  and he could scarce have explained the\ndiscouragement he drew from the absence of this testimony.  It was what\nhe had taken his own stand on,  so far as he had taken a stand; and if\nthey were all only going to see nothing he had only wasted his time. He\ngave his friend till the very last moment, till they had come into\nsight of the hotel; and when poor Pocock only continued cheerful and\nenvious and funny he fairly grew to dislike him, to feel him\nextravagantly common.  If they were ALL going to see\nnothing!--Strether knew,  as this came back to him, that he was also\nletting Pocock represent for him what Mrs. Newsome wouldn't see.  He\nwent on disliking, in the light of Jim's commonness, to talk to him\nabout that lady; yet just before the cab pulled up he knew the extent\nof his desire for the real word from Woollett.\n\n\"Has Mrs. Newsome at all given way--?\"\n\n\"'Given way'?\"--Jim echoed it with the practical derision of his sense\nof a long past.\n\n\"Under the strain, I mean, of hope deferred, of disappointment repeated\nand thereby intensified.\"\n\n\"Oh is she prostrate, you mean?\"--he had his categories in hand. \"Why\nyes, she's prostrate--just as Sally is.  But they're never so lively,\nyou know, as when they're prostrate.\"\n\n\"Ah Sarah's prostrate?\" Strether vaguely murmured.\n\n\"It's when they're prostrate that they most sit up.\"\n\n\"And Mrs. Newsome's sitting up?\"\n\n\"All night, my boy--for YOU!\"  And Jim fetched him,  with a vulgar\nlittle guffaw, a thrust that gave relief to the picture.  But he had\ngot what he wanted.  He felt on the spot that this WAS the real word\nfrom Woollett.  \"So don't you go home!\" Jim added while he alighted and\nwhile his friend, letting him profusely pay the cabman,  sat on in a\nmomentary muse.  Strether wondered if that were the real word too.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nAs the door of Mrs. Pocock's salon was pushed open for him, the next\nday, well before noon, he was reached by a voice with a charming sound\nthat made him just falter before crossing the threshold.  Madame de\nVionnet was already on the field, and this gave the drama a quicker\npace than he felt it as yet--though his suspense had increased--in the\npower of any act of his own to do. He had spent the previous evening\nwith all his old friends together yet he would still have described\nhimself as quite in the dark in respect to a forecast of their\ninfluence on his situation. It was strange now, none the less, that in\nthe light of this unexpected note of her presence he felt Madame de\nVionnet a part of that situation as she hadn't even yet been.  She was\nalone, he found himself assuming, with Sarah, and there was a bearing\nin that--somehow beyond his control--on his personal fate.  Yet she was\nonly saying something quite easy and independent--the thing she had\ncome, as a good friend of Chad's, on purpose to say. \"There isn't\nanything at all--?  I should be so delighted.\"\n\nIt was clear enough, when they were there before him, how she had been\nreceived.  He saw this, as Sarah got up to greet him, from something\nfairly hectic in Sarah's face.  He saw furthermore that they weren't,\nas had first come to him, alone together; he was at no loss as to the\nidentity of the broad high back presented to him in the embrasure of\nthe window furthest from the door. Waymarsh, whom he had to-day not yet\nseen,  whom he only knew to have left the hotel before him,  and who\nhad taken part, the night previous, on Mrs.  Pocock's kind invitation,\nconveyed by Chad, in the entertainment, informal but cordial, promptly\noffered by that lady--Waymarsh had anticipated him even as Madame de\nVionnet had done, and, with his hands in his pockets and his attitude\nunaffected by Strether's entrance, was looking out, in marked\ndetachment, at the Rue de Rivoli.  The latter felt it in the air--it\nwas immense how Waymarsh could mark things---that he had remained\ndeeply dissociated from the overture to their hostess that we have\nrecorded on Madame de Vionnet's side.  He had, conspicuously, tact,\nbesides a stiff general view; and this was why he had left Mrs. Pocock\nto struggle alone.  He would outstay the visitor; he would\nunmistakeably wait; to what had he been doomed for months past but\nwaiting?  Therefore she was to feel that she had him in reserve. What\nsupport she drew from this was still to be seen, for, although Sarah\nwas vividly bright, she had given herself up for the moment to an\nambiguous flushed formalism.  She had had to reckon more quickly than\nshe expected; but it concerned her first of all to signify that she was\nnot to be taken unawares.  Strether arrived precisely in time for her\nshowing it.  \"Oh you're too good; but I don't think I feel quite\nhelpless.  I have my brother--and these American friends.  And then you\nknow I've been to Paris.  I KNOW Paris,\" said Sally Pocock in a tone\nthat breathed a certain chill on Strether's heart.\n\n\"Ah but a woman, in this tiresome place where everything's always\nchanging, a woman of good will,\" Madame de Vionnet threw off, \"can\nalways help a woman.  I'm sure you 'know'--but we know perhaps\ndifferent things.\" She too, visibly, wished to make no mistake; but it\nwas a fear of a different order and more kept out of sight.  She smiled\nin welcome at Strether; she greeted him more familiarly than Mrs.\nPocock; she put out her hand to him without moving from her place; and\nit came to him in the course of a minute and in the oddest way\nthat--yes, positively--she was giving him over to ruin. She was all\nkindness and ease, but she couldn't help so giving him; she was\nexquisite, and her being just as she was poured for Sarah a sudden rush\nof meaning into his own equivocations.  How could she know how she was\nhurting him?  She wanted to show as simple and humble--in the degree\ncompatible with operative charm; but it was just this that seemed to\nput him on her side.  She struck him as dressed, as arranged, as\nprepared infinitely to conciliate--with the very poetry of good taste\nin her view of the conditions of her early call.  She was ready to\nadvise about dressmakers and shops; she held herself wholly at the\ndisposition of Chad's family. Strether noticed her card on the\ntable--her coronet and her \"Comtesse\"--and the imagination was sharp in\nhim of certain private adjustments in Sarah's mind.  She had never, he\nwas sure, sat with a \"Comtesse\" before, and such was the specimen of\nthat class he had been keeping to play on her.  She had crossed the sea\nvery particularly for a look at her; but he read in Madame de Vionnet's\nown eyes that this curiosity hadn't been so successfully met as that\nshe herself wouldn't now have more than ever need of him.  She looked\nmuch as she had looked to him that morning at Notre Dame; he noted in\nfact the suggestive sameness of her discreet and delicate dress.  It\nseemed to speak--perhaps a little prematurely or too finely--of the\nsense in which she would help Mrs. Pocock with the shops.  The way that\nlady took her in, moreover, added depth to his impression of what Miss\nGostrey, by their common wisdom, had escaped.  He winced as he saw\nhimself but for that timely prudence ushering in Maria as a guide and\nan example.  There was however a touch of relief for him in his\nglimpse, so far as he had got it, of Sarah's line.  She \"knew Paris.\"\nMadame de Vionnet had, for that matter, lightly taken this up.  \"Ah\nthen you've a turn for that, an affinity that belongs to your family.\nYour brother, though his long experience makes a difference, I admit,\nhas become one of us in a marvellous way.\" And she appealed to Strether\nin the manner of a woman who could always glide off with smoothness\ninto another subject.  Wasn't HE struck with the way Mr. Newsome had\nmade the place his own, and hadn't he been in a position to profit by\nhis friend's wondrous expertness?\n\nStrether felt the bravery, at the least, of her presenting herself so\npromptly to sound that note, and yet asked himself what other note,\nafter all, she COULD strike from the moment she presented herself at\nall.  She could meet Mrs. Pocock only on the ground of the obvious, and\nwhat feature of Chad's situation was more eminent than the fact that he\nhad created for himself a new set of circumstances?  Unless she hid\nherself altogether she could show but as one of these, an illustration\nof his domiciled and indeed of his confirmed condition.  And the\nconsciousness of all this in her charming eyes was so clear and fine\nthat as she thus publicly drew him into her boat she produced in him\nsuch a silent agitation as he was not to fail afterwards to denounce as\npusillanimous.  \"Ah don't be so charming to me!--for it makes us\nintimate, and after all what IS between us when I've been so\ntremendously on my guard and have seen you but half a dozen times?\"  He\nrecognised once more the perverse law that so inveterately governed his\npoor personal aspects:  it would be exactly LIKE the way things always\nturned out for him that he should affect Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh as\nlaunched in a relation in which he had really never been launched at\nall. They were at this very moment--they could only be--attributing to\nhim the full licence of it, and all by the operation of her own tone\nwith him; whereas his sole licence had been to cling with intensity to\nthe brink, not to dip so much as a toe into the flood. But the flicker\nof his fear on this occasion was not, as may be added, to repeat\nitself; it sprang up, for its moment, only to die down and then go out\nfor ever.  To meet his fellow visitor's invocation and, with Sarah's\nbrilliant eyes on him, answer, WAS quite sufficiently to step into her\nboat.  During the rest of the time her visit lasted he felt himself\nproceed to each of the proper offices, successively, for helping to\nkeep the adventurous skiff afloat.  It rocked beneath him, but he\nsettled himself in his place. He took up an oar and, since he was to\nhave the credit of pulling, pulled.\n\n\"That will make it all the pleasanter if it so happens that we DO\nmeet,\" Madame de Vionnet had further observed in reference to Mrs.\nPocock's mention of her initiated state; and she had immediately added\nthat, after all, her hostess couldn't be in need with the good offices\nof Mr. Strether so close at hand.  \"It's he, I gather, who has learnt\nto know his Paris, and to love it, better than any one ever before in\nso short a time; so that between him and your brother, when it comes to\nthe point, how can you possibly want for good guidance?  The great\nthing, Mr. Strether will show you,\" she smiled, \"is just to let one's\nself go.\"\n\n\"Oh I've not let myself go very far,\" Strether answered, feeling quite\nas if he had been called upon to hint to Mrs. Pocock how Parisians\ncould talk.  \"I'm only afraid of showing I haven't let myself go far\nenough.  I've taken a good deal of time, but I must quite have had the\nair of not budging from one spot.\" He looked at Sarah in a manner that\nhe thought she might take as engaging, and he made, under Madame de\nVionnet's protection, as it were, his first personal point.  \"What has\nreally happened has been that, all the while, I've done what I came out\nfor.\"\n\nYet it only at first gave Madame de Vionnet a chance immediately to\ntake him up.  \"You've renewed acquaintance with your friend--you've\nlearnt to know him again.\" She spoke with such cheerful helpfulness\nthat they might, in a common cause, have been calling together and\npledged to mutual aid.\n\nWaymarsh, at this, as if he had been in question, straightway turned\nfrom the window.  \"Oh yes, Countess--he has renewed acquaintance with\nME, and he HAS, I guess, learnt something about me, though I don't know\nhow much he has liked it.  It's for Strether himself to say whether he\nhas felt it justifies his course.\"\n\n\"Oh but YOU,\" said the Countess gaily, \"are not in the least what he\ncame out for--is he really, Strether? and I hadn't you at all in my\nmind.  I was thinking of Mr. Newsome, of whom we think so much and with\nwhom, precisely, Mrs. Pocock has given herself the opportunity to take\nup threads.  What a pleasure for you both!\" Madame de Vionnet, with her\neyes on Sarah, bravely continued.\n\nMrs. Pocock met her handsomely, but Strether quickly saw she meant to\naccept no version of her movements or plans from any other lips. She\nrequired no patronage and no support, which were but other names for a\nfalse position; she would show in her own way what she chose to show,\nand this she expressed with a dry glitter that recalled to him a fine\nWoollett winter morning.  \"I've never wanted for opportunities to see\nmy brother.  We've many things to think of at home, and great\nresponsibilities and occupations, and our home's not an impossible\nplace.  We've plenty of reasons,\" Sarah continued a little piercingly,\n\"for everything we do\"--and in short she wouldn't give herself the\nleast little scrap away.  But she added as one who was always bland and\nwho could afford a concession:  \"I've come because--well, because we do\ncome.\"\n\n\"Ah then fortunately!\"--Madame de Vionnet breathed it to the air. Five\nminutes later they were on their feet for her to take leave, standing\ntogether in an affability that had succeeded in surviving a further\nexchange of remarks; only with the emphasised appearance on Waymarsh's\npart of a tendency to revert, in a ruminating manner and as with an\ninstinctive or a precautionary lightening of his tread, to an open\nwindow and his point of vantage.  The glazed and gilded room, all red\ndamask, ormolu, mirrors, clocks, looked south, and the shutters were\nbowed upon the summer morning; but the Tuileries garden and what was\nbeyond it, over which the whole place hung, were things visible through\ngaps; so that the far-spreading presence of Paris came up in coolness,\ndimness and invitation, in the twinkle of gilt-tipped palings, the\ncrunch of gravel, the click of hoofs, the crack of whips, things that\nsuggested some parade of the circus.  \"I think it probable,\" said Mrs.\nPocock, \"that I shall have the opportunity of going to my brother's\nI've no doubt it's very pleasant indeed.\" She spoke as to Strether, but\nher face was turned with an intensity of brightness to Madame de\nVionnet, and there was a moment during which, while she thus fronted\nher, our friend expected to hear her add:  \"I'm much obliged to you,\nI'm sure, for inviting me there.\" He guessed that for five seconds\nthese words were on the point of coming; he heard them as clearly as if\nthey had been spoken; but he presently knew they had just failed--knew\nit by a glance, quick and fine, from Madame de Vionnet, which told him\nthat she too had felt them in the air, but that the point had luckily\nnot been made in any manner requiring notice.  This left her free to\nreply only to what had been said.\n\n\"That the Boulevard Malesherbes may be common ground for us offers me\nthe best prospect I see for the pleasure of meeting you again.\"\n\n\"Oh I shall come to see you, since you've been so good\":  and Mrs.\nPocock looked her invader well in the eyes.  The flush in Sarah's\ncheeks had by this time settled to a small definite crimson spot that\nwas not without its own bravery; she held her head a good deal up, and\nit came to Strether that of the two, at this moment, she was the one\nwho most carried out the idea of a Countess.  He quite took in,\nhowever, that she would really return her visitor's civility:  she\nwouldn't report again at Woollett without at least so much producible\nhistory as that in her pocket.\n\n\"I want extremely to be able to show you my little daughter.\" Madame de\nVionnet went on; \"and I should have brought her with me if I hadn't\nwished first to ask your leave.  I was in hopes I should perhaps find\nMiss Pocock, of whose being with you I've heard from Mr. Newsome and\nwhose acquaintance I should so much like my child to make.  If I have\nthe pleasure of seeing her and you do permit it I shall venture to ask\nher to be kind to Jeanne.  Mr. Strether will tell you\"--she beautifully\nkept it up--\"that my poor girl is gentle and good and rather lonely.\nThey've made friends, he and she, ever so happily, and he doesn't, I\nbelieve, think ill of her.  As for Jeanne herself he has had the same\nsuccess with her that I know he has had here wherever he has turned.\"\nShe seemed to ask him for permission to say these things, or seemed\nrather to take it, softly and happily, with the ease of intimacy, for\ngranted, and he had quite the consciousness now that not to meet her at\nany point more than halfway would be odiously, basely to abandon her.\nYes, he was WITH her, and, opposed even in this covert, this semi-safe\nfashion to those who were not, he felt, strangely and confusedly, but\nexcitedly, inspiringly, how much and how far.  It was as if he had\npositively waited in suspense for something from her that would let him\nin deeper, so that he might show her how he could take it.  And what\ndid in fact come as she drew out a little her farewell served\nsufficiently the purpose.  \"As his success is a matter that I'm sure\nhe'll never mention for himself, I feel, you see, the less scruple;\nwhich it's very good of me to say, you know, by the way,\" she added as\nshe addressed herself to him; \"considering how little direct advantage\nI've gained from your triumphs with ME.  When does one ever see you?  I\nwait at home and I languish.  You'll have rendered me the service, Mrs.\nPocock, at least,\" she wound up, \"of giving me one of my much-too-rare\nglimpses of this gentleman.\"\n\n\"I certainly should be sorry to deprive you of anything that seems so\nmuch, as you describe it, your natural due.  Mr. Strether and I are\nvery old friends,\" Sarah allowed, \"but the privilege of his society\nisn't a thing I shall quarrel about with any one.\"\n\n\"And yet, dear Sarah,\" he freely broke in, \"I feel, when I hear you say\nthat, that you don't quite do justice to the important truth of the\nextent to which--as you're also mine--I'm your natural due.  I should\nlike much better,\" he laughed, \"to see you fight for me.\"\n\nShe met him, Mrs. Pocock, on this, with an arrest of speech--with a\ncertain breathlessness, as he immediately fancied, on the score of a\nfreedom for which she wasn't quite prepared.  It had flared up--for all\nthe harm he had intended by it--because, confoundedly, he didn't want\nany more to be afraid about her than he wanted to be afraid about\nMadame de Vionnet.  He had never, naturally, called her anything but\nSarah at home, and though he had perhaps never quite so markedly\ninvoked her as his \"dear,\" that was somehow partly because no occasion\nhad hitherto laid so effective a trap for it. But something admonished\nhim now that it was too late--unless indeed it were possibly too early;\nand that he at any rate shouldn't have pleased Mrs. Pocock the more by\nit.  \"Well, Mr. Strether--!\" she murmured with vagueness, yet with\nsharpness, while her crimson spot burned a trifle brighter and he was\naware that this must be for the present the limit of her response.\nMadame de Vionnet had already, however, come to his aid, and Waymarsh,\nas if for further participation, moved again back to them.  It was true\nthat the aid rendered by Madame de Vionnet was questionable; it was a\nsign that, for all one might confess to with her, and for all she might\ncomplain of not enjoying, she could still insidiously show how much of\nthe material of conversation had accumulated between them.\n\n\"The real truth is, you know, that you sacrifice one without mercy to\ndear old Maria.  She leaves no room in your life for anybody else.  Do\nyou know,\" she enquired of Mrs. Pocock, \"about dear old Maria?  The\nworst is that Miss Gostrey is really a wonderful woman.\"\n\n\"Oh yes indeed,\" Strether answered for her, \"Mrs. Pocock knows about\nMiss Gostrey.  Your mother, Sarah, must have told you about her; your\nmother knows everything,\" he sturdily pursued.  \"And I cordially\nadmit,\" he added with his conscious gaiety of courage, \"that she's as\nwonderful a woman as you like.\"\n\n\"Ah it isn't I who 'like,' dear Mr. Strether, anything to do with the\nmatter!\" Sarah Pocock promptly protested; \"and I'm by no means sure I\nhave--from my mother or from any one else--a notion of whom you're\ntalking about.\"\n\n\"Well, he won't let you see her, you know,\" Madame de Vionnet\nsympathetically threw in.  \"He never lets me--old friends as we are: I\nmean as I am with Maria.  He reserves her for his best hours; keeps her\nconsummately to himself; only gives us others the crumbs of the feast.\"\n\n\"Well, Countess, I'VE had some of the crumbs,\" Waymarsh observed with\nweight and covering her with his large look; which led her to break in\nbefore he could go on.\n\n\"Comment donc, he shares her with YOU?\" she exclaimed in droll\nstupefaction.  \"Take care you don't have, before you go much further,\nrather more of all ces dames than you may know what to do with!\"\n\nBut he only continued in his massive way.  \"I can post you about the\nlady, Mrs. Pocock, so far as you may care to hear.  I've seen her quite\na number of times, and I was practically present when they made\nacquaintance.  I've kept my eye on her right along, but I don't know as\nthere's any real harm in her.\"\n\n\"'Harm'?\" Madame de Vionnet quickly echoed.  \"Why she's the dearest and\ncleverest of all the clever and dear.\"\n\n\"Well, you run her pretty close, Countess,\" Waymarsh returned with\nspirit; \"though there's no doubt she's pretty well up in things. She\nknows her way round Europe.  Above all there's no doubt she does love\nStrether.\"\n\n\"Ah but we all do that--we all love Strether:  it isn't a merit!\" their\nfellow visitor laughed, keeping to her idea with a good conscience at\nwhich our friend was aware that he marvelled, though he trusted also\nfor it, as he met her exquisitely expressive eyes, to some later light.\n\nThe prime effect of her tone, however--and it was a truth which his own\neyes gave back to her in sad ironic play--could only be to make him\nfeel that, to say such things to a man in public, a woman must\npractically think of him as ninety years old.  He had turned awkwardly,\nresponsively red, he knew, at her mention of Maria Gostrey; Sarah\nPocock's presence--the particular quality of it--had made this\ninevitable; and then he had grown still redder in proportion as he\nhated to have shown anything at all.  He felt indeed that he was\nshowing much, as, uncomfortably and almost in pain, he offered up his\nredness to Waymarsh, who, strangely enough, seemed now to be looking at\nhim with a certain explanatory yearning.  Something deep--something\nbuilt on their old old relation--passed, in this complexity, between\nthem; he got the side-wind of a loyalty that stood behind all actual\nqueer questions.  Waymarsh's dry bare humour--as it gave itself to be\ntaken--gloomed out to demand justice.  \"Well, if you talk of Miss\nBarrace I've MY chance too,\" it appeared stiffly to nod, and it granted\nthat it was giving him away, but struggled to add that it did so only\nto save him.  The sombre glow stared it at him till it fairly sounded\nout--\"to save you, poor old man, to save you; to save you in spite of\nyourself.\" Yet it was somehow just this communication that showed him\nto himself as more than ever lost. Still another result of it was to\nput before him as never yet that between his comrade and the interest\nrepresented by Sarah there was already a basis.  Beyond all question\nnow, yes:  Waymarsh had been in occult relation with Mrs. Newsome--out,\nout it all came in the very effort of his face.  \"Yes, you're feeling\nmy hand\"--he as good as proclaimed it; \"but only because this at least\nI SHALL have got out of the damned Old World:  that I shall have picked\nup the pieces into which it has caused you to crumble.\" It was as if in\nshort, after an instant, Strether had not only had it from him, but had\nrecognised that so far as this went the instant had cleared the air.\nOur friend understood and approved; he had the sense that they wouldn't\notherwise speak of it.  This would be all, and it would mark in himself\na kind of intelligent generosity.  It was with grim Sarah then--Sarah\ngrim for all her grace--that Waymarsh had begun at ten o'clock in the\nmorning to save him.  Well--if he COULD, poor dear man, with his big\nbleak kindness!  The upshot of which crowded perception was that\nStrether, on his own side, still showed no more than he absolutely had\nto.  He showed the least possible by saying to Mrs. Pocock after an\ninterval much briefer than our glance at the picture reflected in him:\n\"Oh it's as true as they please!--There's no Miss Gostrey for any one\nbut me--not the least little peep.  I keep her to myself.\"\n\n\"Well, it's very good of you to notify me,\" Sarah replied without\nlooking at him and thrown for a moment by this discrimination, as the\ndirection of her eyes showed, upon a dimly desperate little community\nwith Madame de Vionnet.  \"But I hope I shan't miss her too much.\"\n\nMadame de Vionnet instantly rallied.  \"And you know--though it might\noccur to one--it isn't in the least that he's ashamed of her. She's\nreally--in a way--extremely good-looking.\"\n\n\"Ah but extremely!\" Strether laughed while he wondered at the odd part\nhe found thus imposed on him.\n\nIt continued to be so by every touch from Madame de Vionnet.  \"Well, as\nI say, you know, I wish you would keep ME a little more to yourself.\nCouldn't you name some day for me, some hour--and better soon than\nlate?  I'll be at home whenever it best suits you. There--I can't say\nfairer.\"\n\nStrether thought a moment while Waymarsh and Mrs. Pocock affected him\nas standing attentive.  \"I did lately call on you.  Last week--while\nChad was out of town.\"\n\n\"Yes--and I was away, as it happened, too.  You choose your moments\nwell.  But don't wait for my next absence, for I shan't make another,\"\nMadame de Vionnet declared, \"while Mrs. Pocock's here.\"\n\n\"That vow needn't keep you long, fortunately,\" Sarah observed with\nreasserted suavity.  \"I shall be at present but a short time in Paris.\nI have my plans for other countries.  I meet a number of charming\nfriends\"--and her voice seemed to caress that description of these\npersons.\n\n\"Ah then,\" her visitor cheerfully replied, \"all the more reason!\nTo-morrow, for instance, or next day?\" she continued to Strether.\n\"Tuesday would do for me beautifully.\"\n\n\"Tuesday then with pleasure.\"\n\n\"And at half-past five?--or at six?\"\n\nIt was ridiculous, but Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh struck him as fairly\nwaiting for his answer.  It was indeed as if they were arranged,\ngathered for a performance, the performance of \"Europe\" by his\nconfederate and himself.  Well, the performance could only go on.  \"Say\nfive forty-five.\"\n\n\"Five forty-five--good.\" And now at last Madame de Vionnet must leave\nthem, though it carried, for herself, the performance a little further.\n\"I DID hope so much also to see Miss Pocock. Mayn't I still?\"\n\nSarah hesitated, but she rose equal.  \"She'll return your visit with\nme.  She's at present out with Mr. Pocock and my brother.\"\n\n\"I see--of course Mr. Newsome has everything to show them.  He has told\nme so much about her.  My great desire's to give my daughter the\nopportunity of making her acquaintance.  I'm always on the lookout for\nsuch chances for her.  If I didn't bring her to-day it was only to make\nsure first that you'd let me.\" After which the charming woman risked a\nmore intense appeal.  \"It wouldn't suit you also to mention some near\ntime, so that we shall be sure not to lose you?\"  Strether on his side\nwaited, for Sarah likewise had, after all, to perform; and it occupied\nhim to have been thus reminded that she had stayed at home--and on her\nfirst morning of Paris--while Chad led the others forth.  Oh she was up\nto her eyes; if she had stayed at home she had stayed by an\nunderstanding, arrived at the evening before, that Waymarsh would come\nand find her alone.  This was beginning well--for a first day in Paris;\nand the thing might be amusing yet.  But Madame de Vionnet's\nearnestness was meanwhile beautiful.  \"You may think me indiscreet, but\nI've SUCH a desire my Jeanne shall know an American girl of the really\ndelightful kind.  You see I throw myself for it on your charity.\"\n\nThe manner of this speech gave Strether such a sense of depths below it\nand behind it as he hadn't yet had--ministered in a way that almost\nfrightened him to his dim divinations of reasons; but if Sarah still,\nin spite of it, faltered, this was why he had time for a sign of\nsympathy with her petitioner.  \"Let me say then, dear lady, to back\nyour plea, that Miss Mamie is of the most delightful kind of all--is\ncharming among the charming.\"\n\nEven Waymarsh, though with more to produce on the subject, could get\ninto motion in time.  \"Yes, Countess, the American girl's a thing that\nyour country must at least allow ours the privilege to say we CAN show\nyou.  But her full beauty is only for those who know how to make use of\nher.\"\n\n\"Ah then,\" smiled Madame de Vionnet, \"that's exactly what I want to do.\nI'm sure she has much to teach us.\"\n\nIt was wonderful, but what was scarce less so was that Strether found\nhimself, by the quick effect of it, moved another way.  \"Oh that may\nbe!  But don't speak of your own exquisite daughter, you know, as if\nshe weren't pure perfection.  I at least won't take that from you.\nMademoiselle de Vionnet,\" he explained, in considerable form, to Mrs.\nPocock, \"IS pure perfection.  Mademoiselle de Vionnet IS exquisite.\"\n\nIt had been perhaps a little portentous, but \"Ah?\" Sarah simply\nglittered.\n\nWaymarsh himself, for that matter, apparently recognised, in respect to\nthe facts, the need of a larger justice, and he had with it an\ninclination to Sarah.  \"Miss Jane's strikingly handsome--in the regular\nFrench style.\"\n\nIt somehow made both Strether and Madame de Vionnet laugh out, though\nat the very moment he caught in Sarah's eyes, as glancing at the\nspeaker, a vague but unmistakeable \"You too?\"  It made Waymarsh in fact\nlook consciously over her head.  Madame de Vionnet meanwhile, however,\nmade her point in her own way.  \"I wish indeed I could offer you my\npoor child as a dazzling attraction:  it would make one's position\nsimple enough!  She's as good as she can be, but of course she's\ndifferent, and the question is now--in the light of the way things seem\nto go--if she isn't after all TOO different: too different I mean from\nthe splendid type every one is so agreed that your wonderful country\nproduces.  On the other hand of course Mr. Newsome, who knows it so\nwell, has, as a good friend, dear kind man that he is, done everything\nhe can--to keep us from fatal benightedness--for my small shy creature.\nWell,\" she wound up after Mrs. Pocock had signified, in a murmur still\na little stiff, that she would speak to her own young charge on the\nquestion--\"well, we shall sit, my child and I, and wait and wait and\nwait for you.\" But her last fine turn was for Strether.  \"Do speak of\nus in such a way--!\"\n\n\"As that something can't but come of it?  Oh something SHALL come of\nit!  I take a great interest!\" he further declared; and in proof of it,\nthe next moment, he had gone with her down to her carriage.\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Ninth\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\n\"The difficulty is,\" Strether said to Madame de Vionnet a couple of\ndays later, \"that I can't surprise them into the smallest sign of his\nnot being the same old Chad they've been for the last three years\nglowering at across the sea.  They simply won't give any, and as a\npolicy, you know--what you call a parti pris, a deep game--that's\npositively remarkable.\"\n\nIt was so remarkable that our friend had pulled up before his hostess\nwith the vision of it; he had risen from his chair at the end of ten\nminutes and begun, as a help not to worry, to move about before her\nquite as he moved before Maria.  He had kept his appointment with her\nto the minute and had been intensely impatient, though divided in truth\nbetween the sense of having everything to tell her and the sense of\nhaving nothing at all.  The short interval had, in the face of their\ncomplication, multiplied his impressions--it being meanwhile to be\nnoted, moreover, that he already frankly, already almost publicly,\nviewed the complication as common to them.  If Madame de Vionnet, under\nSarah's eyes, had pulled him into her boat, there was by this time no\ndoubt whatever that he had remained in it and that what he had really\nmost been conscious of for many hours together was the movement of the\nvessel itself.  They were in it together this moment as they hadn't yet\nbeen, and he hadn't at present uttered the least of the words of alarm\nor remonstrance that had died on his lips at the hotel.  He had other\nthings to say to her than that she had put him in a position; so\nquickly had his position grown to affect him as quite excitingly,\naltogether richly, inevitable.  That the outlook, however--given the\npoint of exposure--hadn't cleared up half so much as he had reckoned\nwas the first warning she received from him on his arrival.  She had\nreplied with indulgence that he was in too great a hurry, and had\nremarked soothingly that if she knew how to be patient surely HE might\nbe.  He felt her presence, on the spot, he felt her tone and everything\nabout her, as an aid to that effort; and it was perhaps one of the\nproofs of her success with him that he seemed so much to take his ease\nwhile they talked. By the time he had explained to her why his\nimpressions, though multiplied, still baffled him, it was as if he had\nbeen familiarly talking for hours.  They baffled him because\nSarah--well, Sarah was deep, deeper than she had ever yet had a chance\nto show herself. He didn't say that this was partly the effect of her\nopening so straight down, as it were, into her mother, and that, given\nMrs. Newsome's profundity, the shaft thus sunk might well have a reach;\nbut he wasn't without a resigned apprehension that, at such a rate of\nconfidence between the two women, he was likely soon to be moved to\nshow how already, at moments, it had been for him as if he were dealing\ndirectly with Mrs. Newsome.  Sarah, to a certainty, would have begun\nherself to feel it in him--and this naturally put it in her power to\ntorment him the more.  From the moment she knew he COULD be tormented--!\n\n\"But WHY can you be?\"--his companion was surprised at his use of the\nword.\n\n\"Because I'm made so--I think of everything.\"\n\n\"Ah one must never do that,\" she smiled.  \"One must think of as few\nthings as possible.\"\n\n\"Then,\" he answered, \"one must pick them out right.  But all I mean\nis--for I express myself with violence--that she's in a position to\nwatch me.  There's an element of suspense for me, and she can see me\nwriggle.  But my wriggling doesn't matter,\" he pursued.  \"I can bear\nit.  Besides, I shall wriggle out.\"\n\nThe picture at any rate stirred in her an appreciation that he felt to\nbe sincere.  \"I don't see how a man can be kinder to a woman than you\nare to me.\"\n\nWell, kind was what he wanted to be; yet even while her charming eyes\nrested on him with the truth of this he none the less had his humour of\nhonesty.  \"When I say suspense I mean, you know,\" he laughed, \"suspense\nabout my own case too!\"\n\n\"Oh yes--about your own case too!\"  It diminished his magnanimity, but\nshe only looked at him the more tenderly.\n\n\"Not, however,\" he went on, \"that I want to talk to you about that.\nIt's my own little affair, and I mentioned it simply as part of Mrs.\nPocock's advantage.\" No, no; though there was a queer present\ntemptation in it, and his suspense was so real that to fidget was a\nrelief, he wouldn't talk to her about Mrs. Newsome, wouldn't work off\non her the anxiety produced in him by Sarah's calculated omissions of\nreference.  The effect she produced of representing her mother had been\nproduced--and that was just the immense, the uncanny part of\nit--without her having so much as mentioned that lady.  She had brought\nno message, had alluded to no question, had only answered his enquiries\nwith hopeless limited propriety.  She had invented a way of meeting\nthem--as if he had been a polite perfunctory poor relation, of distant\ndegree--that made them almost ridiculous in him.  He couldn't moreover\non his own side ask much without appearing to publish how he had lately\nlacked news; a circumstance of which it was Sarah's profound policy not\nto betray a suspicion.  These things, all the same, he wouldn't breathe\nto Madame de Vionnet--much as they might make him walk up and down. And\nwhat he didn't say--as well as what SHE didn't, for she had also her\nhigh decencies--enhanced the effect of his being there with her at the\nend of ten minutes more intimately on the basis of saving her than he\nhad yet had occasion to be.  It ended in fact by being quite beautiful\nbetween them, the number of things they had a manifest consciousness of\nnot saying.  He would have liked to turn her, critically, to the\nsubject of Mrs. Pocock, but he so stuck to the line he felt to be the\npoint of honour and of delicacy that he scarce even asked her what her\npersonal impression had been. He knew it, for that matter, without\nputting her to trouble: that she wondered how, with such elements,\nSarah could still have no charm, was one of the principal things she\nheld her tongue about. Strether would have been interested in her\nestimate of the elements--indubitably there, some of them, and to be\nappraised according to taste--but he denied himself even the luxury of\nthis diversion.  The way Madame de Vionnet affected him to-day was in\nitself a kind of demonstration of the happy employment of gifts.  How\ncould a woman think Sarah had charm who struck one as having arrived at\nit herself by such different roads?  On the other hand of course Sarah\nwasn't obliged to have it.  He felt as if somehow Madame de Vionnet\nWAS.  The great question meanwhile was what Chad thought of his sister;\nwhich was naturally ushered in by that of Sarah's apprehension of Chad.\nTHAT they could talk of, and with a freedom purchased by their\ndiscretion in other senses.  The difficulty however was that they were\nreduced as yet to conjecture.  He had given them in the day or two as\nlittle of a lead as Sarah, and Madame de Vionnet mentioned that she\nhadn't seen him since his sister's arrival.\n\n\"And does that strike you as such an age?\"\n\nShe met it in all honesty.  \"Oh I won't pretend I don't miss him.\nSometimes I see him every day.  Our friendship's like that.  Make what\nyou will of it!\" she whimsically smiled; a little flicker of the kind,\noccasional in her, that had more than once moved him to wonder what he\nmight best make of HER.  \"But he's perfectly right,\" she hastened to\nadd, \"and I wouldn't have him fail in any way at present for the world.\nI'd sooner not see him for three months. I begged him to be beautiful\nto them, and he fully feels it for himself.\"\n\nStrether turned away under his quick perception; she was so odd a\nmixture of lucidity and mystery.  She fell in at moments with the\ntheory about her he most cherished, and she seemed at others to blow it\ninto air.  She spoke now as if her art were all an innocence, and then\nagain as if her innocence were all an art. \"Oh he's giving himself up,\nand he'll do so to the end.  How can he but want, now that it's within\nreach, his full impression?--which is much more important, you know,\nthan either yours or mine.  But he's just soaking,\" Strether said as he\ncame back; \"he's going in conscientiously for a saturation.  I'm bound\nto say he IS very good.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" she quietly replied, \"to whom do you say it?\"  And then more\nquietly still:  \"He's capable of anything.\"\n\nStrether more than reaffirmed--\"Oh he's excellent.  I more and more\nlike,\" he insisted, \"to see him with them;\" though the oddity of this\ntone between them grew sharper for him even while they spoke. It placed\nthe young man so before them as the result of her interest and the\nproduct of her genius, acknowledged so her part in the phenomenon and\nmade the phenomenon so rare, that more than ever yet he might have been\non the very point of asking her for some more detailed account of the\nwhole business than he had yet received from her.  The occasion almost\nforced upon him some question as to how she had managed and as to the\nappearance such miracles presented from her own singularly close place\nof survey. The moment in fact however passed, giving way to more\npresent history, and he continued simply to mark his appreciation of\nthe happy truth.  \"It's a tremendous comfort to feel how one can trust\nhim.\" And then again while for a little she said nothing--as if after\nall to HER trust there might be a special limit:  \"I mean for making a\ngood show to them.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she thoughtfully returned--\"but if they shut their eyes to it!\"\n\nStrether for an instant had his own thought.  \"Well perhaps that won't\nmatter!\"\n\n\"You mean because he probably--do what they will--won't like them?\"\n\n\"Oh 'do what they will'--!  They won't do much; especially if Sarah\nhasn't more--well, more than one has yet made out--to give.\"\n\nMadame de Vionnet weighed it.  \"Ah she has all her grace!\"  It was a\nstatement over which, for a little, they could look at each other\nsufficiently straight, and though it produced no protest from Strether\nthe effect was somehow as if he had treated it as a joke. \"She may be\npersuasive and caressing with him; she may be eloquent beyond words.\nShe may get hold of him,\" she wound up--\"well, as neither you nor I\nhave.\"\n\n\"Yes, she MAY\"--and now Strether smiled.  \"But he has spent all his\ntime each day with Jim.  He's still showing Jim round.\"\n\nShe visibly wondered.  \"Then how about Jim?\"\n\nStrether took a turn before he answered.  \"Hasn't he given you Jim?\nHasn't he before this 'done' him for you?\"  He was a little at a loss.\n\"Doesn't he tell you things?\"\n\nShe hesitated.  \"No\"--and their eyes once more gave and took. \"Not as\nyou do.  You somehow make me see them--or at least feel them. And I\nhaven't asked too much,\" she added; \"I've of late wanted so not to\nworry him.\"\n\n\"Ah for that, so have I,\" he said with encouraging assent; so that--as\nif she had answered everything--they were briefly sociable on it. It\nthrew him back on his other thought, with which he took another turn;\nstopping again, however, presently with something of a glow. \"You see\nJim's really immense.  I think it will be Jim who'll do it.\"\n\nShe wondered.  \"Get hold of him?\"\n\n\"No--just the other thing.  Counteract Sarah's spell.\" And he showed\nnow, our friend, how far he had worked it out.  \"Jim's intensely\ncynical.\"\n\n\"Oh dear Jim!\" Madame de Vionnet vaguely smiled.\n\n\"Yes, literally--dear Jim!  He's awful.  What HE wants, heaven forgive\nhim, is to help us.\"\n\n\"You mean\"--she was eager--\"help ME?\"\n\n\"Well, Chad and me in the first place.  But he throws you in too,\nthough without as yet seeing you much.  Only, so far as he does see\nyou--if you don't mind--he sees you as awful.\"\n\n\"'Awful'?\"--she wanted it all.\n\n\"A regular bad one--though of course of a tremendously superior kind.\nDreadful, delightful, irresistible.\"\n\n\"Ah dear Jim!  I should like to know him.  I MUST.\"\n\n\"Yes, naturally.  But will it do?  