

                                  Henry James

                                The Ambassadors

                                    Preface

Nothing is more easy than to state the subject of »The Ambassadors,« which first
appeared in twelve numbers of The North American Review (1903) and was published
as a whole the same year. The situation involved is gathered up betimes, that is
in the second chapter of Book Fifth, for the reader's benefit, into as few words
as possible - planted or sunk, stiffly and saliently, in the centre of the
current, almost perhaps to the obstruction of traffic. Never can a composition
of this sort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of suggestion, and
never can that grain, developed, overgrown and smothered, have yet lurked more
in the mass as an independent particle. The whole case, in fine, is in Lambert
Strether's irrepressible outbreak to little Bilham on the Sunday afternoon in
Gloriani's garden, the candour with which he yields, for his young friend's
enlightenment, to the charming admonition of that crisis. The idea of the tale
resides indeed in the very fact that an hour of such unprecedented ease should
have been felt by him as a crisis, and he is at pains to express it for us as
neatly as we could desire. The remarks to which he thus gives utterance contain
the essence of »The Ambassadors,« his fingers close, before he has done, round
the stem of the full-blown flower; which, after that fashion, he continues
officiously to present to us. »Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It
doesn't't so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life.
If you haven't had that what have you had? I'm too old - too old at any rate for
what I see. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. Still, we have
the illusion of freedom; therefore don't, like me to-day, be without the memory
of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent
to have it, and now I'm a case of reaction against the mistake. Do what you like
so long as you don't make it. For it was a mistake. Live, live!« Such is the
gist of Strether's appeal to the impressed youth, whom he likes and whom he
desires to befriend; the word mistake occurs several times, it will be seen, in
the course of his remarks - which gives the measure of the signal warning he
feels attached to his case. He has accordingly missed too much, though perhaps
after all constitutionally qualified for a better part, and he wakes up to it in
conditions that press the spring of a terrible question. Would there yet perhaps
be time for reparation? - reparation, that is, for the injury done his
character; for the affront, he is quite ready to say, so stupidly put upon it
and in which he has even himself had so clumsy a hand? The answer to which is
that he now at all events sees; so that the business of my tale and the march of
my action, not to say the precious moral of everything, is just my demonstration
of this process of vision.
    Nothing can exceed the closeness with which the whole fits again into its
germ. That had been given me bodily, as usual, by the spoken word, for I was to
take the image over exactly as I happened to have met it. A friend had repeated
to me, with great appreciation, a thing or two said to him by a man of
distinction, much his senior, and to which a sense akin to that of Strether's
melancholy eloquence might be imputed - said as chance would have, and so easily
might, in Paris, and in a charming old garden attached to a house of art, and on
a Sunday afternoon of summer, many persons of great interest being present. The
observation there listened to and gathered up had contained part of the note
that I was to recognise on the spot as to my purpose - had contained in fact the
greater part; the rest was in the place and the time and the scene they
sketched: these constituents clustered and combined to give me further support,
to give me what I may call the note absolute. There it stands, accordingly, full
in the tideway; driven in, with hard taps, like some strong stake for the noose
of a cable, the swirl of the current roundabout it. What amplified the hint to
more than the bulk of hints in general was the gift with it of the old Paris
garden, for in that token were sealed up values infinitely precious. There was
of course the seal to break and each item of the packet to count over and handle
and estimate; but somehow, in the light of the hint, all the elements of a
situation of the sort most to my taste were there. I could even remember no
occasion on which, so confronted, I had found it of a livelier interest to take
stock, in this fashion, of suggested wealth. For I think, verily, that there are
degrees of merit in subjects - in spite of the fact that to treat even one of
the most ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for the feverish and
prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its dignity as possibly absolute.
What it comes to, doubtless, is that even among the supremely good - since with
such alone is it one's theory of one's honour to be concerned - there is an
ideal beauty of goodness the invoked action of which is to raise the artistic
faith to its maximum. Then truly, I hold, one's theme may be said to shine, and
that of »The Ambassadors,« I confess, wore this glow for me from beginning to
end. Fortunately thus I am able to estimate this as, frankly, quite the best,
all round, of all my productions; any failure of that justification would have
made such an extreme of complacency publicly fatuous.
    I recall then in this connexion no moment of subjective intermittence, never
one of those alarms as for a suspected hollow beneath one's feet, a felt
ingratitude in the scheme adopted, under which confidence fails and opportunity
seems but to mock. If the motive of »The Wings of the Dove,« as I have noted,
was to worry me at moments by a sealing-up of its face - though without
prejudice to its again, of a sudden, fairly grimacing with expression - so in
this other business I had absolute conviction and constant clearness to deal
with; it had been a frank proposition, the whole bunch of data, installed on my
premises like a monotony of fine weather. (The order of composition, in these
things, I may mention, was reversed by the order of publication; the earlier
written of the two books having appeared as the later.) Even under the weight of
my hero's years I could feel my postulate firm; even under the strain of the
difference between those of Madame de Vionnet and those of Chad Newsome, a
difference liable to be denounced as shocking, I could still feel it serene.
Nothing resisted, nothing betrayed, I seem to make out, in this full and sound
sense of the matter; it shed from any side I could turn it to the same golden
glow. I rejoiced in the promise of a hero so mature, who would give me thereby
the more to bite into - since it's only into thickened motive and accumulated
character, I think, that the painter of life bites more than a little. My poor
friend should have accumulated character, certainly; or rather would be quite
naturally and handsomely possessed of it, in the sense that he would have, and
would always have felt he had, imagination galore, and that this yet wouldn't
have wrecked him. It was immeasurable, the opportunity to do a man of
imagination, for if there mightn't be a chance to bite, where in the world might
it be? This personage of course, so enriched, wouldn't give me, for his type,
imagination in predominance or as his prime faculty, nor should I, in view of
other matters, have found that convenient. So particular a luxury - some
occasion, that is, for study of the high gift in supreme command of a case or of
a career - would still doubtless come on the day I should be ready to pay for
it; and till then might, as from far back, remain hung up well in view and just
out of reach. The comparative case meanwhile would serve - it was only on the
minor scale that I had treated myself even to comparative cases.
    I was to hasten to add however that, happy stopgaps as the minor scale had
thus yielded, the instance in hand should enjoy the advantage of the full range
of the major; since most immediately to the point was the question of that
supplement of situation logically involved in our gentleman's impulse to deliver
himself in the Paris garden on the Sunday afternoon - or if not involved by
strict logic then all ideally and enchantingly implied in it. (I say ideally,
because I need scarce mention that for development, for expression of its
maximum, my glimmering story was, at the earliest stage, to have nipped the
thread of connexion with the possibilities of the actual reported speaker. He
remains but the happiest of accidents; his actualities, all too definite,
precluded any range of possibilities; it had only been his charming office to
project upon that wide field of the artist's vision - which hangs there ever in
place like the white sheet suspended for the figures of a child's magic-lantern
- a more fantastic and more moveable shadow.) No privilege of the teller of
tales and the handler of puppets is more delightful, or has more of the suspense
and the thrill of a game of difficulty breathlessly played, than just this
business of looking for the unseen and the occult, in a scheme half-grasped, by
the light or, so to speak, by the clinging scent, of the gage already in hand.
No dreadful old pursuit of the hidden slave with bloodhounds and the rag of
association can ever, for excitement, I judge, have bettered it at its best. For
the dramatist always, by the very law of his genius, believes not only in a
possible right issue from the rightly-conceived tight place; he does much more
than this - he believes, irresistibly, in the necessary, the precious tightness
of the place (whatever the issue) on the strength of any respectable hint. It
being thus the respectable hint that I had with such avidity picked up, what
would be the story to which it would most inevitably form the centre? It is part
of the charm attendant on such questions that the story, with the omens true, as
I say, puts on from this stage the authenticity of concrete existence. It then
is, essentially - it begins to be, though it may more or less obscurely lurk; so
that the point is not in the least what to make of it, but only, very
delightfully and very damnably, where to put one's hand on it.
    In which truth resides surely much of the interest of that admirable mixture
for salutary application which we know as art. Art deals with what we see, it
must first contribute full-handed that ingredient; it plucks its material,
otherwise expressed, in the garden of life - which material elsewhere grown is
stale and uneatable. But it has no sooner done this than it has to take account
of a process - from which only when it's the basest of the servants of man,
incurring ignominious dismissal with no character, does it, and whether under
some muddled pretext of morality or on any other, pusillanimously edge away. The
process, that of the expression, the literal squeezing-out, of value is another
affair - with which the happy luck of mere finding has little to do. The joys of
finding, at this stage, are pretty well over; that quest of the subject as a
whole by matching, as the ladies say at the shops, the big piece with the
snippet, having ended, we assume, with a capture. The subject is found, and if
the problem is then transferred to the ground of what to do with it the field
opens out for any amount of doing. This is precisely the infusion that, as I
submit, completes the strong mixture. It is on the other hand the part of the
business that can least be likened to the chase with horn and hound. It's all a
sedentary part - involves as much ciphering, of sorts, as would merit the
highest salary paid to a chief accountant. Not, however, that the chief
accountant hasn't his gleams of bliss; for the felicity, or at least the
equilibrium, of the artist's state dwells less, surely, in the further
delightful complications he can smuggle in than in those he succeeds in keeping
out. He sows his seed at the risk of too thick a crop; wherefore yet again, like
the gentlemen who audit ledgers, he must keep his head at any price. In
consequence of all which, for the interest of the matter, I might seem here to
have my choice of narrating my hunt for Lambert Strether, of describing the
capture of the shadow projected by my friend's anecdote, or of reporting on the
occurrences subsequent to that triumph. But I had probably best attempt a little
to glance in each direction; since it comes to me again and again, over this
licentious record, that one's bag of adventures, conceived or conceivable, has
been only half-emptied by the mere telling of one's story. It depends so on what
one means by that equivocal quantity. There is the story of one's hero, and
then, thanks to the intimate connexion of things, the story of one's story
itself. I blush to confess it, but if one's a dramatist one's a dramatist, and
the latter imbroglio is liable on occasion to strike me as really the more
objective of the two.
    The philosophy imputed to him in that beautiful outbreak, the hour there,
amid such happy provision, striking for him, would have been then, on behalf of
my man of imagination, to be logically and, as the artless craft of comedy has
it, led up to; the probable course to such a goal, the goal of so conscious a
predicament, would have in short to be finely calculated. Where has he come from
and why has he come, what is he doing (as we Anglo-Saxons, and we only, say, in
our foredoomed clutch of exotic aids to expression) in that galère? To answer
these questions plausibly, to answer them as under cross-examination in the
witness-box by counsel for the prosecution, in other words satisfactorily to
account for Strether and for his peculiar tone, was to possess myself of the
entire fabric. At the same time the clue to its whereabouts would lie in a
certain principle of probability: he wouldn't have indulged in his peculiar tone
without a reason; it would take a felt predicament or a false position to give
him so ironic an accent. One hadn't been noting tones all one's life without
recognising when one heard it the voice of the false position. The dear man in
the Paris garden was then admirably and unmistakeably in one - which was no
small point gained; what next accordingly concerned us was the determination of
this identity. One could only go by probabilities, but there was the advantage
that the most general of the probabilities were virtual certainties. Possessed
of our friend's nationality, to start with, there was a general probability in
his narrower localism; which, for that matter, one had really but to keep under
the lens for an hour to see it give up its secrets. He would have issued, our
rueful worthy, from the very heart of New England - at the heels of which matter
of course a perfect train of secrets tumbled for me into the light. They had to
be sifted and sorted, and I shall not reproduce the detail of that process; but
unmistakeably they were all there, and it was but a question, auspiciously, of
picking among them. What the position would infallibly be, and why, on his
hands, it had turned false - these inductive steps could only be as rapid as
they were distinct. I accounted for everything - and everything had by this time
become the most promising quantity - by the view that he had come to Paris in
some state of mind which was literally undergoing, as a result of new and
unexpected assaults and infusions, a change almost from hour to hour. He had
come with a view that might have been figured by a clear green liquid, say, in a
neat glass phial; and the liquid, once poured into the open cup of application,
once exposed to the action of another air, had begun to turn from green to red,
or whatever, and might, for all he knew, be on its way to purple, to black, to
yellow. At the still wilder extremes represented perhaps, for all he could say
to the contrary, by a variability so violent, he would at first, naturally, but
have gazed in surprise and alarm; whereby the situation clearly would spring
from the play of wildness and the development of extremes. I saw in a moment
that, should this development proceed both with force and logic, my story would
leave nothing to be desired. There is always, of course, for the story-teller,
the irresistible determinant and the incalculable advantage of his interest in
the story as such; it is ever, obviously, overwhelmingly, the prime and precious
thing (as other than this I have never been able to see it); as to which what
makes for it, with whatever headlong energy, may be said to pale before the
energy with which it simply makes for itself. It rejoices, none the less, at its
best, to seem to offer itself in a light, to seem to know, and with the very
last knowledge, what it's about - liable as it yet is at moments to be caught by
us with its tongue in its cheek and absolutely no warrant but its splendid
impudence. Let us grant then that the impudence is always there - there, so to
speak, for grace and effect and allure; there, above all, because the Story is
just the spoiled child of art, and because, as we are always disappointed when
the pampered don't play up, we like it, to that extent, to look all its
character. It probably does so, in truth, even when we most flatter ourselves
that we negotiate with it by treaty.
    All of which, again, is but to say that the steps, for my fable, placed
themselves with a prompt and, as it were, functional assurance - an air quite as
of readiness to have dispensed with logic had I been in fact too stupid for my
clue. Never, positively, none the less, as the links multiplied, had I felt less
stupid than for the determination of poor Strether's errand and for the
apprehension of his issue. These things continued to fall together, as by the
neat action of their own weight and form, even while their commentator scratched
his head about them; he easily sees now that they were always well in advance of
him. As the case completed itself he had in fact, from a good way behind, to
catch up with them, breathless and a little flurried, as he best could. The
false position, for our belated man of the world - belated because he had
endeavoured so long to escape being one, and now at last had really to face his
doom - the false position for him, I say, was obviously to have presented
himself at the gate of that boundless menagerie primed with a moral scheme of
the most approved pattern which was yet framed to break down on any approach to
vivid facts; that is to any at all liberal appreciation of them. There would
have been of course the case of the Strether prepared, wherever presenting
himself, only to judge and to feel meanly; but he would have moved for me, I
confess, enveloped in no legend whatever. The actual man's note, from the first
of our seeing it struck, is the note of discrimination, just as his drama is to
become, under stress, the drama of discrimination. It would have been his blessed
imagination, we have seen, that had already helped him to discriminate; the
element that was for so much of the pleasure of my cutting thick, as I have
intimated, into his intellectual, into his moral substance. Yet here it was, at
the same time, just here, that a shade for a moment fell across the scene.
    There was the dreadful little old tradition, one of the platitudes of the
human comedy, that people's moral scheme does break down in Paris; that nothing
is more frequently observed; that hundreds of thousands of more or less
hypocritical or more or less cynical persons annually visit the place for the
sake of the probable catastrophe, and that I came late in the day to work myself
up about it. There was in fine the trivial association, one of the vulgarest in
the world; but which give me pause no longer, I think, simply because its
vulgarity is so advertised. The revolution performed by Strether under the
influence of the most interesting of great cities was to have nothing to do with
any bêtise of the imputably tempted state; he was to be thrown forward, rather,
thrown quite with violence, upon his lifelong trick of intense reflection: which
friendly test indeed was to bring him out, through winding passages, through
alternations of darkness and light, very much in Paris, but with the surrounding
scene itself a minor matter, a mere symbol for more things than had been dreamt
of in the philosophy of Woollett. Another surrounding scene would have done as
well for our show could it have represented a place in which Strether's errand
was likely to lie and his crisis to await him. The likely place had the great
merit of sparing me preparations; there would have been too many involved - not
at all impossibilities, only rather worrying and delaying difficulties - in
positing elsewhere Chad Newsome's interesting relation, his so interesting
complexity of relations. Strether's appointed stage, in fine, could be but
Chad's most luckily selected one. The young man had gone in, as they say, for
circumjacent charm; and where he would have found it, by the turn of his mind,
most authentic, was where his earnest friend's analysis would most find him; as
well as where, for that matter, the former's whole analytic faculty would be led
such a wonderful dance.
    »The Ambassadors« had been, all conveniently, arranged for; its first
appearance was from month to month, in the North American Review during 1903,
and I had been open from far back to any pleasant provocation for ingenuity that
might reside in one's actively adopting - so as to make it, in its way, a small
compositional law - recurrent breaks and resumptions. I had made up my mind here
regularly to exploit and enjoy these often rather rude jolts - having found, as
I believed, an admirable way to it; yet every question of form and pressure, I
easily remember, paled in the light of the major propriety, recognised as soon
as really weighed; that of employing but one centre and keeping it all within my
hero's compass. The thing was to be so much this worthy's intimate adventure
that even the projection of his consciousness upon it from beginning to end
without intermission or deviation would probably still leave a part of its value
for him, and a fortiori for ourselves, unexpressed. I might, however, express
every grain of it that there would be room for - on condition of contriving a
splendid particular economy. Other persons in no small number were to people the
scene, and each with his or her axe to grind, his or her situation to treat, his
or her coherency not to fail of, his or her relation to my leading motive, in a
word, to establish and carry on. But Strether's sense of these things, and
Strether's only, should avail me for showing them; I should know them but
through his more or less groping knowledge of them, since his very gropings
would figure among his most interesting motions, and a full observance of the
rich rigour I speak of would give me more of the effect I should be most after
than all other possible observances together. It would give me a large unity,
and that in turn would crown me with the grace to which the enlightened
story-teller will at any time, for his interest, sacrifice if need be all other
graces whatever. I refer of course to the grace of intensity, which there are
ways of signally achieving and ways of signally missing - as we see it, all
round us, helplessly and woefully missed. Not that it isn't, on the other hand,
a virtue eminently subject to appreciation - there being no strict, no absolute
measure of it; so that one may hear it acclaimed where it has quite escaped
one's perception, and see it unnoticed where one has gratefully hailed it. After
all of which I am not sure, either, that the immense amusement of the whole
cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not operate, for the fond fabulist, when
judicious not less than fond, as his best of determinants. That charming
principle is always there, at all events, to keep interest fresh: it is a
principle, we remember, essentially ravenous, without scruple and without mercy,
appeased with no cheap nor easy nourishment. It enjoys the costly sacrifice and
rejoices thereby in the very odour of difficulty - even as ogres, with their
Fee-faw-fum! rejoice in the smell of the blood of Englishmen.
    Thus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so speedy,
definition of my gentleman's job - his coming out, all solemnly appointed and
deputed, to save Chad, and his then finding the young man so disobligingly and,
at first, so bewilderingly not lost that a new issue altogether, in the
connexion, prodigiously faces them, which has to be dealt with in a new light -
promised as many calls on ingenuity and on the higher branches of the
compositional art as one could possibly desire. Again and yet again, as, from
book to book, I proceed with my survey, I find no source of interest equal to
this verification after the fact, as I may call it, and the more in detail the
better, of the scheme of consistency gone in for. As always - since the charm
never fails - the retracing of the process from point to point brings back the
old illusion. The old intentions bloom again and flower - in spite of all the
blossoms they were to have dropped by the way. This is the charm, as I say, of
adventure transposed - the thrilling ups and downs, the intricate ins and outs
of the compositional problem, made after such a fashion admirably objective,
becoming the question at issue and keeping the author's heart in his mouth. Such
an element, for instance, as his intention that Mrs. Newsome, away off with her
finger on the pulse of Massachusetts, should yet be no less intensely than
circuitously present through the whole thing, should be no less felt as to be
reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest portrayal at first
hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good faith, I say, once it's
unmistakeably there, takes on again an actuality not too much impaired by the
comparative dimness of the particular success. Cherished intention too
inevitably acts and operates, in the book, about fifty times as little as I had
fondly dreamt it might; but that scarce spoils for me the pleasure of
recognising the fifty ways in which I had sought to provide for it. The mere
charm of seeing such an idea constituent, in its degree; the fineness of the
measures taken - a real extension, if successful, of the very terms and
possibilities of representation and figuration - such things alone were, after
this fashion, inspiring, such things alone were a gage of the probable success
of that dissimulated calculation with which the whole effort was to square. But
oh the cares begotten, none the less, of that same judicious sacrifice to a
particular form of interest! One's work should have composition, because
composition alone is positive beauty; but all the while - apart from one's
inevitable consciousness too of the dire paucity of readers ever recognising or
ever missing positive beauty - how, as to the cheap and easy, at every turn,
how, as to immediacy and facility, and even as to the commoner vivacity,
positive beauty might have to be sweated for and paid for! Once achieved and
installed it may always be trusted to make the poor seeker feel he would have
blushed to the roots of his hair for failing of it; yet, how, as its virtue can
be essentially but the virtue of the whole, the wayside traps set in the
interest of muddlement and pleading but the cause of the moment, of the
particular bit in itself, have to be kicked out of the path! All the
sophistications in life, for example, might have appeared to muster on behalf of
the menace - the menace to a bright variety - involved in Strether's having all
the subjective say, as it were, to himself.
    Had I, meanwhile, made him at once hero and historian, endowed him with the
romantic privilege of the first person - the darkest abyss of romance this,
inveterately, when enjoyed on the grand scale - variety, and many other queer
matters as well, might have been smuggled in by a back door. Suffice it, to be
brief, that the first person, in the long piece, is a form foredoomed to
looseness, and that looseness, never much my affair, had never been so little so
as on this particular occasion. All of which reflections flocked to the standard
from the moment - a very early one - the question of how to keep my form amusing
while sticking so close to my central figure and constantly taking its pattern
from him had to be faced. He arrives (arrives at Chester) as for the dreadful
purpose of giving his creator no end to tell about him - before which rigorous
mission the serenest of creators might well have quailed. I was far from the
serenest; I was more than agitated enough to reflect that, grimly deprived of
one alternative or one substitute for telling, I must address myself tooth and
nail to another. I couldn't, save by implication, make other persons tell each
other about him - blessed resource, blessed necessity, of the drama, which reaches
its effects of unity, all remarkably, by paths absolutely opposite to the paths
of the novel: with other persons, save as they were primarily his persons (not
he primarily but one of theirs), I had simply nothing to do. I had relations for
him none the less, by the mercy of Providence, quite as much as if my exhibition
was to be a muddle; if I could only by implication and a show of consequence
make other persons tell each other about him, I could at least make him tell
them whatever in the world he must; and could so, by the same token - which was
a further luxury thrown in - see straight into the deep differences between what
that could do for me, or at all events for him, and the large ease of
autobiography. It may be asked why, if one so keeps to one's hero, one shouldn't
make a single mouthful of method, shouldn't throw the reins on his neck and,
letting them flap there as free as in »Gil Blas« or in »David Copperfield,«
equip him with the double privilege of subject and object - a course that has at
least the merit of brushing away questions at a sweep. The answer to which is, I
think, that one makes that surrender only if one is prepared not to make certain
precious discriminations.
    The first person then, so employed, is addressed by the author directly to
ourselves, his possible readers, whom he has to reckon with, at the best, by our
English tradition, so loosely and vaguely after all, so little respectfully, on
so scant a presumption of exposure to criticism. Strether, on the other hand,
encaged and provided for as »The Ambassadors« encages and provides, has to keep
in view proprieties much stiffer and more salutary than any our straight and
credulous gape are likely to bring home to him, has exhibitional conditions to
meet, in a word, that forbid the terrible fluidity of self-revelation. I may
seem not to better the case for my discrimination if I say that, for my first
care, I had thus inevitably to set him up a confidant or two, to wave away with
energy the custom of the seated mass of explanation after the fact, the inserted
block of merely referential narrative, which flourishes so, to the shame of the
modern impatience, on the serried page of Balzac, but which seems simply to
appal our actual, our general weaker, digestion. »Harking back to make up« took
at any rate more doing, as the phrase is, not only than the reader of to-day
demands, but than he will tolerate at any price any call upon him either to
understand or remotely to measure; and for the beauty of the thing when done the
current editorial mind in particular appears wholly without sense. It is not,
however, primarily for either of these reasons, whatever their weight, that
Strether's friend Waymarsh is so keenly clutched at, on the threshold of the
book, or that no less a pounce is made on Maria Gostrey - without even the
pretext, either, of her being, in essence, Strether's friend. She is the
reader's friend much rather - in consequence of dispositions that make him so
eminently require one; and she acts in that capacity, and really in that
capacity alone, with exemplary devotion, from beginning to end of the book. She
is an enrolled, a direct, aid to lucidity; she is in fine, to tear off her mask,
the most unmitigated and abandoned of ficelles. Half the dramatist's art, as we
well know - since if we don't it's not the fault of the proofs that lie
scattered about us - is in the use of ficelles; by which I mean in a deep
dissimulation of his dependence on them. Waymarsh only to a slighter degree
belongs, in the whole business, less to my subject than to my treatment of it;
the interesting proof, in these connexions, being that one has but to take one's
subject for the stuff of drama to interweave with enthusiasm as many Gostreys as
need be.
    The material of »The Ambassadors,« conforming in this respect exactly to
that of »The Wings of the Dove,« published just before it, is taken absolutely
for the stuff of drama; so that, availing myself of the opportunity given me by
this edition for some prefatory remarks on the latter work, I had mainly to make
on its behalf the point of its scenic consistency. It disguises that virtue, in
the oddest way in the world, by just looking, as we turn its pages, as little
scenic as possible; but it sharply divides itself, just as the composition
before us does, into the parts that prepare, that tend in fact to over-prepare,
for scenes, and the parts, or otherwise into the scenes, that justify and crown
the preparation. It may definitely be said, I think, that everything in it that
is not scene (not, I of course mean, complete and functional scene, treating all
the submitted matter, as by logical start, logical turn, and logical finish) is
discriminated preparation, is the fusion and synthesis of picture. These
alternations propose themselves all recogniseably, I think, from an early stage,
as the very form and figure of »The Ambassadors«; so that, to repeat, such an
agent as Miss Gostrey, pre-engaged at a high salary, but waits in the draughty
wing with her shawl and her smelling-salts. Her function speaks at once for
itself, and by the time she has dined with Strether in London and gone to a play
with him her intervention as a ficelle is, I hold, expertly justified. Thanks to
it we have treated scenically, and scenically alone, the whole lumpish question
of Strether's past, which has seen us more happily on the way than anything else
could have done; we have strained to a high lucidity and vivacity (or at least
we hope we have) certain indispensable facts; we have seen our two or three
immediate friends all conveniently and profitably in action; to say nothing of
our beginning to descry others, of a remoter intensity, getting into motion,
even if a bit vaguely as yet, for our further enrichment. Let my first point be
here that the scene in question, that in which the whole situation at Woollett
and the complex forces that have propelled my hero to where this lively
extractor of his value and distiller of his essence awaits him, is normal and
entire, is really an excellent standard scene; copious, comprehensive, and
accordingly never short, but with its office as definite as that of the hammer
on the gong of the clock, the office of expressing all that is in the hour.
    The ficelle character of the subordinate party is as artfully dissimulated,
throughout, as may be, and to that extent that, with the seams or joints of
Maria Gostrey's ostensible connectedness taken particular care of, duly smoothed
over, that is, and anxiously kept from showing as pieced on, this figure
doubtless achieves, after a fashion, something of the dignity of a prime idea:
which circumstance but shows us afresh how many quite incalculable but none the
less clear sources of enjoyment for the infatuated artist, how many copious
springs of our never-to-be-slighted fun for the reader and critic susceptible of
contagion, may sound their incidental plash as soon as an artistic process
begins to enjoy free development. Exquisite - in illustration of this - the mere
interest and amusement of such at once creative and critical questions as how
and where and why to make Miss Gostrey's false connexion carry itself, under a
due high polish, as a real one. Nowhere is it more of an artful expedient for
mere consistency of form, to mention a case, than in the last scene of the book,
where its function is to give or to add nothing whatever, but only to express as
vividly as possible certain things quite other than itself and that are of the
already fixed and appointed measure. Since, however, all art is expression, and
is thereby vividness, one was to find the door open here to any amount of
delightful dissimulation. These verily are the refinements and ecstasies of
method - amid which, or certainly under the influence of any exhilarated
demonstration of which, one must keep one's head and not lose one's way. To
cultivate an adequate intelligence for them and to make that sense operative is
positively to find a charm in any produced ambiguity of appearance that is not
by the same stroke, and all helplessly, an ambiguity of sense. To project
imaginatively, for my hero, a relation that has nothing to do with the matter
(the matter of my subject) but has everything to do with the manner (the manner
of my presentation of the same) and yet to treat it, at close quarters and for
fully economic expression's possible sake, as if it were important and essential
- to do that sort of thing and yet muddle nothing may easily become, as one
goes, a signally attaching proposition; even though it all remains but part and
parcel, I hasten to recognise, of the merely general and related question of
expressional curiosity and expressional decency.
    I am moved to add after so much insistence on the scenic side of my labour
that I have found the steps of re-perusal almost as much waylaid here by quite
another style of effort in the same signal interest - or have in other words not
failed to note how, even so associated and so discriminated, the finest
proprieties and charms of the non-scenic may, under the right hand for them,
still keep their intelligibility and assert their office. Infinitely suggestive
such an observation as this last on the whole delightful head, where
representation is concerned, of possible variety, of effective expressional
change and contrast. One would like, at such an hour as this, for critical
licence, to go into the matter of the noted inevitable deviation (from too fond
an original vision) that the exquisite treachery even of the straightest
execution may ever be trusted to inflict even on the most mature plan - the case
being that, though one's last reconsidered production always seems to bristle
with that particular evidence, »The Ambassadors« would place a flood of such
light at my service. I must attach to my final remark here a different import;
noting in the other connexion I just glanced at that such passages as that of my
hero's first encounter with Chad Newsome, absolute attestations of the
non-scenic form though they be, yet lay the firmest hand too - so far at least
as intention goes - on representational effect. To report at all closely and
completely of what passes on a given occasion is inevitably to become more or
less scenic; and yet in the instance I allude to, with the conveyance,
expressional curiosity and expressional decency are sought and arrived at under
quite another law. The true inwardness of this may be at bottom but that one of
the suffered treacheries has consisted precisely, for Chad's whole figure and
presence, of a direct presentability diminished and compromised - despoiled,
that is, of its proportional advantage; so that, in a word, the whole economy of
his author's relation to him has at important points to be redetermined. The
book, however, critically viewed, is touchingly full of these disguised and
repaired losses, these insidious recoveries, these intensely redemptive
consistencies. The pages in which Mamie Pocock gives her appointed and, I can't
but think, duly felt lift to the whole action by the so inscrutably-applied
side-stroke or short-cut of our just watching, and as quite at an angle of
vision as yet untried, her single hour of suspense in the hotel salon, in our
partaking of her concentrated study of the sense of matters bearing on her own
case, all the bright warm Paris afternoon, from the balcony that overlooks the
Tuileries garden - these are as marked an example of the representational virtue
that insists here and there on being, for the charm of opposition and renewal,
other than the scenic. It wouldn't take much to make me further argue that from
an equal play of such oppositions the book gathers an intensity that fairly adds
to the dramatic - though the latter is supposed to be the sum of all
intensities; or that has at any rate nothing to fear from juxtaposition with it.
I consciously fail to shrink in fact from that extravagance - I risk it, rather,
for the sake of the moral involved; which is not that the particular production
before us exhausts the interesting questions it raises, but that the Novel
remains still, under the right persuasion, the most independent, most elastic,
most prodigious of literary forms.
                                                                    HENRY JAMES.
 

                                   Book First

                                       I

Strether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet
on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was
not wholly disconcerted. A telegram from him bespeaking a room »only if not
noisy,« reply paid, was produced for the enquirer at the office, so that the
understanding they should meet at Chester rather than at Liverpool remained to
that extent sound. The same secret principle, however, that had prompted
Strether not absolutely to desire Waymarsh's presence at the dock, that had led
him thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of it, now operated to make
him feel he could still wait without disappointment. They would dine together at
the worst, and, with all respect to dear old Waymarsh - if not even, for that
matter, to himself - there was little fear that in the sequel they shouldn't see
enough of each other. The principle I have just mentioned as operating had been,
with the most newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive - the fruit
of a sharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking, after
so much separation, into his comrade's face, his business would be a trifle
bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to present itself to the
nearing steamer as the first note, of Europe. Mixed with everything was the
apprehension, already, on Strether's part, that it would, at best, throughout,
prove the note of Europe in quite a sufficient degree.
    That note had been meanwhile - since the previous afternoon, thanks to this
happier device - such a consciousness of personal freedom as he hadn't known for
years; such a deep taste of change and of having above all for the moment nobody
and nothing to consider, as promised already, if headlong hope were not too
foolish, to colour his adventure with cool success. There were people on the
ship with whom he had easily consorted - so far as ease could up to now be
imputed to him - and who for the most part plunged straight into the current
that set from the landing-stage to London; there were others who had invited him
to a tryst at the inn and had even invoked his aid for a look round at the
beauties of Liverpool; but he had stolen away from every one alike, had kept no
appointment and renewed no acquaintance, had been indifferently aware of the
number of persons who esteemed themselves fortunate in being, unlike himself,
met, and had even independently, un-sociably, alone, without encounter or
relapse and by mere quiet evasion, given his afternoon and evening to the
immediate and the sensible. They formed a qualified draught of Europe, an
afternoon and an evening on the banks of the Mersey, but such as it was he took
his potion at least undiluted. He winced a little, truly, at the thought that
Waymarsh might be already at Chester; he reflected that, should he have to
describe himself there as having got in so early, it would be difficult to make
the interval look particularly eager; but he was like a man who, elatedly
finding in his pocket more money than usual, handles it a while and idly and
pleasantly chinks it before addressing himself to the business of spending. That
he was prepared to be vague to Waymarsh about the hour of the ship's touching,
and that he both wanted extremely to see him and enjoyed extremely the duration
of delay - these things, it is to be conceived, were early signs in him that his
relation to his actual errand might prove none of the simplest. He was burdened,
poor Strether - it had better be confessed at the outset - with the oddity of a
double consciousness. There was detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his
indifference.
    After the young woman in the glass cage had held up to him across her
counter the pale-pink leaflet bearing his friend's name, which she neatly
pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall, facing a lady who met
his eyes as with an intention suddenly determined, and whose features - not
freshly young, not markedly fine, but on happy terms with each other - came back
to him as from a recent vision. For a moment they stood confronted; then the
moment placed her: he had noticed her the day before, noticed her at his
previous inn, where - again in the hall - she had been briefly engaged with some
people of his own ship's company. Nothing had actually passed between them, and
he would as little have been able to say what had been the sign of her face for
him on the first occasion as to name the ground of his present recognition.
Recognition at any rate appeared to prevail on her own side as well - which
would only have added to the mystery. All she now began by saying to him
nevertheless was that, having chanced to catch his enquiry, she was moved to
ask, by his leave, if it were possibly a question of Mr. Waymarsh of Milrose
Connecticut - Mr. Waymarsh the American lawyer.
    »Oh yes,« he replied, »my very well-known friend. He's to meet me here,
coming up from Malvern, and I supposed he'd already have arrived. But he doesn't't
come till later, and I'm relieved not to have kept him. Do you know him?«
Strether wound up.
    It wasn't't till after he had spoken that he became aware of how much there
had been in him of response; when the tone of her own rejoinder, as well as the
play of something more in her face - something more, that is, than its
apparently usual restless light - seemed to notify him. »I've met him at Milrose
- where I used sometimes, a good while ago, to stay; I had friends there who
were friends of his, and I've been at his house. I won't answer for it that he
would know me,« Strether's new acquaintance pursued; »but I should be delighted
to see him. Perhaps,« she added, »I shall - for I'm staying over.« She paused
while our friend took in these things, and it was as if a good deal of talk had
already passed. They even vaguely smiled at it, and Strether presently observed
that Mr. Waymarsh would, no doubt, be easily to be seen. This, however, appeared
to affect the lady as if she might have advanced too far. She appeared to have
no reserves about anything. »Oh,« she said, »he won't care!« - and she
immediately thereupon remarked that she believed Strether knew the Munsters; the
Munsters being the people he had seen her with at Liverpool.
    But he didn't, it happened, know the Munsters well enough to give the case
much of a lift; so that they were left together as if over the mere laid table
of conversation. Her qualification of the mentioned connexion had rather removed
than placed a dish, and there seemed nothing else to serve. Their attitude
remained, none the less, that of not forsaking the board; and the effect of this
in turn was to give them the appearance of having accepted each other with an
absence of preliminaries practically complete. They moved along the hall
together, and Strether's companion threw off that the hotel had the advantage of
a garden. He was aware by this time of his strange inconsequence: he had shirked
the intimacies of the steamer and had muffled the shock of Waymarsh only to find
himself forsaken, in this sudden case, both of avoidance and of caution. He
passed, under this unsought protection and before he had so much as gone up to
his room, into the garden of the hotel, and at the end of ten minutes had agreed
to meet there again, as soon as he should have made himself tidy, the dispenser
of such good assurances. He wanted to look at the town, and they would forthwith
look together. It was almost as if she had been in possession and received him
as a guest. Her acquaintance with the place presented her in a manner as a
hostess, and Strether had a rueful glance for the lady in the glass cage. It was
as if this personage had seen herself instantly superseded.
    When in a quarter of an hour he came down, what his hostess saw, what she
might have taken in with a vision kindly adjusted, was the lean, the slightly
loose figure of a man of the middle height and something more perhaps than the
middle age - a man of five- whose most immediate signs were a marked bloodless
brownness of face, a thick dark moustache, of characteristically American cut,
growing strong and falling low, a head of hair still abundant but irregularly
streaked with grey, and a nose of bold free prominence, the even line, the high
finish, as it might have been called, of which, had a certain effect of
mitigation. A perpetual pair of glasses astride of this fine ridge, and a line,
unusually deep and drawn, the prolonged pen-stroke of time, accompanying the
curve of the moustache from nostril to chin, did something to complete the
facial furniture that an attentive observer would have seen catalogued, on the
spot, in the vision of the other party to Strether's appointment. She waited for
him in the garden, the other party, drawing on a pair of singularly fresh soft
and elastic light gloves and presenting herself with a superficial readiness
which, as he approached her over the small smooth lawn and in the watery English
sunshine, he might, with his rougher preparation, have marked as the model for
such an occasion. She had, this lady, a perfect plain propriety, an expensive
subdued suitability, that her companion was not free to analyse, but that struck
him, so that his consciousness of it was instantly acute, as a quality quite new
to him. Before reaching her he stopped on the grass and went through the form of
feeling for something, possibly forgotten, in the light overcoat he carried on
his arm; yet the essence of the act was no more than the impulse to gain time.
Nothing could have been odder than Strether's sense of himself as at that moment
launched in something of which the sense would be quite disconnected from the
sense of his past and which was literally beginning there and then. It had begun
in fact already upstairs and before the dressing-glass that struck him as
blocking further, so strangely, the dimness of the window of his dull bedroom;
begun with a sharper survey of the elements of Appearance than he had for a long
time been moved to make. He had during those moments felt these elements to be
not so much to his hand as he should have liked, and then had fallen back on the
thought that they were precisely a matter as to which help was supposed to come
from what he was about to do. He was about to go up to London, so that hat and
necktie might wait. What had come as straight to him as a ball in a well-played
game - and caught moreover not less neatly - was just the air, in the person of
his friend, of having seen and chosen, the air of achieved possession of those
vague qualities and quantities that collectively figured to him as the advantage
snatched from lucky chances. Without pomp or circumstance, certainly, as her
original address to him, equally with his own response, had been, he would have
sketched to himself his impression of her as: »Well, she's more thoroughly
civilized -!« If »More thoroughly than whom?« would not have been for him a
sequel to this remark, that was just by reason of his deep consciousness of the
bearing of his comparison.
    The amusement, at all events, of a civilisation intenser was what - familiar
compatriot as she was, with the full tone of the compatriot and the rattling
link not with mystery but only with dear dyspeptic Waymarsh - she appeared
distinctly to promise. His pause while he felt in his overcoat was positively
the pause of confidence, and it enabled his eyes to make out as much of a case
for her, in proportion, as her own made out for himself. She affected him as
almost insolently young; but an easily carried five-and-thirty could still do
that. She was, however, like himself, marked and wan; only it naturally couldn't
have been known to him how much a spectator looking from one to the other might
have discerned that they had in common. It wouldn't for such a spectator have
been altogether insupposable that, each so finely brown and so sharply spare,
each confessing so to dents of surface and aids to sight, to a disproportionate
nose and a head delicately or grossly grizzled, they might have been brother and
sister. On this ground indeed there would have been a residuum of difference;
such a sister having surely known in respect to such a brother the extremity of
separation, and such a brother now feeling in respect to such a sister the
extremity of surprise. Surprise, it was true, was not on the other hand what the
eyes of Strether's friend most showed him while she gave him, stroking her
gloves smoother, the time he appreciated. They had taken hold of him
straightway, measuring him up and down as if they knew how; as if he were human
material they had already in some sort handled. Their possessor was in truth, it
may be communicated, the mistress of a hundred cases or categories, receptacles
of the mind, subdivisions for convenience, in which, from a full experience, she
pigeon-holed her fellow mortals with a hand as free as that of a compositor
scattering type. She was as equipped in this particular as Strether was the
reverse, and it made an opposition between them which he might well have shrunk
from submitting to if he had fully suspected it. So far as he did suspect it he
was on the contrary, after a short shake of his consciousness, as pleasantly
passive as might be. He really had a sort of sense of what she knew. He had
quite the sense that she knew things he didn't, and though this was a concession
that in general he found not easy to make to women, he made it now as
good-humouredly as if it lifted a burden. His eyes were so quiet behind his
eternal nippers that they might almost have been absent without changing his
face, which took its expression mainly, and not least its stamp of sensibility,
from other sources, surface and grain and form. He joined his guide in an
instant, and then felt she had profited still better than he by his having been,
for the moments just mentioned, so at the disposal of her intelligence. She knew
even intimate things about him that he hadn't yet told her and perhaps never
would. He wasn't't unaware that he had told her rather remarkably many for the
time, but these were not the real ones. Some of the real ones, however,
precisely, were what she knew.
    They were to pass again through the hall of the inn to get into the street,
and it was here she presently checked him with a question. »Have you looked up
my name?«
    He could only stop with a laugh. »Have you looked up mine?«
    »Oh dear, yes - as soon as you left me. I went to the office and asked.
Hadn't you better do the same?«
    He wondered. »Find out who you are? - after the uplifted young woman there
has seen us thus scrape acquaintance!«
    She laughed on her side now at the shade of alarm in his amusement. »Isn't
it a reason the more? If what you're afraid of is the injury for me - my being
seen to walk off with a gentleman who has to ask who I am - I assure you I don't
in the least mind. Here, however,« she continued, »is my card, and as I find
there's something else again I have to say at the office, you can just study it
during the moment I leave you.«
    She left him after he had taken from her the small pasteboard she had
extracted from her pocket-book, and he had extracted another from his own, to
exchange with it, before she came back. He read thus the simple designation
Maria Gostrey, to which was attached, in a corner of the card, with a number,
the name of a street, presumably in Paris, without other appreciable identity
than its foreignness. He put the card into his waistcoat pocket, keeping his own
meanwhile in evidence; and as he leaned against the door-post he met with the
smile of a straying thought what the expanse before the hotel offered to his
view. It was positively droll to him that he should already have Maria Gostrey,
whoever she was - of which he hadn't really the least idea - in a place of safe
keeping. He had somehow an assurance that he should carefully preserve the
little token he had just tucked in. He gazed with unseeing lingering eyes as he
followed some of the implications of his act, asking himself if he really felt
admonished to qualify it as disloyal. It was prompt, it was possibly even
premature, and there was little doubt of the expression of face the sight of it
would have produced in a certain person. But if it was wrong - why then he had
better not have come out at all. At this, poor man, had he already - and even
before meeting Waymarsh - arrived. He had believed he had a limit, but the limit
had been transcended within thirty-six hours. By how long a space on the plane
of manners, or even of morals, moreover, he felt still more sharply after Maria
Gostrey had come back to him and with a gay decisive »So now -!« led him forth
into the world. This counted, it struck him as he walked beside her with his
overcoat on an arm, his umbrella under another and his personal pasteboard a
little stiffly retained between forefinger and thumb, this struck him as really,
in comparison, his introduction to things. It hadn't been Europe at Liverpool,
no - not even in the dreadful delightful impressive streets the night before -
to the extent his present companion made it so. She hadn't yet done that so much
as when, after their walk had lasted a few minutes and he had had time to wonder
if a couple of sidelong glances from her meant that he had best have put on
gloves, she almost pulled him up with an amused challenge. »But why - fondly as
it's so easy to imagine your clinging to it - don't you put it away? Or if it's
an inconvenience to you to carry it, one's often glad to have one's card back.
The fortune one spends in them!«
    Then he saw both that his way of marching with his own prepared tribute had
affected her as a deviation in one of those directions he couldn't yet measure,
and that she supposed this emblem to be still the one he had received from her.
He accordingly handed her the card as if in restitution, but as soon as she had
it she felt the difference and, with her eyes on it, stopped short for apology.
»I like,« she observed, »your name.«
    »Oh,« he answered, »you won't have heard of it!« Yet he had his reasons for
not being sure but that she perhaps might.
    Ah it was but too visible! She read it over again as one who had never seen
it. » Mr. Lewis Lambert Strether «- she sounded it almost as freely as for any
stranger. She repeated however that she liked it - »particularly the Lewis
Lambert. It's the name of a novel of Balzac's.«
    »Oh I know that!« said Strether.
    »But the novel's an awfully bad one.«
    »I know that too,« Strether smiled. To which he added with an irrelevance
that was only superficial: »I come from Woollett Massachusetts.« It made her for
some reason - the irrelevance or whatever - laugh. Balzac had described many
cities, but hadn't described Woollett Massachusetts. »You say that,« she
returned, »as if you wanted one immediately to know the worst.«
    »Oh I think it's a thing,« he said, »that you must already have made out. I
feel it so that I certainly must look it, speak it, and, as people say there,
act it. It sticks out of me, and you knew surely for yourself as soon as you
looked at me.«
    »The worst, you mean?«
    »Well, the fact of where I come from. There at any rate it is; so that you
won't be able, if anything happens, to say I've not been straight with you.«
    »I see« - and Miss Gostrey looked really interested in the point he had
made. »But what do you think of as happening?«
    Though he wasn't't shy - which was rather anomalous - Strether gazed about
without meeting her eyes; a motion that was frequent with him in talk, yet of
which his words often seemed not at all the effect. »Why that you should find me
too hopeless.« With which they walked on again together while she answered, as
they went, that the most hopeless of her countryfolk were in general precisely
those she liked best. All sorts of other pleasant small things - small things
that were yet large for him - flowered in the air of the occasion; but the
bearing of the occasion itself on matters still remote concerns us too closely
to permit us to multiply our illustrations. Two or three, however, in truth, we
should perhaps regret to lose. The tortuous wall - girdle, long since snapped,
of the little swollen city, half held in place by careful civic hands - wanders
in narrow file between parapets smoothed by peaceful generations, pausing here
and there for a dismantled gate or a bridged gap, with rises and drops, steps up
and steps down, queer twists, queer contacts, peeps into homely streets and
under the brows of gables, views of cathedral tower and waterside fields, of
huddled English town and ordered English country. Too deep almost for words was
the delight of these things to Strether; yet as deeply mixed with it were
certain images of his inward picture. He had trod this walk in the far-off time,
at twenty-five; but that, instead of spoiling it, only enriched it for present
feeling and marked his renewal as a thing substantial enough to share. It was
with Waymarsh he should have shared it, and he was now accordingly taking from
him something that was his due. He looked repeatedly at his watch, and when he
had done so for the fifth time Miss Gostrey took him up.
    »You're doing something that you think not right.«
    It so touched the place that he quite changed colour and his laugh grew
almost awkward. »Am I enjoying it as much as that?«
    »You're not enjoying it, I think, so much as you ought.«
    »I see« - he appeared thoughtfully to agree. »Great is my privilege.«
    »Oh it's not your privilege! It has nothing to do with me. It has to do with
yourself. Your failure's general.«
    »Ah there you are!« he laughed. »It's the failure of Woollett. That's
general.«
    »The failure to enjoy,« Miss Gostrey explained, »is what I mean.«
    »Precisely. Woollett isn't sure it ought to enjoy. If it were it would. But
it hasn't, poor thing,« Strether continued, »any one to show it how. It's not
like me. I have somebody.«
    They had stopped, in the afternoon sunshine - constantly pausing, in their
stroll, for the sharper sense of what they saw - and Strether rested on one of
the high sides of the old stony groove of the little rampart. He leaned back on
this support with his face to the tower of the cathedral, now admirably
commanded by their station, the high red-brown mass, square and subordinately
spired and crocketed, retouched and restored, but charming to his long-sealed
eyes and with the first swallows of the year weaving their flight all round it.
Miss Gostrey lingered near him, full of an air, to which she more and more
justified her right, of understanding the effect of things. She quite concurred.
»You've indeed somebody.« And she added: »I wish you would let me show you how!«
    »Oh I'm afraid of you!« he cheerfully pleaded.
    She kept on him a moment, through her glasses and through his own, a certain
pleasant pointedness. »Ah no, you're not! You're not in the least, thank
goodness! If you had been we shouldn't so soon have found ourselves here
together. I think,« she comfortably concluded, »you trust me.«
    »I think I do! - but that's exactly what I'm afraid of. I shouldn't mind if
I didn't. It's falling thus in twenty minutes so utterly into your hands. I dare
say,« Strether continued, »it's a sort of thing you're thoroughly familiar with;
but nothing more extraordinary has ever happened to me.«
    She watched him with all her kindness. »That means simply that you've
recognised me - which is rather beautiful and rare. You see what I am.« As on
this, however, he protested, with a good-humoured headshake, a resignation of
any such claim, she had a moment of explanation. »If you'll only come on further
as you have come you'll at any rate make out. My own fate has been too many for
me, and I've succumbed to it. I'm a general guide - to Europe, don't you know? I
wait for people - I put them through. I pick them up - I set them down. I'm a
sort of superior courier-maid. I'm a companion at large. I take people, as I've
told you, about. I never sought it - it has come to me. It has been my fate, and
one's fate one accepts. It's a dreadful thing to have to say, in so wicked a
world, but I verily believe that, such as you see me, there's nothing I don't
know. I know all the shops and the prices - but I know worse things still. I
bear on my back the huge load of our national consciousness, or, in other words
- for it comes to that - of our nation itself. Of what is our nation composed
but of the men and women individually on my shoulders? I don't do it, you know,
for any particular advantage. I don't do it, for instance - some people do, you
know - for money.«
    Strether could only listen and wonder and weigh his chance. »And yet,
affected as you are then to so many of your clients, you can scarcely be said to
do it for love.« He waited a moment. »How do we reward you?«
    She had her own hesitation, but »You don't!« she finally returned, setting
him again in motion. They went on, but in a few minutes, though while still
thinking over what she had said, he once more took out his watch; mechanically,
unconsciously and as if made nervous by the mere exhilaration of what struck him
as her strange and cynical wit. He looked at the hour without seeing it, and
then, on something again said by his companion, had another pause. »You're
really in terror of him.«
    He smiled a smile that he almost felt to be sickly. »Now you can see why I'm
afraid of you.«
    »Because I've such illuminations? Why they're all for your help! It's what I
told you,« she added, »just now. You feel as if this were wrong.«
    He fell back once more, settling himself against the parapet as if to hear
more about it. »Then get me out!«
    Her face fairly brightened for the joy of the appeal, but, as if it were a
question of immediate action, she visibly considered. »Out of waiting for him? -
of seeing him at all?«
    »Oh no - not that,« said poor Strether, looking grave. »I've got to wait for
him - and I want very much to see him. But out of the terror. You did put your
finger on it a few minutes ago. It's general, but it avails itself of particular
occasions. That's what it's doing for me now. I'm always considering something
else; something else, I mean, than the thing of the moment. The obsession of the
other thing is the terror. I'm considering at present for instance something
else than you.«
    She listened with charming earnestness. »Oh you oughtn't to do that!«
    »It's what I admit. Make it then impossible.«
    She continued to think. »Is it really an order from you? - that I shall take
the job? Will you give yourself up?«
    Poor Strether heaved his sigh. »If I only could! But that's the deuce of it
- that I never can. No - I can't.«
    She wasn't't, however, discouraged. »But you want to at least?«
    »Oh unspeakably!«
    »Ah then, if you'll try!« - and she took over the job, as she had called it,
on the spot. »Trust me!« she exclaimed; and the action of this, as they retraced
their steps, was presently to make him pass his hand into her arm in the manner
of a benign dependent paternal old person who wishes to be nice to a younger
one. If he drew it out again indeed as they approached the inn this may have
been because, after more talk had passed between them, the relation of age, or
at least of experience - which, for that matter, had already played to and fro
with some freedom - affected him as incurring a readjustment. It was at all
events perhaps lucky that they arrived in sufficiently separate fashion within
range of the hotel-door. The young lady they had left in the glass cage watched
as if she had come to await them on the threshold. At her side stood a person
equally interested, by his attitude, in their return, and the effect of the
sight of whom was instantly to determine for Strether another of those
responsive arrests that we have had so repeatedly to note. He left it to Miss
Gostrey to name, with the fine full bravado, as it almost struck him, of her Mr.
Waymarsh! what was to have been, what - he more than ever felt as his short
stare of suspended welcome took things in - would have been, but for herself,
his doom. It was already upon him even at that distance - Mr. Waymarsh was for
his part joyless.