You may, you know,\" Strether\nsuggested, \"disappoint him.\"\n\nShe was droll and humble about it.  \"I can but try.  But my wickedness\nthen,\" she went on, \"is my recommendation for him?\"\n\n\"Your wickedness and the charms with which, in such a degree as yours,\nhe associates it.  He understands, you see, that Chad and I have above\nall wanted to have a good time, and his view is simple and sharp.\nNothing will persuade him--in the light, that is, of my behaviour--that\nI really didn't, quite as much as Chad, come over to have one before it\nwas too late.  He wouldn't have expected it of me; but men of my age,\nat Woollett--and especially the least likely ones--have been noted as\nliable to strange outbreaks, belated uncanny clutches at the unusual,\nthe ideal.  It's an effect that a lifetime of Woollett has quite been\nobserved as having; and I thus give it to you, in Jim's view, for what\nit's worth.  Now his wife and his mother-in-law,\" Strether continued to\nexplain, \"have, as in honour bound, no patience with such phenomena,\nlate or early--which puts Jim, as against his relatives, on the other\nside.  Besides,\" he added, \"I don't think he really wants Chad back. If\nChad doesn't come--\"\n\n\"He'll have\"--Madame de Vionnet quite apprehended--\"more of the free\nhand?\"\n\n\"Well, Chad's the bigger man.\"\n\n\"So he'll work now, en dessous, to keep him quiet?\"\n\n\"No--he won't 'work' at all, and he won't do anything en dessous. He's\nvery decent and won't be a traitor in the camp.  But he'll be amused\nwith his own little view of our duplicity, he'll sniff up what he\nsupposes to be Paris from morning till night, and he'll be, as to the\nrest, for Chad--well, just what he is.\"\n\nShe thought it over.  \"A warning?\"\n\nHe met it almost with glee.  \"You ARE as wonderful as everybody says!\"\nAnd then to explain all he meant:  \"I drove him about for his first\nhour, and do you know what--all beautifully unconscious--he most put\nbefore me?  Why that something like THAT is at bottom, as an\nimprovement to his present state, as in fact the real redemption of it,\nwhat they think it may not be too late to make of our friend.\" With\nwhich, as, taking it in, she seemed, in her recurrent alarm, bravely to\ngaze at the possibility, he completed his statement.  \"But it IS too\nlate.  Thanks to you!\"\n\nIt drew from her again one of her indefinite reflexions.  \"Oh\n'me'--after all!\"\n\nHe stood before her so exhilarated by his demonstration that he could\nfairly be jocular.  \"Everything's comparative.  You're better than\nTHAT.\"\n\n\"You\"--she could but answer him--\"are better than anything.\" But she\nhad another thought.  \"WILL Mrs. Pocock come to me?\"\n\n\"Oh yes--she'll do that.  As soon, that is, as my friend Waymarsh--HER\nfriend now--leaves her leisure.\"\n\nShe showed an interest.  \"Is he so much her friend as that?\"\n\n\"Why, didn't you see it all at the hotel?\"\n\n\"Oh\"--she was amused--\"'all' is a good deal to say.  I don't know--I\nforget.  I lost myself in HER.\"\n\n\"You were splendid,\" Strether returned--\"but 'all' isn't a good deal to\nsay:  it's only a little.  Yet it's charming so far as it goes.  She\nwants a man to herself.\"\n\n\"And hasn't she got you?\"\n\n\"Do you think she looked at me--or even at you--as if she had?\"\nStrether easily dismissed that irony.  \"Every one, you see, must strike\nher as having somebody.  You've got Chad--and Chad has got you.\"\n\n\"I see\"--she made of it what she could.  \"And you've got Maria.\"\n\nWell, he on his side accepted that.  \"I've got Maria.  And Maria has\ngot me.  So it goes.\"\n\n\"But Mr. Jim--whom has he got?\"\n\n\"Oh he has got--or it's as IF he had--the whole place.\"\n\n\"But for Mr. Waymarsh\"--she recalled--\"isn't Miss Barrace before any\none else?\"\n\nHe shook his head.  \"Miss Barrace is a raffinee, and her amusement\nwon't lose by Mrs. Pocock.  It will gain rather--especially if Sarah\ntriumphs and she comes in for a view of it.\"\n\n\"How well you know us!\" Madame de Vionnet, at this, frankly sighed.\n\n\"No--it seems to me it's we that I know.  I know Sarah--it's perhaps on\nthat ground only that my feet are firm.  Waymarsh will take her round\nwhile Chad takes Jim--and I shall be, I assure you delighted for both\nof them.  Sarah will have had what she requires--she will have paid her\ntribute to the ideal; and he will have done about the same.  In Paris\nit's in the air--so what can one do less?  If there's a point that,\nbeyond any other, Sarah wants to make, it's that she didn't come out to\nbe narrow.  We shall feel at least that.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she sighed, \"the quantity we seem likely to 'feel'!  But what\nbecomes, in these conditions, of the girl?\"\n\n\"Of Mamie--if we're all provided?  Ah for that,\" said Strether, \"you\ncan trust Chad.\"\n\n\"To be, you mean, all right to her?\"\n\n\"To pay her every attention as soon as he has polished off Jim. He\nwants what Jim can give him--and what Jim really won't--though he has\nhad it all, and more than all, from me.  He wants in short his own\npersonal impression, and he'll get it--strong.  But as soon as he has\ngot it Mamie won't suffer.\"\n\n\"Oh Mamie mustn't SUFFER!\" Madame de Vionnet soothingly emphasised.\n\nBut Strether could reassure her.  \"Don't fear.  As soon as he has done\nwith Jim, Jim will fall to me.  And then you'll see.\"\n\nIt was as if in a moment she saw already; yet she still waited. Then\n\"Is she really quite charming?\" she asked.\n\nHe had got up with his last words and gathered in his hat and gloves.\n\"I don't know; I'm watching.  I'm studying the case, as it were--and I\ndare say I shall be able to tell you.\"\n\nShe wondered.  \"Is it a case?\"\n\n\"Yes--I think so.  At any rate I shall see.'\n\n\"But haven't you known her before?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he smiled--\"but somehow at home she wasn't a case. She has\nbecome one since.\" It was as if he made it out for himself. \"She has\nbecome one here.\"\n\n\"So very very soon?\"\n\nHe measured it, laughing.  \"Not sooner than I did.\"\n\n\"And you became one--?\"\n\n\"Very very soon.  The day I arrived.\"\n\nHer intelligent eyes showed her thought of it.  \"Ah but the day you\narrived you met Maria.  Whom has Miss Pocock met?\"\n\nHe paused again, but he brought it out.  \"Hasn't she met Chad?\"\n\n\"Certainly--but not for the first time.  He's an old friend.\" At which\nStrether had a slow amused significant headshake that made her go on:\n\"You mean that for HER at least he's a new person--that she sees him as\ndifferent?\"\n\n\"She sees him as different.\"\n\n\"And how does she see him?\"\n\nStrether gave it up.  \"How can one tell how a deep little girl sees a\ndeep young man?\"\n\n\"Is every one so deep?  Is she too?\"\n\n\"So it strikes me deeper than I thought.  But wait a little--between us\nwe'll make it out.  You'll judge for that matter yourself.\"\n\nMadame de Vionnet looked for the moment fairly bent on the chance.\n\"Then she WILL come with her?--I mean Mamie with Mrs. Pocock?\"\n\n\"Certainly.  Her curiosity, if nothing else, will in any case work\nthat.  But leave it all to Chad.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" wailed Madame de Vionnet, turning away a little wearily, \"the\nthings I leave to Chad!\"\n\nThe tone of it made him look at her with a kindness that showed his\nvision of her suspense.  But he fell back on his confidence. \"Oh\nwell--trust him.  Trust him all the way.\" He had indeed no sooner so\nspoken than the queer displacement of his point of view appeared again\nto come up for him in the very sound, which drew from him a short\nlaugh, immediately checked.  He became still more advisory. \"When they\ndo come give them plenty of Miss Jeanne.  Let Mamie see her well.\"\n\nShe looked for a moment as if she placed them face to face. \"For Mamie\nto hate her?\"\n\nHe had another of his corrective headshakes.  \"Mamie won't. Trust THEM.\"\n\nShe looked at him hard, and then as if it were what she must always\ncome back to:  \"It's you I trust.  But I was sincere,\" she said, \"at\nthe hotel.  I did, I do, want my child--\"\n\n\"Well?\"--Strether waited with deference while she appeared to hesitate\nas to how to put it.\n\n\"Well, to do what she can for me.\"\n\nStrether for a little met her eyes on it; after which something that\nmight have been unexpected to her came from him.  \"Poor little duck!\"\n\nNot more expected for himself indeed might well have been her echo of\nit.  \"Poor little duck!  But she immensely wants herself,\" she said,\n\"to see our friend's cousin.\"\n\n\"Is that what she thinks her?\"\n\n\"It's what we call the young lady.\"\n\nHe thought again; then with a laugh:  \"Well, your daughter will help\nyou.\"\n\nAnd now at last he took leave of her, as he had been intending for five\nminutes.  But she went part of the way with him, accompanying him out\nof the room and into the next and the next.  Her noble old apartment\noffered a succession of three, the first two of which indeed, on\nentering, smaller than the last, but each with its faded and formal\nair, enlarged the office of the antechamber and enriched the sense of\napproach.  Strether fancied them, liked them, and, passing through them\nwith her more slowly now, met a sharp renewal of his original\nimpression.  He stopped, he looked back; the whole thing made a vista,\nwhich he found high melancholy and sweet--full, once more, of dim\nhistoric shades, of the faint faraway cannon-roar of the great Empire.\nIt was doubtless half the projection of his mind, but his mind was a\nthing that, among old waxed parquets, pale shades of pink and green,\npseudo-classic candelabra, he had always needfully to reckon with. They\ncould easily make him irrelevant. The oddity, the originality, the\npoetry--he didn't know what to call it--of Chad's connexion reaffirmed\nfor him its romantic side. \"They ought to see this, you know.  They\nMUST.\"\n\n\"The Pococks?\"--she looked about in deprecation; she seemed to see gaps\nhe didn't.\n\n\"Mamie and Sarah--Mamie in particular.\"\n\n\"My shabby old place?  But THEIR things--!\"\n\n\"Oh their things!  You were talking of what will do something for you--\"\n\n\"So that it strikes you,\" she broke in, \"that my poor place may? Oh,\"\nshe ruefully mused, \"that WOULD be desperate!\"\n\n\"Do you know what I wish?\" he went on.  \"I wish Mrs. Newsome herself\ncould have a look.\"\n\nShe stared, missing a little his logic.  \"It would make a difference?\"\n\nHer tone was so earnest that as he continued to look about he laughed.\n\"It might!\"\n\n\"But you've told her, you tell me--\"\n\n\"All about you?  Yes, a wonderful story.  But there's all the\nindescribable--what one gets only on the spot.\"\n\n\"Thank you!\" she charmingly and sadly smiled.\n\n\"It's all about me here,\" he freely continued.  \"Mrs. Newsome feels\nthings.\"\n\nBut she seemed doomed always to come back to doubt.  \"No one feels so\nmuch as YOU.  No--not any one.\"\n\n\"So much the worse then for every one.  It's very easy.\"\n\nThey were by this time in the antechamber, still alone together, as she\nhadn't rung for a servant.  The antechamber was high and square, grave\nand suggestive too, a little cold and slippery even in summer, and with\na few old prints that were precious, Strether divined, on the walls. He\nstood in the middle, slightly lingering, vaguely directing his glasses,\nwhile, leaning against the door-post of the room, she gently pressed\nher cheek to the side of the recess.  \"YOU would have been a friend.\"\n\n\"I?\"--it startled him a little.\n\n\"For the reason you say.  You're not stupid.\" And then abruptly, as if\nbringing it out were somehow founded on that fact: \"We're marrying\nJeanne.\"\n\nIt affected him on the spot as a move in a game, and he was even then\nnot without the sense that that wasn't the way Jeanne should be\nmarried.  But he quickly showed his interest, though--as quickly\nafterwards struck him--with an absurd confusion of mind.  \"'You'? You\nand--a--not Chad?\"  Of course it was the child's father who made the\n'we,' but to the child's father it would have cost him an effort to\nallude.  Yet didn't it seem the next minute that Monsieur de Vionnet\nwas after all not in question?--since she had gone on to say that it\nwas indeed to Chad she referred and that he had been in the whole\nmatter kindness itself.\n\n\"If I must tell you all, it is he himself who has put us in the way.  I\nmean in the way of an opportunity that, so far as I can yet see, is all\nI could possibly have dreamed of.  For all the trouble Monsieur de\nVionnet will ever take!\"  It was the first time she had spoken to him\nof her husband, and he couldn't have expressed how much more intimate\nwith her it suddenly made him feel.  It wasn't much, in truth--there\nwere other things in what she was saying that were far more; but it was\nas if, while they stood there together so easily in these cold chambers\nof the past, the single touch had shown the reach of her confidence.\n\"But our friend,\" she asked, \"hasn't then told you?\"\n\n\"He has told me nothing.\"\n\n\"Well, it has come with rather a rush--all in a very few days; and\nhasn't moreover yet taken a form that permits an announcement.  It's\nonly for you--absolutely you alone--that I speak; I so want you to\nknow.\" The sense he had so often had, since the first hour of his\ndisembarkment, of being further and further \"in,\" treated him again at\nthis moment to another twinge; but in this wonderful way of her putting\nhim in there continued to be something exquisitely remorseless.\n\"Monsieur de Vionnet will accept what he MUST accept. He has proposed\nhalf a dozen things--each one more impossible than the other; and he\nwouldn't have found this if he lives to a hundred. Chad found it,\" she\ncontinued with her lighted, faintly flushed, her conscious confidential\nface, \"in the quietest way in the world. Or rather it found HIM--for\neverything finds him; I mean finds him right.  You'll think we do such\nthings strangely--but at my age,\" she smiled, \"one has to accept one's\nconditions.  Our young man's people had seen her; one of his sisters, a\ncharming woman--we know all about them--had observed her somewhere with\nme.  She had spoken to her brother--turned him on; and we were again\nobserved, poor Jeanne and I, without our in the least knowing it.  It\nwas at the beginning of the winter; it went on for some time; it\noutlasted our absence; it began again on our return; and it luckily\nseems all right.  The young man had met Chad, and he got a friend to\napproach him--as having a decent interest in us.  Mr. Newsome looked\nwell before he leaped; he kept beautifully quiet and satisfied himself\nfully; then only he spoke.  It's what has for some time past occupied\nus.  It seems as if it were what would do; really, really all one could\nwish.  There are only two or three points to be settled--they depend on\nher father.  But this time I think we're safe.\"\n\nStrether, consciously gaping a little, had fairly hung upon her lips.\n\"I hope so with all my heart.\" And then he permitted himself: \"Does\nnothing depend on HER?\"\n\n\"Ah naturally; everything did.  But she's pleased comme tout.  She has\nbeen perfectly free; and he--our young friend--is really a combination.\nI quite adore him.\"\n\nStrether just made sure.  \"You mean your future son-in-law?\"\n\n\"Future if we all bring it off.\"\n\n\"Ah well,\" said Strether decorously, \"I heartily hope you may.\" There\nseemed little else for him to say, though her communication had the\noddest effect on him.  Vaguely and confusedly he was troubled by it;\nfeeling as if he had even himself been concerned in something deep and\ndim.  He had allowed for depths, but these were greater:  and it was as\nif, oppressively--indeed absurdly--he was responsible for what they had\nnow thrown up to the surface.  It was--through something ancient and\ncold in it--what he would have called the real thing.  In short his\nhostess's news, though he couldn't have explained why, was a sensible\nshock, and his oppression a weight he felt he must somehow or other\nimmediately get rid of.  There were too many connexions missing to make\nit tolerable he should do anything else.  He was prepared to\nsuffer--before his own inner tribunal--for Chad; he was prepared to\nsuffer even for Madame de Vionnet.  But he wasn't prepared to suffer\nfor the little girl So now having said the proper thing, he wanted to\nget away.  She held him an instant, however, with another appeal.\n\n\"Do I seem to you very awful?\"\n\n\"Awful?  Why so?\"  But he called it to himself, even as he spoke, his\nbiggest insincerity yet.\n\n\"Our arrangements are so different from yours.\"\n\n\"Mine?\"  Oh he could dismiss that too!  \"I haven't any arrangements.\"\n\n\"Then you must accept mine; all the more that they're excellent.\nThey're founded on a vieille sagesse.  There will be much more, if all\ngoes well, for you to hear and to know, and everything, believe me, for\nyou to like.  Don't be afraid; you'll be satisfied.\" Thus she could\ntalk to him of what, of her innermost life--for that was what it came\nto--he must \"accept\"; thus she could extraordinarily speak as if in\nsuch an affair his being satisfied had an importance.  It was all a\nwonder and made the whole case larger.  He had struck himself at the\nhotel, before Sarah and Waymarsh, as being in her boat; but where on\nearth was he now?  This question was in the air till her own lips\nquenched it with another.  \"And do you suppose HE--who loves her\nso--would do anything reckless or cruel?\"\n\nHe wondered what he supposed.  \"Do you mean your young man--?\"\n\n\"I mean yours.  I mean Mr. Newsome.\" It flashed for Strether the next\nmoment a finer light, and the light deepened as she went on. \"He takes,\nthank God, the truest tenderest interest in her.\"\n\nIt deepened indeed.  \"Oh I'm sure of that!\"\n\n\"You were talking,\" she said, \"about one's trusting him.  You see then\nhow I do.\"\n\nHe waited a moment--it all came.  \"I see--I see.\" He felt he really did\nsee.\n\n\"He wouldn't hurt her for the world, nor--assuming she marries at\nall--risk anything that might make against her happiness.\nAnd--willingly, at least--he would never hurt ME.\"\n\nHer face, with what he had by this time grasped, told him more than her\nwords; whether something had come into it, or whether he only read\nclearer, her whole story--what at least he then took for such--reached\nout to him from it.  With the initiative she now attributed to Chad it\nall made a sense, and this sense--a light, a lead, was what had\nabruptly risen before him.  He wanted, once more, to get off with these\nthings; which was at last made easy, a servant having, for his\nassistance, on hearing voices in the hall, just come forward. All that\nStrether had made out was, while the man opened the door and\nimpersonally waited, summed up in his last word.  \"I don't think, you\nknow, Chad will tell me anything.\"\n\n\"No--perhaps not yet.\"\n\n\"And I won't as yet speak to him.\"\n\n\"Ah that's as you'll think best.  You must judge.\"\n\nShe had finally given him her hand, which he held a moment.  \"How MUCH\nI have to judge!\"\n\n\"Everything,\" said Madame de Vionnet:  a remark that was indeed--with\nthe refined disguised suppressed passion of her face--what he most\ncarried away.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nSo far as a direct approach was concerned Sarah had neglected him, for\nthe week now about to end, with a civil consistency of chill that,\ngiving him a higher idea of her social resource, threw him back on the\ngeneral reflexion that a woman could always be amazing. It indeed\nhelped a little to console him that he felt sure she had for the same\nperiod also left Chad's curiosity hanging; though on the other hand,\nfor his personal relief, Chad could at least go through the various\nmotions--and he made them extraordinarily numerous--of seeing she had a\ngood time.  There wasn't a motion on which, in her presence, poor\nStrether could so much as venture, and all he could do when he was out\nof it was to walk over for a talk with Maria.  He walked over of course\nmuch less than usual, but he found a special compensation in a certain\nhalf-hour during which, toward the close of a crowded empty expensive\nday, his several companions seemed to him so disposed of as to give his\nforms and usages a rest.  He had been with them in the morning and had\nnevertheless called on the Pococks in the afternoon; but their whole\ngroup, he then found, had dispersed after a fashion of which it would\namuse Miss Gostrey to hear.  He was sorry again, gratefully sorry she\nwas so out of it--she who had really put him in; but she had\nfortunately always her appetite for news.  The pure flame of the\ndisinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine\nvault.  It was just now, as happened, that for so fine a sense as hers\na near view would have begun to pay.  Within three days, precisely, the\nsituation on which he was to report had shown signs of an equilibrium;\nthe effect of his look in at the hotel was to confirm this appearance.\nIf the equilibrium might only prevail! Sarah was out with Waymarsh,\nMamie was out with Chad, and Jim was out alone.  Later on indeed he\nhimself was booked to Jim, was to take him that evening to the\nVarieties--which Strether was careful to pronounce as Jim pronounced\nthem.\n\nMiss Gostrey drank it in.  \"What then to-night do the others do?\"\n\n\"Well, it has been arranged.  Waymarsh takes Sarah to dine at Bignons.\"\n\nShe wondered.  \"And what do they do after?  They can't come straight\nhome.\"\n\n\"No, they can't come straight home--at least Sarah can't. It's their\nsecret, but I think I've guessed it.\" Then as she waited: \"The circus.\"\n\nIt made her stare a moment longer, then laugh almost to extravagance.\n\"There's no one like you!\"\n\n\"Like ME?\"--he only wanted to understand.\n\n\"Like all of you together--like all of us:  Woollett, Milrose and their\nproducts.  We're abysmal--but may we never be less so! Mr. Newsome,\"\nshe continued, \"meanwhile takes Miss Pocock--?\"\n\n\"Precisely--to the Francais:  to see what you took Waymarsh and me to,\na family-bill.\"\n\n\"Ah then may Mr. Chad enjoy it as I did!\"  But she saw so much in\nthings.  \"Do they spend their evenings, your young people, like that,\nalone together?\"\n\n\"Well, they're young people--but they're old friends.\"\n\n\"I see, I see.  And do THEY dine--for a difference--at Brebant's?\"\n\n\"Oh where they dine is their secret too.  But I've my idea that it will\nbe, very quietly, at Chad's own place.\"\n\n\"She'll come to him there alone?\"\n\nThey looked at each other a moment.  \"He has known her from a child.\nBesides,\" said Strether with emphasis, \"Mamie's remarkable.  She's\nsplendid.\"\n\nShe wondered.  \"Do you mean she expects to bring it off?\"\n\n\"Getting hold of him?  No--I think not.\"\n\n\"She doesn't want him enough?--or doesn't believe in her power?\" On\nwhich as he said nothing she continued:  \"She finds she doesn't care\nfor him?\"\n\n\"No--I think she finds she does.  But that's what I mean by so\ndescribing her.  It's IF she does that she's splendid.  But we'll see,\"\nhe wound up, \"where she comes out.\"\n\n\"You seem to show me sufficiently,\" Miss Gostrey laughed, \"where she\ngoes in!  But is her childhood's friend,\" she asked, \"permitting\nhimself recklessly to flirt with her?\"\n\n\"No--not that.  Chad's also splendid.  They're ALL splendid!\" he\ndeclared with a sudden strange sound of wistfulness and envy. \"They're\nat least HAPPY.\"\n\n\"Happy?\"--it appeared, with their various difficulties, to surprise her.\n\n\"Well--I seem to myself among them the only one who isn't.\"\n\nShe demurred.  \"With your constant tribute to the ideal?\"\n\nHe had a laugh at his tribute to the ideal, but he explained after a\nmoment his impression.  \"I mean they're living.  They're rushing about.\nI've already had my rushing.  I'm waiting.\"\n\n\"But aren't you,\" she asked by way of cheer, \"waiting with ME?\"\n\nHe looked at her in all kindness.  \"Yes--if it weren't for that!\"\n\n\"And you help me to wait,\" she said.  \"However,\" she went on, \"I've\nreally something for you that will help you to wait and which you shall\nhave in a minute.  Only there's something more I want from you first. I\nrevel in Sarah.\"\n\n\"So do I.  If it weren't,\" he again amusedly sighed, \"for THAT--!\"\n\n\"Well, you owe more to women than any man I ever saw.  We do seem to\nkeep you going.  Yet Sarah, as I see her, must be great.\"\n\n\"She IS\" Strether fully assented:  \"great!  Whatever happens, she\nwon't, with these unforgettable days, have lived in vain.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey had a pause.  \"You mean she has fallen in love?\"\n\n\"I mean she wonders if she hasn't--and it serves all her purpose.\"\n\n\"It has indeed,\" Maria laughed, \"served women's purposes before!\"\n\n\"Yes--for giving in.  But I doubt if the idea--as an idea--has ever up\nto now answered so well for holding out.  That's HER tribute to the\nideal--we each have our own.  It's her romance--and it seems to me\nbetter on the whole than mine.  To have it in Paris too,\" he\nexplained--\"on this classic ground, in this charged infectious air,\nwith so sudden an intensity:  well, it's more than she expected.  She\nhas had in short to recognise the breaking out for her of a real\naffinity--and with everything to enhance the drama.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey followed.  \"Jim for instance?\"\n\n\"Jim.  Jim hugely enhances.  Jim was made to enhance.  And then Mr.\nWaymarsh.  It's the crowning touch--it supplies the colour. He's\npositively separated.\"\n\n\"And she herself unfortunately isn't--that supplies the colour too.\"\nMiss Gostrey was all there.  But somehow--!  \"Is HE in love?\"\n\nStrether looked at her a long time; then looked all about the room;\nthen came a little nearer.  \"Will you never tell any one in the world\nas long as ever you live?\"\n\n\"Never.\" It was charming.\n\n\"He thinks Sarah really is.  But he has no fear,\" Strether hastened to\nadd.\n\n\"Of her being affected by it?\"\n\n\"Of HIS being.  He likes it, but he knows she can hold out.  He's\nhelping her, he's floating her over, by kindness.\"\n\nMaria rather funnily considered it.  \"Floating her over in champagne?\nThe kindness of dining her, nose to nose, at the hour when all Paris is\ncrowding to profane delights, and in the--well, in the great temple, as\none hears of it, of pleasure?\"\n\n\"That's just IT, for both of them,\" Strether insisted--\"and all of a\nsupreme innocence.  The Parisian place, the feverish hour, the\nputting before her of a hundred francs' worth of food and drink, which\nthey'll scarcely touch--all that's the dear man's own romance; the\nexpensive kind, expensive in francs and centimes, in which he abounds.\nAnd the circus afterwards--which is cheaper, but which he'll find some\nmeans of making as dear as possible--that's also HIS tribute to the\nideal.  It does for him.  He'll see her through.  They won't talk of\nanything worse than you and me.\"\n\n\"Well, we're bad enough perhaps, thank heaven,\" she laughed, \"to upset\nthem!  Mr. Waymarsh at any rate is a hideous old coquette.\" And the\nnext moment she had dropped everything for a different pursuit.  \"What\nyou don't appear to know is that Jeanne de Vionnet has become engaged.\nShe's to marry--it has been definitely arranged--young Monsieur de\nMontbron.\"\n\nHe fairly blushed.  \"Then--if you know it--it's 'out'?\"\n\n\"Don't I often know things that are NOT out?  However,\" she said, \"this\nwill be out to-morrow.  But I see I've counted too much on your\npossible ignorance.  You've been before me, and I don't make you jump\nas I hoped.\"\n\nHe gave a gasp at her insight.  \"You never fail!  I've HAD my jump. I\nhad it when I first heard.\"\n\n\"Then if you knew why didn't you tell me as soon as you came in?\"\n\n\"Because I had it from her as a thing not yet to be spoken of.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey wondered.  \"From Madame de Vionnet herself?\"\n\n\"As a probability--not quite a certainty:  a good cause in which Chad\nhas been working.  So I've waited.\"\n\n\"You need wait no longer,\" she returned.  \"It reached me\nyesterday--roundabout and accidental, but by a person who had had it\nfrom one of the young man's own people--as a thing quite settled.  I\nwas only keeping it for you.\"\n\n\"You thought Chad wouldn't have told me?\"\n\nShe hesitated.  \"Well, if he hasn't--\"\n\n\"He hasn't.  And yet the thing appears to have been practically his\ndoing.  So there we are.\"\n\n\"There we are!\" Maria candidly echoed.\n\n\"That's why I jumped.  I jumped,\" he continued to explain, \"because it\nmeans, this disposition of the daughter, that there's now nothing else:\nnothing else but him and the mother.\"\n\n\"Still--it simplifies.\"\n\n\"It simplifies\"--he fully concurred.  \"But that's precisely where we\nare.  It marks a stage in his relation.  The act is his answer to Mrs.\nNewsome's demonstration.\"\n\n\"It tells,\" Maria asked, \"the worst?\"\n\n\"The worst.\"\n\n\"But is the worst what he wants Sarah to know?\"\n\n\"He doesn't care for Sarah.\"\n\nAt which Miss Gostrey's eyebrows went up.  \"You mean she has already\ndished herself?\"\n\nStrether took a turn about; he had thought it out again and again\nbefore this, to the end; but the vista seemed each time longer.  \"He\nwants his good friend to know the best.  I mean the measure of his\nattachment.  She asked for a sign, and he thought of that one.  There\nit is.\"\n\n\"A concession to her jealousy?\"\n\nStrether pulled up.  \"Yes--call it that.  Make it lurid--for that makes\nmy problem richer.\"\n\n\"Certainly, let us have it lurid--for I quite agree with you that we\nwant none of our problems poor.  But let us also have it clear. Can he,\nin the midst of such a preoccupation, or on the heels of it, have\nseriously cared for Jeanne?--cared, I mean, as a young man at liberty\nwould have cared?\"\n\nWell, Strether had mastered it.  \"I think he can have thought it would\nbe charming if he COULD care.  It would be nicer.\"\n\n\"Nicer than being tied up to Marie?\"\n\n\"Yes--than the discomfort of an attachment to a person he can never\nhope, short of a catastrophe, to marry.  And he was quite right,\" said\nStrether.  \"It would certainly have been nicer.  Even when a thing's\nalready nice there mostly is some other thing that would have been\nnicer--or as to which we wonder if it wouldn't.  But his question was\nall the same a dream.  He COULDn't care in that way.  He IS tied up to\nMarie.  The relation is too special and has gone too far.  It's the\nvery basis, and his recent lively contribution toward establishing\nJeanne in life has been his definite and final acknowledgement to\nMadame de Vionnet that he has ceased squirming. I doubt meanwhile,\" he\nwent on, \"if Sarah has at all directly attacked him.\"\n\nHis companion brooded.  \"But won't he wish for his own satisfaction to\nmake his ground good to her?\"\n\n\"No--he'll leave it to me, he'll leave everything to me.  I 'sort of'\nfeel\"--he worked it out--\"that the whole thing will come upon me.  Yes,\nI shall have every inch and every ounce of it.  I shall be USED for\nit--!\"  And Strether lost himself in the prospect.  Then he fancifully\nexpressed the issue.  \"To the last drop of my blood.\"\n\nMaria, however, roundly protested.  \"Ah you'll please keep a drop for\nME.  I shall have a use for it!\"--which she didn't however follow up.\nShe had come back the next moment to another matter. \"Mrs. Pocock, with\nher brother, is trusting only to her general charm?\"\n\n\"So it would seem.\"\n\n\"And the charm's not working?\"\n\nWell, Strether put it otherwise, \"She's sounding the note of\nhome--which is the very best thing she can do.\"\n\n\"The best for Madame de Vionnet?\"\n\n\"The best for home itself.  The natural one; the right one.\"\n\n\"Right,\" Maria asked, \"when it fails?\"\n\nStrether had a pause.  \"The difficulty's Jim.  Jim's the note of home.\"\n\nShe debated.  \"Ah surely not the note of Mrs. Newsome.\"\n\nBut he had it all.  \"The note of the home for which Mrs. Newsome wants\nhim--the home of the business.  Jim stands, with his little legs apart,\nat the door of THAT tent; and Jim is, frankly speaking, extremely\nawful.\"\n\nMaria stared.  \"And you in, you poor thing, for your evening with him?\"\n\n\"Oh he's all right for ME!\" Strether laughed.  \"Any one's good enough\nfor ME.  But Sarah shouldn't, all the same, have brought him. She\ndoesn't appreciate him.\"\n\nHis friend was amused with this statement of it.  \"Doesn't know, you\nmean, how bad he is?\"\n\nStrether shook his head with decision.  \"Not really.\"\n\nShe wondered.  \"Then doesn't Mrs. Newsome?\"\n\nIt made him frankly do the same.  \"Well, no--since you ask me.\"\n\nMaria rubbed it in.  \"Not really either?\"\n\n\"Not at all.  She rates him rather high.\" With which indeed,\nimmediately, he took himself up.  \"Well, he IS good too, in his way. It\ndepends on what you want him for.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey, however, wouldn't let it depend on anything--wouldn't\nhave it, and wouldn't want him, at any price.  \"It suits my book,\" she\nsaid, \"that he should be impossible; and it suits it still better,\" she\nmore imaginatively added, \"that Mrs. Newsome doesn't know he is.\"\n\nStrether, in consequence, had to take it from her, but he fell back on\nsomething else.  \"I'll tell you who does really know.\"\n\n\"Mr. Waymarsh?  Never!\"\n\n\"Never indeed.  I'm not ALWAYS thinking of Mr. Waymarsh; in fact I find\nnow I never am.\" Then he mentioned the person as if there were a good\ndeal in it.  \"Mamie.\"\n\n\"His own sister?\"  Oddly enough it but let her down.  \"What good will\nthat do?\"\n\n\"None perhaps.  But there--as usual--we are!\"\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nThere they were yet again, accordingly, for two days more; when\nStrether, on being, at Mrs. Pocock's hotel, ushered into that lady's\nsalon, found himself at first assuming a mistake on the part of the\nservant who had introduced him and retired.  The occupants hadn't come\nin, for the room looked empty as only a room can look in Paris, of a\nfine afternoon when the faint murmur of the huge collective life,\ncarried on out of doors, strays among scattered objects even as a\nsummer air idles in a lonely garden.  Our friend looked about and\nhesitated; observed, on the evidence of a table charged with purchases\nand other matters, that Sarah had become possessed--by no aid from\nHIM--of the last number of the salmon-coloured Revue; noted further\nthat Mamie appeared to have received a present of Fromentin's \"Maitres\nd'Autrefois\" from Chad, who had written her name on the cover; and\npulled up at the sight of a heavy letter addressed in a hand he knew.\nThis letter, forwarded by a banker and arriving in Mrs. Pocock's\nabsence, had been placed in evidence, and it drew from the fact of its\nbeing unopened a sudden queer power to intensify the reach of its\nauthor.  It brought home to him the scale on which Mrs. Newsome--for\nshe had been copious indeed this time--was writing to her daughter\nwhile she kept HIM in durance; and it had altogether such an effect\nupon him as made him for a few minutes stand still and breathe low.  In\nhis own room, at his own hotel, he had dozens of well-filled envelopes\nsuperscribed in that character; and there was actually something in the\nrenewal of his interrupted vision of the character that played straight\ninto the so frequent question of whether he weren't already\ndisinherited beyond appeal.  It was such an assurance as the sharp\ndownstrokes of her pen hadn't yet had occasion to give him; but they\nsomehow at the present crisis stood for a probable absoluteness in any\ndecree of the writer.  He looked at Sarah's name and address, in short,\nas if he had been looking hard into her mother's face, and then turned\nfrom it as if the face had declined to relax.  But since it was in a\nmanner as if Mrs. Newsome were thereby all the more, instead of the\nless, in the room, and were conscious, sharply and sorely conscious, of\nhimself, so he felt both held and hushed, summoned to stay at least and\ntake his punishment.  By staying, accordingly, he took it--creeping\nsoftly and vaguely about and waiting for Sarah to come in.  She WOULD\ncome in if he stayed long enough, and he had now more than ever the\nsense of her success in leaving him a prey to anxiety.  It wasn't to be\ndenied that she had had a happy instinct, from the point of view of\nWoollett, in placing him thus at the mercy of her own initiative. It\nwas very well to try to say he didn't care--that she might break ground\nwhen she would, might never break it at all if she wouldn't, and that\nhe had no confession whatever to wait upon her with:  he breathed from\nday to day an air that damnably required clearing, and there were\nmoments when he quite ached to precipitate that process.  He couldn't\ndoubt that, should she only oblige him by surprising him just as he\nthen was, a clarifying scene of some sort would result from the\nconcussion.\n\nHe humbly circulated in this spirit till he suddenly had a fresh\narrest.  Both the windows of the room stood open to the balcony, but it\nwas only now that, in the glass of the leaf of one of them, folded\nback, he caught a reflexion quickly recognised as the colour of a\nlady's dress.  Somebody had been then all the while on the balcony, and\nthe person, whoever it might be, was so placed between the windows as\nto be hidden from him; while on the other hand the many sounds of the\nstreet had covered his own entrance and movements.  If the person were\nSarah he might on the spot therefore be served to his taste.  He might\nlead her by a move or two up to the remedy for his vain tension; as to\nwhich, should he get nothing else from it, he would at least have the\nrelief of pulling down the roof on their heads.  There was fortunately\nno one at hand to observe--in respect to his valour--that even on this\ncompleted reasoning he still hung fire.  He had been waiting for Mrs.\nPocock and the sound of the oracle; but he had to gird himself\nafresh--which he did in the embrasure of the window, neither advancing\nnor retreating--before provoking the revelation.  It was apparently for\nSarah to come more into view; he was in that case there at her service.\nShe did however, as meanwhile happened, come more into view; only she\nluckily came at the last minute as a contradiction of Sarah.  The\noccupant of the balcony was after all quite another person, a person\npresented, on a second look, by a charming back and a slight shift of\nher position, as beautiful brilliant unconscious Mamie--Mamie alone at\nhome, Mamie passing her time in her own innocent way, Mamie in short\nrather shabbily used, but Mamie absorbed interested and interesting.\nWith her arms on the balustrade and her attention dropped to the street\nshe allowed Strether to watch her, to consider several things, without\nher turning round.\n\nBut the oddity was that when he HAD so watched and considered he simply\nstepped back into the room without following up his advantage.  He\nrevolved there again for several minutes, quite as with something new\nto think of and as if the bearings of the possibility of Sarah had been\nsuperseded.  For frankly, yes, it HAD bearings thus to find the girl in\nsolitary possession.  There was something in it that touched him to a\npoint not to have been reckoned beforehand, something that softly but\nquite pressingly spoke to him, and that spoke the more each time he\npaused again at the edge of the balcony and saw her still unaware.  Her\ncompanions were plainly scattered; Sarah would be off somewhere with\nWaymarsh and Chad off somewhere with Jim.  Strether didn't at all\nmentally impute to Chad that he was with his \"good friend\"; he gave him\nthe benefit of supposing him involved in appearances that, had he had\nto describe them--for instance to Maria--he would have conveniently\nqualified as more subtle.  It came to him indeed the next thing that\nthere was perhaps almost an excess of refinement in having left Mamie\nin such weather up there alone; however she might in fact have\nextemporised, under the charm of the Rue de Rivoli, a little makeshift\nParis of wonder arid fancy.  Our friend in any case now recognised--and\nit was as if at the recognition Mrs. Newsome's fixed intensity had\nsuddenly, with a deep audible gasp, grown thin and vague--that day\nafter day he had been conscious in respect to his young lady of\nsomething odd and ambiguous, yet something into which he could at last\nread a meaning.  It had been at the most, this mystery, an\nobsession--oh an obsession agreeable; and it had just now fallen into\nits place as at the touch of a spring.  It had represented the\npossibility between them of some communication baffled by accident and\ndelay--the possibility even of some relation as yet unacknowledged.\n\nThere was always their old relation, the fruit of the Woollett years;\nbut that--and it was what was strangest--had nothing whatever in common\nwith what was now in the air.  As a child, as a \"bud,\" and then again\nas a flower of expansion, Mamie had bloomed for him, freely, in the\nalmost incessantly open doorways of home; where he remembered her as\nfirst very forward, as then very backward--for he had carried on at one\nperiod, in Mrs. Newsome's parlours (oh Mrs. Newsome's phases and his\nown!) a course of English Literature re-enforced by exams and teas--and\nonce more, finally, as very much in advance.  But he had kept no great\nsense of points of contact; it not being in the nature of things at\nWoollett that the freshest of the buds should find herself in the same\nbasket with the most withered of the winter apples.  The child had\ngiven sharpness, above all, to his sense of the flight of time; it was\nbut the day before yesterday that he had tripped up on her hoop, yet\nhis experience of remarkable women--destined, it would seem, remarkably\nto grow--felt itself ready this afternoon, quite braced itself, to\ninclude her.  She had in fine more to say to him than he had ever\ndreamed the pretty girl of the moment COULD have; and the proof of the\ncircumstance was that, visibly, unmistakeably, she had been able to say\nit to no one else.  It was something she could mention neither to her\nbrother, to her sister-in-law nor to Chad; though he could just imagine\nthat had she still been at home she might have brought it out, as a\nsupreme tribute to age, authority and attitude, for Mrs. Newsome.  It\nwas moreover something in which they all took an interest; the strength\nof their interest was in truth just the reason of her prudence.  All\nthis then, for five minutes, was vivid to Strether, and it put before\nhim that, poor child, she had now but her prudence to amuse her.  That,\nfor a pretty girl in Paris, struck him, with a rush, as a sorry state;\nso that under the impression he went out to her with a step as\nhypocritically alert, he was well aware, as if he had just come into\nthe room.  She turned with a start at his voice; preoccupied with him\nthough she might be, she was just a scrap disappointed. \"Oh I thought\nyou were Mr. Bilham!\"\n\nThe remark had been at first surprising and our friend's private\nthought, under the influence of it, temporarily blighted; yet we are\nable to add that he presently recovered his inward tone and that many a\nfresh flower of fancy was to bloom in the same air. Little\nBilham--since little Bilham was, somewhat incongruously,\nexpected--appeared behindhand; a circumstance by which Strether was to\nprofit.  They came back into the room together after a little, the\ncouple on the balcony, and amid its crimson-and-gold elegance, with the\nothers still absent, Strether passed forty minutes that he appraised\neven at the time as far, in the whole queer connexion, from his idlest.\nYes indeed, since he had the other day so agreed with Maria about the\ninspiration of the lurid, here was something for his problem that\nsurely didn't make it shrink and that was floated in upon him as part\nof a sudden flood.  He was doubtless not to know till afterwards, on\nturning them over in thought, of how many elements his impression was\ncomposed; but he none the less felt, as he sat with the charming girl,\nthe signal growth of a confidence.  For she WAS charming, when all was\nsaid--and none the less so for the visible habit and practice of\nfreedom and fluency. She was charming, he was aware, in spite of the\nfact that if he hadn't found her so he would have found her something\nhe should have been in peril of expressing as \"funny.\" Yes, she was\nfunny, wonderful Mamie, and without dreaming it; she was bland, she was\nbridal--with never, that he could make out as yet, a bridegroom to\nsupport it; she was handsome and portly and easy and chatty, soft and\nsweet and almost disconcertingly reassuring.  She was dressed, if we\nmight so far discriminate, less as a young lady than as an old one--had\nan old one been supposable to Strether as so committed to vanity; the\ncomplexities of her hair missed moreover also the looseness of youth;\nand she had a mature manner of bending a little, as to encourage and\nreward, while she held neatly together in front of her a pair of\nstrikingly polished hands:  the combination of all of which kept up\nabout her the glamour of her \"receiving,\" placed her again perpetually\nbetween the windows and within sound of the ice-cream plates, suggested\nthe enumeration of all the names, all the Mr. Brookses and Mr.\nSnookses, gregarious specimens of a single type, she was happy to\n\"meet.\" But if all this was where she was funny, and if what was\nfunnier than the rest was the contrast between her beautiful benevolent\npatronage--such a hint of the polysyllabic as might make her something\nof a bore toward middle age--and her rather flat little voice, the\nvoice, naturally, unaffectedly yet, of a girl of fifteen; so Strether,\nnone the less, at the end of ten minutes, felt in her a quiet dignity\nthat pulled things bravely together.  If quiet dignity, almost more\nthan matronly, with voluminous, too voluminous clothes, was the effect\nshe proposed to produce, that was an ideal one could like in her when\nonce one had got into relation.  The great thing now for her visitor\nwas that this was exactly what he had done; it made so extraordinary a\nmixture of the brief and crowded hour.  It was the mark of a relation\nthat he had begun so quickly to find himself sure she was, of all\npeople, as might have been said, on the side and of the party of Mrs.\nNewsome's original ambassador. She was in HIS interest and not in\nSarah's, and some sign of that was precisely what he had been feeling\nin her, these last days, as imminent.  Finally placed, in Paris, in\nimmediate presence of the situation and of the hero of it--by whom\nStrether was incapable of meaning any one but Chad--she had\naccomplished, and really in a manner all unexpected to herself, a\nchange of base; deep still things had come to pass within her, and by\nthe time she had grown sure of them Strether had become aware of the\nlittle drama.  When she knew where she was, in short, he had made it\nout; and he made it out at present still better; though with never a\ndirect word passing between them all the while on the subject of his\nown predicament.  There had been at first, as he sat there with her, a\nmoment during which he wondered if she meant to break ground in respect\nto his prime undertaking.  That door stood so strangely ajar that he\nwas half-prepared to be conscious, at any juncture, of her having, of\nany one's having, quite bounced in.  But, friendly, familiar, light of\ntouch and happy of tact, she exquisitely stayed out; so that it was for\nall the world as if to show she could deal with him without being\nreduced to--well, scarcely anything.\n\nIt fully came up for them then, by means of their talking of everything\nBUT Chad, that Mamie, unlike Sarah, unlike Jim, knew perfectly what had\nbecome of him.  It fully came up that she had taken to the last\nfraction of an inch the measure of the change in him, and that she\nwanted Strether to know what a secret she proposed to make of it.  They\ntalked most conveniently--as if they had had no chance yet--about\nWoollett; and that had virtually the effect of their keeping the secret\nmore close.  The hour took on for Strether, little by little, a queer\nsad sweetness of quality, he had such a revulsion in Mamie's favour and\non behalf of her social value as might have come from remorse at some\nearly injustice.  She made him, as under the breath of some vague\nwestern whiff, homesick and freshly restless; he could really for the\ntime have fancied himself stranded with her on a far shore, during an\nominous calm, in a quaint community of shipwreck.  Their little\ninterview was like a picnic on a coral strand; they passed each other,\nwith melancholy smiles and looks sufficiently allusive, such cupfuls of\nwater as they had saved.  Especially sharp in Strether meanwhile was\nthe conviction that his companion really knew, as we have hinted, where\nshe had come out.  It was at a very particular place--only THAT she\nwould never tell him; it would be above all what he should have to\npuzzle for himself.  This was what he hoped for, because his interest\nin the girl wouldn't be complete without it.  No more would the\nappreciation to which she was entitled--so assured was he that the more\nhe saw of her process the more he should see of her pride. She saw,\nherself, everything; but she knew what she didn't want, and that it was\nthat had helped her.  What didn't she want?--there was a pleasure lost\nfor her old friend in not yet knowing, as there would doubtless be a\nthrill in getting a glimpse.  Gently and sociably she kept that dark to\nhim, and it was as if she soothed and beguiled him in other ways to\nmake up for it.  She came out with her impression of Madame de\nVionnet--of whom she had \"heard so much\"; she came out with her\nimpression of Jeanne, whom she had been \"dying to see\":  she brought it\nout with a blandness by which her auditor was really stirred that she\nhad been with Sarah early that very afternoon, and after dreadful\ndelays caused by all sorts of things, mainly, eternally, by the\npurchase of clothes--clothes that unfortunately wouldn't be themselves\neternal--to call in the Rue de Bellechasse.\n\nAt the sound of these names Strether almost blushed to feel that he\ncouldn't have sounded them first--and yet couldn't either have\njustified his squeamishness.  Mamie made them easy as he couldn't have\nbegun to do, and yet it could only have cost her more than he should\never have had to spend.  It was as friends of Chad's, friends special,\ndistinguished, desirable, enviable, that she spoke of them, and she\nbeautifully carried it off that much as she had heard of them--though\nshe didn't say how or where, which was a touch of her own--she had\nfound them beyond her supposition.  She abounded in praise of them, and\nafter the manner of Woollett--which made the manner of Woollett a\nloveable thing again to Strether.  He had never so felt the true\ninwardness of it as when his blooming companion pronounced the elder of\nthe ladies of the Rue de Bellechasse too fascinating for words and\ndeclared of the younger that she was perfectly ideal, a real little\nmonster of charm.  \"Nothing,\" she said of Jeanne, \"ought ever to happen\nto her--she's so awfully right as she is.  Another touch will spoil\nher--so she oughtn't to BE touched.\"\n\n\"Ah but things, here in Paris,\" Strether observed, \"do happen to little\ngirls.\" And then for the joke's and the occasion's sake: \"Haven't you\nfound that yourself?\"\n\n\"That things happen--?  Oh I'm not a little girl.  I'm a big battered\nblowsy one.  I don't care,\" Mamie laughed, \"WHAT happens.\"\n\nStrether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn't happen that he\nshould give her the pleasure of learning that he found her nicer than\nhe had really dreamed--a pause that ended when he had said to himself\nthat, so far as it at all mattered for her, she had in fact perhaps\nalready made this out.  He risked accordingly a different\nquestion--though conscious, as soon as he had spoken, that he seemed to\nplace it in relation to her last speech.  \"But that Mademoiselle de\nVionnet is to be married--I suppose you've heard of THAT.\" For all, he\nthen found, he need fear!  \"Dear, yes; the gentleman was there:\nMonsieur de Montbron, whom Madame de Vionnet presented to us.\"\n\n\"And was he nice?\"\n\nMamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner.  \"Any man's\nnice when he's in love.\"\n\nIt made Strether laugh.  \"But is Monsieur de Montbron in\nlove--already--with YOU?\"\n\n\"Oh that's not necessary--it's so much better he should be so with HER:\nwhich, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for myself.  He's\nperfectly gone--and I couldn't have borne it for her if he hadn't been.\nShe's just too sweet.\"\n\nStrether hesitated.  \"And through being in love too?\"\n\nOn which with a smile that struck him as wonderful Mamie had a\nwonderful answer.  \"She doesn't know if she is or not.\"\n\nIt made him again laugh out.  \"Oh but YOU do!\"\n\nShe was willing to take it that way.  \"Oh yes, I know everything.\" And\nas she sat there rubbing her polished hands and making the best of\nit--only holding her elbows perhaps a little too much out--the\nmomentary effect for Strether was that every one else, in all their\naffair, seemed stupid.\n\n\"Know that poor little Jeanne doesn't know what's the matter with her?\"\n\nIt was as near as they came to saying that she was probably in love\nwith Chad; but it was quite near enough for what Strether wanted; which\nwas to be confirmed in his certitude that, whether in love or not, she\nappealed to something large and easy in the girl before him.  Mamie\nwould be fat, too fat, at thirty; but she would always be the person\nwho, at the present sharp hour, had been disinterestedly tender.  \"If I\nsee a little more of her, as I hope I shall, I think she'll like me\nenough--for she seemed to like me to-day--to want me to tell her.\"\n\n\"And SHALL you?\"\n\n\"Perfectly.  I shall tell her the matter with her is that she wants\nonly too much to do right.  To do right for her, naturally,\" said\nMamie, \"is to please.\"\n\n\"Her mother, do you mean?\"\n\n\"Her mother first.\"\n\nStrether waited.  \"And then?\"\n\n\"Well, 'then'--Mr. Newsome.\"\n\nThere was something really grand for him in the serenity of this\nreference.  \"And last only Monsieur de Montbron?\"\n\n\"Last only\"--she good-humouredly kept it up.\n\nStrether considered.  \"So that every one after all then will be suited?\"\n\nShe had one of her few hesitations, but it was a question only of a\nmoment; and it was her nearest approach to being explicit with him\nabout what was between them.  \"I think I can speak for myself.  I shall\nbe.\"\n\nIt said indeed so much, told such a story of her being ready to help\nhim, so committed to him that truth, in short, for such use as he might\nmake of it toward those ends of his own with which, patiently and\ntrustfully, she had nothing to do--it so fully achieved all this that\nhe appeared to himself simply to meet it in its own spirit by the last\nfrankness of admiration.  Admiration was of itself almost accusatory,\nbut nothing less would serve to show her how nearly he understood.  He\nput out his hand for good-bye with a \"Splendid, splendid, splendid!\"\nAnd he left her, in her splendour, still waiting for little Bilham.\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Tenth\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nStrether occupied beside little Bilham, three evenings after his\ninterview with Mamie Pocock, the same deep divan they had enjoyed\ntogether on the first occasion of our friend's meeting Madame de\nVionnet and her daughter in the apartment of the Boulevard Malesherbes,\nwhere his position affirmed itself again as ministering to an easy\nexchange of impressions.  The present evening had a different stamp; if\nthe company was much more numerous, so, inevitably, were the ideas set\nin motion.  It was on the other hand, however, now strongly marked that\nthe talkers moved, in respect to such matters, round an inner, a\nprotected circle. They knew at any rate what really concerned them\nto-night, and Strether had begun by keeping his companion close to it.\nOnly a few of Chad's guests had dined--that is fifteen or twenty, a few\ncompared with the large concourse offered to sight by eleven o'clock;\nbut number and mass, quantity and quality, light, fragrance, sound, the\noverflow of hospitality meeting the high tide of response, had all from\nthe first pressed upon Strether's consciousness, and he felt himself\nsomehow part and parcel of the most festive scene, as the term was, in\nwhich he had ever in his life been engaged.  He had perhaps seen, on\nFourths of July and on dear old domestic Commencements, more people\nassembled, but he had never seen so many in proportion to the space, or\nhad at all events never known so great a promiscuity to show so\nmarkedly as picked. Numerous as was the company, it had still been made\nso by selection, and what was above all rare for Strether was that, by\nno fault of his own, he was in the secret of the principle that had\nworked.  He hadn't enquired, he had averted his head, but Chad had put\nhim a pair of questions that themselves smoothed the ground. He hadn't\nanswered the questions, he had replied that they were the young man's\nown affair; and he had then seen perfectly that the latter's direction\nwas already settled.\n\nChad had applied for counsel only by way of intimating that he knew\nwhat to do; and he had clearly never known it better than in now\npresenting to his sister the whole circle of his society.  This was all\nin the sense and the spirit of the note struck by him on that lady's\narrival; he had taken at the station itself a line that led him without\na break, and that enabled him to lead the Pococks--though dazed a\nlittle, no doubt, breathless, no doubt, and bewildered--to the\nuttermost end of the passage accepted by them perforce as pleasant.  He\nhad made it for them violently pleasant and mercilessly full; the\nupshot of which was, to Strether's vision, that they had come all the\nway without discovering it to be really no passage at all.  It was a\nbrave blind alley, where to pass was impossible and where, unless they\nstuck fast, they would have--which was always awkward--publicly to back\nout.  They were touching bottom assuredly tonight; the whole scene\nrepresented the terminus of the cul-de-sac.  So could things go when\nthere was a hand to keep them consistent--a hand that pulled the wire\nwith a skill at which the elder man more and more marvelled.  The elder\nman felt responsible, but he also felt successful, since what had taken\nplace was simply the issue of his own contention, six weeks before,\nthat they properly should wait to see what their friends would have\nreally to say.  He had determined Chad to wait, he had determined him\nto see; he was therefore not to quarrel with the time given up to the\nbusiness.  As much as ever, accordingly, now that a fortnight had\nelapsed, the situation created for Sarah, and against which she had\nraised no protest, was that of her having accommodated herself to her\nadventure as to a pleasure-party surrendered perhaps even somewhat in\nexcess to bustle and to \"pace.\" If her brother had been at any point\nthe least bit open to criticism it might have been on the ground of his\nspicing the draught too highly and pouring the cup too full.  Frankly\ntreating the whole occasion of the presence of his relatives as an\nopportunity for amusement, he left it, no doubt, but scant margin as an\nopportunity for anything else.  He suggested, invented, abounded--yet\nall the while with the loosest easiest rein. Strether, during his own\nweeks, had gained a sense of knowing Paris; but he saw it afresh, and\nwith fresh emotion, in the form of the knowledge offered to his\ncolleague.\n\nA thousand unuttered thoughts hummed for him in the air of these\nobservations; not the least frequent of which was that Sarah might well\nof a truth not quite know whither she was drifting.  She was in no\nposition not to appear to expect that Chad should treat her handsomely;\nyet she struck our friend as privately stiffening a little each time\nshe missed the chance of marking the great nuance. The great nuance was\nin brief that of course her brother must treat her handsomely--she\nshould like to see him not; but that treating her handsomely, none the\nless, wasn't all in all--treating her handsomely buttered no parsnips;\nand that in fine there were moments when she felt the fixed eyes of\ntheir admirable absent mother fairly screw into the flat of her back.\nStrether, watching, after his habit, and overscoring with thought,\npositively had moments of his own in which he found himself sorry for\nher--occasions on which she affected him as a person seated in a\nrunaway vehicle and turning over the question of a possible jump. WOULD\nshe jump, could she, would THAT be a safe placed--this question, at\nsuch instants, sat for him in her lapse into pallor, her tight lips,\nher conscious eyes.  It came back to the main point at issue: would she\nbe, after all, to be squared?  He believed on the whole she would jump;\nyet his alternations on this subject were the more especial stuff of\nhis suspense.  One thing remained well before him--a conviction that\nwas in fact to gain sharpness from the impressions of this evening:\nthat if she SHOULD gather in her skirts, close her eyes and quit the\ncarriage while in motion, he would promptly enough become aware.  She\nwould alight from her headlong course more or less directly upon him;\nit would be appointed to him, unquestionably, to receive her entire\nweight. Signs and portents of the experience thus in reserve for him\nhad as it happened, multiplied even through the dazzle of Chad's party.\nIt was partly under the nervous consciousness of such a prospect that,\nleaving almost every one in the two other rooms, leaving those of the\nguests already known to him as well as a mass of brilliant strangers of\nboth sexes and of several varieties of speech, he had desired five\nquiet minutes with little Bilham, whom he always found soothing and\neven a little inspiring, and to whom he had actually moreover something\ndistinct and important to say.\n\nHe had felt of old--for it already seemed long ago--rather humiliated\nat discovering he could learn in talk with a personage so much his\njunior the lesson of a certain moral ease; but he had now got used to\nthat--whether or no the mixture of the fact with other humiliations had\nmade it indistinct, whether or no directly from little Bilham's\nexample, the example of his being contentedly just the obscure and\nacute little Bilham he was.  It worked so for him, Strether seemed to\nsee; and our friend had at private hours a wan smile over the fact that\nhe himself, after so many more years, was still in search of something\nthat would work.  However, as we have said, it worked just now for them\nequally to have found a corner a little apart.  What particularly kept\nit apart was the circumstance that the music in the salon was\nadmirable, with two or three such singers as it was a privilege to hear\nin private.  Their presence gave a distinction to Chad's entertainment,\nand the interest of calculating their effect on Sarah was actually so\nsharp as to be almost painful.  Unmistakeably, in her single person,\nthe motive of the composition and dressed in a splendour of crimson\nwhich affected Strether as the sound of a fall through a skylight, she\nwould now be in the forefront of the listening circle and committed by\nit up to her eyes.  Those eyes during the wonderful dinner itself he\nhadn't once met; having confessedly--perhaps a little\npusillanimously--arranged with Chad that he should be on the same side\nof the table.  But there was no use in having arrived now with little\nBilham at an unprecedented point of intimacy unless he could pitch\neverything into the pot.  \"You who sat where you could see her, what\ndoes she make of it all?  By which I mean on what terms does she take\nit?\"\n\n\"Oh she takes it, I judge, as proving that the claim of his family is\nmore than ever justified.\"\n\n\"She isn't then pleased with what he has to show?\"\n\n\"On the contrary; she's pleased with it as with his capacity to do this\nkind of thing--more than she has been pleased with anything for a long\ntime.  But she wants him to show it THERE.  He has no right to waste it\non the likes of us.\"\n\nStrether wondered.  \"She wants him to move the whole thing over?\"\n\n\"The whole thing--with an important exception.  Everything he has\n'picked up'--and the way he knows how.  She sees no difficulty in that.\nShe'd run the show herself, and she'll make the handsome concession\nthat Woollett would be on the whole in some ways the better for it. Not\nthat it wouldn't be also in some ways the better for Woollett.  The\npeople there are just as good.\"\n\n\"Just as good as you and these others?  Ah that may be.  But such an\noccasion as this, whether or no,\" Strether said, \"isn't the people.\nIt's what has made the people possible.\"\n\n\"Well then,\" his friend replied, \"there you are; I give you my\nimpression for what it's worth.  Mrs. Pocock has SEEN, and that's\nto-night how she sits there.  If you were to have a glimpse of her face\nyou'd understand me.  She has made up her mind--to the sound of\nexpensive music.\"\n\nStrether took it freely in.  \"Ah then I shall have news of her.\"\n\n\"I don't want to frighten you, but I think that likely.  However,\"\nlittle Bilham continued, \"if I'm of the least use to you to hold on\nby--!\"\n\n\"You're not of the least!\"--and Strether laid an appreciative hand on\nhim to say it.  \"No one's of the least.\" With which, to mark how gaily\nhe could take it, he patted his companion's knee.  \"I must meet my fate\nalone, and I SHALL--oh you'll see!  And yet,\" he pursued the next\nmoment, \"you CAN help me too.  You once said to me\"--he followed this\nfurther--\"that you held Chad should marry. I didn't see then so well as\nI know now that you meant he should marry Miss Pocock.  Do you still\nconsider that he should?  Because if you do\"--he kept it up--\"I want\nyou immediately to change your mind.  You can help me that way.\"\n\n\"Help you by thinking he should NOT marry?\"\n\n\"Not marry at all events Mamie.\"\n\n\"And who then?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Strether returned, \"that I'm not obliged to say.  But Madame de\nVionnet--I suggest--when he can.'\n\n\"Oh!\" said little Bilham with some sharpness.\n\n\"Oh precisely!  But he needn't marry at all--I'm at any rate not\nobliged to provide for it.  Whereas in your case I rather feel that I\nAM.\"\n\nLittle Bilham was amused.  \"Obliged to provide for my marrying?\"\n\n\"Yes--after all I've done to you!\"\n\nThe young man weighed it.  \"Have you done as much as that?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether, thus challenged, \"of course I must remember what\nyou've also done to ME.  We may perhaps call it square.  But all the\nsame,\" he went on, \"I wish awfully you'd marry Mamie Pocock yourself.\"\n\nLittle Bilham laughed out.  \"Why it was only the other night, in this\nvery place, that you were proposing to me a different union altogether.\"\n\n\"Mademoiselle de Vionnet?\"  Well, Strether easily confessed it. \"That,\nI admit, was a vain image.  THIS is practical politics. I want to do\nsomething good for both of you--I wish you each so well; and you can\nsee in a moment the trouble it will save me to polish you off by the\nsame stroke.  She likes you, you know.  You console her.  And she's\nsplendid.\"\n\nLittle Bilham stared as a delicate appetite stares at an overheaped\nplate.  \"What do I console her for?\"\n\nIt just made his friend impatient.  \"Oh come, you knows\"\n\n\"And what proves for you that she likes me?\"\n\n\"Why the fact that I found her three days ago stopping at home alone\nall the golden afternoon on the mere chance that you'd come to her, and\nhanging over her balcony on that of seeing your cab drive up.  I don't\nknow what you want more.\"\n\nLittle Bilham after a moment found it.  \"Only just to know what proves\nto you that I like HER.\"\n\n\"Oh if what I've just mentioned isn't enough to make you do it, you're\na stony-hearted little fiend.  Besides\"--Strether encouraged his\nfancy's flight--\"you showed your inclination in the way you kept her\nwaiting, kept her on purpose to see if she cared enough for you.\"\n\nHis companion paid his ingenuity the deference of a pause.  \"I didn't\nkeep her waiting.  I came at the hour.  I wouldn't have kept her\nwaiting for the world,\" the young man honourably declared.\n\n\"Better still--then there you are!\"  And Strether, charmed, held him\nthe faster.  \"Even if you didn't do her justice, moreover,\" he\ncontinued, \"I should insist on your immediately coming round to it. I\nwant awfully to have worked it.  I want\"--and our friend spoke now with\na yearning that was really earnest--\"at least to have done THAT.\"\n\n\"To have married me off--without a penny?\"\n\n\"Well, I shan't live long; and I give you my word, now and here, that\nI'll leave you every penny of my own.  I haven't many, unfortunately,\nbut you shall have them all.  And Miss Pocock, I think, has a few.  I\nwant,\" Strether went on, \"to have been at least to that extent\nconstructive even expiatory.  I've been sacrificing so to strange gods\nthat I feel I want to put on record, somehow, my\nfidelity--fundamentally unchanged after all--to our own.  I feel as if\nmy hands were embrued with the blood of monstrous alien altars--of\nanother faith altogether.  There it is--it's done.\" And then he further\nexplained.  \"It took hold of me because the idea of getting her quite\nout of the way for Chad helps to clear my ground.\"\n\nThe young man, at this, bounced about, and it brought them face to face\nin admitted amusement.  \"You want me to marry as a convenience to Chad?\"\n\n\"No,\" Strether debated--\"HE doesn't care whether you marry or not. It's\nas a convenience simply to my own plan FOR him.\"\n\n\"'Simply'!\"--and little Bilham's concurrence was in itself a lively\ncomment.  \"Thank you.  But I thought,\" he continued, \"you had exactly\nNO plan 'for' him.\"\n\n\"Well then call it my plan for myself--which may be well, as you say,\nto have none.  His situation, don't you see? is reduced now to the bare\nfacts one has to recognise.  Mamie doesn't want him, and he doesn't\nwant Mamie:  so much as that these days have made clear.  It's a thread\nwe can wind up and tuck in.\"\n\nBut little Bilham still questioned.  \"YOU can--since you seem so much\nto want to.  But why should I?\"\n\nPoor Strether thought it over, but was obliged of course to admit that\nhis demonstration did superficially fail.  \"Seriously, there is no\nreason.  It's my affair--I must do it alone.  I've only my fantastic\nneed of making my dose stiff.\"\n\nLittle Bilham wondered.  \"What do you call your dose?\"\n\n\"Why what I have to swallow.  I want my conditions unmitigated.\"\n\nHe had spoken in the tone of talk for talk's sake, and yet with an\nobscure truth lurking in the loose folds; a circumstance presently not\nwithout its effect on his young friend.  Little Bilham's eyes rested on\nhim a moment with some intensity; then suddenly, as if everything had\ncleared up, he gave a happy laugh.  It seemed to say that if\npretending, or even trying, or still even hoping, to be able to care\nfor Mamie would be of use, he was all there for the job.  \"I'll do\nanything in the world for you!\"\n\n\"Well,\" Strether smiled, \"anything in the world is all I want.  I don't\nknow anything that pleased me in her more,\" he went on, \"than the way\nthat, on my finding her up there all alone, coming on her unawares and\nfeeling greatly for her being so out of it, she knocked down my tall\nhouse of cards with her instant and cheerful allusion to the next young\nman.  It was somehow so the note I needed--her staying at home to\nreceive him.\"\n\n\"It was Chad of course,\" said little Bilham, \"who asked the next young\nman--I like your name for me!--to call.\"\n\n\"So I supposed--all of which, thank God, is in our innocent and natural\nmanners.  But do you know,\" Strether asked, \"if Chad knows--?\"  And\nthen as this interlocutor seemed at a loss: \"Why where she has come\nout.\"\n\nLittle Bilham, at this, met his face with a conscious look--it was as\nif, more than anything yet, the allusion had penetrated.  \"Do you know\nyourself?\"\n\nStrether lightly shook his head.  \"There I stop.  Oh, odd as it may\nappear to you, there ARE things I don't know.  I only got the sense\nfrom her of something very sharp, and yet very deep down, that she was\nkeeping all to herself.  That is I had begun with the belief that she\nHAD kept it to herself; but face to face with her there I soon made out\nthat there was a person with whom she would have shared it.  I had\nthought she possibly might with ME--but I saw then that I was only half\nin her confidence.  When, turning to me to greet me--for she was on the\nbalcony and I had come in without her knowing it--she showed me she had\nbeen expecting YOU and was proportionately disappointed, I got hold of\nthe tail of my conviction.  Half an hour later I was in possession of\nall the rest of it.  You know what has happened.\" He looked at his\nyoung friend hard--then he felt sure.  \"For all you say, you're up to\nyour eyes. So there you are.\"\n\nLittle Bilham after an instant pulled half round.  \"I assure you she\nhasn't told me anything.\"\n\n\"Of course she hasn't.  For what do you suggest that I suppose her to\ntake you?  But you've been with her every day, you've seen her freely,\nyou've liked her greatly--I stick to that--and you've made your profit\nof it.  You know what she has been through as well as you know that she\nhas dined here to-night--which must have put her, by the way, through a\ngood deal more.\"\n\nThe young man faced this blast; after which he pulled round the rest of\nthe way.  \"I haven't in the least said she hasn't been nice to me.  But\nshe's proud.\"\n\n\"And quite properly.  But not too proud for that.\"\n\n\"It's just her pride that has made her.  Chad,\" little Bilham loyally\nwent on, \"has really been as kind to her as possible. It's awkward for\na man when a girl's in love with him.\"\n\n\"Ah but she isn't--now.\"\n\nLittle Bilham sat staring before him; then he sprang up as if his\nfriend's penetration, recurrent and insistent, made him really after\nall too nervous.  \"No--she isn't now.  It isn't in the least,\" he went\non, \"Chad's fault.  He's really all right.  I mean he would have been\nwilling.  But she came over with ideas.  Those she had got at home.\nThey had been her motive and support in joining her brother and his\nwife.  She was to SAVE our friend.\"\n\n\"Ah like me, poor thing?\"  Strether also got to his feet.\n\n\"Exactly--she had a bad moment.  It was very soon distinct to her, to\npull her up, to let her down, that, alas, he was, he IS, saved. There's\nnothing left for her to do.\"\n\n\"Not even to love him?\"\n\n\"She would have loved him better as she originally believed him.\"\n\nStrether wondered \"Of course one asks one's self what notion a little\ngirl forms, where a young man's in question, of such a history and such\na state.\"\n\n\"Well, this little girl saw them, no doubt, as obscure, but she saw\nthem practically as wrong.  The wrong for her WAS the obscure. Chad\nturns out at any rate right and good and disconcerting, while what she\nwas all prepared for, primed and girded and wound up for, was to deal\nwith him as the general opposite.\"\n\n\"Yet wasn't her whole point\"--Strether weighed it--\"that he was to be,\nthat he COULD be, made better, redeemed?\"\n\nLittle Bilham fixed it all a moment, and then with a small headshake\nthat diffused a tenderness:  \"She's too late.  Too late for the\nmiracle.\"\n\n\"Yes\"--his companion saw enough.  \"Still, if the worst fault of his\ncondition is that it may be all there for her to profit by--?\"\n\n\"Oh she doesn't want to 'profit,' in that flat way.  She doesn't want\nto profit by another woman's work--she wants the miracle to have been\nher own miracle.  THAT'S what she's too late for.\"\n\nStrether quite felt how it all fitted, yet there seemed one loose\npiece.  \"I'm bound to say, you know, that she strikes one, on these\nlines, as fastidious--what you call here difficile.\"\n\nLittle Bilham tossed up his chin.  \"Of course she's difficile--on any\nlines!  What else in the world ARE our Mamies--the real, the right\nones?\"\n\n\"I see, I see,\" our friend repeated, charmed by the responsive wisdom\nhe had ended by so richly extracting.  \"Mamie is one of the real and\nthe right.\"\n\n\"The very thing itself.\"\n\n\"And what it comes to then,\" Strether went on, \"is that poor awful Chad\nis simply too good for her.\"\n\n\"Ah too good was what he was after all to be; but it was she herself,\nand she herself only, who was to have made him so.\"\n\nIt hung beautifully together, but with still a loose end.  \"Wouldn't he\ndo for her even if he should after all break--\"\n\n\"With his actual influence?\"  Oh little Bilham had for this enquiry the\nsharpest of all his controls.  \"How can he 'do'--on any terms\nwhatever--when he's flagrantly spoiled?\"\n\nStrether could only meet the question with his passive, his receptive\npleasure.  \"Well, thank goodness, YOU'RE not!  You remain for her to\nsave, and I come back, on so beautiful and full a demonstration, to my\ncontention of just now--that of your showing distinct signs of her\nhaving already begun.\"\n\nThe most he could further say to himself--as his young friend turned\naway--was that the charge encountered for the moment no renewed denial.\nLittle Bilham, taking his course back to the music, only shook his\ngood-natured ears an instant, in the manner of a terrier who has got\nwet; while Strether relapsed into the sense--which had for him in these\ndays most of comfort--that he was free to believe in anything that from\nhour to hour kept him going.  He had positively motions and flutters of\nthis conscious hour-to-hour kind, temporary surrenders to irony, to\nfancy, frequent instinctive snatches at the growing rose of\nobservation, constantly stronger for him, as he felt, in scent and\ncolour, and in which he could bury his nose even to wantonness.  This\nlast resource was offered him, for that matter, in the very form of his\nnext clear perception--the vision of a prompt meeting, in the doorway\nof the room, between little Bilham and brilliant Miss Barrace, who was\nentering as Bilham withdrew.  She had apparently put him a question, to\nwhich he had replied by turning to indicate his late interlocutor;\ntoward whom, after an interrogation further aided by a resort to that\noptical machinery which seemed, like her other ornaments, curious and\narchaic, the genial lady, suggesting more than ever for her fellow\nguest the old French print, the historic portrait, directed herself\nwith an intention that Strether instantly met.  He knew in advance the\nfirst note she would sound, and took in as she approached all her need\nof sounding it.  Nothing yet had been so \"wonderful\" between them as\nthe present occasion; and it was her special sense of this quality in\noccasions that she was there, as she was in most places, to feed.  That\nsense had already been so well fed by the situation about them that she\nhad quitted the other room, forsaken the music, dropped out of the\nplay, abandoned, in a word, the stage itself, that she might stand a\nminute behind the scenes with Strether and so perhaps figure as one of\nthe famous augurs replying, behind the oracle, to the wink of the\nother.  Seated near him presently where little Bilham had sat, she\nreplied in truth to many things; beginning as soon as he had said to\nher--what he hoped he said without fatuity--\"All you ladies are\nextraordinarily kind to me.\"\n\nShe played her long handle, which shifted her observation; she saw in\nan instant all the absences that left them free.  \"How can we be\nanything else?  But isn't that exactly your plight?  'We ladies'--oh\nwe're nice, and you must be having enough of us!  As one of us, you\nknow, I don't pretend I'm crazy about us.  But Miss Gostrey at least\nto-night has left you alone, hasn't she?\"  With which she again looked\nabout as if Maria might still lurk.\n\n\"Oh yes,\" said Strether; \"she's only sitting up for me at home.\" And\nthen as this elicited from his companion her gay \"Oh, oh, oh!\" he\nexplained that he meant sitting up in suspense and prayer.  \"We thought\nit on the whole better she shouldn't be present; and either way of\ncourse it's a terrible worry for her.\" He abounded in the sense of his\nappeal to the ladies, and they might take their choice of his doing so\nfrom humility or from pride.  \"Yet she inclines to believe I shall come\nout.\"\n\n\"Oh I incline to believe too you'll come out!\"--Miss Barrace, with her\nlaugh, was not to be behind.  \"Only the question's about WHERE, isn't\nit?  However,\" she happily continued, \"if it's anywhere at all it must\nbe very far on, mustn't it?  To do us justice, I think, you know,\" she\nlaughed, \"we do, among us all, want you rather far on.  Yes, yes,\" she\nrepeated in her quick droll way; \"we want you very, VERY far on!\" After\nwhich she wished to know why he had thought it better Maria shouldn't\nbe present.\n\n\"Oh,\" he replied, \"it was really her own idea.  I should have wished\nit.  But she dreads responsibility.\"\n\n\"And isn't that a new thing for her?\"\n\n\"To dread it?  No doubt--no doubt.  But her nerve has given way.\"\n\nMiss Barrace looked at him a moment.  \"She has too much at stake.\" Then\nless gravely:  \"Mine, luckily for me, holds out.\"\n\n\"Luckily for me too\"--Strether came back to that.  \"My own isn't so\nfirm, MY appetite for responsibility isn't so sharp, as that I haven't\nfelt the very principle of this occasion to be 'the more the merrier.'\nIf we ARE so merry it's because Chad has understood so well.\"\n\n\"He has understood amazingly,\" said Miss Barrace.\n\n\"It's wonderful--Strether anticipated for her.\n\n\"It's wonderful!\" she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face to face\nover it, they largely and recklessly laughed.  But she presently added:\n\"Oh I see the principle.  If one didn't one would be lost.  But when\nonce one has got hold of it--\"\n\n\"It's as simple as twice two!  From the moment he had to do something--\"\n\n\"A crowd\"--she took him straight up--\"was the only thing?  Rather,\nrather:  a rumpus of sound,\" she laughed, \"or nothing.  Mrs. Pocock's\nbuilt in, or built out--whichever you call it; she's packed so tight\nshe can't move.  She's in splendid isolation\"--Miss Barrace embroidered\nthe theme.\n\nStrether followed, but scrupulous of justice.  \"Yet with every one in\nthe place successively introduced to her.\"\n\n\"Wonderfully--but just so that it does build her out.  She's bricked\nup, she's buried alive!\"\n\nStrether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him to a\nsigh.  \"Oh but she's not dead!  It will take more than this to kill\nher.\"\n\nHis companion had a pause that might have been for pity.  \"No, I can't\npretend I think she's finished--or that it's for more than to-night.\"\nShe remained pensive as if with the same compunction. \"It's only up to\nher chin.\" Then again for the fun of it:  \"She can breathe.\"\n\n\"She can breathe!\"--he echoed it in the same spirit.  \"And do you\nknow,\" he went on, \"what's really all this time happening to\nme?--through the beauty of music, the gaiety of voices, the uproar in\nshort of our revel and the felicity of your wit?  The sound of Mrs.\nPocock's respiration drowns for me, I assure you, every other. It's\nliterally all I hear.\"\n\nShe focussed him with her clink of chains.  \"Well--!\" she breathed ever\nso kindly.\n\n\"Well, what?\"\n\n\"She IS free from her chin up,\" she mused; \"and that WILL be enough for\nher.\"\n\n\"It will be enough for me!\" Strether ruefully laughed.  \"Waymarsh has\nreally,\" he then asked, \"brought her to see you?\"\n\n\"Yes--but that's the worst of it.  I could do you no good.  And yet I\ntried hard.\"\n\nStrether wondered.  \"And how did you try?\"\n\n\"Why I didn't speak of you.\"\n\n\"I see.  That was better.\"\n\n\"Then what would have been worse?  For speaking or silent,\" she lightly\nwailed, \"I somehow 'compromise.' And it has never been any one but you.\"\n\n\"That shows\"--he was magnanimous--\"that it's something not in you, but\nin one's self.  It's MY fault.\"\n\nShe was silent a little.  \"No, it's Mr. Waymarsh's.  It's the fault of\nhis having brought her.\"\n\n\"Ah then,\" said Strether good-naturedly, \"why DID he bring her?\"\n\n\"He couldn't afford not to.\"\n\n\"Oh you were a trophy--one of the spoils of conquest?  But why in that\ncase, since you do 'compromise'--\"\n\n\"Don't I compromise HIM as well?  I do compromise him as well,\" Miss\nBarrace smiled.  \"I compromise him as hard as I can.  But for Mr.\nWaymarsh it isn't fatal.  It's--so far as his wonderful relation with\nMrs. Pocock is concerned--favourable.\" And then, as he still seemed\nslightly at sea:  \"The man who had succeeded with ME, don't you see?\nFor her to get him from me was such an added incentive.\"\n\nStrether saw, but as if his path was still strewn with surprises. \"It's\n'from' you then that she has got him?\"\n\nShe was amused at his momentary muddle.  \"You can fancy my fight! She\nbelieves in her triumph.  I think it has been part of her joy.\n\n\"Oh her joy!\" Strether sceptically murmured.\n\n\"Well, she thinks she has had her own way.  And what's to-night for her\nbut a kind of apotheosis?  Her frock's really good.\"\n\n\"Good enough to go to heaven in?  For after a real apotheosis,\"\nStrether went on, \"there's nothing BUT heaven.  For Sarah there's only\nto-morrow.\"\n\n\"And you mean that she won't find to-morrow heavenly?\"\n\n\"Well, I mean that I somehow feel to-night--on her behalf--too good to\nbe true.  She has had her cake; that is she's in the act now of having\nit, of swallowing the largest and sweetest piece.  There won't be\nanother left for her.  Certainly I haven't one.  It can only, at the\nbest, be Chad.\" He continued to make it out as for their common\nentertainment.  \"He may have one, as it were, up his sleeve; yet it's\nborne in upon me that if he had--\"\n\n\"He wouldn't\"--she quite understood--\"have taken all THIS trouble? I\ndare say not, and, if I may be quite free and dreadful, I very much\nhope he won't take any more.  Of course I won't pretend now,\" she\nadded, \"not to know what it's a question of.\"\n\n\"Oh every one must know now,\" poor Strether thoughtfully admitted; \"and\nit's strange enough and funny enough that one should feel everybody\nhere at this very moment to be knowing and watching and waiting.\"\n\n\"Yes--isn't it indeed funny?\"  Miss Barrace quite rose to it. \"That's\nthe way we ARE in Paris.\" She was always pleased with a new\ncontribution to that queerness.  \"It's wonderful!  But, you know,\" she\ndeclared, \"it all depends on you.  