                                       II

 
He had none the less to confess to this friend that evening that he knew almost
nothing about her, and it was a deficiency that Waymarsh, even with his memory
refreshed by contact, by her own prompt and lucid allusions and enquiries, by
their having publicly partaken of dinner in her company, and by another stroll,
to which she was not a stranger, out into the town to look at the cathedral by
moonlight - it was a blank that the resident of Milrose, though admitting
acquaintance with the Munsters, professed himself unable to fill. He had no
recollection of Miss Gostrey, and two or three questions that she put to him
about those members of his circle had, to Strether's observation, the same
effect he himself had already more directly felt - the effect of appearing to
place all knowledge, for the time, on this original woman's side. It interested
him indeed to mark the limits of any such relation for her with his friend as
there could possibly be a question of, and it particularly struck him that they
were to be marked altogether in Waymarsh's quarter. This added to his own sense
of having gone far with her - gave him an early illustration of a much shorter
course. There was a certitude he immediately grasped - a conviction that
Waymarsh would quite fail, as it were, and on whatever degree of acquaintance,
to profit by her.
    There had been after the first interchange among the three a talk of some
five minutes in the hall, and then the two men had adjourned to the garden, Miss
Gostrey for the time disappearing. Strether in due course accompanied his friend
to the room he had bespoken and had, before going out, scrupulously visited;
where at the end of another half-hour he had no less discreetly left him. On
leaving him he repaired straight to his own room, but with the prompt effect of
feeling the compass of that chamber resented by his condition. There he enjoyed
at once the first consequence of their reunion. A place was too small for him
after it that had seemed large enough before. He had awaited it with something
he would have been sorry, have been almost ashamed not to recognise as emotion,
yet with a tacit assumption at the same time that emotion would in the event
find itself relieved. The actual oddity was that he was only more excited; and
his excitement - to which indeed he would have found it difficult instantly to
give a name - brought him once more downstairs and caused him for some minutes
vaguely to wander. He went once more to the garden; he looked into the public
room, found Miss Gostrey writing letters and backed out; he roamed, fidgeted and
wasted time; but he was to have his more intimate session with his friend before
the evening closed.
    It was late - not till Strether had spent an hour upstairs with him - that
this subject consented to betake himself to doubtful rest. Dinner and the
subsequent stroll by moonlight - a dream, on Strether's part, of romantic
effects rather prosaically merged in a mere missing of thicker coats - had
measurably intervened, and this midnight conference was the result of Waymarsh's
having (when they were free, as he put it, of their fashionable friend) found
the smoking-room not quite what he wanted, and yet bed what he wanted less. His
most frequent form of words was that he knew himself, and they were applied on
this occasion to his certainty of not sleeping. He knew himself well enough to
know that he should have a night of prowling unless he should succeed, as a
preliminary, in getting prodigiously tired. If the effort directed to this end
involved till a late hour the presence of Strether - consisted, that is, in the
detention of the latter for full discourse - there was yet an impression of
minor discipline involved for our friend in the picture Waymarsh made as he sat
in trousers and shirt on the edge of his couch. With his long legs extended and
his large back much bent, he nursed alternately, for an almost incredible time,
his elbows and his beard. He struck his visitor as extremely, as almost wilfully
uncomfortable; yet what had this been for Strether, from that first glimpse of
him disconcerted in the porch of the hotel, but the predominant note? The
discomfort was in a manner contagious, as well as also in a manner inconsequent
and unfounded; the visitor felt that unless he should get used to it - or unless
Waymarsh himself should - it would constitute a menace for his own prepared, his
own already confirmed, consciousness of the agreeable. On their first going up
together to the room Strether had selected for him Waymarsh had looked it over
in silence and with a sigh that represented for his companion, if not the habit
of disapprobation, at least the despair of felicity; and this look had recurred
to Strether as the key of much he had since observed. Europe, he had begun to
gather from these things, had up to now rather failed of its message to him; he
hadn't got into tune with it and had at the end of three months almost renounced
any such expectation.
    He really appeared at present to insist on that by just perching there with
the gas in his eyes. This of itself somehow conveyed the futility of single
rectifications in a multiform failure. He had a large handsome head and a large
sallow seamed face - a striking significant physiognomic total, the upper range
of which, the great political brow, the thick loose hair, the dark fuliginous
eyes, recalled even to a generation whose standard had dreadfully deviated the
impressive image, familiar by engravings and busts, of some great national
worthy of the earlier part of the mid-century. He was of the personal type - and
it was an element in the power and promise that in their early time Strether had
found in him - of the American statesman, the statesman trained in Congressional
halls, of an elder day. The legend had been in later years that as the lower
part of his face, which was weak, and slightly crooked, spoiled the likeness,
this was the real reason for the growth of his beard, which might have seemed to
spoil it for those not in the secret. He shook his mane; he fixed, with his
admirable eyes, his auditor or his observer; he wore no glasses and had a way,
partly formidable, yet also partly encouraging, as from a representative to a
constituent, of looking very hard at those who approached him. He met you as if
you had knocked and he had bidden you enter. Strether, who hadn't seen him for
so long an interval, apprehended him now with a freshness of taste, and had
perhaps never done him such ideal justice. The head was bigger, the eyes finer,
than they need have been for the career; but that only meant, after all, that
the career was itself expressive. What it expressed at midnight in the
gas-glaring bedroom at Chester was that the subject of it had, at the end of
years, barely escaped, by flight in time, a general nervous collapse. But this
very proof of the full life, as the full life was understood at Milrose, would
have made to Strether's imagination an element in which Waymarsh could have
floated easily had he only consented to float. Alas nothing so little resembled
floating as the rigour with which, on the edge of his bed, he hugged his posture
of prolonged impermanence. It suggested to his comrade something that always,
when kept up, worried him - a person established in a railway-coach with a
forward inclination. It represented the angle at which poor Waymarsh was to sit
through the ordeal of Europe.
    Thanks to the stress of occupation, the strain of professions, the
absorption and embarrassment of each, they had not, at home, during years before
this sudden brief and almost bewildering reign of comparative ease, found so
much as a day for a meeting; a fact that was in some degree an explanation of
the sharpness with which most of his friend's features stood out to Strether.
Those he had lost sight of since the early time came back to him; others that it
was never possible to forget struck him now as sitting, clustered and expectant,
like a somewhat defiant family-group, on the doorstep of their residence. The
room was narrow for its length, and the occupant of the bed thrust so far a pair
of slippered feet that the visitor had almost to step over them in his recurrent
rebounds from his chair to fidget back and forth. There were marks the friends
made on things to talk about, and on things not to, and one of the latter in
particular fell like the tap of chalk on the blackboard. Married at thirty,
Waymarsh had not lived with his wife for fifteen years, and it came up vividly
between them in the glare of the gas that Strether wasn't't to ask about her. He
knew they were still separate and that she lived at hotels, travelled in Europe,
painted her face and wrote her husband abusive letters, of not one of which, to
a certainty, that sufferer spared himself the perusal; but he respected without
difficulty the cold twilight that had settled on this side of his companion's
life. It was a province in which mystery reigned and as to which Waymarsh had
never spoken the informing word. Strether, who wanted to do him the highest
justice wherever he could do it, singularly admired him for the dignity of this
reserve, and even counted it as one of the grounds - grounds all handled and
numbered - for ranking him, in the range of their acquaintance, as a success. He
was a success, Waymarsh, in spite of overwork, or prostration, of sensible
shrinkage, of his wife's letters and of his not liking Europe. Strether would
have reckoned his own career less futile had he been able to put into it
anything so handsome as so much fine silence. One might one's self easily have
left Mrs. Waymarsh; and one would assuredly have paid one's tribute to the ideal
in covering with that attitude the derision of having been left by her. Her
husband had held his tongue and had made a large income; and these were in
especial the achievements as to which Strether envied him. Our friend had had
indeed on his side too a subject for silence, which he fully appreciated; but it
was a matter of a different sort, and the figure of the income he had arrived at
had never been high enough to look any one in the face.
    »I don't know as I quite see what you require it for. You don't appear sick
to speak of.« It was of Europe Waymarsh thus finally spoke.
    »Well,« said Strether, who fell as much as possible into step, »I guess I
don't feel sick now that I've started. But I had pretty well run down before I
did start.«
    Waymarsh raised his melancholy look. »Ain't you about up to your usual
average?«
    It was not quite pointedly sceptical, but it seemed somehow a plea for the
purest veracity, and it thereby affected our friend as the very voice of
Milrose. He had long since made a mental distinction - though never in truth
daring to betray it - between the voice of Milrose and the voice even of
Woollett. It was the former, he felt, that was most in the real tradition. There
had been occasions in his past when the sound of it had reduced him to temporary
confusion, and the present, for some reason, suddenly became such another. It
was nevertheless no light matter that the very effect of his confusion should be
to make him again prevaricate. »That description hardly does justice to a man to
whom it has done such a lot of good to see you.«
    Waymarsh fixed on his washing-stand the silent detached stare with which
Milrose in person, as it were, might have marked the unexpectedness of a
compliment from Woollett; and Strether, for his part, felt once more like
Woollett in person. »I mean,« his friend presently continued, »that your
appearance isn't as bad as I've seen it: it compares favourably with what it was
when I last noticed it.« On this appearance Waymarsh's eyes yet failed to rest;
it was almost as if they obeyed an instinct of propriety, and the effect was
still stronger when, always considering the basin and jug, he added: »You've
filled out some since then.«
    »I'm afraid I have,« Strether laughed: »one does fill out some with all one
takes in, and I've taken in, I dare say, more than I've natural room for. I was
dog-tired when I sailed.« It had the oddest sound of cheerfulness.
    »I was dog-tired,« his companion returned, »when I arrived, and it's this
wild hunt for rest that takes all the life out of me. The fact is, Strether -
and it's a comfort to have you here at last to say it to; though I don't know,
after all, that I've really waited; I've told it to people I've met in the cars
- the fact is, such a country as this ain't my kind of country anyway. There
ain't a country I've seen over here that does seem my kind. Oh I don't say but
what there are plenty of pretty places and remarkable old things; but the
trouble is that I don't seem to feel anywhere in tune. That's one of the reasons
why I suppose I've gained so little. I haven't had the first sign of that lift I
was led to expect.« With this he broke out more earnestly. »Look here - I want
to go back.«
    His eyes were all attached to Strether's now, for he was one of the men who
fully face you when they talk of themselves. This enabled his friend to look at
him hard and immediately to appear to the highest advantage in his eyes by doing
so. »That's a genial thing to say to a fellow who has come out on purpose to
meet you!«
    Nothing could have been finer, on this, than Waymarsh's sombre glow. »Have
you come out on purpose?«
    »Well - very largely.«
    »I thought from the way you wrote there was something back of it.«
    Strether hesitated. »Back of my desire to be with you?«
    »Back of your prostration.«
    Strether, with a smile made more dim by a certain consciousness, shook his
head. »There are all the causes of it!«
    »And no particular cause that seemed most to drive you?«
    Our friend could at last conscientiously answer. »Yes. One. There is a
matter that has had much to do with my coming out.«
    Waymarsh waited a little. »Too private to mention?«
    »No, not too private - for you. Only rather complicated.«
    »Well,« said Waymarsh, who had waited again, »I may lose my mind over here,
but I don't know as I've done so yet.«
    »Oh you shall have the whole thing. But not tonight.«
    Waymarsh seemed to sit stiffer and to hold his elbows tighter. »Why not - if
I can't sleep?«
    »Because, my dear man, I can!«
    »Then where's your prostration?«
    »Just in that - that I can put in eight hours.« And Strether brought it out
that if Waymarsh didn't gain it was because he didn't go to bed: the result of
which was, in its order, that, to do the latter justice, he permitted his friend
to insist on his really getting settled. Strether, with a kind coercive hand for
it, assisted him to this consummation, and again found his own part in their
relation auspiciously enlarged by the smaller touches of lowering the lamp and
seeing to a sufficiency of blanket. It somehow ministered for him to indulgence
to feel Waymarsh, who looked unnaturally big and black in bed, as much tucked in
as a patient in a hospital and, with his covering up to his chin, as much
simplified by it. He hovered in vague pity, to be brief, while his companion
challenged him out of the bedclothes. »Is she really after you? Is that what's
behind?«
    Strether felt an uneasiness at the direction taken by his companion's
insight, but he played a little at uncertainty. »Behind my coming out?«
    »Behind your prostration or whatever. It's generally felt, you know, that
she follows you up pretty close.«
    Strether's candour was never very far off. »Oh it has occurred to you that
I'm literally running away from Mrs. Newsome?«
    »Well, I haven't known but what you are. You're a very attractive man,
Strether. You've seen for yourself,« said Waymarsh, »what that lady downstairs
makes of it. Unless indeed,« he rambled on with an effect between the ironic and
the anxious, »it's you who are after her. Is Mrs. Newsome over here?« He spoke
as with a droll dread of her.
    It made his friend - though rather dimly - smile. »Dear no; she's safe,
thank goodness - as I think I more and more feel - at home. She thought of
coming, but she gave it up. I've come in a manner instead of her; and come to
that extent - for you're right in your inference - on her business. So you see
there is plenty of connexion.«
    Waymarsh continued to see at least all there was. »Involving accordingly the
particular one I've referred to?«
    Strether took another turn about the room, giving a twitch to his
companion's blanket and finally gaining the door. His feeling was that of a
nurse who had earned personal rest by having made everything straight.
»Involving more things than I can think of breaking ground on now. But don't be
afraid - you shall have them from me: you'll probably find yourself having quite
as much of them as you can do with. I shall - if we keep together - very much
depend on your impression of some of them.«
    Waymarsh's acknowledgement of this tribute was characteristically indirect.
»You mean to say you don't believe we will keep together?«
    »I only glance at the danger,« Strether paternally said, »because when I
hear you wail to go back I seem to see you open up such possibilities of folly.«
    Waymarsh took it - silent a little - like a large snubbed child. »What are
you going to do with me?«
    It was the very question Strether himself had put to Miss Gostrey, and he
wondered if he had sounded like that. But he at least could be more definite.
»I'm going to take you right down to London.«
    »Oh I've been down to London!« Waymarsh more softly moaned. »I've no use,
Strether, for anything down there.«
    »Well,« said Strether, good-humouredly, »I guess you've some use for me.«
    »So I've got to go?«
    »Oh you've got to go further yet.«
    »Well,« Waymarsh sighed, »do your damnedest! Only you will tell me before
you lead me on all the way -?«
    Our friend had again so lost himself, both for amusement and for contrition,
in the wonder of whether he had made, in his own challenge that afternoon, such
another figure, that he for an instant missed the thread. »Tell you -?«
    »Why what you've got on hand.«
    Strether hesitated. »Why it's such a matter as that even if I positively
wanted I shouldn't be able to keep it from you.«
    Waymarsh gloomily gazed. »What does that mean then but that your trip is
just for her?«
    »For Mrs. Newsome? Oh it certainly is, as I say. Very much.«
    »Then why do you also say it's for me?«
    Strether, in impatience, violently played with his latch. »It's simple
enough. It's for both of you.«
    Waymarsh at last turned over with a groan. »Well, I won't marry you!«
    »Neither, when it comes to that -!« But the visitor had already laughed and
escaped.

                                      III

 
He had told Miss Gostrey he should probably take, for departure with Waymarsh,
some afternoon train, and it thereupon in the morning appeared that this lady
had made her own plan for an earlier one. She had breakfasted when Strether came
into the coffee-room; but, Waymarsh not having yet emerged, he was in time to
recall her to the terms of their understanding and to pronounce her discretion
overdone. She was surely not to break away at the very moment she had created a
want. He had met her as she rose from her little table in a window, where, with
the morning papers beside her, she reminded him, as he let her know, of Major
Pendennis breakfasting at his club - a compliment of which she professed a deep
appreciation; and he detained her as pleadingly as if he had already - and
notably under pressure of the visions of the night - learned to be unable to do
without her. She must teach him at all events, before she went, to order
breakfast as breakfast was ordered in Europe, and she must especially sustain
him in the problem of ordering for Waymarsh. The latter had laid upon his
friend, by desperate sounds through the door of his room, dreadful divined
responsibilities in respect to beefsteak and oranges - responsibilities which
Miss Gostrey took over with an alertness of action that matched her quick
intelligence. She had before this weaned the expatriated from traditions
compared with which the matutinal beefsteak was but the creature of an hour, and
it was not for her, with some of her memories, to falter in the path; though she
freely enough declared, on reflection, that there was always in such cases a
choice of opposed policies. »There are times when to give them their head, you
know -!«
    They had gone to wait together in the garden for the dressing of the meal,
and Strether found her more suggestive than ever. »Well, what?«
    »Is to bring about for them such a complexity of relations - unless indeed
we call it a simplicity! - that the situation has to wind itself up. They want
to go back.«
    »And you want them to go!« Strether gaily concluded.
    »I always want them to go, and I send them as fast as I can.«
    »Oh I know - you take them to Liverpool.«
    »Any port will serve in a storm. I'm - with all my other functions - an
agent for repatriation. I want to re-people our stricken country. What will
become of it else? I want to discourage others.«
    The ordered English garden, in the freshness of the day, was delightful to
Strether, who liked the sound, under his feet, of the tight fine gravel, packed
with the chronic damp, and who had the idlest eye for the deep smoothness of
turf and the clean curves of paths. »Other people?«
    »Other countries. Other people - yes. I want to encourage our own.«
    Strether wondered. »Not to come? Why then do you meet them? - since it
doesn't't appear to be to stop them?«
    »Oh that they shouldn't come is as yet too much to ask. What I attend to is
that they come quickly and return still more so. I meet them to help it to be
over as soon as possible, and though I don't stop them I've my way of putting
them through. That's my little system; and, if you want to know,« said Maria
Gostrey, »it's my real secret, my innermost mission and use. I only seem, you
see, to beguile and approve; but I've thought it all out and I'm working all the
while underground. I can't perhaps quite give you my formula, but I think that
practically I succeed. I send you back spent. So you stay back. Passed through
my hands -«
    »We don't turn up again?« The further she went the further he always saw
himself able to follow. »I don't want your formula - I feel quite enough, as I
hinted yesterday, your abysses. Spent!« he echoed. »If that's how you're
arranging so subtly to send me I thank you for the warning.«
    For a minute, amid the pleasantness - poetry in tariffed items, but all the
more, for guests already convicted, a challenge to consumption - they smiled at
each other in confirmed fellowship. »Do you call it subtly? It's a plain poor
tale. Besides, you're a special case.«
    »Oh special cases - that's weak!« She was weak enough, further still, to
defer her journey and agree to accompany the gentlemen on their own, might a
separate carriage mark her independence; though it was in spite of this to
befall after luncheon that she went off alone and that, with a tryst taken for a
day of her company in London, they lingered another night. She had, during the
morning - spent in a way that he was to remember later on as the very climax of
his foretaste, as warm with presentiments, with what he would have called
collapses - had all sorts of things out with Strether; and among them the fact
that though there was never a moment of her life when she wasn't't due somewhere,
there was yet scarce a perfidy to others of which she wasn't't capable for his
sake. She explained moreover that wherever she happened to be she found a
dropped thread to pick up, a ragged edge to repair, some familiar appetite in
ambush, jumping out as she approached, yet appeasable with a temporary biscuit.
It became, on her taking the risk of the deviation imposed on him by her
insidious arrangement of his morning meal, a point of honour for her not to fail
with Waymarsh of the larger success too; and her subsequent boast to Strether
was that she had made their friend fare - and quite without his knowing what was
the matter - as Major Pendennis would have fared at the Megatherium. She had
made him breakfast like a gentleman, and it was nothing, she forcibly asserted,
to what she would yet make him do. She made him participate in the slow
reiterated ramble with which, for Strether, the new day amply filled itself; and
it was by her art that he somehow had the air, on the ramparts and in the Rows,
of carrying a point of his own.
    The three strolled and stared and gossiped, or at least the two did; the
case really yielding for their comrade, if analysed, but the element of stricken
silence. This element indeed affected Strether as charged with audible
rumblings, but he was conscious of the care of taking it explicitly as a sign of
pleasant peace. He wouldn't appeal too much, for that provoked stiffness; yet he
wouldn't be too freely tacit, for that suggested giving up. Waymarsh himself
adhered to an ambiguous dumbness that might have represented either the growth
of a perception or the despair of one; and at times and in places - where the
low-browed galleries were darkest, the opposite gables queerest, the
solicitations of every kind densest - the others caught him fixing hard some
object of minor interest, fixing even at moments nothing discernible, as if he
were indulging it with a truce. When he met Strether's eye on such occasions he
looked guilty and furtive, fell the next minute into some attitude of
retractation. Our friend couldn't show him the right things for fear of
provoking some total renouncement, and was tempted even to show him the wrong in
order to make him differ with triumph. There were moments when he himself felt
shy of professing the full sweetness of the taste of leisure, and there were
others when he found himself feeling as if his passages of interchange with the
lady at his side might fall upon the third member of their party very much as
Mr. Burchell, at Dr. Primrose's fireside, was influenced by the high flights of
the visitors from London. The smallest things so arrested and amused him that he
repeatedly almost apologised - brought up afresh in explanation his plea of a
previous grind. He was aware at the same time that his grind had been as nothing
to Waymarsh's, and he repeatedly confessed that, to cover his frivolity, he was
doing his best for his previous virtue. Do what he might, in any case, his
previous virtue was still there, and it seemed fairly to stare at him out of the
windows of shops that were not as the shops of Woollett, fairly to make him want
things that he shouldn't know what to do with. It was by the oddest, the least
admissible of laws demoralising him now; and the way it boldly took was to make
him want more wants. These first walks in Europe were in fact a kind of finely
lurid intimation of what one might find at the end of that process. Had he come
back after long years, in something already so like the evening of life, only to
be exposed to it? It was at all events over the shop-windows that he made, with
Waymarsh, most free; though it would have been easier had not the latter most
sensibly yielded to the appeal of the merely useful trades. He pierced with his
sombre detachment the plate-glass of ironmongers and saddlers, while Strether
flaunted an affinity with the dealers in stamped letter-paper and in smart
neckties. Strether was in fact recurrently shameless in the presence of the
tailors, though it was just over the heads of the tailors that his countryman
most loftily looked. This gave Miss Gostrey a grasped opportunity to back up
Waymarsh at his expense. The weary lawyer - it was unmistakeable - had a
conception of dress; but that, in view of some of the features of the effect
produced, was just what made the danger of insistence on it. Strether wondered
if he by this time thought Miss Gostrey less fashionable or Lambert Strether
more so; and it appeared probable that most of the remarks exchanged between
this latter pair about passers, figures, faces, personal types, exemplified in
their degree the disposition to talk as society talked.
    Was what was happening to himself then, was what already had happened,
really that a woman of fashion was floating him into society and that an old
friend deserted on the brink was watching the force of the current? When the
woman of fashion permitted Strether - as she permitted him at the most - the
purchase of a pair of gloves, the terms she made about it, the prohibition of
neckties and other items till she should be able to guide him through the
Burlington Arcade, were such as to fall upon a sensitive ear as a challenge to
just imputations. Miss Gostrey was such a woman of fashion as could make without
a symptom of vulgar blinking an appointment for the Burlington Arcade. Mere
discriminations about a pair of gloves could thus at any rate represent - always
for such sensitive ears as were in question - possibilities of something that
Strether could make a mark against only as the peril of apparent wantonness. He
had quite the consciousness of his new friend, for their companion, that he
might have had of a Jesuit in petticoats, a representative of the recruiting
interests of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, for Waymarsh - that was
to say the enemy, the monster of bulging eyes and far-reaching quivering groping
tentacles - was exactly society, exactly the multiplication of shibboleths,
exactly the discrimination of types and tones, exactly the wicked old Rows of
Chester, rank with feudalism; exactly in short Europe.
    There was light for observation, however, in an incident that occurred just
before they turned back to luncheon. Waymarsh had been for a quarter of an hour
exceptionally mute and distant, and something, or other - Strether was never to
make out exactly what - proved, as it were, too much for him after his comrades
had stood for three minutes taking in, while they leaned on an old balustrade
that guarded the edge of the Row, a particularly crooked and huddled
street-view. »He thinks us sophisticated, he thinks us worldly, he thinks us
wicked, he thinks us all sorts of queer things,« Strether reflected; for
wondrous were the vague quantities our friend had within a couple of short days
acquired the habit of conveniently and conclusively lumping together. There
seemed moreover a direct connexion between some such inference and a sudden grim
dash taken by Waymarsh to the opposite side. This movement was startlingly
sudden, and his companions at first supposed him to have espied, to be pursuing,
the glimpse of an acquaintance. They next made out, however, that an open door
had instantly received him, and they then recognised him as engulfed in the
establishment of a jeweller, behind whose glittering front he was lost to view.
The fact had somehow the note of a demonstration, and it left each of the others
to show a face almost of fear. But Miss Gostrey broke into a laugh. »What's the
matter with him?«
    »Well,« said Strether, »he can't stand it.«
    »But can't stand what?«
    »Anything. Europe.«
    »Then how will that jeweller help him?«
    Strether seemed to make it out, from their position, between the interstices
of arrayed watches, of close-hung dangling gewgaws. »You'll see.«
    »Ah that's just what - if he buys anything - I'm afraid of: that I shall see
something rather dreadful.«
    Strether studied the finer appearances. »He may buy everything.«
    »Then don't you think we ought to follow him?«
    »Not for worlds. Besides we can't. We're paralysed. We exchange a long
scared look, we publicly tremble. The thing is, you see, we realise. He has
struck for freedom.«
    She wondered but she laughed. »Ah what a price to pay! And I was preparing
some for him so cheap.«
    »No, no,« Strether went on, frankly amused now; »don't call it that: the
kind of freedom you deal in is dear.« Then as to justify himself: »Am I not in
my way trying it? It's this.«
    »Being here, you mean, with me?«
    »Yes, and talking to you as I do. I've known you a few hours, and I've known
him all my life; so that if the ease I thus take with you about him isn't
magnificent« - and the thought of it held him a moment - »why it's rather base.«
    »It's magnificent!« said Miss Gostrey to make an end of it. »And you should
hear,« she added, »the ease I take - and I above all intend to take - with Mr.
Waymarsh.«
    Strether thought. »About me? Ah that's no equivalent. The equivalent would
be Waymarsh's himself serving me up - his remorseless analysis of me. And he'll
never do that« - he was sadly clear. »He'll never remorselessly analyse me.« He
quite held her with the authority of this. »He'll never say a word to you about
me.«
    She took it in; she did it justice; yet after an instant her reason, her
restless irony, disposed of it. »Of course he won't. For what do you take
people, that they're able to say words about anything, able remorselessly to
analyse? There are not many like you and me. It will be only because he's too
stupid.«
    It stirred in her friend a sceptical echo which was at the same time the
protest of the faith of years. »Waymarsh stupid?«
    »Compared with you.«
    Strether had still his eyes on the jeweller's front, and he waited a moment
to answer. »He's a success of a kind that I haven't approached.«
    »Do you mean he has made money?«
    »He makes it - to my belief. And I,« said Strether, »though with a back
quite as bent, have never made anything. I'm a perfectly equipped failure.«
    He feared an instant she'd ask him if he meant he was poor; and he was glad
she didn't, for he really didn't know to what the truth on this unpleasant point
mightn't have prompted her. She only, however, confirmed his assertion. »Thank
goodness you're a failure - it's why I so distinguish you! Anything else to-day
is too hideous. Look about you - look at the successes. Would you be one, on
your honour? Look, moreover,« she continued, »at me.«
    For a little accordingly their eyes met. »I see,« Strether returned. »You
too are out of it.«
    »The superiority you discern in me,« she concurred, »announces my futility.
If you knew,« she sighed, »the dreams of my youth! But our realities are what
has brought us together. We're beaten brothers in arms.«
    He smiled at her kindly enough, but he shook his head. »It doesn't't alter the
fact that you're expensive. You've cost me already -!«
    But he had hung fire. »Cost you what?«
    »Well, my past - in one great lump. But no matter,« he laughed: »I'll pay
with my last penny.«
    Her attention had unfortunately now been engaged by their comrade's return,
for Waymarsh met their view as he came out of his shop. »I hope he hasn't paid,«
she said, »with his last; though I'm convinced he has been splendid, and has
been so for you.«
    »Ah no - not that!«
    »Then for me?«
    »Quite as little.« Waymarsh was by this time near enough to show signs his
friend could read, though he seemed to look almost carefully at nothing in
particular.
    »Then for himself?«
    »For nobody. For nothing. For freedom.«
    »But what has freedom to do with it?«
    Strether's answer was indirect. »To be as good as you and me. But
different.«
    She had had time to take in their companion's face; and with it, as such
things were easy for her, she took in all. »Different - yes. But better!«
    If Waymarsh was sombre he was also indeed almost sublime. He told them
nothing, left his absence unexplained, and though they were convinced he had
made some extraordinary purchase they were never to learn its nature. He only
glowered grandly at the tops of the old gables. »It's the sacred rage,« Strether
had had further time to say; and this sacred rage was to become between them,
for convenient comprehension, the description of one of his periodical
necessities. It was Strether who eventually contended that it did make him
better than they. But by that time Miss Gostrey was convinced that she didn't
want to be better than Strether.
 

                                  Book Second

                                       I

Those occasions on which Strether was, in association with the exile from
Milrose, to see the sacred rage glimmer through would doubtless have their due
periodicity; but our friend had meanwhile to find names for many other matters.
On no evening of his life perhaps, as he reflected, had he had to supply so many
as on the third of his short stay in London; an evening spent by Miss Gostrey's
side at one of the theatres, to which he had found himself transported, without
his own hand raised, on the mere expression of a conscientious wonder. She knew
her theatre, she knew her play, as she had triumphantly known, three days
running, everything else, and the moment filled to the brim, for her companion,
that apprehension of the interesting which, whether or no the interesting
happened to filter through his guide, strained now to its limits his brief
opportunity. Waymarsh hadn't come with them; he had seen plays enough, he
signified, before Strether had joined him - an affirmation that had its full
force when his friend ascertained by questions that he had seen two and a
circus. Questions as to what he had seen had on him indeed an effect only less
favourable than questions as to what he hadn't. He liked the former to be
discriminated; but how could it be done, Strether asked of their constant
counsellor, without discriminating the latter?
    Miss Gostrey had dined with him at his hotel, face to face over a small
table on which the lighted candles had rose-coloured shades; and the
rose-coloured shades and the small table and the soft fragrance of the lady -
had anything to his mere sense ever been so soft? - were so many touches in he
scarce knew what positive high picture. He had been to the theatre, even to the
opera, in Boston, with Mrs. Newsome, more than once acting as her only escort;
but there had been no little confronted dinner, no pink lights, no whiff of
vague sweetness, as a preliminary: one of the results of which was that at
present, mildly rueful, though with a sharpish accent, he actually asked himself
why there hadn't. There was much the same difference in his impression of the
noticed state of his companion, whose dress was cut down, as he believed the
term to be, in respect to shoulders and bosom, in a manner quite other than Mrs.
Newsome's, and who wore round her throat a broad red velvet band with an antique
jewel - he was rather complacently sure it was antique - attached to it in
front. Mrs. Newsome's dress was never in any degree cut down, and she never wore
round her throat a broad red velvet band: if she had, moreover, would it ever
have served so to carry on and complicate, as he now almost felt, his vision?
    It would have been absurd of him to trace into ramifications the effect of
the ribbon from which Miss Gostrey's trinket depended, had he not for the hour,
at the best, been so given over to uncontrolled perceptions. What was it but an
uncontrolled perception that his friend's velvet band somehow added, in her
appearance, to the value of every other item - to that of her smile and of the
way she carried her head, to that of her complexion, of her lips, her teeth, her
eyes, her hair? What, certainly, had a man conscious of a man's work in the
world to do with red velvet bands? He wouldn't for anything have so exposed
himself as to tell Miss Gostrey how much he liked hers, yet he had none the less
not only caught himself in the act - frivolous, no doubt, idiotic, and above all
unexpected - of liking it: he had in addition taken it as a starting-point for
fresh backward, fresh forward, fresh lateral flights. The manner in which Mrs.
Newsome's throat was encircled suddenly represented for him, in an alien order,
almost as many things as the manner in which Miss Gostrey's was. Mrs. Newsome
wore, at operatic hours, a black silk dress - very handsome, he knew it was
handsome - and an ornament that his memory was able further to identify as a
ruche. He had his association indeed with the ruche, but it was rather
imperfectly romantic. He had once said to the wearer - and it was as free a
remark as he had ever made to her - that she looked, with her ruff and other
matters, like Queen Elizabeth; and it had after this in truth been his fancy
that, as a consequence of that tenderness and an acceptance of the idea, the
form of this special tribute to the frill had grown slightly more marked. The
connexion, as he sat there and let his imagination roam, was to strike him as
vaguely pathetic; but there it all was, and pathetic was doubtless in the
conditions the best thing it could possibly be. It had assuredly existed at any
rate; for it seemed now to come over him that no gentleman of his age at
Woollett could ever, to a lady of Mrs. Newsome's, which was not much less than
his, have embarked on such a simile.
    All sorts of things in fact now seemed to come over him, comparatively few
of which his chronicler can hope for space to mention. It came over him for
instance that Miss Gostrey looked perhaps like Mary Stuart: Lambert Strether had
a candour of fancy which could rest for an instant gratified in such an
antithesis. It came over him that never before - no, literally never - had a
lady dined with him at a public place before going to the play. The publicity of
the place was just, in the matter, for Strether, the rare strange thing; it
affected him almost as the achievement of privacy might have affected a man of a
different experience. He had married, in the far-away years, so young as to have
missed the time natural in Boston for taking girls to the Museum; and it was
absolutely true of him that - even after the close of the period of conscious
detachment occupying the centre of his life, the grey middle desert of the two
deaths, that of his wife and that, ten years later, of his boy - he had never
taken any one anywhere. It came over him in especial - though the monition had,
as happened, already sounded, fitfully gleamed, in other forms - that the
business he had come out on hadn't yet been so brought home to him as by the
sight of the people about him. She gave him the impression, his friend, at
first, more straight than he got it for himself - gave it simply by saying with
off-hand illumination: »Oh yes, they're types!« - but after he had taken it he
made to the full his own use of it; both while he kept silence for the four acts
and while he talked in the intervals. It was an evening, it was a world of
types, and this was a connexion above all in which the figures and faces in the
stalls were interchangeable with those on the stage.
    He felt as if the play itself penetrated him with the naked elbow of his
neighbour, a great stripped handsome red-haired lady who conversed with a
gentleman on her other side in stray dissyllables which had for his ear, in the
oddest way in the world, so much sound that he wondered they hadn't more sense;
and he recognised by the same law, beyond the footlights, what he was pleased to
take for the very flush of English life. He had distracted drops in which he
couldn't have said if it were actors or auditors who were most true, and the
upshot of which, each time, was the consciousness of new contacts. However he
viewed his job it was types he should have to tackle. Those before him and
around him were not as the types of Woollett, where, for that matter, it had
begun to seem to him that there must only have been the male and the female.
These made two exactly, even with the individual varieties. Here, on the other
hand, apart from the personal and the sexual range - which might be greater or
less - a series of strong stamps had been applied, as it were, from without;
stamps that his observation played with as, before a glass case on a table, it
might have passed from medal to medal and from copper to gold. It befell that in
the drama precisely there was a bad woman in a yellow frock who made a pleasant
weak good-looking young man in perpetual evening dress do the most dreadful
things. Strether felt himself on the whole not afraid of the yellow frock, but
he was vaguely anxious over a certain kindness into which he found himself
drifting for its victim. He hadn't come out, he reminded himself, to be too
kind, or indeed to be kind at all, to Chadwick Newsome. Would Chad also be in
perpetual evening dress? He somehow rather hoped it - it seemed so to add to
this young man's general amenability; though he wondered too if, to fight him
with his own weapons, he himself (a thought almost startling) would have
likewise to be. This young man furthermore would have been much more easy to
handle - at least for him - than appeared probable in respect to Chad.
    It came up for him with Miss Gostrey that there were things of which she
would really perhaps after all have heard; and she admitted when a little
pressed that she was never quite sure of what she heard as distinguished from
things such as, on occasions like the present, she only extravagantly guessed.
»I seem with this freedom, you see, to have guessed Mr. Chad. He's a young man
on whose head high hopes are placed at Woollett; a young man a wicked woman has
got hold of and whom his family over there have sent you out to rescue. You've
accepted the mission of separating him from the wicked woman. Are you quite sure
she's very bad for him?«
    Something in his manner showed it as quite pulling him up. »Of course we
are. Wouldn't you be?«
    »Oh I don't know. One never does - does one? - beforehand. One can only
judge on the facts. Yours are quite new to me; I'm really not in the least, as
you see, in possession of them: so it will be awfully interesting to have them
from you. If you're satisfied, that's all that's required. I mean if you're sure
you are sure: sure it won't do.«
    »That he should lead such a life? Rather!«
    »Oh but I don't know, you see, about his life; you've not told me about his
life. She may be charming - his life!«
    »Charming?« - Strether stared before him. »She's base, venal - out of the
streets.«
    »I see. And he -?«
    »Chad, wretched boy?«
    »Of what type and temper is he?« she went on as Strether had lapsed.
    »Well - the obstinate.« It was as if for a moment he had been going to say
more and had then controlled himself.
    That was scarce what she wished. »Do you like him?«
    This time he was prompt. »No. How can I?«
    »Do you mean because of your being so saddled with him?«
    »I'm thinking of his mother,« said Strether after a moment. »He has darkened
her admirable life.« He spoke with austerity. »He has worried her half to
death.«
    »Oh that's of course odious.« She had a pause as if for renewed emphasis of
this truth, but it ended on another note. »Is her life very admirable?«
    »Extraordinarily.«
    There was so much in the tone that Miss Gostrey had to devote another pause
to the appreciation of it. »And has he only her? I don't mean the bad woman in
Paris,« she quickly added - »for I assure you I shouldn't even at the best be
disposed to allow him more than one. But has he only his mother?«
    »He has also a sister, older than himself and married; and they're both
remarkably fine women.«
    »Very handsome, you mean?«
    This promptitude - almost, as he might have thought, this precipitation,
gave him a brief drop; but he came up again. »Mrs. Newsome, I think, is
handsome, though she's not of course, with a son of twenty-eight and a daughter
of thirty, in her very first youth. She married, however, extremely young.«
    »And is wonderful,« Miss Gostrey asked, »for her age?«
    Strether seemed to feel with a certain disquiet the pressure of it. »I don't
say she's wonderful. Or rather,« he went on the next moment, »I do say it. It's
exactly what she is - wonderful. But I wasn't't thinking of her appearance,« he
explained - »striking as that doubtless is. I was thinking - well, of many other
things.« He seemed to look at these as if to mention some of them; then took,
pulling himself up, another turn. »About Mrs. Pocock people may differ.«
    »Is that the daughter's name - Pocock?«
    »That's the daughter's name,« Strether sturdily confessed.
    »And people may differ, you mean, about her beauty?«
    »About everything.«
    »But you admire her?«
    He gave his friend a glance as to show how he could bear this. »I'm perhaps
a little afraid of her.«
    »Oh,« said Miss Gostrey, »I see her from here! You may say then I see very
fast and very far, but I've already shown you I do. The young man and the two
ladies,« she went on, »are at any rate all the family?«
    »Quite all. His father has been dead ten years, and there's no brother, nor
any other sister. They'd do,« said Strether, »anything in the world for him.«
    »And you'd do anything in the world for them?«
    He shifted again; she had made it perhaps just a shade too affirmative for
his nerves. »Oh I don't know!«
    »You'd do at any rate this, and the anything they'd do is represented by
their making you do it.«
    »Ah they couldn't have come - either of them. They're very busy people and
Mrs. Newsome in particular has a large full life. She's moreover highly nervous
- and not at all strong.«
    »You mean she's an American invalid?«
    He carefully distinguished. »There's nothing she likes less than to be
called one, but she would consent to be one of those things, I think,« he
laughed, »if it were the only way to be the other.«
    »Consent to be an American in order to be an invalid?«
    »No,« said Strether, »the other way round. She's at any rate delicate
sensitive high-strung. She puts so much of herself into everything -«
    Ah Maria knew these things! »That she has nothing left for anything else? Of
course she hasn't. To whom do you say it? High-strung? Don't I spend my life,
for them, jamming down the pedal? I see moreover how it has told on you.«
    Strether took this more lightly. »Oh I jam down the pedal too!«
    »Well,« she lucidly returned, »we must from this moment bear on it together
with all our might.« And she forged ahead. »Have they money?«
    But it was as if, while her energetic image still held him, her enquiry fell
short. »Mrs. Newsome,« he wished further to explain, »hasn't moreover your
courage on the question of contact. If she had come it would have been to see
the person herself.«
    »The woman? Ah but that's courage.«
    »No - it's exaltation, which is a very different thing. Courage,« he,
however, accommodatingly threw out, »is what you have.«
    She shook her head. »You say that only to patch me up - to cover the nudity
of my want of exaltation. I've neither the one nor the other. I've mere battered
indifference. I see that what you mean,« Miss Gostrey pursued, »is that if your
friend had come she would take great views, and the great views, to put it
simply, would be too much for her.«
    Strether looked amused at her notion of the simple, but he adopted her
formula. »Everything's too much for her.«
    »Ah then such a service as this of yours -«
    »Is more for her than anything else? Yes - far more. But so long as it isn't
too much for me -!«
    »Her condition doesn't't matter? Surely not; we leave her condition out; we
take it, that is, for granted. I see it, her condition, as behind and beneath
you; yet at the same time I see it as bearing you up.«
    »Oh it does bear me up!« Strether laughed.
    »Well then as yours bears me nothing more's needed.« With which she put
again her question. »Has Mrs. Newsome money?«
    This time he heeded. »Oh plenty. That's the root of the evil. There's money,
to very large amounts, in the concern. Chad has had the free use of a great
deal. But if he'll pull himself together and come home, all the same, he'll find
his account in it.«
    She had listened with all her interest. »And I hope to goodness you'll find
yours!«
    »He'll take up his definite material reward,« said Strether without
acknowledgement of this. »He's at the parting of the ways. He can come into the
business now - he can't come later.«
    »Is there a business?«
    »Lord, yes - a big brave bouncing business. A roaring trade.«
    »A great shop?«
    »Yes - a workshop; a great production, a great industry. The concern's a
manufacture - and a manufacture that, if it's only properly looked after, may
well be on the way to become a monopoly. It's a little thing they make - make
better, it appears, than other people can, or than other people, at any rate,
do. Mr. Newsome, being a man of ideas, at least in that particular line,«
Strether explained, »put them on it with great effect, and gave the place
altogether, in his time, an immense lift.«
    »It's a place in itself?«
    »Well, quite a number of buildings; almost a little industrial colony. But
above all it's a thing. The article produced.«
    »And what is the article produced?«
    Strether looked about him as in slight reluctance to say; then the curtain,
which he saw about to rise, came to his aid. »I'll tell you next time.« But when
the next time came he only said he'd tell her later on - after they should have
left the theatre; for she had immediately reverted to their topic, and even for
himself the picture of the stage was now overlaid with another image. His
postponements, however, made her wonder - wonder if the article referred to were
anything bad. And she explained that she meant improper or ridiculous or wrong.
But Strether, so far as that went, could satisfy her. »Unmentionable? Oh no, we
constantly talk of it; we are quite familiar and brazen about it. Only, as a
small, trivial, rather ridiculous object of the commonest domestic use, it's
just wanting in - what shall I say? Well, dignity, or the least approach to
distinction. Right here therefore, with everything about us so grand -!« In
short he shrank.
    »It's a false note?«
    »Sadly. It's vulgar.«
    »But surely not vulgarer than this.« Then on his wondering as she herself
had done: »Than everything about us.« She seemed a trifle irritated. »What do
you take this for?«
    »Why for - comparatively - divine!«
    »This dreadful London theatre? It's impossible, if you really want to know.«
    »Oh then,« laughed Strether, »I don't really want to know!«
    It made between them a pause, which she, however, still fascinated by the
mystery of the production at Woollett, presently broke. »Rather ridiculous?
Clothes-pins? Saleratus? Shoe-polish?«
    It brought him round. »No - you don't even burn. I don't think, you know,
you'll guess it.«
    »How then can I judge how vulgar it is?«
    »You'll judge when I do tell you« - and he persuaded her to patience. But it
may even now frankly be mentioned that he in the sequel never was to tell her.
He actually never did so, and it moreover oddly occurred that by the law, within
her, of the incalculable, her desire for the information dropped and her
attitude to the question converted itself into a positive cultivation of
ignorance. In ignorance she could humour her fancy, and that proved a useful
freedom. She could treat the little nameless object as indeed un-nameable - she
could make their abstention enormously definite. There might indeed have been
for Strether the portent of this in what she next said.
    »Is it perhaps then because it's so bad - because your industry, as you call
it, is so vulgar - that Mr. Chad won't come back? Does he feel the taint? Is he
staying away not to be mixed up in it?«
    »Oh,« Strether laughed, »it wouldn't appear - would it? - that he feels
taints! He's glad enough of the money from it, and the money's his whole basis.
There's appreciation in that - I mean as to the allowance his mother has
hitherto made him. She has of course the resource of cutting this allowance off;
but even then he has unfortunately, and on no small scale, his independent
supply - money left him by his grandfather, her own father.«
    »Wouldn't the fact you mention then,« Miss Gostrey asked, »make it just more
easy for him to be particular? Isn't he conceivable as fastidious about the
source - the apparent and public source - of his income?«
    Strether was able quite good-humouredly to entertain the proposition. »The
source of his grandfather's wealth - and thereby of his own share in it - was
not particularly noble.«
    »And what source was it?«
    Strether cast about. »Well - practices.«
    »In business? Infamies? He was an old swindler?«
    »Oh,« he said with more emphasis than spirit, »I shan't describe him nor
narrate his exploits.«
    »Lord, what abysses! And the late Mr. Newsome then?«
    »Well, what about him?«
    »Was he like the grandfather?«
    »No - he was on the other side of the house. And he was different.«
    Miss Gostrey kept it up. »Better?«
    Her friend for a moment hung fire. »No.«
    Her comment on his hesitation was scarce the less marked for being mute.
»Thank you. Now don't you see,« she went on, »why the boy doesn't't come home?
He's drowning his shame.«
    »His shame? What shame?«
    »What shame? Comment donc? The shame.«
    »But where and when,« Strether asked, »is the shame - where is any shame -
to-day? The men I speak of - they did as every one does; and (besides being
ancient history) it was all a matter of appreciation.«
    She showed how she understood. »Mrs. Newsome has appreciated?«
    »Ah I can't speak for her!«
    »In the midst of such doings - and, as I understand you, profiting by them,
she at least has remained exquisite?«
    »Oh I can't talk of her!« Strether said.
    »I thought she was just what you could talk of. You don't trust me,« Miss
Gostrey after a moment declared.
    It had its effect. »Well, her money is spent, her life conceived and carried
on with a large beneficence -«
    »That's a kind of expiation of wrongs? Gracious,« she added before he could
speak, »how intensely you make me see her!«
    »If you see her,« Strether dropped, »it's all that's necessary.«
    She really seemed to have her. »I feel that. She is, in spite of everything,
handsome.«
    This at least enlivened him. »What do you mean by everything?«
    »Well, I mean you.« With which she had one of her swift changes of ground.
»You say the concern needs looking after; but doesn't't Mrs. Newsome look after
it?«
    »So far as possible. She's wonderfully able, but it's not her affair, and
her life's a good deal overcharged. She has many, many things.«
    »And you also?«
    »Oh yes - I've many too, if you will.«
    »I see. But what I mean is,« Miss Gostrey amended, »do you also look after
the business?«
    »Oh no, I don't touch the business.«
    »Only everything else?«
    »Well, yes - some things.«
    »As for instance -?«
    Strether obligingly thought. »Well, the Review.«
    »The Review? - you have a Review?«
    »Certainly. Woollett has a Review - which Mrs. Newsome, for the most part,
magnificently pays for and which I, not at all magnificently, edit. My name's on
the cover,« Strether pursued, »and I'm really rather disappointed and hurt that
you seem never to have heard of it.«
    She neglected for a moment this grievance. »And what kind of a Review is
it?«
    His serenity was now completely restored. »Well, it's green.«
    »Do you mean in political colour as they say here - in thought?«
    »No; I mean the cover's green - of the most lovely shade.«
    »And with Mrs. Newsome's name on it too?«
    He waited a little. »Oh as for that you must judge if she peeps out. She's
behind the whole thing; but she's of a delicacy and a discretion -!«
    Miss Gostrey took it all. »I'm sure. She would be. I don't underrate her.
She must be rather a swell.«
    »Oh yes, she's rather a swell!«
    »A Woollett swell - bon! I like the idea of a Woollett swell. And you must
be rather one too, to be so mixed up with her.«
    »Ah no,« said Strether, »that's not the way it works.«
    But she had already taken him up. »The way it works - you needn't tell me! -
is of course that you efface yourself.«
    »With my name on the cover?« he lucidly objected.
    »Ah but you don't put it on for yourself.«
    »I beg your pardon - that's exactly what I do put it on for. It's exactly
the thing that I'm reduced to doing for myself. It seems to rescue a little, you
see, from the wreck of hopes and ambitions, the refuse-heap of disappointments
and failures, my one presentable little scrap of an identity.«
    On this she looked at him as to say many things, but what she at last simply
said was: »She likes to see it there. You're the bigger swell of the two,« she
immediately continued, »because you think you're not one. She thinks she is one.
However,« Miss Gostrey added, »she thinks you're one too. You're at all events
the biggest she can get hold of.« She embroidered, she abounded. »I don't say it
to interfere between you, but on the day she gets hold of a bigger one -!«
Strether had thrown back his head as in silent mirth over something that struck
him in her audacity or felicity, and her flight meanwhile was already higher.
»Therefore close with her -!«
    »Close with her?« he asked as she seemed to hang poised.
    »Before you lose your chance.«
    Their eyes met over it. »What do you mean by closing?«
    »And what do I mean by your chance? I'll tell you when you tell me all the
things you don't. Is it her greatest fad?« she briskly pursued.
    »The Review?« He seemed to wonder how he could best describe it. This
resulted however but in a sketch. »It's her tribute to the ideal.«
    »I see. You go in for tremendous things.«
    »We go in for the unpopular side - that is so far as we dare.«
    »And how far do you dare?«
    »Well, she very far. I much less. I don't begin to have her faith. She
provides,« said Strether, »three fourths of that. And she provides, as I've
confided to you, all the money.«
    It evoked somehow a vision of gold that held for a little Miss Gostrey's
eyes, and she looked as if she heard the bright dollars shovelled in. »I hope
then you make a good thing -«
    »I never made a good thing!« he at once returned.
    She just waited. »Don't you call it a good thing to be loved?«
    »Oh we're not loved. We're not even hated. We're only just sweetly ignored.«
    She had another pause. »You don't trust me!« she once more repeated.
    »Don't I when I lift the last veil? - tell you the very secret of the
prison-house?«
    Again she met his eyes, but to the result that after an instant her own
turned away with impatience. »You don't sell? Oh I'm glad of that!« After which
however, and before he could protest she was off again. »She's just a moral
swell.«
    He accepted gaily enough the definition. »Yes - I really think that
describes her.«
    But it had for his friend the oddest connexion. »How does she do her hair?«
    He laughed out. »Beautifully!«
    »Ah that doesn't't tell me. However, it doesn't't matter - I know. It's
tremendously neat - a real reproach; quite remarkably thick and without, as yet,
a single strand of white. There!«
    He blushed for her realism, but gaped at her truth. »You're the very deuce.«
    »What else should I be? It was as the very deuce I pounced on you. But don't
let it trouble you, for everything but the very deuce - at our age - is a bore
and a delusion, and even he himself, after all, but half a joy.« With which, on
a single sweep of her wing, she resumed. »You assist her to expiate - which is
rather hard when you've yourself not sinned.«
    »It's she who hasn't sinned,« Strether replied. »I've sinned the most.«
    »Ah,« Miss Gostrey cynically laughed, »what a picture of her! Have you
robbed the widow and the orphan?«
    »I've sinned enough,« said Strether.
    »Enough for whom? Enough for what?«
    »Well, to be where I am.«
    »Thank you!« They were disturbed at this moment by the passage between their
knees and the back of the seats before them of a gentleman who had been absent
during a part of the performance and who now returned for the close; but the
interruption left Miss Gostrey time, before the subsequent hush, to express as a
sharp finality her sense of the moral of all their talk. »I knew you had
something up your sleeve!« This finality, however, left them in its turn, at the
end of the play, as disposed to hang back as if they had still much to say; so
that they easily agreed to let every one go before them - they found an interest
in waiting. They made out from the lobby that the night had turned to rain; yet
Miss Gostrey let her friend know that he wasn't't to see her home. He was simply
to put her, by herself, into a four-wheeler; she liked so in London, of wet
nights after wild pleasures, thinking things over, on the return, in lonely
four-wheelers. This was her great time, she intimated, for pulling herself
together. The delays caused by the weather, the struggle for vehicles at the
door, gave them occasion to subside on a divan at the back of the vestibule and
just beyond the reach of the fresh damp gusts from the street. Here Strether's
comrade resumed that free handling of the subject to which his own imagination
of it already owed so much. »Does your young friend in Paris like you?«
    It had almost, after the interval, startled him. »Oh I hope not! Why should
he?«
    »Why shouldn't he?« Miss Gostrey asked. »That you're coming down on him need
have nothing to do with it.«
    »You see more in it,« he presently returned, »than I.«
    »Of course I see you in it.«
    »Well then you see more in me!«
    »Than you see in yourself? Very likely. That's always one's right. What I
was thinking of,« she explained, »is the possible particular effect on him of
his milieu.«
    »Oh his milieu -!« Strether really felt he could imagine it better now than
three hours before.
    »Do you mean it can only have been so lowering?«
    »Why that's my very starting-point.«
    »Yes, but you start so far back. What do his letters say?«
    »Nothing. He practically ignores us - or spares us. He doesn't't write.«
    »I see. But there are all the same,« she went on, »two quite distinct things
that - given the wonderful place he's in - may have happened to him. One is that
he may have got brutalised. The other is that he may have got refined.«
    Strether stared - this was a novelty. »Refined?«
    »Oh,« she said quietly, »there are refinements.«
    The way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh. »You have
them!«
    »As one of the signs,« she continued in the same tone, »they constitute
perhaps the worst.«
    He thought it over and his gravity returned. »Is it a refinement not to
answer his mother's letters?«
    She appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out. »Oh I should say the
greatest of all.«
    »Well,« said Strether, »I'm quite content to let it, as one of the signs,
pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do what he likes with me.«
    This appeared to strike her. »How do you know it?«
    »Oh I'm sure of it. I feel it in my bones.«
    »Feel he can do it?«
    »Feel that he believes he can. It may come to the same thing!« Strether
laughed.
    She wouldn't, however, have this. »Nothing for you will ever come to the
same thing as anything else.« And she understood what she meant, it seemed,
sufficiently to go straight on. »You say that if he does break he'll come in for
things at home?«
    »Quite positively. He'll come in for a particular chance - a chance that any
properly constituted young man would jump at. The business has so developed that
an opening scarcely apparent three years ago, but which his father's will took
account of as in certain conditions possible and which, under that will,
attaches to Chad's availing himself of it a large contingent advantage - this
opening, the conditions having come about, now simply awaits him. His mother has
kept it for him, holding out against strong pressure, till the last possible
moment. It requires, naturally, as it carries with it a handsome part, a large
share in profits, his being on the spot and making a big effort for a big
result. That's what I mean by his chance. If he misses it he comes in, as you
say, for nothing. And to see that he doesn't't miss it is, in a word, what I've
come out for.«
    She let it all sink in. »What you've come out for then is simply to render
him an immense service.«
    Well, poor Strether was willing to take it so. »Ah if you like.«
    »He stands, as they say, if you succeed with him, to gain -«
    »Oh a lot of advantages.« Strether had them clearly at his fingers ends.
    »By which you mean of course a lot of money.«
    »Well, not only. I'm acting with a sense for him of other things too.
Consideration and comfort and security - the general safety of being anchored by
a strong chain. He wants, as I see him, to be protected. Protected I mean from
life.«
    »Ah voilà!« - her thought fitted with a click. »From life. What you really
want to get him home for is to marry him.«
    »Well, that's about the size of it.«
    »Of course,« she said, »it's rudimentary. But to any one in particular?«
    He smiled at this, looking a little more conscious. »You get everything
out.«
    For a moment again their eyes met. »You put everything in!«
    He acknowledged the tribute by telling her. »To Mamie Pocock.«
    She wondered; then gravely, even exquisitely, as if to make the oddity also
fit: »His own niece?«
    »Oh you must yourself find a name for the relation. His brother-in-law's
sister. Mrs. Jim's sister-in-law.«
    It seemed to have on Miss Gostrey a certain hardening effect. »And who in
the world's Mrs. Jim?«
    »Chad's sister - who was Sarah Newsome. She's married - didn't I mention it?
- to Jim Pocock.«
    »Ah yes,« she tacitly replied; but he had mentioned things -! Then, however,
with all the sound it could have, »Who in the world's Jim Pocock?« she asked.
    »Why Sally's husband. That's the only way we distinguish people at
Woollett,« he good-humouredly explained.
    »And is it a great distinction - being Sally's husband?«
    He considered. »I think there can be scarcely a greater - unless it may
become one, in the future, to be Chad's wife.«
    »Then how do they distinguish you?«
    »They don't - except, as I've told you, by the green cover.«
    Once more their eyes met on it, and she held him an instant. »The green
cover won't - nor will any cover - avail you with me. You're of a depth of
duplicity!« Still, she could in her own large grasp of the real condone it. »Is
Mamie a great parti?«
    »Oh the greatest we have - our prettiest brightest girl.«
    Miss Gostrey seemed to fix the poor child. »I know what they can be. And
with money?«
    »Not perhaps with a great deal of that - but with so much of everything else
that we don't miss it. We don't miss money much, you know,« Strether added, »in
general, in America, in pretty girls.«
    »No,« she conceded; »but I know also what you do sometimes miss. And do
you,« she asked, »yourself admire her?«
    It was a question, he indicated, that there might be several ways of taking;
but he decided after an instant for the humorous. »Haven't I sufficiently showed
you how I admire any pretty girl?«
    Her interest in his problem was by this time such that it scarce left her
freedom, and she kept close to the facts. »I supposed that at Woollett you
wanted them - what shall I call it? - blameless. I mean your young men for your
pretty girls.«
    »So did I!« Strether confessed. »But you strike there a curious fact - the
fact that Woollett too accommodates itself to the spirit of the age and the
increasing mildness of manners. Everything changes, and I hold that our
situation precisely marks a date. We should prefer them blameless, but we have
to make the best of them as we find them. Since the spirit of the age and the
increasing mildness send them so much more to Paris -«
    »You've to take them back as they come. When they do come. Bon!« Once more
she embraced it all, but she had a moment of thought. »Poor Chad!«
    »Ah,« said Strether cheerfully, »Mamie will save him!«
    She was looking away, still in her vision, and she spoke with impatience and
almost as if he hadn't understood her. »You'll save him. That's who'll save
him.«
    »Oh but with Mamie's aid. Unless indeed you mean,« he added, »that I shall
effect so much more with yours!«
    It made her at last again look at him. »You'll do more - as you're so much
better - than all of us put together.«
    »I think I'm only better since I've known you!« Strether bravely returned.
    The depletion of the place, the shrinkage of the crowd and now comparatively
quiet withdrawal of its last elements had already brought them nearer the door
and put them in relation with a messenger of whom he bespoke Miss Gostrey's cab.
But this left them a few minutes more, which she was clearly in no mood not to
use. »You've spoken to me of what - by your success - Mr. Chad stands to gain.
But you've not spoken to me of what you do.«
    »Oh I've nothing more to gain,« said Strether very simply.
    She took it as even quite too simple. »You mean you've got it all down?
You've been paid in advance?«
    »Ah don't talk about payment!« he groaned.
    Something in the tone of it pulled her up, but as their messenger still
delayed she had another chance and she put it in another way. »What - by failure
- do you stand to lose?«
    He still, however, wouldn't have it. »Nothing!« he exclaimed, and on the
messenger's at this instant reappearing he was able to sink the subject in their
responsive advance. When, a few steps up the street, under a lamp, he had put
her into her four-wheeler and she had asked him if the man had called for him no
second conveyance, he replied before the door was closed. »You won't take me
with you?«
    »Not for the world.«
    »Then I shall walk.«
    »In the rain?«
    »I like the rain,« said Strether. »Good-night!«
    She kept him a moment, while his hand was on the door, by not answering;
after which she answered by repeating her question. »What do you stand to lose?«
    Why the question now affected him as other he couldn't have said; he could
only this time meet it otherwise. »Everything.«
    »So I thought. Then you shall succeed. And to that end I'm yours -«
    »Ah, dear lady!« he kindly breathed.
    »Till death!« said Maria Gostrey. »Good-night.«

                                       II

 
Strether called, his second morning in Paris, on the bankers of the Rue Scribe
to whom his letter of credit was addressed, and he made this visit attended by
Waymarsh, in whose company he had crossed from London two days before. They had
hastened to the Rue Scribe on the morrow of their arrival, but Strether had not
then found the letters the hope of which prompted this errand. He had had as yet
none at all; hadn't expected them in London, but had counted on several in
Paris, and, disconcerted now, had presently strolled back to the Boulevard with
a sense of injury that he felt himself taking for as good a start as any other.
It would serve, this spur to his spirit, he reflected, as, pausing at the top of
the street, he looked up and down the great foreign avenue, it would serve to
begin business with. His idea was to begin business immediately, and it did much
for him the rest of his day that the beginning of business awaited him. He did
little else till night but ask himself what he should do if he hadn't
fortunately had so much to do; but he put himself the question in many different
situations and connexions. What carried him hither and yon was an admirable
theory that nothing he could do wouldn't be in some manner related to what he
fundamentally had on hand, or would be - should he happen to have a scruple -
wasted for it. He did happen to have a scruple - a scruple about taking no
definite step till he should get letters; but this reasoning carried it off. A
single day to feel his feet - he had felt them as yet only at Chester and in
London - was, he could consider, none too much; and having, as he had often
privately expressed it, Paris to reckon with, he threw these hours of freshness
consciously into the reckoning. They made it continually greater, but that was
what it had best be if it was to be anything at all, and he gave himself up till
far into the evening, at the theatre and on the return, after the theatre, along
the bright congested Boulevard, to feeling it grow. Waymarsh had accompanied him
this time to the play, and the two men had walked together, as a first stage,
from the Gymnase to the Café Riche, into the crowded terrace of which
establishment - the night, or rather the morning, for midnight had struck, being
bland and populous - they had wedged themselves for refreshment. Waymarsh, as a
result of some discussion with his friend, had made a marked virtue of his
having now let himself go; and there had been elements of impression in their
half-hour over their watered beer-glasses that gave him his occasion for
conveying that he held this compromise with his stiffer self to have become
extreme. He conveyed it - for it was still, after all, his stiffer self who
gloomed out of the glare of the terrace - in solemn silence; and there was
indeed a great deal of critical silence, every way, between the companions, even
till they gained the Place de l'Opéra, as to the character of their nocturnal
progress.
    This morning there were letters - letters which had reached London,
apparently all together, the day of Strether's journey, and had taken their time
to follow him; so that, after a controlled impulse to go into them in the
reception-room of the bank, which, reminding him of the post-office at Woollett,
affected him as the abutment of some transatlantic bridge, he slipped them into
the pocket of his loose grey overcoat with a sense of the felicity of carrying
them off. Waymarsh, who had had letters yesterday, had had them again to-day,
and Waymarsh suggested in this particular no controlled impulses. The last one
he was at all events likely to be observed to struggle with was clearly that of
bringing to a premature close any visit to the Rue Scribe. Strether had left him
there yesterday; he wanted to see the papers, and he had spent, by what his
friend could make out, a succession of hours with the papers. He spoke of the
establishment, with emphasis, as a post of superior observation; just as he
spoke generally of his actual damnable doom as a device for hiding from him what
was going on. Europe was best described, to his mind, as an elaborate engine for
dissociating the confined American from that indispensable knowledge, and was
accordingly only rendered bearable by these occasional stations of relief, traps
for the arrest of wandering western airs. Strether, on his side, set himself to
walk again - he had his relief in his pocket; and indeed, much as he had desired
his budget, the growth of restlessness might have been marked in him from the
moment he had assured himself of the superscription of most of the missives it
contained. This restlessness became therefore his temporary law; he knew he
should recognise as soon as see it the best place of all for settling down with
his chief correspondent. He had for the next hour an accidental air of looking
for it in the windows of shops; he came down the Rue de la Paix in the sun and,
passing across the Tuileries and the river, indulged more than once - as if on
finding himself determined - in a sudden pause before the book-stalls of the
opposite quay. In the garden of the Tuileries he had lingered, on two or three
spots, to look; it was as if the wonderful Paris spring had stayed him as he
roamed. The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes - in a soft breeze
and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the garden-floor, of bareheaded
girls with the buckled strap of oblong boxes, in the type of ancient thrifty
persons basking betimes where terrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked
brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references
of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged
soldier. He watched little brisk figures, figures whose movement was as the tick
of the great Paris clock, take their smooth diagonal from point to point; the
air had a taste as of something mixed with art, something that presented nature
as a white-capped master-chef. The palace was gone, Strether remembered the
palace; and when he gazed into the irremediable void of its site the historic
sense in him might have been freely at play - the play under which in Paris
indeed it so often winces like a touched nerve. He filled out spaces with dim
symbols of scenes; he caught the gleam of white statues at the base of which,
with his letters out, he could tilt back a straw-bottomed chair. But his drift
was, for reasons, to the other side, and it floated him unspent up the Rue de
Seine and as far as the Luxembourg.
    In the Luxembourg Gardens he pulled up; here at last he found his nook, and
here, on a penny chair from which terraces, alleys, vistas, fountains, little
trees in green tubs, little women in white caps and shrill little girls at play
all sunnily composed together, he passed an hour in which the cup of his
impressions seemed truly to overflow. But a week had elapsed since he quitted
the ship, and there were more things in his mind than so few days could account
for. More than once, during the time, he had regarded himself as admonished; but
the admonition this morning was formidably sharp. It took as it hadn't done yet
the form of a question - the question of what he was doing with such an
extraordinary sense of escape. This sense was sharpest after he had read his
letters, but that was also precisely why the question pressed. Four of the
letters were from Mrs. Newsome and none of them short; she had lost no time, had
followed on his heels while he moved, so expressing herself that he now could
measure the probable frequency with which he should hear. They would arrive, it
would seem, her communications, at the rate of several a week; he should be able
to count, it might even prove, on more than one by each mail. If he had begun
yesterday with a small grievance he had therefore an opportunity to begin to-day
with its opposite. He read the letters successively and slowly, putting others
back into his pocket but keeping these for a long time afterwards gathered in
his lap. He held them there, lost in thought, as if to prolong the presence of
what they gave him; or as if at the least to assure them their part in the
constitution of some lucidity. His friend wrote admirably, and her tone was even
more in her style than in her voice - he might almost, for the hour, have had to
come this distance to get its full carrying quality; yet the plentitude of his
consciousness of difference consorted perfectly with the deepened intensity of
the connexion. It was the difference, the difference of being just where he was
and as he was, that formed the escape - this difference was so much greater than
he had dreamed it would be; and what he finally sat there turning over was the
strange logic of his finding himself so free. He felt it in a manner his duty to
think out his state, to approve the process, and when he came in fact to trace
the steps and add up the items they sufficiently accounted for the sum. He had
never expected - that was the truth of it - again to find himself young, and all
the years and other things it had taken to make him so were exactly his present
arithmetic. He had to make sure of them to put his scruple to rest.
    It all sprang at bottom from the beauty of Mrs. Newsome's desire that he
should be worried with nothing that was not of the essence of his task; by
insisting that he should thoroughly intermit and break she had so provided for
his freedom that she would, as it were, have only herself to thank. Strether
could not at this point indeed have completed his thought by the image of what
she might have to thank herself for: the image, at best, of his own likeness -
poor Lambert Strether washed up on the sunny strand by the waves of a single
day, poor Lambert Strether thankful for breathing-time and stiffening himself
while he gasped. There he was, and with nothing in his aspect or his posture to
scandalise: it was only true that if he had seen Mrs. Newsome coming he would
instinctively have jumped up to walk away a little. He would have come round and
back to her bravely, but he would have had first to pull himself together. She
abounded in news of the situation at home, proved to him how perfectly she was
arranging for his absence, told him who would take up this and who take up that
exactly where he had left it, gave him in fact chapter and verse for the moral
that nothing would suffer. It filled for him, this tone of hers, all the air;
yet it struck him at the same time as the hum of vain things. This latter effect
was what he tried to justify - and with the success that, grave though the
appearance, he at last lighted on a form that was happy. He arrived at it by the
inevitable recognition of his having been a fortnight before one of the weariest
of men. If ever a man had come off tired Lambert Strether was that man; and
hadn't it been distinctly on the ground of his fatigue that his wonderful friend
at home had so felt for him and so contrived? It seemed to him somehow at these
instants that, could he only maintain with sufficient firmness his grasp of that
truth, it might become in a manner his compass and his helm. What he wanted most
was some idea that would simplify, and nothing would do this so much as the fact
that he was done for and finished. If it had been in such a light that he had
just detected in his cup the dregs of youth, that was a mere flaw of the surface
of his scheme. He was so distinctly fagged-out that it must serve precisely as
his convenience, and if he could but consistently be good for little enough he
might do everything he wanted.
    Everything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon - the common
unattainable art of taking things as they came. He appeared to himself to have
given his best years to an active appreciation of the way they didn't come; but
perhaps - as they would seemingly here be things quite other - this long ache
might at last drop to rest. He could easily see that from the moment he should
accept the notion of his foredoomed collapse the last thing he would lack would
be reasons and memories. Oh if he should do the sum no slate would hold the
figures! The fact that he had failed, as he considered, in everything, in each
relation and in half a dozen trades, as he liked luxuriously to put it, might
have made, might still make, for an empty present; but it stood solidly for a
crowded past. It had not been, so much achievement missed, a light yoke nor a
short road. It was at present as if the backward picture had hung there, the
long crooked course, grey in the shadow of his solitude. It had been a dreadful
cheerful sociable solitude, a solitude of life or choice, of community; but
though there had been people enough all round it there had been but three or
four persons in it. Waymarsh was one of these, and the fact struck him just now
as marking the record. Mrs. Newsome was another, and Miss Gostrey had of a
sudden shown signs of becoming a third. Beyond, behind them was the pale figure
of his real youth, which held against its breast the two presences paler than
itself - the young wife he had early lost and the young son he had stupidly
sacrificed. He had again and again made out for himself that he might have kept
his little boy, his little dull boy who had died at school of rapid diphtheria,
if he had not in those years so insanely given himself to merely missing the
mother. It was the soreness of his remorse that the child had in all likelihood
not really been dull - had been dull, as he had been banished and neglected,
mainly because the father had been unwittingly selfish. This was doubtless but
the secret habit of sorrow, which had slowly given way to time; yet there
remained an ache sharp enough to make the spirit, at the sight now and again of
some fair young man just growing up, wince with the thought of an opportunity
lost. Had ever a man, he had finally fallen into the way of asking himself, lost
so much and even done so much for so little? There had been particular reasons
why all yesterday, beyond other days, he should have had in one ear this cold
enquiry. His name on the green cover, where he had put it for Mrs. Newsome,
expressed him doubtless just enough to make the world - the world as
distinguished, both for more and for less, from Woollett - ask who he was. He
had incurred the ridicule of having to have his explanation explained. He was
Lambert Strether because he was on the cover, whereas it should have been, for
anything like glory, that he was on the cover because he was Lambert Strether.
He would have done anything for Mrs. Newsome, have been still more ridiculous -
as he might, for that matter, have occasion to be yet; which came to saying that
this acceptance of fate was all he had to show at fifty-five.
    He judged the quantity as small because it was small, and all the more
egregiously since it couldn't, as he saw the case, so much as thinkably have
been larger. He hadn't had the gift of making the most of what he tried, and if
he had tried and tried again - no one but himself knew how often - it appeared
to have been that he might demonstrate what else, in default of that, could be
made. Old ghosts of experiments came back to him, old drudgeries and delusions,
and disgusts, old recoveries with their relapses, old fevers with their chills,
broken moments of good faith, others of still better doubt; adventures, for the
most part, of the sort qualified as lessons. The special spring that had
constantly played for him the day before was the recognition - frequent enough
to surprise him - of the promises to himself that he had after his other visit
never kept. The reminiscence to-day most quickened for him was that of the vow
taken in the course of the pilgrimage that, newly-married, with the War just
over, and helplessly young in spite of it, he had recklessly made with the
creature who was so much younger still. It had been a bold dash, for which they
had taken money set apart for necessities, but kept sacred at the moment in a
hundred ways, and in none more so than by this private pledge of his own to
treat the occasion as a relation formed with the higher culture and see that, as
they said at Woollett, it should bear a good harvest. He had believed, sailing
home again, that he had gained something great, and his theory - with an
elaborate innocent plan of reading, digesting, coming back even, every few years
- had then been to preserve, cherish and extend it. As such plans as these had
come to nothing, however, in respect to acquisitions still more precious, it was
doubtless little enough of a marvel that he should have lost account of that
handful of seed. Buried for long years in dark corners at any rate these few
germs had sprouted again under forty-eight hours of Paris. The process of
yesterday had really been the process of feeling the general stirred life of
connexions long since individually dropped. Strether had become acquainted even
on this ground with short gusts of speculation - sudden flights of fancy in
Louvre galleries, hungry gazes through clear plates behind which lemon-coloured
volumes were as fresh as fruit on the tree.
    There were instants at which he could ask whether, since there had been
fundamentally so little question of his keeping anything, the fate after all
decreed for him hadn't been only to be kept. Kept for something, in that event,
that he didn't pretend, didn't possibly dare as yet to divine; something that
made him hover and wonder and laugh and sigh, made him advance and retreat,
feeling half ashamed of his impulse to plunge and more than half afraid of his
impulse to wait. He remembered for instance how he had gone back in the sixties
with lemon-coloured volumes in general on the brain as well as with a dozen -
selected for his wife too - in his trunk; and nothing had at the moment shown
more confidence than this invocation of the finer taste. They were still
somewhere at home, the dozen - stale and soiled and never sent to the binder;
but what had become of the sharp initiation they represented? They represented
now the mere sallow paint on the door of the temple of taste that he had dreamed
of raising up - a structure he had practically never carried further. Strether's
present highest flights were perhaps those in which this particular lapse
figured to him as a symbol, a symbol of his long grind and his want of odd
moments, his want moreover of money, of opportunity, of positive dignity. That
the memory of the vow of his youth should, in order to throb again, have had to
wait for this last, as he felt it, of all his accidents - that was surely proof
enough of how his conscience had been encumbered. If any further proof were
needed it would have been to be found in the fact that, as he perfectly now saw,
he had ceased even to measure his meagreness, a meagreness that sprawled, in
this retrospect, vague and comprehensive, stretching back like some unmapped
Hinterland from a rough coast-settlement. His conscience had been amusing itself
for the forty-eight hours by forbidding him the purchase of a book; he held off
from that, held off from everything; from the moment he didn't yet call on Chad
he wouldn't for the world have taken any other step. On this evidence, however,
of the way they actually affected him he glared at the lemon-coloured covers in
confession of the subconsciousness that, all the same, in the great desert of
the years, he must have had of them. The green covers at home comprised, by the
law of their purpose, no tribute to letters; it was of a mere rich kernel of
economics, politics, ethics that, glazed and, as Mrs. Newsome maintained rather
against his view, pre-eminently pleasant to touch, they formed the specious
shell. Without therefore any needed instinctive knowledge of what was coming
out, in Paris, on the bright highway, he struck himself at present as having
more than once flushed with a suspicion: he couldn't otherwise at present be
feeling so many fears confirmed. There were movements he was too late for:
weren't they, with the fun of them, already spent? There were sequences he had
missed and great gaps in the procession: he might have been watching it all
recede in a golden cloud of dust. If the playhouse wasn't't closed his seat had at
least fallen to somebody else. He had had an uneasy feeling the night before
that if he was at the theatre at all - though he indeed justified the theatre,
in the specific sense, and with a grotesqueness to which his imagination did all
honour, as something he owed poor Waymarsh - he should have been there with, and
as might have been said, for Chad.
    This suggested the question of whether he could properly have taken him to
such a play, and what effect - it was a point that suddenly rose - his peculiar
responsibility might be held in general to have on his choice of entertainment.
It had literally been present to him at the Gymnase - where one was held
moreover comparatively safe - that having his young friend at his side would
have been an odd feature of the work of redemption; and this quite in spite of
the fact that the picture presented might well, confronted with Chad's own
private stage, have seemed the pattern of propriety. He clearly hadn't come out
in the name of propriety but to visit unattended equivocal performances; yet
still less had he done so to undermine his authority by sharing them with the
graceless youth. Was he to renounce all amusement for the sweet sake of that
authority? and would such renouncement give him for Chad a moral glamour? The
little problem bristled the more by reason of poor Strether's fairly open sense
of the irony of things. Were there then sides on which his predicament
threatened to look rather droll to him? Should he have to pretend to believe -
either to himself or the wretched boy - that there was anything that could make
the latter worse? Wasn't some such pretence on the other hand involved in the
assumption of possible processes that would make him better? His greatest
uneasiness seemed to peep at him out of the imminent impression that almost any
acceptance of Paris might give one's authority away. It hung before him this
morning, the vast bright Babylon, like some huge iridescent object, a jewel
brilliant and hard, in which parts were not to be discriminated nor differences
comfortably marked. It twinkled and trembled and melted together, and what
seemed all surface one moment seemed all depth the next. It was a place of
which, unmistakeably, Chad was fond; wherefore if he, Strether, should like it
too much, what on earth, with such a bond, would become of either of them? It
all depended of course - which was a gleam of light - on how the too much was
measured; though indeed our friend fairly felt, while he prolonged the
meditation I describe, that for himself even already a certain measure had been
reached. It will have been sufficiently seen that he was not a man to neglect
any good chance for reflection. Was it at all possible for instance to like Paris
enough without liking it too much? He luckily however hadn't promised Mrs.
Newsome not to like it at all. He was ready to recognise at this stage that such
an engagement would have tied his hands. The Luxembourg Gardens were
incontestably just so adorable at this hour by reason - in addition to their
intrinsic charm - of his not having taken it. The only engagement he had taken,
when he looked the thing in the face, was to do what he reasonably could.
    It upset him a little none the less and after a while to find himself at
last remembering on what current of association he had been floated so far. Old
imaginations of the Latin Quarter had played their part for him, and he had duly
recalled its having been with this scene of rather ominous legend that, like so
many young men in fiction as well as in fact, Chad had begun. He was now quite
out of it, with his home, as Strether figured the place, in the Boulevard
Malesherbes; which was perhaps why, repairing, not to fail of justice either, to
the elder neighbourhood, our friend had felt he could allow for the element of
the usual, the immemorial, without courting perturbation. He was not at least in
danger of seeing the youth and the particular Person flaunt by together; and yet
he was in the very air of which - just to feel what the early natural note must
have been - he wished most to take counsel. It became at once vivid to him that
he had originally had, for a few days, an almost envious vision of the boy's
romantic privilege. Melancholy Mürger, with Francine and Musette and Rodolphe,
at home, in the company of the tattered, one - if he not in his single self two
or three - of the unbound, the paper-covered dozen on the shelf; and when Chad
had written, five years ago, after a sojourn then already prolonged to six
months, that he had decided to go in for economy and the real thing, Strether's
fancy had quite fondly accompanied him in this migration, which was to convey
him, as they somewhat confusedly learned at Woollett, across the bridges and up
the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. This was the region - Chad had been quite
distinct about it - in which the best French, and many other things, were to be
learned at least cost, and in which all sorts of clever fellows, compatriots
there for a purpose, formed an awfully pleasant set. The clever fellows, the
friendly countrymen were mainly young painters, sculptors, architects, medical
students; but they were, Chad sagely opined, a much more profitable lot to be
with - even on the footing of not being quite one of them - than the terrible
toughs (Strether remembered the edifying discrimination) of the American bars
and banks roundabout the Opéra. Chad had thrown out, in the communications
following this one - for at that time he did once in a while communicate - that
several members of a band of earnest workers under one of the great artists had
taken him right in, making him dine every night, almost for nothing, at their
place, and even pressing him not to neglect the hypothesis of there being as
much in him as in any of them. There had been literally a moment at which it
appeared there might be something in him; there had been at any rate a moment at
which he had written that he didn't know but what a month or two more might see
him enrolled in some atelier. The season had been one at which Mrs. Newsome was
moved to gratitude for small mercies; it had broken on them all as a blessing
that their absentee had perhaps a conscience - that he was sated in fine with
idleness, was ambitious of variety. The exhibition was doubtless as yet not
brilliant, but Strether himself, even by that time much enlisted and immersed,
had determined, on the part of the two ladies, a temperate approval and in fact,
as he now recollected, a certain austere enthusiasm.
    But the very next thing that happened had been a dark drop of the curtain.
The son and brother had not browsed long on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève - his
effective little use of the name of which, like his allusion to the best French,
appeared to have been but one of the notes of his rough cunning. The light
refreshment of these vain appearances had not accordingly carried any of them
very far. On the other hand it had gained Chad time; it had given him a chance,
unchecked, to strike his roots, had paved the way for initiations more direct
and more deep. It was Strether's belief that he had been comparatively innocent
before this first migration, and even that the first effects of the migration
would not have been, without some particular bad accident, to have been
deplored. There had been three months - he had sufficiently figured it out - in
which Chad had wanted to try. He had tried, though not very hard - he had had
his little hour of good faith. The weakness of this principle in him was that
almost any accident attestedly bad enough was stronger. Such had at any rate
markedly been the case for the precipitation of a special series of impressions.
They had proved, successively, these impressions - all of Musette and Francine,
but Musette and Francine vulgarised by the larger evolution of the type -
irresistibly sharp: he had taken up, by what was at the time to be shrinkingly
gathered, as it was scantly mentioned, with one ferociously interested little
person after another. Strether had read somewhere of a Latin motto, a
description of the hours, observed on a clock by a traveller in Spain; and he
had been led to apply it in thought to Chad's number one, number two, number
three. Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat - they had all morally wounded, the last
had morally killed. The last had been longest in possession - in possession,
that is, of whatever was left of the poor boy's finer mortality. And it hadn't
been she, it had been one of her early predecessors, who had determined the
second migration, the expensive return and relapse, the exchange again, as was
fairly to be presumed, of the vaunted best French for some special variety of
the worst.
    He pulled himself then at last together for his own progress back; not with
the feeling that he had taken his walk in vain. He prolonged it a little, in the
immediate neighbourhood, after he had quitted his chair; and the upshot of the
whole morning for him was that his campaign had begun. He had wanted to put
himself in relation, and he would be hanged if he were not in relation. He was
that at no moment so much as while, under the old arches of the Odéon, he
lingered before the charming open-air array of literature classic and casual. He
found the effect of tone and tint, in the long charged tables and shelves,
delicate and appetising; the impression - substituting one kind of low-priced
consommation for another - might have been that of one of the pleasant cafés
that overlapped, under an awning, to the pavement; but he edged along, grazing
the tables, with his hands firmly behind him. He wasn't't there to dip, to consume
- he was there to reconstruct. He wasn't't there for his own profit - not, that
is, the direct; he was there on some chance of feeling the brush of the wing of
the stray spirit of youth. He felt it in fact, he had it beside him; the old
arcade indeed, as his inner sense listened, gave out the faint sound, as from
far off, of the wild waving of wings. They were folded now over the breasts of
buried generations; but a flutter or two lived again in the turned page of
shock-headed slouch-hatted loiterers whose young intensity of type, in the
direction of pale acuteness, deepened his vision, and even his appreciation, of
racial differences, and whose manipulation of the uncut volume was too often,
however, but a listening at closed doors. He reconstructed a possible groping
Chad of three or four years before, a Chad who had, after all, simply - for that
was the only way to see it - been too vulgar for his privilege. Surely it was a
privilege to have been young and happy just there. Well, the best thing Strether
knew of him was that he had had such a dream.
    But his own actual business half an hour later was with a third floor on the
Boulevard Malesherbes - so much as that was definite; and the fact of the
enjoyment by the third-floor windows of a continuous balcony, to which he was
helped by this knowledge, had perhaps something to do with his lingering for
five minutes on the opposite side of the street. There were points as to which
he had quite made up his mind, and one of these bore precisely on the wisdom of
the abruptness to which events had finally committed him, a policy that he was
pleased to find not at all shaken as he now looked at his watch and wondered. He
had announced himself - six months before; had written out at least that Chad
wasn't't to be surprised should he see him some day turn up. Chad had thereupon,
in a few words of rather carefully colourless answer, offered him a general
welcome; and Strether, ruefully reflecting that he might have understood the
warning as a hint to hospitality, a bid for an invitation, had fallen back upon
silence as the corrective most to his own taste. He had asked Mrs. Newsome
moreover not to announce him again; he had so distinct an opinion on his
attacking his job, should he attack it at all, in his own way. Not the least of
this lady's high merits for him was that he could absolutely rest on her word.
She was the only woman he had known, even at Woollett, as to whom his conviction
was positive that to lie was beyond her art. Sarah Pocock, for instance, her own
daughter, though with social ideals, as they said, in some respects different -
Sarah who was, in her way, aesthetic, had never refused to human commerce that
mitigation of rigour; there were occasions when he had distinctly seen her apply
it. Since, accordingly, at all events, he had had it from Mrs. Newsome that she
had, at whatever cost to her more strenuous view, conformed, in the matter of
preparing Chad, wholly to his restrictions, he now looked up at the fine
continuous balcony with a safe sense that if the case had been bungled the
mistake was at least his property. Was there perhaps just a suspicion of that in
his present pause on the edge of the Boulevard and well in the pleasant light?
    Many things came over him here, and one of them was that he should doubtless
presently know whether he had been shallow or sharp. Another was that the
balcony in question didn't somehow show as a convenience easy to surrender. Poor
Strether had at this very moment to recognise the truth that wherever one paused
in Paris the imagination reacted before one could stop it. This perpetual
reaction put a price, if one would, on pauses; but it piled up consequences till
there was scarce room to pick one's steps among them. What call had he, at such
a juncture, for example, to like Chad's very house? High broad clear - he was
expert enough to make out in a moment that it was admirably built - it fairly
embarrassed our friend by the quality that, as he would have said, it sprang on
him. He had struck off the fancy that it might, as a preliminary, be of service
to him to be seen, by a happy accident, from the third-story windows, which took
all the March sun, but of what service was it to find himself making out after a
moment that the quality sprung, the quality produced by measure and balance, the
fine relation of part to part and space to space, was probably - aided by the
presence of ornament as positive as it was discreet, and by the complexion of
the stone, a cold fair grey, warmed and polished a little by life - neither more
nor less than a case of distinction, such a case as he could only feel
unexpectedly as a sort of delivered challenge? Meanwhile, however, the chance he
had allowed for - the chance of being seen in time from the balcony - had become
a fact. Two or three of the windows stood open to the violet air; and, before
Strether had cut the knot by crossing, a young man had come out and looked about
him, had lighted a cigarette and tossed the match over, and then, resting on the
rail, had given himself up to watching the life below while he smoked. His
arrival contributed, in its order, to keeping Strether in position; the result
of which in turn was that Strether soon felt himself noticed. The young man
began to look at him as in acknowledgement of his being himself in observation.
    This was interesting so far as it went, but the interest was affected by the
young man's not being Chad. Strether wondered at first if he were perhaps Chad
altered, and then saw that this was asking too much of alteration. The young man
was light bright and alert - with an air too pleasant to have been arrived at by
patching. Strether had conceived Chad as patched, but not beyond recognition. He
was in presence, he felt, of amendments enough as they stood; it was a
sufficient amendment that the gentleman up there should be Chad's friend. He was
young too then, the gentleman up there - he was very young; young enough
apparently to be amused at an elderly watcher, to be curious even to see what
the elderly watcher would do on finding himself watched. There was youth in
that, there was youth in the surrender to the balcony, there was youth for
Strether at this moment in everything but his own business; and Chad's thus
pronounced association with youth had given the next instant an extraordinary
quick lift to the issue. The balcony, the distinguished front, testified
suddenly, for Strether's fancy, to something that was up and up; they placed the
whole case materially, and as by an admirable image, on a level that he found
himself at the end of another moment rejoicing to think he might reach. The
young man looked at him still, he looked at the young man; and the issue, by a
rapid process, was that this knowledge of a perched privacy appeared to him the
last of luxuries. To him too the perched privacy was open, and he saw it now but
in one light - that of the only domicile, the only fireside, in the great ironic
city, on which he had the shadow of a claim. Miss Gostrey had a fireside; she
had told him of it, and it was something that doubtless awaited him; but Miss
Gostrey hadn't yet arrived - she mightn't arrive for days; and the sole
attenuation of his excluded state was his vision of the small, the admittedly
secondary hotel in the bye-street from the Rue de la Paix, in which her
solicitude for his purse had placed him, which affected him somehow as all
indoor chill, glass-roofed court and slippery staircase, and which, by the same
token, expressed the presence of Waymarsh even at times when Waymarsh might have
been certain to be round at the bank. It came to pass before he moved that
Waymarsh, and Waymarsh alone, Waymarsh not only undiluted but positively
strengthened, struck him as the present alternative to the young man in the
balcony. When he did move it was fairly to escape that alternative. Taking his
way over the street at last and passing through the porte-cochère of the house
was like consciously leaving Waymarsh out. However, he would tell him all about
it.
 

                                   Book Third

                                       I

Strether told Waymarsh all about it that very evening, on their dining together
at the hotel; which needn't have happened, he was all the while aware, hadn't he
chosen to sacrifice to this occasion a rarer opportunity. The mention to his
companion of the sacrifice was moreover exactly what introduced his recital -
or, as he would have called it with more confidence in his interlocutor, his
confession. His confession was that he had been captured and that one of the
features of the affair had just failed to be his engaging himself on the spot to
dinner. As by such a freedom Waymarsh would have lost him he had obeyed his
scruple; and he had likewise obeyed another scruple - which bore on the question
of his himself bringing a guest.
    Waymarsh looked gravely ardent, over the finished soup, at this array of
scruples; Strether hadn't yet got quite used to being so unprepared for the
consequences of the impression he produced. It was comparatively easy to
explain, however, that he hadn't felt sure his guest would please. The person
was a young man whose acquaintance he had made but that afternoon in the course
of rather a hindered enquiry for another person - an enquiry his new friend had
just prevented in fact from being vain. »Oh,« said Strether, »I've all sorts of
things to tell you!« - and he put it in a way that was a virtual hint to
Waymarsh to help him to enjoy the telling. He waited for his fish, he drank of
his wine, he wiped his long moustache, he leaned back in his chair, he took in
the two English ladies who had just creaked past them and whom he would even
have articulately greeted if they hadn't rather chilled the impulse; so that all
he could do was - by way of doing something - to say »Merci, François!« out
quite loud when his fish was brought. Everything was there that he wanted,
everything that could make the moment an occasion, that would do beautifully -
everything but what Waymarsh might give. The little waxed salle-à-manger was
sallow and sociable; François, dancing over it, all smiles, was a man and a
brother; the high-shouldered patronne, with her high-held, much-rubbed hands,
seemed always assenting exuberantly to something unsaid; the Paris evening in
short was, for Strether, in the very taste of the soup, in the goodness, as he
was innocently pleased to think it, of the wine, in the pleasant coarse texture
of the napkin and the crunch of the thick-crusted bread. These all were things
congruous with his confession, and his confession was that he had - it would
come out properly just there if Waymarsh would only take it properly - agreed to
breakfast out, at twelve literally, the next day. He didn't quite know where;
the delicacy of the case came straight up in the remembrance of his new friend's
»We'll see; I'll take you somewhere!« - for it had required little more than
that, after all, to let him right in. He was affected after a minute, face to
face with his actual comrade, by the impulse to overcolour. There had already
been things in respect to which he knew himself tempted by this perversity. If
Waymarsh thought them bad he should at least have his reason tor his discomfort;
so Strether showed them as worse. Still, he was now, in his way, sincerely
perplexed.
    Chad had been absent from the Boulevard Malesherbes - was absent from Paris
altogether; he had learned that from the concierge, but had nevertheless gone
up, and gone up - there were no two ways about it - from an uncontrollable, a
really, if one would, depraved curiosity. The concierge had mentioned to him
that a friend of the tenant of the troisième was for the time in possession; and
this had been Strether's pretext for a further enquiry, an experiment carried
on, under Chad's roof, without his knowledge. »I found his friend in fact there
keeping the place warm, as he called it, for him; Chad himself being, as
appears, in the south. He went a month ago to Cannes and though his return
begins to be looked for it can't be for some days. I might, you see, perfectly
have waited a week; might have beaten a retreat as soon as I got this essential
knowledge. But I beat no retreat; I did the opposite; I stayed, I dawdled, I
trifled; above all I looked round. I saw, in fine; and - I don't know what to
call it - I sniffed. It's a detail, but it's as if there were something -
something very good - to sniff.«
    Waymarsh's face had shown his friend an attention apparently so remote that
the latter was slightly surprised to find it at this point abreast with him. »Do
you mean a smell? What of?«
    »A charming scent. But I don't know.«
    Waymarsh gave an inferential grunt. »Does he live there with a woman?«
    »I don't know.«
    Waymarsh waited an instant for more, then resumed. »Has he taken her off
with him?«
    »And will he bring her back?« - Strether fell into the enquiry. But he wound
it up as before. »I don't know.«
    The way he wound it up, accompanied as this was with another drop back,
another degustation of the Léoville, another wipe of his moustache and another
good word for François, seemed to produce in his companion a slight irritation.
»Then what the devil do you know?«
    »Well,« said Strether almost gaily, »I guess I don't know anything!« His
gaiety might have been a tribute to the fact that the state he had been reduced
to did for him again what had been done by his talk of the matter with Miss
Gostrey at the London theatre. It was somehow enlarging; and the air of that
amplitude was now doubtless more or less - and all for Waymarsh to feel - in his
further response. »That's what I found out from the young man.«
    »But I thought you said you found out nothing.«
    »Nothing but that - that I don't know anything.«
    »And what good does that do you?«
    »It's just,« said Strether, »what I've come to you to help me to discover. I
mean anything about anything over here. I felt that, up there. It regularly rose
before me in its might. The young man moreover - Chad's friend - as good as told
me so.«
    »As good as told you you know nothing about anything?« Waymarsh appeared to
look at some one who might have as good as told him. »How old is he?«
    »Well, I guess not thirty.«
    »Yet you had to take that from him?«
    »Oh I took a good deal more - since, as I tell you, I took an invitation to
déjeuner.«
    »And are you going to that unholy meal?«
    »If you'll come with me. He wants you too, you know. I told him about you.
He gave me his card,« Strether pursued, »and his name's rather funny. It's John
Little Bilham, and he says his two surnames are, on account of his being small,
inevitably used together.«
    »Well,« Waymarsh asked with due detachment from these details, »what's he
doing up there?«
    »His account of himself is that he's only a little artist-man. That seemed
to me perfectly to describe him. But he's yet in the phase of study; this, you
know, is the great art-school - to pass a certain number of years in which he
came over. And he's a great friend of Chad's, and occupying Chad's rooms just
now because they're so pleasant. He's very pleasant and curious too,« Strether
added - »though he's not from Boston.«
    Waymarsh looked already rather sick of him. »Where is he from?«
    Strether thought. »I don't know that, either. But he's notoriously, as he
put it himself, not from Boston.«
    »Well,« Waymarsh moralised from dry depths, »every one can't notoriously be
from Boston. Why,« he continued, »is he curious?«
    »Perhaps just for that - for one thing! But really,« Strether added, »for
everything. When you meet him you'll see.«
    »Oh I don't want to meet him,« Waymarsh impatiently growled. »Why don't he
go home?«
    Strether hesitated. »Well, because he likes it over here.«
    This appeared in particular more than Waymarsh could bear. »He ought then to
be ashamed of himself, and, as you admit that you think so too, why drag him
in?«
    Strether's reply again took time. »Perhaps I do think so myself - though I
don't quite yet admit it. I'm not a bit sure - it's again one of the things I
want to find out. I liked him, and can you like people -? But no matter.« He
pulled himself up. »There's no doubt I want you to come down on me and squash
me.«
    Waymarsh helped himself to the next course, which, however, proving not the
dish he had just noted as supplied to the English ladies, had the effect of
causing his imagination temporarily to wander. But it presently broke out at a
softer spot. »Have they got a handsome place up there?«
    »Oh a charming place; full of beautiful and valuable things. I never saw
such a place« - and Strether's thought went back to it. »For a little artist-man
-!« He could in fact scarce express it.
    But his companion, who appeared now to have a view, insisted. »Well?«
    »Well, life can hold nothing better. Besides, they're things of which he's
in charge.«
    »So that he does doorkeeper for your precious pair? Can life,« Waymarsh
enquired, »hold nothing better than that?« Then as Strether, silent, seemed even
yet to wonder, »Doesn't he know what she is?« he went on.
    »I don't know. I didn't ask him. I couldn't. It was impossible. You wouldn't
either. Besides I didn't want to. No more would you.« Strether in short
explained it at a stroke. »You can't make out over here what people do know.«
    »Then what did you come over for?«
    »Well, I suppose exactly to see for myself - without their aid.«
    »Then what do you want mine for?«
    »Oh,« Strether laughed, »you're not one of them! I do know what you know.«
    As, however, this last assertion caused Waymarsh again to look at him hard -
such being the latter's doubt of its implications - he felt his justification
lame. Which was still more the case when Waymarsh presently said: »Look here,
Strether. Quit this.«
    Our friend smiled with a doubt of his own. »Do you mean my tone?«
    »No - damn your tone. I mean your nosing round. Quit the whole job. Let them
stew in their juice. You're being used for a thing you ain't fit for. People
don't take a fine-tooth comb to groom a horse.«
    »Am I a fine-tooth comb?« Strether laughed. »It's something I never called
myself!«
    »It's what you are, all the same. You ain't so young as you were, but you've
kept your teeth.«
    He acknowledged his friend's humour. »Take care I don't get them into you!
You'd like them, my friends at home, Waymarsh,« he declared; »you'd really
particularly like them. And I know« - it was slightly irrelevant, but he gave it
sudden and singular force - »I know they'd like you!«
    »Oh don't work them off on me!« Waymarsh groaned.
    Yet Strether still lingered with his hands in his pockets. »It's really
quite as indispensable as I say that Chad should be got back.«
    »Indispensable to whom? To you?«
    »Yes,« Strether presently said.
    »Because if you get him you also get Mrs. Newsome?«
    Strether faced it. »Yes.«
    »And if you don't get him you don't get her?«
    It might be merciless, but he continued not to flinch. »I think it might
have some effect on our personal understanding. Chad's of real importance - or
can easily become so if he will - to the business.«
    »And the business is of real importance to his mother's husband?«
    »Well, I naturally want what my future wife wants. And the thing will be
much better if we have our own man in it.«
    »If you have your own man in it, in other words,« Waymarsh said, »you'll
marry - you personally - more money. She's already rich, as I understand you,
but she'll be richer still if the business can be made to boom on certain lines
that you've laid down.«
    »I haven't laid them down,« Strether promptly returned. »Mr. Newsome - who
knew extraordinarily well what he was about - laid them down ten years ago.«
    Oh well, Waymarsh seemed to indicate with a shake of his mane, that didn't
matter! »You're fierce for the boom anyway.«
    His friend weighed a moment in silence the justice of the charge. »I can
scarcely be called fierce, I think, when I so freely take my chance of the
possibility, the danger, of being influenced in a sense counter to Mrs.
Newsome's own feelings.«
    Waymarsh gave this proposition a long hard look. »I see. You're afraid
yourself of being squared. But you're a humbug,« he added, »all the same.«
    »Oh!« Strether quickly protested.
    »Yes, you ask me for protection - which makes you very interesting; and then
you won't take it. You say you want to be squashed -«
    »Ah but not so easily! Don't you see,« Strether demanded, »where my
interest, as already shown you, lies? It lies in my not being squared. If I'm
squared where's my marriage? If I miss my errand I miss that; and if I miss that
I miss everything - I'm nowhere.«
    Waymarsh - but all relentlessly - took this in. »What do I care where you
are if you're spoiled?«
    Their eyes met on it an instant. »Thank you awfully,« Strether at last said.
»But don't you think her judgement of that -?«
    »Ought to content me? No.«
    It kept them again face to face, and the end of this was that Strether again
laughed. »You do her injustice. You really must know her. Good-night.«
    He breakfasted with Mr. Bilham on the morrow, and, as inconsequently befell,
with Waymarsh massively of the party. The latter announced, at the eleventh hour
and much to his friend's surprise, that, damn it, he would as soon join him as
do anything else; on which they proceeded together, strolling in a state of
detachment practically luxurious for them to the Boulevard Malesherbes, a couple
engaged that day with the sharp spell of Paris as confessedly, it might have
been seen, as any couple among the daily thousands so compromised. They walked,
wandered, wondered and, a little, lost themselves; Strether hadn't had for years
so rich a consciousness of time - a bag of gold into which he constantly dipped
for a handful. It was present to him that when the little business with Mr.
Bilham should be over he would still have shining hours to use absolutely as he
liked. There was no great pulse of haste yet in this process of saving Chad; nor
was that effect a bit more marked as he sat, half an hour later, with his legs
under Chad's mahogany, with Mr. Bilham on one side, with a friend of Mr.
Bilham's on the other, with Waymarsh stupendously opposite, and with the great
hum of Paris coming up in softness, vagueness - for Strether himself indeed
already positive sweetness - through the sunny windows toward which, the day
before, his curiosity had raised its wings from below. The feeling strongest
with him at that moment had borne fruit almost faster than he could taste it,
and Strether literally felt at the present hour that there was a precipitation
in his fate. He had known nothing and nobody as he stood in the street; but
hadn't his view now taken a bound in the direction of every one and of every
thing?
    »What's he up to, what's he up to?« - something like that was at the back of
his head all the while in respect to little Bilham; but meanwhile, till he
should make out, every one and every thing were as good as represented for him
by the combination of his host and the lady on his left. The lady on his left,
the lady thus promptly and ingeniously invited to meet Mr. Strether and Mr.
Waymarsh - it was the way she herself expressed her case - was a very marked
person, a person who had much to do with our friend's asking himself if the
occasion weren't in its essence the most baited, the most gilded of traps.
Baited it could properly be called when the repast was of so wise a savour, and
gilded surrounding objects seemed inevitably to need to be when Miss Barrace -
which was the lady's name - looked at them with convex Parisian eyes and through
a glass with a remarkably long tortoise-shell handle. Why Miss Barrace, mature
meagre erect and eminently gay, highly adorned, perfectly familiar, freely
contradictious and reminding him of some last-century portrait of a clever head
without powder - why Miss Barrace should have been in particular the note of a
trap Strether couldn't on the spot have explained; he blinked in the light of a
conviction that he should know later on, and know well - as it came over him,
for that matter, with force, that he should need to. He wondered what he was to
think exactly of either of his new friends; since the young man, Chad's intimate
and deputy, had, in thus constituting the scene, practised so much more subtly
than he had been prepared for, and since in especial Miss Barrace, surrounded
clearly by every consideration, hadn't scrupled to figure as a familiar object.
It was interesting to him to feel that he was in the presence of new measures,
other standards, a different scale of relations, and that evidently here were a
happy pair who didn't think of things at all as he and Waymarsh thought. Nothing
was less to have been calculated in the business than that it should now be for
him as if he and Waymarsh were comparatively quite at one.
    The latter was magnificent - this at least was an assurance privately given
him by Miss Barrace. »Oh your friend's a type, the grand old American - what
shall one call it? The Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, who used when I was a
little girl in the Rue Montaigne to come to see my father and who was usually
the American Minister to the Tuileries or some other court. I haven't seen one
these ever so many years; the sight of it warms my poor old chilled heart; this
specimen is wonderful; in the right quarter, you know, he'll have a succès fou«
Strether hadn't failed to ask what the right quarter might be, much as he
required his presence of mind to meet such a change in their scheme. »Oh the
artist-quarter and that kind of thing; here already, for instance, as you see.«
He had been on the point of echoing »Here? - is this the artist-quarter?« but
she had already disposed of the question with a wave of all her tortoise-shell
and an easy »Bring him to me!« He knew on the spot how little he should be able
to bring him, for the very air was by this time, to his sense, thick and hot
with poor Waymarsh's judgement of it He was in the trap still more than his
companion and, unlike his companion, not making the best of it; which was
precisely what doubtless gave him his admirable sombre glow. Little did Miss
Barrace know that what was behind it was his grave estimate of her own laxity.
The general assumption with which our two friends had arrived had been that of
finding Mr. Bilham ready to conduct them to one or other of those resorts of the
earnest, the aesthetic fraternity which were shown among the sights of Paris. In
this character it would have justified them in a proper insistence on
discharging their score. Waymarsh's only proviso at the last had been that
nobody should pay for him; but he found himself, as the occasion developed, paid
for on a scale as to which Strether privately made out that he already nursed
retribution. Strether was conscious across the table of what worked in him,
conscious when they passed back to the small salon to which, the previous
evening, he himself had made so rich a reference; conscious most of all as they
stepped out to the balcony in which one would have had to be an ogre not to
recognise the perfect place for easy aftertastes. These things were enhanced for
Miss Barrace by a succession of excellent cigarettes - acknowledged, acclaimed,
as a part of the wonderful supply left behind him by Chad - in an almost equal
absorption of which Strether found himself blindly, almost wildly pushing
forward. He might perish by the sword as well as by famine, and he knew that his
having abetted the lady by an excess that was rare with him would count for
little in the sum - as Waymarsh might so easily add it up - of her licence.
Waymarsh had smoked of old, smoked hugely; but Waymarsh did nothing now, and
that gave him his advantage over people who took things up lightly just when
others had laid them heavily down. Strether had never smoked, and he felt as if
he flaunted at his friend that this had been only because of a reason. The
reason, it now began to appear even to himself, was that he had never had a lady
to smoke with.
    It was this lady's being there at all, however, that was the strange free
thing; perhaps, since she was there, her smoking was the least of her freedoms.
If Strether had been sure at each juncture of what - with Bilham in especial -
she talked about, he might have traced others and winced at them and felt
Waymarsh wince; but he was in fact so often at sea that his sense of the range
of reference was merely general and that he on several different occasions
guessed and interpreted only to doubt. He wondered what they meant, but there
were things he scarce thought they could be supposed to mean, and »Oh no - not
that!« was at the end of most of his ventures. This was the very beginning with
him of a condition as to which, later on, it will be seen, he found cause to
pull himself up; and he was to remember the moment duly as the first step in a
process. The central fact of the place was neither more nor less, when analysed
- and a pressure superficial sufficed - than the fundamental impropriety of
Chad's situation, round about which they thus seemed cynically clustered.
Accordingly, since they took it for granted, they took for granted all that was
in connexion with it taken for granted at Woollett - matters as to which,
verily, he had been reduced with Mrs. Newsome to the last intensity of silence.
That was the consequence of their being too bad to be talked about, and was the
accompaniment, by the same token, of a deep conception of their badness. It
befell therefore that when poor Strether put it to himself that their badness
was ultimately, or perhaps even insolently, what such a scene as the one before
him was, so to speak, built upon, he could scarce shirk the dilemma of reading a
roundabout echo of them into almost anything that came up. This, he was well
aware, was a dreadful necessity; but such was the stem logic, he could only
gather, of a relation to the irregular life.
    It was the way the irregular life sat upon Bilham and Miss Barrace that was
the insidious, the delicate marvel. He was eager to concede that their relation
to it was all indirect, for anything else in him would have shown the grossness
of bad manners; but the indirectness was none the less consonant - that was
striking - with a grateful enjoyment of everything that was Chad's. They spoke
of him repeatedly, invoking his good name and good nature, and the worst
confusion of mind for Strether was that all their mention of him was of a kind
to do him honour. They commended his munificence and approved his taste, and in
doing so sat down, as it seemed to Strether, in the very soil out of which these
things flowered. Our friend's final predicament was that he himself was sitting
down, for the time, with them, and there was a supreme moment at which, compared
with his collapse, Waymarsh's erectness affected him as really high. One thing
was certain - he saw he must make up his mind. He must approach Chad, must wait
for him, deal with him, master him, but he mustn't dispossess himself of the
faculty of seeing things as they were. He must bring him to him - not go
himself, as it were, so much of the way. He must at any rate be clearer as to
what - should he continue to do that for convenience - he was still condoning.
It was on the detail of this quantity - and what could the fact be but
mystifying? - that Bilham and Miss Barrace threw so little light. So there they
were.