I don't want to turn the knife in\nyour vitals, but that's naturally what you just now meant by our all\nbeing on top of you.  We know you as the hero of the drama, and we're\ngathered to see what you'll do.\"\n\nStrether looked at her a moment with a light perhaps slightly obscured.\n\"I think that must be why the hero has taken refuge in this corner.\nHe's scared at his heroism--he shrinks from his part.\"\n\n\"Ah but we nevertheless believe he'll play it.  That's why,\" Miss\nBarrace kindly went on, \"we take such an interest in you. We feel\nyou'll come up to the scratch.\" And then as he seemed perhaps not quite\nto take fire:  \"Don't let him do it.\"\n\n\"Don't let Chad go?\"\n\n\"Yes, keep hold of him.  With all this\"--and she indicated the general\ntribute--\"he has done enough.  We love him here--he's charming.\"\n\n\"It's beautiful,\" said Strether, \"the way you all can simplify when you\nwill.\"\n\nBut she gave it to him back.  \"It's nothing to the way you will when\nyou must.\"\n\nHe winced at it as at the very voice of prophecy, and it kept him a\nmoment quiet.  He detained her, however, on her appearing about to\nleave him alone in the rather cold clearance their talk had made.\n\"There positively isn't a sign of a hero to-night; the hero's dodging\nand shirking, the hero's ashamed.  Therefore, you know, I think, what\nyou must all REALLY be occupied with is the heroine.\"\n\nMiss Barrace took a minute.  \"The heroine?\"\n\n\"The heroine.  I've treated her,\" said Strether, \"not a bit like a\nhero.  Oh,\" he sighed, \"I don't do it well!\"\n\nShe eased him off.  \"You do it as you can.\"  And then after another\nhesitation:  \"I think she's satisfied.\"\n\nBut he remained compunctious.  \"I haven't been near her.  I haven't\nlooked at her.\"\n\n\"Ah then you've lost a good deal!\"\n\nHe showed he knew it.  \"She's more wonderful than ever?\"\n\n\"Than ever.  With Mr. Pocock.\"\n\nStrether wondered.  \"Madame de Vionnet--with Jim?\"\n\n\"Madame de Vionnet--with 'Jim.'\"  Miss Barrace was historic.\n\n\"And what's she doing with him?\"\n\n\"Ah you must ask HIM!\"\n\nStrether's face lighted again at the prospect.  \"It WILL be amusing to\ndo so.\"  Yet he continued to wonder.  \"But she must have some idea.\"\n\n\"Of course she has--she has twenty ideas.  She has in the first place,\"\nsaid Miss Barrace, swinging a little her tortoise-shell, \"that of doing\nher part.  Her part is to help YOU.\"\n\nIt came out as nothing had come yet; links were missing and connexions\nunnamed, but it was suddenly as if they were at the heart of their\nsubject.  \"Yes; how much more she does it,\" Strether gravely reflected,\n\"than I help HER!\"  It all came over him as with the near presence of\nthe beauty, the grace, the intense, dissimulated spirit with which he\nhad, as he said, been putting off contact.  \"SHE has courage.\"\n\n\"Ah she has courage!\" Miss Barrace quite agreed; and it was as if for a\nmoment they saw the quantity in each other's face.\n\nBut indeed the whole thing was present.  \"How much she must care!\"\n\n\"Ah there it is.  She does care.  But it isn't, is it,\" Miss Barrace\nconsiderately added, \"as if you had ever had any doubt of that?\"\n\nStrether seemed suddenly to like to feel that he really never had. \"Why\nof course it's the whole point.\"\n\n\"Voila!\" Miss Barrace smiled.\n\n\"It's why one came out,\" Strether went on.  \"And it's why one has\nstayed so long.  And it's also\"--he abounded--\"why one's going home.\nIt's why, it's why--\"\n\n\"It's why everything!\" she concurred.  \"It's why she might be\nto-night--for all she looks and shows, and for all your friend 'Jim'\ndoes--about twenty years old.  That's another of her ideas; to be for\nhim, and to be quite easily and charmingly, as young as a little girl.\"\n\nStrether assisted at his distance.  \"'For him'?  For Chad--?\"\n\n\"For Chad, in a manner, naturally, always.  But in particular to-night\nfor Mr.  Pocock.\"  And then as her friend still stared: \"Yes, it IS of\na bravery But that's what she has:  her high sense of duty.\"  It was\nmore than sufficiently before them.  \"When Mr. Newsome has his hands so\nembarrassed with his sister--\"\n\n\"It's quite the least\"--Strether filled it out--\"that she should take\nhis sister's husband?  Certainly--quite the least.  So she has taken\nhim.\"\n\n\"She has taken him.\"  It was all Miss Barrace had meant.\n\nStill it remained enough.  \"It must be funny.\"\n\n\"Oh it IS funny.\"  That of course essentially went with it.\n\nBut it brought them back.  \"How indeed then she must care!\" In answer to\nwhich Strether's entertainer dropped a comprehensive \"Ah!\" expressive\nperhaps of some impatience for the time he took to get used to it.  She\nherself had got used to it long before.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nWhen one morning within the week he perceived the whole thing to be\nreally at last upon him Strether's immediate feeling was all relief. He\nhad known this morning that something was about to happen--known it, in\na moment, by Waymarsh's manner when Waymarsh appeared before him during\nhis brief consumption of coffee and a roll in the small slippery\nsalle-a-manger so associated with rich rumination.  Strether had taken\nthere of late various lonely and absent-minded meals; he communed\nthere, even at the end of June, with a suspected chill, the air of old\nshivers mixed with old savours, the air in which so many of his\nimpressions had perversely matured; the place meanwhile renewing its\nmessage to him by the very circumstance of his single state.  He now\nsat there, for the most part, to sigh softly, while he vaguely tilted\nhis carafe, over the vision of how much better Waymarsh was occupied.\nThat was really his success by the common measure--to have led this\ncompanion so on and on.  He remembered how at first there had been\nscarce a squatting-place he could beguile him into passing; the actual\noutcome of which at last was that there was scarce one that could\narrest him in his rush.  His rush--as Strether vividly and amusedly\nfigured it--continued to be all with Sarah, and contained perhaps\nmoreover the word of the whole enigma, whipping up in its fine\nfull-flavoured froth the very principle, for good or for ill, of his\nown, of Strether's destiny.  It might after all, to the end, only be\nthat they had united to save him, and indeed, so far as Waymarsh was\nconcerned, that HAD to be the spring of action. Strether was glad at\nall events, in connexion with the case, that the saving he required was\nnot more scant; so constituted a luxury was it in certain lights just\nto lurk there out of the full glare. He had moments of quite seriously\nwondering whether Waymarsh wouldn't in fact, thanks to old friendship\nand a conceivable indulgence, make about as good terms for him as he\nmight make for himself. They wouldn't be the same terms of course; but\nthey might have the advantage that he himself probably should be able\nto make none at all.\n\nHe was never in the morning very late, but Waymarsh had already been\nout, and, after a peep into the dim refectory, he presented himself\nwith much less than usual of his large looseness.  He had made sure,\nthrough the expanse of glass exposed to the court, that they would be\nalone; and there was now in fact that about him that pretty well took\nup the room.  He was dressed in the garments of summer; and save that\nhis white waistcoat was redundant and bulging these things favoured,\nthey determined, his expression.  He wore a straw hat such as his\nfriend hadn't yet seen in Paris, and he showed a buttonhole freshly\nadorned with a magnificent rose. Strether read on the instant his\nstory--how, astir for the previous hour, the sprinkled newness of the\nday, so pleasant at that season in Paris, he was fairly panting with\nthe pulse of adventure and had been with Mrs. Pocock, unmistakeably, to\nthe Marche aux Fleurs. Strether really knew in this vision of him a joy\nthat was akin to envy; so reversed as he stood there did their old\npositions seem; so comparatively doleful now showed, by the sharp turn\nof the wheel, the posture of the pilgrim from Woollett.  He wondered,\nthis pilgrim, if he had originally looked to Waymarsh so brave and\nwell, so remarkably launched, as it was at present the latter's\nprivilege to appear.  He recalled that his friend had remarked to him\neven at Chester that his aspect belied his plea of prostration; but\nthere certainly couldn't have been, for an issue, an aspect less\nconcerned than Waymarsh's with the menace of decay.  Strether had at\nany rate never resembled a Southern planter of the great days--which\nwas the image picturesquely suggested by the happy relation between the\nfuliginous face and the wide panama of his visitor. This type, it\nfurther amused him to guess, had been, on Waymarsh's part, the object\nof Sarah's care; he was convinced that her taste had not been a\nstranger to the conception and purchase of the hat, any more than her\nfine fingers had been guiltless of the bestowal of the rose.  It came\nto him in the current of thought, as things so oddly did come, that HE\nhad never risen with the lark to attend a brilliant woman to the Marche\naux Fleurs; this could be fastened on him in connexion neither with\nMiss Gostrey nor with Madame de Vionnet; the practice of getting up\nearly for adventures could indeed in no manner be fastened on him.  It\ncame to him in fact that just here was his usual case:  he was for ever\nmissing things through his general genius for missing them, while\nothers were for ever picking them up through a contrary bent.  And it\nwas others who looked abstemious and he who looked greedy; it was he\nsomehow who finally paid, and it was others who mainly partook.  Yes,\nhe should go to the scaffold yet for he wouldn't know quite whom.  He\nalmost, for that matter, felt on the scaffold now and really quite\nenjoying it.  It worked out as BECAUSE he was anxious there--it worked\nout as for this reason that Waymarsh was so blooming.  It was HIS trip\nfor health, for a change, that proved the success--which was just what\nStrether, planning and exerting himself, had desired it should be. That\ntruth already sat full-blown on his companion's lips; benevolence\nbreathed from them as with the warmth of active exercise, and also a\nlittle as with the bustle of haste.\n\n\"Mrs. Pocock, whom I left a quarter of an hour ago at her hotel, has\nasked me to mention to you that she would like to find you at home here\nin about another hour.  She wants to see you; she has something to\nsay--or considers, I believe, that you may have:  so that I asked her\nmyself why she shouldn't come right round.  She hasn't BEEN round\nyet--to see our place; and I took upon myself to say that I was sure\nyou'd be glad to have her.  The thing's therefore, you see, to keep\nright here till she comes.\"\n\nThe announcement was sociably, even though, after Waymarsh's wont,\nsomewhat solemnly made; but Strether quickly felt other things in it\nthan these light features.  It was the first approach, from that\nquarter, to admitted consciousness; it quickened his pulse; it simply\nmeant at last that he should have but himself to thank if he didn't\nknow where he was.  He had finished his breakfast; he pushed it away\nand was on his feet.  There were plenty of elements of surprise, but\nonly one of doubt.  \"The thing's for YOU to keep here too?\"  Waymarsh\nhad been slightly ambiguous.\n\nHe wasn't ambiguous, however, after this enquiry; and Strether's\nunderstanding had probably never before opened so wide and effective a\nmouth as it was to open during the next five minutes. It was no part of\nhis friend's wish, as appeared, to help to receive Mrs. Pocock; he\nquite understood the spirit in which she was to present herself, but\nhis connexion with her visit was limited to his having--well, as he\nmight say--perhaps a little promoted it.  He had thought, and had let\nher know it, that Strether possibly would think she might have been\nround before.  At any rate, as turned out, she had been wanting\nherself, quite a while, to come.  \"I told her,\" said Waymarsh, \"that it\nwould have been a bright idea if she had only carried it out before.\"\n\nStrether pronounced it so bright as to be almost dazzling.  \"But why\nHASn't she carried it out before?  She has seen me every day--she had\nonly to name her hour.  I've been waiting and waiting.\"\n\n\"Well, I told her you had.  And she has been waiting too.\"  It was, in\nthe oddest way in the world, on the showing of this tone, a genial new\npressing coaxing Waymarsh; a Waymarsh conscious with a different\nconsciousness from any he had yet betrayed, and actually rendered by it\nalmost insinuating.  He lacked only time for full persuasion, and\nStrether was to see in a moment why.  Meantime, however, our friend\nperceived, he was announcing a step of some magnanimity on Mrs.\nPocock's part, so that he could deprecate a sharp question.  It was his\nown high purpose in fact to have smoothed sharp questions to rest.  He\nlooked his old comrade very straight in the eyes, and he had never\nconveyed to him in so mute a manner so much kind confidence and so much\ngood advice.  Everything that was between them was again in his face,\nbut matured and shelved and finally disposed of.  \"At any rate,\" he\nadded, \"she's coming now.\"\n\nConsidering how many pieces had to fit themselves, it all fell, in\nStrether's brain, into a close rapid order.  He saw on the spot what\nhad happened, and what probably would yet; and it was all funny enough.\nIt was perhaps just this freedom of appreciation that wound him up to\nhis flare of high spirits.  \"What is she coming FOR?--to kill me?\"\n\n\"She's coming to be very VERY kind to you, and you must let me say that\nI greatly hope you'll not be less so to herself.\"\n\nThis was spoken by Waymarsh with much gravity of admonition, and as\nStrether stood there he knew he had but to make a movement to take the\nattitude of a man gracefully receiving a present.  The present was that\nof the opportunity dear old Waymarsh had flattered himself he had\ndivined in him the slight soreness of not having yet thoroughly\nenjoyed; so he had brought it to him thus, as on a little silver\nbreakfast-tray, familiarly though delicately--without oppressive pomp;\nand he was to bend and smile and acknowledge, was to take and use and\nbe grateful.  He was not--that was the beauty of it--to be asked to\ndeflect too much from his dignity.  No wonder the old boy bloomed in\nthis bland air of his own distillation. Strether felt for a moment as\nif Sarah were actually walking up and down outside.  Wasn't she hanging\nabout the porte-cochere while her friend thus summarily opened a way?\nStrether would meet her but to take it, and everything would be for the\nbest in the best of possible worlds.  He had never so much known what\nany one meant as, in the light of this demonstration, he knew what Mrs.\nNewsome did. It had reached Waymarsh from Sarah, but it had reached\nSarah from her mother, and there was no break in the chain by which it\nreached HIM.  \"Has anything particular happened,\" he asked after a\nminute--\"so suddenly to determine her?  Has she heard anything\nunexpected from home?\"\n\nWaymarsh, on this, it seemed to him, looked at him harder than ever.\n\"'Unexpected'?\"  He had a brief hesitation; then, however, he was firm.\n\"We're leaving Paris.\"\n\n\"Leaving?  That IS sudden.\"\n\nWaymarsh showed a different opinion.  \"Less so than it may seem. The\npurpose of Mrs. Pocock's visit is to explain to you in fact that it's\nNOT.\"\n\nStrether didn't at all know if he had really an advantage--anything\nthat would practically count as one; but he enjoyed for the moment--as\nfor the first time in his life--the sense of so carrying it off.  He\nwondered--it was amusing--if he felt as the impudent feel.  \"I shall\ntake great pleasure, I assure you, in any explanation.  I shall be\ndelighted to receive Sarah.\"\n\nThe sombre glow just darkened in his comrade's eyes; but he was struck\nwith the way it died out again.  It was too mixed with another\nconsciousness--it was too smothered, as might be said, in flowers.  He\nreally for the time regretted it--poor dear old sombre glow! Something\nstraight and simple, something heavy and empty, had been eclipsed in\nits company; something by which he had best known his friend.  Waymarsh\nwouldn't BE his friend, somehow, without the occasional ornament of the\nsacred rage, and the right to the sacred rage--inestimably precious for\nStrether's charity--he also seemed in a manner, and at Mrs. Pocock's\nelbow, to have forfeited. Strether remembered the occasion early in\ntheir stay when on that very spot he had come out with his earnest, his\nominous \"Quit it!\"--and, so remembering, felt it hang by a hair that he\ndidn't himself now utter the same note.  Waymarsh was having a good\ntime--this was the truth that was embarrassing for him, and he was\nhaving it then and there, he was having it in Europe, he was having it\nunder the very protection of circumstances of which he didn't in the\nleast approve; all of which placed him in a false position, with no\nissue possible--none at least by the grand manner.  It was practically\nin the manner of any one--it was all but in poor Strether's own--that\ninstead of taking anything up he merely made the most of having to be\nhimself explanatory.  \"I'm not leaving for the United States direct.\nMr. and Mrs. Pocock and Miss Mamie are thinking of a little trip before\ntheir own return, and we've been talking for some days past of our\njoining forces.  We've settled it that we do join and that we sail\ntogether the end of next month. But we start to-morrow for Switzerland.\nMrs. Pocock wants some scenery.  She hasn't had much yet.\"\n\nHe was brave in his way too, keeping nothing back, confessing all there\nwas, and only leaving Strether to make certain connexions. \"Is what\nMrs. Newsome had cabled her daughter an injunction to break off short?\"\n\nThe grand manner indeed at this just raised its head a little. \"I know\nnothing about Mrs. Newsome's cables.\"\n\nTheir eyes met on it with some intensity--during the few seconds of\nwhich something happened quite out of proportion to the time. It\nhappened that Strether, looking thus at his friend, didn't take his\nanswer for truth--and that something more again occurred in consequence\nof THAT.  Yes--Waymarsh just DID know about Mrs. Newsome's cables:  to\nwhat other end than that had they dined together at Bignon's?  Strether\nalmost felt for the instant that it was to Mrs. Newsome herself the\ndinner had been given; and, for that matter, quite felt how she must\nhave known about it and, as he might think, protected and consecrated\nit.  He had a quick blurred view of daily cables, questions, answers,\nsignals:  clear enough was his vision of the expense that, when so\nwound up, the lady at home was prepared to incur.  Vivid not less was\nhis memory of what, during his long observation of her, some of her\nattainments of that high pitch had cost her.  Distinctly she was at the\nhighest now, and Waymarsh, who imagined himself an independent\nperformer, was really, forcing his fine old natural voice, an\noverstrained accompanist.  The whole reference of his errand seemed to\nmark her for Strether as by this time consentingly familiar to him, and\nnothing yet had so despoiled her of a special shade of consideration.\n\"You don't know,\" he asked, \"whether Sarah has been directed from home\nto try me on the matter of my also going to Switzerland?\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Waymarsh as manfully as possible, \"nothing whatever\nabout her private affairs; though I believe her to be acting in\nconformity with things that have my highest respect.\"  It was as manful\nas possible, but it was still the false note--as it had to be to convey\nso sorry a statement.  He knew everything, Strether more and more felt,\nthat he thus disclaimed, and his little punishment was just in this\ndoom to a second fib.  What falser position--given the man--could the\nmost vindictive mind impose? He ended by squeezing through a passage in\nwhich three months before he would certainly have stuck fast.  \"Mrs\nPocock will probably be ready herself to answer any enquiry you may put\nto her.  But,\" he continued, \"BUT--!\"  He faltered on it.\n\n\"But what?  Don't put her too many?\"\n\nWaymarsh looked large, but the harm was done; he couldn't, do what he\nwould, help looking rosy.  \"Don't do anything you'll be sorry for.\"\n\nIt was an attenuation, Strether guessed, of something else that had\nbeen on his lips; it was a sudden drop to directness, and was thereby\nthe voice of sincerity.  He had fallen to the supplicating note, and\nthat immediately, for our friend, made a difference and reinstated him.\nThey were in communication as they had been, that first morning, in\nSarah's salon and in her presence and Madame de Vionnet's; and the same\nrecognition of a great good will was again, after all, possible.  Only\nthe amount of response Waymarsh had then taken for granted was doubled,\ndecupled now.  This came out when he presently said:  \"Of course I\nneedn't assure you I hope you'll come with us.\"  Then it was that his\nimplications and expectations loomed up for Strether as almost\npathetically gross.\n\nThe latter patted his shoulder while he thanked him, giving the go-by\nto the question of joining the Pococks; he expressed the joy he felt at\nseeing him go forth again so brave and free, and he in fact almost took\nleave of him on the spot.  \"I shall see you again of course before you\ngo; but I'm meanwhile much obliged to you for arranging so conveniently\nfor what you've told me.  I shall walk up and down in the court\nthere--dear little old court which we've each bepaced so, this last\ncouple of months, to the tune of our flights and our drops, our\nhesitations and our plunges:  I shall hang about there, all impatience\nand excitement, please let Sarah know, till she graciously presents\nherself.  Leave me with her without fear,\" he laughed; \"I assure you I\nshan't hurt her.  I don't think either she'll hurt ME:  I'm in a\nsituation in which damage was some time ago discounted.  Besides, THAT\nisn't what worries you--but don't, don't explain! We're all right as we\nare:  which was the degree of success our adventure was pledged to for\neach of us.  We weren't, it seemed, all right as we were before; and\nwe've got over the ground, all things considered, quickly.  I hope\nyou'll have a lovely time in the Alps.\"\n\nWaymarsh fairly looked up at him as from the foot of them.  \"I don't\nknow as I OUGHT really to go.\"\n\nIt was the conscience of Milrose in the very voice of Milrose, but, oh\nit was feeble and flat! Strether suddenly felt quite ashamed for him;\nhe breathed a greater boldness.  \"LET yourself, on the contrary, go--in\nall agreeable directions.  These are precious hours--at our age they\nmayn't recur.  Don't have it to say to yourself at Milrose, next\nwinter, that you hadn't courage for them.\"  And then as his comrade\nqueerly stared:  \"Live up to Mrs. Pocock.\"\n\n\"Live up to her?\"\n\n\"You're a great help to her.\"\n\nWaymarsh looked at it as at one of the uncomfortable things that were\ncertainly true and that it was yet ironical to say.  \"It's more then\nthan you are.\"\n\n\"That's exactly your own chance and advantage.  Besides,\" said\nStrether, \"I do in my way contribute.  I know what I'm about.\"\n\nWaymarsh had kept on his great panama, and, as he now stood nearer the\ndoor, his last look beneath the shade of it had turned again to\ndarkness and warning.  \"So do I!  See here, Strether.\"\n\n\"I know what you're going to say.  'Quit this'?\"\n\n\"Quit this!\"  But it lacked its old intensity; nothing of it remained;\nit went out of the room with him.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nAlmost the first thing, strangely enough, that, about an hour later,\nStrether found himself doing in Sarah's presence was to remark\narticulately on this failure, in their friend, of what had been\nsuperficially his great distinction.  It was as if--he alluded of\ncourse to the grand manner--the dear man had sacrificed it to some\nother advantage; which would be of course only for himself to measure.\nIt might be simply that he was physically so much more sound than on\nhis first coming out; this was all prosaic, comparatively cheerful and\nvulgar.  And fortunately, if one came to that, his improvement in\nhealth was really itself grander than any manner it could be conceived\nas having cost him.  \"You yourself alone, dear Sarah\"--Strether took\nthe plunge--\"have done him, it strikes me, in these three weeks, as\nmuch good as all the rest of his time together.\"\n\nIt was a plunge because somehow the range of reference was, in the\nconditions, \"funny,\" and made funnier still by Sarah's attitude, by the\nturn the occasion had, with her appearance, so sensibly taken. Her\nappearance was really indeed funnier than anything else--the spirit in\nwhich he felt her to be there as soon as she was there, the shade of\nobscurity that cleared up for him as soon as he was seated with her in\nthe small salon de lecture that had, for the most part, in all the\nweeks, witnessed the wane of his early vivacity of discussion with\nWaymarsh.  It was an immense thing, quite a tremendous thing, for her\nto have come:  this truth opened out to him in spite of his having\nalready arrived for himself at a fairly vivid view of it.  He had done\nexactly what he had given Waymarsh his word for--had walked and\nre-walked the court while he awaited her advent; acquiring in this\nexercise an amount of light that affected him at the time as flooding\nthe scene.  She had decided upon the step in order to give him the\nbenefit of a doubt, in order to be able to say to her mother that she\nhad, even to abjectness, smoothed the way for him.  The doubt had been\nas to whether he mightn't take her as not having smoothed it--and the\nadmonition had possibly come from Waymarsh's more detached spirit.\nWaymarsh had at any rate, certainly, thrown his weight into the\nscale--he had pointed to the importance of depriving their friend of a\ngrievance.  She had done justice to the plea, and it was to set herself\nright with a high ideal that she actually sat there in her state.  Her\ncalculation was sharp in the immobility with which she held her tall\nparasol-stick upright and at arm's length, quite as if she had struck\nthe place to plant her flag; in the separate precautions she took not\nto show as nervous; in the aggressive repose in which she did quite\nnothing but wait for him.  Doubt ceased to be possible from the moment\nhe had taken in that she had arrived with no proposal whatever; that\nher concern was simply to show what she had come to receive.  She had\ncome to receive his submission, and Waymarsh was to have made it plain\nto him that she would expect nothing less.  He saw fifty things, her\nhost, at this convenient stage; but one of those he most saw was that\ntheir anxious friend hadn't quite had the hand required of him.\nWaymarsh HAD, however, uttered the request that she might find him\nmild, and while hanging about the court before her arrival he had\nturned over with zeal the different ways in which he could be so. The\ndifficulty was that if he was mild he wasn't, for her purpose,\nconscious.  If she wished him conscious--as everything about her cried\naloud that she did--she must accordingly be at costs to make him so.\nConscious he was, for himself--but only of too many things; so she must\nchoose the one she required.\n\nPractically, however, it at last got itself named, and when once that\nhad happened they were quite at the centre of their situation. One\nthing had really done as well as another; when Strether had spoken of\nWaymarsh's leaving him, and that had necessarily brought on a reference\nto Mrs. Pocock's similar intention, the jump was but short to supreme\nlucidity.  Light became indeed after that so intense that Strether\nwould doubtless have but half made out, in the prodigious glare, by\nwhich of the two the issue had been in fact precipitated.  It was, in\ntheir contracted quarters, as much there between them as if it had been\nsomething suddenly spilled with a crash and a splash on the floor.  The\nform of his submission was to be an engagement to acquit himself within\nthe twenty-four hours.  \"He'll go in a moment if you give him the\nword--he assures me on his honour he'll do that\":  this came in its\norder, out of its order, in respect to Chad, after the crash had\noccurred.  It came repeatedly during the time taken by Strether to feel\nthat he was even more fixed in his rigour than he had supposed--the\ntime he was not above adding to a little by telling her that such a way\nof putting it on her brother's part left him sufficiently surprised.\nShe wasn't at all funny at last--she was really fine; and he felt\neasily where she was strong--strong for herself.  It hadn't yet so come\nhome to him that she was nobly and appointedly officious. She was\nacting in interests grander and clearer than that of her poor little\npersonal, poor little Parisian equilibrium, and all his consciousness\nof her mother's moral pressure profited by this proof of its sustaining\nforce.  She would be held up; she would be strengthened; he needn't in\nthe least be anxious for her. What would once more have been distinct\nto him had he tried to make it so was that, as Mrs. Newsome was\nessentially all moral pressure, the presence of this element was almost\nidentical with her own presence. It wasn't perhaps that he felt he was\ndealing with her straight, but it was certainly as if she had been\ndealing straight with HIM. She was reaching him somehow by the\nlengthened arm of the spirit, and he was having to that extent to take\nher into account; but he wasn't reaching her in turn, not making her\ntake HIM; he was only reaching Sarah, who appeared to take so little of\nhim. \"Something has clearly passed between you and Chad,\" he presently\nsaid, \"that I think I ought to know something more about.  Does he put\nit all,\" he smiled, \"on me?\"\n\n\"Did you come out,\" she asked, \"to put it all on HIM?\"\n\nBut he replied to this no further than, after an instant, by saying:\n\"Oh it's all right.  Chad I mean's all right in having said to\nyou--well anything he may have said.  I'll TAKE it all--what he does\nput on me.  Only I must see him before I see you again.\"\n\nShe hesitated, but she brought it out.  \"Is it absolutely necessary you\nshould see me again?\"\n\n\"Certainly, if I'm to give you any definite word about anything.\"\n\n\"Is it your idea then,\" she returned, \"that I shall keep on meeting you\nonly to be exposed to fresh humiliation?\"\n\nHe fixed her a longer time.  \"Are your instructions from Mrs. Newsome\nthat you shall, even at the worst, absolutely and irretrievably break\nwith me?\"\n\n\"My instructions from Mrs. Newsome are, if you please, my affair. You\nknow perfectly what your own were, and you can judge for yourself of\nwhat it can do for you to have made what you have of them.  You can\nperfectly see, at any rate, I'll go so far as to say, that if I wish\nnot to expose myself I must wish still less to expose HER.\"  She had\nalready said more than she had quite expected; but, though she had also\npulled up, the colour in her face showed him he should from one moment\nto the other have it all. He now indeed felt the high importance of his\nhaving it.  \"What is your conduct,\" she broke out as if to\nexplain--\"what is your conduct but an outrage to women like US?  I mean\nyour acting as if there can be a doubt--as between us and such\nanother--of his duty?\"\n\nHe thought a moment.  It was rather much to deal with at once; not only\nthe question itself, but the sore abysses it revealed. \"Of course\nthey're totally different kinds of duty.\"\n\n\"And do you pretend that he has any at all--to such another?\"\n\n\"Do you mean to Madame de Vionnet?\"  He uttered the name not to affront\nher, but yet again to gain time--time that he needed for taking in\nsomething still other and larger than her demand of a moment before. It\nwasn't at once that he could see all that was in her actual challenge;\nbut when he did he found himself just checking a low vague sound, a\nsound which was perhaps the nearest approach his vocal chords had ever\nknown to a growl.  Everything Mrs. Pocock had failed to give a sign of\nrecognising in Chad as a particular part of a\ntransformation--everything that had lent intention to this particular\nfailure--affected him as gathered into a large loose bundle and thrown,\nin her words, into his face.  The missile made him to that extent catch\nhis breath; which however he presently recovered.  \"Why when a woman's\nat once so charming and so beneficent--\"\n\n\"You can sacrifice mothers and sisters to her without a blush and can\nmake them cross the ocean on purpose to feel the more and take from you\nthe straighter, HOW you do it?\"\n\nYes, she had taken him up as short and as sharply as that, but he tried\nnot to flounder in her grasp.  \"I don't think there's anything I've\ndone in any such calculated way as you describe. Everything has come as\na sort of indistinguishable part of everything else.  Your coming out\nbelonged closely to my having come before you, and my having come was a\nresult of our general state of mind.  Our general state of mind had\nproceeded, on its side, from our queer ignorance, our queer\nmisconceptions and confusions--from which, since then, an inexorable\ntide of light seems to have floated us into our perhaps still queerer\nknowledge. Don't you LIKE your brother as he is,\" he went on, \"and\nhaven't you given your mother an intelligible account of all that that\ncomes to?\"\n\nIt put to her also, doubtless, his own tone, too many things, this at\nleast would have been the case hadn't his final challenge directly\nhelped her.  Everything, at the stage they had reached, directly helped\nher, because everything betrayed in him such a basis of intention.  He\nsaw--the odd way things came out!--that he would have been held less\nmonstrous had he only been a little wilder.  What exposed him was just\nhis poor old trick of quiet inwardness, what exposed him was his\nTHINKING such offence.  He hadn't in the least however the desire to\nirritate that Sarah imputed to him, and he could only at last\ntemporise, for the moment, with her indignant view.  She was altogether\nmore inflamed than he had expected, and he would probably understand\nthis better when he should learn what had occurred for her with Chad.\nTill then her view of his particular blackness, her clear surprise at\nhis not clutching the pole she held out, must pass as extravagant.  \"I\nleave you to flatter yourself,\" she returned, \"that what you speak of\nis what YOU'VE beautifully done.  When a thing has been already\ndescribed in such a lovely way--!\"  But she caught herself up, and her\ncomment on his description rang out sufficiently loud.  \"Do you\nconsider her even an apology for a decent woman?\"\n\nAh there it was at last! She put the matter more crudely than, for his\nown mixed purposes, he had yet had to do; but essentially it was all\none matter.  It was so much--so much; and she treated it, poor lady, as\nso little.  He grew conscious, as he was now apt to do, of a strange\nsmile, and the next moment he found himself talking like Miss Barrace.\n\"She has struck me from the first as wonderful.  I've been thinking too\nmoreover that, after all, she would probably have represented even for\nyourself something rather new and rather good.\"\n\nHe was to have given Mrs. Pocock with this, however, but her best\nopportunity for a sound of derision.  \"Rather new?  I hope so with all\nmy heart!\"\n\n\"I mean,\" he explained, \"that she might have affected you by her\nexquisite amiability--a real revelation, it has seemed to myself; her\nhigh rarity, her distinction of every sort.\"\n\nHe had been, with these words, consciously a little \"precious\"; but he\nhad had to be--he couldn't give her the truth of the case without them;\nand it seemed to him moreover now that he didn't care.  He had at all\nevents not served his cause, for she sprang at its exposed side.  \"A\n'revelation'--to ME:  I've come to such a woman for a revelation?  You\ntalk to me about 'distinction'--YOU, you who've had your\nprivilege?--when the most distinguished woman we shall either of us\nhave seen in this world sits there insulted, in her loneliness, by your\nincredible comparison!\"\n\nStrether forbore, with an effort, from straying; but he looked all\nabout him.  \"Does your mother herself make the point that she sits\ninsulted?\"\n\nSarah's answer came so straight, so \"pat,\" as might have been said,\nthat he felt on the instant its origin.  \"She has confided to my\njudgement and my tenderness the expression of her personal sense of\neverything, and the assertion of her personal dignity.\"\n\nThey were the very words of the lady of Woollett--he would have known\nthem in a thousand; her parting charge to her child.  Mrs. Pocock\naccordingly spoke to this extent by book, and the fact immensely moved\nhim.  \"If she does really feel as you say it's of course very very\ndreadful.  I've given sufficient proof, one would have thought,\" he\nadded, \"of my deep admiration for Mrs. Newsome.\"\n\n\"And pray what proof would one have thought you'd CALL sufficient? That\nof thinking this person here so far superior to her?\"\n\nHe wondered again; he waited.  \"Ah dear Sarah, you must LEAVE me this\nperson here!\"\n\nIn his desire to avoid all vulgar retorts, to show how, even\nperversely, he clung to his rag of reason, he had softly almost wailed\nthis plea.  Yet he knew it to be perhaps the most positive declaration\nhe had ever made in his life, and his visitor's reception of it\nvirtually gave it that importance.  \"That's exactly what I'm delighted\nto do.  God knows WE don't want her! You take good care not to meet,\"\nshe observed in a still higher key, \"my question about their life.  If\nyou do consider it a thing one can even SPEAK of, I congratulate you on\nyour taste!\"\n\nThe life she alluded to was of course Chad's and Madame de Vionnet's,\nwhich she thus bracketed together in a way that made him wince a\nlittle; there being nothing for him but to take home her full\nintention.  It was none the less his inconsequence that while he had\nhimself been enjoying for weeks the view of the brilliant woman's\nspecific action, he just suffered from any characterisation of it by\nother lips.  \"I think tremendously well of her, at the same time that I\nseem to feel her 'life' to be really none of my business.  It's my\nbusiness, that is, only so far as Chad's own life is affected by it;\nand what has happened, don't you see? is that Chad's has been affected\nso beautifully.  The proof of the pudding's in the eating\"--he tried,\nwith no great success, to help it out with a touch of pleasantry, while\nshe let him go on as if to sink and sink.  He went on however well\nenough, as well as he could do without fresh counsel; he indeed\nshouldn't stand quite firm, he felt, till he should have re-established\nhis communications with Chad.  Still, he could always speak for the\nwoman he had so definitely promised to \"save.\"  This wasn't quite for\nher the air of salvation; but as that chill fairly deepened what did it\nbecome but a reminder that one might at the worst perish WITH her?  And\nit was simple enough--it was rudimentary:  not, not to give her away.\n\"I find in her more merits than you would probably have patience with\nmy counting over.  And do you know,\" he enquired, \"the effect you\nproduce on me by alluding to her in such terms?  It's as if you had\nsome motive in not recognising all she has done for your brother, and\nso shut your eyes to each side of the matter, in order, whichever side\ncomes up, to get rid of the other.  I don't, you must allow me to say,\nsee how you can with any pretence to candour get rid of the side\nnearest you.\"\n\n\"Near me--THAT sort of thing?\"  And Sarah gave a jerk back of her head\nthat well might have nullified any active proximity.\n\nIt kept her friend himself at his distance, and he respected for a\nmoment the interval.  Then with a last persuasive effort he bridged it.\n\"You don't, on your honour, appreciate Chad's fortunate development?\"\n\n\"Fortunate?\" she echoed again.  And indeed she was prepared. \"I call it\nhideous.\"\n\nHer departure had been for some minutes marked as imminent, and she was\nalready at the door that stood open to the court, from the threshold of\nwhich she delivered herself of this judgement.  It rang out so loud as\nto produce for the time the hush of everything else.  Strether quite,\nas an effect of it, breathed less bravely; he could acknowledge it, but\nsimply enough.  \"Oh if you think THAT--!\"\n\n\"Then all's at an end?  So much the better.  I do think that!\"  She\npassed out as she spoke and took her way straight across the court,\nbeyond which, separated from them by the deep arch of the porte-cochere\nthe low victoria that had conveyed her from her own hotel was drawn up.\nShe made for it with decision, and the manner of her break, the sharp\nshaft of her rejoinder, had an intensity by which Strether was at first\nkept in arrest.  She had let fly at him as from a stretched cord, and\nit took him a minute to recover from the sense of being pierced.  It\nwas not the penetration of surprise; it was that, much more, of\ncertainty; his case being put for him as he had as yet only put it to\nhimself.  She was away at any rate; she had distanced him--with rather\na grand spring, an effect of pride and ease, after all; she had got\ninto her carriage before he could overtake her, and the vehicle was\nalready in motion.  He stopped halfway; he stood there in the court\nonly seeing her go and noting that she gave him no other look.  The way\nhe had put it to himself was that all quite MIGHT be at an end.  Each\nof her movements, in this resolute rupture, reaffirmed, re-enforced\nthat idea. Sarah passed out of sight in the sunny street while, planted\nthere in the centre of the comparatively grey court, he continued\nmerely to look before him.  It probably WAS all at an end.\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Eleventh\n\n[Note:  In the 1909 New York Edition the following two chapters were\nplaced in the reverse of the order appearing below.  Since 1950, most\nscholars have agreed, because of the internal evidence of the two\nchapters, that an editorial error caused them to be printed in reverse\norder.  This Etext, like other editions of the past four decades,\ncorrects the apparent error.--Richard D. Hathaway, preparer of this\nelectronic text]\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nHe went late that evening to the Boulevard Malesherbes, having his\nimpression that it would be vain to go early, and having also, more\nthan once in the course of the day, made enquiries of the concierge.\nChad hadn't come in and had left no intimation; he had affairs,\napparently, at this juncture--as it occurred to Strether he so well\nmight have--that kept him long abroad.  Our friend asked once for him\nat the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli, but the only contribution offered\nthere was the fact that every one was out.  It was with the idea that\nhe would have to come home to sleep that Strether went up to his rooms,\nfrom which however he was still absent, though, from the balcony, a few\nmoments later, his visitor heard eleven o'clock strike.  Chad's servant\nhad by this time answered for his reappearance; he HAD, the visitor\nlearned, come quickly in to dress for dinner and vanish again. Strether\nspent an hour in waiting for him--an hour full of strange suggestions,\npersuasions, recognitions; one of those that he was to recall, at the\nend of his adventure, as the particular handful that most had counted.\nThe mellowest lamplight and the easiest chair had been placed at his\ndisposal by Baptiste, subtlest of servants; the novel half-uncut, the\nnovel lemon-coloured and tender, with the ivory knife athwart it like\nthe dagger in a contadina's hair, had been pushed within the soft\ncircle--a circle which, for some reason, affected Strether as softer\nstill after the same Baptiste had remarked that in the absence of a\nfurther need of anything by Monsieur he would betake himself to bed.\nThe night was hot and heavy and the single lamp sufficient; the great\nflare of the lighted city, rising high, spending itself afar, played up\nfrom the Boulevard and, through the vague vista of the successive\nrooms, brought objects into view and added to their dignity. Strether\nfound himself in possession as he never yet had been; he had been there\nalone, had turned over books and prints, had invoked, in Chad's\nabsence, the spirit of the place, but never at the witching hour and\nnever with a relish quite so like a pang.\n\nHe spent a long time on the balcony; he hung over it as he had seen\nlittle Bilham hang the day of his first approach, as he had seen Mamie\nhang over her own the day little Bilham himself might have seen her\nfrom below; he passed back into the rooms, the three that occupied the\nfront and that communicated by wide doors; and, while he circulated and\nrested, tried to recover the impression that they had made on him three\nmonths before, to catch again the voice in which they had seemed then\nto speak to him.  That voice, he had to note, failed audibly to sound;\nwhich he took as the proof of all the change in himself.  He had heard,\nof old, only what he COULD then hear; what he could do now was to think\nof three months ago as a point in the far past.  All voices had grown\nthicker and meant more things; they crowded on him as he moved\nabout--it was the way they sounded together that wouldn't let him be\nstill.  He felt, strangely, as sad as if he had come for some wrong,\nand yet as excited as if he had come for some freedom.  But the freedom\nwas what was most in the place and the hour, it was the freedom that\nmost brought him round again to the youth of his own that he had long\nago missed.  He could have explained little enough to-day either why he\nhad missed it or why, after years and years, he should care that he\nhad; the main truth of the actual appeal of everything was none the\nless that everything represented the substance of his loss put it\nwithin reach, within touch, made it, to a degree it had never been, an\naffair of the senses.  That was what it became for him at this singular\ntime, the youth he had long ago missed--a queer concrete presence, full\nof mystery, yet full of reality, which he could handle, taste, smell,\nthe deep breathing of which he could positively hear.  It was in the\noutside air as well as within; it was in the long watch, from the\nbalcony, in the summer night, of the wide late life of Paris, the\nunceasing soft quick rumble, below, of the little lighted carriages\nthat, in the press, always suggested the gamblers he had seen of old at\nMonte Carlo pushing up to the tables.  This image was before him when\nhe at last became aware that Chad was behind.\n\n\"She tells me you put it all on ME\"--he had arrived after this promptly\nenough at that information; which expressed the case however quite as\nthe young man appeared willing for the moment to leave it.  Other\nthings, with this advantage of their virtually having the night before\nthem, came up for them, and had, as well, the odd effect of making the\noccasion, instead of hurried and feverish, one of the largest, loosest\nand easiest to which Strether's whole adventure was to have treated\nhim.  He had been pursuing Chad from an early hour and had overtaken\nhim only now; but now the delay was repaired by their being so\nexceptionally confronted.  They had foregathered enough of course in\nall the various times; they had again and again, since that first night\nat the theatre, been face to face over their question; but they had\nnever been so alone together as they were actually alone--their talk\nhadn't yet been so supremely for themselves.  And if many things\nmoreover passed before them, none passed more distinctly for Strether\nthan that striking truth about Chad of which he had been so often moved\nto take note:  the truth that everything came happily back with him to\nhis knowing how to live.  It had been seated in his pleased smile--a\nsmile that pleased exactly in the right degree--as his visitor turned\nround, on the balcony, to greet his advent; his visitor in fact felt on\nthe spot that there was nothing their meeting would so much do as bear\nwitness to that facility.  He surrendered himself accordingly to so\napproved a gift; for what was the meaning of the facility but that\nothers DID surrender themselves?  He didn't want, luckily, to prevent\nChad from living; but he was quite aware that even if he had he would\nhimself have thoroughly gone to pieces.  It was in truth essentially by\nbringing down his personal life to a function all subsidiary to the\nyoung man's own that he held together.  And the great point, above all,\nthe sign of how completely Chad possessed the knowledge in question,\nwas that one thus became, not only with a proper cheerfulness, but with\nwild native impulses, the feeder of his stream.  Their talk had\naccordingly not lasted three minutes without Strether's feeling basis\nenough for the excitement in which he had waited.  This overflow fairly\ndeepened, wastefully abounded, as he observed the smallness of anything\ncorresponding to it on the part of his friend.  That was exactly this\nfriend's happy case; he \"put out\" his excitement, or whatever other\nemotion the matter involved, as he put out his washing; than which no\narrangement could make more for domestic order.  It was quite for\nStrether himself in short to feel a personal analogy with the laundress\nbringing home the triumphs of the mangle.\n\nWhen he had reported on Sarah's visit, which he did very fully, Chad\nanswered his question with perfect candour.  \"I positively referred her\nto you--told her she must absolutely see you.  This was last night, and\nit all took place in ten minutes.  It was our first free talk--really\nthe first time she had tackled me.  She knew I also knew what her line\nhad been with yourself; knew moreover how little you had been doing to\nmake anything difficult for her. So I spoke for you frankly--assured\nher you were all at her service. I assured her I was too,\" the young\nman continued; \"and I pointed out how she could perfectly, at any time,\nhave got at me.  Her difficulty has been simply her not finding the\nmoment she fancied.\"\n\n\"Her difficulty,\" Strether returned, \"has been simply that she finds\nshe's afraid of you.  She's not afraid of ME, Sarah, one little scrap;\nand it was just because she has seen how I can fidget when I give my\nmind to it that she has felt her best chance, rightly enough to be in\nmaking me as uneasy as possible.  I think she's at bottom as pleased to\nHAVE you put it on me as you yourself can possibly be to put it.\"\n\n\"But what in the world, my dear man,\" Chad enquired in objection to\nthis luminosity, \"have I done to make Sally afraid?\"\n\n\"You've been 'wonderful, wonderful,' as we say--we poor people who\nwatch the play from the pit; and that's what has, admirably, made her.\nMade her all the more effectually that she could see you didn't set\nabout it on purpose--I mean set about affecting her as with fear.\"\n\nChad cast a pleasant backward glance over his possibilities of motive.\n\"I've only wanted to be kind and friendly, to be decent and\nattentive--and I still only want to be.\"\n\nStrether smiled at his comfortable clearness.  \"Well, there can\ncertainly be no way for it better than by my taking the onus.  It\nreduces your personal friction and your personal offence to almost\nnothing.\"\n\nAh but Chad, with his completer conception of the friendly, wouldn't\nquite have this!  They had remained on the balcony, where, after their\nday of great and premature heat, the midnight air was delicious; and\nthey leaned back in turn against the balustrade, all in harmony with\nthe chairs and the flower-pots, the cigarettes and the starlight. \"The\nonus isn't REALLY yours--after our agreeing so to wait together and\njudge together.  That was all my answer to Sally,\" Chad pursued--\"that\nwe have been, that we are, just judging together.\"\n\n\"I'm not afraid of the burden,\" Strether explained; \"I haven't come in\nthe least that you should take it off me.  I've come very much, it\nseems to me, to double up my fore legs in the manner of the camel when\nhe gets down on his knees to make his back convenient. But I've\nsupposed you all this while to have been doing a lot of special and\nprivate judging--about which I haven't troubled you; and I've only\nwished to have your conclusion first from you. I don't ask more than\nthat; I'm quite ready to take it as it has come.\"\n\nChad turned up his face to the sky with a slow puff of his smoke.\n\"Well, I've seen.\"\n\nStrether waited a little.  \"I've left you wholly alone; haven't, I\nthink I may say, since the first hour or two--when I merely preached\npatience--so much as breathed on you.\"\n\n\"Oh you've been awfully good!\"\n\n\"We've both been good then--we've played the game.  We've given them\nthe most liberal conditions.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Chad, \"splendid conditions!  It was open to them, open to\nthem\"--he seemed to make it out, as he smoked, with his eyes still on\nthe stars.  He might in quiet sport have been reading their horoscope.\nStrether wondered meanwhile what had been open to them, and he finally\nlet him have it.  \"It was open to them simply to let me alone; to have\nmade up their minds, on really seeing me for themselves, that I could\ngo on well enough as I was.\"\n\nStrether assented to this proposition with full lucidity, his\ncompanion's plural pronoun, which stood all for Mrs. Newsome and her\ndaughter, having no ambiguity for him.  There was nothing, apparently,\nto stand for Mamie and Jim; and this added to our friend's sense of\nChad's knowing what he thought.  \"But they've made up their minds to\nthe opposite--that you CAN'T go on as you are.\"\n\n\"No,\" Chad continued in the same way; \"they won't have it for a minute.\"\n\nStrether on his side also reflectively smoked.  It was as if their high\nplace really represented some moral elevation from which they could\nlook down on their recent past.  \"There never was the smallest chance,\ndo you know, that they WOULD have it for a moment.\"\n\n\"Of course not--no real chance.  But if they were willing to think\nthere was--!\"\n\n\"They weren't willing.\" Strether had worked it all out.  \"It wasn't for\nyou they came out, but for me.  It wasn't to see for themselves what\nyou're doing, but what I'm doing.  The first branch of their curiosity\nwas inevitably destined, under my culpable delay, to give way to the\nsecond; and it's on the second that, if I may use the expression and\nyou don't mind my marking the invidious fact, they've been of late\nexclusively perched.  When Sarah sailed it was me, in other words, they\nwere after.\"\n\nChad took it in both with intelligence and with indulgence.  \"It IS\nrather a business then--what I've let you in for!\"\n\nStrether had again a brief pause; which ended in a reply that seemed to\ndispose once for all of this element of compunction. Chad was to treat\nit, at any rate, so far as they were again together, as having done so.\n\"I was 'in' when you found me.\"\n\n\"Ah but it was you,\" the young man laughed, \"who found ME.\"\n\n\"I only found you out.  It was you who found me in.  It was all in the\nday's work for them, at all events, that they should come.  And they've\ngreatly enjoyed it,\" Strether declared.\n\n\"Well, I've tried to make them,\" said Chad.\n\nHis companion did himself presently the same justice.  \"So have I. I\ntried even this very morning--while Mrs. Pocock was with me.  She\nenjoys for instance, almost as much as anything else, not being, as\nI've said, afraid of me; and I think I gave her help in that.\"\n\nChad took a deeper interest.  \"Was she very very nasty?\"\n\nStrether debated.  \"Well, she was the most important thing--she was\ndefinite.  She was--at last--crystalline.  And I felt no remorse. I saw\nthat they must have come.\"\n\n\"Oh I wanted to see them for myself; so that if it were only for\nTHAT--!\"  Chad's own remorse was as small.\n\nThis appeared almost all Strether wanted.  \"Isn't your having seen them\nfor yourself then THE thing, beyond all others, that has come of their\nvisit?\"\n\nChad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it so.\n\"Don't you count it as anything that you're dished--if you ARE dished?\nAre you, my dear man, dished?\"\n\nIt sounded as if he were asking if he had caught cold or hurt his foot,\nand Strether for a minute but smoked and smoked.  \"I want to see her\nagain.  I must see her.\"\n\n\"Of course you must.\" Then Chad hesitated.  \"Do you mean--a--Mother\nherself?\"\n\n\"Oh your mother--that will depend.\"\n\nIt was as if Mrs. Newsome had somehow been placed by the words very far\noff.  Chad however endeavoured in spite of this to reach the place.\n\"What do you mean it will depend on?\"\n\nStrether, for all answer, gave him a longish look.  \"I was speaking of\nSarah.  I must positively--though she quite cast me off--see HER again.\nI can't part with her that way.\"\n\n\"Then she was awfully unpleasant?\"\n\nAgain Strether exhaled.  \"She was what she had to be.  I mean that from\nthe moment they're not delighted they can only be--well what I admit\nshe was.  We gave them,\" he went on, \"their chance to be delighted, and\nthey've walked up to it, and looked all round it, and not taken it.\"\n\n\"You can bring a horse to water--!\" Chad suggested.\n\n\"Precisely.  And the tune to which this morning Sarah wasn't\ndelighted--the tune to which, to adopt your metaphor, she refused to\ndrink--leaves us on that side nothing more to hope.\"\n\nChad had a pause, and then as if consolingly:  \"It was never of course\nreally the least on the cards that they would be 'delighted.'\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know, after all,\" Strether mused.  \"I've had to come as\nfar round.  However\"--he shook it off--\"it's doubtless MY performance\nthat's absurd.\"\n\n\"There are certainly moments,\" said Chad, \"when you seem to me too good\nto be true.  Yet if you are true,\" he added, \"that seems to be all that\nneed concern me.\"\n\n\"I'm true, but I'm incredible.  I'm fantastic and ridiculous--I don't\nexplain myself even TO myself.  How can they then,\" Strether asked,\n\"understand me?  So I don't quarrel with them.\"\n\n\"I see.  They quarrel,\" said Chad rather comfortably, \"with US.\"\nStrether noted once more the comfort, but his young friend had already\ngone on.  \"I should feel greatly ashamed, all the same, if I didn't put\nit before you again that you ought to think, after all, tremendously\nwell.  I mean before giving up beyond recall--\" With which insistence,\nas from a certain delicacy, dropped.\n\nAh but Strether wanted it.  \"Say it all, say it all.\"\n\n\"Well, at your age, and with what--when all's said and done--Mother\nmight do for you and be for you.\"\n\nChad had said it all, from his natural scruple, only to that extent; so\nthat Strether after an instant himself took a hand. \"My absence of an\nassured future.  The little I have to show toward the power to take\ncare of myself.  The way, the wonderful way, she would certainly take\ncare of me.  Her fortune, her kindness, and the constant miracle of her\nhaving been disposed to go even so far. Of course, of course\"--he\nsummed it up.  \"There are those sharp facts.\"\n\nChad had meanwhile thought of another still.  \"And don't you really\ncare--?\"\n\nHis friend slowly turned round to him.  \"Will you go?\"\n\n\"I'll go if you'll say you now consider I should.  You know,\" he went\non, \"I was ready six weeks ago.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Strether, \"that was when you didn't know I wasn't! You're\nready at present because you do know it.\"\n\n\"That may be,\" Chad returned; \"but all the same I'm sincere.  You talk\nabout taking the whole thing on your shoulders, but in what light do\nyou regard me that you think me capable of letting you pay?\"  Strether\npatted his arm, as they stood together against the parapet,\nreassuringly--seeming to wish to contend that he HAD the wherewithal;\nbut it was again round this question of purchase and price that the\nyoung man's sense of fairness continued to hover. \"What it literally\ncomes to for you, if you'll pardon my putting it so, is that you give\nup money.  Possibly a good deal of money.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Strether laughed, \"if it were only just enough you'd still be\njustified in putting it so!  But I've on my side to remind you too that\nYOU give up money; and more than 'possibly'--quite certainly, as I\nshould suppose--a good deal.\"\n\n\"True enough; but I've got a certain quantity,\" Chad returned after a\nmoment.  \"Whereas you, my dear man, you--\"\n\n\"I can't be at all said\"--Strether took him up--\"to have a 'quantity'\ncertain or uncertain?  Very true.  Still, I shan't starve.\"\n\n\"Oh you mustn't STARVE!\" Chad pacifically emphasised; and so, in the\npleasant conditions, they continued to talk; though there was, for that\nmatter, a pause in which the younger companion might have been taken as\nweighing again the delicacy of his then and there promising the elder\nsome provision against the possibility just mentioned.  This, however,\nhe presumably thought best not to do, for at the end of another minute\nthey had moved in quite a different direction.  Strether had broken in\nby returning to the subject of Chad's passage with Sarah and enquiring\nif they had arrived, in the event, at anything in the nature of a\n\"scene.\"  To this Chad replied that they had on the contrary kept\ntremendously polite; adding moreover that Sally was after all not the\nwoman to have made the mistake of not being.  \"Her hands are a good\ndeal tied, you see.  I got so, from the first,\" he sagaciously\nobserved, \"the start of her.\"\n\n\"You mean she has taken so much from you?\"\n\n\"Well, I couldn't of course in common decency give less:  only she\nhadn't expected, I think, that I'd give her nearly so much.  And she\nbegan to take it before she knew it.\"\n\n\"And she began to like it,\" said Strether, \"as soon as she began to\ntake it!\"\n\n\"Yes, she has liked it--also more than she expected.\" After which Chad\nobserved:  \"But she doesn't like ME.  In fact she hates me.\"\n\nStrether's interest grew.  \"Then why does she want you at home?\"\n\n\"Because when you hate you want to triumph, and if she should get me\nneatly stuck there she WOULD triumph.\"\n\nStrether followed afresh, but looking as he went.  \"Certainly--in a\nmanner.  But it would scarce be a triumph worth having if, once\nentangled, feeling her dislike and possibly conscious in time of a\ncertain quantity of your own, you should on the spot make yourself\nunpleasant to her.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Chad, \"she can bear ME--could bear me at least at home. It's\nmy being there that would be her triumph.  She hates me in Paris.\"\n\n\"She hates in other words--\"\n\n\"Yes, THAT'S it!\"--Chad had quickly understood this understanding;\nwhich formed on the part of each as near an approach as they had yet\nmade to naming Madame de Vionnet.  The limitations of their\ndistinctness didn't, however, prevent its fairly lingering in the air\nthat it was this lady Mrs. Pocock hated.  It added one more touch\nmoreover to their established recognition of the rare intimacy of\nChad's association with her.  He had never yet more twitched away the\nlast light veil from this phenomenon than in presenting himself as\nconfounded and submerged in the feeling she had created at Woollett.\n\"And I'll tell you who hates me too,\" he immediately went on.\n\nStrether knew as immediately whom he meant, but with as prompt a\nprotest.  \"Ah no!  Mamie doesn't hate--well,\" he caught himself in\ntime--\"anybody at all.  Mamie's beautiful.\"\n\nChad shook his head.  \"That's just why I mind it.  She certainly\ndoesn't like me.\"\n\n\"How much do you mind it?  What would you do for her?\"\n\n\"Well, I'd like her if she'd like me.  Really, really,\" Chad declared.\n\nIt gave his companion a moment's pause.  \"You asked me just now if I\ndon't, as you said, 'care' about a certain person.  You rather tempt me\ntherefore to put the question in my turn.  Don't YOU care about a\ncertain other person?\"\n\nChad looked at him hard in the lamplight of the window.  \"The\ndifference is that I don't want to.\"\n\nStrether wondered.  \"'Don't want' to?\"\n\n\"I try not to--that is I HAVE tried.  I've done my best.  You can't be\nsurprised,\" the young man easily went on, \"when you yourself set me on\nit.  I was indeed,\" he added, \"already on it a little; but you set me\nharder.  It was six weeks ago that I thought I had come out.\"\n\nStrether took it well in.  \"But you haven't come out!\"\n\n\"I don't know--it's what I WANT to know,\" said Chad.  \"And if I could\nhave sufficiently wanted--by myself--to go back, I think I might have\nfound out.\"\n\n\"Possibly\"--Strether considered.  \"But all you were able to achieve was\nto want to want to!  And even then,\" he pursued, \"only till our friends\nthere came.  Do you want to want to still?\"  As with a sound\nhalf-dolorous, half-droll and all vague and equivocal, Chad buried his\nface for a little in his hands, rubbing it in a whimsical way that\namounted to an evasion, he brought it out more sharply:  \"DO you?\"\n\nChad kept for a time his attitude, but at last he looked up, and then\nabruptly, \"Jim IS a damned dose!\" he declared.\n\n\"Oh I don't ask you to abuse or describe or in any way pronounce on\nyour relatives; I simply put it to you once more whether you're NOW\nready.  You say you've 'seen.' Is what you've seen that you can't\nresist?\"\n\nChad gave him a strange smile--the nearest approach he had ever shown\nto a troubled one.  \"Can't you make me NOT resist?\"\n\n\"What it comes to,\" Strether went on very gravely now and as if he\nhadn't heard him, \"what it comes to is that more has been done for you,\nI think, than I've ever seen done--attempted perhaps, but never so\nsuccessfully done--by one human being for another.\"\n\n\"Oh an immense deal certainly\"--Chad did it full justice.  \"And you\nyourself are adding to it.\"\n\nIt was without heeding this either that his visitor continued. \"And our\nfriends there won't have it.\"\n\n\"No, they simply won't.\"\n\n\"They demand you on the basis, as it were, of repudiation and\ningratitude; and what has been the matter with me,\" Strether went on,\n\"is that I haven't seen my way to working with you for repudiation.\"\n\nChad appreciated this.  \"Then as you haven't seen yours you naturally\nhaven't seen mine.  There it is.\" After which he proceeded, with a\ncertain abruptness, to a sharp interrogation. \"NOW do you say she\ndoesn't hate me?\"\n\nStrether hesitated.  \"'She'--?\"\n\n\"Yes--Mother.  We called it Sarah, but it comes to the same thing.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Strether objected, \"not to the same thing as her hating YOU.\"\n\nOn which--though as if for an instant it had hung fire--Chad remarkably\nreplied:  \"Well, if they hate my good friend, THAT comes to the same\nthing.\" It had a note of inevitable truth that made Strether take it as\nenough, feel he wanted nothing more.  The young man spoke in it for his\n\"good friend\" more than he had ever yet directly spoken, confessed to\nsuch deep identities between them as he might play with the idea of\nworking free from, but which at a given moment could still draw him\ndown like a whirlpool.  And meanwhile he had gone on.  \"Their hating\nyou too moreover--that also comes to a good deal.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Strether, \"your mother doesn't.\"\n\nChad, however, loyally stuck to it--loyally, that is, to Strether. \"She\nwill if you don't look out.\"\n\n\"Well, I do look out.  I am, after all, looking out.  That's just why,\"\nour friend explained, \"I want to see her again.\"\n\nIt drew from Chad again the same question.  \"To see Mother?\"\n\n\"To see--for the present--Sarah.\"\n\n\"Ah then there you are!  And what I don't for the life of me make out,\"\nChad pursued with resigned perplexity, \"is what you GAIN by it.\"\n\nOh it would have taken his companion too long to say!  \"That's because\nyou have, I verily believe, no imagination.  You've other qualities.\nBut no imagination, don't you see? at all.\"\n\n\"I dare say.  I do see.\" It was an idea in which Chad showed interest.\n\"But haven't you yourself rather too much?\"\n\n\"Oh RATHER--!\"  So that after an instant, under this reproach and as if\nit were at last a fact really to escape from, Strether made his move\nfor departure.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nOne of the features of the restless afternoon passed by him after Mrs.\nPocock's visit was an hour spent, shortly before dinner, with Maria\nGostrey, whom of late, in spite of so sustained a call on his attention\nfrom other quarters, he had by no means neglected.  And that he was\nstill not neglecting her will appear from the fact that he was with her\nagain at the same hour on the very morrow--with no less fine a\nconsciousness moreover of being able to hold her ear. It continued\ninveterately to occur, for that matter, that whenever he had taken one\nof his greater turns he came back to where she so faithfully awaited\nhim.  None of these excursions had on the whole been livelier than the\npair of incidents--the fruit of the short interval since his previous\nvisit--on which he had now to report to her.  He had seen Chad Newsome\nlate the night before, and he had had that morning, as a sequel to this\nconversation, a second interview with Sarah.  \"But they're all off,\" he\nsaid, \"at last.\"\n\nIt puzzled her a moment.  \"All?--Mr. Newsome with them?\"\n\n\"Ah not yet!  Sarah and Jim and Mamie.  But Waymarsh with them--for\nSarah.  It's too beautiful,\" Strether continued; \"I find I don't get\nover that--it's always a fresh joy.  But it's a fresh joy too,\" he\nadded, \"that--well, what do you think?  Little Bilham also goes. But he\nof course goes for Mamie.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey wondered.  \"'For' her?  Do you mean they're already\nengaged?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether, \"say then for ME.  He'll do anything for me;\njust as I will, for that matter--anything I can--for him.  Or for Mamie\neither.  SHE'LL do anything for me.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey gave a comprehensive sigh.  \"The way you reduce people to\nsubjection!\"\n\n\"It's certainly, on one side, wonderful.  But it's quite equalled, on\nanother, by the way I don't.  I haven't reduced Sarah, since yesterday;\nthough I've succeeded in seeing her again, as I'll presently tell you.\nThe others however are really all right. Mamie, by that blessed law of\nours, absolutely must have a young man.\"\n\n\"But what must poor Mr. Bilham have?  Do you mean they'll MARRY for\nyou?\"\n\n\"I mean that, by the same blessed law, it won't matter a grain if they\ndon't--I shan't have in the least to worry.\"\n\nShe saw as usual what he meant.  \"And Mr. Jim?--who goes for him?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Strether had to admit, \"I couldn't manage THAT.  He's thrown, as\nusual, on the world; the world which, after all, by his account--for he\nhas prodigious adventures--seems very good to him. He\nfortunately--'over here,' as he says--finds the world everywhere; and\nhis most prodigious adventure of all,\" he went on, \"has been of course\nof the last few days.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey, already knowing, instantly made the connexion.  \"He has\nseen Marie de Vionnet again?\"\n\n\"He went, all by himself, the day after Chad's party--didn't I tell\nyou?--to tea with her.  By her invitation--all alone.\"\n\n\"Quite like yourself!\" Maria smiled.\n\n\"Oh but he's more wonderful about her than I am!\"  And then as his\nfriend showed how she could believe it, filling it out, fitting it on\nto old memories of the wonderful woman:  \"What I should have liked to\nmanage would have been HER going.\"\n\n\"To Switzerland with the party?\"\n\n\"For Jim--and for symmetry.  If it had been workable moreover for a\nfortnight she'd have gone.  She's ready\"--he followed up his renewed\nvision of her--\"for anything.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey went with him a minute.  \"She's too perfect!\"\n\n\"She WILL, I think,\" he pursued, \"go to-night to the station.\"\n\n\"To see him off?\"\n\n\"With Chad--marvellously--as part of their general attention.  And she\ndoes it\"--it kept before him--\"with a light, light grace, a free, free\ngaiety, that may well softly bewilder Mr. Pocock.\"\n\nIt kept her so before him that his companion had after an instant a\nfriendly comment.  \"As in short it has softly bewildered a saner man.\nAre you really in love with her?\" Maria threw off.\n\n\"It's of no importance I should know,\" he replied.  \"It matters so\nlittle--has nothing to do, practically, with either of us.\"\n\n\"All the same\"--Maria continued to smile--\"they go, the five, as I\nunderstand you, and you and Madame de Vionnet stay.\"\n\n\"Oh and Chad.\" To which Strether added:  \"And you.\"\n\n\"Ah 'me'!\"--she gave a small impatient wail again, in which something\nof the unreconciled seemed suddenly to break out.  \"I don't stay, it\nsomehow seems to me, much to my advantage.  In the presence of all you\ncause to pass before me I've a tremendous sense of privation.\"\n\nStrether hesitated.  \"But your privation, your keeping out of\neverything, has been--hasn't it?--by your own choice.\"\n\n\"Oh yes; it has been necessary--that is it has been better for you.\nWhat I mean is only that I seem to have ceased to serve you.\"\n\n\"How can you tell that?\" he asked.  \"You don't know how you serve me.\nWhen you cease--\"\n\n\"Well?\" she said as he dropped.\n\n\"Well, I'll LET you know.  Be quiet till then.\"\n\nShe thought a moment.  \"Then you positively like me to stay?\"\n\n\"Don't I treat you as if I did?\"\n\n\"You're certainly very kind to me.  But that,\" said Maria, \"is for\nmyself.  It's getting late, as you see, and Paris turning rather hot\nand dusty.  People are scattering, and some of them, in other places\nwant me.  But if you want me here--!\"\n\nShe had spoken as resigned to his word, but he had of a sudden a still\nsharper sense than he would have expected of desiring not to lose her.\n\"I want you here.\"\n\nShe took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they brought\nher, gave her something that was the compensation of her case.  \"Thank\nyou,\" she simply answered.  And then as he looked at her a little\nharder, \"Thank you very much,\" she repeated.\n\nIt had broken as with a slight arrest into the current of their talk,\nand it held him a moment longer.  \"Why, two months, or whatever the\ntime was, ago, did you so suddenly dash off?  The reason you afterwards\ngave me for having kept away three weeks wasn't the real one.\"\n\nShe recalled.  \"I never supposed you believed it was.  Yet,\" she\ncontinued, \"if you didn't guess it that was just what helped you.\"\n\nHe looked away from her on this; he indulged, so far as space\npermitted, in one of his slow absences.  \"I've often thought of it, but\nnever to feel that I could guess it.  And you see the consideration\nwith which I've treated you in never asking till now.\"\n\n\"Now then why DO you ask?\"\n\n\"To show you how I miss you when you're not here, and what it does for\nme.\"\n\n\"It doesn't seem to have done,\" she laughed, \"all it might! However,\"\nshe added, \"if you've really never guessed the truth I'll tell it you.\"\n\n\"I've never guessed it,\" Strether declared.\n\n\"Never?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Well then I dashed off, as you say, so as not to have the confusion of\nbeing there if Marie de Vionnet should tell you anything to my\ndetriment.\"\n\nHe looked as if he considerably doubted.  \"You even then would have had\nto face it on your return.\"\n\n\"Oh if I had found reason to believe it something very bad I'd have\nleft you altogether.\"\n\n\"So then,\" he continued, \"it was only on guessing she had been on the\nwhole merciful that you ventured back?\"\n\nMaria kept it together.  \"I owe her thanks.  Whatever her temptation\nshe didn't separate us.  That's one of my reasons,\" she went on \"for\nadmiring her so.\"\n\n\"Let it pass then,\" said Strether, \"for one of mine as well.  But what\nwould have been her temptation?\"\n\n\"What are ever the temptations of women?\"\n\nHe thought--but hadn't, naturally, to think too long.  \"Men?\"\n\n\"She would have had you, with it, more for herself.  But she saw she\ncould have you without it.\"\n\n\"Oh 'have' me!\" Strether a trifle ambiguously sighed.  \"YOU,\" he\nhandsomely declared, \"would have had me at any rate WITH it.\"\n\n\"Oh 'have' you!\"--she echoed it as he had done.  \"I do have you,\nhowever,\" she less ironically said, \"from the moment you express a\nwish.\"\n\nHe stopped before her, full of the disposition.  \"I'll express fifty.\"\n\nWhich indeed begot in her, with a certain inconsequence, a return of\nher small wail.  \"Ah there you are!\"\n\nThere, if it were so, he continued for the rest of the time to be, and\nit was as if to show her how she could still serve him that, coming\nback to the departure of the Pococks, he gave her the view, vivid with\na hundred more touches than we can reproduce, of what had happened for\nhim that morning.  He had had ten minutes with Sarah at her hotel, ten\nminutes reconquered, by irresistible pressure, from the time over which\nhe had already described her to Miss Gostrey as having, at the end of\ntheir interview on his own premises, passed the great sponge of the\nfuture.  He had caught her by not announcing himself, had found her in\nher sitting-room with a dressmaker and a lingere whose accounts she\nappeared to have been more or less ingenuously settling and who soon\nwithdrew.  Then he had explained to her how he had succeeded, late the\nnight before, in keeping his promise of seeing Chad.  \"I told her I'd\ntake it all.\"\n\n\"You'd 'take' it?\"\n\n\"Why if he doesn't go.\"\n\nMaria waited.  \"And who takes it if he does?\" she enquired with a\ncertain grimness of gaiety.\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether, \"I think I take, in any event, everything.\"\n\n\"By which I suppose you mean,\" his companion brought out after a\nmoment, \"that you definitely understand you now lose everything.\"\n\nHe stood before her again.  \"It does come perhaps to the same thing.\nBut Chad, now that he has seen, doesn't really want it.\"\n\nShe could believe that, but she made, as always, for clearness. \"Still,\nwhat, after all, HAS he seen?\"\n\n\"What they want of him.  And it's enough.\"\n\n\"It contrasts so unfavourably with what Madame de Vionnet wants?\"\n\n\"It contrasts--just so; all round, and tremendously.\"\n\n\"Therefore, perhaps, most of all with what YOU want?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Strether, \"what I want is a thing I've ceased to measure or\neven to understand.\"\n\nBut his friend none the less went on.  \"Do you want Mrs. Newsome--after\nsuch a way of treating you?\"\n\nIt was a straighter mode of dealing with this lady than they had as\nyet--such was their high form--permitted themselves; but it seemed not\nwholly for this that he delayed a moment.  \"I dare say it has been,\nafter all, the only way she could have imagined.\"\n\n\"And does that make you want her any more?\"\n\n\"I've tremendously disappointed her,\" Strether thought it worth while\nto mention.\n\n\"Of course you have.  That's rudimentary; that was plain to us long\nago.  But isn't it almost as plain,\" Maria went on, \"that you've even\nyet your straight remedy?  Really drag him away, as I believe you still\ncan, and you'd cease to have to count with her disappointment.\"\n\n\"Ah then,\" he laughed, \"I should have to count with yours!\"\n\nBut this barely struck her now.  \"What, in that case, should you call\ncounting?  You haven't come out where you are, I think, to please ME.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he insisted, \"that too, you know, has been part of it. I can't\nseparate--it's all one; and that's perhaps why, as I say, I don't\nunderstand.\" But he was ready to declare again that this didn't in the\nleast matter; all the more that, as he affirmed, he HADn't really as\nyet \"come out.\" \"She gives me after all, on its coming to the pinch, a\nlast mercy, another chance.  They don't sail, you see, for five or six\nweeks more, and they haven't--she admits that--expected Chad would take\npart in their tour.  It's still open to him to join them, at the last,\nat Liverpool.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey considered.  \"How in the world is it 'open' unless you\nopen it?  How can he join them at Liverpool if he but sinks deeper into\nhis situation here?\"\n\n\"He has given her--as I explained to you that she let me know\nyesterday--his word of honour to do as I say.\"\n\nMaria stared.  \"But if you say nothing!\"\n\nWell, he as usual walked about on it.  \"I did say something this\nmorning.  I gave her my answer--the word I had promised her after\nhearing from himself what HE had promised.  What she demanded of me\nyesterday, you'll remember, was the engagement then and there to make\nhim take up this vow.\"\n\n\"Well then,\" Miss Gostrey enquired, \"was the purpose of your visit to\nher only to decline?\"\n\n\"No; it was to ask, odd as that may seem to you, for another delay.\"\n\n\"Ah that's weak!\"\n\n\"Precisely!\"  She had spoken with impatience, but, so far as that at\nleast, he knew where he was.  \"If I AM weak I want to find it out.  If\nI don't find it out I shall have the comfort, the little glory, of\nthinking I'm strong.\"\n\n\"It's all the comfort, I judge,\" she returned, \"that you WILL have!\"\n\n\"At any rate,\" he said, \"it will have been a month more.  Paris may\ngrow, from day to day, hot and dusty, as you say; but there are other\nthings that are hotter and dustier.  I'm not afraid to stay on; the\nsummer here must be amusing in a wild--if it isn't a tame--way of its\nown; the place at no time more picturesque.  I think I shall like it.\nAnd then,\" he benevolently smiled for her, \"there will be always you.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she objected, \"it won't be as a part of the picturesqueness that\nI shall stay, for I shall be the plainest thing about you. You may, you\nsee, at any rate,\" she pursued, \"have nobody else. Madame de Vionnet\nmay very well be going off, mayn't she?--and Mr. Newsome by the same\nstroke:  unless indeed you've had an assurance from them to the\ncontrary.  So that if your idea's to stay for them\"--it was her duty to\nsuggest it--\"you may be left in the lurch. Of course if they do\nstay\"--she kept it up--\"they would be part of the picturesqueness.  Or\nelse indeed you might join them somewhere.\"\n\nStrether seemed to face it as if it were a happy thought; but the next\nmoment he spoke more critically.  \"Do you mean that they'll probably go\noff together?\"\n\nShe just considered.  \"I think it will be treating you quite without\nceremony if they do; though after all,\" she added, \"it would be\ndifficult to see now quite what degree of ceremony properly meets your\ncase.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Strether conceded, \"my attitude toward them is\nextraordinary.\"\n\n\"Just so; so that one may ask one's self what style of proceeding on\ntheir own part can altogether match it.  The attitude of their own that\nwon't pale in its light they've doubtless still to work out.  The\nreally handsome thing perhaps,\" she presently threw off, \"WOULD be for\nthem to withdraw into more secluded conditions, offering at the same\ntime to share them with you.\" He looked at her, on this, as if some\ngenerous irritation--all in his interest--had suddenly again flickered\nin her; and what she next said indeed half-explained it.  \"Don't really\nbe afraid to tell me if what now holds you IS the pleasant prospect of\nthe empty town, with plenty of seats in the shade, cool drinks,\ndeserted museums, drives to the Bois in the evening, and our wonderful\nwoman all to yourself.\" And she kept it up still more.  \"The handsomest\nthing of ALL, when one makes it out, would, I dare say, be that Mr.\nChad should for a while go off by himself.  It's a pity, from that\npoint of view,\" she wound up, \"that he doesn't pay his mother a visit.\nIt would at least occupy your interval.\" The thought in fact held her a\nmoment.  \"Why doesn't he pay his mother a visit?  Even a week, at this\ngood moment, would do.\"\n\n\"My dear lady,\" Strether replied--and he had it even to himself\nsurprisingly ready--\"my dear lady, his mother has paid HIM a visit.\nMrs. Newsome has been with him, this month, with an intensity that I'm\nsure he has thoroughly felt; he has lavishly entertained her, and she\nhas let him have her thanks.  Do you suggest he shall go back for more\nof them?\"\n\nWell, she succeeded after a little in shaking it off.  \"I see. It's\nwhat you don't suggest--what you haven't suggested. And you know.\"\n\n\"So would you, my dear,\" he kindly said, \"if you had so much as seen\nher.\"\n\n\"As seen Mrs. Newsome?\"\n\n\"No, Sarah--which, both for Chad and for myself, has served all the\npurpose.\"\n\n\"And served it in a manner,\" she responsively mused, \"so extraordinary!\"\n\n\"Well, you see,\" he partly explained, \"what it comes to is that she's\nall cold thought--which Sarah could serve to us cold without its really\nlosing anything.  So it is that we know what she thinks of us.\"\n\nMaria had followed, but she had an arrest.  \"What I've never made out,\nif you come to that, is what you think--I mean you personally--of HER.\nDon't you so much, when all's said, as care a little?\"\n\n\"That,\" he answered with no loss of promptness, \"is what even Chad\nhimself asked me last night.  He asked me if I don't mind the\nloss--well, the loss of an opulent future.  Which moreover,\" he\nhastened to add, \"was a perfectly natural question.\"\n\n\"I call your attention, all the same,\" said Miss Gostrey, \"to the fact\nthat I don't ask it.  What I venture to ask is whether it's to Mrs.\nNewsome herself that you're indifferent.\"\n\n\"I haven't been so\"--he spoke with all assurance.  \"I've been the very\nopposite.  I've been, from the first moment, preoccupied with the\nimpression everything might be making on her--quite oppressed, haunted,\ntormented by it.  I've been interested ONLY in her seeing what I've\nseen.  And I've been as disappointed in her refusal to see it as she\nhas been in what has appeared to her the perversity of my insistence.\"\n\n\"Do you mean that she has shocked you as you've shocked her?\"\n\nStrether weighed it.  \"I'm probably not so shockable.  But on the other\nhand I've gone much further to meet her.  She, on her side, hasn't\nbudged an inch.\"\n\n\"So that you're now at last\"--Maria pointed the moral--\"in the sad\nstage of recriminations.\"\n\n\"No--it's only to you I speak.  