                                       II

 
When Miss Gostrey arrived, at the end of a week, she made him a sign; he went
immediately to see her, and it wasn't't till then that he could again close his
grasp on the idea of a corrective. This idea however was luckily all before him
again from the moment he crossed the threshold of the little entresol of the
Quartier Marboeuf into which she had gathered, as she said, picking them up in a
thousand flights and funny little passionate pounces, the makings of a final
nest. He recognised in an instant that there really, there only, he should find
the boon with the vision of which he had first mounted Chad's stairs. He might
have been a little scared at the picture of how much more, in this place, he
should know himself in hadn't his friend been on the spot to measure the amount
to his appetite. Her compact and crowded little chambers, almost dusky, as they
at first struck him, with accumulations, represented a supreme general
adjustment to opportunities and conditions. Wherever he looked he saw an old
ivory or an old brocade, and he scarce knew where to sit for fear of a
misappliance. The life of the occupant struck him of a sudden as more charged
with possession even than Chad's or than Miss Barrace's; wide as his glimpse had
lately become of the empire of things, what was before him still enlarged it;
the lust of the eyes and the pride of life had indeed thus their temple. It was
the innermost nook of the shrine - as brown as a pirate's cave. In the brownness
were glints of gold; patches of purple were in the gloom; objects all that
caught, through the muslin, with their high rarity, the light of the low
windows. Nothing was clear about them but that they were precious, and they
brushed his ignorance with their contempt as a flower, in a liberty taken with
him, might have been whisked under his nose. But after a full look at his
hostess he knew none the less what most concerned him. The circle in which they
stood together was warm with life, and every question between them would live
there as nowhere else. A question came up as soon as they had spoken, for his
answer, with a laugh, was quickly: »Well, they've got hold of me!« Much of their
talk on this first occasion was his development of that truth. He was
extraordinarily glad to see her, expressing to her frankly what she most showed
him, that one might live for years without a blessing unsuspected, but that to
know it at last for no more than three days was to need it or miss it for ever.
She was the blessing that had now become his need, and what could prove it
better than that without her he had lost himself?
    »What do you mean?« she asked with an absence of alarm that, correcting him
as if he had mistaken the period of one of her pieces, gave him afresh a sense
of her easy movement through the maze he had but begun to tread. »What in the
name of all the Pococks have you managed to do?«
    »Why exactly the wrong thing. I've made a frantic friend of little Bilham.«
    »Ah that sort of thing was of the essence of your case and to have been
allowed for from the first.« And it was only after this that, quite as a minor
matter, she asked who in the world little Bilham might be. When she learned that
he was a friend of Chad's and living for the time in Chad's rooms in Chad's
absence, quite as if acting in Chad's spirit and serving Chad's cause, she
showed, however, more interest. »Should you mind my seeing him? Only once, you
know,« she added.
    »Oh the oftener the better: he's amusing - he's original.«
    »He doesn't't shock you?« Miss Gostrey threw out.
    »Never in the world! We escape that with a perfection -! I feel it to be
largely, no doubt, because I don't half - understand him; but our modus vivendi
isn't spoiled even by that. You must dine with me to meet him,« Strether went
on. »Then you'll see.«
    »Are you giving dinners?«
    »Yes - there I am. That's what I mean.«
    All her kindness wondered. »That you're spending too much money?«
    »Dear no - they seem to cost so little. But that I do it to them. I ought to
hold off.«
    She thought again - she laughed. »The money you must be spending to think it
cheap! But I must be out of it - to the naked eye.«
    He looked for a moment as if she were really failing him. »Then you won't
meet them?« It was almost as if she had developed an unexpected personal
prudence.
    She hesitated. »Who are they - first?«
    »Why little Bilham to begin with.« He kept back for the moment Miss Barrace.
»And Chad - when he comes - you must absolutely see.«
    »When then does he come?«
    »When Bilham has had time to write him, and hear from him, about me. Bilham,
however,« he pursued, »will report favourably - favourably for Chad. That will
make him not afraid to come. I want you the more therefore, you see, for my
bluff.«
    »Oh you'll do yourself for your bluff.« She was perfectly easy. »At the rate
you've gone I'm quiet.«
    »Ah but I haven't,« said Strether, »made one protest.«
    She turned it over. »Haven't you been seeing what there's to protest about?«
    He let her, with this, however ruefully, have the whole truth. »I haven't
yet found a single thing.«
    »Isn't there any one with him then?«
    »Of the sort I came out about?« Strether took a moment. »How do I know? And
what do I care?«
    »Oh oh!« - and her laughter spread. He was struck in fact by the effect on
her of his joke. He saw now how he meant it as a joke. She saw, however, still
other things, though in an instant she had hidden them. »You've got at no facts
at all?«
    He tried to muster them. »Well, he has a lovely home.«
    »Ah that, in Paris,« she quickly returned, »proves nothing. That is rather
it disproves nothing. They may very well, you see, the people your mission is
concerned with, have done it for him.«
    »Exactly. And it was on the scene of their doings then that Waymarsh and I
sat guzzling.«
    »Oh if you forbore to guzzle here on scenes of doings,« she replied, »you
might easily die of starvation.« With which she smiled at him. »You've worse
before you.«
    »Ah I've everything before me. But on our hypothesis, you know, they must be
wonderful.«
    »They are!« said Miss Gostrey. »You're not therefore, you see,« she added,
»wholly without facts. They've been, in effect, wonderful.«
    To have got at something comparatively definite appeared at last a little to
help - a wave by which moreover, the next moment, recollection was washed. »My
young man does admit furthermore that they're our friend's great interest.«
    »Is that the expression he uses?«
    Strether more exactly recalled. »No - not quite.«
    »Something more vivid? Less?«
    He had bent, with neared glasses, over a group of articles on a small stand;
and at this he came up. »It was a mere allusion, but, on the lookout as I was,
it struck me. Awful, you know, as Chad is - those were Bilham's words.«
    »Awful, you know -? Oh!« - and Miss Gostrey turned them over. She seemed,
however, satisfied. »Well, what more do you want?«
    He glanced once more at a bibelot or two, and everything sent him back. »But
it is all the same as if they wished to let me have it between the eyes.«
    She wondered. »Quoi donc?«
    »Why what I speak of. The amenity. They can stun you with that as well as
with anything else.«
    »Oh,« she answered, »you'll come round! I must see them each,« she went on,
»for myself. I mean Mr. Bilham and Mr. Newsome - Mr. Bilham naturally first.
Once only - once for each; that will do. But face to face - for half an hour.
What's Mr. Chad,« she immediately pursued, »doing at Cannes? Decent men don't go
to Cannes with the - well, with the kind of ladies you mean.«
    »Don't they?« Strether asked with an interest in decent men that amused her.
    »No; elsewhere, but not to Cannes. Cannes is different. Cannes is better.
Cannes is best. I mean it's all people you know - when you do know them. And if
he does, why that's different too. He must have gone alone. She can't be with
him.«
    »I haven't,« Strether confessed in his weakness, »the least idea.« There
seemed much in what she said, but he was able after a little to help her to a
nearer impression. The meeting with little Bilham took place, by easy
arrangement, in the great gallery of the Louvre; and when, standing with his
fellow visitor before one of the splendid Titians - the overwhelming portrait of
the young man with the strangely-shaped glove and the blue-grey eyes - he turned
to see the third member of their party advance from the end of the waxed and
gilded vista, he had a sense of having at last taken hold. He had agreed with
Miss Gostrey - it dated even from Chester - for a morning at the Louvre, and he
had embraced independently the same idea as thrown out by little Bilham, whom he
had already accompanied to the museum of the Luxembourg. The fusion of these
schemes presented no difficulty, and it was to strike him again that in little
Bilham's company contrarieties in general dropped.
    »Oh he's all right - he's one of us!« Miss Gostrey, after the first
exchange, soon found a chance to murmur to her companion; and Strether, as they
proceeded and paused and while a quick unanimity between the two appeared to
have phrased itself in half a dozen remarks - Strether knew that he knew almost
immediately what she meant, and took it as still another sign that he had got
his job in hand. This was the more grateful to him that he could think of the
intelligence now serving him as an acquisition positively new. He wouldn't have
known even the day before what she meant - that is if she meant, what he
assumed, that they were intense Americans together. He had just worked round -
and with a sharper turn of the screw than any yet - to the conception of an
American intense as little Bilham was intense. The young man was his first
specimen; the specimen had profoundly perplexed him; at present however there
was light. It was by little Bilham's amazing serenity that he had at first been
affected, but he had inevitably, in his circumspection, felt it as the trail of
the serpent, the corruption, as he might conveniently have said, of Europe;
whereas the promptness with which it came up for Miss Gostrey but as a special
little form of the oldest thing they knew justified it at once to his own vision
as well. He wanted to be able to like his specimen with a clear good conscience,
and this fully permitted it. What had muddled him was precisely the small
artist-man's way - it was so complete - of being more American than anybody. But
it now for the time put Strether vastly at his ease to have this view of a new
way.
    The amiable youth then looked out, as it had first struck Strether, at a
world in respect to which he hadn't a prejudice. The one our friend most
instantly missed was the usual one in favour of an occupation accepted. Little
Bilham had an occupation, but it was only an occupation declined; and it was by
his general exemption from alarm, anxiety or remorse on this score that the
impression of his serenity was made. He had come out to Paris to paint - to
fathom, that is, at large, that mystery; but study had been fatal to him so far
as anything could be fatal, and his productive power faltered in proportion as
his knowledge grew. Strether had gathered from him that at the moment of his
finding him in Chad's rooms he hadn't saved from his shipwreck a scrap of
anything but his beautiful intelligence and his confirmed habit of Paris. He
referred to these things with an equal fond familiarity, and it was sufficiently
clear that, as an outfit, they still served him. They were charming to Strether
through the hour spent at the Louvre, where indeed they figured for him as an
unseparated part of the charged iridescent air, the glamour of the name, the
splendour of the space, the colour of the masters. Yet they were present too
wherever the young man led, and the day after the visit to the Louvre they hung,
in a different walk, about the steps of our party. He had invited his companions
to cross the river with him, offering to show them his own poor place; and his
own poor place, which was very poor, gave to his idiosyncrasies, for Strether -
the small sublime indifferences and independences that had struck the latter as
fresh - an odd and engaging dignity. He lived at the end of an alley that went
out of an old short cobbled street, a street that went in turn out of a new long
smooth avenue - street and avenue and alley having, however, in common a sort of
social shabbiness; and he introduced them to the rather cold and blank little
studio which he had lent to a comrade for the term of his elegant absence. The
comrade was another ingenuous compatriot, to whom he had wired that tea was to
await them regardless, and this reckless repast, and the second ingenuous
compatriot, and the faraway makeshift life, with its jokes and its gaps, its
delicate daubs and its three or four chairs, its overflow of taste and
conviction and its lack of nearly all else - these things wove round the
occasion a spell to which our hero unreservedly surrendered.
    He liked the ingenuous compatriots - for two or three others soon gathered;
he liked the delicate daubs and the free discriminations - involving references
indeed, involving enthusiasms and execrations that made him, as they said, sit
up; he liked above all the legend of good-humoured poverty, of mutual
accommodation fairly raised to the romantic, that he soon read into the scene.
The ingenuous compatriots showed a candour, he thought, surpassing even the
candour of Woollett; they were red-haired and long-legged, they were quaint and
queer and dear and droll; they made the place resound with the vernacular, which
he had never known so marked as when figuring for the chosen language, he must
suppose, of contemporary art. They twanged with a vengeance the aesthetic lyre -
they drew from it wonderful airs. This aspect of their life had an admirable
innocence; and he looked on occasion at Maria Gostrey to see to what extent that
element reached her. She gave him however for the hour, as she had given him the
previous day, no further sign than to show how she dealt with boys; meeting them
with the air of old Parisian practice that she had for every one, for
everything, in turn. Wonderful about the delicate daubs, masterful about the way
to make tea, trustful about the legs of chairs and familiarly reminiscent of
those, in the other time, the named, the numbered or the caricatured, who had
flourished or failed, disappeared or arrived, she had accepted with the best
grace her second course of little Bilham, and had said to Strether, the previous
afternoon, on his leaving them, that, since her impression was to be renewed,
she would reserve judgement till after the new evidence.
    The new evidence was to come, as it proved, in a day or two. He soon had
from Maria a message to the effect that an excellent box at the Français had
been lent her for the following night; it seeming on such occasions not the
least of her merits that she was subject to such approaches. The sense of how
she was always paying for something in advance was equalled on Strether's part
only by the sense of how she was always being paid; all of which made for his
consciousness, in the larger air, of a lively bustling traffic, the exchange of
such values as were not for him to handle. She hated, he knew, at the French
play, anything but a box - just as she hated at the English anything but a
stall; and a box was what he was already in this phase girding himself to press
upon her. But she had for that matter her community with little Bilham: she too
always, on the great issues, showed as having known in time. It made her
constantly beforehand with him and gave him mainly the chance to ask himself how
on the day of their settlement their account would stand. He endeavoured even
now to keep it a little straight by arranging that if he accepted her invitation
she should dine with him first; but the upshot of this scruple was that at eight
o'clock on the morrow he awaited her with Waymarsh under the pillared portico.
She hadn't dined with him, and it was characteristic of their relation that she
had made him embrace her refusal without in the least understanding it. She ever
caused her rearrangements to affect him as her tenderest touches. It was on that
principle for instance that, giving him the opportunity to be amiable again to
little Bilham, she had suggested his offering the young man a seat in their box.
Strether had dispatched for this purpose a small blue missive to the Boulevard
Malesherbes, but up to the moment of their passing into the theatre he had
received no response to his message. He held, however, even after they had been
for some time conveniently seated, that their friend, who knew his way about,
would come in at his own right moment. His temporary absence moreover seemed, as
never yet, to make the right moment for Miss Gostrey. Strether had been waiting
till tonight to get back from her in some mirrored form her impressions and
conclusions. She had elected, as they said, to see little Bilham once; but now
she had seen him twice and had nevertheless not said more than a word.
    Waymarsh meanwhile sat opposite him with their hostess between; and Miss
Gostrey spoke of herself as an instructor of youth introducing her little
charges to a work that was one of the glories of literature. The glory was
happily unobjectionable, and the little charges were candid; for herself she had
travelled that road and she merely waited on their innocence. But she referred
in due time to their absent friend, whom it was clear they should have to give
up. »He either won't have got your note,« she said, »or you won't have got his:
he has had some kind of hindrance, and, of course, for that matter, you know, a
man never writes about coming to a box.« She spoke as if, with her look, it
might have been Waymarsh who had written to the youth, and the latter's face
showed a mixture of austerity and anguish. She went on however as if to meet
this. »He's far and away, you know, the best of them.«
    »The best of whom, ma'am?«
    »Why of all the long procession - the boys, the girls, or the old men and
old women as they sometimes really are; the hope, as one may say, of our
country. They've all passed, year after year; but there has been no one in
particular I've ever wanted to stop. I feel - don't you? - that I want to stop
little Bilham; he's so exactly right as he is.« She continued to talk to
Waymarsh. »He's too delightful. If he'll only not spoil it! But they always
will; they always do; they always have.«
    »I don't think Waymarsh knows,« Strether said after a moment, »quite what
it's open to Bilham to spoil.«
    »It can't be a good American,« Waymarsh lucidly enough replied; »for it
didn't strike me the young man had developed much in that shape.«
    »Ah,« Miss Gostrey sighed, »the name of the good American is as easily given
as taken away! What is it, to begin with, to be one, and what's the
extraordinary hurry? Surely nothing that's so pressing was ever so little
defined. It's such an order, really, that before we cook you the dish we must at
least have your receipt. Besides, the poor chicks have time! What I've seen so
often spoiled,« she pursued, »is the happy attitude itself, the state of faith
and - what shall I call it? - the sense of beauty. You're right about him« - she
now took in Strether; »little Bilham has them to a charm; we must keep little
Bilham along.« Then she was all again for Waymarsh. »The others have all wanted
so dreadfully to do something, and they've gone and done it in too many cases
indeed. It leaves them never the same afterwards; the charm's always somehow
broken. Now he, I think, you know, really won't. He won't do the least dreadful
little thing. We shall continue to enjoy him just as he is. No - he's quite
beautiful. He sees everything. He isn't a bit ashamed. He has every scrap of the
courage of it that one could ask. Only think what he might do. One wants really
- for fear of some accident - to keep him in view. At this very moment perhaps
what mayn't he be up to? I've had my disappointments - the poor things are never
really safe; or only at least when you have them under your eye. One can never
completely trust them. One's uneasy, and I think that's why I most miss him
now.«
    She had wound up with a laugh of enjoyment over her embroidery of her idea -
an enjoyment that her face communicated to Strether, who almost wished none the
less at this moment that she would let poor Waymarsh alone. He knew more or less
what she meant; but the fact wasn't't a reason for her not pretending to Waymarsh
that he didn't. It was craven of him perhaps, but he would, for the high amenity
of the occasion, have liked Waymarsh not to be so sure of his wit. Her
recognition of it gave him away and, before she had done with him or with that
article, would give him worse. What was he, all the same, to do? He looked
across the box at his friend; they eyes met; something queer and stiff,
something that bore on the situation but that it was better not to touch, passed
in silence between them. Well, the effect of it for Strether was an abrupt
reaction, a final impatience of his own tendency to temporise. Where was that
taking him anyway? It was one of the quiet instants that sometimes settle more
matters than the outbreaks dear to the historic muse. The only qualification of
the quietness was the synthetic »Oh hang it!« into which Strether's share of the
silence soundlessly flowered. It represented, this mute ejaculation, a final
impulse to burn his ships. These ships, to the historic muse, may seem of course
mere cockles, but when he presently spoke to Miss Gostrey it was with the sense
at least of applying the torch. »Is it then a conspiracy?«
    »Between the two young men? Well, I don't pretend to be a seer or a
prophetess,« she presently replied; »but if I'm simply a woman of sense he's
working for you to-night. I don't quite know how - but it's in my bones.« And
she looked at him at last as if, little material as she yet gave him, he'd
really understand. »For an opinion that's my opinion. He makes you out too well
not to.«
    »Not to work for me to-night?« Strether wondered. »Then I hope he isn't
doing anything very bad.«
    »They've got you,« she portentously answered.
    »Do you mean he is -?«
    »They've got you,« she merely repeated. Though she disclaimed the prophetic
vision she was at this instant the nearest approach he had ever met to the
priestess of the oracle. The light was in her eyes. »You must face it now.«
    He faced it on the spot. »They had arranged -?«
    »Every move in the game. And they've been arranging ever since. He has had
every day his little telegram from Cannes.«
    It made Strether open his eyes. »Do you know that?«
    »I do better. I see it. This was, before I met him, what I wondered whether
I was to see. But as soon as I met him I ceased to wonder, and our second
meeting made me sure. I took him all in. He was acting - he is still - on his
daily instructions.«
    »So that Chad has done the whole thing?«
    »Oh no - not the whole. We've done some of it. You and I and Europe.«
    »Europe - yes,« Strether mused.
    »Dear old Paris,« she seemed to explain. But there was more, and, with one
of her turns, she risked it. »And dear old Waymarsh. You,« she declared, »have
been a good bit of it.«
    He sat massive. »A good bit of what, ma'am?«
    »Why of the wonderful consciousness of our friend here. You've helped too in
your way to float him to where he is.«
    »And where the devil is he?«
    She passed it on with a laugh. »Where the devil, Strether, are you?«
    He spoke as if he had just been thinking it out. »Well, quite already in
Chad's hands, it would seem.« And he had had with this another thought. »Will
that be - just all through Bilham - the way he's going to work it? It would be,
for him, you know, an idea. And Chad with an idea -!«
    »Well?« she asked while the image held him.
    »Well, is Chad - what shall I say? - monstrous?«
    »Oh as much as you like! But the idea you speak of,« she said, »won't have
been his best. He'll have a better. It won't be all through little Bilham that
he'll work it.«
    This already sounded almost like a hope destroyed. »Through whom else then?«
    »That's what we shall see!« But quite as she spoke she turned, and Strether
turned; for the door of the box had opened, with the click of the ouvreuse, from
the lobby, and a gentleman, a stranger to them, had come in with a quick step.
The door closed behind him, and, though their faces showed him his mistake, his
air, which was striking, was all good confidence. The curtain had just again
arisen, and, in the hush of the general attention, Strether's challenge was
tacit, as was also the greeting, with a quickly-deprecating hand and smile, of
the unannounced visitor. He discreetly signed that he would wait, would stand,
and these things and his face, one look from which she had caught, had suddenly
worked for Miss Gostrey. She fitted to them all an answer for Strether's last
question. The solid stranger was simply the answer - as she now, turning to her
friend, indicated. She brought it straight out for him - it presented the
intruder. »Why, through this gentleman!« The gentleman indeed, at the same time,
though sounding for Strether a very short name, did practically as much to
explain. Strether gasped the name back - then only had he seen. Miss Gostrey had
said more than she knew. They were in presence of Chad himself.
    Our friend was to go over it afterwards again and again - he was going over
it much of the time that they were together, and they were together constantly
for three or four days: the note had been so strongly struck during that first
half-hour that everything happening since was comparatively a minor development.
The fact was that his perception of the young man's identity - so absolutely
checked for a minute - had been quite one of the sensations that count in life;
he certainly had never known one that had acted, as he might have said, with
more of a crowded rush. And the rush, though both vague and multitudinous, had
lasted a long time, protected, as it were, yet at the same time aggravated, by
the circumstance of its coinciding with a stretch of decorous silence. They
couldn't talk without disturbing the spectators in the part of the balcony just
below them; and it, for that matter, came to Strether - being a thing of the
sort that did come to him - that these were the accidents of a high
civilisation; the imposed tribute to propriety, the frequent exposure to
conditions, usually brilliant, in which relief has to await its time. Relief was
never quite near at hand for kings, queens, comedians and other such people, and
though you might be yourself not exactly one of those, you could yet, in leading
the life of high pressure, guess a little how they sometimes felt. It was truly
the life of high pressure that Strether had seemed to feel himself lead while he
sat there, close to Chad, during the long tension of the act. He was in presence
of a fact that occupied his whole mind, that occupied for the half-hour his
senses themselves all together; but he couldn't without inconvenience show
anything - which moreover might count really as luck. What he might have shown,
had he shown at all, was exactly the kind of emotion - the emotion of
bewilderment - that he had proposed to himself from the first, whatever should
occur, to show least. The phenomenon that had suddenly sat down there with him
was a phenomenon of change so complete that his imagination, which had worked so
beforehand, felt itself, in the connexion, without margin or allowance. It had
faced every contingency but that Chad should not be Chad, and this was what it
now had to face with a mere strained smile and an uncomfortable flush.
    He asked himself if, by any chance, before he should have in some way to
commit himself, he might feel his mind settled to the new vision, might
habituate it, so to speak, to the remarkable truth. But oh it was too
remarkable, the truth; for what could be more remarkable than this sharp rupture
of an identity? You could deal with a man as himself - you couldn't deal with
him as somebody else. It was a small source of peace moreover to be reduced to
wondering how little he might know in such an event what a sum he was setting
you. He couldn't absolutely not know, for you couldn't absolutely not let him.
It was a case then simply, a strong case, as people nowadays called such things,
a case of transformation unsurpassed, and the hope was but in the general law
that strong cases were liable to control from without. Perhaps he, Strether
himself, was the only person after all aware of it. Even Miss Gostrey, with all
her science, wouldn't be, would she? - and he had never seen any one less aware
of anything than Waymarsh as he glowered at Chad. The social sightlessness of
his old friend's survey marked for him afresh, and almost in an humiliating way,
the inevitable limits of direct aid from this source. He was not certain,
however, of not drawing a shade of compensation from the privilege, as yet
untasted, of knowing more about something in particular than Miss Gostrey did.
His situation too was a case, for that matter, and he was now so interested,
quite so privately agog, about it, that he had already an eye to the fun it
would be to open up to her afterwards. He derived during his half-hour no
assistance from her, and just this fact of her not meeting his eyes played a
little, it must be confessed, into his predicament.
    He had introduced Chad, in the first minutes, under his breath, and there
was never the primness in her of the person unacquainted; but she had none the
less betrayed at first no vision but of the stage, where she occasionally found
a pretext for an appreciative moment that she invited Waymarsh to share. The
latter's faculty of participation had never had, all round, such an assault to
meet; the pressure on him being the sharper for this chosen attitude in her, as
Strether judged it, of isolating, for their natural intercourse, Chad and
himself. This intercourse was meanwhile restricted to a frank friendly look from
the young man, something markedly like a smile, but falling far short of a grin,
and to the vivacity of Strether's private speculation as to whether he carried
himself like a fool. He didn't quite see how he could so feel as one without
somehow showing as one. The worst of that question moreover was that he knew it
as a symptom the sense of which annoyed him. »If I'm going to be odiously
conscious of how I may strike the fellow,« he reflected, »it was so little what
I came out for that I may as well stop before I begin.« This sage consideration
too, distinctly, seemed to leave untouched the fact that he was going to be
conscious. He was conscious of everything but of what would have served him.
    He was to know afterwards, in the watches of the night, that nothing would
have been more open to him than after a minute or two to propose to Chad to seek
with him the refuge of the lobby. He hadn't only not proposed it, but had lacked
even the presence of mind to see it as possible. He had stuck there like a
schoolboy wishing not to miss a minute of the show; though for that portion of
the show then presented he hadn't had an instant's real attention. He couldn't
when the curtain fell have given the slightest account of what had happened. He
had therefore, further, not at that moment acknowledged the amenity added by
this acceptance of his awkwardness to Chad's general patience. Hadn't he none
the less known at the very time - known it stupidly and without reaction - that
the boy was accepting something? He was modestly benevolent, the boy - that was
at least what he had been capable of the superiority of making out his chance to
be; and one had one's self literally not had the gumption to get in ahead of
him. If we should go into all that occupied our friend in the watches of the
night we should have to mend our pen; but an instance or two may mark for us the
vividness with which he could remember. He remembered the two absurdities that,
if his presence of mind had failed, were the things that had had most to do with
it. He had never in his life seen a young man come into a box at ten o'clock at
night, and would, if challenged on the question in advance, have scarce been
ready to pronounce as to different ways of doing so. But it was in spite of this
definite to him that Chad had had a way that was wonderful: a fact carrying with
it an implication that, as one might imagine it, he knew, he had learned, how.
    Here already then were abounding results; he had on the spot and without the
least trouble of intention taught Strether that even in so small a thing as that
there were different ways. He had done in the same line still more than this;
had by a mere shake or two of the head made his old friend observe that the
change in him was perhaps more than anything else, for the eye, a matter of the
marked streaks of grey, extraordinary at his age, in his thick black hair; as
well as that this new feature was curiously becoming to him, did something for
him, as characterisation, also even - of all things in the world - as
refinement, that had been a good deal wanted. Strether felt, however, he would
have had to confess, that it wouldn't have been easy just now, on this and other
counts, in the presence of what had been supplied, to be quite clear as to what
had been missed. A reflection a candid critic might have made of old, for
instance, was that it would have been happier for the son to look more like the
mother; but this was a reflection that at present would never occur. The ground
had quite fallen away from it, yet no resemblance whatever to the mother had
supervened. It would have been hard for a young man's face and air to disconnect
themselves more completely than Chad's at this juncture from any discerned, from
any imaginable aspect of a New England female parent. That of course was no more
than had been on the cards; but it produced in Strether none the less one of
those frequent phenomena of mental reference with which all judgement in him was
actually beset.
    Again and again as the days passed he had had a sense of the pertinence of
communicating quickly with Woollett - communicating with a quickness with which
telegraphy alone would rhyme; the fruit really of a fine fancy in him for
keeping things straight, for the happy forestalment of error. No one could
explain better when needful, nor put more conscience into an account or a
report; which burden of conscience is perhaps exactly the reason why his heart
always sank when the clouds of explanation gathered. His highest ingenuity was
in keeping the sky of life clear of them. Whether or no he had a grand idea of
the lucid, he held that nothing ever was in fact - for any one else - explained.
One went through the vain motions, but it was mostly a waste of life. A personal
relation was a relation only so long as people either perfectly understood or,
better still, didn't care if they didn't. From the moment they cared if they
didn't it was living by the sweat of one's brow; and the sweat of one's brow was
just what one might buy one's self off from by keeping the ground free of the
wild weed of delusion. It easily grew too fast, and the Atlantic cable now alone
could race with it. That agency would each day have testified for him to
something that was not what Woollett had argued. He was not at this moment
absolutely sure that the effect of the morrow's - or rather of the night's -
appreciation of the crisis wouldn't be to determine some brief missive. »Have at
last seen him, but oh dear!« - some temporary relief of that sort seemed to
hover before him. It hovered somehow as preparing them all - yet preparing them
for what? If he might do so more luminously and cheaply he would tick out in
four words: »Awfully old - grey hair.« To this particular item in Chad's
appearance he constantly, during their mute half-hour, reverted; as if so very
much more than he could have said had been involved in it. The most he could
have said would have been: »If he's going to make me feel young -!« which
indeed, however, carried with it quite enough. If Strether was to feel young,
that is, it would be because Chad was to feel old; and an aged and hoary sinner
had been no part of the scheme.
    The question of Chadwick's true time of life was, doubtless, what came up
quickest after the adjournment of the two, when the play was over, to a café in
the Avenue de l'Opéra. Miss Gostrey had in due course been perfect for such a
step; she had known exactly what they wanted - to go straight somewhere and
talk; and Strether had even felt she had known what he wished to say and that he
was arranging immediately to begin. She hadn't pretended this, as she had
pretended on the other hand, to have divined Waymarsh's wish to extend to her an
independent protection homeward; but Strether nevertheless found how, after he
had Chad opposite to him at a small table in the brilliant halls that his
companion straightway selected, sharply and easily discriminated from others, it
was quite, to his mind, as if she heard him speak; as if, sitting up, a mile
away, in the little apartment he knew, she would listen hard enough to catch. He
found too that he liked that idea, and he wished that, by the same token, Mrs.
Newsome might have caught as well. For what had above all been determined in him
as a necessity of the first order was not to lose another hour, nor a fraction
of one; was to advance, to overwhelm, with a rush. This was how he would
anticipate - by a night-attack, as might be - any forced maturity that a crammed
consciousness of Paris was likely to take upon itself to assert on behalf of the
boy. He knew to the full, on what he had just extracted from Miss Gostrey,
Chad's marks of alertness; but they were a reason the more for not dawdling. If
he was himself moreover to be treated as young he wouldn't at all events be so
treated before he should have struck out at least once. His arms might be
pinioned afterwards, but it would have been left on record that he was fifty.
The importance of this he had indeed begun to feel before they left the theatre;
it had become a wild unrest, urging him to seize his chance. He could scarcely
wait for it as they went; he was on the verge of the indecency of bringing up
the question in the street; he fairly caught himself going on - so he afterwards
invidiously named it - as if there would be for him no second chance should the
present be lost. Not till, on the purple divan before the perfunctory bock, he
had brought out the words themselves, was he sure, for that matter, that the
present would be saved.
 

                                  Book Fourth

                                       I

»I've come, you know, to make you break with everything, neither more nor less,
and take you straight home; so you'll be so good as immediately and favourably
to consider it!« - Strether, face to face with Chad after the play, had sounded
these words almost breathlessly, and with an effect at first positively
disconcerting to himself alone. For Chad's receptive attitude was that of a
person who had been gracefully quiet while the messenger at last reaching him
has run a mile through the dust. During some seconds after he had spoken
Strether felt as if he had made some such exertion; he was not even certain that
the perspiration wasn't't on his brow. It was the kind of consciousness for which
he had to thank the look that, while the strain lasted, the young man's eyes
gave him. They reflected - and the deuce of the thing was that they reflected
really with a sort of shyness of kindness - his momentarily disordered state;
which fact brought on in its turn for our friend the dawn of a fear that Chad
might simply take it out - take everything out - in being sorry for him. Such a
fear, any fear, was unpleasant. But everything was unpleasant; it was odd how
everything had suddenly turned so. This however was no reason for letting the
least thing go. Strether had the next minute proceeded as roundly as if with an
advantage to follow up. »Of course I'm a busybody, if you want to fight the case
to the death; but after all mainly in the sense of having known you and having
given you such attention as you kindly permitted when you were in jackets and
knickerbockers. Yes - it was knickerbockers, I'm busybody enough to remember
that; and that you had, for your age - I speak of the first far-away time -
tremendously stout legs. Well, we want you to break. Your mother's heart's
passionately set upon it, but she has above and beyond that excellent arguments
and reasons. I've not put them into her head - I needn't remind you how little
she's a person who needs that. But they exist - you must take it from me as a
friend both of hers and yours - for myself as well. I didn't invent them, I
didn't originally work them out; but I understand them, I think I can explain
them - by which I mean make you actively do them justice; and that's why you see
me here. You had better know the worst at once. It's a question of an immediate
rupture and an immediate return. I've been conceited enough to dream I can sugar
that pill. I take at any rate the greatest interest in the question. I took it
already before I left home; and I don't mind telling you that, altered as you
are, I take it still more now that I've seen you. You're older and - I don't
know what to call it! - more of a handful; but you're by so much the more, I
seem to make out, to our purpose.«
    »Do I strike you as improved?« Strether was to recall that Chad had at this
point enquired.
    He was likewise to recall - and it had to count for some time as his
greatest comfort - that it had been given him, as they said at Woollett, to
reply with some presence of mind: »I haven't the least idea.« He was really for
a while to like thinking he had been positively hard. On the point of conceding
that Chad had improved in appearance, but that to the question of appearance the
remark must be confined, he checked even that compromise and left his
reservation bare. Not only his moral, but also, as it were, his aesthetic sense
had a little to pay for this, Chad being unmistakeably - and wasn't't it a matter
of the confounded grey hair again? - handsomer than he had ever promised. That
however fell in perfectly with what Strether had said. They had no desire to
keep down his proper expansion, and he wouldn't be less to their purpose for not
looking, as he had too often done of old, only bold and wild. There was indeed a
signal particular in which he would distinctly be more so. Strether didn't, as
he talked, absolutely follow himself; he only knew he was clutching his thread
and that he held it from moment to moment a little tighter; his mere
uninterruptedness during the few minutes helped him to do that. He had
frequently, for a month, turned over what he should say on this very occasion,
and he seemed at last to have said nothing he had thought of - everything was so
totally different.
    But in spite of all he had put the flag at the window. This was what he had
done, and there was a minute during which he affected himself as having shaken
it hard, flapped it with a mighty flutter, straight in front of his companion's
nose. It gave him really almost the sense of having already acted his part. The
momentary relief - as if from the knowledge that nothing of that at least could
be undone - sprang from a particular cause, the cause that had flashed into
operation, in Miss Gostrey's box, with direct apprehension, with amazed
recognition, and that had been concerned since then in every throb of his
consciousness. What it came to was that with an absolutely new quantity to deal
with one simply couldn't know. The new quantity was represented by the fact that
Chad had been made over. That was all; whatever it was it was everything.
Strether had never seen the thing so done before - it was perhaps a speciality
of Paris. If one had been present at the process one might little by little have
mastered the result; but he was face to face, as matters stood, with the
finished business. It had freely been noted for him that he might be received as
a dog among skittles, but that was on the basis of the old quantity. He had
originally thought of lines and tones as things to be taken, but these
possibilities had now quite melted away. There was no computing at all what the
young man before him would think or feel or say on any subject whatever. This
intelligence Strether had afterwards, to account for his nervousness,
reconstituted as he might, just as he had also reconstituted the promptness with
which Chad had corrected his uncertainty. An extraordinarily short time had been
required for the correction, and there had ceased to be anything negative in his
companion's face and air as soon as it was made. »Your engagement to my mother
has become then what they call here a fait accompli?« - it had consisted, the
determinant touch, in nothing more than that.
    Well, that was enough, Strether had felt while his answer hung fire. He had
felt at the same time, however, that nothing could less become him than that it
should hang fire too long. »Yes,« he said brightly, »it was on the happy
settlement of the question that I started. You see therefore to what tune I'm in
your family. Moreover,« he added, »I've been supposing you'd suppose it.«
    »Oh I've been supposing it for a long time, and what you tell me helps me to
understand that you should want to do something. To do something, I mean,« said
Chad, »to commemorate an event so - what do they call it? - so auspicious. I see
you make out, and not unnaturally,« he continued, »that bringing me home in
triumph as a sort of wedding-present to Mother would commemorate it better than
anything else. You want to make a bonfire in fact,« he laughed, »and you pitch
me on. Thank you, thank you!« he laughed again.
    He was altogether easy about it, and this made Strether now see how at
bottom, and in spite of the shade of shyness that really cost him nothing, he
had from the first moment been easy about everything. The shade of shyness was
mere good taste. People with manners formed could apparently have, as one of
their best cards, the shade of shyness too. He had leaned a little forward to
speak; his elbows were on the table; and the inscrutable new face that he had
got somewhere and somehow was brought by the movement nearer to his critic's.
There was a fascination for that critic in its not being, this ripe physiognomy,
the face that, under observation at least, he had originally carried away from
Woollett. Strether found a certain freedom on his own side in defining it as
that of a man of the world - a formula that indeed seemed to come now in some
degree to his relief; that of a man to whom things had happened and were
variously known. In gleams, in glances, the past did perhaps peep out of it; but
such lights were faint and instantly merged. Chad was brown and thick and
strong, and of old Chad had been rough. Was all the difference therefore that he
was actually smooth? Possibly; for that he was smooth was as marked as in the
taste of a sauce or in the rub of a hand. The effect of it was general - it had
retouched his features, drawn them with a cleaner line. It had cleared his eyes
and settled his colour and polished his fine square teeth - the main ornament of
his face; and at the same time that it had given him a form and a surface,
almost a design, it had toned his voice, established his accent, encouraged his
smile to more play and his other motions to less. He had formerly, with a great
deal of action, expressed very little; and he now expressed whatever was
necessary with almost none at all. It was as if in short he had really, copious
perhaps but shapeless, been put into a firm mould and turned successfully out.
The phenomenon - Strether kept eyeing it as a phenomenon, an eminent case - was
marked enough to be touched by the finger. He finally put his hand across the
table and laid it on Chad's arm. »If you'll promise me - here on the spot and
giving me your word of honour - to break straight off, you'll make the future
the real right thing for all of us alike. You'll ease off the strain of this
decent but none the less acute suspense in which I've for so many days been
waiting for you, and let me turn in to rest. I shall leave you with my blessing
and go to bed in peace.«
    Chad again fell back at this and, his hands pocketed, settled himself a
little; in which posture he looked, though he rather anxiously smiled, only the
more earnest. Then Strether seemed to see that he was really nervous, and he
took that as what he would have called a wholesome sign. The only mark of it
hitherto had been his more than once taking off and putting on his wide-brimmed
crush hat. He had at this moment made the motion again to remove it, then had
only pushed it back, so that it hung informally on his strong young grizzled
crop. It was a touch that gave the note of the familiar - the intimate and the
belated - to their quiet colloquy; and it was indeed by some such trivial aid
that Strether became aware at the same moment of something else. The observation
was at any rate determined in him by some light too fine to distinguish from so
many others, but it was none the less sharply determined. Chad looked
unmistakeably during these instants - well, as Strether put it to himself, all
he was worth. Our friend had a sudden apprehension of what that would on certain
sides be. He saw him in a flash as the young man marked out by women; and for a
concentrated minute the dignity, the comparative austerity, as he funnily
fancied it, of this character affected him almost with awe. There was an
experience on his interlocutor's part that looked out at him from under the
displaced hat, and that looked out moreover by a force of its own, the deep fact
of its quantity and quality, and not through Chad's intending bravado or
swagger. That was then the way men marked out by women were - and also the men
by whom the women were doubtless in turn sufficiently distinguished. It affected
Strether for thirty seconds as a relevant truth; a truth which, however, the
next minute, had fallen into its relation. »Can't you imagine there being some
questions,« Chad asked, »that a fellow - however much impressed by your charming
way of stating things - would like to put to you first?«
    »Oh yes - easily. I'm here to answer everything. I think I can even tell you
things, of the greatest interest to you, that you won't know enough to ask me.
We'll take as many days to it as you like. But I want,« Strether wound up, »to
go to bed now.«
    »Really?«
    Chad had spoken in such surprise that he was amused. »Can't you believe it?
- with what you put me through?«
    The young man seemed to consider. »Oh I haven't put you through much - yet.«
    »Do you mean there's so much more to come?« Strether laughed. »All the more
reason then that I should gird myself.« And as if to mark what he felt he could
by this time count on he was already on his feet.
    Chad, still seated, stayed him, with a hand against him, as he passed
between their table and the next. »Oh we shall get on!«
    The tone was, as who should say, everything Strether could have desired; and
quite as good the expression of face with which the speaker had looked up at him
and kindly held him. All these things lacked was their not showing quite so much
as the fruit of experience. Yes, experience was what Chad did play on him, if he
didn't play any grossness of defiance. Of course experience was in a manner
defiance; but it wasn't't, at any rate - rather indeed quite the contrary! -
grossness; which was so much gained. He fairly grew older, Strether thought,
while he himself so reasoned. Then with his mature pat of his visitor's arm he
also got up; and there had been enough of it all by this time to make the
visitor feel that something was settled. Wasn't it settled that he had at least
the testimony of Chad's own belief in a settlement? Strether found himself
treating Chad's profession that they would get on as a sufficient basis for
going to bed. He hadn't nevertheless after this gone to bed directly; for when
they had again passed out together into the mild bright night a check had
virtually sprung from nothing more than a small circumstance which might have
acted only as confirming quiescence. There were people, expressive sound,
projected light, still abroad, and after they had taken in for a moment, through
everything, the great clear architectural street, they turned off in tacit union
to the quarter of Strether's hotel. »Of course,« Chad here abruptly began, »of
course Mother's making things out with you about me has been natural - and of
course also you've had a good deal to go upon. Still, you must have filled out.«
    He had stopped, leaving his friend to wonder a little what point he wished
to make; and this it was that enabled Strether meanwhile to make one. »Oh we've
never pretended to go into detail. We weren't in the least bound to that. It was
filling out enough to miss you as we did.«
    But Chad rather oddly insisted, though under the high lamp at their corner,
where they paused, he had at first looked as if touched by Strether's allusion
to the long sense, at home, of his absence. »What I mean is you must have
imagined.«
    »Imagined what?«
    »Well - horrors.«
    It affected Strether: horrors were so little - superficially at least - in
this robust and reasoning image. But he was none the less there to be veracious.
»Yes, I dare say we have imagined horrors. But where's the harm if we haven't
been wrong?«
    Chad raised his face to the lamp, and it was one of the moments at which he
had, in his extraordinary way, most his air of designedly showing himself. It
was as if at these instants he just presented himself, his identity so rounded
off, his palpable presence and his massive young manhood, as such a link in the
chain as might practically amount to a kind of demonstration. It was as if - and
how but anomalously? - he couldn't after all help thinking sufficiently well of
these things to let them go for what they were worth. What could there be in
this for Strether but the hint of some self-respect, some sense of power, oddly
perverted; something latent and beyond access, ominous and perhaps enviable? The
intimation had the next thing, in a flash, taken on a name - a name on which our
friend seized as he asked himself if he weren't perhaps really dealing with an
irreducible young Pagan. This description - he quite jumped at it - had a sound
that gratified his mental ear, so that of a sudden he had already adopted it.
Pagan - yes, that was, wasn't't it? what Chad would logically be. It was what he
must be. It was what he was. The idea was a clue and, instead of darkening the
prospect, projected a certain clearness. Strether made out in this quick ray
that a Pagan was perhaps, at the pass they had come to, the thing most wanted at
Woollett. They'd be able to do with one - a good one; he'd find an opening -
yes; and Strether's imagination even now prefigured and accompanied the first
appearance there of the rousing personage. He had only the slight discomfort of
feeling, as the young man turned away from the lamp, that his thought had in the
momentary silence possibly been guessed. »Well, I've no doubt,« said Chad,
»you've come near enough. The details, as you say, don't matter. It has been
generally the case that I've let myself go. But I'm coming round - I'm not so
bad now.« With which they walked on again to Strether's hotel.
    »Do you mean,« the latter asked as they approached the door, »that there
isn't any woman with you now?«
    »But pray what has that to do with it?«
    »Why it's the whole question.«
    »Of my going home?« Chad was clearly surprised. »Oh not much! Do you think
that when I want to go any one will have any power -«
    »To keep you« - Strether took him straight up - »from carrying out your
wish? Well, our idea has been thnt somebody has hitherto - or a good many
persons perhaps - kept you pretty well from wanting. That's what - if you're in
anybody's hands - may again happen. You don't answer my question« - he kept it
up; »but if you aren't in anybody's hands so much the better. There's nothing
then but what makes for your going.«
    Chad turned this over. »I don't answer your question?« He spoke quite
without resenting it. »Well, such questions have always a rather exaggerated
side. One doesn't't know quite what you mean by being in women's hands. It's all
so vague. One is when one isn't. One isn't when one is. And then one can't quite
give people away.« He seemed kindly to explain. »I've never got stuck - so very
hard; and, as against anything at any time really better, I don't think I've
ever been afraid.« There was something in it that held Strether to wonder, and
this give him time to go on. He broke out as with a more helpful thought. »Don't
you know how I like Paris itself?«
    The upshot was indeed to make our friend marvel. »Oh if that's all that's
the matter with you -!« It was he who almost showed resentment.
    Chad's smile of a truth more than met it. »But isn't that enough?«
    Strether hesitated, but it came out. »Not enough for your mother!« Spoken,
however, it sounded a trifle odd - the effect of which was that Chad broke into
a laugh. Strether, at this, succumbed as well, though with extreme brevity.
»Permit us to have still our theory. But if you are so free and so strong you're
inexcusable. I'll write in the morning,« he added with decision. »I'll say I've
got you.«
    This appeared to open for Chad a new interest. »How often do you write?«
    »Oh perpetually.«
    »And at great length?«
    Strether had become a little impatient. »I hope it's not found too great.«
    »Oh I'm sure not. And you hear as often?«
    Again Strether paused. »As often as I deserve.«
    »Mother writes,« said Chad, »a lovely letter.«
    Strether, before the closed porte-cochère, fixed him a moment. »It's more,
my boy, than you do! But our suppositions don't matter,« he added, »if you're
actually not entangled.«
    Chad's pride seemed none the less a little touched. »I never was that - let
me insist. I always had my own way.« With which he pursued: »And I have it at
present.«
    »Then what are you here for? What has kept you,« Strether asked, »if you
have been able to leave?«
    It made Chad, after a stare, throw himself back. »Do you think one's kept
only by women?« His surprise and his verbal emphasis rang out so clear in the
still street that Strether winced till he remembered the safety of their English
speech. »Is that,« the young man demanded, »what they think at Woollett?« At the
good faith in the question Strether had changed colour, feeling that, as he
would have said, he had put his foot in it. He had appeared stupidly to
misrepresent what they thought at Woollett; but before he had time to rectify
Chad again was upon him. »I must say then you show a low mind!«
    It so fell in, unhappily for Strether, with that reflection of his own
prompted in him by the pleasant air of the Boulevard Malesherbes, that its
disconcerting force was rather unfairly great. It was a dig that, administered
by himself - and administered even to poor Mrs. Newsome - was no more than
salutary; but administered by Chad - and quite logically - it came nearer
drawing blood. They hadn't a low mind - nor any approach to one; yet
incontestably they had worked, and with a certain smugness, on a basis that
might be turned against them. Chad had at any rate pulled his visitor up; he had
even pulled up his admirable mother; he had absolutely, by a turn of the wrist
and a jerk of the far-flung noose, pulled up, in a bunch, Woollett browsing in
its pride. There was no doubt Woollett had insisted on his coarseness; and what
he at present stood there for in the sleeping street was, by his manner of
striking the other note, to make of such insistence a preoccupation compromising
to the insisters. It was exactly as if they had imputed to him a vulgarity that
he had by a mere gesture caused to fall from him. The devil of the case was that
Strether felt it, by the same stroke, as falling straight upon himself. He had
been wondering a minute ago if the boy weren't a Pagan, and he found himself
wondering now if he weren't by chance a gentleman. It didn't in the least, on
the spot, spring up helpfully for him that a person couldn't at the same time be
both. There was nothing at this moment in the air to challenge the combination;
there was everything to give it on the contrary something of a flourish. It
struck Strether into the bargain as doing something to meet the most difficult
of the questions; though perhaps indeed only by substituting another. Wouldn't
it be precisely by having learned to be a gentleman that he had mastered the
consequent trick of looking so well that one could scarce speak to him straight?
But what in the world was the clue to such a prime producing cause? There were
too many clues then that Strether still lacked, and these clues to clues were
among them. What it accordingly amounted to for him was that he had to take full
in the face a fresh attribution of ignorance. He had grown used by this time to
reminders, especially from his own lips, of what he didn't know; but he had
borne them because in the first place they were private and because in the
second they practically conveyed a tribute. He didn't know what was bad, and -
as others didn't know how little he knew it - he could put up with his state.
But if he didn't know, in so important a particular, what was good, Chad at
least was now aware he didn't; and that, for some reason, affected our friend as
curiously public. It was in fact an exposed condition that the young man left
him in long enough for him to feel its chill - till he saw fit, in a word,
generously again to cover him. This last was in truth what Chad quite gracefully
did. But he did it as with a simple thought that met the whole of the case. »Oh
I'm all right!« It was what Strether had rather bewilderedly to go to bed on.

                                       II

 
It really looked true moreover from the way Chad was to behave after this. He
was full of attentions to his mother's ambassador; in spite of which, all the
while, the latter's other relations rather remarkably contrived to assert
themselves. Strether's sittings pen in hand with Mrs. Newsome up in his own room
were broken, vet they were richer; and they were more than ever interspersed
with the hours in which he reported himself, in a different fashion, but with
scarce less earnestness and fullness, to Maria Gostrey. Now that, as he would
have expressed it, he had really something to talk about he found himself, in
respect to any oddity that might reside for him in the double connexion, at once
more aware and more indifferent. He had been fine to Mrs. Newsome about his
useful friend, but it had begun to haunt his imagination that Chad, taking up
again for her benefit a pen too long disused, might possibly be finer. It
wouldn't at all do, he saw, that anything should come up for him at Chad's hand
but what specifically was to have come; the greatest divergence from which would
be precisely the element of any lubrication of their intercourse by levity. It
was accordingly to forestall such an accident that he frankly put before the
young man the several facts, just as they had occurred, of his funny alliance.
He spoke of these facts, pleasantly and obligingly, as the whole story, and felt
that he might qualify the alliance as funny if he remained sufficiently grave
about it. He fllattered himself that he even exaggerated the wild freedom of his
original encounter with the wonderful lady; he was scrupulously definite about
the absurd conditions in which they had made acquaintance - their having picked
each other up almost in the street; and he had (finest inspiration of all!) a
conception of carrying the war into the enemy's country by showing surprise at
the enemy's ignorance.
    He had always had a notion that this last was the grand style of fighting;
the greater therefore the reason for it, as he couldn't remember that he had
ever before fought in the grand style. Every one, according to this, knew Miss
Gostrey: how came it Chad didn't know her? The difficulty, the impossibility,
was really to escape it; Strether put on him, by what he took for granted, the
burden of proof of the contrary. This tone was so far successful as that Chad
quite appeared to recognise her as a person whose fame had reached him, but
against his acquaintance with whom much mischance had worked. He made the point
at the same time that his social relations, such as they could be called, were
perhaps not to the extent Strether supposed with the rising flood of their
compatriots. He hinted at his having more and more given way to a different
principle of selection; the moral of which seemed to be that he went about
little in the colony. For the moment certainly he had quite another interest. It
was deep, what he understood; and Strether, for himself, could only so observe
it. He couldn't see as yet how deep. Might he not all too soon! For there was
really too much of their question that Chad had already committed himself to
liking. He liked, to begin with, his prospective stepfather; which was
distinctly what had not been on the cards. His hating him was the untowardness
for which Strether had been best prepared; he hadn't expected the boy's actual
form to give him more to do than his imputed. It gave him more through
suggesting that he must somehow make up to himself for not being sure he was
sufficiently disagreeable. That had really been present to him as his only way
to be sure he was sufficiently thorough. The point was that if Chad's tolerance
of his thoroughness were insincere, were but the best of devices for gaining
time, it none the less did treat everything as tacitly concluded.
    That seemed at the end of ten days the upshot of the abundant, the recurrent
talk through which Strether poured into him all it concerned him to know, put
him in full possession of facts and figures. Never cutting these colloquies
short by a minute, Chad behaved, looked and spoke as if he were rather heavily,
perhaps even a trifle gloomily, but none the less fundamentally and comfortably
free. He made no crude profession of eagerness to yield, but he asked the most
intelligent questions, probed, at moments, abruptly, even deeper than his
friend's layer of information, justified by these touches the native estimate of
his latent stuff, and had in every way the air of trying to live, reflectively,
into the square bright picture. He walked up and down in front of this
production, sociably took Strether's arm at the points at which he stopped,
surveyed it repeatedly from the right and from the left, inclined a critical
head to either quarter, and, while he puffed a still more critical cigarette,
animadverted to his companion on this passage and that. Strether sought relief -
there were hours when he required it - in repeating himself; it was in truth not
to be blinked that Chad had a way. The main question as yet was of what it was a
way to. It made vulgar questions no more easy; but that was unimportant when all
questions save those of his own asking had dropped. That he was free was answer
enough, and it wasn't't quite ridiculous that this freedom should end by
presenting itself as what was difficult to move. His changed state, his lovely
home, his beautiful things, his easy talk, his very appetite for Strether,
insatiable and, when all was said, flattering - what were such marked matters
all but the notes of his freedom? He had the effect of making a sacrifice of it
just in these handsome forms to his visitor; which was mainly the reason the
visitor was privately, for the time, a little out of countenance. Strether was
at this period again and again thrown back on a felt need to remodel somehow his
plan. He fairly caught himself shooting rueful glances, shy looks of pursuit,
toward the embodied influence, the definite adversary, who had by a stroke of
her own failed him and on a fond theory of whose palpable presence he had, under
Mrs. Newsome's inspiration, altogether proceeded. He had once or twice, in
secret, literally expressed the irritated wish that she would come out and find
her.
    He couldn't quite yet force it upon Woollett that such a career, such a
perverted young life, showed after all a certain plausible side, did in the case
before them flaunt something like an impunity for the social man; but he could
at least treat himself to the statement that would prepare him for the sharpest
echo. This echo - as distinct over there in the dry thin air as some shrill
heading above a column of print - seemed to reach him even as he wrote. »He says
there's no woman,« he could hear Mrs. Newsome report, in capitals almost of
newspaper size, to Mrs. Pocock; and he could focus in Mrs. Pocock the response
of the reader of the journal. He could see in the younger lady's face the
earnestness of her attention and catch the full scepticism of her but slightly
delayed »What is there then?« Just so he could again as little miss the mother's
clear decision: »There's plenty of disposition, no doubt, to pretend there
isn't.« Strether had, after posting his letter, the whole scene out; and it was
a scene during which, coming and going, as befell, he kept his eye not least
upon the daughter. He had his fine sense of the conviction Mrs. Pocock would
take occasion to reaffirm - a conviction bearing, as he had from the first
deeply divined it to bear, on Mr. Strether's essential inaptitude. She had
looked him in his conscious eyes even before he sailed, and that she didn't
believe he would find the woman had been written in her look. Hadn't she at the
best but a scant faith in his ability to find women? It wasn't't even as if he had
found her mother - so much more, to her discrimination, had her mother performed
the finding. Her mother had, in a case her private judgement of which remained
educative of Mrs. Pocock's critical sense, found the man. The man owed his
unchallenged state, in general, to the fact that Mrs. Newsome's discoveries were
accepted at Woollett; but he knew in his bones, our friend did, how almost
irresistibly Mrs. Pocock would now be moved to show what she thought of his own.
Give her a free hand, would be the moral, and the woman would soon be found.
    His impression of Miss Gostrey after her introduction to Chad was meanwhile
an impression of a person almost unnaturally on her guard. He struck himself as
at first unable to extract from her what he wished; though indeed of what he
wished at this special juncture he would doubtless have contrived to make but a
crude statement. It sifted and settled nothing to put to her, tout bêtement, as
she often said, »Do you like him, eh?« - thanks to his feeling it actually the
least of his needs to heap up the evidence in the young man's favour. He
repeatedly knocked at her door to let her have it afresh that Chad's case -
whatever else of minor interest it might yield - was first and foremost a
miracle almost monstrous. It was the alteration of the entire man, and was so
signal an instance that nothing else, for the intelligent observer, could -
could it? - signify. »It's a plot,« he declared - »there's more in it than meets
the eye.« He gave the rein to his fancy. »It's a plant!«
    His fancy seemed to please her. »Whose then?«
    »Well, the party responsible is, I suppose, the fate that waits for one, the
dark doom that rides. What I mean is that with such elements one can't count.
I've but my poor individual, my modest human means. It isn't playing the game to
turn on the uncanny. All one's energy goes to facing it, to tracking it. One
wants, confound it, don't vou see?« he confessed with a queer face - »one wants
to enjoy anything so rare. Call it then life« - he puzzled it out - »call it
poor dear old life simply that springs the surprise. Nothing alters the fact
that the surprise is paralysing, or at any rate engrossing - all, practically,
hang it, that one sees, that one can see.«
    Her silences were never barren, nor even dull. »Is that what you've written
home?«
    He tossed it off. »Oh dear, yes!«
    She had another pause while, across her carpets, he had another walk. »If
you don't look out you'll have them straight over.«
    »Oh but I've said he'll go back.«
    »And will he?« Miss Gostrey asked.
    The special tone of it made him, pulling up, look at her long. »What's that
but just the question I've spent treasures of patience and ingenuity in giving
you, by the sight of him - after everything had led up - every facility to
answer? What is it but just the thing I came here to-day to get out of you? Will
he?«
    »No - he won't,« she said at last. »He's not free.«
    The air of it held him. »Then you've all the while known -?«
    »I've known nothing but what I've seen; and I wonder,« she declared with
some impatience, »that you didn't see as much. It was enough to be with him
there -«
    »In the box? Yes,« he rather blankly urged.
    »Well - to feel sure.«
    »Sure of what?«
    She got up from her chair, at this, with a nearer approach than she had ever
yet shown to dismay at his dimness. She even, fairly pausing for it, spoke with
a shade of pity. »Guess!«
    It was a shade, fairly, that brought a flush into his face; so that for a
moment, as they waited together, their difference was between them. »You mean
that just your hour with him told you so much of his story? Very good; I'm not
such a fool, on my side, as that I don't understand you, or as that I didn't in
some degree understand him. That he has done what he liked most isn't, among any
of us, a matter the least in dispute. There's equally little question at this
time of day of what it is he does like most. But I'm not talking,« he reasonably
explained, »of any mere wretch he may still pick up. I'm talking of some person
who in his present situation may have held her own, may really have counted.«
    »That's exactly what I am!« said Miss Gostrey. But she as quickly made her
point. »I thought you thought - or that they think at Woollett - that that's
what mere wretches necessarily do. Mere wretches necessarily don't!« she
declared with spirit. »There must, behind every appearance to the contrary,
still be somebody - somebody who's not a mere wretch, since we accept the
miracle. What else but such a somebody can such a miracle be?«
    He took it in. »Because the fact itself is the woman?«
    »A woman. Some woman or other. It's one of the things that have to be.«
    »But you mean then at least a good one.«
    »A good woman?« She threw up her arms with a laugh. »I should call her
excellent!«
    »Then why does he deny her?«
    Miss Gostrey thought a moment. »Because she's too good to admit! Don't you
see,« she went on, »how she accounts for him?«
    Strether clearly, more and more, did see; yet it made him also see other
things. »But isn't what we want that he shall account for her?«
    »Well, he does. What you have before you is his way. You must forgive him if
it isn't quite outspoken. In Paris such debts are tacit.«
    Strether could imagine; but still -! »Even when the woman's good?«
    Again she laughed out. »Yes, and even when the man is! There's always a
caution in such cases,« she more seriously explained - »for what it may seem to
show. There's nothing that's taken as showing so much here as sudden unnatural
goodness.«
    »Ah then you're speaking now,« Strether said, »of people who are not nice.«
    »I delight,« she replied, »in your classifications. But do you want me,« she
asked, »to give you in the matter, on this ground, the wisest advice I'm capable
of? Don't consider her, don't judge her at all in herself. Consider her and
judge her only in Chad.«
    He had the courage at least of his companion's logic. »Because then I shall
like her?« He almost looked, with his quick imagination, as if he already did,
though seeing at once also the full extent of how little it would suit his book.
»But is that what I came out for?«
    She had to confess indeed that it wasn't't. But there was something else.
»Don't make up your mind. There are all sorts of things. You haven't seen him
all.«
    This on his side Strether recognised; but his acuteness none the less showed
him the danger. »Yes, but if the more I see the better he seems?«
    Well, she found something. »That may be - but his disavowal of her isn't,
all the same, pure consideration. There's a hitch.« She made it out. »It's the
effort to sink her.«
    Strether winced at the image. »To sink -?«
    »Well, I mean there's a struggle, and a part of it is just what he hides.
Take time - that's the only way not to make some mistake that you'll regret.
Then you'll see. He does really want to shake her off.«
    Our friend had by this time so got into the vision that he almost gasped.
»After all she has done for him?«
    Miss Gostrey gave him a look which broke the next moment into a wonderful
smile. »He's not so good as you think!«
    They remained with him, these words, promising him, in their character of
warning, considerable help; but the support he tried to draw from them found
itself on each renewal of contact with Chad defeated by something else. What
could it be, this disconcerting force, he asked himself, but the sense,
constantly renewed, that Chad was - quite in fact insisted on being - as good as
he thought? It seemed somehow as if he couldn't but be as good from the moment
he wasn't't as bad. There was a succession of days at all events when contact with
him - and in its immediate effect, as if it could produce no other - elbowed out
of Strether's consciousness everything but itself. Little Bilham once more
pervaded the scene, but little Bilham became even in a higher degree than he had
originally been one of the numerous forms of the inclusive relation; a
consequence promoted, to our friend's sense, by two or three incidents with
which we have yet to make acquaintance. Waymarsh himself, for the occasion, was
drawn into the eddy; it absolutely, though but temporarily, swallowed him down,
and there were days when Strether seemed to bump against him as a sinking
swimmer might brush a submarine object. The fathomless medium held them - Chad's
manner was the fathomless medium; and our friend felt as if they passed each
other, in their deep immersion, with the round impersonal eye of silent fish. It
was practically produced between them that Waymarsh was giving him then his
chance; and the shade of discomfort that Strether drew from the allowance
resembled not a little the embarrassment he had known at school, as a boy, when
members of his family had been present at exhibitions. He could perform before
strangers, but relatives were fatal, and it was now as if, comparatively,
Waymarsh were a relative. He seemed to hear him say »Strike up then!« and to
enjoy a foretaste of conscientious domestic criticism. He had struck up, so far
as he actually could; Chad knew by this time in profusion what he wanted; and
what vulgar violence did his fellow pilgrim expect of him when he had really
emptied his mind? It went somehow to and fro that what poor Waymarsh meant was
»I told you so - that you'd lose your immortal soul!« but it was also fairly
explicit that Strether had his own challenge and that, since they must go to the
bottom of things, he wasted no more virtue in watching Chad than Chad wasted in
watching him. His dip for duty's sake - where was it worse than Waymarsh's own?
For he needn't have stopped resisting and refusing, needn't have parleyed, at
that rate, with the foe.
    The strolls over Paris to see something or call somewhere were accordingly
inevitable and natural, and the late sessions in the wondrous troisième, the
lovely home, when men dropped in and the picture composed more suggestively
through the haze of tobacco, of music more or less good and of talk more or less
polyglot, were on a principle not to be distinguished from that of the mornings
and the afternoons. Nothing, Strether had to recognise as he leaned back and
smoked, could well less resemble a scene of violence than even the liveliest of
these occasions. They were occasions of discussion, none the less, and Strether
had never in his life heard so many opinions on so many subjects. There were
opinions at Woollett, but only on three or four. The differences were there to
match; if they were doubtless deep, though few, they were quiet - they were, as
might be said, almost as shy as if people had been ashamed of them. People
showed little diffidence about such things, on the other hand, in the Boulevard
Malesherbes, and were so far from being ashamed of them - or indeed of anything
else - that they often seemed to have invented them to avert those agreements
that destroy the taste of talk. No one had ever done that at Woollett, though
Strether could remember times when he himself had been tempted to it without
quite knowing why. He saw why at present - he had but wanted to promote
intercourse.
    These, however, were but parenthetic memories; and the turn taken by his
affair on the whole was positively that if his nerves were on the stretch it was
because he missed violence. When he asked himself if none would then, in
connexion with it, ever come at all, he might almost have passed as wondering
how to provoke it. It would be too absurd if such a vision as that should have
to be invoked for relief; it was already marked enough as absurd that he should
actually have begun with flutters and dignities on the score of a single
accepted meal. What sort of a brute had he expected Chad to be, anyway? -
Strether had occasion to make the enquiry but was careful to make it in private.
He could himself, comparatively recent as it was - it was truly but the fact of
a few days since - focus his primal crudity; but he would on the approach of an
observer, as if handling an illicit possession, have slipped the reminiscence
out of sight. There were echoes of it still in Mrs. Newsome's letters, and there
were moments when these echoes made him exclaim on her want of tact. He blushed
of course, at once, still more for the explanation than for the ground of it: it
came to him in time to save his manners that she couldn't at the best become
tactful as quickly as he. Her tact had to reckon with the Atlantic Ocean, the
General Post-Office and the extravagant curve of the globe.
    Chad had one day offered tea at the Boulevard Malesherbes to a chosen few, a
group again including the unobscured Miss Barrace; and Strether had on coming
out walked away with the acquaintance whom in his letters to Mrs. Newsome he
always spoke of as the little artist-man. He had had full occasion to mention
him as the other party, so oddly, to the only close personal alliance
observation had as yet detected in Chad's existence. Little Bilham's way this
afternoon was not Strether's, but he had none the less kindly come with him, and
it was somehow a part of his kindness that as it had sadly begun to rain they
suddenly found themselves seated for conversation at a café in which they had
taken refuge. He had passed no more crowded hour in Chad's society than the one
just ended; he had talked with Miss Barrace, who had reproached him with not
having come to see her, and he had above all hit on a happy thought for causing
Waymarsh's tension to relax. Something might possibly be extracted for the
latter from the idea of his success with that lady, whose quick apprehension of
what might amuse her had given Strether a free hand. What had she meant if not
to ask whether she couldn't help him with his splendid encumbrance, and mightn't
the sacred rage at any rate be kept a little in abeyance by thus creating for
his comrade's mind even in a world of irrelevance the possibility of a relation?
What was it but a relation to be regarded as so decorative and, in especial, on
the strength of it, to be whirled away, amid flounces and feathers, in a coupé
lined, by what Strether could make out, with dark blue brocade? He himself had
never been whirled away - never at least in a coupé and behind a footman; he had
driven with Miss Gostrey in cabs, with Mrs. Pocock, a few times, in an open
buggy, with Mrs. Newsome in a four-seated cart and, occasionally up at the
mountains, on a buckboard; but his friend's actual adventure transcended his
personal experience. He now showed his companion soon enough indeed how
inadequate, as a general monitor, this last queer quantity could once more feel
itself.
    »What game under the sun is he playing?« He signified the next moment that
his allusion was not to the fat gentleman immersed in dominoes on whom his eyes
had begun by resting, but to their host of the previous hour, as to whom, there
on the velvet bench, with a final collapse of all consistency, he treated
himself to the comfort of indiscretion. »Where do you see him come out?«
    Little Bilham, in meditation, looked at him with a kindness almost paternal.
»Don't you like it over here?«
    Strether laughed out - for the tone was indeed droll; he let himself go.
»What has that to do with it? The only thing I've any business to like is to
feel that I'm moving him. That's why I ask you whether you believe I am? Is the
creature« - and he did his best to show that he simply wished to ascertain -
honest?
    His companion looked responsible, but looked it through a small dim smile.
»What creature do you mean?«
    It was on this that they did have for a little a mute interchange. »Is it
untrue that he's free? How then,« Strether asked wondering, »does he arrange his
life?«
    »Is the creature you mean Chad himself?« little Bilham said.
    Strether here, with a rising hope, just thought, »We must take one of them
at a time.« But his coherence lapsed. »Is there some woman? Of whom he's really
afraid of course I mean - or who does with him what she likes.«
    »It's awfully charming of you,« Bilham presently remarked, »not to have
asked me that before.«
    »Oh I'm not fit for my job!«
    The exclamation had escaped our friend, but it made little Bilham more
deliberate. »Chad's a rare case!« he luminously observed. »He's awfully
changed,« he added.
    »Then you see it too?«
    »The way he has improved? Oh yes - I think every one must see it. But I'm
not sure,« said little Bilham, »that I didn't like him about as well in his
other state.«
    »Then this is really a new state altogether?«
    »Well,« the young man after a moment returned, »I'm not sure he was really
meant by nature to be quite so good. It's like the new edition of an old book
that one has been fond of - revised and amended, brought up to date, but not
quite the thing one knew and loved. However that may be at all events,« he
pursued, »I don't think, you know, that he's really playing, as you call it, any
game. I believe he really wants to go back and take up a career. He's capable of
one, you know, that will improve and enlarge him still more. He won't then,«
little Bilham continued to remark, »be my pleasant well-rubbed old-fashioned
volume at all. But of course I'm beastly immoral. I'm afraid it would be a funny
world altogether - a world with things the way I like them. I ought, I dare say,
to go home and go into business myself. Only I'd simply rather die - simply. And
I've not the least difficulty in making up my mind not to, and in knowing
exactly why, and in defending my ground against all comers. All the same,« he
wound up, »I assure you I don't say a word against it - for himself, I mean - to
Chad. I seem to see it as much the best thing for him. You see he's not happy.«
    »Do I?« - Strether stared. »I've been supposing I see just the opposite - an
extraordinary case of the equilibrium arrived at and assured.«
    »Oh there's a lot behind it.«
    »Ah there you are!« Strether exclaimed. »That's just what I want to get at.
You speak of your familiar volume altered out of recognition. Well, who's the
editor?«
    Little Bilham looked before him a minute in silence. »He ought to get
married. That would do it. And he wants to.«
    »Wants to marry her?«
    Again little Bilham waited, and, with a sense that he had information,
Strether scarce knew what was coming. »He wants to be free. He isn't used, you
see,« the young man explained in his lucid way, »to being so good.«
    Strether hesitated. »Then I may take it from you that he is good?«
    His companion matched his pause, but making it up with a quiet fullness.
    »Well then why isn't he free? He swears to me he is, but meanwhile does
nothing - except of course that he's so kind to me - to prove it; and couldn't
really act much otherwise if he weren't. My question to you just now was exactly
on this queer impression of his diplomacy: as if instead of really giving ground
his line were to keep me on here and set me a bad example.«
    As the half-hour meanwhile had ebbed Strether paid his score, and the waiter
was presently in the act of counting out change. Our friend pushed back to him a
fraction of it, with which, after an emphatic recognition, the personage in
question retreated. »You give too much,« little Bilham permitted himself
benevolently to observe.
    »Oh I always give too much!« Strether helplessly sighed. »But you don't,« he
went on as if to get quickly away from the contemplation of that doom, »answer
my question. Why isn't he free?«
    Little Bilham had got up as if the transaction with the waiter had been a
signal, and had already edged out between the table and the divan. The effect of
this was that a minute later they had quitted the place, the gratified waiter
alert again at the open door. Strether had found himself deferring to his
companion's abruptness as to a hint that he should be answered as soon as they
were more isolated. This happened when after a few steps in the outer air they
had turned the next corner. There our friend had kept it up. »Why isn't he free
if he's good?«
    Little Bilham looked him full in the face. »Because it's a virtuous
attachment.«
    This had settled the question so effectually for the time - that is for the
next few days - that it had given Strether almost a new lease of life. It must
be added however that, thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle in
which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste of
the lees rising as usual into his draught. His imagination had in other words
already dealt with his young friend's assertion; of which it had made something
that sufficiently came out on the very next occasion of his seeing Maria
Gostrey. This occasion moreover had been determined promptly by a new
circumstance - a circumstance he was the last man to leave her for a day in
ignorance of. »When I said to him last night,« he immediately began, »that
without some definite word from him now that will enable me to speak to them
over there of our sailing - or at least of mine, giving them some sort of date -
my responsibility becomes uncomfortable and my situation awkward; when I said
that to him what do you think was his reply?« And then as she this time gave it
up: »Why that he has two particular friends, two ladies, mother and daughter,
about to arrive in Paris - coming back from an absence; and that he wants me so
furiously to meet them, know them and like them, that I shall oblige him by
kindly not bringing our business to a crisis till he has had a chance to see
them again himself. Is that,« Strether enquired, »the way he's going to try to
get off? These are the people,« he explained, »that he must have gone down to
see before I arrived. They're the best friends he has in the world, and they
take more interest than any one else in what concerns him. As I'm his next best
he sees a thousand reasons why we should comfortably meet. He hasn't broached
the question sooner because their return was uncertain - seemed in fact for the
present impossible. But he more than intimates that - if you can believe it -
their desire to make my acquaintance has had to do with their surmounting
difficulties.«
    »They're dying to see you?« Miss Gostrey asked.
    »Dying. Of course,« said Strether, »they're the virtuous attachment.« He had
already told her about that - had seen her the day after his talk with little
Bilham; and they had then threshed out together the bearing of the revelation.
She had helped him to put into it the logic in which little Bilham had left it
slightly deficient. Strether hadn't pressed him as to the object of the
preference so unexpectedly described; feeling in the presence of it, with one of
his irrepressible scruples, a delicacy from which he had in the quest of the
quite other article worked himself sufficiently free. He had held off, as on a
small principle of pride, from permitting his young friend to mention a name;
wishing to make with this the great point that Chad's virtuous attachments were
none of his business. He had wanted from the first not to think too much of his
dignity, but that was no reason for not allowing it any little benefit that
might turn up. He had often enough wondered to what degree his interference
might pass for interested; so that there was no want of luxury in letting it be
seen whenever he could that he didn't interfere. That had of course at the same
time not deprived him of the further luxury of much private astonishment; which
however he had reduced to some order before communicating his knowledge. When he
had done this at last it was with the remark that, surprised as Miss Gostrey
might, like himself, at first be, she would probably agree with him on reflection
that such an account of the matter did after all fit the confirmed appearances.
Nothing certainly, on all the indications, could have been a greater change for
him than a virtuous attachment, and since they had been in search of the word as
the French called it, of that change, little Bilham's announcement - though so
long and so oddly delayed - would serve as well as another. She had assured
Strether in fact after a pause that the more she thought of it the more it did
serve; and yet her assurance hadn't so weighed with him as that before they
parted he hadn't ventured to challenge her sincerity. Didn't she believe the
attachment was virtuous? - he had made sure of her again with the aid of that
question. The tidings he brought her on this second occasion were moreover such
as would help him to make surer still.
    She showed at first none the less as only amused. »You say there are two? An
attachment to them both then would, I suppose, almost necessarily be innocent.«
    Our friend took the point, but he had his clue. »Mayn't he be still in the
stage of not quite knowing which of them, mother or daughter, he likes best?«
    She gave it more thought. »Oh it must be the daughter - at his age«
    »Possibly. Yet what do we know,« Strether asked, »about hers? She may be old
enough.«
    »Old enough for what?«
    »Why to marry Chad. That may be, you know, what they want. And if Chad wants
it too, and little Bilham wants it, and even we, at a pinch, could do with it -
that is if she doesn't't prevent repatriation - why it may be plain sailing yet.«
    It was always the case for him in these counsels that each of his remarks,
as it came, seemed to drop into a deeper well. He had at all events to wait a
moment to hear the slight splash of this one. »I don't see why if Mr. Newsome
wants to marry the young lady he hasn't already done it or hasn't been prepared
with some statement to you about it. And if he both wants to marry her and is on
good terms with them why isn't he free?«
    Strether, responsively, wondered indeed. »Perhaps the girl herself doesn't't
like him.«
    »Then why does he speak of them to you as he does?«
    Strether's mind echoed the question, but also again met it. »Perhaps it's
with the mother he's on good terms.«
    »As against the daughter?«
    »Well, if she's trying to persuade the daughter to consent to him, what
could make him like the mother more? Only,« Strether threw out, »why shouldn't
the daughter consent to him?«
    »Oh,« said Miss Gostrey, »mayn't it be that every one else isn't quite so
struck with him as you?«
    »Doesn't regard him you mean as such an eligible young man? Is that what
I've come to?« he audibly and rather gravely sought to know. »However,« he went
on, »his marriage is what his mother most desires - that is if it will help. And
oughtn't any marriage to help? They must want him« - he had already worked it
out - »to be better off. Almost any girl he may marry will have a direct
interest in his taking up his chances. It won't suit her at least that he shall
miss them.«
    Miss Gostrey cast about. »No - you reason well! But of course on the other
hand there's always dear old Woollett itself.«
    »Oh yes,« he mused - »there's always dear old Woollett itself.«
    She waited a moment. »The young lady mayn't find herself able to swallow
that quantity. She may think it's paying too much; she may weigh one thing
against another.«
    Strether, ever restless in such debates, took a vague turn. »It will all
depend on who she is. That of course - the proved ability to deal with dear old
Woollett, since I'm sure she does deal with it - is what makes so strongly for
Mamie.«
    »Mamie?«
    He stopped short, at her tone, before her; then, though seeing that it
represented not vagueness, but a momentary embarrassed fullness, let his
exclamation come. »You surely haven't forgotten about Mamie!«
    »No, I haven't forgotten about Mamie,« she smiled. »There's no doubt
whatever that there's ever so much to be said for her. Mamie's my girl!« she
roundly declared.
    Strether resumed for a minute his walk. »She's really perfectly lovely, you
know. Far prettier than any girl I've seen over here yet.«
    »That's precisely on what I perhaps most build.« And she mused a moment in
her friend's way. »I should positively like to take her in hand!«
    He humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it. »Oh but don't,
in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and can't, you know, be left.«
    But she kept it up. »I wish they'd send her out to me!«
    »If they knew you,« he returned, »they would.«
    »Ah but don't they? - after all that, as I've understood you, you've told
them about me?«
    He had paused before her again, but he continued his course. »They will -
before, as you say, I've done.« Then he came out with the point he had wished
after all most to make. »It seems to give away now his game. This is what he has
been doing - keeping me along for. He has been waiting for them.«
    Miss Gostrey drew in her lips. »You see a good deal in it!«
    »I doubt if I see as much as you. Do you pretend,« he went on, »that you
don't see -?«
    »Well, what?« - she pressed him as he paused.
    »Why that there must be a lot between them - and that it has been going on
from the first; even from before I came.«
    She took a minute to answer. »Who are they then - if it's so grave?«
    »It mayn't be grave - it may be gay. But at any rate it's marked. Only I
don't know,« Strether had to confess, »anything about them. Their name for
instance was a thing that, after little Bilham's information, I found it a kind
of refreshment not to feel obliged to follow up.«
    »Oh,« she returned, »if you think you've got off -!«
    Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom. »I don't think I've got off. I
only think I'm breathing for about five minutes. I dare say I shall have, at the
best, still to get on.« A look, over it all, passed between them, and the next
minute he had come back to good humour. »I don't meanwhile take the smallest
interest in their name.«
    »Nor in their nationality? - American, French, English, Polish?«
    »I don't care the least little hang,« he smiled, »for their nationality. It
would be nice if they're Polish!« he almost immediately added.
    »Very nice indeed.« The transition kept up her spirits. »So you see you do
care.«
    He did this contention a modified justice. »I think I should if they were
Polish. Yes,« he thought - »there might be joy in that.«
    »Let us then hope for it.« But she came after this nearer to the question.
»If the girl's of the right age of course the mother can't be. I mean for the
virtuous attachment. If the girl's twenty - and she can't be less - the mother
must be at least forty. So it puts the mother out. She's too old for him.«
    Strether, arrested again, considered and demurred. »Do you think so? Do you
think any one would be too old for him? I'm eighty, and I'm too young. But
perhaps the girl,« he continued, »isn't twenty. Perhaps she's only ten - but
such a little dear that Chad finds himself counting her in as an attraction of
the acquaintance. Perhaps she's only five. Perhaps the mother's but
five-and-twenty - a charming young widow.«
    Miss Gostrey entertained the suggestion. »She is a widow then?«
    »I haven't the least idea!« They once more, in spite of this vagueness,
exchanged a look - a look that was perhaps the longest yet. It seemed in fact,
the next thing, to require to explain itself; which it did as it could. »I only
feel what I've told you - that he has some reason.«
    Miss Gostrey's imagination had taken its own flight. »Perhaps she's not a
widow.«
    Strether seemed to accept the possibility with reserve. Still he accepted
it. »Then that's why the attachment - if it's to her - is virtuous.«
    But she looked as if she scarce followed. »Why is it virtuous if - since
she's free - there's nothing to impose on it any condition?«
    He laughed at her question. »Oh I perhaps don't mean as virtuous as that!
Your idea is that it can be virtuous - in any sense worthy of the name - only if
she's not free? But what does it become then,« he asked, »for her?«
    »Ah that's another matter.« He said nothing for a moment, and she soon went
on. »I dare say you're right, at any rate, about Mr. Newsome's little plan. He
has been trying you - has been reporting on you to these friends.«
    Strether meanwhile had had time to think more. »Then where's his
straightness?«
    »Well, as we say, it's struggling up, breaking out, asserting itself as it
can. We can be on the side, you see, of his straightness. We can help him. But
he has made out,« said Miss Gostrey, »that you'll do.«
    »Do for what?«
    »Why, for them - for ces dames. He has watched you, studied you, liked you -
and recognised that they must. It's a great compliment to you, my dear man; for
I'm sure they're particular. You came out for a success. Well,« she gaily
declared, »you're having it!«
    He took it from her with momentary patience and then turned abruptly away.
It was always convenient to him that there were so many fine things in her room
to look at. But the examination of two or three of them appeared soon to have
determined a speech that had little to do with them. »You don't believe in it!«
    »In what?«
    »In the character of the attachment. In its innocence.«
    But she defended herself. »I don't pretend to know anything about it.
Everything's possible. We must see.«
    »See?« he echoed with a groan. »Haven't we seen enough?«
    »I haven't,« she smiled.
    »But do you suppose then little Bilham has lied?«
    »You must find out.«
    It made him almost turn pale. »Find out any more?«
    He had dropped on a sofa for dismay; but she seemed, as she stood over him,
to have the last word. »Wasn't what you came out for to find out all?«
 

                                   Book Fifth

                                       I

The Sunday of the next week was a wonderful day, and Chad Newsome had let his
friend know in advance that he had provided for it. There had already been a
question of his taking him to see the great Gloriani, who was at home on Sunday
afternoons and at whose house, for the most part, fewer bores were to be met
than elsewhere; but the project, through some accident, had not had instant
effect, and now revived in happier conditions. Chad had made the point that the
celebrated sculptor had a queer old garden, for which the weather - spring at
last frank and fair - was propitious; and two or three of his other allusions
had confirmed for Strether the expectation of something special. He had by this
time, for all introductions and adventures, let himself recklessly go,
cherishing the sense that whatever the young man showed him he was showing at
least himself. He could have wished indeed, so far as this went, that Chad were
less of a mere cicerone; for he was not without the impression - now that the
vision of his game, his plan, his deep diplomacy, did recurrently assert itself
- of his taking refuge from the realities of their intercourse in profusely
dispensing, as our friend mentally phrased it, panem et circenses. Our friend
continued to feel rather smothered in flowers, though he made in his other
moments the almost angry inference that this was only because of his odious
ascetic suspicion of any form of beauty. He periodically assured himself - for
his reactions were sharp - that he shouldn't reach the truth of anything till he
had at least got rid of that.
    He had known beforehand that Madame de Vionnet and her daughter would
probably be on view, an intimation to that effect having constituted the only
reference again made by Chad to his good friends from the south. The effect of
Strether's talk about them with Miss Gostrey had been quite to consecrate his
reluctance to pry; something in the very air of Chad's silence - judged in the
light of that talk - offered it to him as a reserve he could markedly match. It
shrouded them about with he scarce knew what, a consideration, a distinction; he
was in presence at any rate - so far as it placed him there - of ladies; and the
one thing that was definite for him was that they themselves should be, to the
extent of his responsibility, in presence of a gentleman. Was it because they
were very beautiful, very clever, or even very good - was it for one of these
reasons that Chad was, so to speak, nursing his effect? Did he wish to spring
them, in the Woollett phrase, with a fuller force - to confound his critic,
slight though as yet the criticism, with some form of merit exquisitely
incalculable? The most the critic had at all events asked was whether the
persons in question were French; and that enquiry had been but a proper comment
on the sound of their name. »Yes. That is no!« had been Chad's reply; but he had
immediately added that their English was the most charming in the world, so that
if Strether were wanting an excuse for not getting on with them he wouldn't in
the least find one. Never in fact had Strether - in the mood into which the
place had quickly launched him - felt, for himself, less the need of an excuse.
Those he might have found would have been, at the worst, all for the others, the
people before him, in whose liberty to be as they were he was aware that he
positively rejoiced. His fellow guests were multiplying, and these things, their
liberty, their intensity, their variety, their conditions at large, were in
fusion in the admirable medium of the scene.
    The place itself was a great impression - a small pavilion, clearfaced and
sequestered, an effect of polished parquet, of fine white panel and spare sallow
gilt, of decoration delicate and rare, in the heart of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain and on the edge of a cluster of gardens attached to old noble
houses. Far back from streets and unsuspected by crowds, reached by a long
passage and a quiet court, it was as striking to the unprepared mind, he
immediately saw, as a treasure dug up; giving him too, more than anything yet,
the note of the range of the immeasurable town and sweeping away, as by a last
brave brush, his usual landmarks and terms. It was in the garden, a spacious
cherished remnant, out of which a dozen persons had already passed, that Chad's
host presently met them; while the tall bird-haunted trees, all of a twitter
with the spring and the weather, and the high party-walls, on the other side of
which grave hôtels stood off for privacy, spoke of survival, transmission,
association, a strong indifferent persistent order. The day was so soft that the
little party had practically adjourned to the open air, but the open air was in
such conditions all a chamber of state. Strether had presently the sense of a
great convent, a convent of missions, famous for he scarce knew what, a nursery
of young priests, of scattered shade, of straight alleys and chapel-bells, that
spread its mass in one quarter; he had the sense of names in the air, of ghosts
at the windows, of signs and tokens, a whole range of expression, all about him,
too thick for prompt discrimination.
    This assault of images became for a moment, in the address of the
distinguished sculptor, almost formidable: Gloriani showed him, in such perfect
confidence, on Chad's introduction of him, a fine worn handsome face, a face
that was like an open letter in a foreign tongue. With his genius in his eyes,
his manners on his lips, his long career behind him and his honours and rewards
all round, the great artist, in the course of a single sustained look and a few
words of delight at receiving him, affected our friend as a dazzling prodigy of
type. Strether had seen in museums - in the Luxembourg as well as, more
reverently, later on, in the New York of the billionaires - the work of his
hand; knowing too that after an earlier time in his native Rome he had migrated,
in mid-career, to Paris, where, with a personal lustre almost violent, he shone
in a constellation: all of which was more than enough to crown him, for his
guest, with the light, with the romance, of glory. Strether, in contact with
that element as he had never yet so intimately been, had the consciousness of
opening to it, for the happy instant, all the windows of his mind, of letting
this rather grey interior drink in for once the sun of a clime not marked in his
old geography. He was to remember again repeatedly the medal-like Italian face,
in which every line was an artist's own, in which time told only as tone and
consecration; and he was to recall in especial, as the penetrating radiance, as
the communication of the illustrious spirit itself, the manner in which, while
they stood briefly, in welcome and response, face to face, he was held by the
sculptor's eyes. He wasn't't soon to forget them, was to think of them, all
unconscious, unintending, preoccupied though they were, as the source of the
deepest intellectual sounding to which he had ever been exposed. He was in fact
quite to cherish his vision of it, to play with it in idle hours; only speaking
of it to no one and quite aware he couldn't have spoken without appearing to
talk nonsense. Was what it had told him or what it had asked him the greater of
the mysteries? Was it the most special flare, unequalled, supreme, of the
aesthetic torch, lighting that wondrous world for ever, or was it above all the
long straight shaft sunk by a personal acuteness that life had seasoned to
steel? Nothing on earth could have been stranger and no one doubtless more
surprised than the artist himself, but it was for all the world to Strether just
then as if in the matter of his accepted duty he had positively been on trial.
The deep human expertness in Gloriani's charming smile - oh the terrible life
behind it! - was flashed upon him as a test of his stuff.
    Chad meanwhile, after having easily named his companion, had still more
easily turned away and was already greeting other persons present. He was as
easy, clever Chad, with the great artist as with his obscure compatriot, and as
easy with every one else as with either: this fell into its place for Strether
and made almost a new light, giving him, as a concatenation, something more he
could enjoy. He liked Gloriani, but should never see him again; of that he was
sufficiently sure. Chad accordingly, who was wonderful with both of them, was a
kind of link for hopeless fancy, an implication of possibilities - oh if
everything had been different! Strether noted at all events that he was thus on
terms with illustrious spirits, and also that - yes, distinctly - he hadn't in
the least swaggered about it. Our friend hadn't come there only for this figure
of Abel Newsome's son, but that presence threatened to affect the observant mind
as positively central. Gloriani indeed, remembering something and excusing
himself, pursued Chad to speak to him, and Strether was left musing on many
things. One of them was the question of whether, since he had been tested, he
had passed. Did the artist drop him from having made out that he wouldn't do? He
really felt just to-day that he might do better than usual. Hadn't he done well
enough, so far as that went, in being exactly so dazzled? and in not having too,
as he almost believed, wholly hidden from his host that he felt the latter's
plummet? Suddenly, across the garden, he saw little Bilham approach, and it was
a part of the fit that was on him that as their eyes met he guessed also his
knowledge. If he had said to him on the instant what was uppermost he would have
said: »Have I passed? - for of course I know one has to pass here.« Little
Bilham would have reassured him, have told him that he exaggerated, and have
adduced happily enough the argument of little Bilham's own very presence; which,
in truth, he could see, was as easy a one as Gloriani's own or as Chad's. He
himself would perhaps then after a while cease to be frightened, would get the
point of view for some of the faces - types tremendously alien, alien to
Woollett - that he had already begun to take in. Who were they all, the
dispersed groups and couples, the ladies even more unlike those of Woollett than
the gentlemen? - this was the enquiry that, when his young friend had greeted
him, he did find himself making.
    »Oh they're every one - all sorts and sizes; of course I mean within limits,
though limits down perhaps rather more than limits up. There are always artists
- he's beautiful and inimitable to the cher confrère; and then gros bonnets of
many kinds - ambassadors, cabinet ministers, bankers, generals, what do I know?
even Jews. Above all always some awfully nice women - and not too many;
sometimes an actress, an artist, a great performer - but only when they're not
monsters; and in particular the right femmes du monde. You can fancy his history
on that side - I believe it's fabulous: they never give him up. Yet he keeps
them down: no one knows how he manages; it's too beautiful and bland. Never too
many - and a mighty good thing too; just a perfect choice. But there are not in
any way many bores; it has always been so; he has some secret. It's
extraordinary. And you don't find it out. He's the same to every one. He doesn't't
ask questions.«
    »Ah doesn't't he?« Strether laughed.
    Bilham met it with all his candour. »How then should I be here?«
    »Oh for what you tell me. You're part of the perfect choice.«
    Well, the young man took in the scene. »It seems rather good to-day.«
    Strether followed the direction of his eyes. »Are they all, this time,
femmes du monde?«
    Little Bilham showed his competence. »Pretty well.«
    This was a category our friend had a feeling for; a light, romantic and
mysterious, on the feminine element, in which he enjoyed for a little watching
it. »Are there any Poles?«
    His companion considered. »I think I make out a Portuguee But I've seen
Turks.«
    Strether wondered, desiring justice. »They seem - all the women - very
harmonious.«
    »Oh in closer quarters they come out!« And then, while Strether was aware of
fearing closer quarters, though giving himself again to the harmonies, »Well,«
little Bilham went on, »it is at the worst rather good, you know. If you like
it, you feel it, this way, that shows you're not in the least out. But you
always know things,« he handsomely added, »immediately.«
    Strether liked it and felt it only too much; so »I say, don't lay traps for
me!« he rather helplessly murmured.
    »Well,« his companion returned, »he's wonderfully kind to us.«
    »To us Americans you mean?«
    »Oh no - he doesn't't know anything about that. That's half the battle here -
that you can never hear politics. We don't talk them. I mean to poor young
wretches of all sorts. And yet it's always as charming as this; it's as if, by
something in the air, our squalor didn't show. It puts us all back - into the
last century.«
    »I'm afraid,« Strether said, amused, »that it puts me rather forward: oh
ever so far!«
    »Into the next? But isn't that only,« little Bilham asked, »because you're
really of the century before?«
    »The century before the last? Thank youl« Strether laughed. »If I ask you
about some of the ladies it can't be then that I may hope, as such a specimen of
the rococo, to please them.«
    »On the contrary they adore - we all adore here - the rococo, and where is
there a better setting for it than the whole thing, the pavilion and the garden,
together? There are lots of people with collections,« little Bilham smiled as he
glanced round. »You'll be secured!«
    It made Strether for a moment give himself again to contemplation. There
were faces he scarce knew what to make of. Were they charming or were they only
strange? He mightn't talk politics, yet he suspected a Pole or two. The upshot
was the question at the back of his head from the moment his friend had joined
him. »Have Madame de Vionnet and her daughter arrived?«
    »I haven't seen them yet, but Miss Gostrey has come. She's in the pavilion
looking at objects. One can see she's a collector,« little Bilham added without
offence.
    »Oh yes, she's a collector, and I knew she was to come. Is Madame de Vionnet
a collector?« Strether went on.
    »Rather, I believe; almost celebrated.« The young man met, on it, a little,
his friend's eyes. »I happen to know - from Chad, whom I saw last night - that
they've come back; but only yesterday. He wasn't't sure - up to the last. This,
accordingly,« little Bilham went on, »will be - if they are here - their first
appearance after their return.«
    Strether, very quickly, turned these things over. »Chad told you last night?
To me, on our way here, he said nothing about it.«
    »But did you ask him?«
    Strether did him the justice. »I dare say not.«
    »Well,« said little Bilham, »you're not a person to whom ifs easy to tell
things you don't want to know. Though it is easy, I admit - it's quite
beautiful,« he benevolently added, »when you do want to.«
    Strether looked at him with an indulgence that matched his intelligence. »Is
that the deep reasoning on which - about these ladies - you've been yourself so
silent?«
    Little Bilham considered the depth of his reasoning. »I haven't been silent.
I spoke of them to you the other day, the day we sat together after Chad's
tea-party.«
    Strether came round to it. »They then are the virtuous attachment?«
    »I can only tell you that it's what they pass for. But isn't that enough?
What more than a vain appearance does the wisest of us know? I commend you,« the
young man declared with a pleasant emphasis, »the vain appearance.«
    Strether looked more widely round, and what he saw, from face to face,
deepened the effect of his young friend's words. »Is it so good?«
    »Magnificent.«
    Strether had a pause. »The husband's dead?«
    »Dear no. Alive.«
    »Oh!« said Strether. After which, as his companion laughed: »How then can it
be so good?«
    »You'll see for yourself. One does see.«
    »Chad's in love with the daughter?«
    »That's what I mean.«
    Strether wondered. »Then where's the difficulty?«
    »Why, aren't you and I - with our grander bolder ideas?«
    »Oh mine -!« Strether said rather strangely. But then as if to attenuate:
»You mean they won't hear of Woollett?«
    Little Bilham smiled. »Isn't that just what you must see about?«
    It had brought them, as she caught the last words, into relation with Miss
Barrace, whom Strether had already observed - as he had never before seen a lady
at a party - moving about alone. Coming within sound of them she had already
spoken, and she took again, through her long-handled glass, all her amused and
amusing possession. »How much, poor Mr. Strether, you seem to have to see about!
But you can't say,« she gaily declared, »that I don't do what I can to help you.
Mr. Waymarsh is placed. I've left him in the house with Miss Gostrey.«
    »The way,« little Bilham exclaimed, »Mr. Strether gets the ladies to work
for him! He's just preparing to draw in another; to pounce - don't you see him?
- on Madame de Vionnet.«
    »Madame de Vionnet? Oh, oh, oh!« Miss Barrace cried in a wonderful
crescendo. There was more in it, our friend made out, than met the ear. Was it
after all a joke that he should be serious about anything? He envied Miss
Barrace at any rate her power of not being. She seemed, with little cries and
protests and quick recognitions, movements like the darts of some fine
high-feathered free-pecking bird, to stand before life as before some full
shop-window. You could fairly hear, as she selected and pointed, the tap of her
tortoise-shell against the glass. »It's certain that we do need seeing about;
only I'm glad it's not I who have to do it. One does, no doubt, begin that way;
then suddenly one finds that one has given it up. It's too much, it's too
difficult. You're wonderful, you people,« she continued to Strether, »for not
feeling those things - by which I mean impossibilities. You never feel them. You
face them with a fortitude that makes it a lesson to watch you.«
    »Ah but« - little Bilham put it with discouragement - - »what do we achieve
after all? We see about you and report - when we even go so far as reporting.
But nothing's done.«
    »Oh you, Mr. Bilham,« she replied as with an impatient rap on the glass,
»you're not worth sixpence! You come over to convert the savages - for I know
you verily did, I remember you - and the savages simply convert you.«
    »Not even!« the young man woefully confessed: »they haven't gone through
that form. They've simply - the cannibals! - eaten me; converted me if you like,
but converted me into food. I'm but the bleached bones of a Christian.«
    »Well then there we are! Only« - and Miss Barrace appealed again to Strether
- »don't let it discourage you. You'll break down soon enough, but you'll
meanwhile have had your moments. Il faut en avoir. I always like to see you
while you last. And I'll tell you who will last.«
    »Waymarsh?« - he had already taken her up.
    She laughed out as at the alarm of it. »He'll resist even Miss Gostrey: so
grand is it not to understand. He's wonderful.«
    »He is indeed,« Strether conceded. »He wouldn't tell me of this affair -
only said he had an engagement; but with such a gloom, you must let me insist,
as if it had been an engagement to be hanged. Then silently and secretly he
turns up here with you. Do you call that lasting?«
    »Oh I hope it's lasting!« Miss Barrace said. »But he only, at the best,
bears with me. He doesn't't understand - not one little scrap. He's delightful.
He's wonderful,« she repeated.
    »Michelangelesque!« - little Bilham completed her meaning. »He is a success.
Moses, on the ceiling, brought down to the floor; overwhelming, colossal, but
somehow portable.«
    »Certainly, if you mean by portable,« she returned, »looking so well in
one's carriage. He's too funny beside me in his corner; he looks like somebody,
somebody foreign and famous, en exil; so that people wonder - it's very amusing
- whom I'm taking about. I show him Paris, show him everything, and he never
turns a hair. He's like the Indian chief one reads about, who, when he comes up
to Washington to see the Great Father, stands wrapt in his blanket and gives no
sign. I might be the Great Father - from the way he takes everything.« She was
delighted at this hit of her identity with that personage - it fitted so her
character; she declared it was the title she meant henceforth to adopt. »And the
way he sits, too, in the corner of my room, only looking at my visitors very
hard and as if he wanted to start something! They wonder what he does want to
start. But he's wonderful,« Miss Barrace once more insisted. »He has never
started anything yet«
    It presented him none the less, in truth, to her actual friends, who looked
at each other in intelligence, with frank amusement on Bilham's part and a shade
of sadness on Strether's. Strether's sadness sprang - for the image had its
grandeur - from his thinking how little he himself was wrapt in his blanket, how
little, in marble halls, all too oblivious of the Great Father, he resembled a
really majestic aboriginal. But he had also another reflection. »You've all of
you here so much visual sense that you've somehow all run to it. There are
moments when it strikes one that you haven't any other.«
    »Any moral,« little Bilham explained, watching serenely, across the garden,
the several femmes du monde. »But Miss Barrace has a moral distinction,« he
kindly continued; speaking as if for Strether's benefit not less than for her
own.
    »Have you?« Strether, scarce knowing what he was about, asked of her almost
eagerly.
    »Oh not a distinction« - she was mightily amused at his tone - »Mr. Bilham's
too good. But I think I may say a sufficiency. Yes, a sufficiency. Have you
supposed strange things of me?« - and she fixed him again, through all her
tortoise-shell, with the droll interest of it. »You are all indeed wonderful. I
should awfully disappoint you. I do take my stand on my sufficiency. But I know,
I confess,« she went on, »strange people. I don't know how it happens; I don't
do it on purpose; it seems to be my doom - as if I were always one of their
habits: it's wonderful! I dare say moreover,« she pursued with an interested
gravity, »that I do, that we all do here, run too much to mere eye. But how can
it be helped? We're all looking at each other - and in the light of Paris one
sees what things resemble. That's what the light of Paris seems always to show.
It's the fault of the light of Paris - dear old light!«
    »Dear old Paris!« little Bilham echoed.
    »Everything, every one shows,« Miss Barrace went on.
    »But for what they really are?« Strether asked.
    »Oh I like your Boston reallys! But sometimes - yes.«
    »Dear old Paris then!« Strether resignedly sighed while for a moment they
looked at each other. Then he broke out: »Does Madame de Vionnet do that? I mean
really show for what she is?«
    Her answer was prompt. »She's charming. She's perfect.«
    »Then why did you a minute ago say Oh, oh, oh! at her name?«
    She easily remembered. »Why just because -! She's wonderful.«
    »Ah she too?« - Strether had almost a groan.
    But Miss Barrace had meanwhile perceived relief. »Why not put your question
straight to the person who can answer it best?«
    »No,« said little Bilham; »don't put any question; wait, rather - it will be
much more fun - to judge for yourself. He has come to take you to her.«

                                       II

 
On which Strether saw that Chad was again at hand, and he afterwards scarce
knew, absurd as it may seem, what had then quickly occurred. The moment
concerned him, he felt, more deeply than he could have explained, and he had a
subsequent passage of speculation as to whether, on walking off with Chad, he
hadn't looked either pale or red. The only thing he was clear about was that,
luckily, nothing indiscreet had in fact been said, and that Chad himself was
more than ever, in Miss Barrace's great sense, wonderful. It was one of the
connexions - though really why it should be, after all, was none so apparent -
in which the whole change in him came out as most striking. Strether recalled as
they approached the house that he had impressed him that first night as knowing
how to enter a box. Well, he impressed him scarce less now as knowing how to
make a presentation. It did something for Strether's own quality - marked it as
estimated; so that our poor friend, conscious and passive, really seemed to feel
himself quite handed over and delivered; absolutely, as he would have said, made
a present of, given away. As they reached the house a young woman, about to come
forth, appeared, unaccompanied, on the steps; at the exchange with whom of a
word on Chad's part Strether immediately perceived that, obligingly, kindly, she
was there to meet them. Chad had left her in the house, but she had afterwards
come halfway and then the next moment had joined them in the garden. Her air of
youth, for Strether, was at first almost disconcerting, while his second
impression was, not less sharply, a degree of relief at there not having just
been, with the others, any freedom used about her. It was upon him at a touch
that she was no subject for that, and meanwhile, on Chad's introducing him, she
had spoken to him, very simply and gently, in an English clearly of the easiest
to her, yet unlike any other he had ever heard. It wasn't't as if she tried;
nothing, he could see after they had been a few minutes together, was as if she
tried; but her speech, charming correct and odd, was like a precaution against
her passing for a Pole. There were precautions, he seemed indeed to see, only
when there were really dangers.
    Later on he was to feel many more of them, but by that time he was to feel
other things besides. She was dressed in black, but in black that struck him as
light and transparent; she was exceedingly fair, and, though she was as markedly
slim, her face had a roundness, with eyes far apart and a little strange. Her
smile was natural and dim; her hat not extravagant; he had only perhaps a sense
of the clink, beneath her fine black sleeves, of more gold bracelets and bangles
than he had ever seen a lady wear. Chad was excellently free and light about
their encounter; it was one of the occasions on which Strether most wished he
himself might have arrived at such ease and such humour: »Here you are then,
face to face at last; you're made for each other - vous allez voir; and I bless
your union.« It was indeed, after he had gone off, as if he had been partly
serious too. This latter motion had been determined by an enquiry from him about
Jeanne; to which her mother had replied that she was probably still in the house
with Miss Gostrey, to whom she had lately committed her. »Ah but you know,« the
young man had rejoined, »he must see her«; with which, while Strether pricked up
his ears, he had started as if to bring her, leaving the other objects of his
interest together. Strether wondered to find Miss Gostrey already involved,
feeling that he missed a link; but feeling also, with small delay, how much he
should like to talk with her of Madame de Vionnet on this basis of evidence.
    The evidence as yet in truth was meagre; which, for that matter, was perhaps
a little why his expectation had had a drop. There was somehow not quite a
wealth in her; and a wealth was all that, in his simplicity, he had definitely
prefigured. Still, it was too much to be sure already that there was but a
poverty. They moved away from the house, and, with eyes on a bench at some
distance, he proposed that they should sit down. »I've heard a great deal about
you,« she said as they went; but he had an answer to it that made her stop
short. »Well, about you, Madame de Vionnet, I've heard, I'm bound to say, almost
nothing« - those struck him as the only words he himself could utter with any
lucidity; conscious as he was, and as with more reason, of the determination to
be in respect to the rest of his business perfectly plain and go perfectly
straight. It hadn't at any rate been in the least his idea to spy on Chad's
proper freedom. It was possibly, however, at this very instant and under the
impression of Madame de Vionnet's pause, that going straight began to announce
itself as a matter for care. She had only after all to smile at him ever so
gently in order to make him ask himself if he weren't already going crooked. It
might be going crooked to find it of a sudden just only clear that she intended
very definitely to be what he would have called nice to him. This was what
passed between them while, for another instant, they stood still; he couldn't at
least remember afterwards what else it might have been. The thing indeed really
unmistakeable was its rolling over him as a wave that he had been, in conditions
incalculable and unimaginable, a subject of discussion. He had been, on some
ground that concerned her, answered for; which gave her an advantage he should
never be able to match.
    »Hasn't Miss Gostrey,« she asked, »said a good word for me?«
    What had struck him first was the way he was bracketed with that lady; and
he wondered what account Chad would have given of their acquaintance. Something
not as yet traceable, at all events, had obviously happened. »I didn't even know
of her knowing you.«
    »Well, now she'll tell you all. I'm so glad you're in relation with her.«
    This was one of the things - the all Miss Gostrey would now tell him - that,
with every deference to present preoccupation, was uppermost for Strether after
they had taken their seat. One of the others was, at the end of five minutes,
that she - oh incontestably, yes - differed less; differed, that is, scarcely at
all - well, superficially speaking, from Mrs. Newsome or even from Mrs. Pocock.
She was ever so much younger than the one and not so young as the other; but
what was there in her, if anything, that would have made it impossible he should
meet her at Woollett? And wherein was her talk during their moments on the bench
together not the same as would have been found adequate for a Woollett
garden-party? - unless perhaps truly in not being quite so bright. She observed
to him that Mr. Newsome had, to her knowledge, taken extraordinary pleasure in
his visit; but there was no good lady at Woollett who wouldn't have been at
least up to that. Was there in Chad, by chance, after all, deep down, a
principle of aboriginal loyalty that had made him, for sentimental ends, attach
himself to elements, happily encountered, that would remind him most of the old
air and the old soil? Why accordingly be in a flutter - Strether could even put
it that way - about this unfamiliar phenomenon of the femme du monde? On these
terms Mrs. Newsome herself was as much of one. Little Bilham verily had
testified that they came out, the ladies of the type, in close quarters; but it
was just in these quarters - now comparatively close - that he felt Madame de
Vionnet's common humanity. She did come out, and certainly to his relief, but
she came out as the usual thing. There might be motives behind, but so could
there often be even at Woollett. The only thing was that if she showed him she
wished to like him - as the motives behind might conceivably prompt - it would
possibly have been more thrilling for him that she should have shown as more
vividly alien. Ah she was neither Turk nor Pole! - which would be indeed flat
once more for Mrs. Newsome and Mrs. Pocock. A lady and two gentlemen had
meanwhile, however, approached their bench, and this accident stayed for the
time further developments.
    They presently addressed his companion, the brilliant strangers; she rose to
speak to them, and Strether noted how the escorted lady, though mature and by no
means beautiful, had more of the bold high look, the range of expensive
reference, that he had, as might have been said, made his plans for. Madame de
Vionnet greeted her as Duchesse and was greeted in turn, while talk started in
French, as Ma toute-belle; little facts that had their due, their vivid interest
for Strether. Madame de Vionnet didn't, none the less, introduce him - a note he
was conscious of as false to the Woollett scale and the Woollett humanity;
though it didn't prevent the Duchess, who struck him as confident and free, very
much what he had obscurely supposed duchesses, from looking at him as straight
and as hard - for it was hard - as if she would have liked, all the same, to
know him. »Oh yes, my dear, it's all right, it's me; and who are you, with your
interesting wrinkles and your most effective (is it the handsomest, is it the
ugliest?) of noses?« - some such loose handful of bright flowers she seemed,
fragrantly enough, to fling at him. Strether almost wondered - at such a pace
was he going - if some divination of the influence of either party were what
determined Madame de Vionnet's abstention. One of the gentlemen, in any case,
succeeded in placing himself in close relation with our friend's companion; a
gentleman rather stout and importantly short, in a hat with a wonderful wide
curl to its brim and a frock coat buttoned with an effect of superlative
decision. His French had quickly turned to equal English, and it occurred to
Strether that he might well be one of the ambassadors. His design was evidently
to assert a claim to Madame de Vionnet's undivided countenance, and he made it
good in the course of a minute - led her away with a trick of three words; a
trick played with a social art of which Strether, looking after them as the
four, whose backs were now all turned, moved off, felt himself no master.
    He sank again upon his bench and, while his eyes followed the party,
reflected, as he had done before, on Chad's strange communities. He sat there
alone for five minutes, with plenty to think of; above all with his sense of
having suddenly been dropped by a charming woman overlaid now by other
impressions and in fact quite cleared and indifferent. He hadn't yet had so
quiet a surrender; he didn't in the least care if nobody spoke to him more. He
might have been, by his attitude, in for something of a march so broad that the
want of ceremony with which he had just been used could fall into its place as
but a minor incident of the procession. Besides, there would be incidents
enough, as he felt when this term of contemplation was closed by the
reappearance of little Bilham, who stood before him a moment with a suggestive
Well? in which he saw himself reflected as disorganised, as possibly floored. He
replied with a Well! intended to show that he wasn't't floored in the least. No
indeed; he gave it out, as the young man sat down beside him, that if, at the
worst, he had been overturned at all, he had been overturned into the upper air,
the sublimer element with which he had an affinity and in which he might be
trusted a while to float. It wasn't't a descent to earth to say after an instant
and in sustained response to the reference: »You're quite sure her husband's
living?«
    »Oh dear, yes.«
    »Ah then -!«
    »Ah then what?«
    Strether had after all to think. »Well, I'm sorry for them.« But it didn't
for the moment matter more than that. He assured his young friend he was quite
content. They wouldn't stir; were all right as they were. He didn't want to be
introduced; had been introduced already about as far as he could go. He had seen
moreover an immensity; liked Gloriani, who, as Miss Barrace kept saying, was
wonderful; had made out, he was sure, the half-dozen other men who were
distinguished, the artists, the critics and oh the great dramatist - him it was
easy to spot; but wanted - no, thanks, really - to talk with none of them;
having nothing at all to say and finding it would do beautifully as it was; do
beautifully because what it was - well, was just simply too late. And when after
this little Bilham, submissive and responsive, but with an eye to the
consolation nearest, easily threw off some »Better late than never!« all he got
in return for it was a sharp »Better early than latel« This note indeed the next
thing overflowed for Strether into a quiet stream of demonstration that as soon
as he had let himself go he felt as the real relief. It had consciously gathered
to a head, but the reservoir had filled sooner than he knew, and his companion's
touch was to make the waters spread. There were some things that had to come in
time if they were to come at all. If they didn't come in time they were lost for
ever. It was the general sense of them that had overwhelmed him with its long
slow rush.
    »It's not too late for you, on any side, and you don't strike me as in
danger of missing the train; besides which people can be in general pretty well
trusted, of course - with the clock of their freedom ticking as loud as it seems
to do here - to keep an eye on the fleeting hour. All the same don't forget that
you're young - blessedly young; be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it.
Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't't so much matter what you do
in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have
you had? This place and these impressions - mild as you may find them to wind a
man up so; all my impressions of Chad and of people I've seen at his place -
well, have had their abundant message for me, have just dropped that into my
mind. I see it now. I haven't done so enough before - and now I'm old; too old
at any rate for what I see. Oh I do see, at least; and more than you'd believe
or I can express. It's too late. And it's as if the train had fairly waited at
the station for me without my having had the gumption to know it was there. Now
I hear its faint receding whistle miles and miles down the line. What one loses
one loses; make no mistake about that. The affair - I mean the affair of life -
couldn't, no doubt, have been different for me; for it's at the best a tin
mould, either fluted and embossed, with ornamental excrescences, or else smooth
and dreadfully plain, into which, a helpless jelly, one's consciousness is
poured - so that one takes the form, as the great cook says, and is more or less
compactly held by it: one lives in fine as one can. Still, one has the illusion
of freedom; therefore don't be, like me, without the memory of that illusion. I
was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it; I don't
quite know which. Of course at present I'm a case of reaction against the
mistake; and the voice of reaction should, no doubt, always be taken with an
allowance. But that doesn't't affect the point that the right time is now yours.
The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have. You've plenty;
that's the great thing; you're, as I say, damn you, so happily and hatefully
young. Don't at any rate miss things out of stupidity. Of course I don't take
you for a fool, or I shouldn't be addressing you thus awfully. Do what you like
so long as you don't make my mistake. For it was a mistake. Live!« ... Slowly
and sociably, with full pauses and straight dashes, Strether had so delivered
himself; holding little Bilham from step to step deeply and gravely attentive.
The end of all was that the young man had turned quite solemn, and that this was
a contradiction of the innocent gaiety the speaker had wished to promote. He
watched for a moment the consequence of his words, and then, laying a hand on
his listener's knee and as if to end with the proper joke: »And now for the eye
I shall keep on you!«
    »Oh but I don't know that I want to be, at your age, too different from
you!«
    »Ah prepare while you're about it,« said Strether, »to be more amusing.«
    Little Bilham continued to think, but at last had a smile. »Well, you are
amusing - to me.«
    »Impayable, as you say, no doubt. But what am I to myself?« Strether had
risen with this, giving his attention now to an encounter that, in the middle of
the garden, was in the act of taking place between their host and the lady at
whose side Madame de Vionnet had quitted him. This lady, who appeared within a
few minutes to have left her friends, awaited Gloriani's eager approach with
words on her lips that Strether couldn't catch, but of which her interesting
witty face seemed to give him the echo. He was sure she was prompt and fine, but
also that she had met her match, and he liked - in the light of what he was
quite sure was the Duchess's latent insolence - the good humour with which the
great artist asserted equal resources. Were they, this pair, of the »great
world«? - and was he himself, for the moment and thus related to them by his
observation, in it? Then there was something in the great world covertly
tigerish, which came to him across the lawn and in the charming air as a waft
from the jungle. Yet it made him admire most of the two, made him envy, the
glossy male tiger, magnificently marked. These absurdities of the stirred sense,
fruits of suggestion ripening on the instant, were all reflected in his next
words to little Bilham. »I know - if we talk of that - whom I should enjoy being
like!«
    Little Bilham followed his eyes; but then as with a shade of knowing
surprise: »Gloriani?«
    Our friend had in fact already hesitated, though not on the hint of his
companion's doubt, in which there were depths of critical reserve. He had just
made out, in the now full picture, something and somebody else; another
impression had been superimposed. A young girl in a white dress and a softly
plumed white hat had suddenly come into view, and what was presently clear was
that her course was toward them. What was clearer still was that the handsome
young man at her side was Chad Newsome, and what was clearest of all was that
she was therefore Mademoiselle de Vionnet, that she was unmistakeably pretty -
bright gentle shy happy wonderful - and that Chad now, with a consummate
calculation of effect, was about to present her to his old friend's vision. What
was clearest of all indeed was something much more than this, something at the
single stroke of which - and wasn't't it simply juxtaposition? - all vagueness
vanished. It was the click of a spring - he saw the truth. He had by this time
also met Chad's look; there was more of it in that; and the truth, accordingly,
so far as Bilham's enquiry was concerned, had thrust in the answer. »Oh Chad!« -
it was that rare youth he should have enjoyed being like. The virtuous
attachment would be all there before him; the virtuous attachment would be in
the very act of appeal for his blessing; Jeanne de Vionnet, this charming
creature, would be - exquisitely, intensely now - the object of it. Chad brought
her straight up to him, and Chad was, oh yes, at this moment - for the glory of
Woollett or whatever - better still even than Gloriani. He had plucked this
blossom; he had kept it over-night in water; and at last as he held it up to
wonder he did enjoy his effect. That was why Strether had felt at first the
breath of calculation - and why moreover, as he now knew, his look at the girl
would be, for the young man, a sign of the latter's success. What young man had
ever paraded about that way, without a reason, a maiden in her flower? And there
was nothing in his reason at present obscure. Her type sufficiently told of it -
they wouldn't, they couldn't, want her to go to Woollett. Poor Woollett, and
what it might miss! - though brave Chad indeed too, and what it might gain!
Brave Chad however had just excellently spoken. »This is a good little friend of
mine who knows all about you and has moreover a message for you. And this, my
dear« - he had turned to the child herself - »is the best man in the world, who
has it in his power to do a great deal for us and whom I want you to like and
revere as nearly as possible as much as I do.«
    She stood there quite pink, a little frightened, prettier and prettier and
not a bit like her mother. There was in this last particular no resemblance but
that of youth to youth; and here was in fact suddenly Strether's sharpest
impression. It went wondering, dazed, embarrassed, back to the woman he had just
been talking with; it was a revelation in the light of which he already saw she
would become more interesting. So slim and fresh and fair, she had yet put forth
this perfection; so that for really believing it of her, for seeing her to any
such developed degree as a mother, comparison would be urgent. Well, what was it
now but fairly thrust upon him? »Mamma wishes me to tell you before we go,« the
girl said, »that she hopes very much you'll come to see us very soon. She has
something important to say to you.«
    »She quite reproaches herself,« Chad helpfully explained: »you were
interesting her so much when she accidentally suffered you to be interrupted.«
    »Ah don't mention it!« Strether murmured, looking kindly from one to the
other and wondering at many things.
    »And I'm to ask you for myself,« Jeanne continued with her hands clasped
together as if in some small learnt prayer - »I'm to ask you for myself if you
won't positively come.«
    »Leave it to me, dear - I'll take care of it!« Chad genially declared in
answer to this, while Strether himself almost held his breath. What was in the
girl was indeed too soft, too unknown for direct dealing; so that one could only
gaze at it as at a picture, quite staying one's own hand. But with Chad he was
now on ground - Chad he could meet; so pleasant a confidence in that and in
everything did the young man freely exhale. There was the whole of a story in
his tone to his companion, and he spoke indeed as if already of the family. It
made Strether guess the more quickly what it might be about which Madame de
Vionnet was so urgent. Having seen him then she had found him easy; she wished
to have it out with him that some way for the young people must be discovered,
some way that would not impose as a condition the transplantation of her
daughter. He already saw himself discussing with this lady the attractions of
Woollett as a residence for Chad's companion. Was that youth going now to trust
her with the affair - so that it would be after all with one of his
»lady-friends« that his mother's missionary should be condemned to deal? It was
quite as if for an instant the two men looked at each other on this question.
But there was no mistaking at last Chad's pride in the display of such a
connexion. This was what had made him so carry himself while, three minutes
before, he was bringing it into view; what had caused his friend, first catching
sight of him, to be so struck with his air. It was, in a word, just when he thus
finally felt Chad putting things straight off on him that he envied him, as he
had mentioned to little Bilham, most. The whole exhibition however was but a
matter of three or four minutes, and the author of it had soon explained that,
as Madame de Vionnet was immediately going »on,« this could be for Jeanne but a
snatch. They would all meet again soon, and Strether was meanwhile to stay and
amuse himself - »I'll pick you up again in plenty of time.« He took the girl off
as he had brought her, and Strether, with the faint sweet foreignness of her »Au
revoir, monsieur!« in his ears as a note almost unprecedented, watched them
recede side by side and felt how, once more, her companion's relation to her got
an accent from it. They disappeared among the others and apparently into the
house; whereupon our friend turned round to give out to little Bilham the
conviction of which he was full. But there was no little Bilham any more; little
Bilham had within the few moments, for reasons of his own, proceeded further: a
circumstance by which, in its order, Strether was also sensibly affected.

                                      III

 
Chad was not in fact on this occasion to keep his promise of coming back; but
Miss Gostrey had soon presented herself with an explanation of his failure.
There had been reasons at the last for his going off with ces dames; and he had
asked her with much instance to come out and take charge of their friend. She
did so, Strether felt as she took her place beside him, in a manner that left
nothing to desire. He had dropped back on his bench, alone again for a time, and
the more conscious for little Bilham's defection of his unexpressed thought; in
respect to which however this next converser was a still more capacious vessel.
»It's the child!« he had exclaimed to her almost as soon as she appeared; and
though her direct response was for some time delayed he could feel in her
meanwhile the working of this truth. It might have been simply, as she waited,
that they were now in presence altogether of truth spreading like a flood and
not for the moment to be offered her in the mere cupful; inasmuch as who should
ces dames prove to be but persons about whom - once thus face to face with them
- she found she might from the first have told him almost everything? This would
have freely come had he taken the simple precaution of giving her their name.
There could be no better example - and she appeared to note it with high
amusement - than the way, making things out already so much for himself, he was
at last throwing precautions to the winds. They were neither more nor less, she
and the child's mother, than old school-friends - friends who had scarcely met
for years but whom this unlooked-for chance had brought together with a rush. It
was a relief, Miss Gostrey hinted, to feel herself no longer groping; she was
unaccustomed to grope and as a general thing, he might well have seen, made
straight enough for her clue. With the one she had now picked up in her hands
there need be at least no waste of wonder. »She's coming to see me - that's for
you,« Strether's counsellor continued; »but I don't require it to know where I
am.«
    The waste of wonder might be proscribed; but Strether, characteristically,
was even by this time in the immensity of space. »By which you mean that you
know where she is?«
    She just hesitated. »I mean that if she comes to see me I shall - now that
I've pulled myself round a bit after the shock - not be at home.«
    Strether hung poised. »You call it - your recognition - a shock?«
    She gave one of her rare flickers of impatience. »It was a surprise, an
emotion. Don't be so literal. I wash my hands of her.«
    Poor Strether's face lengthened. »She's impossible -?«
    »She's even more charming than I remembered her.«
    »Then what's the matter?«
    She had to think how to put it. »Well, I'm impossible. It's impossible.
Everything's impossible.«
    He looked at her an instant. »I see where you're coming out. Everything's
possible.« Their eyes had on it in fact an exchange of some duration; after
which he pursued: »Isn't it that beautiful child?« Then as she still said
nothing: »Why don't you mean to receive her?«
    Her answer in an instant rang clear. »Because I wish to keep out of the
business.«
    It provoked in him a weak wail. »You're going to abandon me now?«
    »No, I'm only going to abandon her. She'll want me to help her with you. And
I won't.«
    »You'll only help me with her? Well then -!« Most of the persons previously
gathered had, in the interest of tea, passed into the house, and they had the
gardens mainly to themselves. The shadows were long, the last call of the birds,
who had made a home of their own in the noble interspaced quarter, sounded from
the high trees in the other gardens as well, those of the old convent and of the
old hôtels; it was as if our friends had waited for the full charm to come out.
Strether's impressions were still present; it was as if something had happened
that nailed them, made them more intense; but he was to ask himself soon
afterwards, that evening, what really had happened - conscious as he could after
all remain that for a gentleman taken, and taken the first time, into the »great
world,« the world of ambassadors and duchesses, the items made a meagre total.
It was nothing new to him, however, as we know, that a man might have - at all
events such a man as he - an amount of experience out of any proportion to his
adventures; so that, though it was doubtless no great adventure to sit on there
with Miss Gostrey and hear about Madame de Vionnet, the hour, the picture, the
immediate, the recent, the possible - as well as the communication itself, not a
note of which failed to reverberate - only gave the moments more of the taste of
history.
    It was history, to begin with, that Jeanne's mother had been
three-and-twenty years before, at Geneva, schoolmate and good girlfriend to
Maria Gostrey, who had moreover enjoyed since then, though interruptedly and
above all with a long recent drop, other glimpses of her. Twenty-three years put
them both on, no doubt; and Madame de Vionnet - though she had married straight
after school - couldn't be today an hour less than thirty-eight. This made her
ten years older than Chad - though ten years, also, if Strether liked, older
than she looked; the least, at any rate, that a prospective mother-in-law could
be expected to do with. She would be of all mothers-in-law the most charming;
unless indeed, through some perversity as yet insupposeable, she should utterly
belie herself in that relation. There was none surely in which, as Maria
remembered her, she mustn't be charming; and this frankly in spite of the stigma
of failure in the tie where failure always most showed. It was no test there -
when indeed was it a test there? - for Monsieur de Vionnet had been a brute. She
had lived for years apart from him - which was of course always a horrid
position; but Miss Gostrey's impression of the matter had been that she could
scarce have made a better thing of it had she done it on purpose to show she was
amiable. She was so amiable that nobody had had a word to say; which was luckily
not the case for her husband. He was so impossible that she had the advantage of
all her merits.
    It was still history for Strether that the Comte de Vionnet - it being also
history that the lady in question was a Countess - should now, under Miss
Gostrey's sharp touch, rise before him as a high distinguished polished
impertinent reprobate, the product of a mysterious order; it was history,
further, that the charming girl so freely sketched by his companion should have
been married out of hand by a mother, another figure of striking outline, full
of dark personal motive; it was perhaps history most of all that this company
was, as a matter of course, governed by such considerations as put divorce out
of the question. »Ces gens-là don't divorce, you know, any more than they
emigrate or abjure - they think it impious and vulgar«; a fact in the light of
which they seemed but the more richly special. It was all special; it was all,
for Strether's imagination, more or less rich. The girl at the Genevese school,
an isolated interesting attaching creature, then both sensitive and violent,
audacious but always forgiven, was the daughter of a French father and an
English mother who, early left a widow, had married again - tried afresh with a
foreigner; in her career with whom she had apparently given her child no example
of comfort. All these people - the people of the English mother's side - had
been of condition more or less eminent; yet with oddities and disparities that
had often since made Maria, thinking them over, wonder what they really quite
rhymed to. It was in any case her belief that the mother, interested and prone
to adventure, had been without conscience, had only thought of ridding herself
most quickly of a possible, an actual encumbrance. The father, by her
impression, a Frenchman with a name one knew, had been a different matter,
leaving his child, she clearly recalled, a memory all fondness, as well as an
assured little fortune which was unluckily to make her more or less of a prey
later on. She had been in particular, at school, dazzlingly, though quite
booklessly, clever; as polyglot as a little Jewess (which she wasn't't, oh no!)
and chattering French, English, German, Italian, anything one would, in a way
that made a clean sweep, if not of prizes and parchments, at least of every
part, whether memorised or improvised, in the curtained costumed school
repertory, and in especial of all mysteries of race and vagueness of reference,
all swagger about home, among their variegated mates.
    It would doubtless be difficult to-day, as between French and English, to
name her and place her; she would certainly show, on knowledge, Miss Gostrey
felt, as one of those convenient types who don't keep you explaining - minds
with doors as numerous as the many-tongued cluster of confessionals at Saint
Peter's. You might confess to her with confidence in Roumelian, and even
Roumelian sins. Therefore -! But Strether's narrator covered her implication
with a laugh; a laugh by which his betrayal of a sense of the lurid in the
picture was also perhaps sufficiently protected. He had a moment of wondering,
while his friend went on, what sins might be especially Roumelian. She went on
at all events to the mention of her having met the young thing - again by some
Swiss lake - in her first married state, which had appeared for the few
intermediate years not at least violently disturbed. She had been lovely at that
moment, delightful to her, full of responsive emotion, of amused recognitions
and amusing reminders; and then, once more, much later, after a long interval,
equally but differently charming - touching and rather mystifying for the five
minutes of an encounter at a railway-station en province, during which it had
come out that her life was all changed. Miss Gostrey had understood enough to
see, essentially, what had happened, and yet had beautifully dreamed that she
was herself faultless. There were doubtless depths in her, but she was all
right; Strether would see if she wasn't't. She was another person however - that
had been promptly marked - from the small child of nature at the Geneva school;
a little person quite made over (as foreign women were, compared with American)
by marriage. Her situation too had evidently cleared itself up; there would have
been - all that was possible - a judicial separation. She had settled in Paris,
brought up her daughter, steered her boat. It was no very pleasant boat -
especially there - to be in; but Marie de Vionnet would have headed straight.
She would have friends, certainly - and very good ones. There she was at all
events - and it was very interesting. Her knowing Mr. Chad didn't in the least
prove she hadn't friends; what it proved was what good ones he had. »I saw
that,« said Miss Gostrey, »that night at the Français; it came out for me in
three minutes. I saw her - or somebody like her. And so,« she immediately added,
»did you.«
    »Oh no - not anybody like her!« Strether laughed. »But you mean,« he as
promptly went on, »that she has had such an influence on him?«
    Miss Gostrey was on her feet; it was time for them to go. »She has brought
him up for her daughter.«
    Their eyes, as so often, in candid conference, through their settled
glasses, met over it long; after which Strether's again took in the whole place.
They were quite alone there now. »Mustn't she rather - in the time then - have
rushed it?«
    »Ah she won't of course have lost an hour. But that's just the good mother -
the good French one. You must remember that of her - that as a mother she's
French, and that for them there's a special providence. It precisely however -
that she mayn't have been able to begin as far back as she'd have liked - makes
her grateful for aid.«
    Strether took this in as they slowly moved to the house on their way out.
»She counts on me then to put the thing through?«
    »Yes - she counts on you. Oh and first of all of course,« Miss Gostrey
added, »on her - well, convincing you.«
    »Ah,« her friend returned, »she caught Chad young!«
    »Yes, but there are women who are for all your times of life. They're the
most wonderful sort.«
    She had laughed the words out, but they brought her companion, the next
thing, to a stand. »Is what you mean that she'll try to make a fool of me?«
    »Well, I'm wondering what she will - with an opportunity - make.«
    »What do you call,« Strether asked, »an opportunity? My going to see her?«
    »Ah you must go to see her« - Miss Gostrey was a trifle evasive. »You can't
not do that. You'd have gone to see the other woman. I mean if there had been
one - a different sort. It's what you came out for.«
    It might be; but Strether distinguished. »I didn't come out to see this
sort.«
    She had a wonderful look at him now. »Are you disappointed she isn't worse?«
    He for a moment entertained the question, then found for it the frankest of
answers. »Yes. If she were worse she'd be better for our purpose. It would be
simpler.«
    »Perhaps,« she admitted. »But won't this be pleasanter?«
    »Ah you know,« he promptly replied, »I didn't come out - wasn't't that just
what you originally reproached me with? - for the pleasant.«
    »Precisely. Therefore I say again what I said at first. You must take things
as they come. Besides,« Miss Gostrey added, »I'm not afraid for myself.«
    »For yourself -?«
    »Of your seeing her. I trust her. There's nothing she'll say about me. In
fact there's nothing she can.«
    Strether wondered - little as he had thought of this. Then he broke out. »Oh
you women!«
    There was something in it at which she flushed. »Yes - there we are. We're
abysses.« At last she smiled. »But I risk her!«
    He gave himself a shake. »Well then so do I!« But he added as they passed
into the house that he would see Chad the first thing in the morning.
    This was the next day the more easily effected that the young man, as it
happened, even before he was down, turned up at his hotel. Strether took his
coffee, by habit, in the public room; but on his descending for this purpose
Chad instantly proposed an adjournment to what he called greater privacy. He had
himself as yet had nothing - they would sit down somewhere together; and when
after a few steps and a turn into the Boulevard they had, for their greater
privacy, sat down among twenty others, our friend saw in his companion's move a
fear of the advent of Waymarsh. It was the first time Chad had to that extent
given this personage away; and Strether found himself wondering of what it was
symptomatic. He made out in a moment that the youth was in earnest as he hadn't
yet seen him; which in its turn threw a ray perhaps a trifle startling on what
they had each up to that time been treating as earnestness. It was sufficiently
flattering however that the real thing - if this was at last the real thing -
should have been determined, as appeared, precisely by an accretion of
Strether's importance. For this was what it quickly enough came to - that Chad,
rising with the lark, had rushed down to let him know while his morning
consciousness was yet young that he had literally made the afternoon before a
tremendous impression. Madame de Vionnet wouldn't, couldn't rest till she should
have some assurance from him that he would consent again to see her. The
announcement was made, across their marble-topped table, while the foam of the
hot milk was in their cups and its plash still in the air, with the smile of
Chad's easiest urbanity; and this expression of his face caused our friend's
doubts to gather on the spot into a challenge of the lips. »See here« - that was
all; he only for the moment said again »See here.« Chad met it with all his air
of straight intelligence, while Strether remembered again that fancy of the
first impression of him, the happy young Pagan, handsome and hard but oddly
indulgent, whose mysterious measure he had under the street-lamp tried mentally
to take. The young Pagan, while a long look passed between them, sufficiently
understood. Strether scarce needed at last to say the rest - »I want to know
where I am.« But he said it, adding before any answer something more. »Are you
engaged to be married - is that your secret? - to the young lady?«
    Chad shook his head with the slow amenity that was one of his ways of
conveying that there was time for everything. »I have no secret - though I may
have secrets! I haven't at any rate that one. We're not engaged. No.«
    »Then where's the hitch?«
    »Do you mean why I haven't already started with you?« Chad, beginning his
coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to explain. »Nothing would have
induced me - nothing will still induce me - not to try to keep you here as long
as you can be made to stay. It's too visibly good for you.« Strether had himself
plenty to say about this, but it was amusing also to measure the march of Chad's
tone. He had never been more a man of the world, and it was always in his
company present to our friend that one was seeing how in successive connexions a
man of the world acquitted himself. Chad kept it up beautifully. »My idea -
voyons! - is simply that you should let Madame de Vionnet know you, simply that
you should consent to know her. I don't in the least mind telling you that,
clever and charming as she is, she's ever so much in my confidence. All I ask of
you is to let her talk to you. You've asked me about what you call my hitch, and
so far as it goes she'll explain it to you. She's herself my hitch, hang it - if
you must really have it all out. But in a sense,« he hastened in the most
wonderful manner to add, »that you'll quite make out for yourself. She's too
good a friend, confound her. Too good, I mean, for me to leave without - without
-« It was his first hesitation.
    »Without what?«
    »Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms of my
sacrifice.«
    »It will be a sacrifice then?«
    »It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered. I owe her so much.«
    It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was now
confessedly - oh quite flagrantly and publicly - interesting. The moment really
took on for Strether an intensity. Chad owed Madame de Vionnet so much? What did
that do then but clear up the whole mystery? He was indebted for alterations,
and she was thereby in a position to have sent in her bill for expenses incurred
in reconstruction. What was this at bottom but what had been to be arrived at?
Strether sat there arriving at it while he munched toast and stirred his second
cup. To do this with the aid of Chad's pleasant earnest face was also to do more
besides. No, never before had he been so ready to take him as he was. What was
it that had suddenly so cleared up? It was just everybody's character; that is
everybody's but - in a measure - his own. Strether felt his character receive
for the instant a smutch from all the wrong things he had suspected or believed.
The person to whom Chad owed it that he could positively turn out such a comfort
to other persons - such a person was sufficiently raised above any breath by the
nature of her work and the young man's steady light. All of which was vivid
enough to come and go quickly; though indeed in the midst of it Strether could
utter a question. »Have I your word of honour that if I surrender myself to
Madame de Vionnet you'll surrender yourself to me?«
    Chad laid his hand firmly on his friend's. »My dear man, you have it.«
    There was finally something in his felicity almost embarrassing and
oppressive - Strether had begun to fidget under it for the open air and the
erect posture. He had signed to the waiter that he wished to pay, and this
transaction took some moments, during which he thoroughly felt, while he put
down money and pretended - it was quite hollow - to estimate change, that Chad's
higher spirit, his youth, his practice, his paganism, his felicity, his
assurance, his impudence, whatever it might be, had consciously scored a
success. Well, that was all right so far as it went; his sense of the thing in
question covered our friend for a minute like a veil through which - as if he
had been muffled - he heard his interlocutor ask him if he mightn't take him
over about five. Over was over the river, and over the river was where Madame de
Vionnet lived, and five was that very afternoon. They got at last out of the
place - got out before he answered. He lighted, in the street, a cigarette,
which again gave him more time. But it was already sharp for him that there was
no use in time. »What does she propose to do to me?« he had presently demanded.
    Chad had no delays. »Are you afraid of her?«
    »Oh immensely. Don't you see it?«
    »Well,« said Chad, »she won't do anything worse to you than make you like
her.«
    »It's just of that I'm afraid.«
    »Then it's not fair to me.«
    Strether cast about. »It's fair to your mother.«
    »Oh,« said Chad, »are you afraid of her?«
    »Scarcely less. Or perhaps even more. But is this lady against your
interests at home?« Strether went on.
    »Not directly, no doubt; but she's greatly in favour of them here.«
    »And what - here - does she consider them to be?«
    »Well, good relations!«
    »With herself?«
    »With herself.«
    »And what is it that makes them so good?«
    »What? Well, that's exactly what you'll make out if you'll only go, as I'm
supplicating you, to see her.«
    Strether stared at him with a little of the wanness, no doubt, that the
vision of more to make out could scarce help producing. »I mean how good are
they?«
    »Oh awfully good.«
    Again Strether had faltered, but it was brief. It was all very well, but
there was nothing now he wouldn't risk. »Excuse me, but I must really - as I
began by telling you - know where I am. Is she bad?«
    »Bad?« - Chad echoed it, but without a shock. »Is that what's implied -?«
    »When relations are good?« Strether felt a little silly, and was even
conscious of a foolish laugh, at having it imposed on him to have appeared to
speak so. What indeed was he talking about? His stare had relaxed; he looked now
all round him. But something in him brought him back, though he still didn't
know quite how to turn it. The two or three ways he thought of, and one of them
in particular, were, even with scruples dismissed, too ugly. He none the less at
last found something. »Is her life without reproach?«
    It struck him, directly he had found it, as pompous and priggish; so much so
that he was thankful to Chad for taking it only in the right spirit. The young
man spoke so immensely to the point that the effect was practically of positive
blandness. »Absolutely without reproach. A beautiful life. Allez donc voir!«
    These last words were, in the liberality of their confidence, so imperative
that Strether went through no form of assent; but before they separated it had
been confirmed that he should be picked up at a quarter to five.
 