I've been like a lamb to Sarah. I've\nonly put my back to the wall.  It's to THAT one naturally staggers when\none has been violently pushed there.\"\n\nShe watched him a moment.  \"Thrown over?\"\n\n\"Well, as I feel I've landed somewhere I think I must have been thrown.\"\n\nShe turned it over, but as hoping to clarify much rather than to\nharmonise.  \"The thing is that I suppose you've been disappointing--\"\n\n\"Quite from the very first of my arrival?  I dare say.  I admit I was\nsurprising even to myself.\"\n\n\"And then of course,\" Maria went on, \"I had much to do with it.\"\n\n\"With my being surprising--?\"\n\n\"That will do,\" she laughed, \"if you're too delicate to call it MY\nbeing!  Naturally,\" she added, \"you came over more or less for\nsurprises.\"\n\n\"Naturally!\"--he valued the reminder.\n\n\"But they were to have been all for you\"--she continued to piece it\nout--\"and none of them for HER.\"\n\nOnce more he stopped before her as if she had touched the point.\n\"That's just her difficulty--that she doesn't admit surprises. It's a\nfact that, I think, describes and represents her; and it falls in with\nwhat I tell you--that she's all, as I've called it, fine cold thought.\nShe had, to her own mind, worked the whole thing out in advance, and\nworked it out for me as well as for herself.  Whenever she has done\nthat, you see, there's no room left; no margin, as it were, for any\nalteration.  She's filled as full, packed as tight, as she'll hold and\nif you wish to get anything more or different either out or in--\"\n\n\"You've got to make over altogether the woman herself?\"\n\n\"What it comes to,\" said Strether, \"is that you've got morally and\nintellectually to get rid of her.\"\n\n\"Which would appear,\" Maria returned, \"to be practically what you've\ndone.\"\n\nBut her friend threw back his head.  \"I haven't touched her.  She won't\nBE touched.  I see it now as I've never done; and she hangs together\nwith a perfection of her own,\" he went on, \"that does suggest a kind of\nwrong in ANY change of her composition.  It was at any rate,\" he wound\nup, \"the woman herself, as you call her the whole moral and\nintellectual being or block, that Sarah brought me over to take or to\nleave.\"\n\nIt turned Miss Gostrey to deeper thought.  \"Fancy having to take at the\npoint of the bayonet a whole moral and intellectual being or block!\"\n\n\"It was in fact,\" said Strether, \"what, at home, I HAD done. But\nsomehow over there I didn't quite know it.\"\n\n\"One never does, I suppose,\" Miss Gostrey concurred, \"realise in\nadvance, in such a case, the size, as you may say, of the block. Little\nby little it looms up.  It has been looming for you more and more till\nat last you see it all.\"\n\n\"I see it all,\" he absently echoed, while his eyes might have been\nfixing some particularly large iceberg in a cool blue northern sea.\n\"It's magnificent!\" he then rather oddly exclaimed.\n\nBut his friend, who was used to this kind of inconsequence in him, kept\nthe thread.  \"There's nothing so magnificent--for making others feel\nyou--as to have no imagination.\"\n\nIt brought him straight round.  \"Ah there you are! It's what I said\nlast night to Chad.  That he himself, I mean, has none.\"\n\n\"Then it would appear,\" Maria suggested, \"that he has, after all,\nsomething in common with his mother.\"\n\n\"He has in common that he makes one, as you say, 'feel' him.  And yet,\"\nhe added, as if the question were interesting, \"one feels others too,\neven when they have plenty.\"\n\nMiss Gostrey continued suggestive.  \"Madame de Vionnet?\"\n\n\"SHE has plenty.\"\n\n\"Certainly--she had quantities of old.  But there are different ways of\nmaking one's self felt.\"\n\n\"Yes, it comes, no doubt, to that.  You now--\"\n\nHe was benevolently going on, but she wouldn't have it. \"Oh I DON'T\nmake myself felt; so my quantity needn't be settled. Yours, you know,\"\nshe said, \"is monstrous.  No one has ever had so much.\"\n\nIt struck him for a moment.  \"That's what Chad also thinks.\"\n\n\"There YOU are then--though it isn't for him to complain of it!\"\n\n\"Oh he doesn't complain of it,\" said Strether.\n\n\"That's all that would be wanting! But apropos of what,\" Maria went on,\n\"did the question come up?\"\n\n\"Well, of his asking me what it is I gain.\"\n\nShe had a pause.  \"Then as I've asked you too it settles my case. Oh\nyou HAVE,\" she repeated, \"treasures of imagination.\"\n\nBut he had been for an instant thinking away from this, and he came up\nin another place.  \"And yet Mrs. Newsome--it's a thing to remember--HAS\nimagined, did, that is, imagine, and apparently still does, horrors\nabout what I should have found.  I was booked, by her\nvision--extraordinarily intense, after all--to find them; and that I\ndidn't, that I couldn't, that, as she evidently felt, I wouldn't--this\nevidently didn't at all, as they say, 'suit' her book. It was more than\nshe could bear.  That was her disappointment.\"\n\n\"You mean you were to have found Chad himself horrible?\"\n\n\"I was to have found the woman.\"\n\n\"Horrible?\"\n\n\"Found her as she imagined her.\"  And Strether paused as if for his own\nexpression of it he could add no touch to that picture.\n\nHis companion had meanwhile thought.  \"She imagined stupidly--so it\ncomes to the same thing.\"\n\n\"Stupidly?  Oh!\" said Strether.\n\nBut she insisted.  \"She imagined meanly.\"\n\nHe had it, however, better.  \"It couldn't but be ignorantly.\"\n\n\"Well, intensity with ignorance--what do you want worse?\"\n\nThis question might have held him, but he let it pass.  \"Sarah isn't\nignorant--now; she keeps up the theory of the horrible.\"\n\n\"Ah but she's intense--and that by itself will do sometimes as well. If\nit doesn't do, in this case, at any rate, to deny that Marie's\ncharming, it will do at least to deny that she's good.\"\n\n\"What I claim is that she's good for Chad.\"\n\n\"You don't claim\"--she seemed to like it clear--\"that she's good for\nYOU.\"\n\nBut he continued without heeding.  \"That's what I wanted them to come\nout for--to see for themselves if she's bad for him.\"\n\n\"And now that they've done so they won't admit that she's good even for\nanything?\"\n\n\"They do think,\" Strether presently admitted, \"that she's on the whole\nabout as bad for me.  But they're consistent of course, inasmuch as\nthey've their clear view of what's good for both of us.\"\n\n\"For you, to begin with\"--Maria, all responsive, confined the question\nfor the moment--\"to eliminate from your existence and if possible even\nfrom your memory the dreadful creature that I must gruesomely shadow\nforth for them, even more than to eliminate the distincter\nevil--thereby a little less portentous--of the person whose confederate\nyou've suffered yourself to become.  However, that's comparatively\nsimple.  You can easily, at the worst, after all, give me up.\"\n\n\"I can easily at the worst, after all, give you up.\" The irony was so\nobvious that it needed no care.  \"I can easily at the worst, after all,\neven forget you.\"\n\n\"Call that then workable.  But Mr. Newsome has much more to forget. How\ncan HE do it?\"\n\n\"Ah there again we are! That's just what I was to have made him do;\njust where I was to have worked with him and helped.\"\n\nShe took it in silence and without attenuation--as if perhaps from very\nfamiliarity with the facts; and her thought made a connexion without\nshowing the links.  \"Do you remember how we used to talk at Chester and\nin London about my seeing you through?\"  She spoke as of far-off\nthings and as if they had spent weeks at the places she named.\n\n\"It's just what you ARE doing.\"\n\n\"Ah but the worst--since you've left such a margin--may be still to\ncome.  You may yet break down.\"\n\n\"Yes, I may yet break down.  But will you take me--?\"\n\nHe had hesitated, and she waited.  \"Take you?\"\n\n\"For as long as I can bear it.\"\n\nShe also debated \"Mr. Newsome and Madame de Vionnet may, as we were\nsaying, leave town.  How long do you think you can bear it without\nthem?\"\n\nStrether's reply to this was at first another question.  \"Do you mean\nin order to get away from me?\"\n\nHer answer had an abruptness.  \"Don't find me rude if I say I should\nthink they'd want to!\"\n\nHe looked at her hard again--seemed even for an instant to have an\nintensity of thought under which his colour changed.  But he smiled.\n\"You mean after what they've done to me?\"\n\n\"After what SHE has.\"\n\nAt this, however, with a laugh, he was all right again.  \"Ah but she\nhasn't done it yet!\"\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nHe had taken the train a few days after this from a station--as well as\nto a station--selected almost at random; such days, whatever should\nhappen, were numbered, and he had gone forth under the impulse--artless\nenough, no doubt--to give the whole of one of them to that French\nruralism, with its cool special green, into which he had hitherto\nlooked only through the little oblong window of the picture-frame.  It\nhad been as yet for the most part but a land of fancy for him--the\nbackground of fiction, the medium of art, the nursery of letters;\npractically as distant as Greece, but practically also well-nigh as\nconsecrated.  Romance could weave itself, for Strether's sense, out of\nelements mild enough; and even after what he had, as he felt, lately\n\"been through,\" he could thrill a little at the chance of seeing\nsomething somewhere that would remind him of a certain small Lambinet\nthat had charmed him, long years before, at a Boston dealer's and that\nhe had quite absurdly never forgotten.  It had been offered, he\nremembered, at a price he had been instructed to believe the lowest\never named for a Lambinet, a price he had never felt so poor as on\nhaving to recognise, all the same, as beyond a dream of possibility. He\nhad dreamed--had turned and twisted possibilities for an hour:  it had\nbeen the only adventure of his life in connexion with the purchase of a\nwork of art.  The adventure, it will be perceived, was modest; but the\nmemory, beyond all reason and by some accident of association, was\nsweet.  The little Lambinet abode with him as the picture he WOULD have\nbought--the particular production that had made him for the moment\noverstep the modesty of nature.  He was quite aware that if he were to\nsee it again he should perhaps have a drop or a shock, and he never\nfound himself wishing that the wheel of time would turn it up again,\njust as he had seen it in the maroon-coloured, sky-lighted inner shrine\nof Tremont Street. It would be a different thing, however, to see the\nremembered mixture resolved back into its elements--to assist at the\nrestoration to nature of the whole far-away hour:  the dusty day in\nBoston, the background of the Fitchburg Depot, of the maroon-coloured\nsanctum, the special-green vision, the ridiculous price, the poplars,\nthe willows, the rushes, the river, the sunny silvery sky, the shady\nwoody horizon.\n\nHe observed in respect to his train almost no condition save that it\nshould stop a few times after getting out of the banlieue; he threw\nhimself on the general amiability of the day for the hint of where to\nalight.  His theory of his excursion was that he could alight\nanywhere--not nearer Paris than an hour's run--on catching a suggestion\nof the particular note required.  It made its sign, the\nsuggestion--weather, air, light, colour and his mood all favouring--at\nthe end of some eighty minutes; the train pulled up just at the right\nspot, and he found himself getting out as securely as if to keep an\nappointment.  It will be felt of him that he could amuse himself, at\nhis age, with very small things if it be again noted that his\nappointment was only with a superseded Boston fashion.  He hadn't gone\nfar without the quick confidence that it would be quite sufficiently\nkept.  The oblong gilt frame disposed its enclosing lines; the poplars\nand willows, the reeds and river--a river of which he didn't know, and\ndidn't want to know, the name--fell into a composition, full of\nfelicity, within them; the sky was silver and turquoise and varnish;\nthe village on the left was white and the church on the right was grey;\nit was all there, in short--it was what he wanted:  it was Tremont\nStreet, it was France, it was Lambinet.  Moreover he was freely walking\nabout in it. He did this last, for an hour, to his heart's content,\nmaking for the shady woody horizon and boring so deep into his\nimpression and his idleness that he might fairly have got through them\nagain and reached the maroon-coloured wall.  It was a wonder, no doubt,\nthat the taste of idleness for him shouldn't need more time to sweeten;\nbut it had in fact taken the few previous days; it had been sweetening\nin truth ever since the retreat of the Pococks. He walked and walked as\nif to show himself how little he had now to do; he had nothing to do\nbut turn off to some hillside where he might stretch himself and hear\nthe poplars rustle, and whence--in the course of an afternoon so spent,\nan afternoon richly suffused too with the sense of a book in his\npocket--he should sufficiently command the scene to be able to pick out\njust the right little rustic inn for an experiment in respect to\ndinner.  There was a train back to Paris at 9.20, and he saw himself\npartaking, at the close of the day, with the enhancements of a coarse\nwhite cloth and a sanded door, of something fried and felicitous,\nwashed down with authentic wine; after which he might, as he liked,\neither stroll back to his station in the gloaming or propose for the\nlocal carriole and converse with his driver, a driver who naturally\nwouldn't fail of a stiff clean blouse, of a knitted nightcap and of the\ngenius of response--who, in fine, would sit on the shafts, tell him\nwhat the French people were thinking, and remind him, as indeed the\nwhole episode would incidentally do, of Maupassant.  Strether heard his\nlips, for the first time in French air, as this vision assumed\nconsistency, emit sounds of expressive intention without fear of his\ncompany. He had been afraid of Chad and of Maria and of Madame de\nVionnet; he had been most of all afraid of Waymarsh, in whose presence,\nso far as they had mixed together in the light of the town, he had\nnever without somehow paying for it aired either his vocabulary or his\naccent.  He usually paid for it by meeting immediately afterwards\nWaymarsh's eye.\n\nSuch were the liberties with which his fancy played after he had turned\noff to the hillside that did really and truly, as well as most amiably,\nawait him beneath the poplars, the hillside that made him feel, for a\nmurmurous couple of hours, how happy had been his thought.  He had the\nsense of success, of a finer harmony in things; nothing but what had\nturned out as yet according to his plan. It most of all came home to\nhim, as he lay on his back on the grass, that Sarah had really gone,\nthat his tension was really relaxed; the peace diffused in these ideas\nmight be delusive, but it hung about him none the less for the time. It\nfairly, for half an hour, sent him to sleep; he pulled his straw hat\nover his eyes--he had bought it the day before with a reminiscence of\nWaymarsh's--and lost himself anew in Lambinet.  It was as if he had\nfound out he was tired--tired not from his walk, but from that inward\nexercise which had known, on the whole, for three months, so little\nintermission.  That was it--when once they were off he had dropped;\nthis moreover was what he had dropped to, and now he was touching\nbottom.  He was kept luxuriously quiet, soothed and amused by the\nconsciousness of what he had found at the end of his descent.  It was\nvery much what he had told Maria Gostrey he should like to stay on for,\nthe hugely-distributed Paris of summer, alternately dazzling and dusky,\nwith a weight lifted for him off its columns and cornices and with\nshade and air in the flutter of awnings as wide as avenues.  It was\npresent to him without attenuation that, reaching out, the day after\nmaking the remark, for some proof of his freedom, he had gone that very\nafternoon to see Madame de Vionnet. He had gone again the next day but\none, and the effect of the two visits, the after-sense of the couple of\nhours spent with her, was almost that of fulness and frequency.  The\nbrave intention of frequency, so great with him from the moment of his\nfinding himself unjustly suspected at Woollett, had remained rather\ntheoretic, and one of the things he could muse about under his poplars\nwas the source of the special shyness that had still made him careful.\nHe had surely got rid of it now, this special shyness; what had become\nof it if it hadn't precisely, within the week, rubbed off?\n\nIt struck him now in fact as sufficiently plain that if he had still\nbeen careful he had been so for a reason.  He had really feared, in his\nbehaviour, a lapse from good faith; if there was a danger of one's\nliking such a woman too much one's best safety was in waiting at least\ntill one had the right to do so.  In the light of the last few days the\ndanger was fairly vivid; so that it was proportionately fortunate that\nthe right was likewise established. It seemed to our friend that he had\non each occasion profited to the utmost by the latter:  how could he\nhave done so more, he at all events asked himself, than in having\nimmediately let her know that, if it was all the same to her, he\npreferred not to talk about anything tiresome?  He had never in his\nlife so sacrificed an armful of high interests as in that remark; he\nhad never so prepared the way for the comparatively frivolous as in\naddressing it to Madame de Vionnet's intelligence.  It hadn't been till\nlater that he quite recalled how in conjuring away everything but the\npleasant he had conjured away almost all they had hitherto talked\nabout; it was not till later even that he remembered how, with their\nnew tone, they hadn't so much as mentioned the name of Chad himself.\nOne of the things that most lingered with him on his hillside was this\ndelightful facility, with such a woman, of arriving at a new tone; he\nthought, as he lay on his back, of all the tones she might make\npossible if one were to try her, and at any rate of the probability\nthat one could trust her to fit them to occasions.  He had wanted her\nto feel that, as he was disinterested now, so she herself should be,\nand she had showed she felt it, and he had showed he was grateful, and\nit had been for all the world as if he were calling for the first time.\nThey had had other, but irrelevant, meetings; it was quite as if, had\nthey sooner known how much they REALLY had in common, there were\nquantities of comparatively dull matters they might have skipped. Well,\nthey were skipping them now, even to graceful gratitude, even to\nhandsome \"Don't mention it!\"--and it was amazing what could still come\nup without reference to what had been going on between them.  It might\nhave been, on analysis, nothing more than Shakespeare and the musical\nglasses; but it had served all the purpose of his appearing to have\nsaid to her: \"Don't like me, if it's a question of liking me, for\nanything obvious and clumsy that I've, as they call it, 'done' for you:\nlike me--well, like me, hang it, for anything else you choose.  So, by\nthe same propriety, don't be for me simply the person I've come to know\nthrough my awkward connexion with Chad--was ever anything, by the way,\nMORE awkward?  Be for me, please, with all your admirable tact and\ntrust, just whatever I may show you it's a present pleasure to me to\nthink you.\" It had been a large indication to meet; but if she hadn't\nmet it what HAD she done, and how had their time together slipped along\nso smoothly, mild but not slow, and melting, liquefying, into his happy\nillusion of idleness?  He could recognise on the other hand that he had\nprobably not been without reason, in his prior, his restricted state,\nfor keeping an eye on his liability to lapse from good faith.\n\nHe really continued in the picture--that being for himself his\nsituation--all the rest of this rambling day; so that the charm was\nstill, was indeed more than ever upon him when, toward six o'clock he\nfound himself amicably engaged with a stout white-capped deep-voiced\nwoman at the door of the auberge of the biggest village, a village that\naffected him as a thing of whiteness, blueness and crookedness, set in\ncoppery green, and that had the river flowing behind or before it--one\ncouldn't say which; at the bottom, in particular, of the inn-garden. He\nhad had other adventures before this; had kept along the height, after\nshaking off slumber; had admired, had almost coveted, another small old\nchurch, all steep roof and dim slate-colour without and all whitewash\nand paper flowers within; had lost his way and had found it again; had\nconversed with rustics who struck him perhaps a little more as men of\nthe world than he had expected; had acquired at a bound a fearless\nfacility in French; had had, as the afternoon waned, a watery bock, all\npale and Parisian, in the cafe of the furthest village, which was not\nthe biggest; and had meanwhile not once overstepped the oblong gilt\nframe. The frame had drawn itself out for him, as much as you please;\nbut that was just his luck.  He had finally come down again to the\nvalley, to keep within touch of stations and trains, turning his face\nto the quarter from which he had started; and thus it was that he had\nat last pulled up before the hostess of the Cheval Blanc, who met him,\nwith a rough readiness that was like the clatter of sabots over stones,\non their common ground of a cotelette de veau a l'oseille and a\nsubsequent lift.  He had walked many miles and didn't know he was\ntired; but he still knew he was amused, and even that, though he had\nbeen alone all day, he had never yet so struck himself as engaged with\nothers and in midstream of his drama.  It might have passed for\nfinished his drama, with its catastrophe all but reached:  it had,\nhowever, none the less been vivid again for him as he thus gave it its\nfuller chance.  He had only had to be at last well out of it to feel\nit, oddly enough, still going on.\n\nFor this had been all day at bottom the spell of the picture--that it\nwas essentially more than anything else a scene and a stage, that the\nvery air of the play was in the rustle of the willows and the tone of\nthe sky.  The play and the characters had, without his knowing it till\nnow, peopled all his space for him, and it seemed somehow quite happy\nthat they should offer themselves, in the conditions so supplied, with\na kind of inevitability.  It was as if the conditions made them not\nonly inevitable, but so much more nearly natural and right as that they\nwere at least easier, pleasanter, to put up with.  The conditions had\nnowhere so asserted their difference from those of Woollett as they\nappeared to him to assert it in the little court of the Cheval Blanc\nwhile he arranged with his hostess for a comfortable climax.  They were\nfew and simple, scant and humble, but they were THE THING, as he would\nhave called it, even to a greater degree than Madame de Vionnet's old\nhigh salon where the ghost of the Empire walked.  \"The\" thing was the\nthing that implied the greatest number of other things of the sort he\nhad had to tackle; and it was queer of course, but so it was--the\nimplication here was complete.  Not a single one of his observations\nbut somehow fell into a place in it; not a breath of the cooler evening\nthat wasn't somehow a syllable of the text. The text was simply, when\ncondensed, that in THESE places such things were, and that if it was in\nthem one elected to move about one had to make one's account with what\none lighted on.  Meanwhile at all events it was enough that they did\naffect one--so far as the village aspect was concerned--as whiteness,\ncrookedness and blueness set in coppery green; there being positively,\nfor that matter, an outer wall of the White Horse that was painted the\nmost improbable shade.  That was part of the amusement--as if to show\nthat the fun was harmless; just as it was enough, further, that the\npicture and the play seemed supremely to melt together in the good\nwoman's broad sketch of what she could do for her visitor's appetite.\nHe felt in short a confidence, and it was general, and it was all he\nwanted to feel.  It suffered no shock even on her mentioning that she\nhad in fact just laid the cloth for two persons who, unlike Monsieur,\nhad arrived by the river--in a boat of their own; who had asked her,\nhalf an hour before, what she could do for them, and had then paddled\naway to look at something a little further up--from which promenade\nthey would presently return. Monsieur might meanwhile, if he liked,\npass into the garden, such as it was, where she would serve him, should\nhe wish it--for there were tables and benches in plenty--a \"bitter\"\nbefore his repast. Here she would also report to him on the possibility\nof a conveyance to his station, and here at any rate he would have the\nagrement of the river.\n\nIt may be mentioned without delay that Monsieur had the agrement of\neverything, and in particular, for the next twenty minutes, of a small\nand primitive pavilion that, at the garden's edge, almost overhung the\nwater, testifying, in its somewhat battered state, to much fond\nfrequentation.  It consisted of little more than a platform, slightly\nraised, with a couple of benches and a table, a protecting rail and a\nprojecting roof; but it raked the full grey-blue stream, which, taking\na turn a short distance above, passed out of sight to reappear much\nhigher up; and it was clearly in esteemed requisition for Sundays and\nother feasts.  Strether sat there and, though hungry, felt at peace;\nthe confidence that had so gathered for him deepened with the lap of\nthe water, the ripple of the surface, the rustle of the reeds on the\nopposite bank, the faint diffused coolness and the slight rock of a\ncouple of small boats attached to a rough landing-place hard by.  The\nvalley on the further side was all copper-green level and glazed pearly\nsky, a sky hatched across with screens of trimmed trees, which looked\nflat, like espaliers; and though the rest of the village straggled away\nin the near quarter the view had an emptiness that made one of the\nboats suggestive.  Such a river set one afloat almost before one could\ntake up the oars--the idle play of which would be moreover the aid to\nthe full impression.  This perception went so far as to bring him to\nhis feet; but that movement, in turn, made him feel afresh that he was\ntired, and while he leaned against a post and continued to look out he\nsaw something that gave him a sharper arrest.\n\n\n\nIV\n\nWhat he saw was exactly the right thing--a boat advancing round the\nbend and containing a man who held the paddles and a lady, at the\nstern, with a pink parasol.  It was suddenly as if these figures, or\nsomething like them, had been wanted in the picture, had been wanted\nmore or less all day, and had now drifted into sight, with the slow\ncurrent, on purpose to fill up the measure.  They came slowly, floating\ndown, evidently directed to the landing-place near their spectator and\npresenting themselves to him not less clearly as the two persons for\nwhom his hostess was already preparing a meal.  For two very happy\npersons he found himself straightway taking them--a young man in\nshirt-sleeves, a young woman easy and fair, who had pulled pleasantly\nup from some other place and, being acquainted with the neighbourhood,\nhad known what this particular retreat could offer them.  The air quite\nthickened, at their approach, with further intimations; the intimation\nthat they were expert, familiar, frequent--that this wouldn't at all\nevents be the first time.  They knew how to do it, he vaguely felt--and\nit made them but the more idyllic, though at the very moment of the\nimpression, as happened, their boat seemed to have begun to drift wide,\nthe oarsman letting it go.  It had by this time none the less come\nmuch nearer--near enough for Strether to dream the lady in the stern\nhad for some reason taken account of his being there to watch them. She\nhad remarked on it sharply, yet her companion hadn't turned round; it\nwas in fact almost as if our friend had felt her bid him keep still.\nShe had taken in something as a result of which their course had\nwavered, and it continued to waver while they just stood off.  This\nlittle effect was sudden and rapid, so rapid that Strether's sense of\nit was separate only for an instant from a sharp start of his own.  He\ntoo had within the minute taken in something, taken in that he knew the\nlady whose parasol, shifting as if to hide her face, made so fine a\npink point in the shining scene.  It was too prodigious, a chance in a\nmillion, but, if he knew the lady, the gentleman, who still presented\nhis back and kept off, the gentleman, the coatless hero of the idyll,\nwho had responded to her start, was, to match the marvel, none other\nthan Chad.\n\nChad and Madame de Vionnet were then like himself taking a day in the\ncountry--though it was as queer as fiction, as farce, that their\ncountry could happen to be exactly his; and she had been the first at\nrecognition, the first to feel, across the water, the shock--for it\nappeared to come to that--of their wonderful accident. Strether became\naware, with this, of what was taking place--that her recognition had\nbeen even stranger for the pair in the boat, that her immediate impulse\nhad been to control it, and that she was quickly and intensely debating\nwith Chad the risk of betrayal. He saw they would show nothing if they\ncould feel sure he hadn't made them out; so that he had before him for\na few seconds his own hesitation.  It was a sharp fantastic crisis that\nhad popped up as if in a dream, and it had had only to last the few\nseconds to make him feel it as quite horrible.  They were thus, on\neither side, TRYING the other side, and all for some reason that broke\nthe stillness like some unprovoked harsh note.  It seemed to him again,\nwithin the limit, that he had but one thing to do--to settle their\ncommon question by some sign of surprise and joy.  He hereupon gave\nlarge play to these things, agitating his hat and his stick and loudly\ncalling out--a demonstration that brought him relief as soon as he had\nseen it answered.  The boat, in mid-stream, still went a little\nwild--which seemed natural, however, while Chad turned round, half\nspringing up; and his good friend, after blankness and wonder, began\ngaily to wave her parasol.  Chad dropped afresh to his paddles and the\nboat headed round, amazement and pleasantry filling the air meanwhile,\nand relief, as Strether continued to fancy, superseding mere violence.\nOur friend went down to the water under this odd impression as of\nviolence averted--the violence of their having \"cut\" him, out there in\nthe eye of nature, on the assumption that he wouldn't know it.  He\nawaited them with a face from which he was conscious of not being able\nquite to banish this idea that they would have gone on, not seeing and\nnot knowing, missing their dinner and disappointing their hostess, had\nhe himself taken a line to match. That at least was what darkened his\nvision for the moment.  Afterwards, after they had bumped at the\nlanding-place and he had assisted their getting ashore, everything\nfound itself sponged over by the mere miracle of the encounter.\n\nThey could so much better at last, on either side, treat it as a wild\nextravagance of hazard, that the situation was made elastic by the\namount of explanation called into play.  Why indeed--apart from\noddity--the situation should have been really stiff was a question\nnaturally not practical at the moment, and in fact, so far as we are\nconcerned, a question tackled, later on and in private, only by\nStrether himself.  He was to reflect later on and in private that it\nwas mainly HE who had explained--as he had had moreover comparatively\nlittle difficulty in doing.  He was to have at all events meanwhile the\nworrying thought of their perhaps secretly suspecting him of having\nplotted this coincidence, taking such pains as might be to give it the\nsemblance of an accident.  That possibility--as their\nimputation--didn't of course bear looking into for an instant; yet the\nwhole incident was so manifestly, arrange it as they would, an awkward\none, that he could scarce keep disclaimers in respect to his own\npresence from rising to his lips. Disclaimers of intention would have\nbeen as tactless as his presence was practically gross; and the\nnarrowest escape they either of them had was his lucky escape, in the\nevent, from making any.  Nothing of the sort, so far as surface and\nsound were involved, was even in question; surface and sound all made\nfor their common ridiculous good fortune, for the general\ninvraisemblance of the occasion, for the charming chance that they had,\nthe others, in passing, ordered some food to be ready, the charming\nchance that he had himself not eaten, the charming chance, even more,\nthat their little plans, their hours, their train, in short, from\nla-bas, would all match for their return together to Paris.  The chance\nthat was most charming of all, the chance that drew from Madame de\nVionnet her clearest, gayest \"Comme cela se trouve!\" was the\nannouncement made to Strether after they were seated at table, the word\ngiven him by their hostess in respect to his carriage for the station,\non which he might now count.  It settled the matter for his friends as\nwell; the conveyance--it WAS all too lucky!--would serve for them; and\nnothing was more delightful than his being in a position to make the\ntrain so definite. It might have been, for themselves--to hear Madame\nde Vionnet--almost unnaturally vague, a detail left to be fixed; though\nStrether indeed was afterwards to remember that Chad had promptly\nenough intervened to forestall this appearance, laughing at his\ncompanion's flightiness and making the point that he had after all, in\nspite of the bedazzlement of a day out with her, known what he was\nabout.\n\nStrether was to remember afterwards further that this had had for him\nthe effect of forming Chad's almost sole intervention; and indeed he\nwas to remember further still, in subsequent meditation, many things\nthat, as it were, fitted together.  Another of them was for instance\nthat the wonderful woman's overflow of surprise and amusement was\nwholly into French, which she struck him as speaking with an\nunprecedented command of idiomatic turns, but in which she got, as he\nmight have said, somewhat away from him, taking all at once little\nbrilliant jumps that he could but lamely match.  The question of his\nown French had never come up for them; it was the one thing she\nwouldn't have permitted--it belonged, for a person who had been through\nmuch, to mere boredom; but the present result was odd, fairly veiling\nher identity, shifting her back into a mere voluble class or race to\nthe intense audibility of which he was by this time inured.  When she\nspoke the charming slightly strange English he best knew her by he\nseemed to feel her as a creature, among all the millions, with a\nlanguage quite to herself, the real monopoly of a special shade of\nspeech, beautifully easy for her, yet of a colour and a cadence that\nwere both inimitable and matters of accident.  She came back to these\nthings after they had shaken down in the inn-parlour and knew, as it\nwere, what was to become of them; it was inevitable that loud\nejaculation over the prodigy of their convergence should at last wear\nitself out.  Then it was that his impression took fuller form--the\nimpression, destined only to deepen, to complete itself, that they had\nsomething to put a face upon, to carry off and make the best of, and\nthat it was she who, admirably on the whole, was doing this.  It was\nfamiliar to him of course that they had something to put a face upon;\ntheir friendship, their connexion, took any amount of explaining--that\nwould have been made familiar by his twenty minutes with Mrs. Pocock if\nit hadn't already been so.  Yet his theory, as we know, had bountifully\nbeen that the facts were specifically none of his business, and were,\nover and above, so far as one had to do with them, intrinsically\nbeautiful; and this might have prepared him for anything, as well as\nrendered him proof against mystification. When he reached home that\nnight, however, he knew he had been, at bottom, neither prepared nor\nproof; and since we have spoken of what he was, after his return, to\nrecall and interpret, it may as well immediately be said that his real\nexperience of these few hours put on, in that belated vision--for he\nscarce went to bed till morning--the aspect that is most to our purpose.\n\nHe then knew more or less how he had been affected--he but half knew at\nthe time.  There had been plenty to affect him even after, as has been\nsaid, they had shaken down; for his consciousness, though muffled, had\nits sharpest moments during this passage, a marked drop into innocent\nfriendly Bohemia.  They then had put their elbows on the table,\ndeploring the premature end of their two or three dishes; which they\nhad tried to make up with another bottle while Chad joked a little\nspasmodically, perhaps even a little irrelevantly, with the hostess.\nWhat it all came to had been that fiction and fable WERE, inevitably,\nin the air, and not as a simple term of comparison, but as a result of\nthings said; also that they were blinking it, all round, and that they\nyet needn't, so much as that, have blinked it--though indeed if they\nhadn't Strether didn't quite see what else they could have done.\nStrether didn't quite see THAT even at an hour or two past midnight,\neven when he had, at his hotel, for a long time, without a light and\nwithout undressing, sat back on his bedroom sofa and stared straight\nbefore him.  He was, at that point of vantage, in full possession, to\nmake of it all what he could.  He kept making of it that there had been\nsimply a LIE in the charming affair--a lie on which one could now,\ndetached and deliberate, perfectly put one's finger.  It was with the\nlie that they had eaten and drunk and talked and laughed, that they had\nwaited for their carriole rather impatiently, and had then got into the\nvehicle and, sensibly subsiding, driven their three or four miles\nthrough the darkening summer night.  The eating and drinking, which had\nbeen a resource, had had the effect of having served its turn; the talk\nand laughter had done as much; and it was during their somewhat tedious\nprogress to the station, during the waits there, the further delays,\ntheir submission to fatigue, their silences in the dim compartment of\nthe much-stopping train, that he prepared himself for reflexions to\ncome. It had been a performance, Madame de Vionnet's manner, and though\nit had to that degree faltered toward the end, as through her ceasing\nto believe in it, as if she had asked herself, or Chad had found a\nmoment surreptitiously to ask her, what after all was the use, a\nperformance it had none the less quite handsomely remained, with the\nfinal fact about it that it was on the whole easier to keep up than to\nabandon.\n\nFrom the point of view of presence of mind it had been very wonderful\nindeed, wonderful for readiness, for beautiful assurance, for the way\nher decision was taken on the spot, without time to confer with Chad,\nwithout time for anything.  Their only conference could have been the\nbrief instants in the boat before they confessed to recognising the\nspectator on the bank, for they hadn't been alone together a moment\nsince and must have communicated all in silence. It was a part of the\ndeep impression for Strether, and not the least of the deep interest,\nthat they COULD so communicate--that Chad in particular could let her\nknow he left it to her.  He habitually left things to others, as\nStrether was so well aware, and it in fact came over our friend in\nthese meditations that there had been as yet no such vivid illustration\nof his famous knowing how to live. It was as if he had humoured her to\nthe extent of letting her lie without correction--almost as if, really,\nhe would be coming round in the morning to set the matter, as between\nStrether and himself, right.  Of course he couldn't quite come; it was\na case in which a man was obliged to accept the woman's version, even\nwhen fantastic; if she had, with more flurry than she cared to show,\nelected, as the phrase was, to represent that they had left Paris that\nmorning, and with no design but of getting back within the day--if she\nhad so sized-up, in the Woollett phrase, their necessity, she knew best\nher own measure.  There were things, all the same, it was impossible to\nblink and which made this measure an odd one--the too evident fact for\ninstance that she hadn't started out for the day dressed and hatted and\nshod, and even, for that matter, pink parasol'd, as she had been in the\nboat.  From what did the drop in her assurance proceed as the tension\nincreased--from what did this slightly baffled ingenuity spring but\nfrom her consciousness of not presenting, as night closed in, with not\nso much as a shawl to wrap her round, an appearance that matched her\nstory?  She admitted that she was cold, but only to blame her\nimprudence which Chad suffered her to give such account of as she\nmight.  Her shawl and Chad's overcoat and her other garments, and his,\nthose they had each worn the day before, were at the place, best known\nto themselves--a quiet retreat enough, no doubt--at which they had been\nspending the twenty-four hours, to which they had fully meant to return\nthat evening, from which they had so remarkably swum into Strether's\nken, and the tacit repudiation of which had been thus the essence of\nher comedy. Strether saw how she had perceived in a flash that they\ncouldn't quite look to going back there under his nose; though,\nhonestly, as he gouged deeper into the matter, he was somewhat\nsurprised, as Chad likewise had perhaps been, at the uprising of this\nscruple. He seemed even to divine that she had entertained it rather\nfor Chad than for herself, and that, as the young man had lacked the\nchance to enlighten her, she had had to go on with it, he meanwhile\nmistaking her motive.\n\nHe was rather glad, none the less, that they had in point of fact not\nparted at the Cheval Blanc, that he hadn't been reduced to giving them\nhis blessing for an idyllic retreat down the river. He had had in the\nactual case to make-believe more than he liked, but this was nothing,\nit struck him, to what the other event would have required.  Could he,\nliterally, quite have faced the other event?  Would he have been\ncapable of making the best of it with them?  This was what he was\ntrying to do now; but with the advantage of his being able to give more\ntime to it a good deal counteracted by his sense of what, over and\nabove the central fact itself, he had to swallow.  It was the quantity\nof make-believe involved and so vividly exemplified that most disagreed\nwith his spiritual stomach.  He moved, however, from the consideration\nof that quantity--to say nothing of the consciousness of that\norgan--back to the other feature of the show, the deep, deep truth of\nthe intimacy revealed.  That was what, in his vain vigil, he oftenest\nreverted to:  intimacy, at such a point, was LIKE that--and what in the\nworld else would one have wished it to be like?  