                                   Book Sixth

                                       I

It was quite by half-past five - after the two men had been together in Madame
de Vionnet's drawing-room not more than a dozen minutes - that Chad, with a look
at his watch and then another at their hostess, said genially, gaily: »I've an
engagement, and I know you won't complain if I leave him with you. He'll
interest you immensely; and as for her,« he declared to Strether, »I assure you,
if you're at all nervous, she's perfectly safe.«
    He had left them to be embarrassed or not by this guarantee, as they could
best manage, and embarrassment was a thing that Strether wasn't't at first sure
Madame de Vionnet escaped. He escaped it himself, to his surprise; but he had
grown used by this time to thinking of himself as brazen. She occupied, his
hostess, in the Rue de Bellechasse, the first floor of an old house to which our
visitors had had access from an old clean court. The court was large and open,
full of revelations, for our friend, of the habit of privacy, the peace of
intervals, the dignity of distances and approaches; the house, to his restless
sense, was in the high homely style of an elder day, and the ancient Paris that
he was always looking for - sometimes intensely felt, sometimes more acutely
missed - was in the immemorial polish of the wide waxed staircase and in the
fine boiseries, the medallions, mouldings, mirrors, great clear spaces, of the
greyish-white salon into which he had been shown. He seemed at the very outset
to see her in the midst of possessions not vulgarly numerous, but hereditary
cherished charming. While his eyes turned after a little from those of his
hostess and Chad freely talked - not in the least about him, but about other
people, people he didn't know, and quite as if he did know them - he found
himself making out, as a background of the occupant, some glory, some prosperity
of the First Empire, some Napoleonic glamour, some dim lustre of the great
legend; elements clinging still to all the consular chairs and mythological
brasses and sphinxes' heads and faded surfaces of satin striped with alternate
silk.
    The place itself went further back - that he guessed, and how old Paris
continued in a manner to echo there; but the post-revolutionary period, the
world he vaguely thought of as the world of Châteaubriand, of Madame de Staël,
even of the young Lamartine, had left its stamp of harps and urns and torches, a
stamp impressed on sundry small objects, ornaments and relics. He had never
before, to his knowledge, had present to him relics, of any special dignity, of
a private order - little old miniatures, medallions, pictures, books; books in
leather bindings, pinkish and greenish, with gilt garlands on the back, ranged,
together with other promiscuous properties, under the glass of brass-mounted
cabinets. His attention took them all tenderly into account. They were among the
matters that marked Madame de Vionnet's apartment as something quite different
from Miss Gostrey's little museum of bargains and from Chad's lovely home; he
recognised it as founded much more on old accumulations that had possibly from
time to time shrunken than on any contemporary method of acquisition or form of
curiosity. Chad and Miss Gostrey had rummaged and purchased and picked up and
exchanged, sifting, selecting, comparing; whereas the mistress of the scene
before him, beautifully passive under the spell of transmission - transmission
from her father's line, he quite made up his mind - had only received, accepted
and been quiet. When she hadn't been quiet she had been moved at the most to
some occult charity for some fallen fortune. There had been objects she or her
predecessors might even conceivably have parted with under need, but Strether
couldn't suspect them of having sold old pieces to get better ones. They would
have felt no difference as to better or worse. He could but imagine their having
felt - perhaps in emigration, in proscription, for his sketch was slight and
confused - the pressure of want or the obligation of sacrifice.
    The pressure of want - whatever might be the case with the other force -
was, however, presumably not active now, for the tokens of a chastened ease
still abounded after all, many marks of a taste whose discriminations might
perhaps have been called eccentric. He guessed at intense little preferences and
sharp little exclusions, a deep suspicion of the vulgar and a personal view of
the right. The general result of this was something for which he had no name on
the spot quite ready, but something he would have come nearest to naming in
speaking of it as the air of supreme respectability, the consciousness, small,
still, reserved, but none the less distinct and diffused, of private honour. The
air of supreme respectability - that was a strange blank wall for his adventure
to have brought him to break his nose against. It had in fact, as he was now
aware, filled all the approaches, hovered in the court as he passed, hung on the
staircase as he mounted, sounded in the grave rumble of the old bell, as little
electric as possible, of which Chad, at the door, had pulled the ancient but
neatly-kept tassel; it formed in short the clearest medium of its particular
kind that he had ever breathed. He would have answered for it at the end of a
quarter of an hour that some of the glass cases contained swords and epaulettes
of ancient colonels and generals; medals and orders once pinned over hearts that
had long since ceased to beat; snuffboxes bestowed on ministers and envoys;
copies of works presented, with inscriptions, by authors now classic. At bottom
of it all for him was the sense of her rare unlikeness to the women he had
known. This sense had grown, since the day before, the more he recalled her, and
had been above all singularly fed by his talk with Chad in the morning.
Everything in fine made her immeasurably new, and nothing so new as the old
house and the old objects. There were books, two or three, on a small table near
his chair, but they hadn't the lemon-coloured covers with which his eye had
begun to dally from the hour of his arrival and to the opportunity of a further
acquaintance with which he had for a fortnight now altogether succumbed. On
another table, across the room, he made out the great Revue; but even that
familiar face, conspicuous in Mrs. Newsome's parlours, scarce counted here as a
modern note. He was sure on the spot - and he afterwards knew he was right -
that this was a touch of Chad's own hand. What would Mrs. Newsome say to the
circumstance that Chad's interested influence kept her paper-knife in the Revue?
The interested influence at any rate had, as we say, gone straight to the point
- had in fact soon left it quite behind.
    She was seated, near the fire, on a small stuffed and fringed chair, one of
the few modern articles in the room; and she leaned back in it with her hands
clasped in her lap and no movement, in all her person, but the fine prompt play
of her deep young face. The fire, under the low white marble, undraped and
academic, had burnt down to the silver ashes of light wood; one of the windows,
at a distance, stood open to the mildness and stillness, out of which, in the
short pauses, came the faint sound, pleasant and homely, almost rustic, of a
plash and a clatter of sabots from some coachhouse on the other side of the
court. Madame de Vionnet, while Strether sat there, wasn't't to shift her posture
by an inch. »I don't think you seriously believe in what you're doing,« she
said; »but all the same, you know, I'm going to treat you quite as if I did.«
    »By which you mean,« Strether directly replied, »quite as if you didn't! I
assure you it won't make the least difference with me how you treat me.«
    »Well,« she said, taking that menace bravely and philosophically enough,
»the only thing that really matters is that you shall get on with me.«
    »Ah but I don't!« he immediately returned.
    It gave her another pause; which, however, she happily enough shook off.
»Will you consent to go on with me a little - provisionally - as if you did?«
    Then it was that he saw how she had decidedly come all the way; and there
accompanied it an extraordinary sense of her raising from somewhere below him
her beautiful suppliant eyes. He might have been perched at his door-step or at
his window and she standing in the road. For a moment he let her stand and
couldn't moreover have spoken. It had been sad, of a sudden, with a sadness that
was like a cold breath in his face. »What can I do,« he finally asked, »but
listen to you as I promised Chadwick?«
    »Ah but what I'm asking you,« she quickly said, »isn't what Mr. Newsome had
in mind.« She spoke at present, he saw, as if to take courageously all her risk.
»This is my own idea and a different thing.«
    It gave poor Strether in truth - uneasy as it made him too - something of
the thrill of a bold perception justified. »Well,« he answered kindly enough, »I
was sure a moment since that some idea of your own had come to you.«
    She seemed still to look up at him, but now more serenely. »I made out you
were sure - and that helped it to come. So you see,« she continued, »we do get
on.«
    »Oh but it appears to me I don't at all meet your request. How can I when I
don't understand it?«
    »It isn't at all necessary you should understand; it will do quite well
enough if you simply remember it. Only feel I trust you - and for nothing so
tremendous after all. Just,« she said with a wonderful smile, »for common
civility.«
    Strether had a long pause while they sat again face to face, as they had
sat, scarce less conscious, before the poor lady had crossed the stream. She was
the poor lady for Strether now because clearly she had some trouble, and her
appeal to him could only mean that her trouble was deep. He couldn't help it; it
wasn't't his fault; he had done nothing; but by a turn of the hand she had somehow
made their encounter a relation. And the relation profited by a mass of things
that were not strictly in it or of it; by the very air in which they sat, by the
high cold delicate room, by the world outside and the little plash in the court,
by the First Empire and the relics in the stiff cabinets, by matters as far off
as those and by others as near as the unbroken clasp of her hands in her lap and
the look her expression had of being most natural when her eyes were most fixed.
»You count upon me of course for something really much greater than it sounds.«
    »Oh it sounds great enough too!« she laughed at this.
    He found himself in time on the point of telling her that she was, as Miss
Barrace called it, wonderful; but, catching himself up, he said something else
instead. »What was it Chad's idea then that you should say to me?«
    »Ah his idea was simply what a man's idea always is - to put every effort
off on the woman.«
    »The woman -?« Strether slowly echoed.
    »The woman he likes - and just in proportion as he likes her. In proportion
too - for shifting the trouble - as she likes him.«
    Strether followed it; then with an abruptness of his own: »How much do you
like Chad?«
    »Just as much as that - to take all, with you, on myself.« But she got at
once again away from this. »I've been trembling as if we were to stand or fall
by what you may think of me; and I'm even now,« she went on wonderfully,
»drawing a long breath - and, yes, truly taking a great courage - from the hope
that I don't in fact strike you as impossible.«
    »That's at all events, clearly,« he observed after an instant, »the way I
don't strike you.«
    »Well,« she so far assented, »as you haven't yet said you won't have the
little patience with me I ask for -«
    »You draw splendid conclusions? Perfectly. But I don't understand them,«
Strether pursued. »You seem to me to ask for much more than you need. What, at
the worst for you, what at the best for myself, can I after all do? I can use no
pressure that I haven't used. You come really late with your request. I've
already done all that for myself the case admits of. I've said my say, and here
I am.«
    »Yes, here you are, fortunately!« Madame de Vionnet laughed. »Mrs. Newsome,«
she added in another tone, »didn't think you can do so little.«
    He had an hesitation, but he brought the words out. »Well, she thinks so
now.«
    »Do you mean by that -?« But she also hung fire.
    »Do I mean what?«
    She still rather faltered. »Pardon me if I touch on it, but if I'm saying
extraordinary things, why, perhaps, mayn't I? Besides, doesn't't it properly
concern us to know?«
    »To know what?« he insisted as after thus beating about the bush she had
again dropped.
    She made the effort. »Has she given you up?«
    He was amazed afterwards to think how simply and quietly he had met it. »Not
yet.« It was almost as if he were a trifle disappointed - had expected still
more of her freedom. But he went straight on. »Is that what Chad has told you
will happen to me?«
    She was evidently charmed with the way he took it. »If you mean if we've
talked of it - most certainly. And the question's not what has had least to do
with my wishing to see you.«
    »To judge if I'm the sort of man a woman can -?«
    »Precisely,« she exclaimed - »you wonderful gentleman! I do judge - I have
judged. A woman can't. You're safe - with every right to be. You'd be much
happier if you'd only believe it.«
    Strether was silent a little; then he found himself speaking with a cynicism
of confidence of which even at the moment the sources were strange to him. »I
try to believe it. But it's a marvel,« he exclaimed, »how you already get at
it!«
    Oh she was able to say. »Remember how much I was on the way to it through
Mr. Newsome - before I saw you. He thinks everything of your strength.«
    »Well, I can bear almost anything!« our friend briskly interrupted. Deep and
beautiful on this her smile came back, and with the effect of making him hear
what he had said just as she had heard it. He easily enough felt that it gave
him away, but what in truth had everything done but that? It had been all very
well to think at moments that he was holding her nose down and that he had
coerced her: what had he by this time done but let her practically see that he
accepted their relation? What was their relation moreover - though light and
brief enough in form as yet - but whatever she might choose to make it? Nothing
could prevent her - certainly he couldn't - from making it pleasant. At the back
of his head, behind everything, was the sense that she was - there, before him,
close to him, in vivid imperative form - one of the rare women he had so often
heard of, read of, thought of, but never met, whose very presence, look, voice,
the mere contemporaneous fact of whom, from the moment it was at all presented,
made a relation of mere recognition. That was not the kind of woman he had ever
found Mrs. Newsome, a contemporaneous fact who had been distinctly slow to
establish herself; and at present, confronted with Madame de Vionnet, he felt
the simplicity of his original impression of Miss Gostrey. She certainly had
been a fact of rapid growth; but the world was wide, each day was more and more
a new lesson. There were at any rate even among the stranger ones relations and
relations. »Of course I suit Chad's grand way,« he quickly added. »He hasn't had
much difficulty in working me in.«
    She seemed to deny a little, on the young man's behalf, by the rise of her
eyebrows, an intention of any process at all inconsiderate. »You must know how
grieved he'd be if you were to lose anything. He believes you can keep his
mother patient.«
    Strether wondered with his eyes on her. »I see. That's then what you really
want of me. And how am I to do it? Perhaps you'll tell me that.«
    »Simply tell her the truth.«
    »And what do you call the truth?«
    »Well, any truth - about us all - that you see yourself. I leave it to you.«
    »Thank you very much. I like,« Strether laughed with a slight harshness,
»the way you leave things!«
    But she insisted kindly, gently, as if it wasn't't so bad. »Be perfectly
honest. Tell her all.«
    »All?« he oddly echoed.
    »Tell her the simple truth,« Madame de Vionnet again pleaded.
    »But what is the simple truth? The simple truth is exactly what I'm trying
to discover.«
    She looked about a while, but presently she came back to him. »Tell her,
fully and clearly, about us.«
    Strether meanwhile had been staring. »You and your daughter?«
    »Yes - little Jeanne and me. Tell her,« she just slightly quavered, »you
like us.«
    »And what good will that do me? Or rather« - he caught himself up - »what
good will it do you?«
    She looked graver. »None, you believe, really?«
    Strether debated. »She didn't send me out to like you.«
    »Oh,« she charmingly contended, »she sent you out to face the facts.«
    He admitted after an instant that there was something in that. »But how can
I face them till I know what they are? Do you want him,« he then braced himself
to ask, »to marry your daughter?«
    She gave a headshake as noble as it was prompt. »No - not that.«
    »And he really doesn't't want to himself?«
    She repeated the movement, but now with a strange light in her face. »He
likes her too much.«
    Strether wondered. »To be willing to consider, you mean, the question of
taking her to America?«
    »To be willing to do anything with her but be immensely kind and nice -
really tender of her. We watch over her, and you must help us. You must see her
again.«
    Strether felt awkward. »Ah with pleasure - she's so remarkably attractive.«
    The mother's eagerness with which Madame de Vionnet jumped at this was to
come back to him later as beautiful in its grace. »The dear thing did please
you?« Then as he met it with the largest »Oh!« of enthusiasm: »She's perfect.
She's my joy.«
    »Well, I'm sure that - if one were near her and saw more of her - she'd be
mine.«
    »Then,« said Madame de Vionnet, »tell Mrs. Newsome that!«
    He wondered the more. »What good will that do you?« As she appeared unable
at once to say, however, he brought out something else. »Is your daughter in
love with our friend?«
    »Ah,« she rather startlingly answered, »I wish you'd find out!«
    He showed his surprise. »I? A stranger?«
    »Oh you won't be a stranger - presently. You shall see her quite, I assure
you, as if you weren't.«
    It remained for him none the less an extraordinary notion. »It seems to me
surely that if her mother can't -«
    »Ah little girls and their mothers to-day!« she rather inconsequently broke
in. But she checked herself with something she seemed to give out as after all
more to the point. »Tell her I've been good for him. Don't you think I have?«
    It had its effect on him - more than at the moment he quite measured. Yet he
was consciously enough touched. »Oh if it's all you -!«
    »Well, it may not be all, « she interrupted, »but it's to a great extent.
Really and truly,« she added in a tone that was to take its place with him among
things remembered.
    »Then it's very wonderful.« He smiled at her from a face that he felt as
strained, and her own face for a moment kept him so. At last she also got up.
»Well, don't you think that for that -«
    »I ought to save you?« So it was that the way to meet her - and the way, as
well, in a manner, to get off - came over him. He heard himself use the
exorbitant word, the very sound of which helped to determine his flight. »I'll
save you if I can.«

                                       II

 
In Chad's lovely home, however, one evening ten days later, he felt himself
present at the collapse of the question of Jeanne de Vionnet's shy secret. He
had been dining there in the company of that young lady and her mother, as well
as of other persons, and he had gone into the petit salon, at Chad's request, on
purpose to talk with her. The young man had put this to him as a favour - »I
should like so awfully to know what you think of her. It will really be a chance
for you,« he had said, »to see the jeune fille - I mean the type - as she
actually is, and I don't think that, as an observer of manners, it's a thing you
ought to miss. It will be an impression that - whatever else you take - you can
carry home with you, where you'll find again so much to compare it with.«
    Strether knew well enough with what Chad wished him to compare it, and
though he entirely assented he hadn't yet somehow been so deeply reminded that
he was being, as he constantly though mutely expressed it, used. He was as far
as ever from making out exactly to what end; but he was none the less constantly
accompanied by a sense of the service he rendered. He conceived only that this
service was highly agreeable to those who profited by it; and he was indeed
still waiting for the moment at which he should catch it in the act of proving
disagreeable, proving in some degree intolerable, to himself. He failed quite to
see how his situation could clear up at all logically except by some turn of
events that would give him the pretext of disgust. He was building from day to
day on the possibility of disgust, but each day brought forth meanwhile a new
and more engaging bend of the road. That possibility was now ever so much
further from sight than on the eve of his arrival, and he perfectly felt that,
should it come at all, it would have to be at best inconsequent and violent. He
struck himself as a little nearer to it only when he asked himself what service,
in such a life of utility, he was after all rendering Mrs. Newsome. When he
wished to help himself to believe that he was still all right he reflected - and
in fact with wonder - on the unimpaired frequency of their correspondence; in
relation to which what was after all more natural than that it should become
more frequent just in proportion as their problem became more complicated?
    Certain it is at any rate that he now often brought himself balm by the
question, with the rich consciousness of yesterday's letter, »Well, what can I
do more than that - what can I do more than tell her everything?« To persuade
himself that he did tell her, had told her, everything, he used to try to think
of particular things he hadn't told her. When at rare moments and in the watches
of the night he pounced on one it generally showed itself to be - to a deeper
scrutiny - not quite truly of the essence. When anything new struck him as
coming up, or anything already noted as reappearing, he always immediately
wrote, as if for fear that if he didn't he would miss something; and also that
he might be able to say to himself from time to time »She knows it now - even
while I worry.« It was a great comfort to him in general not to have left past
things to be dragged to light and explained; not to have to produce at so late a
stage anything not produced, or anything even veiled and attenuated, at the
moment. She knew it now: that was what he said to himself to-night in relation
to the fresh fact of Chad's acquaintance with the two ladies - not to speak of
the fresher one of his own. Mrs. Newsome knew in other words that very night at
Woollett that he himself knew Madame de Vionnet and that he had conscientiously
been to see her; also that he had found her remarkably attractive and that there
would probably be a good deal more to tell. But she further knew, or would know
very soon, that, again conscientiously, he hadn't repeated his visit; and that
when Chad had asked him on the Countess's behalf - Strether made her out
vividly, with a thought at the back of his head, a Countess - if he wouldn't
name a day for dining with her, he had replied lucidly: »Thank you very much -
impossible.« He had begged the young man would present his excuses and had
trusted him to understand that it couldn't really strike one as quite the
straight thing. He hadn't reported to Mrs. Newsome that he had promised to save
Madame de Vionnet; but, so far as he was concerned with that reminiscence, he
hadn't at any rate promised to haunt her house. What Chad had understood could
only, in truth, be inferred from Chad's behaviour, which had been in this
connexion as easy as in every other. He was easy, always, when he understood; he
was easier still, if possible, when he didn't; he had replied that he would make
it all right; and he had proceeded to do this by substituting the present
occasion - as he was ready to substitute others - for any, for every occasion as
to which his old friend should have a funny scruple.
    »Oh but I'm not a little foreign girl; I'm just as English as I can be,«
Jeanne de Vionnet had said to him as soon as, in the petit salon, he sank, shyly
enough on his own side, into the place near her vacated by Madame Gloriani at
his approach. Madame Gloriani, who was in black velvet, with white lace and
powdered hair, and whose somewhat massive majesty melted, at any contact, into
the graciousness of some incomprehensible tongue, moved away to make room for
the vague gentleman, after benevolent greetings to him which embodied, as he
believed, in baffling accents, some recognition of his face from a couple of
Sundays before. Then he had remarked - making the most of the advantage of his
years - that it frightened him quite enough to find himself dedicated to the
entertainment of a little foreign girl. There were girls he wasn't't afraid of -
he was quite bold with little Americans. Thus it was that she had defended
herself to the end - »Oh but I'm almost American too. That's what mamma has
wanted me to be - I mean like that; for she has wanted me to have lots of
freedom. She has known such good results from it.«
    She was fairly beautiful to him - a faint pastel in an oval frame: he
thought of her already as of some lurking image in a long gallery, the portrait
of a small old-time princess of whom nothing was known but that she had died
young. Little Jeanne wasn't't, doubtless, to die young, but one couldn't, all the
same, bear on her lightly enough. It was bearing hard, it was bearing as he, in
any case, wouldn't bear, to concern himself, in relation to her, with the
question of a young man. Odious really the question of a young man; one didn't
treat such a person as a maid-servant suspected of a follower. And then young
men, young men - well, the thing was their business simply, or was at all events
hers. She was fluttered, fairly fevered - to the point of a little glitter that
came and went in her eyes and a pair of pink spots that stayed in her cheeks -
with the great adventure of dining out and with the greater one still, possibly,
of finding a gentleman whom she must think of as very, very old, a gentleman
with eye-glasses, wrinkles, a long grizzled moustache. She spoke the prettiest
English, our friend thought, that he had ever heard spoken, just as he had
believed her a few minutes before to be speaking the prettiest French. He
wondered almost wistfully if such a sweep of the lyre didn't react on the spirit
itself; and his fancy had in fact, before he knew it, begun so to stray and
embroider that he finally found himself, absent and extravagant, sitting with
the child in a friendly silence. Only by this time he felt her flutter to have
fortunately dropped and that she was more at her ease. She trusted him, liked
him, and it was to come back to him afterwards that she had told him things. She
had dipped into the waiting medium at last and found neither surge nor chill -
nothing but the small splash she could herself make in the pleasant warmth,
nothing but the safety of dipping and dipping again. At the end of the ten
minutes he was to spend with her his impression - with all it had thrown off and
all it had taken in - was complete. She had been free, as she knew freedom,
partly to show him that, unlike other little persons she knew, she had imbibed
that ideal. She was delightfully quaint about herself, but the vision of what
she had imbibed was what most held him. It really consisted, he was soon enough
to feel, in just one great little matter, the fact that, whatever her nature,
she was thoroughly - he had to cast about for the word, but it came - bred. He
couldn't of course on so short an acquaintance speak for her nature, but the
idea of breeding was what she had meanwhile dropped into his mind. He had never
yet known it so sharply presented. Her mother gave it, no doubt; but her mother,
to make that less sensible, gave so much else besides, and on neither of the two
previous occasions, extraordinary woman, Strether felt, anything like what she
was giving tonight. Little Jeanne was a case, an exquisite case of education;
whereas the Countess, whom it so amused him to think of by that denomination,
was a case, also exquisite, of - well, he didn't know what.
    »He has wonderful taste, notre jeune homme«: this was what Gloriani said to
him on turning away from the inspection of a small picture suspended near the
door of the room. The high celebrity in question had just come in, apparently in
search of Mademoiselle de Vionnet, but while Strether had got up from beside her
their fellow guest, with his eye sharply caught, had paused for a long look. The
thing was a landscape, of no size, but of the French school, as our friend was
glad to feel he knew, and also of a quality - which he liked to think he should
also have guessed; its frame was large out of proportion to the canvas, and he
had never seen a person look at anything, he thought, just as Gloriani, with his
nose very near and quick movements of the head from side to side and bottom to
top, examined this feature of Chad's collection. The artist used that word the
next moment, smiling courteously, wiping his nippers and looking round him
further - paying the place in short by the very manner of his presence and by
something Strether fancied he could make out in this particular glance, such a
tribute as, to the latter's sense, settled many things once for all. Strether
was conscious at this instant, for that matter, as he hadn't yet been, of how,
round about him, quite without him, they were consistently settled. Gloriani's
smile, deeply Italian, he considered, and finely inscrutable, had had for him,
during dinner, at which they were not neighbours, an indefinite greeting; but
the quality in it was gone that had appeared on the other occasion to turn him
inside out; it was as if even the momentary link supplied by the doubt between
them had snapped. He was conscious now of the final reality, which was that
there wasn't't so much a doubt as a difference altogether; all the more that over
the difference the famous sculptor seemed to signal almost condolingly, yet oh
how vacantly! as across some great flat sheet of water. He threw out the bridge
of a charming hollow civility on which Strether wouldn't have trusted his own
full weight a moment. That idea, even though but transient and perhaps belated,
had performed the office of putting Strether more at his ease, and the blurred
picture had already dropped - dropped with the sound of something else said and
with his becoming aware, by another quick turn, that Gloriani was now on the
sofa talking with Jeanne, while he himself had in his ears again the familiar
friendliness and the elusive meaning of the »Oh, oh, oh!« that had made him, a
fortnight before, challenge Miss Barrace in vain. She had always the air, this
picturesque and original lady, who struck him, so oddly, as both antique and
modern - she had always the air of taking up some joke that one had already had
out with her. The point itself, no doubt, was what was antique, and the use she
made of it what was modern. He felt just now that her good-natured irony did
bear on something, and it troubled him a little that she wouldn't be more
explicit, only assuring him, with the pleasure of observation so visible in her,
that she wouldn't tell him more for the world. He could take refuge but in
asking her what she had done with Waymarsh, though it must be added that he felt
himself a little on the way to a clue after she had answered that this personage
was, in the other room, engaged in conversation with Madame de Vionnet. He
stared a moment at the image of such a conjunction; then, for Miss Barrace's
benefit, he wondered. »Is she too then under the charm -?«
    »No, not a bit« - Miss Barrace was prompt. »She makes nothing of him. She's
bored. She won't help you with him.«
    »Oh,« Strether laughed, »she can't do everything.«
    »Of course not - wonderful as she is. Besides, he makes nothing of her. She
won't take him from me - though she wouldn't, no doubt, having other affairs in
hand, even if she could. I've never,« said Miss Barrace, »seen her fail with any
one before. And to-night, when she's so magnificent, it would seem to her
strange - if she minded. So at any rate I have him all. Je suis tranquille!«
    Strether understood, so far as that went; but he was feeling for his clue.
»She strikes you to-night as particularly magnificent?«
    »Surely. Almost as I've never seen her. Doesn't she you? Why it's for you.«
    He persisted in his candour. »For me -?«
    »Oh, oh, oh!« cried Miss Barrace, who persisted in the opposite of that
quality.
    »Well,« he acutely admitted, »she is different. She's gay.«
    »She's gay!« Miss Barrace laughed. »And she has beautiful shoulders - though
there's nothing different in that.«
    »No,« said Strether, »one was sure of her shoulders. It isn't her
shoulders.«
    His companion, with renewed mirth and the finest sense, between the puffs of
her cigarette, of the drollery of things, appeared to find their conversation
highly delightful. »Yes, it isn't her shoulders.«
    »What then is it?« Strether earnestly enquired.
    »Why, it's she - simply. It's her mood. It's her charm.«
    »Of course it's her charm, but we're speaking of the difference.«
    »Well,« Miss Barrace explained, »she's just brilliant, as we used to say.
That's all. She's various. She's fifty women.«
    »Ah but only one« - Strether kept it clear - »at a time.«
    »Perhaps. But in fifty times -!«
    »Oh we shan't come to that,« our friend declared; and the next moment he had
moved in another direction. »Will you answer me a plain question? Will she ever
divorce?«
    Miss Barrace looked at him through all her tortoise-shell. »Why should she?«
    It wasn't't what he had asked for, he signified; but he met it well enough.
»To marry Chad.«
    »Why should she marry Chad?«
    »Because I'm convinced she's very fond of him. She has done wonders for
him.«
    »Well then, how could she do more? Marrying a man, or a woman either,« Miss
Barrace sagely went on, »is never the wonder, for any Jack and Jill can bring
that off. The wonder is their doing such things without marrying.«
    Strether considered a moment this proposition. »You mean it's so beautiful
for our friends simply to go on so?«
    But whatever he said made her laugh. »Beautiful.«
    He nevertheless insisted. »And that because it's disinterested?«
    She was now, however, suddenly tired of the question. »Yes, then - call it
that. Besides, she'll never divorce. Don't, moreover,« she added, »believe
everything you hear about her husband.«
    »He's not then,« Strether asked, »a wretch?«
    »Oh yes. But charming.«
    »Do you know him?«
    »I've met him. He's bien aimable.«
    »To every one but his wife?«
    »Oh for all I know, to her too - to any, to every woman. I hope you at any
rate,« she pursued with a quick change, »appreciate the care I take of Mr.
Waymarsh.«
    »Oh immensely.« But Strether was not yet in line. »At all events,« he
roundly brought out, »the attachment's an innocent one.«
    »Mine and his? Ah,« she laughed, »don't rob it of all interest!«
    »I mean our friend's here - to the lady we've been speaking of.« That was
what he had settled to as an indirect but none the less closely involved
consequence of his impression of Jeanne. That was where he meant to stay. »It's
innocent,« he repeated - »I see the whole thing.«
    Mystified by his abrupt declaration, she had glanced over at Gloriani as at
the unnamed subject of his allusion, but the next moment she had understood;
though indeed not before Strether had noticed her momentary mistake and wondered
what might possibly be behind that too. He already knew that the sculptor
admired Madame de Vionnet; but did this admiration also represent an attachment
of which the innocence was discussable? He was moving verily in a strange air
and on ground not of the firmest. He looked hard for an instant at Miss Barrace,
but she had already gone on. »All right with Mr. Newsome? Why of course she is!«
- and she got gaily back to the question of her own good friend. »I dare say
you're surprised that I'm not worn out with all I see - it being so much! - of
Sitting Bull. But I'm not, you know - I don't mind him; I bear up, and we get on
beautifully. I'm very strange; I'm like that; and often I can't explain. There
are people who are supposed interesting or remarkable or whatever, and who bore
me to death; and then there are others as to whom nobody can understand what
anybody sees in them - in whom I see no end of things.« Then after she had
smoked a moment, »He's touching, you know,« she said.
    »Know?« Strether echoed - »don't I, indeed? We must move you almost to
tears.«
    »Oh but I don't mean you!« she laughed.
    »You ought to then, for the worst sign of all - as I must have it for you -
is that you can't help me. That's when a woman pities.«
    »Ah but I do help you!« she cheerfully insisted.
    Again he looked at her hard, and then after a pause; »No you don't!«
    Her tortoise-shell, on its long chain, rattled down. »I help you with
Sitting Bull. That's a good deal.«
    »Oh that, yes.« But Strether hesitated. »Do you mean he talks of me?«
    »So that I have to defend you? No, never.«
    »I see,« Strether mused. »It's too deep.«
    »That's his only fault,« she returned - »that everything, with him, is too
deep. He has depths of silence - which he breaks only at the longest intervals
by a remark. And when the remark comes it's always something he has seen or felt
for himself - never a bit banal. That would be what one might have feared and
what would kill me. But never.« She smoked again as she thus, with amused
complacency, appreciated her acquisition. »And never about you. We keep clear of
you. We're wonderful. But I'll tell you what he does do,« she continued: »he
tries to make me presents.«
    »Presents?« poor Strether echoed, conscious with a pang that he hadn't yet
tried that in any quarter.
    »Why you see,« she explained, »he's as fine as ever in the victoria; so that
when I leave him, as I often do almost for hours - he likes it so - at the doors
of shops, the sight of him there helps me, when I come out, to know my carriage
away off in the rank. But sometimes, for a change, he goes with me into the
shops, and then I've all I can do to prevent his buying me things.«
    »He wants to treat you?« Strether almost gasped at all he himself hadn't
thought of. He had a sense of admiration. »Oh he's much more in the real
tradition than I. Yes,« he mused; »it's the sacred rage.«
    »The sacred rage, exactly!« - and Miss Barrace, who hadn't before heard this
term applied, recognised its bearing with a clap of her gemmed hands. »Now I do
know why he's not banal. But I do prevent him all the same - and if you saw what
he sometimes selects - from buying. I save him hundreds and hundreds. I only
take flowers.«
    »Flowers?« Strether echoed again with a rueful reflection. How many nosegays
had her present converser sent?
    »Innocent flowers,« she pursued, »as much as he likes. And he sends me
splendours; he knows all the best places - he has found them for himself; he's
wonderful.«
    »He hasn't told them to me,« her friend smiled; »he has a life of his own.«
But Strether had swung back to the consciousness that for himself after all it
never would have done. Waymarsh hadn't Mrs. Waymarsh in the least to consider,
whereas Lambert Strether had constantly, in the inmost honour of his thoughts,
to consider Mrs. Newsome. He liked moreover to feel how much his friend was in
the real tradition. Yet he had his conclusion. »What a rage it is!« He had
worked it out. »It's an opposition.«
    She followed, but at a distance. »That's what I feel. Yet to what?«
    »Well, he thinks, you know, that I've a life of my own. And I haven't!«
    »You haven't?« She showed doubt, and her laugh confirmed it. »Oh, oh, oh!«
    »No - not for myself. I seem to have a life only for other people.«
    »Ah for them and with them! Just now for instance with -«
    »Well, with whom?« he asked before she had had time to say.
    His tone had the effect of making her hesitate and even, as he guessed,
speak with a difference. »Say with Miss Gostrey. What do you do for her?«
    It really made him wonder. »Nothing at all!«

                                      III

 
Madame de Vionnet, having meanwhile come in, was at present close to them, and
Miss Barrace hereupon, instead of risking a rejoinder, became again with a look
that measured her from top to toe all mere long-handled appreciative
tortoise-shell. She had struck our friend, from the first of her appearing, as
dressed for a great occasion, and she met still more than on either of the
others the conception reawakened in him at their garden-party, the idea of the
femme du monde in her habit as she lived. Her bare shoulders and arms were white
and beautiful; the materials of her dress, a mixture, as he supposed, of silk
and crape, were of a silvery grey so artfully composed as to give an impression
of warm splendour; and round her neck she wore a collar of large old emeralds,
the green note of which was more dimly repeated, at other points of her apparel,
in embroidery, in enamel, in satin, in substances and textures vaguely rich. Her
head, extremely fair and exquisitely festal, was like a happy fancy, a notion of
the antique, on an old precious medal, some silver coin of the Renaissance;
while her slim lightness and brightness, her gaiety, her expression, her
decision, contributed to an effect that might have been felt by a poet as half
mythological and half conventional. He could have compared her to a goddess
still partly engaged in a morning cloud, or to a sea-nymph waist-high in the
summer surge. Above all she suggested to him the reflection that the femme du
monde - in these finest developments of the type - was, like Cleopatra in the
play, indeed various and multifold. She had aspects, characters, days, nights -
or had them at least, showed them by a mysterious law of her own, when in
addition to everything she happened also to be a woman of genius. She was an
obscure person, a muffled person one day, and a showy person, an uncovered
person the next. He thought of Madame de Vionnet to-night as showy and
uncovered, though he felt the formula rough, because, thanks to one of the
short-cuts of genius, she had taken all his categories by surprise. Twice during
dinner he had met Chad's eyes in a longish look; but these communications had in
truth only stirred up again old ambiguities - so little was it clear from them
whether they were an appeal or an admonition. »You see how I'm fixed,« was what
they appeared to convey; yet how he was fixed was exactly what Strether didn't
see. However, perhaps he should see now.
    »Are you capable of the very great kindness of going to relieve Newsome, for
a few minutes, of the rather crushing responsibility of Madame Gloriani, while I
say a word, if he'll allow me, to Mr. Strether, of whom I've a question to ask?
Our host ought to talk a bit to those other ladies, and I'll come back in a
minute to your rescue.« She made this proposal to Miss Barrace as if her
consciousness of a special duty had just flickered up, but that lady's
recognition of Strether's little start at it - as at a betrayal on the speaker's
part of a domesticated state - was as mute as his own comment; and after an
instant, when their fellow guest had good-naturedly left them, he had been given
something else to think of. »Why has Maria so suddenly gone? Do you know?« That
was the question Madame de Vionnet had brought with her.
    »I'm afraid I've no reason to give you but the simple reason I've had from
her in a note - the sudden obligation to join in the south a sick friend who has
got worse.«
    »Ah then she has been writing you?«
    »Not since she went - I had only a brief explanatory word before she
started. I went to see her,« Strether explained - »it was the day after I called
on you - but she was already on her way, and her concierge told me that in case
of my coming I was to be informed she had written to me. I found her note when I
got home.«
    Madame de Vionnet listened with interest and with her eyes on Strether's
face; then her delicately decorated head had a small melancholy motion. »She
didn't write to me. I went to see her,« she added, »almost immediately after I
had seen you, and as I assured her I would do when I met her at Gloriani's. She
hadn't then told me she was to be absent, and I felt at her door as if I
understood. She's absent - with all respect to her sick friend, though I know
indeed she has plenty - so that I may not see her. She doesn't't want to meet me
again. Well,« she continued with a beautiful conscious mildness, »I liked and
admired her beyond every one in the old time, and she knew it - perhaps that's
precisely what has made her go - and I dare say I haven't lost her for ever.«
Strether still said nothing; he had a horror, as he now thought of himself, of
being in question between women - was in fact already quite enough on his way to
that; and there was moreover, as it came to him, perceptibly, something behind
these allusions and professions that, should he take it in, would square but ill
with his present resolve to simplify. It was as if, for him, all the same, her
softness and sadness were sincere. He felt that not less when she soon went on:
»I'm extremely glad of her happiness.« But it also left him mute - sharp and
fine though the imputation it conveyed. What it conveyed was that he was Maria
Gostrey's happiness, and for the least little instant he had the impulse to
challenge the thought. He could have done so however only by saying »What then
do you suppose to be between us?« and he was wonderfully glad a moment later not
to have spoken. He would rather seem stupid any day than fatuous, and he drew
back as well, with a smothered inward shudder, from the consideration of what
women - of highly-developed type in particular - might think of each other.
Whatever he had come out for he hadn't come to go into that; so that he
absolutely took up nothing his interlocutress had now let drop. Yet, though he
had kept away from her for days, had laid wholly on herself the burden of their
meeting again, she hadn't a gleam of irritation to show him. »Well, about Jeanne
now?« she smiled - it had the gaiety with which she had originally come in. He
felt it on the instant to represent her motive and real errand. But he had been
schooling her of a truth to say much in proportion to his little. »Do you make
out that she has a sentiment? I mean for Mr. Newsome.«
    Almost resentful, Strether could at last be prompt. »How can I make out such
things?«
    She remained perfectly good-natured. »Ah but they're beautiful little
things, and you make out - don't pretend! - everything in the world. Haven't
you,« she asked, »been talking with her?«
    »Yes, but not about Chad. At least not much.«
    »Oh you don't require much!« she reassuringly declared. But she immediately
changed her ground. »I hope you remember your promise of the other day.«
    »To save you, as you called it?«
    »I call it so still. You will?« she insisted. »You haven't repented?«
    He wondered. »No - but I've been thinking what I meant.«
    She kept it up. »And not, a little, what I did?«
    »No - that's not necessary. It will be enough if I know what I meant
myself.«
    »And don't you know,« she asked, »by this time?«
    Again he had a pause. »I think you ought to leave it to me. But how long,«
he added, »do you give me?«
    »It seems to me much more a question of how long you give me. Doesn't our
friend here himself, at any rate,« she went on, »perpetually make me present to
you?«
    »Not,« Strether replied, »by ever speaking of you to me.«
    »He never does that?«
    »Never.«
    She considered, and, if the fact was disconcerting to her, effectually
concealed it. The next minute indeed she had recovered. »No, he wouldn't. But do
you need that?«
    Her emphasis was wonderful, and though his eyes had been wandering he looked
at her longer now. »I see what you mean.«
    »Of course you see what I mean.«
    Her triumph was gentle, and she really had tones to make justice weep. »I've
before me what he owes you.«
    »Admit then that that's something,« she said, yet still with the same
discretion in her pride.
    He took in this note but went straight on. »You've made of him what I see,
but what I don't see is how in the world you've done it.«
    »Ah that's another question!« she smiled. »The point is of what use is your
declining to know me when to know Mr. Newsome - as you do me the honour to find
him - is just to know me.«
    »I see,« he mused, still with his eyes on her. »I shouldn't have met you
to-night.«
    She raised and dropped her linked hands. »It doesn't't matter. If I trust you
why can't you a little trust me too? And why can't you also,« she asked in
another tone, »trust yourself?« But she gave him no time to reply. »Oh I shall
be so easy for you! And I'm glad at any rate you've seen my child.«
    »I'm glad too,« he said; »but she does you no good.«
    »No good?« - Madame de Vionnet had a clear stare. »Why she's an angel of
light.«
    »That's precisely the reason. Leave her alone. Don't try to find out. I
mean,« he explained, »about what you spoke to me of - the way she feels.«
    His companion wondered. »Because one really won't?«
    »Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to. She's the most
charming creature I've ever seen. Therefore don't touch her. Don't know - don't
want to know. And moreover - yes - you won't.«
    It was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in. »As a favour to you?«
    »Well - since you ask me.«
    »Anything, everything you ask,« she smiled. »I shan't know then - never.
Thank you,« she added with peculiar gentleness as she turned away.
    The sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if he had been
tripped up and had a fall. In the very act of arranging with her for his
independence he had, under pressure from a particular perception,
inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed himself, and, with her subtlety
sensitive on the spot to an advantage, she had driven in by a single word a
little golden nail, the sharp intention of which he signally felt. He hadn't
detached, he had more closely connected himself, and his eyes, as he considered
with some intensity this circumstance, met another pair which had just come
within their range and which struck him as reflecting his sense of what he had
done. He recognised them at the same moment as those of little Bilham, who had
apparently drawn near on purpose to speak to him, and little Bilham wasn't't, in
the conditions, the person to whom his heart would be most closed. They were
seated together a minute later at the angle of the room obliquely opposite the
corner in which Gloriani was still engaged with Jeanne de Vionnet, to whom at
first and in silence their attention had been benevolently given. »I can't see
for my life,« Strether had then observed, »how a young fellow of any spirit -
such a one as you for instance - can be admitted to the sight of that young lady
without being hard hit. Why don't you go in, little Bilham?« He remembered the
tone into which he had been betrayed on the garden-bench at the sculptor's
reception, and this might make up for that by being much more the right sort of
thing to say to a young man worthy of any advice at all. »There would be some
reason.«
    »Some reason for what?«
    »Why for hanging on here.«
    »To offer my hand and fortune to Mademoiselle de Vionnet?«
    »Well,« Strether asked, »to what lovelier apparition could you offer them?
She's the sweetest little thing I've ever seen.«
    »She's certainly immense. I mean she's the real thing. I believe the pale
pink petals are folded up there for some wondrous efflorescence in time; to
open, that is, to some great golden sun. I'm unfortunately but a small farthing
candle. What chance in such a field for a poor little painter-man?«
    »Oh you're good enough,« Strether threw out.
    »Certainly I'm good enough. We're good enough, I consider, nous autres, for
anything. But she's too good. There's the difference. They wouldn't look at me.«
    Strether, lounging on his divan and still charmed by the young girl, whose
eyes had consciously strayed to him, he fancied, with a vague smile - Strether,
enjoying the whole occasion as with dormant pulses at last awake and in spite of
new material thrust upon him, thought over his companion's words. »Whom do you
mean by they? She and her mother?«
    »She and her mother. And she has a father too, who, whatever else he may be,
certainly can't be indifferent to the possibilities she represents. Besides,
there's Chad.«
    Strether was silent a little. »Ah but he doesn't't care for her - not, I mean,
it appears, after all, in the sense I'm speaking of. He's not in love with her.«
    »No - but he's her best friend; after her mother. He's very fond of her. He
has his ideas about what can be done for her.«
    »Well, it's very strange!« Strether presently remarked with a sighing sense
of fullness.
    »Very strange indeed. That's just the beauty of it. Isn't it very much the
kind of beauty you had in mind,« little Bilham went on, »when you were so
wonderful and so inspiring to me the other day? Didn't you adjure me, in accents
I shall never forget, to see, while I've a chance, everything I can? - and
really to see, for it must have been that only you meant. Well, you did me no
end of good, and I'm doing my best. I do make it out a situation.«
    »So do I!« Strether went on after a moment. But he had the next minute an
inconsequent question. »How comes Chad so mixed up, anyway?«
    »Ah, ah, ah!« - and little Bilham fell back on his cushions.
    It reminded our friend of Miss Barrace, and he felt again the brush of his
sense of moving in a maze of mystic closed allusions. Yet he kept hold of his
thread. »Of course I understand really; only the general transformation makes me
occasionally gasp. Chad with such a voice in the settlement of the future of a
little countess - no,« he declared, »it takes more time! You say moreover,« he
resumed, »that we're inevitably, people like you and me, out of the running. The
curious fact remains that Chad himself isn't. The situation doesn't't make for it,
but in a different one he could have her if he would.«
    »Yes, but that's only because he's rich and because there's a possibility of
his being richer. They won't think of anything but a great name or a great
fortune.«
    »Well,« said Strether, »he'll have no great fortune on these lines. He must
stir his stumps.«
    »Is that,« little Bilham enquired, »what you were saying to Madame de
Vionnet?«
    »No - I don't say much to her. Of course, however,« Strether continued, »he
can make sacrifices if he likes.«
    Little Bilham had a pause. »Oh he's not keen for sacrifices; or thinks, that
is, possibly, that he has made enough.«
    »Well, it is virtuous,« his companion observed with some decision.
    »That's exactly,« the young man dropped after a moment, »what I mean.«
    It kept Strether himself silent a little. »I've made it out for myself,« he
then went on; »I've really, within the last half-hour, got hold of it. I
understand it in short at last; which at first - when you originally spoke to me
- I didn't. Nor when Chad originally spoke to me either.«
    »Oh,« said little Bilham, »I don't think that at that time you believed me.«
    »Yes - I did; and I believed Chad too. It would have been odious and
unmannerly - as well as quite perverse - if I hadn't. What interest have you in
deceiving me?«
    The young man cast about. »What interest have I?«
    »Yes. Chad might have. But you?«
    »Ah, ah, ah!« little Bilham exclaimed.
    It might, on repetition, as a mystification, have irritated our friend a
little, but he knew, once more, as we have seen, where he was, and his being
proof against everything was only another attestation that he meant to stay
there. »I couldn't, without my own impression, realise. She's a tremendously
clever brilliant capable woman, and with an extraordinary charm on top of it all
- the charm we surely all of us this evening know what to think of. It isn't
every clever brilliant capable woman that has it. In fact it's rare with any
woman. So there you are,« Strether proceeded as if not for little Bilham's
benefit alone. »I understand what a relation with such a woman - what such a
high fine friendship - may be. It can't be vulgar or coarse, anyway - and that's
the point.«
    »Yes, that's the point,« said little Bilham. »It can't be vulgar or coarse.
And, bless us and save us, it isn't! It's, upon my word, the very finest thing I
ever saw in my life, and the most distinguished.«
    Strether, from beside him and leaning back with him as he leaned, dropped on
him a momentary look which filled a short interval and of which he took no
notice. He only gazed before him with intent participation. »Of course what it
has done for him,« Strether at all events presently pursued, »of course what it
has done for him - that is as to how it has so wonderfully worked - isn't a
thing I pretend to understand. I've to take it as I find it. There he is.«
    »There he is!« little Bilham echoed. »And it's really and truly she. I don't
understand either, even with my longer and closer opportunity. But I'm like
you,« he added; »I can admire and rejoice even when I'm a little in the dark.
You see I've watched it for some three years, and especially for this last. He
wasn't't so bad before it as I seem to have made out that you think -«
    »Oh I don't think anything now!« Strether impatiently broke in: »that is but
what I do think! I mean that originally, for her to have cared for him -«
    »There must have been stuff in him? Oh yes, there was stuff indeed, and much
more of it than ever showed, I dare say, at home. Still, you know,« the young
man in all fairness developed, »there was room for her, and that's where she
came in. She saw her chance and took it. That's what strikes me as having been
so fine. But of course,« he wound up, »he liked her first.«
    »Naturally,« said Strether.
    »I mean that they first met somehow and somewhere - I believe in some
American house - and she, without in the least then intending it, made her
impression. Then with time and opportunity he made his; and after that she was
as bad as he.«
    Strether vaguely took it up. »As bad?«
    »She began, that is, to care - to care very much. Alone, and in her horrid
position, she found it, when once she had started, an interest. It was, it is,
an interest; and it did - it continues to do - a lot for herself as well. So she
still cares. She cares in fact,« said little Bilham thoughtfully, »more.«
    Strether's theory that it was none of his business was somehow not damaged
by the way he took this. »More, you mean, than he?« On which his companion
looked round at him, and now for an instant their eyes met. »More than he?« he
repeated.
    Little Bilham, for as long, hung fire. »Will you never tell any one?«
    Strether thought. »Whom should I tell?«
    »Why I supposed you reported regularly -«
    »To people at home?« - Strether took him up. »Well, I won't tell them this.«
    The young man at last looked away. »Then she does now care more than he.«
    »Oh!« Strether oddly exclaimed.
    But his companion immediately met it. »Haven't you after all had your
impression of it? That's how you've got hold of him.«
    »Ah but I haven't got hold of him!«
    »Oh I say!« But it was all little Bilham said.
    »It's at any rate none of my business. I mean,« Strether explained, »nothing
else than getting hold of him is.« It appeared, however, to strike him as his
business to add: »The fact remains nevertheless that she has saved him.«
    Little Bilham just waited. »I thought that was what you were to do.«
    But Strether had his answer ready. »I'm speaking - in connexion with her -
of his manners and morals, his character and life. I'm speaking of him as a
person to deal with and talk with and live with - speaking of him as a social
animal.«
    »And isn't it as a social animal that you also want him?«
    »Certainly; so that it's as if she had saved him for us.«
    »It strikes you accordingly then,« the young man threw out, »as for you all
to save her?«
    »Oh for us all -!« Strether could but laugh at that. It brought him back,
however, to the point he had really wished to make. »They've accepted their
situation - hard as it is. They're not free - at least she's not; but they take
what's left to them. It's a friendship, of a beautiful sort; and that's what
makes them so strong. They're straight, they feel; and they keep each other up.
It's doubtless she, however, who, as you yourself have hinted, feels it most.«
    Little Bilham appeared to wonder what he had hinted. »Feels most that
they're straight?«
    »Well, feels that she is, and the strength that comes from it. She keeps him
up - she keeps the whole thing up. When people are able to it's fine. She's
wonderful, wonderful, as Miss Barrace says; and he is, in his way, too; however,
as a mere man, he may sometimes rebel and not feel that he finds his account in
it. She has simply given him an immense moral lift, and what that can explain is
prodigious. That's why I speak of it as a situation. It is one, if there ever
was.« And Strether, with his head back and his eyes on the ceiling, seemed to
lose himself in the vision of it.
    His companion attended deeply. »You state it much better than I could.«
    »Oh you see it doesn't't concern you.«
    Little Bilham considered. »I thought you said just now that it doesn't't
concern you either.«
    »Well, it doesn't't a bit as Madame de Vionnet's affair. But as we were again
saying just now, what did I come out for but to save him?«
    »Yes - to remove him.«
    »To save him by removal; to win him over to himself thinking it best he
shall take up business - thinking he must immediately do therefore what's
necessary to that end.«
    »Well,« said little Bilham after a moment, »you have won him over. He does
think it best. He has within a day or two again said to me as much.«
    »And that,« Strether asked, »is why you consider that he cares less than
she?«
    »Cares less for her than she for him? Yes, that's one of the reasons. But
other things too have given me the impression. A man, don't you think?« little
Bilham presently pursued, »can't, in such conditions, care so much as a woman.
It takes different conditions to make him, and then perhaps he cares more.
Chad,« he wound up, »has his possible future before him.«
    »Are you speaking of his business future?«
    »No - on the contrary; of the other, the future of what you so justly call
their situation. M. de Vionnet may live for ever.«
    »So that they can't marry?«
    The young man waited a moment. »Not being able to marry is all they've with
any confidence to look forward to. A woman - a particular woman - may stand that
strain. But can a man?« he propounded.
    Strether's answer was as prompt as if he had already, for himself, worked it
out. »Not without a very high ideal of conduct. But that's just what we're
attributing to Chad. And how, for that matter,« he mused, »does his going to
America diminish the particular strain? Wouldn't it seem rather to add to it?«
    »Out of sight out of mind!« his companion laughed. Then more bravely:
»Wouldn't distance lessen the torment?« But before Strether could reply, »The
thing is, you see, Chad ought to marry!« he wound up.
    Strether, for a little, appeared to think of it. »If you talk of torments
you don't diminish mine!« he then broke out. The next moment he was on his feet
with a question. »He ought to marry whom?«
    Little Bilham rose more slowly. »Well, some one he can - some throughly nice
girl.«
    Strether's eyes, as they stood together, turned again to Jeanne. »Do you
mean her?«
    His friend made a sudden strange face. »After being in love with her mother?
No.«
    »But isn't it exactly your idea that he isn't in love with her mother?«
    His friend once more had a pause. »Well, he isn't at any rate in love with
Jeanne.«
    »I dare say not.«
    »How can he be with any other woman?«
    »Oh that I admit. But being in love isn't, you know, here« - little Bilham
spoke in friendly reminder - »thought necessary, in strictness, for marriage.«
    »And what torment - to call a torment - can there ever possibly be with a
woman like that?« As if from the interest of his own question Strether had gone
on without hearing. »Is it for her to have turned a man out so wonderfully, too,
only for somebody else?« He appeared to make a point of this, and little Bilham
looked at him now. »When it's for each other that people give things up they
don't miss them.« Then he threw off as with an extravagance of which he was
conscious: »Let them face the future together!«
    Little Bilham looked at him indeed. »You mean that after all he shouldn't go
back?«
    »I mean that if he gives her up -!«
    »Yes?«
    »Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself.« But Strether spoke with a sound
that might have passed for a laugh.
 