It was all very well\nfor him to feel the pity of its being so much like lying; he almost\nblushed, in the dark, for the way he had dressed the possibility in\nvagueness, as a little girl might have dressed her doll. He had made\nthem--and by no fault of their own--momentarily pull it for him, the\npossibility, out of this vagueness; and must he not therefore take it\nnow as they had had simply, with whatever thin attenuations, to give it\nto him?  The very question, it may be added, made him feel lonely and\ncold.  There was the element of the awkward all round, but Chad and\nMadame de Vionnet had at least the comfort that they could talk it over\ntogether.  With whom could HE talk of such things?--unless indeed\nalways, at almost any stage, with Maria?  He foresaw that Miss Gostrey\nwould come again into requisition on the morrow; though it wasn't to be\ndenied that he was already a little afraid of her \"What on\nearth--that's what I want to know now--had you then supposed?\"  He\nrecognised at last that he had really been trying all along to suppose\nnothing.  Verily, verily, his labour had been lost. He found himself\nsupposing innumerable and wonderful things.\n\n\n\n\n\nBook Twelfth\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nStrether couldn't have said he had during the previous hours definitely\nexpected it; yet when, later on, that morning--though no later indeed\nthan for his coming forth at ten o'clock--he saw the concierge produce,\non his approach, a petit bleu delivered since his letters had been sent\nup, he recognised the appearance as the first symptom of a sequel.  He\nthen knew he had been thinking of some early sign from Chad as more\nlikely, after all, than not; and this would be precisely the early\nsign.  He took it so for granted that he opened the petit bleu just\nwhere he had stopped, in the pleasant cool draught of the\nporte-cochere--only curious to see where the young man would, at such a\njuncture, break out.  His curiosity, however, was more than gratified;\nthe small missive, whose gummed edge he had detached without attention\nto the address, not being from the young man at all, but from the\nperson whom the case gave him on the spot as still more worth while.\nWorth while or not, he went round to the nearest telegraph-office, the\nbig one on the Boulevard, with a directness that almost confessed to a\nfear of the danger of delay.  He might have been thinking that if he\ndidn't go before he could think he wouldn't perhaps go at all.  He at\nany rate kept, in the lower side-pocket of his morning coat, a very\ndeliberate hand on his blue missive, crumpling it up rather tenderly\nthan harshly.  He wrote a reply, on the Boulevard, also in the form of\na petit bleu--which was quickly done, under pressure of the place,\ninasmuch as, like Madame de Vionnet's own communication, it consisted\nof the fewest words.  She had asked him if he could do her the very\ngreat kindness of coming to see her that evening at half-past nine, and\nhe answered, as if nothing were easier, that he would present himself\nat the hour she named.  She had added a line of postscript, to the\neffect that she would come to him elsewhere and at his own hour if he\npreferred; but he took no notice of this, feeling that if he saw her at\nall half the value of it would be in seeing her where he had already\nseen her best.  He mightn't see her at all; that was one of the\nreflexions he made after writing and before he dropped his closed card\ninto the box; he mightn't see any one at all any more at all; he might\nmake an end as well now as ever, leaving things as they were, since he\nwas doubtless not to leave them better, and taking his way home so far\nas should appear that a home remained to him.  This alternative was for\na few minutes so sharp that if he at last did deposit his missive it\nwas perhaps because the pressure of the place had an effect.\n\nThere was none other, however, than the common and constant pressure,\nfamiliar to our friend under the rubric of Postes et Telegraphes--the\nsomething in the air of these establishments; the vibration of the vast\nstrange life of the town, the influence of the types, the performers\nconcocting their messages; the little prompt Paris women, arranging,\npretexting goodness knew what, driving the dreadful needle-pointed\npublic pen at the dreadful sand-strewn public table: implements that\nsymbolised for Strether's too interpretative innocence something more\nacute in manners, more sinister in morals, more fierce in the national\nlife.  After he had put in his paper he had ranged himself, he was\nreally amused to think, on the side of the fierce, the sinister, the\nacute.  He was carrying on a correspondence, across the great city,\nquite in the key of the Postes et Telegraphes in general; and it was\nfairly as if the acceptance of that fact had come from something in his\nstate that sorted with the occupation of his neighbours.  He was mixed\nup with the typical tale of Paris, and so were they, poor things--how\ncould they all together help being? They were no worse than he, in\nshort, and he no worse than they--if, queerly enough, no better; and at\nall events he had settled his hash, so that he went out to begin, from\nthat moment, his day of waiting.  The great settlement was, as he felt,\nin his preference for seeing his correspondent in her own best\nconditions.  THAT was part of the typical tale, the part most\nsignificant in respect to himself.  He liked the place she lived in,\nthe picture that each time squared itself, large and high and clear,\naround her:  every occasion of seeing it was a pleasure of a different\nshade.  Yet what precisely was he doing with shades of pleasure now,\nand why hadn't he properly and logically compelled her to commit\nherself to whatever of disadvantage and penalty the situation might\nthrow up?  He might have proposed, as for Sarah Pocock, the cold\nhospitality of his own salon de lecture, in which the chill of Sarah's\nvisit seemed still to abide and shades of pleasure were dim; he might\nhave suggested a stone bench in the dusty Tuileries or a penny chair at\nthe back part of the Champs Elysees.  These things would have been a\ntrifle stern, and sternness alone now wouldn't be sinister.  An\ninstinct in him cast about for some form of discipline in which they\nmight meet--some awkwardness they would suffer from, some danger, or at\nleast some grave inconvenience, they would incur.  This would give a\nsense--which the spirit required, rather ached and sighed in the\nabsence of--that somebody was paying something somewhere and somehow,\nthat they were at least not all floating together on the silver stream\nof impunity.  Just instead of that to go and see her late in the\nevening, as if, for all the world--well, as if he were as much in the\nswim as anybody else:  this had as little as possible in common with\nthe penal form.\n\nEven when he had felt that objection melt away, however, the practical\ndifference was small; the long stretch of his interval took the colour\nit would, and if he lived on thus with the sinister from hour to hour\nit proved an easier thing than one might have supposed in advance.  He\nreverted in thought to his old tradition, the one he had been brought\nup on and which even so many years of life had but little worn away;\nthe notion that the state of the wrongdoer, or at least this person's\nhappiness, presented some special difficulty.  What struck him now\nrather was the ease of it--for nothing in truth appeared easier.  It\nwas an ease he himself fairly tasted of for the rest of the day; giving\nhimself quite up; not so much as trying to dress it out, in any\nparticular whatever, as a difficulty; not after all going to see\nMaria--which would have been in a manner a result of such dressing;\nonly idling, lounging, smoking, sitting in the shade, drinking lemonade\nand consuming ices.  The day had turned to heat and eventual thunder,\nand he now and again went back to his hotel to find that Chad hadn't\nbeen there.  He hadn't yet struck himself, since leaving Woollett, so\nmuch as a loafer, though there had been times when he believed himself\ntouching bottom.  This was a deeper depth than any, and with no\nforesight, scarcely with a care, as to what he should bring up.  He\nalmost wondered if he didn't LOOK demoralised and disreputable; he had\nthe fanciful vision, as he sat and smoked, of some accidental, some\nmotived, return of the Pococks, who would be passing along the\nBoulevard and would catch this view of him. They would have distinctly,\non his appearance, every ground for scandal. But fate failed to\nadminister even that sternness; the Pococks never passed and Chad made\nno sign.  Strether meanwhile continued to hold off from Miss Gostrey,\nkeeping her till to-morrow; so that by evening his irresponsibility,\nhis impunity, his luxury, had become--there was no other word for\nthem--immense.\n\nBetween nine and ten, at last, in the high clear picture--he was moving\nin these days, as in a gallery, from clever canvas to clever canvas--he\ndrew a long breath:  it was so presented to him from the first that the\nspell of his luxury wouldn't be broken.  He wouldn't have, that is, to\nbecome responsible--this was admirably in the air: she had sent for him\nprecisely to let him feel it, so that he might go on with the comfort\n(comfort already established, hadn't it been?) of regarding his ordeal,\nthe ordeal of the weeks of Sarah's stay and of their climax, as safely\ntraversed and left behind him.  Didn't she just wish to assure him that\nSHE now took it all and so kept it; that he was absolutely not to worry\nany more, was only to rest on his laurels and continue generously to\nhelp her?  The light in her beautiful formal room was dim, though it\nwould do, as everything would always do; the hot night had kept out\nlamps, but there was a pair of clusters of candles that glimmered over\nthe chimney-piece like the tall tapers of an altar. The windows were\nall open, their redundant hangings swaying a little, and he heard once\nmore, from the empty court, the small plash of the fountain.  From\nbeyond this, and as from a great distance--beyond the court, beyond the\ncorps de logis forming the front--came, as if excited and exciting, the\nvague voice of Paris. Strether had all along been subject to sudden\ngusts of fancy in connexion with such matters as these--odd starts of\nthe historic sense, suppositions and divinations with no warrant but\ntheir intensity.  Thus and so, on the eve of the great recorded dates,\nthe days and nights of revolution, the sounds had come in, the omens,\nthe beginnings broken out.  They were the smell of revolution, the\nsmell of the public temper--or perhaps simply the smell of blood.\n\nIt was at present queer beyond words, \"subtle,\" he would have risked\nsaying, that such suggestions should keep crossing the scene; but it\nwas doubtless the effect of the thunder in the air, which had hung\nabout all day without release.  His hostess was dressed as for\nthunderous times, and it fell in with the kind of imagination we have\njust attributed to him that she should be in simplest coolest white, of\na character so old-fashioned, if he were not mistaken, that Madame\nRoland must on the scaffold have worn something like it.  This effect\nwas enhanced by a small black fichu or scarf, of crape or gauze,\ndisposed quaintly round her bosom and now completing as by a mystic\ntouch the pathetic, the noble analogy. Poor Strether in fact scarce\nknew what analogy was evoked for him as the charming woman, receiving\nhim and making him, as she could do such things, at once familiarly and\ngravely welcome, moved over her great room with her image almost\nrepeated in its polished floor, which had been fully bared for summer.\nThe associations of the place, all felt again; the gleam here and\nthere, in the subdued light, of glass and gilt and parquet, with the\nquietness of her own note as the centre--these things were at first as\ndelicate as if they had been ghostly, and he was sure in a moment that,\nwhatever he should find he had come for, it wouldn't be for an\nimpression that had previously failed him.  That conviction held him\nfrom the outset, and, seeming singularly to simplify, certified to him\nthat the objects about would help him, would really help them both. No,\nhe might never see them again--this was only too probably the last\ntime; and he should certainly see nothing in the least degree like\nthem. He should soon be going to where such things were not, and it\nwould be a small mercy for memory, for fancy, to have, in that stress,\na loaf on the shelf.  He knew in advance he should look back on the\nperception actually sharpest with him as on the view of something old,\nold, old, the oldest thing he had ever personally touched; and he also\nknew, even while he took his companion in as the feature among\nfeatures, that memory and fancy couldn't help being enlisted for her.\nShe might intend what she would, but this was beyond anything she could\nintend, with things from far back--tyrannies of history, facts of type,\nvalues, as the painters said, of expression--all working for her and\ngiving her the supreme chance, the chance of the happy, the really\nluxurious few, the chance, on a great occasion, to be natural and\nsimple.  She had never, with him, been more so; or if it was the\nperfection of art it would never--and that came to the same thing--be\nproved against her.\n\nWhat was truly wonderful was her way of differing so from time to time\nwithout detriment to her simplicity.  Caprices, he was sure she felt,\nwere before anything else bad manners, and that judgement in her was by\nitself a thing making more for safety of intercourse than anything that\nin his various own past intercourses he had had to reckon on.  If\ntherefore her presence was now quite other than the one she had shown\nhim the night before, there was nothing of violence in the change--it\nwas all harmony and reason.  It gave him a mild deep person, whereas he\nhad had on the occasion to which their interview was a direct reference\na person committed to movement and surface and abounding in them; but\nshe was in either character more remarkable for nothing than for her\nbridging of intervals, and this now fell in with what he understood he\nwas to leave to her.  The only thing was that, if he was to leave it\nALL to her, why exactly had she sent for him?  He had had, vaguely, in\nadvance, his explanation, his view of the probability of her wishing to\nset something right, to deal in some way with the fraud so lately\npractised on his presumed credulity.  Would she attempt to carry it\nfurther or would she blot it out?  Would she throw over it some more or\nless happy colour; or would she do nothing about it at all?  He\nperceived soon enough at least that, however reasonable she might be,\nshe wasn't vulgarly confused, and it herewith pressed upon him that\ntheir eminent \"lie,\" Chad's and hers, was simply after all such an\ninevitable tribute to good taste as he couldn't have wished them not to\nrender.  Away from them, during his vigil, he had seemed to wince at\nthe amount of comedy involved; whereas in his present posture he could\nonly ask himself how he should enjoy any attempt from her to take the\ncomedy back.  He shouldn't enjoy it at all; but, once more and yet once\nmore, he could trust her.  That is he could trust her to make deception\nright.  As she presented things the ugliness--goodness knew why--went\nout of them; none the less too that she could present them, with an art\nof her own, by not so much as touching them.  She let the matter, at\nall events, lie where it was--where the previous twenty-four hours had\nplaced it; appearing merely to circle about it respectfully, tenderly,\nalmost piously, while she took up another question.\n\nShe knew she hadn't really thrown dust in his eyes; this, the previous\nnight, before they separated, had practically passed between them; and,\nas she had sent for him to see what the difference thus made for him\nmight amount to, so he was conscious at the end of five minutes that he\nhad been tried and tested.  She had settled with Chad after he left\nthem that she would, for her satisfaction, assure herself of this\nquantity, and Chad had, as usual, let her have her way.  Chad was\nalways letting people have their way when he felt that it would somehow\nturn his wheel for him; it somehow always did turn his wheel.  Strether\nfelt, oddly enough, before these facts, freshly and consentingly\npassive; they again so rubbed it into him that the couple thus fixing\nhis attention were intimate, that his intervention had absolutely aided\nand intensified their intimacy, and that in fine he must accept the\nconsequence of that.  He had absolutely become, himself, with his\nperceptions and his mistakes, his concessions and his reserves, the\ndroll mixture, as it must seem to them, of his braveries and his fears,\nthe general spectacle of his art and his innocence, almost an added\nlink and certainly a common priceless ground for them to meet upon.  It\nwas as if he had been hearing their very tone when she brought out a\nreference that was comparatively straight. \"The last twice that you've\nbeen here, you know, I never asked you,\" she said with an abrupt\ntransition--they had been pretending before this to talk simply of the\ncharm of yesterday and of the interest of the country they had seen.\nThe effort was confessedly vain; not for such talk had she invited him;\nand her impatient reminder was of their having done for it all the\nneedful on his coming to her after Sarah's flight.  What she hadn't\nasked him then was to state to her where and how he stood for her; she\nhad been resting on Chad's report of their midnight hour together in\nthe Boulevard Malesherbes.  The thing therefore she at present desired\nwas ushered in by this recall of the two occasions on which,\ndisinterested and merciful, she hadn't worried him.  To-night truly she\nWOULD worry him, and this was her appeal to him to let her risk it.  He\nwasn't to mind if she bored him a little: she had behaved, after\nall--hadn't she?--so awfully, awfully well.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\n\"Oh, you're all right, you're all right,\" he almost impatiently\ndeclared; his impatience being moreover not for her pressure, but for\nher scruple.  More and more distinct to him was the tune to which she\nwould have had the matter out with Chad:  more and more vivid for him\nthe idea that she had been nervous as to what he might be able to\n\"stand.\" Yes, it had been a question if he had \"stood\" what the scene\non the river had given him, and, though the young man had doubtless\nopined in favour of his recuperation, her own last word must have been\nthat she should feel easier in seeing for herself.  That was it,\nunmistakeably; she WAS seeing for herself.  What he could stand was\nthus, in these moments, in the balance for Strether, who reflected, as\nhe became fully aware of it, that he must properly brace himself.  He\nwanted fully to appear to stand all he might; and there was a certain\ncommand of the situation for him in this very wish not to look too much\nat sea. She was ready with everything, but so, sufficiently, was he;\nthat is he was at one point the more prepared of the two, inasmuch as,\nfor all her cleverness, she couldn't produce on the spot--and it was\nsurprising--an account of the motive of her note.  He had the advantage\nthat his pronouncing her \"all right\" gave him for an enquiry.  \"May I\nask, delighted as I've been to come, if you've wished to say something\nspecial?\"  He spoke as if she might have seen he had been waiting for\nit--not indeed with discomfort, but with natural interest.  Then he saw\nthat she was a little taken aback, was even surprised herself at the\ndetail she had neglected--the only one ever yet; having somehow assumed\nhe would know, would recognise, would leave some things not to be said.\nShe looked at him, however, an instant as if to convey that if he\nwanted them ALL--!\n\n\"Selfish and vulgar--that's what I must seem to you.  You've done\neverything for me, and here I am as if I were asking for more.  But it\nisn't,\" she went on, \"because I'm afraid--though I AM of course afraid,\nas a woman in my position always is.  I mean it isn't because one lives\nin terror--it isn't because of that one is selfish, for I'm ready to\ngive you my word to-night that I don't care; don't care what still may\nhappen and what I may lose.  I don't ask you to raise your little\nfinger for me again, nor do I wish so much as to mention to you what\nwe've talked of before, either my danger or my safety, or his mother,\nor his sister, or the girl he may marry, or the fortune he may make or\nmiss, or the right or the wrong, of any kind, he may do.  If after the\nhelp one has had from you one can't either take care of one's self or\nsimply hold one's tongue, one must renounce all claim to be an object\nof interest.  It's in the name of what I DO care about that I've tried\nstill to keep hold of you.  How can I be indifferent,\" she asked, \"to\nhow I appear to you?\"  And as he found himself unable immediately to\nsay:  \"Why, if you're going, NEED you, after all? Is it impossible you\nshould stay on--so that one mayn't lose you?\"\n\n\"Impossible I should live with you here instead of going home?\"\n\n\"Not 'with' us, if you object to that, but near enough to us,\nsomewhere, for us to see you--well,\" she beautifully brought out, \"when\nwe feel we MUST.  How shall we not sometimes feel it?  I've wanted to\nsee you often when I couldn't,\" she pursued, \"all these last weeks. How\nshan't I then miss you now, with the sense of your being gone forever?\"\nThen as if the straightness of this appeal, taking him unprepared, had\nvisibly left him wondering:  \"Where IS your 'home' moreover now--what\nhas become of it?  I've made a change in your life, I know I have; I've\nupset everything in your mind as well; in your sense of--what shall I\ncall it?--all the decencies and possibilities. It gives me a kind of\ndetestation--\" She pulled up short.\n\nOh but he wanted to hear.  \"Detestation of what?\"\n\n\"Of everything--of life.\"\n\n\"Ah that's too much,\" he laughed--\"or too little!\"\n\n\"Too little, precisely\"--she was eager.  \"What I hate is myself--when I\nthink that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the lives of\nothers, and that one isn't happy even then.  One does it to cheat one's\nself and to stop one's mouth--but that's only at the best for a little.\nThe wretched self is always there, always making one somehow a fresh\nanxiety.  What it comes to is that it's not, that it's never, a\nhappiness, any happiness at all, to TAKE. The only safe thing is to\ngive.  It's what plays you least false.\" Interesting, touching,\nstrikingly sincere as she let these things come from her, she yet\npuzzled and troubled him--so fine was the quaver of her quietness.  He\nfelt what he had felt before with her, that there was always more\nbehind what she showed, and more and more again behind that.  \"You know\nso, at least,\" she added, \"where you are!\"\n\n\"YOU ought to know it indeed then; for isn't what you've been giving\nexactly what has brought us together this way?  You've been making, as\nI've so fully let you know I've felt,\" Strether said, \"the most\nprecious present I've ever seen made, and if you can't sit down\npeacefully on that performance you ARE, no doubt, born to torment\nyourself.  But you ought,\" he wound up, \"to be easy.\"\n\n\"And not trouble you any more, no doubt--not thrust on you even the\nwonder and the beauty of what I've done; only let you regard our\nbusiness as over, and well over, and see you depart in a peace that\nmatches my own?  No doubt, no doubt, no doubt,\" she nervously\nrepeated--\"all the more that I don't really pretend I believe you\ncouldn't, for yourself, NOT have done what you have.  I don't pretend\nyou feel yourself victimised, for this evidently is the way you live,\nand it's what--we're agreed--is the best way.  Yes, as you say,\" she\ncontinued after a moment, \"I ought to be easy and rest on my work. Well\nthen here am I doing so.  I AM easy.  You'll have it for your last\nimpression.  When is it you say you go?\" she asked with a quick change.\n\nHe took some time to reply--his last impression was more and more so\nmixed a one.  It produced in him a vague disappointment, a drop that\nwas deeper even than the fall of his elation the previous night.  The\ngood of what he had done, if he had done so much, wasn't there to\nenliven him quite to the point that would have been ideal for a grand\ngay finale.  Women were thus endlessly absorbent, and to deal with them\nwas to walk on water.  What was at bottom the matter with her,\nembroider as she might and disclaim as she might--what was at bottom\nthe matter with her was simply Chad himself. It was of Chad she was\nafter all renewedly afraid; the strange strength of her passion was the\nvery strength of her fear; she clung to HIM, Lambert Strether, as to a\nsource of safety she had tested, and, generous graceful truthful as she\nmight try to be, exquisite as she was, she dreaded the term of his\nbeing within reach. With this sharpest perception yet, it was like a\nchill in the air to him, it was almost appalling, that a creature so\nfine could be, by mysterious forces, a creature so exploited.  For at\nthe end of all things they WERE mysterious:  she had but made Chad what\nhe was--so why could she think she had made him infinite? She had made\nhim better, she had made him best, she had made him anything one would;\nbut it came to our friend with supreme queerness that he was none the\nless only Chad.  Strether had the sense that HE, a little, had made him\ntoo; his high appreciation had as it were, consecrated her work The\nwork, however admirable, was nevertheless of the strict human order,\nand in short it was marvellous that the companion of mere earthly joys,\nof comforts, aberrations (however one classed them) within the common\nexperience should be so transcendently prized.  It might have made\nStrether hot or shy, as such secrets of others brought home sometimes\ndo make us; but he was held there by something so hard that it was\nfairly grim.  This was not the discomposure of last night; that had\nquite passed--such discomposures were a detail; the real coercion was\nto see a man ineffably adored.  There it was again--it took women, it\ntook women; if to deal with them was to walk on water what wonder that\nthe water rose?  And it had never surely risen higher than round this\nwoman.  He presently found himself taking a long look from her, and the\nnext thing he knew he had uttered all his thought.  \"You're afraid for\nyour life!\"\n\nIt drew out her long look, and he soon enough saw why.  A spasm came\ninto her face, the tears she had already been unable to hide overflowed\nat first in silence, and then, as the sound suddenly comes from a\nchild, quickened to gasps, to sobs.  She sat and covered her face with\nher hands, giving up all attempt at a manner. \"It's how you see me,\nit's how you see me\"--she caught her breath with it--\"and it's as I AM,\nand as I must take myself, and of course it's no matter.\" Her emotion\nwas at first so incoherent that he could only stand there at a loss,\nstand with his sense of having upset her, though of having done it by\nthe truth.  He had to listen to her in a silence that he made no\nimmediate effort to attenuate, feeling her doubly woeful amid all her\ndim diffused elegance; consenting to it as he had consented to the\nrest, and even conscious of some vague inward irony in the presence of\nsuch a fine free range of bliss and bale.  He couldn't say it was NOT\nno matter; for he was serving her to the end, he now knew,\nanyway--quite as if what he thought of her had nothing to do with it.\nIt was actually moreover as if he didn't think of her at all, as if he\ncould think of nothing but the passion, mature, abysmal, pitiful, she\nrepresented, and the possibilities she betrayed. She was older for him\nto-night, visibly less exempt from the touch of time; but she was as\nmuch as ever the finest and subtlest creature, the happiest apparition,\nit had been given him, in all his years, to meet; and yet he could see\nher there as vulgarly troubled, in very truth, as a maidservant crying\nfor her young man.  The only thing was that she judged herself as the\nmaidservant wouldn't; the weakness of which wisdom too, the dishonour\nof which judgement, seemed but to sink her lower. Her collapse,\nhowever, no doubt, was briefer and she had in a manner recovered\nherself before he intervened.  \"Of course I'm afraid for my life.  But\nthat's nothing.  It isn't that.\"\n\nHe was silent a little longer, as if thinking what it might be.\n\"There's something I have in mind that I can still do.\"\n\nBut she threw off at last, with a sharp sad headshake, drying her eyes,\nwhat he could still do.  \"I don't care for that.  Of course, as I've\nsaid, you're acting, in your wonderful way, for yourself; and what's\nfor yourself is no more my business--though I may reach out unholy\nhands so clumsily to touch it--than if it were something in Timbuctoo.\nIt's only that you don't snub me, as you've had fifty chances to\ndo--it's only your beautiful patience that makes one forget one's\nmanners.  In spite of your patience, all the same,\" she went on, \"you'd\ndo anything rather than be with us here, even if that were possible.\nYou'd do everything for us but be mixed up with us--which is a\nstatement you can easily answer to the advantage of your own manners.\nYou can say 'What's the use of talking of things that at the best are\nimpossible?' What IS of course the use?  It's only my little madness.\nYou'd talk if you were tormented.  And I don't mean now about HIM.  Oh\nfor him--!\" Positively, strangely, bitterly, as it seemed to Strether,\nshe gave \"him,\" for the moment, away.  \"You don't care what I think of\nyou; but I happen to care what you think of me.  And what you MIGHT,\"\nshe added.  \"What you perhaps even did.\"\n\nHe gained time.  \"What I did--?\"\n\n\"Did think before.  Before this.  DIDn't you think--?\"\n\nBut he had already stopped her.  \"I didn't think anything.  I never\nthink a step further than I'm obliged to.\"\n\n\"That's perfectly false, I believe,\" she returned--\"except that you\nmay, no doubt, often pull up when things become TOO ugly; or even, I'll\nsay, to save you a protest, too beautiful.  At any rate, even so far as\nit's true, we've thrust on you appearances that you've had to take in\nand that have therefore made your obligation.  Ugly or beautiful--it\ndoesn't matter what we call them--you were getting on without them, and\nthat's where we're detestable.  We bore you--that's where we are.  And\nwe may well--for what we've cost you.  All you can do NOW is not to\nthink at all.  And I who should have liked to seem to you--well,\nsublime!\"\n\nHe could only after a moment re-echo Miss Barrace.  \"You're wonderful!\"\n\n\"I'm old and abject and hideous\"--she went on as without hearing him.\n\"Abject above all.  Or old above all.  It's when one's old that it's\nworst.  I don't care what becomes of it--let what WILL; there it is.\nIt's a doom--I know it; you can't see it more than I do myself.  Things\nhave to happen as they will.\" With which she came back again to what,\nface to face with him, had so quite broken down.  \"Of course you\nwouldn't, even if possible, and no matter what may happen to you, be\nnear us.  But think of me, think of me--!\" She exhaled it into air.\n\nHe took refuge in repeating something he had already said and that she\nhad made nothing of.  \"There's something I believe I can still do.\" And\nhe put his hand out for good-bye.\n\nShe again made nothing of it; she went on with her insistence. \"That\nwon't help you.  There's nothing to help you.\"\n\n\"Well, it may help YOU,\" he said.\n\nShe shook her head.  \"There's not a grain of certainty in my\nfuture--for the only certainty is that I shall be the loser in the end.\"\n\nShe hadn't taken his hand, but she moved with him to the door. \"That's\ncheerful,\" he laughed, \"for your benefactor!\"\n\n\"What's cheerful for ME,\" she replied, \"is that we might, you and I,\nhave been friends.  That's it--that's it.  You see how, as I say, I\nwant everything.  I've wanted you too.\"\n\n\"Ah but you've HAD me!\" he declared, at the door, with an emphasis that\nmade an end.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nHis purpose had been to see Chad the next day, and he had prefigured\nseeing him by an early call; having in general never stood on ceremony\nin respect to visits at the Boulevard Malesherbes.  It had been more\noften natural for him to go there than for Chad to come to the small\nhotel, the attractions of which were scant; yet it nevertheless, just\nnow, at the eleventh hour, did suggest itself to Strether to begin by\ngiving the young man a chance.  It struck him that, in the inevitable\ncourse, Chad would be \"round,\" as Waymarsh used to say--Waymarsh who\nalready, somehow, seemed long ago.  He hadn't come the day before,\nbecause it had been arranged between them that Madame de Vionnet should\nsee their friend first; but now that this passage had taken place he\nwould present himself, and their friend wouldn't have long to wait.\nStrether assumed, he became aware, on this reasoning, that the\ninteresting parties to the arrangement would have met betimes, and that\nthe more interesting of the two--as she was after all--would have\ncommunicated to the other the issue of her appeal.  Chad would know\nwithout delay that his mother's messenger had been with her, and,\nthough it was perhaps not quite easy to see how she could qualify what\nhad occurred, he would at least have been sufficiently advised to feel\nhe could go on.  The day, however, brought, early or late, no word from\nhim, and Strether felt, as a result of this, that a change had\npractically come over their intercourse.  It was perhaps a premature\njudgement; or it only meant perhaps--how could he tell?--that the\nwonderful pair he protected had taken up again together the excursion\nhe had accidentally checked.  They might have gone back to the country,\nand gone back but with a long breath drawn; that indeed would best mark\nChad's sense that reprobation hadn't rewarded Madame de Vionnet's\nrequest for an interview.  At the end of the twenty-four hours, at the\nend of the forty-eight, there was still no overture; so that Strether\nfilled up the time, as he had so often filled it before, by going to\nsee Miss Gostrey.\n\nHe proposed amusements to her; he felt expert now in proposing\namusements; and he had thus, for several days, an odd sense of leading\nher about Paris, of driving her in the Bois, of showing her the penny\nsteamboats--those from which the breeze of the Seine was to be best\nenjoyed--that might have belonged to a kindly uncle doing the honours\nof the capital to an Intelligent niece from the country.  He found\nmeans even to take her to shops she didn't know, or that she pretended\nshe didn't; while she, on her side, was, like the country maiden, all\npassive modest and grateful--going in fact so far as to emulate\nrusticity in occasional fatigues and bewilderments.  Strether described\nthese vague proceedings to himself, described them even to her, as a\nhappy interlude; the sign of which was that the companions said for the\ntime no further word about the matter they had talked of to satiety. He\nproclaimed satiety at the outset, and she quickly took the hint; as\ndocile both in this and in everything else as the intelligent obedient\nniece.  He told her as yet nothing of his late adventure--for as an\nadventure it now ranked with him; he pushed the whole business\ntemporarily aside and found his interest in the fact of her beautiful\nassent.  She left questions unasked--she who for so long had been all\nquestions; she gave herself up to him with an understanding of which\nmere mute gentleness might have seemed the sufficient expression.  She\nknew his sense of his situation had taken still another step--of that\nhe was quite aware; but she conveyed that, whatever had thus happened\nfor him, it was thrown into the shade by what was happening for\nherself.  This--though it mightn't to a detached spirit have seemed\nmuch--was the major interest, and she met it with a new directness of\nresponse, measuring it from hour to hour with her grave hush of\nacceptance. Touched as he had so often been by her before, he was, for\nhis part too, touched afresh; all the more that though he could be duly\naware of the principle of his own mood he couldn't be equally so of the\nprinciple of hers.  He knew, that is, in a manner--knew roughly and\nresignedly--what he himself was hatching; whereas he had to take the\nchance of what he called to himself Maria's calculations.  It was all\nhe needed that she liked him enough for what they were doing, and even\nshould they do a good deal more would still like him enough for that;\nthe essential freshness of a relation so simple was a cool bath to the\nsoreness produced by other relations.  These others appeared to him now\nhorribly complex; they bristled with fine points, points all\nunimaginable beforehand, points that pricked and drew blood; a fact\nthat gave to an hour with his present friend on a bateau-mouche, or in\nthe afternoon shade of the Champs Elysees, something of the innocent\npleasure of handling rounded ivory.  His relation with Chad\npersonally--from the moment he had got his point of view--had been of\nthe simplest; yet this also struck him as bristling, after a third and\na fourth blank day had passed.  It was as if at last however his care\nfor such indications had dropped; there came a fifth blank day and he\nceased to enquire or to heed.\n\nThey now took on to his fancy, Miss Gostrey and he, the image of the\nBabes in the Wood; they could trust the merciful elements to let them\ncontinue at peace.  He had been great already, as he knew, at\npostponements; but he had only to get afresh into the rhythm of one to\nfeel its fine attraction.  It amused him to say to himself that he\nmight for all the world have been going to die--die resignedly; the\nscene was filled for him with so deep a death-bed hush, so melancholy a\ncharm.  That meant the postponement of everything else--which made so\nfor the quiet lapse of life; and the postponement in especial of the\nreckoning to come--unless indeed the reckoning to come were to be one\nand the same thing with extinction.  It faced him, the reckoning, over\nthe shoulder of much interposing experience--which also faced him; and\none would float to it doubtless duly through these caverns of Kubla\nKhan.  It was really behind everything; it hadn't merged in what he had\ndone; his final appreciation of what he had done--his appreciation on\nthe spot--would provide it with its main sharpness.  The spot so\nfocussed was of course Woollett, and he was to see, at the best, what\nWoollett would be with everything there changed for him.  Wouldn't THAT\nrevelation practically amount to the wind-up of his career?  Well, the\nsummer's end would show; his suspense had meanwhile exactly the\nsweetness of vain delay; and he had with it, we should mention, other\npastimes than Maria's company--plenty of separate musings in which his\nluxury failed him but at one point.  He was well in port, the outer sea\nbehind him, and it was only a matter of getting ashore.  There was a\nquestion that came and went for him, however, as he rested against the\nside of his ship, and it was a little to get rid of the obsession that\nhe prolonged his hours with Miss Gostrey.  It was a question about\nhimself, but it could only be settled by seeing Chad again; it was\nindeed his principal reason for wanting to see Chad. After that it\nwouldn't signify--it was a ghost that certain words would easily lay to\nrest.  Only the young man must be there to take the words.  Once they\nwere taken he wouldn't have a question left; none, that is, in\nconnexion with this particular affair.  It wouldn't then matter even to\nhimself that he might now have been guilty of speaking BECAUSE of what\nhe had forfeited.  That was the refinement of his supreme scruple--he\nwished so to leave what he had forfeited out of account.  He wished not\nto do anything because he had missed something else, because he was\nsore or sorry or impoverished, because he was maltreated or desperate;\nhe wished to do everything because he was lucid and quiet, just the\nsame for himself on all essential points as he had ever been.  Thus it\nwas that while he virtually hung about for Chad he kept mutely putting\nit:  \"You've been chucked, old boy; but what has that to do with it?\"\nIt would have sickened him to feel vindictive.\n\nThese tints of feeling indeed were doubtless but the iridescence of his\nidleness, and they were presently lost in a new light from Maria.  She\nhad a fresh fact for him before the week was out, and she practically\nmet him with it on his appearing one night.  He hadn't on this day seen\nher, but had planned presenting himself in due course to ask her to\ndine with him somewhere out of doors, on one of the terraces, in one of\nthe gardens, of which the Paris of summer was profuse.  It had then\ncome on to rain, so that, disconcerted, he changed his mind; dining\nalone at home, a little stuffily and stupidly, and waiting on her\nafterwards to make up his loss.  He was sure within a minute that\nsomething had happened; it was so in the air of the rich little room\nthat he had scarcely to name his thought.  Softly lighted, the whole\ncolour of the place, with its vague values, was in cool fusion--an\neffect that made the visitor stand for a little agaze.  It was as if in\ndoing so now he had felt a recent presence--his recognition of the\npassage of which his hostess in turn divined.  She had scarcely to say\nit--\"Yes, she has been here, and this time I received her.\" It wasn't\ntill a minute later that she added:  \"There being, as I understand you,\nno reason NOW--!\"\n\n\"None for your refusing?\"\n\n\"No--if you've done what you've had to do.\"\n\n\"I've certainly so far done it,\" Strether said, \"as that you needn't\nfear the effect, or the appearance of coming between us.  There's\nnothing between us now but what we ourselves have put there, and not an\ninch of room for anything else whatever.  Therefore you're only\nbeautifully WITH us as always--though doubtless now, if she has talked\nto you, rather more with us than less.  Of course if she came,\" he\nadded, \"it was to talk to you.\"\n\n\"It was to talk to me,\" Maria returned; on which he was further sure\nthat she was practically in possession of what he himself hadn't yet\ntold her.  He was even sure she was in possession of things he himself\ncouldn't have told; for the consciousness of them was now all in her\nface and accompanied there with a shade of sadness that marked in her\nthe close of all uncertainties.  It came out for him more than ever yet\nthat she had had from the first a knowledge she believed him not to\nhave had, a knowledge the sharp acquisition of which might be destined\nto make a difference for him.  The difference for him might not\ninconceivably be an arrest of his independence and a change in his\nattitude--in other words a revulsion in favour of the principles of\nWoollett.  She had really prefigured the possibility of a shock that\nwould send him swinging back to Mrs. Newsome.  He hadn't, it was true,\nweek after week, shown signs of receiving it, but the possibility had\nbeen none the less in the air.  What Maria accordingly had had now to\ntake in was that the shock had descended and that he hadn't, all the\nsame, swung back.  He had grown clear, in a flash, on a point long\nsince settled for herself; but no reapproximation to Mrs. Newsome had\noccurred in consequence.  Madame de Vionnet had by her visit held up\nthe torch to these truths, and what now lingered in poor Maria's face\nwas the somewhat smoky light of the scene between them. If the light\nhowever wasn't, as we have hinted, the glow of joy, the reasons for\nthis also were perhaps discernible to Strether even through the blur\ncast over them by his natural modesty.  She had held herself for months\nwith a firm hand; she hadn't interfered on any chance--and chances were\nspecious enough--that she might interfere to her profit.  She had\nturned her back on the dream that Mrs. Newsome's rupture, their\nfriend's forfeiture--the engagement the relation itself, broken beyond\nall mending--might furnish forth her advantage; and, to stay her hand\nfrom promoting these things, she had on private, difficult, but rigid,\nlines, played strictly fair.  She couldn't therefore but feel that,\nthough, as the end of all, the facts in question had been stoutly\nconfirmed, her ground for personal, for what might have been called\ninterested, elation remained rather vague.  Strether might easily have\nmade out that she had been asking herself, in the hours she had just\nsat through, if there were still for her, or were only not, a fair\nshade of uncertainty.  Let us hasten to add, however, that what he at\nfirst made out on this occasion he also at first kept to himself.  He\nonly asked what in particular Madame de Vionnet had come for, and as to\nthis his companion was ready.\n\n\"She wants tidings of Mr. Newsome, whom she appears not to have seen\nfor some days.\"\n\n\"Then she hasn't been away with him again?\"\n\n\"She seemed to think,\" Maria answered, \"that he might have gone away\nwith YOU.\"\n\n\"And did you tell her I know nothing of him?\"\n\nShe had her indulgent headshake.  \"I've known nothing of what you know.\nI could only tell her I'd ask you.\"\n\n\"Then I've not seen him for a week--and of course I've wondered.\" His\nwonderment showed at this moment as sharper, but he presently went on.\n\"Still, I dare say I can put my hand on him.  Did she strike you,\" he\nasked, \"as anxious?\"\n\n\"She's always anxious.\"\n\n\"After all I've done for her?\"  And he had one of the last flickers of\nhis occasional mild mirth.  \"To think that was just what I came out to\nprevent!\"\n\nShe took it up but to reply.  \"You don't regard him then as safe?\"\n\n\"I was just going to ask you how in that respect you regard Madame de\nVionnet.\"\n\nShe looked at him a little.  \"What woman was EVER safe?  She told me,\"\nshe added--and it was as if at the touch of the connexion--\"of your\nextraordinary meeting in the country.  After that a quoi se fier?\"\n\n\"It was, as an accident, in all the possible or impossible chapter,\"\nStrether conceded, \"amazing enough.  But still, but still--!\"\n\n\"But still she didn't mind?\"\n\n\"She doesn't mind anything.\"\n\n\"Well, then, as you don't either, we may all sink to rest!\"\n\nHe appeared to agree with her, but he had his reservation. \"I do mind\nChad's disappearance.\"\n\n\"Oh you'll get him back.  But now you know,\" she said, \"why I went to\nMentone.\" He had sufficiently let her see that he had by this time\ngathered things together, but there was nature in her wish to make them\nclearer still.  \"I didn't want you to put it to me.\"\n\n\"To put it to you--?\"\n\n\"The question of what you were at last--a week ago--to see for\nyourself.  I didn't want to have to lie for her.  I felt that to be too\nmuch for me.  A man of course is always expected to do it--to do it, I\nmean, for a woman; but not a woman for another woman; unless perhaps on\nthe tit-for-tat principle, as an indirect way of protecting herself.  I\ndon't need protection, so that I was free to 'funk' you--simply to\ndodge your test.  The responsibility was too much for me.  I gained\ntime, and when I came back the need of a test had blown over.\"\n\nStrether thought of it serenely.  \"Yes; when you came back little\nBilham had shown me what's expected of a gentleman.  Little Bilham had\nlied like one.\"\n\n\"And like what you believed him?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Strether, \"it was but a technical lie--he classed the\nattachment as virtuous.  That was a view for which there was much to be\nsaid--and the virtue came out for me hugely There was of course a great\ndeal of it.  I got it full in the face, and I haven't, you see, done\nwith it yet.\"\n\n\"What I see, what I saw,\" Maria returned, \"is that you dressed up even\nthe virtue.  You were wonderful--you were beautiful, as I've had the\nhonour of telling you before; but, if you wish really to know,\" she\nsadly confessed, \"I never quite knew WHERE you were. There were\nmoments,\" she explained, \"when you struck me as grandly cynical; there\nwere others when you struck me as grandly vague.\"\n\nHer friend considered.  \"I had phases.  I had flights.\"\n\n\"Yes, but things must have a basis.\"\n\n\"A basis seemed to me just what her beauty supplied.\"\n\n\"Her beauty of person?\"\n\n\"Well, her beauty of everything.  The impression she makes.  She has\nsuch variety and yet such harmony.\"\n\nShe considered him with one of her deep returns of indulgence--returns\nout of all proportion to the irritations they flooded over. \"You're\ncomplete.\"\n\n\"You're always too personal,\" he good-humouredly said; \"but that's\nprecisely how I wondered and wandered.\"\n\n\"If you mean,\" she went on, \"that she was from the first for you the\nmost charming woman in the world, nothing's more simple.  Only that was\nan odd foundation.\"\n\n\"For what I reared on it?\"\n\n\"For what you didn't!\"\n\n\"Well, it was all not a fixed quantity.  And it had for me--it has\nstill--such elements of strangeness.  Her greater age than his, her\ndifferent world, traditions, association; her other opportunities,\nliabilities, standards.\"\n\nHis friend listened with respect to his enumeration of these\ndisparities; then she disposed of them at a stroke.  \"Those things are\nnothing when a woman's hit.  It's very awful.  She was hit.\"\n\nStrether, on his side, did justice to that plea.  \"Oh of course I saw\nshe was hit.  That she was hit was what we were busy with; that she was\nhit was our great affair.  But somehow I couldn't think of her as down\nin the dust.  And as put there by OUR little Chad!\"\n\n\"Yet wasn't 'your' little Chad just your miracle?\"\n\nStrether admitted it.  \"Of course I moved among miracles.  It was all\nphantasmagoric.  But the great fact was that so much of it was none of\nmy business--as I saw my business.  It isn't even now.\"\n\nHis companion turned away on this, and it might well have been yet\nagain with the sharpness of a fear of how little his philosophy could\nbring her personally.  \"I wish SHE could hear you!\"\n\n\"Mrs. Newsome?\"\n\n\"No--not Mrs. Newsome; since I understand you that it doesn't matter\nnow what Mrs. Newsome hears.  Hasn't she heard everything?\"\n\n\"Practically--yes.\" He had thought a moment, but he went on.  \"You wish\nMadame de Vionnet could hear me?\"\n\n\"Madame de Vionnet.\" She had come back to him.  \"She thinks just the\ncontrary of what you say.  That you distinctly judge her.\"\n\nHe turned over the scene as the two women thus placed together for him\nseemed to give it.  \"She might have known--!\"\n\n\"Might have known you don't?\" Miss Gostrey asked as he let it drop.\n\"She was sure of it at first,\" she pursued as he said nothing; \"she\ntook it for granted, at least, as any woman in her position would. But\nafter that she changed her mind; she believed you believed--\"\n\n\"Well?\"--he was curious.\n\n\"Why in her sublimity.  And that belief had remained with her, I make\nout, till the accident of the other day opened your eyes.  For that it\ndid,\" said Maria, \"open them--\"\n\n\"She can't help\"--he had taken it up--\"being aware?  No,\" he mused; \"I\nsuppose she thinks of that even yet.\"\n\n\"Then they WERE closed?  There you are!  However, if you see her as the\nmost charming woman in the world it comes to the same thing. And if\nyou'd like me to tell her that you do still so see her--!\" Miss\nGostrey, in short, offered herself for service to the end.\n\nIt was an offer he could temporarily entertain; but he decided. \"She\nknows perfectly how I see her.\"\n\n\"Not favourably enough, she mentioned to me, to wish ever to see her\nagain.  She told me you had taken a final leave of her.  She says\nyou've done with her.\"\n\n\"So I have.\"\n\nMaria had a pause; then she spoke as if for conscience.  \"She wouldn't\nhave done with YOU.  She feels she has lost you--yet that she might\nhave been better for you.\"\n\n\"Oh she has been quite good enough!\" Strether laughed.\n\n\"She thinks you and she might at any rate have been friends.\"\n\n\"We might certainly.  That's just\"--he continued to laugh--\"why I'm\ngoing.\"\n\nIt was as if Maria could feel with this then at last that she had done\nher best for each.  But she had still an idea.  \"Shall I tell her that?\"\n\n\"No.  Tell her nothing.\"\n\n\"Very well then.\" To which in the next breath Miss Gostrey added: \"Poor\ndear thing!\"\n\nHer friend wondered; then with raised eyebrows:  \"Me?\"\n\n\"Oh no.  Marie de Vionnet.\"\n\nHe accepted the correction, but he wondered still.  \"Are you so sorry\nfor her as that?\"\n\nIt made her think a moment--made her even speak with a smile.  But she\ndidn't really retract.  \"I'm sorry for us all!\"\n\n\n\nIV\n\nHe was to delay no longer to re-establish communication with Chad, and\nwe have just seen that he had spoken to Miss Gostrey of this intention\non hearing from her of the young man's absence.  It was not moreover\nonly the assurance so given that prompted him; it was the need of\ncausing his conduct to square with another profession still--the motive\nhe had described to her as his sharpest for now getting away.  If he\nwas to get away because of some of the relations involved in staying,\nthe cold attitude toward them might look pedantic in the light of\nlingering on.  He must do both things; he must see Chad, but he must\ngo.  The more he thought of the former of these duties the more he felt\nhimself make a subject of insistence of the latter.  They were alike\nintensely present to him as he sat in front of a quiet little cafe into\nwhich he had dropped on quitting Maria's entresol.  The rain that had\nspoiled his evening with her was over; for it was still to him as if\nhis evening HAD been spoiled--though it mightn't have been wholly the\nrain.  It was late when he left the cafe, yet not too late; he couldn't\nin any case go straight to bed, and he would walk round by the\nBoulevard Malesherbes--rather far round--on his way home. Present\nenough always was the small circumstance that had originally pressed\nfor him the spring of so big a difference--the accident of little\nBilham's appearance on the balcony of the mystic troisieme at the\nmoment of his first visit, and the effect of it on his sense of what\nwas then before him.  He recalled his watch, his wait, and the\nrecognition that had proceeded from the young stranger, that had played\nfrankly into the air and had presently brought him up--things smoothing\nthe way for his first straight step.  He had since had occasion, a few\ntimes, to pass the house without going in; but he had never passed it\nwithout again feeling how it had then spoken to him.  He stopped short\nto-night on coming to sight of it:  it was as if his last day were\noddly copying his first.  The windows of Chad's apartment were open to\nthe balcony--a pair of them lighted; and a figure that had come out and\ntaken up little Bilham's attitude, a figure whose cigarette-spark he\ncould see leaned on the rail and looked down at him.  It denoted\nhowever no reappearance of his younger friend; it quickly defined\nitself in the tempered darkness as Chad's more solid shape; so that\nChad's was the attention that after he had stepped forward into the\nstreet and signalled, he easily engaged; Chad's was the voice that,\nsounding into the night with promptness and seemingly with joy, greeted\nhim and called him up.\n\nThat the young man had been visible there just in this position\nexpressed somehow for Strether that, as Maria Gostrey had reported, he\nhad been absent and silent; and our friend drew breath on each\nlanding--the lift, at that hour, having ceased to work--before the\nimplications of the fact.  He had been for a week intensely away, away\nto a distance and alone; but he was more back than ever, and the\nattitude in which Strether had surprised him was something more than a\nreturn--it was clearly a conscious surrender.  He had arrived but an\nhour before, from London, from Lucerne, from Homburg, from no matter\nwhere--though the visitor's fancy, on the staircase, liked to fill it\nout; and after a bath, a talk with Baptiste and a supper of light cold\nclever French things, which one could see the remains of there in the\ncircle of the lamp, pretty and ultra-Parisian, he had come into the air\nagain for a smoke, was occupied at the moment of Strether's approach in\nwhat might have been called taking up his life afresh.  His life, his\nlife!--Strether paused anew, on the last flight, at this final rather\nbreathless sense of what Chad's life was doing with Chad's mother's\nemissary.  It was dragging him, at strange hours, up the staircases of\nthe rich; it was keeping him out of bed at the end of long hot days; it\nwas transforming beyond recognition the simple, subtle, conveniently\nuniform thing that had anciently passed with him for a life of his own.\nWhy should it concern him that Chad was to be fortified in the pleasant\npractice of smoking on balconies, of supping on salads, of feeling his\nspecial conditions agreeably reaffirm themselves, of finding\nreassurance in comparisons and contrasts?  There was no answer to such\na question but that he was still practically committed--he had perhaps\nnever yet so much known it. It made him feel old, and he would buy his\nrailway-ticket--feeling, no doubt, older--the next day; but he had\nmeanwhile come up four flights, counting the entresol, at midnight and\nwithout a lift, for Chad's life.  The young man, hearing him by this\ntime, and with Baptiste sent to rest, was already at the door; so that\nStrether had before him in full visibility the cause in which he was\nlabouring and even, with the troisieme fairly gained, panting a little.\n\nChad offered him, as always, a welcome in which the cordial and the\nformal--so far as the formal was the respectful--handsomely met; and\nafter he had expressed a hope that he would let him put him up for the\nnight Strether was in full possession of the key, as it might have been\ncalled, to what had lately happened.  If he had just thought of himself\nas old Chad was at sight of him thinking of him as older:  he wanted to\nput him up for the night just because he was ancient and weary.  It\ncould never be said the tenant of these quarters wasn't nice to him; a\ntenant who, if he might indeed now keep him, was probably prepared to\nwork it all still more thoroughly.  Our friend had in fact the\nimpression that with the minimum of encouragement Chad would propose to\nkeep him indefinitely; an impression in the lap of which one of his own\npossibilities seemed to sit.  Madame de Vionnet had wished him to\nstay--so why didn't that happily fit?  He could enshrine himself for\nthe rest of his days in his young host's chambre d'ami and draw out\nthese days at his young host's expense:  there could scarce be greater\nlogical expression of the countenance he had been moved to give.  There\nwas literally a minute--it was strange enough--during which he grasped\nthe idea that as he WAS acting, as he could only act, he was\ninconsistent.  The sign that the inward forces he had obeyed really\nhung together would be that--in default always of another career--he\nshould promote the good cause by mounting guard on it.  These things,\nduring his first minutes, came and went; but they were after all\npractically disposed of as soon as he had mentioned his errand.  He had\ncome to say good-bye--yet that was only a part; so that from the moment\nChad accepted his farewell the question of a more ideal affirmation\ngave way to something else. He proceeded with the rest of his business.\n\"You'll be a brute, you know--you'll be guilty of the last infamy--if\nyou ever forsake her.\"\n\nThat, uttered there at the solemn hour, uttered in the place that was\nfull of her influence, was the rest of his business; and when once he\nhad heard himself say it he felt that his message had never before been\nspoken.  It placed his present call immediately on solid ground, and\nthe effect of it was to enable him quite to play with what we have\ncalled the key.  Chad showed no shade of embarrassment, but had none\nthe less been troubled for him after their meeting in the country; had\nhad fears and doubts on the subject of his comfort.  He was disturbed,\nas it were, only FOR him, and had positively gone away to ease him off,\nto let him down--if it wasn't indeed rather to screw him up--the more\ngently. Seeing him now fairly jaded he had come, with characteristic\ngood humour, all the way to meet him, and what Strether thereupon\nsupremely made out was that he would abound for him to the end in\nconscientious assurances.  This was what was between them while the\nvisitor remained; so far from having to go over old ground he found his\nentertainer keen to agree to everything.  It couldn't be put too\nstrongly for him that he'd be a brute.  \"Oh rather!--if I should do\nanything of THAT sort.  I hope you believe I really feel it.\"\n\n\"I want it,\" said Strether, \"to be my last word of all to you. I can't\nsay more, you know; and I don't see how I can do more, in every way,\nthan I've done.\"\n\nChad took this, almost artlessly, as a direct allusion.  \"You've seen\nher?\"\n\n\"Oh yes--to say good-bye.  And if I had doubted the truth of what I\ntell you--\"\n\n\"She'd have cleared up your doubt?\"  Chad understood--\"rather\"--again!\nIt even kept him briefly silent.  But he made that up. \"She must have\nbeen wonderful.\"\n\n\"She WAS,\" Strether candidly admitted--all of which practically told as\na reference to the conditions created by the accident of the previous\nweek.\n\nThey appeared for a little to be looking back at it; and that came out\nstill more in what Chad next said.  \"I don't know what you've really\nthought, all along; I never did know--for anything, with you, seemed to\nbe possible.  But of course--of course--\"  Without confusion, quite\nwith nothing but indulgence, he broke down, he pulled up.  \"After all,\nyou understand.  I spoke to you originally only as I HAD to speak.\nThere's only one way--isn't there?--about such things.  However,\" he\nsmiled with a final philosophy, \"I see it's all right.\"\n\nStrether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts.  What was\nit that made him at present, late at night and after journeys, so\nrenewedly, so substantially young?  Strether saw in a moment what it\nwas--it was that he was younger again than Madame de Vionnet. He\nhimself said immediately none of the things that he was thinking; he\nsaid something quite different.  \"You HAVE really been to a distance?\"\n\n\"I've been to England.\" Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, but gave no\nfurther account of it than to say:  \"One must sometimes get off.\"\n\nStrether wanted no more facts--he only wanted to justify, as it were,\nhis question.  \"Of course you do as you're free to do.  But I hope,\nthis time, that you didn't go for ME.\"\n\n\"For very shame at bothering you really too much?  My dear man,\" Chad\nlaughed, \"what WOULDn't I do for you?\"\n\nStrether's easy answer for this was that it was a disposition he had\nexactly come to profit by.  \"Even at the risk of being in your way I've\nwaited on, you know, for a definite reason.\"\n\nChad took it in.  \"Oh yes--for us to make if possible a still better\nimpression.\" And he stood there happily exhaling his full general\nconsciousness.  \"I'm delighted to gather that you feel we've made it.\"\n\nThere was a pleasant irony in the words, which his guest, preoccupied\nand keeping to the point, didn't take up.  \"If I had my sense of\nwanting the rest of the time--the time of their being still on this\nside,\" he continued to explain--\"I know now why I wanted it.\"\n\nHe was as grave, as distinct, as a demonstrator before a blackboard,\nand Chad continued to face him like an intelligent pupil.  \"You wanted\nto have been put through the whole thing.\"\n\nStrether again, for a moment, said nothing; he turned his eyes away,\nand they lost themselves, through the open window, in the dusky outer\nair.  \"I shall learn from the Bank here where they're now having their\nletters, and my last word, which I shall write in the morning and which\nthey're expecting as my ultimatum, will so immediately reach them.\" The\nlight of his plural pronoun was sufficiently reflected in his\ncompanion's face as he again met it; and he completed his\ndemonstration.  He pursued indeed as if for himself.  \"Of course I've\nfirst to justify what I shall do.\"\n\n\"You're justifying it beautifully!\" Chad declared.\n\n\"It's not a question of advising you not to go,\" Strether said, \"but of\nabsolutely preventing you, if possible, from so much as thinking of it.\nLet me accordingly appeal to you by all you hold sacred.\"\n\nChad showed a surprise.  \"What makes you think me capable--?\"\n\n\"You'd not only be, as I say, a brute; you'd be,\" his companion went on\nin the same way, \"a criminal of the deepest dye.\"\n\nChad gave a sharper look, as if to gauge a possible suspicion. \"I don't\nknow what should make you think I'm tired of her.\"\n\nStrether didn't quite know either, and such impressions, for the\nimaginative mind, were always too fine, too floating, to produce on the\nspot their warrant.  There was none the less for him, in the very\nmanner of his host's allusion to satiety as a thinkable motive, a\nslight breath of the ominous.  \"I feel how much more she can do for\nyou.  She hasn't done it all yet.  Stay with her at least till she has.\"\n\n\"And leave her THEN?\"\n\nChad had kept smiling, but its effect in Strether was a shade of\ndryness.  \"Don't leave her BEFORE.  When you've got all that can be\ngot--I don't say,\" he added a trifle grimly.  \"That will be the proper\ntime.  But as, for you, from such a woman, there will always be\nsomething to be got, my remark's not a wrong to her.\" Chad let him go\non, showing every decent deference, showing perhaps also a candid\ncuriosity for this sharper accent.  \"I remember you, you know, as you\nwere.\"\n\n\"An awful ass, wasn't I?\"\n\nThe response was as prompt as if he had pressed a spring; it had a\nready abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment to\nmeet it.  \"You certainly then wouldn't have seemed worth all you've let\nme in for.  You've defined yourself better.  Your value has quintupled.\"\n\n\"Well then, wouldn't that be enough--?\"\n\nChad had risked it jocosely, but Strether remained blank.  \"Enough?\"\n\n\"If one SHOULD wish to live on one's accumulations?\"  After which,\nhowever, as his friend appeared cold to the joke, the young man as\neasily dropped it.  \"Of course I really never forget, night or day,\nwhat I owe her.  I owe her everything.  I give you my word of honour,\"\nhe frankly rang out, \"that I'm not a bit tired of her.\" Strether at\nthis only gave him a stare:  the way youth could express itself was\nagain and again a wonder.  He meant no harm, though he might after all\nbe capable of much; yet he spoke of being \"tired\" of her almost as he\nmight have spoken of being tired of roast mutton for dinner.  \"She has\nnever for a moment yet bored me--never been wanting, as the cleverest\nwomen sometimes are, in tact. She has never talked about her tact--as\neven they too sometimes talk; but she has always had it.  She has never\nhad it more\"--he handsomely made the point--\"than just lately.\" And he\nscrupulously went further. \"She has never been anything I could call a\nburden.\"\n\nStrether for a moment said nothing; then he spoke gravely, with his\nshade of dryness deepened.  \"Oh if you didn't do her justice--!\"\n\n\"I SHOULD be a beast, eh?\"\n\nStrether devoted no time to saying what he would be; THAT, visibly,\nwould take them far.  If there was nothing for it but to repeat,\nhowever, repetition was no mistake.  \"You owe her everything--very much\nmore than she can ever owe you.  You've in other words duties to her,\nof the most positive sort; and I don't see what other duties--as the\nothers are presented to you--can be held to go before them.\"\n\nChad looked at him with a smile.  \"And you know of course about the\nothers, eh?--since it's you yourself who have done the presenting.\"\n\n\"Much of it--yes--and to the best of my ability.  But not all--from the\nmoment your sister took my place.\"\n\n\"She didn't,\" Chad returned.  \"Sally took a place, certainly; but it\nwas never, I saw from the first moment, to be yours.  No one--with\nus--will ever take yours.  It wouldn't be possible.\"\n\n\"Ah of course,\" sighed Strether, \"I knew it.  I believe you're right.\nNo one in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously solemn.  There\nI am,\" he added with another sigh, as if weary enough, on occasion, of\nthis truth.  \"I was made so.\"\n\nChad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might\nfor this purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured\nthe fact.  \"YOU have never needed any one to make you better.  There\nhas never been any one good enough. They couldn't,\" the young man\ndeclared.\n\nHis friend hesitated.  \"I beg your pardon.  They HAVE.\"\n\nChad showed, not without amusement, his doubt.  \"Who then?\"\n\nStrether--though a little dimly--smiled at him.  \"Women--too.\"\n\n\"'Two'?\"--Chad stared and laughed.  \"Oh I don't believe, for such work,\nin any more than one!  So you're proving too much.  And what IS\nbeastly, at all events,\" he added, \"is losing you.\"\n\nStrether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he\npaused.  \"Are you afraid?\"\n\n\"Afraid--?\"\n\n\"Of doing wrong.  I mean away from my eye.\" Before Chad could speak,\nhowever, he had taken himself up.  \"I AM, certainly,\" he laughed,\n\"prodigious.\"\n\n\"Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid--!\"  This might have been, on\nChad's part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely extravagant;\nbut it was full, plainly enough, of the intention of comfort, it\ncarried with it a protest against doubt and a promise, positively, of\nperformance.  Picking up a hat in the vestibule he came out with his\nfriend, came downstairs, took his arm, affectionately, as to help and\nguide him, treating him if not exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a\nnoble eccentric who appealed to tenderness, and keeping on with him,\nwhile they walked, to the next corner and the next.  \"You needn't tell\nme, you needn't tell me!\"--this again as they proceeded, he wished to\nmake Strether feel.  What he needn't tell him was now at last, in the\ngeniality of separation, anything at all it concerned him to know.  He\nknew, up to the hilt--that really came over Chad; he understood, felt,\nrecorded his vow; and they lingered on it as they had lingered in their\nwalk to Strether's hotel the night of their first meeting. The latter\ntook, at this hour, all he could get; he had given all he had had to\ngive; he was as depleted as if he had spent his last sou.  But there\nwas just one thing for which, before they broke off, Chad seemed\ndisposed slightly to bargain.  His companion needn't, as he said, tell\nhim, but he might himself mention that he had been getting some news of\nthe art of advertisement.  He came out quite suddenly with this\nannouncement while Strether wondered if his revived interest were what\nhad taken him, with strange inconsequence, over to London.  He appeared\nat all events to have been looking into the question and had\nencountered a revelation.  Advertising scientifically worked presented\nitself thus as the great new force.  \"It really does the thing, you\nknow.\"\n\nThey were face to face under the street-lamp as they had been the first\nnight, and Strether, no doubt, looked blank.  \"Affects, you mean, the\nsale of the object advertised?\"\n\n\"Yes--but affects it extraordinarily; really beyond what one had\nsupposed.  I mean of course when it's done as one makes out that in our\nroaring age, it CAN be done.  I've been finding out a little, though it\ndoubtless doesn't amount to much more than what you originally, so\nawfully vividly--and all, very nearly, that first night--put before me.\nIt's an art like another, and infinite like all the arts.\" He went on\nas if for the joke of it--almost as if his friend's face amused him.\n\"In the hands, naturally, of a master. The right man must take hold.\nWith the right man to work it c'est un monde.\"\n\nStrether had watched him quite as if, there on the pavement without a\npretext, he had begun to dance a fancy step.  \"Is what you're thinking\nof that you yourself, in the case you have in mind, would be the right\nman?\"\n\nChad had thrown back his light coat and thrust each of his thumbs into\nan armhole of his waistcoat; in which position his fingers played up\nand down.  \"Why, what is he but what you yourself, as I say, took me\nfor when you first came out?\"\n\nStrether felt a little faint, but he coerced his attention.  \"Oh yes,\nand there's no doubt that, with your natural parts, you'd have much in\ncommon with him.  Advertising is clearly at this time of day the secret\nof trade.  It's quite possible it will be open to you--giving the whole\nof your mind to it--to make the whole place hum with you.  Your\nmother's appeal is to the whole of your mind, and that's exactly the\nstrength of her case.\"\n\nChad's fingers continued to twiddle, but he had something of a drop.\n\"Ah we've been through my mother's case!\"\n\n\"So I thought.  Why then do you speak of the matter?\"\n\n\"Only because it was part of our original discussion.  To wind up where\nwe began, my interest's purely platonic.  There at any rate the fact\nis--the fact of the possible.  I mean the money in it.\"\n\n\"Oh damn the money in it!\" said Strether.  And then as the young man's\nfixed smile seemed to shine out more strange:  \"Shall you give your\nfriend up for the money in it?\"\n\nChad preserved his handsome grimace as well as the rest of his\nattitude.  \"You're not altogether--in your so great 'solemnity'--kind.\nHaven't I been drinking you in--showing you all I feel you're worth to\nme?  What have I done, what am I doing, but cleave to her to the death?\nThe only thing is,\" he good-humouredly explained, \"that one can't but\nhave it before one, in the cleaving--the point where the death comes\nin.  Don't be afraid for THAT. It's pleasant to a fellow's feelings,\"\nhe developed, \"to 'size-up' the bribe he applies his foot to.\"\n\n\"Oh then if all you want's a kickable surface the bribe's enormous.\"\n\n\"Good.  Then there it goes!\"  Chad administered his kick with fantastic\nforce and sent an imaginary object flying.  It was accordingly as if\nthey were once more rid of the question and could come back to what\nreally concerned him.  \"Of course I shall see you tomorrow.\"\n\nBut Strether scarce heeded the plan proposed for this; he had still the\nimpression--not the slighter for the simulated kick--of an irrelevant\nhornpipe or jig.  \"You're restless.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" returned Chad as they parted, \"you're exciting.\"\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nHe had, however, within two days, another separation to face. He had\nsent Maria Gostrey a word early, by hand, to ask if he might come to\nbreakfast; in consequence of which, at noon, she awaited him in the\ncool shade of her little Dutch-looking dining-room. This retreat was at\nthe back of the house, with a view of a scrap of old garden that had\nbeen saved from modern ravage; and though he had on more than one other\noccasion had his legs under its small and peculiarly polished table of\nhospitality, the place had never before struck him as so sacred to\npleasant knowledge, to intimate charm, to antique order, to a neatness\nthat was almost august. To sit there was, as he had told his hostess\nbefore, to see life reflected for the time in ideally kept pewter;\nwhich was somehow becoming, improving to life, so that one's eyes were\nheld and comforted.  Strether's were comforted at all events now--and\nthe more that it was the last time--with the charming effect, on the\nboard bare of a cloth and proud of its perfect surface, of the small\nold crockery and old silver, matched by the more substantial pieces\nhappily disposed about the room.  The specimens of vivid Delf, in\nparticular had the dignity of family portraits; and it was in the midst\nof them that our friend resignedly expressed himself. He spoke even\nwith a certain philosophic humour.  \"There's nothing more to wait for;\nI seem to have done a good day's work.  I've let them have it all\nround.  I've seen Chad, who has been to London and come back.  He tells\nme I'm 'exciting,' and I seem indeed pretty well to have upset every\none.  I've at any rate excited HIM.  He's distinctly restless.\"\n\n\"You've excited ME,\" Miss Gostrey smiled.  \"I'M distinctly restless.\"\n\n\"Oh you were that when I found you.  It seems to me I've rather got you\nout of it.  What's this,\" he asked as he looked about him, \"but a haunt\nof ancient peace?\"\n\n\"I wish with all my heart,\" she presently replied, \"I could make you\ntreat it as a haven of rest.\" On which they fronted each other, across\nthe table, as if things unuttered were in the air.\n\nStrether seemed, in his way, when he next spoke, to take some of them\nup.  \"It wouldn't give me--that would be the trouble--what it will, no\ndoubt, still give you.  I'm not,\" he explained, leaning back in his\nchair, but with his eyes on a small ripe round melon--\"in real harmony\nwith what surrounds me.  You ARE.  I take it too hard. You DON'T.  It\nmakes--that's what it comes to in the end--a fool of me.\" Then at a\ntangent, \"What has he been doing in London?\" he demanded.\n\n\"Ah one may go to London,\" Maria laughed.  \"You know I did.\"\n\nYes--he took the reminder.  \"And you brought ME back.\" He brooded there\nopposite to her, but without gloom.  \"Whom has Chad brought? He's full\nof ideas.  And I wrote to Sarah,\" he added, \"the first thing this\nmorning.  So I'm square.  I'm ready for them.\"\n\nShe neglected certain parts of this speech in the interest of others.\n\"Marie said to me the other day that she felt him to have the makings\nof an immense man of business.\"\n\n\"There it is.  He's the son of his father!\"\n\n\"But SUCH a father!\"\n\n\"Ah just the right one from that point of view!  But it isn't his\nfather in him,\" Strether added, \"that troubles me.\"\n\n\"What is it then?\"  He came back to his breakfast; he partook presently\nof the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was only\nafter this that he met her question.  Then moreover it was but to\nremark that he'd answer her presently.  She waited, she watched, she\nserved him and amused him, and it was perhaps with this last idea that\nshe soon reminded him of his having never even yet named to her the\narticle produced at Woollett.  \"Do you remember our talking of it in\nLondon--that night at the play?\" Before he could say yes, however, she\nhad put it to him for other matters.  Did he remember, did he\nremember--this and that of their first days?  He remembered everything,\nbringing up with humour even things of which she professed no\nrecollection, things she vehemently denied; and falling back above all\non the great interest of their early time, the curiosity felt by both\nof them as to where he would \"come out.\" They had so assumed it was to\nbe in some wonderful place--they had thought of it as so very MUCH out.\nWell, that was doubtless what it had been--since he had come out just\nthere.  He was out, in truth, as far as it was possible to be, and must\nnow rather bethink himself of getting in again. He found on the spot\nthe image of his recent history; he was like one of the figures of the\nold clock at Berne.  THEY came out, on one side, at their hour, jigged\nalong their little course in the public eye, and went in on the other\nside.  He too had jigged his little course--him too a modest retreat\nawaited.  He offered now, should she really like to know, to name the\ngreat product of Woollett.  It would be a great commentary on\neverything.  At this she stopped him off; she not only had no wish to\nknow, but she wouldn't know for the world.  She had done with the\nproducts of Woollett--for all the good she had got from them.  She\ndesired no further news of them, and she mentioned that Madame de\nVionnet herself had, to her knowledge, lived exempt from the\ninformation he was ready to supply.  She had never consented to receive\nit, though she would have taken it, under stress, from Mrs. Pocock. But\nit was a matter about which Mrs. Pocock appeared to have had little to\nsay--never sounding the word--and it didn't signify now.  There was\nnothing clearly for Maria Gostrey that signified now--save one sharp\npoint, that is, to which she came in time. \"I don't know whether it's\nbefore you as a possibility that, left to himself, Mr. Chad may after\nall go back.  I judge that it IS more or less so before you, from what\nyou just now said of him.\"\n\nHer guest had his eyes on her, kindly but attentively, as if foreseeing\nwhat was to follow this.  \"I don't think it will be for the money.\" And\nthen as she seemed uncertain:  \"I mean I don't believe it will be for\nthat he'll give her up.\"\n\n\"Then he WILL give her up?\"\n\nStrether waited a moment, rather slow and deliberate now, drawing out a\nlittle this last soft stage, pleading with her in various suggestive\nand unspoken ways for patience and understanding. \"What were you just\nabout to ask me?\"\n\n\"Is there anything he can do that would make you patch it up?\"\n\n\"With Mrs. Newsome?\"\n\nHer assent, as if she had had a delicacy about sounding the name, was\nonly in her face; but she added with it:  \"Or is there anything he can\ndo that would make HER try it?\"\n\n\"To patch it up with me?\"  His answer came at last in a conclusive\nheadshake.  \"There's nothing any one can do.  It's over.  Over for both\nof us.\"\n\nMaria wondered, seemed a little to doubt.  \"Are you so sure for her?\"\n\n\"Oh yes--sure now.  Too much has happened.  I'm different for her.\"\n\nShe took it in then, drawing a deeper breath.  \"I see.  So that as\nshe's different for YOU--\"\n\n\"Ah but,\" he interrupted, \"she's not.\"  And as Miss Gostrey wondered\nagain:  \"She's the same.  She's more than ever the same. But I do what\nI didn't before--I SEE her.\"\n\nHe spoke gravely and as if responsibly--since he had to pronounce; and\nthe effect of it was slightly solemn, so that she simply exclaimed\n\"Oh!\"  Satisfied and grateful, however, she showed in her own next\nwords an acceptance of his statement.  \"What then do you go home to?\"\n\nHe had pushed his plate a little away, occupied with another side of\nthe matter; taking refuge verily in that side and feeling so moved that\nhe soon found himself on his feet.  He was affected in advance by what\nhe believed might come from her, and he would have liked to forestall\nit and deal with it tenderly;  yet in the presence of it he wished\nstill more to be--though as smoothly as possible--deterrent and\nconclusive.  He put her question by for the moment; he told her more\nabout Chad.  \"It would have been impossible to meet me more than he did\nlast night on the question of the infamy of not sticking to her.\"\n\n\"Is that what you called it for him--'infamy'?\"\n\n\"Oh rather!  I described to him in detail the base creature he'd be,\nand he quite agrees with me about it.\"\n\n\"So that it's really as if you had nailed him?\"\n\n\"Quite really as if--!  I told him I should curse him.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she smiled, \"you HAVE done it.\" And then having thought again:\n\"You CAN'T after that propose--!\"  Yet she scanned his face.\n\n\"Propose again to Mrs. Newsome?\"\n\nShe hesitated afresh, but she brought it out.  \"I've never believed,\nyou know, that you did propose.  I always believed it was really\nshe--and, so far as that goes, I can understand it.  What I mean is,\"\nshe explained, \"that with such a spirit--the spirit of curses!--your\nbreach is past mending.  She has only to know what you've done to him\nnever again to raise a finger.\"\n\n\"I've done,\" said Strether, \"what I could--one can't do more. He\nprotests his devotion and his horror.  But I'm not sure I've saved him.\nHe protests too much.  He asks how one can dream of his being tired.\nBut he has all life before him.\"\n\nMaria saw what he meant.  \"He's formed to please.\"\n\n\"And it's our friend who has formed him.\" Strether felt in it the\nstrange irony.\n\n\"So it's scarcely his fault!\"\n\n\"It's at any rate his danger.  I mean,\" said Strether, \"it's hers. But\nshe knows it.\"\n\n\"Yes, she knows it.  And is your idea,\" Miss Gostrey asked, \"that there\nwas some other woman in London?\"\n\n\"Yes.  No.  That is I HAVE no ideas.  I'm afraid of them. I've done\nwith them.\" And he put out his hand to her.  \"Good-bye.\"\n\nIt brought her back to her unanswered question.  \"To what do you go\nhome?\"\n\n\"I don't know.  There will always be something.\"\n\n\"To a great difference,\" she said as she kept his hand.\n\n\"A great difference--no doubt.  Yet I shall see what I can make of it.\"\n\n\"Shall you make anything so good--?\"  But, as if remembering what Mrs.\nNewsome had done, it was as far as she went.\n\nHe had sufficiently understood.  \"So good as this place at this moment?\nSo good as what YOU make of everything you touch?\" He took a moment to\nsay, for, really and truly, what stood about him there in her\noffer--which was as the offer of exquisite service, of lightened care,\nfor the rest of his days--might well have tempted. It built him softly\nround, it roofed him warmly over, it rested, all so firm, on selection.\nAnd what ruled selection was beauty and knowledge.  It was awkward, it\nwas almost stupid, not to seem to prize such things; yet, none the\nless, so far as they made his opportunity they made it only for a\nmoment.  She'd moreover understand--she always understood.\n\nThat indeed might be, but meanwhile she was going on. \"There's nothing,\nyou know, I wouldn't do for you.\"\n\n\"Oh yes--I know.\"\n\n\"There's nothing,\" she repeated, \"in all the world.\"\n\n\"I know.  I know.  But all the same I must go.\" He had got it at last.\n\"To be right.\"\n\n\"To be right?\"\n\nShe had echoed it in vague deprecation, but he felt it already clear\nfor her.  \"That, you see, is my only logic. Not, out of the whole\naffair, to have got anything for myself.\"\n\nShe thought.  \"But with your wonderful impressions you'll have got a\ngreat deal.\"\n\n\"A great deal\"--he agreed.  \"But nothing like YOU.  It's you who would\nmake me wrong!\"\n\nHonest and fine, she couldn't greatly pretend she didn't see it. Still\nshe could pretend just a little.  \"But why should you be so dreadfully\nright?\"\n\n\"That's the way that--if I must go--you yourself would be the first to\nwant me.  And I can't do anything else.\"\n\nSo then she had to take it, though still with her defeated protest. \"It\nisn't so much your BEING 'right'--it's your horrible sharp eye for what\nmakes you so.\"\n\n\"Oh but you're just as bad yourself.  You can't resist me when I point\nthat out.\"\n\nShe sighed it at last all comically, all tragically, away. \"I can't\nindeed resist you.\"\n\n\"Then there we are!\" said Strether."