                                  Book Seventh

                                       I

It wasn't't the first time Strether had sat alone in the great dim church - still
less was it the first of his giving himself up, so far as conditions permitted,
to its beneficent action on his nerves. He had been to Notre Dame with Waymarsh,
he had been there with Miss Gostrey, he had been there with Chad Newsome, and
had found the place, even in company, such a refuge from the obsession of his
problem that, with renewed pressure from that source, he had not unnaturally
recurred to a remedy meeting the case, for the moment, so indirectly, no doubt,
but so relievingly. He was conscious enough that it was only for the moment, but
good moments - if he could call them good - still had their value for a man who
by this time struck himself as living almost disgracefully from hand to mouth.
Having so well learnt the way, he had lately made the pilgrimage more than once
by himself - had quite stolen off, taking an unnoticed chance and making no
point of speaking of the adventure when restored to his friends.
    His great friend, for that matter, was still absent, as well as remarkably
silent; even at the end of three weeks Miss Gostrey hadn't come back. She wrote
to him from Mentone, admitting that he must judge her grossly inconsequent -
perhaps in fact for the time odiously faithless; but asking for patience, for a
deferred sentence, throwing herself in short on his generosity. For her too, she
could assure him, life was complicated - more complicated than he could have
guessed; she had moreover made certain of him - certain of not wholly missing
him on her return - before her disappearance. If furthermore she didn't burden
him with letters it was frankly because of her sense of the other great commerce
he had to carry on. He himself, at the end of a fortnight, had written twice, to
show how his generosity could be trusted; but he reminded himself in each case
of Mrs. Newsome's epistolary manner at the times when Mrs. Newsome kept off
delicate ground. He sank his problem, he talked of Waymarsh and Miss Barrace, of
little Bilham and the set over the river, with whom he had again had tea, and he
was easy, for convenience, about Chad and Madame de Vionnet and Jeanne. He
admitted that he continued to see them, he was decidedly so confirmed a haunter
of Chad's premises and that young man's practical intimacy with them was so
undeniably great; but he had his reason for not attempting to render for Miss
Gostrey's benefit the impression of these last days. That would be to tell her
too much about himself - it being at present just from himself he was trying to
escape.
    This small struggle sprang not a little, in its way, from the same impulse
that had now carried him across to Notre Dame; the impulse to let things be, to
give them time to justify themselves or at least to pass. He was aware of having
no errand in such a place but the desire not to be, for the hour, in certain
other places; a sense of safety, of simplification, which each time he yielded
to it he amused himself by thinking of as a private concession to cowardice. The
great church had no altar for his worship, no direct voice for his soul; but it
was none the less soothing even to sanctity; for he could feel while there what
he couldn't elsewhere, that he was a plain tired man taking the holiday he had
earned. He was tired, but he wasn't't plain - that was the pity and the trouble of
it; he was able, however, to drop his problem at the door very much as if it had
been the copper piece that he deposited, on the threshold, in the receptacle of
the inveterate blind beggar. He trod the long dim nave, sat in the splendid
choir, paused before the clustered chapels of the east end, and the mighty
monument laid upon him its spell. He might have been a student under the charm
of a museum - which was exactly what, in a foreign town, in the afternoon of
life, he would have liked to be free to be. This form of sacrifice did at any
rate for the occasion as well as another; it made him quite sufficiently
understand how, within the precinct, for the real refugee, the things of the
world could fall into abeyance. That was the cowardice, probably - to dodge
them, to beg the question, not to deal with it in the hard outer light; but his
own oblivions were too brief, too vain, to hurt any one but himself, and he had
a vague and fanciful kindness for certain persons whom he met, figures of
mystery and anxiety, and whom, with observation for his pastime, he ranked as
those who were fleeing from justice. Justice was outside, in the hard light, and
injustice too; but one was as absent as the other from the air of the long
aisles and the brightness of the many altars.
    Thus it was at all events that, one morning some dozen days after the dinner
in the Boulevard Malesherbes at which Madame de Vionnet had been present with
her daughter, he was called upon to play his part in an encounter that deeply
stirred his imagination. He had the habit, in these contemplations, of watching
a fellow visitant, here and there, from a respectable distance, remarking some
note of behaviour, of penitence, of prostration, of the absolved, relieved
state; this was the manner in which his vague tenderness took its course, the
degree of demonstration to which it naturally had to confine itself. It hadn't
indeed so felt its responsibility as when on this occasion he suddenly measured
the suggestive effect of a lady whose supreme stillness, in the shade of one of
the chapels, he had two or three times noticed as he made, and made once more,
his slow circuit. She wasn't't prostrate - not in any degree bowed, but she was
strangely fixed, and her prolonged immobility showed her, while he passed and
paused, as wholly given up to the need, whatever it was, that had brought her
there. She only sat and gazed before her, as he himself often sat; but she had
placed herself, as he never did, within the focus of the shrine, and she had
lost herself, he could easily see, as he would only have liked to do. She was
not a wandering alien, keeping back more than she gave, but one of the familiar,
the intimate, the fortunate, for whom these dealings had a method and a meaning.
She reminded our friend - since it was the way of nine tenths of his current
impressions to act as recalls of things imagined - of some fine firm
concentrated heroine of an old story, something he had heard, read, something
that, had he had a hand for drama, he might himself have written, renewing her
courage, renewing her clearness, in splendidly-protected meditation. Her back,
as she sat, was turned to him, but his impression absolutely required that she
should be young and interesting, and she carried her head moreover, even in the
sacred shade, with a discernible faith in herself, a kind of implied conviction
of consistency, security, impunity. But what had such a woman come for if she
hadn't come to pray? Strether's reading of such matters was, it must be owned,
confused; but he wondered if her attitude were some congruous fruit of
absolution, of »indulgence.« He knew but dimly what indulgence, in such a place,
might mean; yet he had, as with a soft sweep, a vision of how it might indeed
add to the zest of active rites. All this was a good deal to have been denoted
by a mere lurking figure who was nothing to him; but, the last thing before
leaving the church, he had the surprise of a still deeper quickening.
    He had dropped upon a seat halfway down the nave and, again in the museum
mood, was trying with head thrown back and eyes aloft, to reconstitute a past,
to reduce it in fact to the convenient terms of Victor Hugo, whom, a few days
before, giving the rein for once in a way to the joy of life, he had purchased
in seventy bound volumes, a miracle of cheapness, parted with, he was assured by
the shopman, at the price of the red-and-gold alone. He looked, doubtless, while
he played his eternal nippers over Gothic glooms, sufficiently rapt in
reverence; but what his thought had finally bumped against was the question of
where, among packed accumulations, so multiform a wedge would be able to enter.
Were seventy volumes in red-and-gold to be perhaps what he should most
substantially have to show at Woollett as the fruit of his mission? It was a
possibility that held him a minute - held him till he happened to feel that some
one, unnoticed, had approached him and paused. Turning, he saw that a lady stood
there as for a greeting, and he sprang up as he next took her, securely, for
Madame de Vionnet, who appeared to have recognised him as she passed near him on
her way to the door. She checked, quickly and gaily, a certain confusion in him,
came to meet it, turned it back, by an art of her own; the confusion having
threatened him as he knew her for the person he had lately been observing. She
was the lurking figure of the dim chapel; she had occupied him more than she
guessed; but it came to him in time, luckily, that he needn't tell her and that
no harm, after all, had been done. She herself, for that matter, straightway
showing she felt their encounter as the happiest of accidents, had for him a
»You come here too?« that despoiled surprise of every awkwardness.
    »I come often,« she said. »I love this place, but I'm terrible, in general,
for churches. The old women who live in them all know me; in fact I'm already
myself one of the old women. It's like that, at all events, that I foresee I
shall end.« Looking about for a chair, so that he instantly pulled one nearer,
she sat down with him again to the sound of an »Oh, I like so much your also
being fond -!«
    He confessed the extent of his feeling, though she left the object vague;
and he was struck with the tact, the taste of her vagueness, which simply took
for granted in him a sense of beautiful things. He was conscious of how much it
was affected, this sense, by something subdued and discreet in the way she had
arranged herself for her special object and her morning walk - he believed her
to have come on foot; the way her slightly thicker veil was drawn - a mere
touch, but everything; the composed gravity of her dress, in which, here and
there, a dull wine-colour seemed to gleam faintly through black; the charming
discretion of her small compact head; the quiet note, as she sat, of her folded,
grey-gloved hands. It was, to Strether's mind, as if she sat on her own ground,
the light honours of which, at an open gate, she thus easily did him, while all
the vastness and mystery of the domain stretched off behind. When people were so
completely in possession they could be extraordinarily civil; and our friend had
indeed at this hour a kind of revelation of her heritage. She was romantic for
him far beyond what she could have guessed, and again he found his small comfort
in the conviction that, subtle though she was, his impression must remain a
secret from her. The thing that, once more, made him uneasy for secrets in
general was this particular patience she could have with his own want of colour;
albeit that on the other hand his uneasiness pretty well dropped after he had
been for ten minutes as colourless as possible and at the same time as
responsive.
    The moments had already, for that matter, drawn their deepest tinge from the
special interest excited in him by his vision of his companion's identity with
the person whose attitude before the glimmering altar had so impressed him. This
attitude fitted admirably into the stand he had privately taken about her
connexion with Chad on the last occasion of his seeing them together. It helped
him to stick fast at the point he had then reached; it was there he had resolved
that he would stick, and at no moment since had it seemed as easy to do so.
Unassailably innocent was a relation that could make one of the parties to it so
carry herself. If it wasn't't innocent why did she haunt the churches? - into
which, given the woman he could believe he made out, she would never have come
to flaunt an insolence of guilt. She haunted them for continued help, for
strength, for peace - sublime support which, if one were able to look at it so,
she found from day to day. They talked, in low easy tones and with lifted
lingering looks, about the great monument and its history and its beauty - all
of which, Madame de Vionnet professed, came to her most in the other, the outer
view. »We'll presently, after we go,« she said, »walk round it again if you
like. I'm not in a particular hurry, and it will be pleasant to look at it well
with you.« He had spoken of the great romancer and the great romance, and of
what, to his imagination, they had done for the whole, mentioning to her
moreover the exorbitance of his purchase, the seventy blazing volumes that were
so out of proportion.
    »Out of proportion to what?«
    »Well, to any other plunge.« Yet he felt even as he spoke how at that
instant he was plunging. He had made up his mind and was impatient to get into
the air; for his purpose was a purpose to be uttered outside, and he had a fear
that it might with delay still slip away from him. She however took her time;
she drew out their quiet gossip as if she had wished to profit by their meeting,
and this confirmed precisely an interpretation of her manner, of her mystery.
While she rose, as he would have called it, to the question of Victor Hugo, her
voice itself, the light low quaver of her deference to the solemnity about them,
seemed to make her words mean something that they didn't mean openly. Help,
strength, peace, a sublime support - she hadn't found so much of these things as
that the amount wouldn't be sensibly greater for any scrap his appearance of
faith in her might enable her to feel in her hand. Every little, in a long
strain, helped, and if he happened to affect her as a firm object she could hold
on by, he wouldn't jerk himself out of her reach. People in difficulties held on
by what was nearest, and he was perhaps after all not further off than sources
of comfort more abstract. It was as to this he had made up his mind; he had made
it up, that is, to give her a sign. The sign would be that - though it was her
own affair - he understood; the sign would be that - though it was her own
affair - she was free to clutch. Since she took him for a firm object - much as
he might to his own sense appear at times to rock - he would do his best to be
one.
    The end of it was that half an hour later they were seated together for an
early luncheon at a wonderful, a delightful house of entertainment on the left
bank - a place of pilgrimage for the knowing, they were both aware, the knowing
who came, for its great renown, the homage of restless days, from the other end
of the town. Strether had already been there three times - first with Miss
Gostrey, then with Chad, then with Chad again and with Waymarsh and little
Bilham, all of whom he had himself sagaciously entertained; and his pleasure was
deep now on learning that Madame de Vionnet hadn't yet been initiated. When he
had said, as they strolled round the church, by the river, acting at last on
what, within, he had made up his mind to, »Will you, if you have time, come to
déjeuner with me somewhere? For instance, if you know it, over there on the
other side, which is so easy a walk« - and then had named the place; when he had
done this she stopped short as for quick intensity, and yet deep difficulty, of
response. She took in the proposal as if it were almost too charming to be true;
and there had perhaps never yet been for her companion so unexpected a moment of
pride - so fine, so odd a case, at any rate, as his finding himself thus able to
offer to a person in such universal possession a new, a rare amusement. She had
heard of the happy spot, but she asked him in reply to a further question how in
the world he could suppose her to have been there. He supposed himself to have
supposed that Chad might have taken her, and she guessed this the next moment,
to his no small discomfort.
    »Ah, let me explain,« she smiled, »that I don't go about with him in public;
I never have such chances - not having them otherwise - and it's just the sort
of thing that, as a quiet creature living in my hole, I adore.« It was more than
kind of him to have thought of it - though, frankly, if he asked whether she had
time she hadn't a single minute. That however made no difference - she'd throw
everything over. Every duty at home, domestic, maternal, social, awaited her;
but it was a case for a high line. Her affairs would go to smash, but hadn't one
a right to one's snatch of scandal when one was prepared to pay? It was on this
pleasant basis of costly disorder, consequently, that they eventually seated
themselves, on either side of a small table, at a window adjusted to the busy
quay and the shining barge-burdened Seine; where, for an hour, in the matter of
letting himself go, of diving deep, Strether was to feel he had touched bottom.
He was to feel many things on this occasion, and one of the first of them was
that he had travelled far since that evening in London, before the theatre, when
his dinner with Maria Gostrey, between the pink-shaded candles, had struck him
as requiring so many explanations. He had at that time gathered them in, the
explanations - he had stored them up; but it was at present as if he had either
soared above or sunk below them - he couldn't tell which; he could somehow think
of none that didn't seem to leave the appearance of collapse and cynicism easier
for him than lucidity. How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one,
that he, for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright clean
ordered water-side life came in at the open window? - the mere way Madame de
Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their omelette aux
tomates, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, thanked him for everything
almost with the smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and out of their
talk, back to the quarter of the warm spring air, in which early summer had
already begun to throb, and then back again to his face and their human
questions.
    Their human questions became many before they had done - many more, as one
after the other came up, than our friend's free fancy had at all foreseen. The
sense he had had before, the sense he had had repeatedly, the sense that the
situation was running away with him, had never been so sharp as now; and all the
more that he could perfectly put his finger on the moment it had taken the bit
in its teeth. That accident had definitely occurred, the other evening, after
Chad's dinner; it had occurred, as he fully knew, at the moment when he
interposed between this lady and her child, when he suffered himself so to
discuss with her a matter closely concerning them that her own subtlety, marked
by its significant »Thank you!« instantly sealed the occasion in her favour.
Again he had held off for ten days, but the situation had continued out of hand
in spite of that; the fact that it was running so fast being indeed just why he
had held off. What had come over him as he recognised her in the nave of the
church was that holding off could be but a losing game from the instant she was
worked for not only by her subtlety, but by the hand of fate itself. If all the
accidents were to fight on her side - and by the actual showing they loomed
large - he could only give himself up. This was what he had done in privately
deciding then and there to propose she should breakfast with him. What did the
success of his proposal in fact resemble but the smash in which a regular
runaway properly ends? The smash was their walk, their déjeuner, their omelette,
the Chablis, the place, the view, their present talk and his present pleasure in
it - to say nothing, wonder of wonders, of her own. To this tune and nothing
less, accordingly, was his surrender made good. It sufficiently lighted up at
least the folly of holding off. Ancient proverbs sounded, for his memory, in the
tone of their words and the clink of their glasses, in the hum of the town and
the plash of the river. It was clearly better to suffer as a sheep than as a
lamb. One might as well perish by the sword as by famine.
    »Maria's still away?« - that was the first thing she had asked him; and when
he had found the frankness to be cheerful about it in spite of the meaning he
knew her to attach to Miss Gostrey's absence, she had gone on to enquire if he
didn't tremendously miss her. There were reasons that made him by no means sure,
yet he nevertheless answered »Tremendously«; which she took in as if it were all
she had wished to prove. Then, »A man in trouble must be possessed somehow of a
woman,« she said; »if she doesn't't come in one way she comes in another.«
    »Why do you call me a man in trouble?«
    »Ah because that's the way you strike me.« She spoke ever so gently and as
if with all fear of wounding him while she sat partaking of his bounty. »Aren't
you in trouble?«
    He felt himself colour at the question, and then hated that - hated to pass
for anything so idiotic as woundable. Woundable by Chad's lady, in respect to
whom he had come out with such a fund of indifference - was he already at that
point? Perversely, none the less, his pause gave a strange air of truth to her
supposition; and what was he in fact but disconcerted at having struck her just
in the way he had most dreamed of not doing? »I'm not in trouble yet,« he at
last smiled. »I'm not in trouble now.«
    »Well, I'm always so. But that you sufficiently know.« She was a woman who,
between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table. It was a
posture unknown to Mrs. Newsome, but it was easy for a femme du monde. »Yes - I
am now!«
    »There was a question you put to me,« he presently returned, »the night of
Chad's dinner. I didn't answer it then, and it has been very handsome of you not
to have sought an occasion for pressing me about it since.«
    She was instantly all there. »Of course I know what you allude to. I asked
you what you had meant by saying, the day you came to see me, just before you
let me, that you'd save me. And you then said - at our friend's - that you'd
have really to wait to see, for yourself, what you did mean.«
    »Yes, I asked for time,« said Strether. »And it sounds now, as you put it,
like a very ridiculous speech.«
    »Oh!« she murmured - she was full of attenuation. But she had another
thought. »If it does sound ridiculous why do you deny that you're in trouble?«
    »Ah if I were,« he replied, »it wouldn't be the trouble of fearing ridicule.
I don't fear it.«
    »What then do you?«
    »Nothing - now.« And he leaned back in his chair.
    »I like your now!« she laughed across at him.
    »Well, it's precisely that it fully comes to me at present that I've kept
you long enough. I know by this time, at any rate, what I meant by my speech;
and I really knew it the night of Chad's dinner.«
    »Then why didn't you tell me?«
    »Because it was difficult at the moment. I had already at that moment done
something for you, in the sense of what I had said the day I went to see you;
but I wasn't't then sure of the importance I might represent this as having.«
    She was all eagerness. »And you're sure now?«
    »Yes; I see that, practically, I've done for you - had done for you when you
put me your question - all that it's as yet possible to me to do. I feel now,«
he went on, »that it may go further than I thought. What I did after my visit to
you,« he explained, »was to write straight off to Mrs. Newsome about you, and
I'm at last, from one day to the other, expecting her answer. It's this answer
that will represent, as I believe, the consequences.«
    Patient and beautiful was her interest. »I see - the consequences of your
speaking for me.« And she waited as if not to hustle him.
    He acknowledged it by immediately going on. »The question, you understand,
was how I should save you. Well, I'm trying it by thus letting her know that I
consider you worth saving.«
    »I see - I see.« Her eagerness broke through.
    »How can I thank you enough?« He couldn't tell her that, however, and she
quickly pursued. »You do really, for yourself, consider it?«
    His only answer at first was to help her to the dish that had been freshly
put before them. »I've written to her again since then - I've left her in no
doubt of what I think. I've told her all about you.«
    »Thanks - not so much. All about me,« she went on - »yes.«
    »All it seems to me you've done for him.«
    »Ah and you might have added all it seems to me!« She laughed again, while
she took up her knife and fork, as in the cheer of these assurances. »But you're
not sure how she'll take it.«
    »No, I'll not pretend I'm sure.«
    »Voilà.« And she waited a moment. »I wish you'd tell me about her.«
    »Oh,« said Strether with a slightly strained smile, »all that need concern
you about her is that she's really a grand person.«
    Madame de Vionnet seemed to demur. »Is that all that need concern me about
her?«
    But Strether neglected the question. »Hasn't Chad talked to you?«
    »Of his mother? Yes, a great deal - immensely. But not from your point of
view.«
    »He can't,« our friend returned, »have said any ill of her.«
    »Not the least bit. He has given me, like you, the assurance that she's
really grand. But her being really grand is somehow just what hasn't seemed to
simplify our case. Nothing,« she continued, »is further from me than to wish to
say a word against her; but of course I feel how little she can like being told
of her owing me anything. No woman ever enjoys such an obligation to another
woman.«
    This was a proposition Strether couldn't contradict. »And yet what other way
could I have expressed to her what I felt? It's what there was most to say about
you.«
    »Do you mean then that she will be good to me?«
    »It's what I'm waiting to see. But I've little doubt she would,« he added,
»if she could comfortably see you.«
    It seemed to strike her as a happy, a beneficent thought. »Oh then couldn't
that be managed? Wouldn't she come out? Wouldn't she if you so put it to her?
Did you by any possibility?« she faintly quavered.
    »Oh no« - he was prompt. »Not that. It would be, much more, to give an
account of you that - since there's no question of your paying the visit - I
should go home first.«
    It instantly made her graver. »And are you thinking of that?«
    »Oh all the while, naturally.«
    »Stay with us - stay with us!« she exclaimed on this. »That's your only way
to make sure.«
    »To make sure of what?«
    »Why that he doesn't't break up. You didn't come out to do that to him.«
    »Doesn't it depend,« Strether returned after a moment, »on what you mean by
breaking up?«
    »Oh you know well enough what I mean!«
    His silence seemed again for a little to denote an understanding. »You take
for granted remarkable things.«
    »Yes, I do - to the extent that I don't take for granted vulgar ones. You're
perfectly capable of seeing that what you came out for wasn't't really at all to
do what you'd now have to do.«
    »Ah it's perfectly simple,« Strether good-humouredly pleaded. »I've had but
one thing to do - to put our case before him. To put it as it could only be put
here on the spot - by personal pressure. My dear lady,« he lucidly pursued, »my
work, you see, is really done, and my reasons for staying on even another day
are none of the best. Chad's in possession of our case and professes to do it
full justice. What remains is with himself. I've had my rest, my amusement and
refreshment; I've had, as we say at Woollett, a lovely time. Nothing in it has
been more lovely than this happy meeting with you - in these fantastic
conditions to which you've so delightfully consented. I've a sense of success.
It's what I wanted. My getting all this good is what Chad has waited for, and I
gather that if I'm ready to go he's the same.«
    She shook her head with a finer deeper wisdom. »You're not ready. If you're
ready why did you write to Mrs. Newsome in the sense you've mentioned to me?«
    Strether considered. »I shan't go before I hear from her. You're too much
afraid of her,« he added.
    It produced between them a long look from which neither shrank. »I don't
think you believe that - believe I've not really reason to fear her.«
    »She's capable of great generosity,« Strether presently stated.
    »Well then let her trust me a little. That's all I ask. Let her recognise in
spite of everything what I've done.«
    »Ah remember,« our friend replied, »that she can't effectually recognise it
without seeing it for herself. Let Chad go over and show her what you've done,
and let him plead with her there for it and, as it were, for you.«
    She measured the depth of this suggestion. »Do you give me your word of
honour that if she once has him there she won't do her best to marry him?«
    It made her companion, this enquiry, look again a while out at the view;
after which he spoke without sharpness. »When she sees for herself what he is -«
    But she had already broken in. »It's when she sees for herself what he is
that she'll want to marry him most.«
    Strether's attitude, that of due deference to what she said, permitted him
to attend for a minute to his luncheon. »I doubt if that will come off. It won't
be easy to make it.«
    »It will be easy if he remains there - and he'll remain for the money. The
money appears to be, as a probability, so hideously much.«
    »Well,« Strether presently concluded, »nothing could really hurt you but his
marrying.«
    She gave a strange light laugh. »Putting aside what may really hurt him.«
    But her friend looked at her as if he had thought of that too. »The question
will come up, of course, of the future that you yourself offer him.«
    She was leaning back now, but she fully faced him. »Well, let it come up!«
    »The point is that it's for Chad to make of it what he can. His being proof
against marriage will show what he does make.«
    »If he is proof, yes« - she accepted the proposition. »But for myself,« she
added, »the question is what you make.«
    »Ah I make nothing. It's not my affair.«
    »I beg your pardon. It's just there that, since you've taken it up and are
committed to it, it most intensely becomes yours. You're not saving me, I take
it, for your interest in myself, but for your interest in our friend. The one's
at any rate wholly dependent on the other. You can't in honour not see me
through,« she wound up, »because you can't in honour not see him.«
    Strange and beautiful to him was her quiet soft acuteness. The thing that
most moved him was really that she was so deeply serious. She had none of the
portentous forms of it, but he had never come in contact, it struck him, with a
force brought to so fine a head. Mrs. Newsome, goodness knew, was serious; but
it was nothing to this. He took it all in, he saw it all together. »No,« he
mused, »I can't in honour not see him.«
    Her face affected him as with an exquisite light. »You will then?«
    »I will.«
    At this she pushed back her chair and was the next moment on her feet.
»Thank you!« she said with her hand held out to him across the table and with no
less a meaning in the words than her lips had so particularly given them after
Chad's dinner. The golden nail she had then driven in pierced a good inch
deeper. Yet he reflected that he himself had only meanwhile done what he had
made up his mind to on the same occasion. So far as the essence of the matter
went he had simply stood fast on the spot on which he had then planted his feet.

                                       II

 
He received three days after this a communication from America, in the form of a
scrap of blue paper folded and gummed, not reaching him through his bankers, but
delivered at his hotel by a small boy in uniform, who, under instructions from
the concierge, approached him as he slowly paced the little court. It was the
evening hour, but daylight was long now and Paris more than ever penetrating.
The scent of flowers was in the streets, he had the whiff of violets perpetually
in his nose; and he had attached himself to sounds and suggestions, vibrations
of the air, human and dramatic, he imagined, as they were not in other places,
that came out for him more and more as the mild afternoons deepened - a far-off
hum, a sharp near click on the asphalt, a voice calling, replying, somewhere and
as full of tone as an actor's in a play. He was to dine at home, as usual, with
Waymarsh - they had settled to that for thrift and simplicity; and he now hung
about before his friend came down.
    He read his telegram in the court, standing still a long time where he had
opened it and giving five minutes afterwards to the renewed study of it. At
last, quickly, he crumpled it up as if to get it out of the way; in spite of
which, however, he kept it there - still kept it when, at the end of another
turn, he had dropped into a chair placed near a small table. Here, with his
scrap of paper compressed in his fist and further concealed by his folding his
arms tight, he sat for some time in thought, gazed before him so straight that
Waymarsh appeared and approached him without catching his eye. The latter in
fact, struck with his appearance, looked at him hard for a single instant and
then, as if determined to that course by some special vividness in it, dropped
back into the salon de lecture without addressing him. But the pilgrim from
Milrose permitted himself still to observe the scene from behind the clear glass
plate of that retreat. Strether ended, as he sat, by a fresh scrutiny of his
compressed missive, which he smoothed out carefully again as he placed it on his
table. There it remained for some minutes, until, at last looking up, he saw
Waymarsh watching him from within. It was on this that their eyes met - met for
a moment during which neither moved. But Strether then got up, folding his
telegram more carefully and putting it into his waistcoat pocket.
    A few minutes later the friends were seated together at dinner; but Strether
had meanwhile said nothing about it, and they eventually parted, after coffee in
the court, with nothing said on either side. Our friend had moreover the
consciousness that even less than usual was on this occasion said between them,
so that it was almost as if each had been waiting for something from the other.
Waymarsh had always more or less the air of sitting at the door of his tent, and
silence, after so many weeks, had come to play its part in their concert. This
note indeed, to Strether's sense, had lately taken a fuller tone, and it was his
fancy to-night that they had never quite so drawn it out. Yet it befell, none
the less, that he closed the door to confidence when his companion finally asked
him if there were anything particular the matter with him. »Nothing,« he
replied, »more than usual.«
    On the morrow, however, at an early hour, he found occasion to give an
answer more in consonance with the facts. What was the matter had continued to
be so all the previous evening, the first hours of which, after dinner, in his
room, he had devoted to the copious composition of a letter. He had quitted
Waymarsh for this purpose, leaving him to his own resources with less ceremony
than their wont, but finally coming down again with his letter unconcluded and
going forth into the streets without enquiry for his comrade. He had taken a
long vague walk, and one o'clock had struck before his return and his re-ascent
to his room by the aid of the glimmering candle-end left for him on the shelf
outside the porter's lodge. He had possessed himself, on closing his door, of
the numerous loose sheets of his unfinished composition, and then, without
reading them over, had torn them into small pieces. He had thereupon slept - as
if it had been in some measure thanks to that sacrifice - the sleep of the just,
and had prolonged his rest considerably beyond his custom. Thus it was that
when, between nine and ten, the tap of the knob of a walking-stick sounded on
his door, he had not yet made himself altogether presentable. Chad Newsome's
bright deep voice determined quickly enough none the less the admission of the
visitor. The little blue paper of the evening before, plainly an object the more
precious for its escape from premature destruction, now lay on the sill of the
open window, smoothed out afresh and kept from blowing away by the
superincumbent weight of his watch. Chad, looking about with careless and
competent criticism, as he looked wherever he went, immediately espied it and
permitted himself to fix it for a moment rather hard. After which he turned his
eyes to his host. »It has come then at last?«
    Strether paused in the act of pinning his necktie. »Then you know -? You've
had one too?«
    »No, I've had nothing, and I only know what I see. I see that thing and I
guess. Well,« he added, »it comes as pat as in a play, for I've precisely turned
up this morning - as I would have done yesterday, but it was impossible - to
take you.«
    »To take me?« Strether had turned again to his glass.
    »Back, at last, as I promised. I'm ready - I've really been ready this
month. I've only been waiting for you - as was perfectly right. But you're
better now; you're safe - I see that for myself; you've got all your good.
You're looking, this morning, as fit as a flea.«
    Strether, at his glass, finished dressing; consulting that witness moreover
on this last opinion. Was he looking preternaturally fit? There was something in
it perhaps for Chad's wonderful eye, but he had felt himself for hours rather in
pieces. Such a judgement, however, was after all but a contribution to his
resolve; it testified unwittingly to his wisdom. He was still firmer, apparently
- since it shone in him as a light - than he had flattered himself. His firmness
indeed was slightly compromised, as he faced about to his friend, by the way
this very personage looked - though the case would of course have been worse
hadn't the secret of personal magnificence been at every hour Chad's unfailing
possession. There he was in all the pleasant morning freshness of it - strong
and sleek and gay, easy and fragrant and fathomless, with happy health in his
colour, and pleasant silver in his thick young hair, and the right word for
everything on the lips that his clear brownness caused to show as red. He had
never struck Strether as personally such a success; it was as if now, for his
definite surrender, he had gathered himself vividly together. This, sharply and
rather strangely, was the form in which he was to be presented to Woollett. Our
friend took him in again - he was always taking him in and yet finding that
parts of him still remained out; though even thus his image showed through a
mist of other things. »I've had a cable,« Strether said, »from your mother.«
    »I dare say, my dear man. I hope she's well.«
    Strether hesitated. »No - she's not well, I'm sorry to have to tell you.«
    »Ah,« said Chad, »I must have had the instinct of it. All the more reason
then that we should start straight off.«
    Strether had now got together hat, gloves and stick, but Chad had dropped on
the sofa as if to show where he wished to make his point. He kept observing his
companion's things; he might have been judging how quickly they could be packed.
He might even have wished to hint that he'd send his own servant to assist.
»What do you mean,« Strether enquired, »by 'straight off'?«
    »Oh by one of next week's boats. Everything at this season goes out so light
that berths will be easy anywhere.«
    Strether had in his hand his telegram, which he had kept there after
attaching his watch, and he now offered it to Chad, who, however, with an odd
movement, declined to take it. »Thanks, I'd rather not. Your correspondence with
Mother's your own affair. I'm only with you both on it, whatever it is.«
Strether, at this, while their eyes met, slowly folded the missive and put it in
his pocket; after which, before he had spoken again, Chad broke fresh ground.
»Has Miss Gostrey come back?«
    But when Strether presently spoke it wasn't't in answer. »It's not, I gather,
that your mother's physically ill; her health, on the whole, this spring, seems
to have been better than usual. But she's worried, she's anxious, and it appears
to have risen within the last few days to a climax. We've tired out, between us,
her patience.«
    »Oh it isn't you!« Chad generously protested.
    »I beg your pardon - it is me.« Strether was mild and melancholy, but firm.
He saw it far away and over his companion's head. »It's very particularly me.«
    »Well then all the more reason. Marchons, marchons!« said the young man
gaily. His host, however, at this, but continued to stand agaze; and he had the
next thing repeated his question of a moment before. »Has Miss Gostrey come
back?«
    »Yes, two days ago.«
    »Then you've seen her?«
    »No - I'm to see her to-day.« But Strether wouldn't linger now on Miss
Gostrey. »Your mother sends me an ultimatum. If I can't bring you I'm to leave
you; I'm to come at any rate myself.«
    »Ah but you can bring me now,« Chad, from his sofa, reassuringly replied.
    Strether had a pause. »I don't think I understand you. Why was it that, more
than a month ago, you put it to me so urgently to let Madame de Vionnet speak
for you?«
    »Why?« Chad considered, but he had it at his fingers' ends. »Why but because
I knew how well she'd do it? It was the way to keep you quiet and, to that
extent, do you good. Besides,« he happily and comfortably explained, »I wanted
you really to know her and to get the impression of her - and you see the good
that has done you.«
    »Well,« said Strether, »the way she has spoken for you, all the same - so
far as I've given her a chance - has only made me feel how much she wishes to
keep you. If you make nothing of that I don't see why you wanted me to listen to
her.«
    »Why my dear man,« Chad exclaimed, »I make everything of it! How can you
doubt -?«
    »I doubt only because you come to me this morning with your signal to
start.«
    Chad stared, then gave a laugh. »And isn't my signal to start just what
you've been waiting for?«
    Strether debated; he took another turn. »This last month I've been awaiting,
I think, more than anything else, the message I have here.«
    »You mean you've been afraid of it?«
    »Well, I was doing my business in my own way. And I suppose your present
announcement,« Strether went on, »isn't merely the result of your sense of what
I've expected. Otherwise you wouldn't have put me in relation -« But he paused,
pulling up.
    At this Chad rose. »Ah her wanting me not to go has nothing to do with it!
It's only because she's afraid - afraid of the way that, over there, I may get
caught. But her fear's groundless.«
    He had met again his companion's sufficiently searching look. »Are you tired
of her?«
    Chad gave him in reply to this, with a movement of the head, the strangest
slow smile he had ever had from him. »Never.«
    It had immediately, on Strether's imagination, so deep and soft an effect
that our friend could only for the moment keep it before him. »Never?«
    »Never,« Chad obligingly and serenely repeated.
    It made his companion take several more steps. »Then you're not afraid.«
    »Afraid to go?«
    Strether pulled up again. »Afraid to stay.«
    The young man looked brightly amazed. »You want me now to stay?«
    »If I don't immediately sail the Pococks will immediately come out. That's
what I mean,« said Strether, »by your mother's ultimatum.«
    Chad showed a still livelier, but not an alarmed interest. »She has turned
on Sarah and Jim?«
    Strether joined him for an instant in the vision. »Oh and you may be sure
Mamie. That's whom she's turning on.«
    This also Chad saw - he laughed out. »Mamie - to corrupt me?«
    »Ah,« said Strether, »she's very charming.«
    »So you've already more than once told me. I should like to see her.«
    Something happy and easy, something above all unconscious, in the way he
said this, brought home again to his companion the facility of his attitude and
the enviability of his state. »See her then by all means. And consider too,«
Strether went on, »that you really give your sister a lift in letting her come
to you. You give her a couple of months of Paris, which she hasn't seen, if I'm
not mistaken, since just after she was married, and which I'm sure she wants but
the pretext to visit.«
    Chad listened, but with all his own knowledge of the world. »She has had it,
the pretext, these several years, yet she has never taken it.«
    »Do you mean you?« Strether after an instant enquired.
    »Certainly - the lone exile. And whom do you mean?« said Chad.
    »Oh I mean me. I'm her pretext. That is - for it comes to the same thing -
I'm your mother's.«
    »Then why,« Chad asked, »doesn't't Mother come herself?«
    His friend gave him a long look. »Should you like her to?« And as he for the
moment said nothing: »It's perfectly open to you to cable for her.«
    Chad continued to think. »Will she come if I do?«
    »Quite possibly. But try, and you'll see.«
    »Why don't you try?« Chad after a moment asked.
    »Because I don't want to.«
    Chad thought. »Don't desire her presence here?«
    Strether faced the question, and his answer was the more emphatic. »Don't
put it off, my dear boy, on me!«
    »Well - I see what you mean. I'm sure you'd behave beautifully, but you
don't want to see her. So I won't play you that trick.«
    »Ah,« Strether declared, »I shouldn't call it a trick. You've a perfect
right, and it would be perfectly straight of you.« Then he added in a different
tone: »You'd have moreover, in the person of Madame de Vionnet, a very
interesting relation prepared for her.«
    Their eyes, on this proposition, continued to meet, but Chad's, pleasant and
bold, never flinched for a moment. He got up at last, and he said something with
which Strether was struck. »She wouldn't understand her, but that makes no
difference. Madame de Vionnet would like to see her. She'd like to be charming
to her. She believes she could work it.«
    Strether thought a moment, affected by this, but finally turning away. »She
couldn't!«
    »You're quite sure?« Chad asked.
    »Well, risk it if you like!«
    Strether, who uttered this with serenity, had urged a plea for their now
getting into the air; but the young man still waited. »Have you sent your
answer?«
    »No, I've done nothing yet.«
    »Were you waiting to see me?«
    »No, not that.«
    »Only waiting« - and Chad, with this, had a smile for him - »to see Miss
Gostrey?«
    »No - not even Miss Gostrey. I wasn't't waiting to see any one. I had only
waited, till now, to make up my mind - in complete solitude; and, since I of
course absolutely owe you the information, was on the point of going out with it
quite made up. Have therefore a little more patience with me. Remember,«
Strether went on, »that that's what you originally asked me to have. I've had
it, you see, and you see what has come of it. Stay on with me.«
    Chad looked grave. »How much longer?«
    »Well, till I make you a sign. I can't myself, you know, at the best, or at
the worst, stay for ever. Let the Pococks come,« Strether repeated.
    »Because it gains you time?«
    »Yes - it gains me time.«
    Chad, as if it still puzzled him, waited a minute. »You don't want to get
back to Mother?«
    »Not just yet. I'm not ready.«
    »You feel,« Chad asked in a tone of his own, »the charm of life over here?«
    »Immensely.« Strether faced it. »You've helped me so to feel it that that
surely needn't surprise you.«
    »No, it doesn't't surprise me, and I'm delighted. But what, my dear man,« Chad
went on with conscious queerness, »does it all lead to for you?«
    The change of position and of relation, for each, was so oddly betrayed in
the question that Chad laughed out as soon as he had uttered it - which made
Strether also laugh. »Well, to my having a certitude that has been tested - that
has passed through the fire. But oh,« he couldn't help breaking out, »if within
my first month here you had been willing to move with me -!«
    »Well?« said Chad, while he broke down as for weight of thought.
    »Well, we should have been over there by now.«
    »Ah but you wouldn't have had your fun!«
    »I should have had a month of it; and I'm having now, if you want to know,«
Strether continued, »enough to last me for the rest of my days.«
    Chad looked amused and interested, yet still somewhat in the dark; partly
perhaps because Strether's estimate of fun had required of him from the first a
good deal of elucidation. »It wouldn't do if I left you -?«
    »Left me?« - Strether remained blank.
    »Only for a month or two - time to go and come. Madame de Vionnet,« Chad
smiled, »would look after you in the interval.«
    »To go back by yourself, I remaining here?« Again for an instant their eyes
had the question out; after which Strether said: »Grotesque!«
    »But I want to see Mother,« Chad presently returned. »Remember how long it
is since I've seen Mother.«
    »Long indeed; and that's exactly why I was originally so keen for moving
you. Hadn't you shown us enough how beautifully you could do without it?«
    »Oh but,« said Chad wonderfully, »I'm better now.«
    There was an easy triumph in it that made his friend laugh out again. »Oh if
you were worse I should know what to do with you. In that case I believe I'd
have you gagged and strapped down, carried on board resisting, kicking. How
much,« Strether asked, »do you want to see Mother?«
    »How much?« - Chad seemed to find it in fact difficult to say.
    »How much.«
    »Why as much as you've made me. I'd give anything to see her. And you've
left me,« Chad went on, »in little enough doubt as to how much she wants it.«
    Strether thought a minute. »Well then if those things are really your motive
catch the French steamer and sail to-morrow. Of course, when it comes to that,
you're absolutely free to do as you choose. From the moment you can't hold
yourself I can only accept your flight.«
    »I'll fly in a minute then,« said Chad, »if you'll stay here.«
    »I'll stay here till the next steamer - then I'll follow you.«
    »And do you call that,« Chad asked, »accepting my flight?«
    »Certainly - it's the only thing to call it. The only way to keep me here,
accordingly,« Strether explained, »is by staying yourself.«
    Chad took it in. »All the more that I've really dished you, eh?«
    »Dished me?« Strether echoed as inexpressively as possible.
    »Why if she sends out the Pococks it will be that she doesn't't trust you, and
if she doesn't't trust you, that bears upon - well, you know what.«
    Strether decided after a moment that he did know what, and in consonance
with this he spoke. »You see then all the more what you owe me.«
    »Well, if I do see, how can I pay?«
    »By not deserting me. By standing by me.«
    »Oh I say -!« But Chad, as they went downstairs, clapped a firm hand, in the
manner of a pledge, upon his shoulder. They descended slowly together and had,
in the court of the hotel, some further talk, of which the upshot was that they
presently separated. Chad Newsome departed, and Strether, left alone, looked
about, superficially, for Waymarsh. But Waymarsh hadn't yet, it appeared, come
down, and our friend finally went forth without sight of him.

                                      III

 
At four o'clock that afternoon he had still not seen him, but he was then, as to
make up for this, engaged in talk about him with Miss Gostrey. Strether had kept
away from home all day, given himself up to the town and to his thoughts,
wandered and mused, been at once restless and absorbed - and all with the
present climax of a rich little welcome in the Quartier Marboeuf. »Waymarsh has
been, unbeknown to me, I'm convinced« - for Miss Gostrey had enquired - »in
communication with Woollett: the consequence of which was, last night, the
loudest possible call for me.«
    »Do you mean a letter to bring you home?«
    »No - a cable, which I have at this moment in my pocket: a Come back by the
first ship.«
    Strether's hostess, it might have been made out, just escaped changing
colour. Reflexion arrived but in time and established a provisional serenity. It
was perhaps exactly this that enabled her to say with duplicity: »And you're
going -?«
    »You almost deserve it when you abandon me so.«
    She shook her head as if this were not worth taking up. »My absence has
helped you - as I've only to look at you to see. It was my calculation, and I'm
justified. You're not where you were. And the thing,« she smiled, »was for me
not to be there either. You can go of yourself.«
    »Oh but I feel to-day,« he comfortably declared, »that I shall want you
yet.«
    She took him all in again. »Well, I promise you not again to leave you, but
it will only be to follow you. You've got your momentum and can toddle alone.«
    He intelligently accepted it. »Yes - I suppose I can toddle. It's the sight
of that in fact that has upset Waymarsh. He can bear it - the way I strike him
as going - no longer. That's only the climax of his original feeling. He wants
me to quit; and he must have written to Woollett that I'm in peril of
perdition.«
    »Ah good!« she murmured. »But is it only your supposition?«
    »I make it out - it explains.«
    »Then he denies? - or you haven't asked him?«
    »I've not had time,« Strether said; »I made it out but last night, putting
various things together, and I've not been since then face to face with him.«
    She wondered. »Because you're too disgusted? You can't trust yourself?«
    He settled his glasses on his nose. »Do I look in a great rage?«
    »You look divine!«
    »There's nothing,« he went on, »to be angry about. He has done me on the
contrary a service.«
    She made it out. »By bringing things to a head?«
    »How well you understand!« he almost groaned. »Waymarsh won't in the least,
at any rate, when I have it out with him, deny or extenuate. He has acted from
the deepest conviction, with the best conscience and after wakeful nights. He'll
recognise that he's fully responsible, and will consider that he has been highly
successful; so that any discussion we may have will bring us quite together
again - bridge the dark stream that has kept us so thoroughly apart. We shall
have at last, in the consequences of his act, something we can definitely talk
about.«
    She was silent a little. »How wonderfully you take it! But you're always
wonderful.«
    He had a pause that matched her own; then he had, with an adequate spirit, a
complete admission. »It's quite true. I'm extremely wonderful just now. I dare
say in fact I'm quite fantastic, and I shouldn't be at all surprised if I were
mad.«
    »Then tell me!« she earnestly pressed. As he, however, for the time answered
nothing, only returning the look with which she watched him, she presented
herself where it was easier to meet her. »What will Mr. Waymarsh exactly have
done?«
    »Simply have written a letter. One will have been quite enough. He has told
them I want looking after.«
    »And do you?« - she was all interest.
    »Immensely. And I shall get it.«
    »By which you mean you don't budge?«
    »I don't budge.«
    »You've cabled?«
    »No - I've made Chad do it.«
    »That you decline to come?«
    »That he declines. We had it out this morning and I brought him round. He
had come in, before I was down, to tell me he was ready - ready, I mean, to
return. And he went off, after ten minutes with me, to say he wouldn't.«
    Miss Gostrey followed with intensity. »Then you've stopped him?«
    Strether settled himself afresh in his chair. »I've stopped him. That is for
the time. That« - he gave it to her more vividly - »is where I am.«
    »I see, I see. But where's Mr. Newsome? He was ready,« she asked, »to go?«
    »All ready.«
    »And sincerely - believing you'd be?«
    »Perfectly, I think; so that he was amazed to find the hand I had laid on
him to pull him over suddenly converted into an engine for keeping him still.«
    It was an account of the matter Miss Gostrey could weigh. »Does he think the
conversion sudden?«
    »Well,« said Strether, »I'm not altogether sure what he thinks. I'm not sure
of anything that concerns him, except that the more I've seen of him the less
I've found him what I originally expected. He's obscure, and that's why I'm
waiting.«
    She wondered. »But for what in particular?«
    »For the answer to his cable.«
    »And what was his cable?«
    »I don't know,« Strether replied; »it was to be, when he left me, according
to his own taste. I simply said to him: I want to stay, and the only way for me
to do so is for you to. That I wanted to stay seemed to interest him, and he
acted on that.«
    Miss Gostrey turned it over. »He wants then himself to stay.«
    »He half wants it. That is he half wants to go. My original appeal has to
that extent worked in him. Nevertheless,« Strether pursued, »he won't go. Not,
at least, so long as I'm here.«
    »But you can't,« his companion suggested, »stay here always. I wish you
could.«
    »By no means. Still, I want to see him a little further. He's not in the
least the case I supposed; he's quite another case. And it's as such that he
interests me.« It was almost as if for his own intelligence that, deliberate and
lucid, our friend thus expressed the matter. »I don't want to give him up.«
    Miss Gostrey but desired to help his lucidity. She had however to be light
and tactful. »Up, you mean - a - to his mother?«
    »Well, I'm not thinking of his mother now. I'm thinking of the plan of which
I was the mouthpiece, which, as soon as we met, I put before him as persuasively
as I knew how, and which was drawn up, as it were, in complete ignorance of all
that, in this last long period, has been happening to him. It took no account
whatever of the impression I was here on the spot immediately to begin to
receive from him - impressions of which I feel sure I'm far from having had the
last.«
    Miss Gostrey had a smile of the most genial criticism. »So your idea is -
more or less - to stay out of curiosity?«
    »Call it what you like! I don't care what it's called -«
    »So long as you do stay? Certainly not then. I call it, all the same,
immense fun,« Maria Gostrey declared; »and to see you work it out will be one of
the sensations of my life. It is clear you can toddle alone!«
    He received this tribute without elation. »I shan't be alone when the
Pococks have come.«
    Her eyebrows went up. »The Pococks are coming?«
    »That, I mean, is what will happen - and happen as quickly as possible - in
consequence of Chad's cable. They'll simply embark. Sarah will come to speak for
her mother - with an effect different from my muddle.«
    Miss Gostrey more gravely wondered. »She then will take him back?«
    »Very possibly - and we shall see. She must at any rate have the chance, and
she may be trusted to do all she can.«
    »And do you want that?«
    »Of course,« said Strether, »I want it. I want to play fair.«
    But she had lost for a moment the thread. »If it devolves on the Pococks why
do you stay?«
    »Just to see that I do play fair - and a little also, no doubt, that they
do.« Strether was luminous as he had never been. »I came out to find myself in
presence of new facts - facts that have kept striking me as less and less met by
our old reasons. The matter's perfectly simple. New reasons - reasons as new as
the facts themselves - are wanted; and of this our friends at Woollett - Chad's
and mine - were at the earliest moment definitely notified. If any are
producible Mrs. Pocock will produce them; she'll bring over the whole
collection. They'll be,« he added with a pensive smile, »a part of the fun you
speak of.«
    She was quite in the current now and floating by his side. »It's Mamie - so
far as I've had it from you - who'll be their great card.« And then as his
contemplative silence wasn't't a denial she significantly added: »I think I'm
sorry for her.«
    »I think I am!« - and Strether sprang up, moving about a little as her eyes
followed him. »But it can't be helped.«
    »You mean her coming out can't be?«
    He explained after another turn what he meant. »The only way for her not to
come is for me to go home - as I believe that on the spot I could prevent it.
But the difficulty as to that is that if I do go home -«
    »I see, I see« - she had easily understood. »Mr. Newsome will do the same,
and that's not« - she laughed out now - »to be thought of.«
    Strether had no laugh; he had only a quiet comparatively placid look that
might have shown him as proof against ridicule. »Strange, isn't it?«
    They had, in the matter that so much interested them, come so far as this
without sounding another name - to which however their present momentary silence
was full of a conscious reference. Strether's question was a sufficient
implication of the weight it had gained with him during the absence of his
hostess; and just for that reason a single gesture from her could pass for him
as a vivid answer. Yet he was answered still better when she said in a moment:
»Will Mr. Newsome introduce his sister -?«
    »To Madame de Vionnet?« Strether spoke the name at last. »I shall be greatly
surprised if he doesn't't.«
    She seemed to gaze at the possibility. »You mean you've thought of it and
you're prepared.«
    »I've thought of it and I'm prepared.«
    It was to her visitor now that she applied her consideration. »Bon! You are
magnificent!«
    »Well,« he answered after a pause and a little wearily, but still standing
there before her - »well, that's what, just once in all my dull days, I think I
shall like to have been!«
    Two days later he had news from Chad of a communication from Woollett in
response to their determinant telegram, this missive being addressed to Chad
himself and announcing the immediate departure for France of Sarah and Jim and
Mamie. Strether had meanwhile on his own side cabled; he had but delayed that
act till after his visit to Miss Gostrey, an interview by which, as so often
before, he felt his sense of things cleared up and settled. His message to Mrs.
Newsome, in answer to her own, had consisted of the words: »Judge best to take
another month, but with full appreciation of all re-enforcements.« He had added
that he was writing, but he was of course always writing; it was a practice that
continued, oddly enough, to relieve him, to make him come nearer than anything
else to the consciousness of doing something: so that he often wondered if he
hadn't really, under his recent stress, acquired some hollow trick, one of the
specious arts of make-believe. Wouldn't the pages he still so freely dispatched
by the American post have been worthy of a showy journalist, some master of the
great new science of beating the sense out of words? Wasn't he writing against
time, and mainly to show he was kind? - since it had become quite his habit not
to like to read himself over. On those lines he could still be liberal, yet it
was at best a sort of whistling in the dark. It was unmistakeable moreover that
the sense of being in the dark now pressed on him more sharply - creating
thereby the need for a louder and livelier whistle. He whistled long and hard
after sending his message; he whistled again and again in celebration of Chad's
news; there was an interval of a fortnight in which this exercise helped him. He
had no great notion of what, on the spot, Sarah Pocock would have to say, though
he had indeed confused premonitions; but it shouldn't be in her power to say -
it shouldn't be in any one's anywhere to say - that he was neglecting her
mother. He might have written before more freely, but he had never written more
copiously; and he frankly gave for a reason at Woollett that he wished to fill
the void created there by Sarah's departure.
    The increase of his darkness, however, and the quickening, as I have called
it, of his tune, resided in the fact that he was hearing almost nothing. He had
for some time been aware that he was hearing less than before, and he was now
clearly following a process by which Mrs. Newsome's letters could but logically
stop. He hadn't had a line for many days, and he needed no proof - though he
was, in time, to have plenty - that she wouldn't have put pen to paper after
receiving the hint that had determined her telegram. She wouldn't write till
Sarah should have seen him and reported on him. It was strange, though it might
well be less so than his own behaviour appeared at Woollett. It was at any rate
significant, and what was remarkable was the way his friend's nature and manner
put on for him, through this very drop of demonstration, a greater intensity. It
struck him really that he had never so lived with her as during this period of
her silence; the silence was a sacred hush, a finer clearer medium, in which her
idiosyncrasies showed. He walked about with her, sat with her, drove with her
and dined face-to-face with her - a rare treat in his life, as he could perhaps
have scarce escaped phrasing it; and if he had never seen her so soundless he
had never, on the other hand, felt her so highly, so almost austerely, herself:
pure and by the vulgar estimate cold, but deep devoted delicate sensitive noble.
Her vividness in these respects became for him, in the special conditions,
almost an obsession; and though the obsession sharpened his pulses, adding
really to the excitement of life, there were hours at which, to be less on the
stretch, he directly sought forgetfulness. He knew it for the queerest of
adventures - a circumstance capable of playing such a part only for Lambert
Strether - that in Paris itself, of all places, he should find this ghost of the
lady of Woollett more importunate than any other presence.
    When he went back to Maria Gostrey it was for the change to something else.
And yet after all the change scarcely operated, for he talked to her of Mrs.
Newsome in these days as he had never talked before. He had hitherto observed in
that particular a discretion and a law; considerations that at present broke
down quite as if relations had altered. They hadn't really altered, he said to
himself, so much as that came to; for if what had occurred was of course that
Mrs. Newsome had ceased to trust him, there was nothing on the other hand to
prove that he shouldn't win back her confidence. It was quite his present theory
that he would leave no stone unturned to do so; and in fact if he now told Maria
things about her that he had never told before this was largely because it kept
before him the idea of the honour of such a woman's esteem. His relation with
Maria as well was, strangely enough, no longer quite the same; this truth -
though not too disconcertingly - had come up between them on the renewal of
their meetings. It was all contained in what she had then almost immediately
said to him; it was represented by the remark she had needed but ten minutes to
make and that he hadn't been disposed to gainsay. He could toddle alone, and the
difference that showed was extraordinary. The turn taken by their talk had
promptly confirmed this difference; his larger confidence on the score of Mrs.
Newsome did the rest; and the time seemed already far off when he had held out
his small thirsty cup to the spout of her pail. Her pail was scarce touched now,
and other fountains had flowed for him; she fell into her place as but one of
his tributaries; and there was a strange sweetness - a melancholy mildness that
touched him - in her acceptance of the altered order.
    It marked for himself the flight of time, or at any rate what he was pleased
to think of with irony and pity as the rush of experience; it having been but
the day before yesterday that he sat at her feet and held on by her garment and
was fed by her hand. It was the proportions that were changed, and the
proportions were at all times, he philosophised, the very conditions of
perception, the terms of thought. It was as if, with her effective little
entresol and her wide acquaintance, her activities, varieties, promiscuities,
the duties and devotions that took up nine tenths of her time and of which he
got, guardedly, but the side-wind - it was as if she had shrunk to a secondary
element and had consented to the shrinkage with the perfection of tact. This
perfection had never failed her; it had originally been greater than his prime
measure for it; it had kept him quite apart, kept him out of the shop, as she
called her huge general acquaintance, made their commerce as quiet, as much a
thing of the home alone - the opposite of the shop - as if she had never another
customer. She had been wonderful to him at first, with the memory of her little
entresol, the image to which, on most mornings at that time, his eyes directly
opened; but now she mainly figured for him as but part of the bristling total -
though of course always as a person to whom he should never cease to be
indebted. It would never be given to him certainly to inspire a greater
kindness. She had decked him out for others, and he saw at this point at least
nothing she would ever ask for. She only wondered and questioned and listened,
rendering him the homage of a wistful speculation. She expressed it repeatedly;
he was already far beyond her, and she must prepare herself to lose him. There
was but one little chance for her.
    Often as she had said it he met it - for it was a touch he liked - each time
the same way. »My coming to grief?«
    »Yes - then I might patch you up.«
    »Oh for my real smash, if it takes place, there will be no patching.«
    »But you surely don't mean it will kill you.«
    »No - worse. It will make me old.«
    »Ah nothing can do that! The wonderful and special thing about you is that
you are, at this time of day, youth.« Then she always made, further, one of
those remarks that she had completely ceased to adorn with hesitations or
apologies, and that had, by the same token, in spite of their extreme
straightness, ceased to produce in Strether the least embarrassment. She made
him believe them, and they became thereby as impersonal as truth itself. »It's
just your particular charm.«
    His answer too was always the same. »Of course I'm youth - youth for the
trip to Europe. I began to be young, or at least to get the benefit of it, the
moment I met you at Chester, and that's what has been taking place ever since. I
never had the benefit at the proper time - which comes to saying that I never
had the thing itself. I'm having the benefit at this moment; I had it the other
day when I said to Chad Wait; I shall have it still again when Sarah Pocock
arrives. It's a benefit that would make a poor show for many people; and I don't
know who else but you and I, frankly, could begin to see in it what I feel. I
don't get drunk; I don't pursue the ladies; I don't spend money; I don't even
write sonnets. But nevertheless I'm making up late for what I didn't have early.
I cultivate my little benefit in my own little way. It amuses me more than
anything that has happened to me in all my life. They may say what they like -
it's my surrender, it's my tribute, to youth. One puts that in where one can -
it has to come in somewhere, if only out of the lives, the conditions, the
feelings of other persons. Chad gives me the sense of it, for all his grey
hairs, which merely make it solid in him and safe and serene; and she does the
same, for all her being older than he, for all her marriageable daughter, her
separated husband, her agitated history. Though they're young enough, my pair, I
don't say they're, in the freshest way, their own absolutely prime adolescence;
for that has nothing to do with it. The point is that they're mine. Yes, they're
my youth; since somehow at the right time nothing else ever was. What I meant
just now therefore is that it would all go - go before doing its work - if they
were to fail me.«
    On which, just here, Miss Gostrey inveterately questioned. »What do you, in
particular, call its work?«
    »Well, to see me through.«
    »But through what?« - she liked to get it all out of him.
    »Why through this experience.« That was all that would come.
    It regularly gave her none the less the last word. »Don't you remember how
in those first days of our meeting it was I who was to see you through?«
    »Remember? Tenderly, deeply« - he always rose to it. »You're just doing your
part in letting me maunder to you thus.«
    »Ah don't speak as if my part were small; since whatever else fails you -«
    »You won't, ever, ever, ever?« - he thus took her up. »Oh I beg your pardon;
you necessarily, you inevitably will. Your conditions - that's what I mean -
won't allow me anything to do for you.«
    »Let alone - I see what you mean - that I'm drearily dreadfully old. I am,
but there's a service - possible for you to render - that I know, all the same,
I shall think of.«
    »And what will it be?«
    This, in fine, however, she would never tell him. »You shall hear only if
your smash takes place. As that's really out of the question, I won't expose
myself« - a point at which, for reasons of his own, Strether ceased to press.
    He came round, for publicity - it was the easiest thing - to the idea that
his smash was out of the question, and this rendered idle the discussion of what
might follow it. He attached an added importance, as the days elapsed, to the
arrival of the Pococks; he had even a shameful sense of waiting for it
insincerely and incorrectly. He accused himself of making believe to his own
mind that Sarah's presence, her impression, her judgement would simplify and
harmonise; he accused himself of being so afraid of what they might do that he
sought refuge, to beg the whole question, in a vain fury. He had abundantly seen
at home what they were in the habit of doing, and he had not at present the
smallest ground. His clearest vision was when he made out that what he most
desired was an account more full and free of Mrs. Newsome's state of mind than
any he felt he could now expect from herself; that calculation at least went
hand in hand with the sharp consciousness of wishing to prove to himself that he
was not afraid to look his behaviour in the face. If he was by an inexorable
logic to pay for it he was literally impatient to know the cost, and he held
himself ready to pay in instalments. The first instalment would be precisely
this entertainment of Sarah; as a consequence of which, moreover, he should know
vastly better how he stood.
 

                                  Book Eighth

                                       I

Strether rambled alone during these few days, the effect of the incident of the
previous week having been to simplify in a marked fashion his mixed relations
with Waymarsh. Nothing had passed between them in reference to Mrs. Newsome's
summons but that our friend had mentioned to his own the departure of the
deputation actually at sea - giving him thus an opportunity to confess to the
occult intervention he imputed to him. Waymarsh however in the event confessed
to nothing; and though this falsified in some degree Strether's forecast the
latter amusedly saw in it the same depth of good conscience out of which the
dear man's impertinence had originally sprung. He was patient with the dear man
now and delighted to observe how unmistakeably he had put on flesh; he felt his
own holiday so successfully large and free that he was full of allowances and
charities in respect to those cabined and confined: his instinct toward a spirit
so strapped down as Waymarsh's was to walk round it on tiptoe for fear of waking
it up to a sense of losses by this time irretrievable. It was all very funny, he
knew, and but the difference, as he often said to himself, of tweedledum and
tweedledee - an emancipation so purely comparative that it was like the advance
of the door-mat on the scraper; yet the present crisis was happily to profit by
it and the pilgrim from Milrose to know himself more than ever in the right.
    Strether felt that when he heard of the approach of the Pococks the impulse
of pity quite sprang up in him beside the impulse of triumph. That was exactly
why Waymarsh had looked at him with eyes in which the heat of justice was
measured and shaded. He had looked very hard, as if affectionately sorry for the
friend - the friend of fifty-five - whose frivolity had had thus to be recorded;
becoming, however, but obscurely sententious and leaving his companion to
formulate a charge. It was in this general attitude that he had of late
altogether taken refuge; with the drop of discussion they were solemnly sadly
superficial; Strether recognised in him the mere portentous rumination to which
Miss Barrace had so good-humouredly described herself as assigning a corner of
her salon. It was quite as if he knew his surreptitious step had been divined,
and it was also as if he missed the chance to explain the purity of his motive;
but this privation of relief should be precisely his small penance: it was not
amiss for Strether that he should find himself to that degree uneasy. If he had
been challenged or accused, rebuked for meddling or otherwise pulled up, he
would probably have shown, on his own system, all the height of his consistency,
all the depth of his good faith. Explicit resentment of his course would have
made him take the floor, and the thump of his fist on the table would have
affirmed him as consciously incorruptible. Had what now really prevailed with
Strether been but a dread of that thump - a dread of wincing a little painfully
at what it might invidiously demonstrate? However this might be, at any rate,
one of the marks of the crisis was a visible, a studied lapse, in Waymarsh, of
betrayed concern. As if to make up to his comrade for the stroke by which he had
played providence he now conspicuously ignored his movements, withdrew himself
from the pretension to share them, stiffened up his sensibility to neglect, and,
clasping his large empty hands and swinging his large restless foot, clearly
looked to another quarter for justice.
    This made for independence on Strether's part, and he had in truth at no
moment of his stay been so free to go and come. The early summer brushed the
picture over and blurred everything but the near; it made a vast warm fragrant
medium in which the elements floated together on the best of terms, in which
rewards were immediate and reckonings postponed. Chad was out of town again, for
the first time since his visitor's first view of him; he had explained this
necessity - without detail, yet also without embarrassment; the circumstance was
one of those which, in the young man's life, testified to the variety of his
ties. Strether wasn't't otherwise concerned with it than for its so testifying - a
pleasant multitudinous image in which he took comfort. He took comfort, by the
same stroke, in the swing of Chad's pendulum back from that other swing, the
sharp jerk towards Woollett, so stayed by his own hand. He had the entertainment
of thinking that if he had for that moment stopped the clock it was to promote
the next minute this still livelier motion. He himself did what he hadn't done
before; he took two or three times whole days off - irrespective of others, of
two or three taken with Miss Gostrey, two or three taken with little Bilham: he
went to Chartres and cultivated, before the front of the cathedral, a general
easy beatitude; he went to Fontainebleau and imagined himself on the way to
Italy; he went to Rouen with a little handbag and inordinately spent the night.
    One afternoon he did something quite different; finding himself in the
neighbourhood of a fine old house across the river, he passed under the great
arch of its doorway and asked at the porter's lodge for Madame de Vionnet. He
had already hovered more than once about that possibility, been aware of it, in
the course of ostensible strolls, as lurking but round the corner. Only it had
perversely happened, after his morning at Notre Dame, that his consistency, as
he considered and intended it, had come back to him; whereby he had reflected
that the encounter in question had been none of his making; clinging again
intensely to the strength of his position, which was precisely that there was
nothing in it for himself. From the moment he actively pursued the charming
associate of his adventure, from that moment his position weakened, for he was
then acting in an interested way. It was only within a few days that he had
fixed himself a limit: he promised himself his consistency should end with
Sarah's arrival. It was arguing correctly to feel the title to a free hand
conferred on him by this event. If he wasn't't to be let alone he should be merely
a dupe to act with delicacy. If he wasn't't to be trusted he could at least take
his ease. If he was to be placed under control he gained leave to try what his
position might agreeably give him. An ideal rigour would perhaps postpone the
trial till after the Pococks had shown their spirit; and it was to an ideal
rigour that he had quite promised himself to conform.
    Suddenly, however, on this particular day, he felt a particular fear under
which everything collapsed. He knew abruptly that he was afraid of himself - and
yet not in relation to the effect on his sensibilities of another hour of Madame
de Vionnet. What he dreaded was the effect of a single hour of Sarah Pocock, as
to whom he was visited, in troubled nights, with fantastic waking dreams. She
loomed at him larger than life; she increased in volume as she drew nearer; she
so met his eyes that, his imagination taking, after the first step, all, and
more than all, the strides, he already felt her come down on him, already
burned, under her reprobation, with the blush of guilt, already consented, by
way of penance, to the instant forfeiture of everything. He saw himself, under
her direction, recommitted to Woollett as juvenile offenders are committed to
reformatories. It wasn't't of course that Woollett was really a place of
discipline; but he knew in advance that Sarah's salon at the hotel would be. His
danger, at any rate, in such moods of alarm, was some concession, on this
ground, that would involve a sharp rupture with the actual; therefore if he
waited to take leave of that actual he might wholly miss his chance. It was
represented with supreme vividness by Madame de Vionnet, and that is why, in a
word, he waited no longer. He had seen in a flash that he must anticipate Mrs.
Pocock. He was accordingly much disappointed on now learning from the portress
that the lady of his quest was not in Paris. She had gone for some days to the
country. There was nothing in this accident but what was natural; yet it
produced for poor Strether a drop of all confidence. It was suddenly as if he
should never see her again, and as if moreover he had brought it on himself by
not having been quite kind to her.
    It was the advantage of his having let his fancy lose itself for a little in
the gloom that, as by reaction, the prospect began really to brighten from the
moment the deputation from Woollett alighted on the platform of the station.
They had come straight from Havre, having sailed from New York to that port, and
having also, thanks to a happy voyage, made land with a promptitude that left
Chad Newsome, who had meant to meet them at the dock, belated. He had received
their telegram, with the announcement of their immediate further advance, just
as he was taking the train for Havre, so that nothing had remained for him but
to await them in Paris. He hastily picked up Strether, at the hotel, for this
purpose, and he even, with easy pleasantry, suggested the attendance of Waymarsh
as well - Waymarsh, at the moment his cab rattled up, being engaged, under
Strether's contemplative range, in a grave perambulation of the familiar court.
Waymarsh had learned from his companion, who had already had a note, delivered
by hand, from Chad, that the Pococks were due, and had ambiguously, though, as
always, impressively, glowered at him over the circumstance; carrying himself in
a manner in which Strether was now expert enough to recognise his uncertainty,
in the premises, as to the best tone. The only tone he aimed at with confidence
was a full tone - which was necessarily difficult in the absence of a full
knowledge. The Pococks were a quantity as yet unmeasured, and, as he had
practically brought them over, so this witness had to that extent exposed
himself. He wanted to feel right about it, but could only, at the best, for the
time, feel vague. »I shall look to you, you know, immensely,« our friend had
said, »to help me with them,« and he had been quite conscious of the effect of
the remark, and of others of the same sort, on his comrade's sombre sensibility.
He had insisted on the fact that Waymarsh would quite like Mrs. Pocock - one
could be certain he would: he would be with her about everything, and she would
also be with him, and Miss Barrace's nose, in short, would find itself out of
joint.
    Strether had woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in the court
for Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself quiet while, caged and
leonine, his fellow traveller paced and turned before him. Chad Newsome was
doubtless to be struck, when he arrived, with the sharpness of their opposition
at this particular hour; he was to remember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came
with him and with Strether to the street and stood there with a face
half-wistful and half-rueful. They talked of him, the two others, as they drove,
and Strether put Chad in possession of much of his own strained sense of things.
He had already, a few days before, named to him the wire he was convinced their
friend had pulled - a confidence that had made on the young man's part quite
hugely for curiosity and diversion. The action of the matter, moreover, Strether
could see, was to penetrate; he saw, that is, how Chad judged a system of
influence in which Waymarsh had served as a determinant - an impression just now
quickened again; with the whole bearing of such a fact on the youth's view of
his relatives. As it came up between them that they might now take their friend
for a feature of the control of these latter now sought to be exerted from
Woollett, Strether felt indeed how it would be stamped all over him, half an
hour later, for Sarah Pocock's eyes, that he was as much on Chad's side as
Waymarsh had probably described him. He was letting himself, at present, go;
there was no denying it; it might be desperation, it might be confidence; he
should offer himself to the arriving travellers bristling with all the lucidity
he had cultivated.
    He repeated to Chad what he had been saying in the court to Waymarsh; how
there was no doubt whatever that his sister would find the latter a kindred
spirit, no doubt of the alliance, based on an exchange of views, that the pair
would successfully strike up. They would become as thick as thieves - which
moreover was but a development of what Strether remembered to have said in one
of his first discussions with his mate, struck as he had then already been with
the elements of affinity between that personage and Mrs. Newsome herself. »I
told him, one day, when he had questioned me on your mother, that she was a
person who, when he should know her, would rouse in him, I was sure, a special
enthusiasm; and that hangs together with the conviction we now feel - this
certitude that Mrs. Pocock will take him into her boat. For it's your mother's
own boat that she's pulling.«
    »Ah,« said Chad, »Mother's worth fifty of Sally!«
    »A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same, you'll be
meeting your mother's representative - just as I shall. I feel like the outgoing
ambassador,« said Strether, »doing honour to his appointed successor.« A moment
after speaking as he had just done he felt he had inadvertently rather cheapened
Mrs. Newsome to her son; an impression audibly reflected, as at first seen, in
Chad's prompt protest. He had recently rather failed of apprehension of the
young man's attitude and temper - remaining principally conscious of how little
worry, at the worst, he wasted; and he studied him at this critical hour with
renewed interest. Chad had done exactly what he had promised him a fortnight
previous - had accepted without another question his plea for delay. He was
waiting cheerfully and handsomely, but also inscrutably and with a slight
increase perhaps of the hardness originally involved in his acquired high
polish. He was neither excited nor depressed; was easy and acute and deliberate
- unhurried unflurried unworried, only at most a little less amused than usual.
Strether felt him more than ever a justification of the extraordinary process of
which his own absurd spirit had been the arena; he knew as their cab rolled
along, knew as he hadn't even yet known, that nothing else than what Chad had
done and had been would have led to his present showing. They had made him,
these things, what he was, and the business hadn't been easy; it had taken time
and trouble, it had cost, above all, a price. The result at any rate was now to
be offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that was concerned, was glad to
be there to witness. Would she in the least make it out or take it in, the
result, or would she in the least care for it if she did? He scratched his chin
as he asked himself by what name, when challenged - as he was sure he should be
- he could call it for her. Oh those were determinations she must herself arrive
at; since she wanted so much to see, let her see then and welcome. She had come
out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in Strether's inner sense that
she practically wouldn't see.
    That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a word
that next dropped from him. »They're children; they play at life!« - and the
exclamation was significant and reassuring. It implied that he hadn't then, for
his companion's sensibility, appeared to give Mrs. Newsome away; and it
facilitated our friend's presently asking him if it were his idea that Mrs.
Pocock and Madame de Vionnet should become acquainted. Strether was still more
sharply struck, hereupon, with Chad's lucidity. »Why, isn't that exactly - to
get a sight of the company I keep - what she has come out for?«
    »Yes - I'm afraid it is,« Strether unguardedly replied.
    Chad's quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation. »Why do you say you're
afraid?«
    »Well, because I feel a certain responsibility. It's my testimony, I
imagine, that will have been at the bottom of Mrs. Pocock's curiosity. My
letters, as I've supposed you to understand from the beginning, have spoken
freely. I've certainly said my little say about Madame de Vionnet.«
    All that, for Chad, was beautifully obvious. »Yes, but you've only spoken
handsomely.«
    »Never more handsomely of any woman. But it's just that tone -!«
    »That tone,« said Chad, »that has fetched her? I dare say; but I've no
quarrel with you about it. And no more has Madame de Vionnet. Don't you know by
this time how she likes you?«
    »Oh!« - and Strether had, with his groan, a real pang of melancholy. »For
all I've done for her!«
    »Ah you've done a great deal.«
    Chad's urbanity fairly shamed him, and he was at this moment absolutely
impatient to see the face Sarah Pocock would present to a sort of thing, as he
synthetically phrased it to himself, with no adequate forecast of which, despite
his admonitions, she would certainly arrive. »I've done this!«
    »Well, this is all right. She likes,« Chad comfortably remarked, »to be
liked.«
    It gave his companion a moment's thought. »And she's sure Mrs. Pocock will
-?«
    »No, I say that for you. She likes your liking her; it's so much, as it
were,« Chad laughed, »to the good. However, she doesn't't despair of Sarah either,
and is prepared, on her own side, to go all lengths.«
    »In the way of appreciation?«
    »Yes, and of everything else. In the way of general amiability, hospitality
and welcome. She's under arms,« Chad laughed again; »she's prepared.«
    Strether took it in; then as if an echo of Miss Barrace were in the air:
»She's wonderful.«
    »You don't begin to know how wonderful!«
    There was a depth in it, to Strether's ear, of confirmed luxury - almost a
kind of unconscious insolence of proprietorship; but the effect of the glimpse
was not at this moment to foster speculation: there was something so conclusive
in so much graceful and generous assurance. It was in fact a fresh evocation;
and the evocation had before many minutes another consequence. »Well, I shall
see her oftener now. I shall see her as much as I like - by your leave; which is
what I hitherto haven't done.«
    »It has been,« said Chad, but without reproach, »only your own fault. I
tried to bring you together, and she, my dear fellow - I never saw her more
charming to any man. But you've got your extraordinary ideas.«
    »Well, I did have,« Strether murmured; while he felt both how they had
possessed him and how they had now lost their authority. He couldn't have traced
the sequence to the end, but it was all because of Mrs. Pocock. Mrs. Pocock
might be because of Mrs. Newsome, but that was still to be proved. What came
over him was the sense of having stupidly failed to profit where profit would
have been precious. It had been open to him to see so much more of her, and he
had but let the good days pass. Fierce in him almost was the resolve to lose no
more of them, and he whimsically reflected, while at Chad's side he drew nearer
to his destination, that it was after all Sarah who would have quickened his
chance. What her visit of inquisition might achieve in other directions was as
yet all obscure - only not obscure that it would do supremely much to bring two
earnest persons together. He had but to listen to Chad at this moment to feel
it; for Chad was in the act of remarking to him that they of course both counted
on him - he himself and the other earnest person - for cheer and support. It was
brave to Strether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out
was to make things ravishing to the Pococks. No, if Madame de Vionnet compassed
that, compassed the ravishment of the Pococks, Madame de Vionnet would be
prodigious. It would be a beautiful plan if it succeeded, and it all came to the
question of Sarah's being really bribeable. The precedent of his own case helped
Strether perhaps but little to consider she might prove so; it being distinct
that her character would rather make for every possible difference. This idea of
his own bribeability set him apart for himself; with the further mark in fact
that his case was absolutely proved. He liked always, where Lambert Strether was
concerned, to know the worst, and what he now seemed to know was not only that
he was bribeable, but that he had been effectually bribed. The only difficulty
was that he couldn't quite have said with what. It was as if he had sold
himself, but hadn't somehow got the cash. That, however, was what,
characteristically, would happen to him. It would naturally be his kind of
traffic. While he thought of these things he reminded Chad of the truth they
mustn't lose sight of - the truth that, with all deference to her susceptibility
to new interests, Sarah would have come out with a high firm definite purpose.
»She hasn't come out, you know, to be bamboozled. We may all be ravishing -
nothing perhaps can be more easy for us; but she hasn't come out to be ravished.
She has come out just simply to take you home.«
    »Oh well, with her I'll go,« said Chad good-humouredly. »I suppose you'll
allow that.« And then as for a minute Strether said nothing: »Or is your idea
that when I've seen her I shan't want to go?« As this question, however, again
left his friend silent he presently went on: »My own idea at any rate is that
they shall have while they're here the best sort of time.«
    It was at this that Strether spoke. »Ah there you are! I think if you really
wanted to go -!«
    »Well?« said Chad to bring it out.
    »Well, you wouldn't trouble about our good time. You wouldn't care what sort
of a time we have.«
    Chad could always take in the easiest way in the world any ingenious
suggestion. »I see. But can I help it? I'm too decent.«
    »Yes, you're too decent!« Strether heavily sighed. And he felt for the
moment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission.
    It ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made no
rejoinder. But he spoke again as they came in sight of the station. »Do you mean
to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?«
    As to this Strether was ready. »No.«
    »But haven't you told me they know about her?«
    »I think I've told you your mother knows.«
    »And won't she have told Sally?«
    »That's one of the things I want to see.«
    »And if you find she has -?«
    »Will I then, you mean, bring them together?«
    »Yes,« said Chad with his pleasant promptness: »to show her there's nothing
in it.«
    Strether hesitated. »I don't know that I care very much what she may think
there's in it.«
    »Not if it represents what Mother thinks?«
    »Ah what does your mother think?« There was in this some sound of
bewilderment.
    But they were just driving up, and help, of a sort, might after all be quite
at hand. »Isn't that, my dear man, what we're both just going to make out?«

                                       II

 
Strether quitted the station half an hour later in different company. Chad had
taken charge, for the journey to the hotel, of Sarah, Mamie, the maid and the
luggage, all spaciously installed and conveyed; and it was only after the four
had rolled away that his companion got into a cab with Jim. A strange new
feeling had come over Strether, in consequence of which his spirits had risen;
it was as if what had occurred on the alighting of his critics had been
something other than his fear, though his fear had yet not been of an instant
scene of violence. His impression had been nothing but what was inevitable - he
said that to himself; yet relief and reassurance had softly dropped upon him.
Nothing could be so odd as to be indebted for these things to the look of faces
and the sound of voices that had been with him to satiety, as he might have
said, for years; but he now knew, all the same, how uneasy he had felt; that was
brought home to him by his present sense of a respite. It had come moreover in
the flash of an eye; it had come in the smile with which Sarah, whom, at the
window of her compartment, they had effusively greeted from the platform,
rustled down to them a moment later, fresh and handsome from her cool June
progress through the charming land. It was only a sign, but enough: she was
going to be gracious and unallusive, she was going to play the larger game -
which was still more apparent, after she had emerged from Chad's arms, in her
direct greeting to the valued friend of her family.
    Strether was then as much as ever the valued friend of her family; it was
something he could at all events go on with; and the manner of his response to
it expressed even for himself how little he had enjoyed the prospect of ceasing
to figure in that likeness. He had always seen Sarah gracious - had in fact
rarely seen her shy or dry; her marked thin-lipped smile, intense without
brightness and as prompt to act as the scrape of a safety-match; the protrusion
of her rather remarkably long chin, which in her case represented invitation and
urbanity, and not, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance; the penetration of
her voice to a distance, the general encouragement and approval of her manner,
were all elements with which intercourse had made him familiar, but which he
noted today almost as if she had been a new acquaintance. This first glimpse of
her had given a brief but vivid accent to her resemblance to her mother; he
could have taken her for Mrs. Newsome while she met his eyes as the train rolled
into the station. It was an impression that quickly dropped; Mrs. Newsome was
much handsomer, and while Sarah inclined to the massive her mother had, at an
age, still the girdle of a maid; also the latter's chin was rather short, than
long, and her smile, by good fortune, much more, oh ever so much more,
mercifully vague. Strether had seen Mrs. Newsome reserved; he had literally
heard her silent, though he had never known her unpleasant. It was the case with
Mrs. Pocock that he had known her unpleasant, even though he had never known her
not affable. She had forms of affability that were in a high degree assertive;
nothing for instance had ever been more striking than that she was affable to
Jim.
    What had told in any case at the window of the train was her high clear
forehead, that forehead which her friends, for some reason, always thought of as
a brow; the long reach of her eyes - it came out at this juncture in such a
manner as to remind him, oddly enough, also of that of Waymarsh's; and the
unusual gloss of her dark hair, dressed and hatted, after her mother's refined
example, with such an avoidance of extremes that it was always spoken of at
Woollett as their own. Though this analogy dropped as soon as she was on the
platform it had lasted long enough to make him feel all the advantage, as it
were, of his relief. The woman at home, the woman to whom he was attached, was
before him just long enough to give him again the measure of the wretchedness,
in fact really of the shame, of their having to recognise the formation, between
them, of a split. He had taken this measure in solitude and meditation; but the
catastrophe, as Sarah steamed up, looked for its seconds unprecedentedly
dreadful - or proved, more exactly, altogether unthinkable; so that his finding
something free and familiar to respond to brought with it an instant renewal of
his loyalty. He had suddenly sounded the whole depth, had gasped at what he
might have lost.
    Well, he could now, for the quarter of an hour of their detention, hover
about the travellers as soothingly as if their direct message to him was that he
had lost nothing. He wasn't't going to have Sarah write to her mother that night
that he was in any way altered or strange. There had been times enough for a
month when it had seemed to him that he was strange, that he was altered, in
every way; but that was a matter for himself; he knew at least whose business it
was not; it was not at all events such a circumstance as Sarah's own unaided
lights would help her to. Even if she had come out to flash those lights more
than yet appeared she wouldn't make much headway against mere pleasantness. He
counted on being able to be merely pleasant to the end, and if only from
incapacity moreover to formulate anything different. He couldn't even formulate
to himself his being changed and queer; it had taken place, the process,
somewhere deep down; Maria Gostrey had caught glimpses of it; but how was he to
fish it up, even if he desired, for Mrs. Pocock? This was then the spirit in
which he hovered, and with the easier throb in it much indebted furthermore to
the impression of high and established adequacy as a pretty girl promptly
produced in him by Mamie. He had wondered vaguely - turning over many things in
the fidget of his thoughts - if Mamie were as pretty as Woollett published her;
as to which issue seeing her now again was to be so swept away by Woollett's
opinion that this consequence really let loose for the imagination an avalanche
of others. There were positively five minutes in which the last word seemed of
necessity to abide with a Woollett represented by a Mamie. This was the sort of
truth the place itself would feel; it would send her forth in confidence; it
would point to her with triumph; it would take its stand on her with assurance;
it would be conscious of no requirements she didn't meet, of no question she
couldn't answer.
    Well, it was right, Strether slipped smoothly enough into the cheerfulness
of saying: granted that a community might be best represented by a young lady of
twenty-two, Mamie perfectly played the part, played it as if she were used to
it, and looked and spoke and dressed the character. He wondered if she mightn't,
in the high light of Paris, a cool full studio-light, becoming yet treacherous,
show as too conscious of these matters; but the next moment he felt satisfied
that her consciousness was after all empty for its size, rather too simple than
too mixed, and that the kind way with her would be not to take many things out
of it, but to put as many as possible in. She was robust and conveniently tall;
just a trifle too bloodlessly fair perhaps, but with a pleasant public familiar
radiance that affirmed her vitality. She might have been receiving for Woollett,
wherever she found herself, and there was something in her manner, her tone, her
motion, her pretty blue eyes, her pretty perfect teeth and her very small, too
small, nose, that immediately placed her, to the fancy, between the windows of a
hot bright room in which voices were high - up at that end to which people were
brought to be presented. They were there to congratulate, these images, and
Strether's renewed vision, on this hint, completed the idea. What Mamie was like
was the happy bride, the bride after the church and just before going away. She
wasn't't the mere maiden, and yet was only as much married as that quantity came
to. She was in the brilliant acclaimed festal stage. Well, might it last her
long!
    Strether rejoiced in these things for Chad, who was all genial attention to
the needs of his friends, besides having arranged that his servant should
re-enforce him; the ladies were certainly pleasant to see, and Mamie would be at
any time and anywhere pleasant to exhibit. She would look extraordinarily like
his young wife - the wife of a honeymoon, should he go about with her; but that
was his own affair - or perhaps it was hers; it was at any rate something she
couldn't help. Strether remembered how he had seen him come up with Jeanne de
Vionnet in Gloriani's garden, and the fancy he had had about that - the fancy
obscured now, thickly overlaid with others; the recollection was during these
minutes his only note of trouble. He had often, in spite of himself, wondered if
Chad but too probably were not with Jeanne the object of a still and shaded
flame. It was on the cards that the child might be tremulously in love, and this
conviction now flickered up not a bit the less for his disliking to think of it,
for its being, in a complicated situation, a complication the more, and for
something indescribable in Mamie, something at all events straightway lent her
by his own mind, something that gave her value, gave her intensity and purpose,
as the symbol of an opposition. Little Jeanne wasn't't really at all in question -
how could she be? - yet from the moment Miss Pocock had shaken her skirts on the
platform, touched up the immense bows of her hat and settled properly over her
shoulder the strap of her morocco-and-gilt travelling-satchel, from that moment
little Jeanne was opposed.
    It was in the cab with Jim that impressions really crowded on Strether,
giving him the strangest sense of length of absence from people among whom he
had lived for years. Having them thus come out to him was as if he had returned
to find them; and the droll promptitude of Jim's mental reaction threw his own
initiation far back into the past. Whoever might or mightn't be suited by what
was going on among them, Jim, for one, would certainly be: his instant
recognition - frank and whimsical - of what the affair was for him gave Strether
a glow of pleasure. »I say, you know, this is about my shape, and if it hadn't
been for you -!« so he broke out as the charming streets met his healthy
appetite; and he wound up, after an expressive nudge, with a clap of his
companion's knee and an »Oh you, you - you are doing it!« that was charged with
rich meaning. Strether felt in it the intention of homage, but, with a curiosity
otherwise occupied, postponed taking it up. What he was asking himself for the
time was how Sarah Pocock, in the opportunity already given her, had judged her
brother - from whom he himself, as they finally, at the station, separated for
their different conveyances, had had a look into which he could read more than
one message. However Sarah was judging her brother, Chad's conclusion about his
sister, and about her husband and her husband's sister, was at the least on the
way not to fail of confidence. Strether felt the confidence, and that, as the
look between them was an exchange, what he himself gave back was relatively
vague. This comparison of notes however could wait; everything struck him as
depending on the effect produced by Chad. Neither Sarah nor Mamie had in any
way, at the station - where they had had after all ample time - broken out about
it; which, to make up for this, was what our friend had expected of Jim as soon
as they should find themselves together.
    It was queer to him that he had that noiseless brush with Chad; an ironic
intelligence with this youth on the subject of his relatives, an intelligence
carried on under their nose and, as might be said, at their expense - such a
matter marked again for him strongly the number of stages he had come; albeit
that if the number seemed great the time taken for the final one was but the
turn of a hand. He had before this had many moments of wondering if he himself
weren't perhaps changed even as Chad was changed. Only what in Chad was
conspicuous improvement - well, he had no name ready for the working, in his own
organism, of his own more timid dose. He should have to see first what this
action would amount to. And for his occult passage with the young man, after
all, the directness of it had no greater oddity than the fact that the young
man's way with the three travellers should have been so happy a manifestation.
Strether liked him for it, on the spot, as he hadn't yet liked him; it affected
him while it lasted as he might have been affected by some light pleasant
perfect work of art: to that degree that he wondered if they were really worthy
of it, took it in and did it justice; to that degree that it would have been
scarce a miracle if, there in the luggage-room, while they waited for their
things, Sarah had pulled his sleeve and drawn him aside. »You're right; we
haven't quite known what you mean, Mother and I, but now we see. Chad's
magnificent; what can one want more? If this is the kind of thing -!« On which
they might, as it were, have embraced and begun to work together.
    Ah how much, as it was, for all her bridling brightness - which was merely
general and noticed nothing - would they work together? Strether knew he was
unreasonable; he set it down to his being nervous; people couldn't notice
everything and speak of everything in a quarter of an hour. Possibly, no doubt,
also, he made too much of Chad's display. Yet, none the less, when, at the end
of five minutes, in the cab, Jim Pocock had said nothing either - hadn't said,
that is, what Strether wanted, though he had said much else - it all suddenly
bounced back to their being either stupid or wilful. It was more probably on the
whole the former; so that that would be the drawback of the bridling brightness.
Yes, they would bridle and be bright; they would make the best of what was
before them, but their observation would fail; it would be beyond them; they
simply wouldn't understand. Of what use would it be then that they had come? -
if they weren't to be intelligent up to that point: unless indeed he himself
were utterly deluded and extravagant? Was he, on this question of Chad's
improvement, fantastic and away from the truth? Did he live in a false world, a
world that had grown simply to suit him, and was his present slight irritation -
in the face now of Jim's silence in particular - but the alarm of the vain thing
menaced by the touch of the real? Was this contribution of the real possibly the
mission of the Pococks? - had they come to make the work of observation, as he
had practised observation, crack and crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain
terms in which honest minds could deal with him? Had they come in short to be
sane where Strether was destined to feel that he himself had only been silly?
    He glanced at such a contingency, but it failed to hold him long when once
he had reflected that he would have been silly, in this case, with Maria Gostrey
and little Bilham, with Madame de Vionnet and little Jeanne, with Lambert
Strether, in fine, and above all with Chad Newsome himself. Wouldn't it be found
to have made more for reality to be silly with these persons than sane with
Sarah and Jim? Jim in fact, he presently made up his mind, was individually out
of it; Jim didn't care; Jim hadn't come out either for Chad or for him; Jim in
short left the moral side to Sally and indeed simply availed himself now, for
the sense of recreation, of the fact that he left almost everything to Sally. He
was nothing compared to Sally, and not so much by reason of Sally's temper and
will as by that of her more developed type and greater acquaintance with the
world. He quite frankly and serenely confessed, as he sat there with Strether,
that he felt his type hang far in the rear of his wife's and still further, if
possible, in the rear of his sister's. Their types, he well knew, were
recognised and acclaimed; whereas the most a leading Woollett business-man could
hope to achieve socially, and for that matter industrially, was a certain
freedom to play into this general glamour.
    The impression he made on our friend was another of the things that marked
our friend's road. It was a strange impression, especially as so soon produced;
Strether had received it, he judged, all in the twenty minutes; it struck him at
least as but in a minor degree the work of the long Woollett years. Pocock was
normally and consentingly though not quite wittingly out of the question. It was
despite his being normal; it was despite his being cheerful; it was despite his
being a leading Woollett business-man; and the determination of his fate left
him thus perfectly usual - as everything else about it was clearly, to his
sense, not less so. He seemed to say that there was a whole side of life on
which the perfectly usual was for leading Woollett business-men to be out of the
question. He made no more of it than that, and Strether, so far as Jim was
concerned, desired to make no more. Only Strether's imagination, as always,
worked, and he asked himself if this side of life were not somehow connected,
for those who figured on it, with the fact of marriage. Would his relation to
it, had he married ten years before, have become now the same as Pocock's? Might
it even become the same should he marry in a few months? Should he ever know
himself as much out of the question for Mrs. Newsome as Jim knew himself - in a
dim way - for Mrs. Jim?
    To turn his eyes in that direction was to be personally reassured; he was
different from Pocock; he had affirmed himself differently and was held after
all in higher esteem. What none the less came home to him, however, at this
hour, was that the society over there, that of which Sarah and Mamie - and, in a
more eminent way, Mrs. Newsome herself - were specimens, was essentially a
society of women, and that poor Jim wasn't't in it. He himself, Lambert Strether,
was as yet in some degree - which was an odd situation for a man; but it kept
coming back to him in a whimsical way that he should perhaps find his marriage
had cost him his place. This occasion indeed, whatever that fancy represented,
was not a time of sensible exclusion for Jim, who was in a state of manifest
response to the charm of his adventure. Small and fat and constantly facetious,
straw-coloured and destitute of marks, he would have been practically
indistinguishable hadn't his constant preference for light-grey clothes, for
white hats, for very big cigars and very little stories, done what it could for
his identity. There were signs in him, though none of them plaintive, of always
paying for others; and the principal one perhaps was just this failure of type.
It was with this that he paid, rather than with fatigue or waste; and also
doubtless a little with the effort of humour - never irrelevant to the
conditions, to the relations, with which he was acquainted.
    He gurgled his joy as they rolled through the happy streets; he declared
that his trip was a regular windfall, and that he wasn't't there, he was eager to
remark, to hang back from anything: he didn't know quite what Sally had come
for, but he had come for a good time. Strether indulged him even while wondering
if what Sally wanted her brother to go back for was to become like her husband.
He trusted that a good time was to be, out and out, the programme for all of
them; and he assented liberally to Jim's proposal that, disencumbered and
irresponsible - his things were in the omnibus with those of the others - they
should take a further turn round before going to the hotel. It wasn't't for him to
tackle Chad - it was Sally's job; and as it would be like her, he felt, to open
fire on the spot, it wouldn't be amiss of them to hold off and give her time.
Strether, on his side, only asked to give her time; so he jogged with his
companion along boulevards and avenues, trying to extract from meagre material
some forecast of his catastrophe. He was quick enough to see that Jim Pocock
declined judgement, had hovered quite round the outer edge of discussion and
anxiety, leaving all analysis of their question to the ladies alone and now only
feeling his way toward some small droll cynicism. It broke out afresh, the
cynicism - it had already shown a flicker - in a but slightly deferred: »Well,
hanged if I would if I were he!«
    »You mean you wouldn't in Chad's place -?«
    »Give up this to go back and boss the advertising!« Poor Jim, with his arms
folded and his little legs out in the open fiacre, drank in the sparkling Paris
noon and carried his eyes from one side of their vista to the other. »Why I want
to come right out and live here myself. And I want to live while I am here too.
I feel with you - oh you've been grand, old man, and I've twigged - that it
ain't right to worry Chad. I don't mean to persecute him; I couldn't in
conscience. It's thanks to you at any rate that I'm here, and I'm sure I'm much
obliged. You're a lovely pair.«
    There were things in this speech that Strether let pass for the time. »Don't
you then think it important the advertising should be thoroughly taken in hand?
Chad will be, so far as capacity is concerned,« he went on, »the man to do it.«
    »Where did he get his capacity,« Jim asked, »over here?«
    »He didn't get it over here, and the wonderful thing is that over here he
hasn't inevitably lost it. He has a natural turn for business, an extraordinary
head. He comes by that,« Strether explained, »honestly enough. He's in that
respect his father's son, and also - for she's wonderful in her way too - his
mother's. He has other tastes and other tendencies; but Mrs. Newsome and your
wife are quite right about his having that. He's very remarkable.«
    »Well, I guess he is!« Jim Pocock comfortably sighed. »But if you've
believed so in his making us hum, why have you so prolonged the discussion?
Don't you know we've been quite anxious about you?«
    These questions were not informed with earnestness, but Strether saw he must
none the less make a choice and take a line. »Because, you see, I've greatly
liked it. I've liked my Paris. I dare say I've liked it too much.«
    »Oh you old wretch!« Jim gaily exclaimed.
    »But nothing's concluded,« Strether went on. »The case is more complex than
it looks from Woollett.«
    »Oh well, it looks bad enough from Woollett!« Jim declared.
    »Even after all I've written?«
    Jim bethought himself. »Isn't it what you've written that has made Mrs.
Newsome pack us off? That at least and Chad's not turning up?«
    Strether made a reflection of his own. »I see. That she should do something
was, no doubt, inevitable, and your wife has therefore of course come out to
act.«
    »Oh yes,« Jim concurred - »to act. But Sally comes out to act, you know,« he
lucidly added, »every time she leaves the house. She never comes out but she
does act. She's acting moreover now for her mother, and that fixes the scale.«
Then he wound up, opening all his senses to it, with a renewed embrace of
pleasant Paris. »We haven't all the same at Woollett got anything like this.«
    Strether continued to consider. »I'm bound to say for you all that you
strike me as having arrived in a very mild and reasonable frame of mind. You
don't show your claws. I felt just now in Mrs. Pocock no symptom of that. She
isn't fierce,« he went on. »I'm such a nervous idiot that I thought she might
be.«
    »Oh don't you know her well enough,« Pocock asked, »to have noticed that she
never gives herself away, any more than her mother ever does? They ain't fierce,
either of 'em; they let you come quite close. They wear their fur the smooth
side out - the warm side in. Do you know what they are?« Jim pursued as he
looked about him, giving the question, as Strether felt, but half his care - »do
you know what they are? They're about as intense as they can live.«
    »Yes« - and Strether's concurrence had a positive precipitation; »they're
about as intense as they can live.«
    »They don't lash about and shake the cage,« said Jim, who seemed pleaseds
with his analogy; »and it's at feeding-time that they're quietest. But they
always get there.«
    »They do indeed - they always get there!« Strether replied with a laugh that
justified his confession of nervousness. He disliked to be talking sincerely of
Mrs. Newsome with Pocock; he could have talked insincerely. But there was
something he wanted to know, a need created in him by her recent intermission,
by his having given from the first so much, as now more than ever appeared to
him, and got so little. It was as if a queer truth in his companion's metaphor
had rolled over him with a rush. She had been quiet at feeding-time; she had
fed, and Sarah had fed with her, out of the big bowl of all his recent free
communication, his vividness and pleasantness, his ingenuity and even his
eloquence, while the current of her response had steadily run thin. Jim
meanwhile however, it was true, slipped characteristically into shallowness from
the moment he ceased to speak out of the experience of a husband.
    »But of course Chad has now the advantage of being there before her. If he
doesn't't work that for all it's worth -!« He sighed with contingent pity at his
brother-in-law's possible want of resource. »He has worked it on you, pretty
well, eh?« and he asked the next moment if there were anything new at the
Varieties, which he pronounced in the American manner. They talked about the
Varieties - Strether confessing to a knowledge which produced again on Pocock's
part a play of innuendo as vague as a nursery-rhyme, yet as aggressive as an
elbow in his side; and they finished their drive under the protection of easy
themes. Strether waited to the end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim had
seen Chad as different; and he could scarce have explained the discouragement he
drew from the absence of this testimony. It was what he had taken his own stand
on, so far as he had taken a stand; and if they were all only going to see
nothing he had only wasted his time. He gave his friend till the very last
moment, till they had come into sight of the hotel; and when poor Pocock only
continued cheerful and envious and funny he fairly grew to dislike him, to feel
him extravagantly common. If they were all going to see nothing! - Strether
knew, as this came back to him, that he was also letting Pocock represent for
him what Mrs. Newsome wouldn't see. He went on disliking, in the light of Jim's
commonness, to talk to him about that lady; yet just before the cab pulled up he
knew the extent of his desire for the real word from Woollett.
    »Has Mrs. Newsome at all given way -?«
    »Given way?« - Jim echoed it with the practical derision of his sense of a
long past.
    »Under the strain, I mean, of hope deferred, of disappointment repeated and
thereby intensified.«
    »Oh is she prostrate, you mean?« - he had his categories in hand. »Why yes,
she's prostrate - just as Sally is. But they're never so lively, you know, as
when they're prostrate.«
    »Ah Sarah's prostrate?« Strether vaguely murmured.
    »It's when they're prostrate that they most sit up.«
    »And Mrs. Newsome's sitting up?«
    »All night, my boy - for you!« And Jim fetched him, with a vulgar little
guffaw, a thrust that gave relief to the picture. But he had got what he wanted.
He felt on the spot that this was the real word from Woollett. »So don't you go
home!« Jim added while he alighted and while his friend, letting him profusely
pay the cab-man, sat on in a momentary muse. Strether wondered if that were the
real word too.

                                      III

 
As the door of Mrs. Pocock's salon was pushed open for him, the next day, well
before noon, he was reached by a voice with a charming sound that made him just
falter before crossing the threshold. Madame de Vionnet was already on the
field, and this gave the drama a quicker pace than he felt it as yet - though
his suspense had increased - in the power of any act of his own to do. He had
spent the previous evening with all his old friends together; yet he would still
have described himself as quite in the dark in respect to a forecast of their
influence on his situation. It was strange now, none the less, that in the light
of this unexpected note of her presence he felt Madame de Vionnet a part of that
situation as she hadn't even yet been. She was alone, he found himself assuming,
with Sarah, and there was a bearing in that - somehow beyond his control - on
his personal fate. Yet she was only saying something quite easy and independent
- the thing she had come, as a good friend of Chad's, on purpose to say. »There
isn't anything at all -? I should be so delighted.«
    It was clear enough, when they were there before him, how she had been
received. He saw this, as Sarah got up to greet him, from something fairly
hectic in Sarah's face. He saw furthermore that they weren't, as had first come
to him, alone together; he was at no loss as to the identity of the broad high
back presented to him in the embrasure of the window furthest from the door.
Waymarsh, whom he had to-day not yet seen, whom he only knew to have left the
hotel before him, and who had taken part, the night previous, on Mrs. Pocock's
kind invitation, conveyed by Chad, in the entertainment, informal but cordial,
promptly offered by that lady - Waymarsh had anticipated him even as Madame de
Vionnet had done, and, with his hands in his pockets and his attitude unaffected
by Strether's entrance, was looking out, in marked detachment, at the Rue de
Rivoli. The latter felt it in the air - it was immense how Waymarsh could mark
things - that he had remained deeply dissociated from the overture to their
hostess that we have recorded on Madame de Vionnet's side. He had,
conspicuously, tact, besides a stiff general view; and this was why he had left
Mrs. Pocock to struggle alone. He would outstay the visitor; he would
unmistakeably wait; to what had he been doomed for months past but waiting?
Therefore she was to feel that she had him in reserve. What support she drew
from this was still to be seen, for, although Sarah was vividly bright, she had
given herself up for the moment to an ambiguous flushed formalism. She had had
to reckon more quickly than she expected; but it concerned her first of all to
signify that she was not to be taken unawares. Strether arrived precisely in
time for her showing it. »Oh you're too good; but I don't think I feel quite
helpless. I have my brother - and these American friends. And then you know I've
been to Paris. I know Paris,« said Sally Pocock in a tone that breathed a
certain chill on Strether's heart.
    »Ah but a woman, in this tiresome place where everything's always changing,
a woman of good will,« Madame de Vionnet threw off, »can always help a woman.
I'm sure you know - but we know perhaps different things.« She too, visibly,
wished to make no mistake; but it was a fear of a different order and more kept
out of sight. She smiled in welcome at Strether; she greeted him more familiarly
than Mrs. Pocock; she put out her hand to him without moving from her place; and
it came to him in the course of a minute and in the oddest way that - yes,
positively - she was giving him over to ruin. She was all kindness and ease, but
she couldn't help so giving him; she was exquisite, and her being just as she
was poured for Sarah a sudden rush of meaning into his own equivocations. How
could she know how she was hurting him? She wanted to show as simple and humble
- in the degree compatible with operative charm; but it was just this that
seemed to put him on her side. She struck him as dressed, as arranged, as
prepared infinitely to conciliate - with the very poetry of good taste in her
view of the conditions of her early call. She was ready to advise about
dressmakers and shops; she held herself wholly at the disposition of Chad's
family. Strether noticed her card on the table - her coronet and her Comtesse -
and the imagination was sharp in him of certain private adjustments in Sarah's
mind. She had never, he was sure, sat with a Comtesse before, and such was the
specimen of that class he had been keeping to play on her. She had crossed the
sea very particularly for a look at her; but he read in Madame de Vionnet's own
eyes that this curiosity hadn't been so successfully met as that she herself
wouldn't now have more than ever need of him. She looked much as she had looked
to him that morning at Notre Dame; he noted in fact the suggestive sameness of
her discreet and delicate dress. It seemed to speak - perhaps a little
prematurely or too finely - of the sense in which she would help Mrs. Pocock
with the shops. The way that lady took her in, moreover, added depth to his
impression of what Miss Gostrey, by their common wisdom, had escaped. He winced
as he saw himself but for that timely prudence ushering in Maria as a guide and
an example. There was however a touch of relief for him in his glimpse, so far
as he had got it, of Sarah's line. She knew Paris. Madame de Vionnet had, for
that matter, lightly taken this up. »Ah then you've a turn for that, an affinity
that belongs to your family. Your brother, though his long experience makes a
difference, I admit, has become one of us in a marvellous way.« And she appealed
to Strether in the manner of a woman who could always glide off with smoothness
into another subject. Wasn't he struck with the way Mr. Newsome had made the
place his own, and hadn't he been in a position to profit by his friend's
wondrous expertness?
    Strether felt the bravery, at the least, of her presenting herself so
promptly to sound that note, and yet asked himself what other note, after all,
she could strike from the moment she presented herself at all. She could meet
Mrs. Pocock only on the ground of the obvious, and what feature of Chad's
situation was more eminent than the fact that he had created for himself a new
set of circumstances? Unless she hid herself altogether she could show but as
one of these, an illustration of his domiciled and indeed of his confirmed
condition. And the consciousness of all this in her charming eyes was so clear
and fine that as she thus publicly drew him into her boat she produced in him
such a silent agitation as he was not to fail afterwards to denounce as
pusillanimous. »Ah don't be so charming to me! - for it makes us intimate, and
after all what is between us when I've been so tremendously on my guard and have
seen you but half a dozen times?« He recognised once more the perverse law that
so inveterately governed his poor personal aspects: it would be exactly like the
way things always turned out for him that he should affect Mrs. Pocock and
Waymarsh as launched in a relation in which he had really never been launched at
all. They were at this very moment - they could only be - attributing to him the
full licence of it, and all by the operation of her own tone with him; whereas
his sole licence had been to cling with intensity to the brink, not to dip so
much as a toe into the flood. But the flicker of his fear on this occasion was
not, as may be added, to repeat itself; it sprang up, for its moment, only to
die down and then go out for ever. To meet his fellow visitor's invocation and,
with Sarah's brilliant eyes on him, answer, was quite sufficiently to step into
her boat. During the rest of the time her visit lasted he felt himself proceed
to each of the proper offices, successively, for helping to keep the adventurous
skiff afloat. It rocked beneath him, but he settled himself in his place. He
took up an oar and, since he was to have the credit of pulling, pulled.
    »That will make it all the pleasanter if it so happens that we do meet,«
Madame de Vionnet had further observed in reference to Mrs. Pocock's mention of
her initiated state; and she had immediately added that, after all, her hostess
couldn't be in need with the good offices of Mr. Strether so close at hand.
»It's he, I gather, who has learnt to know his Paris, and to love it, better
than any one ever before in so short a time; so that between him and your
brother, when it comes to the point, how can you possibly want for good
guidance? The great thing, Mr. Strether will show you,« she smiled, »is just to
let one's self go.«
    »Oh I've not let myself go very far,« Strether answered, feeling quite as if
he had been called upon to hint to Mrs. Pocock how Parisians could talk. »I'm
only afraid of showing I haven't let myself go far enough. I've taken a good
deal of time, but I must quite have had the air of not budging from one spot.«
He looked at Sarah in a manner that he thought she might take as engaging, and
he made, under Madame de Vionnet's protection, as it were, his first personal
point. »What has really happened has been that, all the while, I've done what I
came out for.«
    Yet it only at first gave Madame de Vionnet a chance immediately to take him
up. »You've renewed acquaintance with your friend - you've learnt to know him
again.« She spoke with such cheerful helpfulness that they might, in a common
cause, have been calling together and pledged to mutual aid.
    Waymarsh, at this, as if he had been in question, straightway turned from
the window. »Oh yes. Countess - he has renewed acquaintance with me, and he has,
I guess, learnt something about me, though I don't know how much he has liked
it. It's for Strether himself to say whether he has felt it justifies his
course.«
    »Oh but you,« said the Countess gaily, »are not in the least what he came
out for - is he really, Strether? and I hadn't you at all in my mind. I was
thinking of Mr. Newsome, of whom we think so much and with whom, precisely, Mrs.
Pocock has given herself the opportunity to take up threads. What a pleasure for
you both!« Madame de Vionnet, with her eyes on Sarah, bravely continued.
    Mrs. Pocock met her handsomely, but Strether quickly saw she meant to accept
no version of her movements or plans from any other lips. She required no
patronage and no support, which were but other names for a false position; she
would show in her own way what she chose to show, and this she expressed with a
dry glitter that recalled to him a fine Woollett winter morning. »I've never
wanted for opportunities to see my brother. We've many things to think of at
home, and great responsibilities and occupations, and our home's not an
impossible place. We've plenty of reasons,« Sarah continued a little piercingly,
»for everything we do« - and in short she wouldn't give herself the least little
scrap away. But she added as one who was always bland and who could afford a
concession: »I've come because - well, because we do come.«
    »Ah then fortunately!« - Madame de Vionnet breathed it to the air. Five
minutes later they were on their feet for her to take leave, standing together
in an affability that had succeeded in surviving a further exchange of remarks;
only with the emphasised appearance on Waymarsh's part of a tendency to revert,
in a ruminating manner and as with an instinctive or a precautionary lightening
of his tread, to an open window and his point of vantage. The glazed and gilded
room, all red damask, ormolu, mirrors, clocks, looked south, and the shutters
were bowed upon the summer morning; but the Tuileries garden and what was beyond
it, over which the whole place hung, were things visible through gaps; so that
the far-spreading presence of Paris came up in coolness, dimness and invitation,
in the twinkle of gilt-tipped palings, the crunch of gravel, the click of hoofs,
the crack of whips, things that suggested some parade of the circus. »I think it
probable,« said Mrs. Pocock, »that I shall have the opportunity of going to my
brother's. I've no doubt it's very pleasant indeed.« She spoke as to Strether,
but her face was turned with an intensity of brightness to Madame de Vionnet,
and there was a moment during which, while she thus fronted her, our friend
expected to hear her add: »I'm much obliged to you, I'm sure, for inviting me
there.« He guessed that for five seconds these words were on the point of
coming; he heard them as clearly as if they had been spoken; but he presently
knew they had just failed - knew it by a glance, quick and fine, from Madame de
Vionnet, which told him that she too had felt them in the air, but that the
point had luckily not been made in any manner requiring notice. This left her
free to reply only to what had been said.
    »That the Boulevard Malesherbes may be common ground for us offers me the
best prospect I see for the pleasure of meeting you again.«
    »Oh I shall come to see you, since you've been so good«: and Mrs. Pocock
looked her invader well in the eyes. The flush in Sarah's cheeks had by this
time settled to a small definite crimson spot that was not without its own
bravery; she held her head a good deal up, and it came to Strether that of the
two, at this moment, she was the one who most carried out the idea of a
Countess. He quite took in, however, that she would really return her visitor's
civility: she wouldn't report again at Woollett without at least so much
producible history as that in her pocket.
    »I want extremely to be able to show you my little daughter.« Madame de
Vionnet went on; »and I should have brought her with me if I hadn't wished first
to ask your leave. I was in hopes I should perhaps find Miss Pocock, of whose
being with you I've heard from Mr. Newsome and whose acquaintance I should so
much like my child to make. If I have the pleasure of seeing her and you do
permit it I shall venture to ask her to be kind to Jeanne. Mr. Strether will
tell you« - she beautifully kept it up - »that my poor girl is gentle and good
and rather lonely. They've made friends, he and she, ever so happily, and he
doesn't't, I believe, think ill of her. As for Jeanne herself he has had the same
success with her that I know he has had here wherever he has turned.« She seemed
to ask him for permission to say these things, or seemed rather to take it,
softly and happily, with the ease of intimacy, for granted, and he had quite the
consciousness now that not to meet her at any point more than halfway would be
odiously, basely to abandon her. Yes, he was with her, and, opposed even in this
covert, this semi-safe fashion to those who were not, he felt, strangely and
confusedly, but excitedly, inspiringly, how much and how far. It was as if he
had positively waited in suspense for something from her that would let him in
deeper, so that he might show her how he could take it. And what did in fact
come as she drew out a little her farewell served sufficiently the purpose. »As
his success is a matter that I'm sure he'll never mention for himself, I feel,
you see, the less scruple; which it's very good of me to say, you know, by the
way,« she added as she addressed herself to him; »considering how little direct
advantage I've gained from your triumphs with me. When does one ever see you? I
wait at home and I languish. You'll have rendered me the service, Mrs. Pocock,
at least,« she wound up, »of giving me one of my much-too-rare glimpses of this
gentleman.«
    »I certainly should be sorry to deprive you of anything that seems so much,
as you describe it, your natural due. Mr. Strether and I are very old friends,«
Sarah allowed, »but the privilege of his society isn't a thing I shall quarrel
about with any one.«
    »And yet, dear Sarah,« he freely broke in, »I feel, when I hear you say
that, that you don't quite do justice to the important truth of the extent to
which - as you're also mine - I'm your natural due. I should like much better,«
he laughed, »to see you fight for me.«
    She met him, Mrs. Pocock, on this, with an arrest of speech - with a certain
breathlessness, as he immediately fancied, on the score of a freedom for which
she wasn't't quite prepared. It had flared up - for all the harm he had intended
by it - because, confoundedly, he didn't want any more to be afraid about her
than he wanted to be afraid about Madame de Vionnet. He had never, naturally,
called her anything but Sarah at home, and though he had perhaps never quite so
markedly invoked her as his dear, that was somehow partly because no occasion
had hitherto laid so effective a trap for it. But something admonished him now
that it was too late - unless indeed it were possibly too early; and that he at
any rate shouldn't have pleased Mrs. Pocock the more by it. »Well, Mr. Strether
-!« she murmured with vagueness, yet with sharpness, while her crimson spot
burned a trifle brighter and he was aware that this must be for the present the
limit of her response. Madame de Vionnet had already, however, come to his aid,
and Waymarsh, as if for further participation, moved again back to them. It was
true that the aid rendered by Madame de Vionnet was questionable; it was a sign
that, for all one might confess to with her, and for all she might complain of
not enjoying, she could still insidiously show how much of the material of
conversation had accumulated between them.
    »The real truth is, you know, that you sacrifice one without mercy to dear
old Maria. She leaves no room in your life for anybody else. Do you know,« she
enquired of Mrs. Pocock, »about dear old Maria? The worst is that Miss Gostrey
is really a wonderful woman.«
    »Oh yes indeed,« Strether answered for her, »Mrs. Pocock knows about Miss
Gostrey. Your mother, Sarah, must have told you about her; your mother knows
everything,« he sturdily pursued. »And I cordially admit,« he added with his
conscious gaiety of courage, »that she's as wonderful a woman as you like.«
    »Ah it isn't I who 'like,' dear Mr. Strether, anything to do with the
matter!« Sarah Pocock promptly protested; »and I'm by no means sure I have -
from my mother or from any one else - a notion of whom you're talking about.«
    »Well, he won't let you see her, you know,« Madame de Vionnet
sympathetically threw in. »He never lets me - old friends as we are: I mean as I
am with Maria. He reserves her for his best hours; keeps her consummately to
himself; only gives us others the crumbs of the feast.«
    »Well, Countess, I've had some of the crumbs,« Waymarsh observed with weight
and covering her with his large look; which led her to break in before he could
go on.
    »Comment donc, he shares her with you?« she exclaimed in droll stupefaction.
»Take care you don't have, before you go much further, rather more of all ces
dames than you may know what to do with!«
    But he only continued in his massive way. »I can post you about the lady,
Mrs. Pocock, so far as you may care to hear. I've seen her quite a number of
times, and I was practically present when they made acquaintance. I've kept my
eye on her right along, but I don't know as there's any real harm in her.«
    »Harm?« Madame de Vionnet quickly echoed. »Why she's the dearest and
cleverest of all the clever and dear.«
    »Well, you run her pretty close, Countess,« Waymarsh returned with spirit;
»though there's no doubt she's pretty well up in things. She knows her way round
Europe. Above all there's no doubt she does love Strether.«
    »Ah but we all do that - we all love Strether: it isn't a merit!« their
fellow visitor laughed, keeping to her idea with a good conscience at which our
friend was aware that he marvelled, though he trusted also for it, as he met her
exquisitely expressive eyes, to some later light.
    The prime effect of her tone, however - and it was a truth which his own
eyes gave back to her in sad ironic play - could only to be make him feel that,
to say such things to a man in public, a woman must practically think of him as
ninety years old. He had turned awkwardly, responsively red, he knew, at her
mention of Maria Gostrey; Sarah Pocock's presence - the particular quality of it
- had made this inevitable; and then he had grown still redder in proportion as
he hated to have shown anything at all. He felt indeed that he was showing much,
as, uncomfortably and almost in pain, he offered up his redness to Waymarsh,
who, strangely enough, seemed now to be looking at him with a certain
explanatory yearning. Something deep - something built on their old old relation
- passed, in this complexity, between them; he got the side-wind of a loyalty
that stood behind all actual queer questions. Waymarsh's dry bare humour - as it
gave itself to be taken - gloomed out to demand justice. »Well, if you talk of
Miss Barrace I've my chance too,« it appeared stiffly to nod, and it granted
that it was giving him away, but struggled to add that it did so only to save
him. The sombre glow stared it at him till it fairly sounded out - »to save you,
poor old man, to save you; to save you in spite of yourself.« Yet it was somehow
just this communication that showed him to himself as more than ever lost. Still
another result of it was to put before him as never yet that between his comrade
and the interest represented by Sarah there was already a basis. Beyond all
question now, yes: Waymarsh had been in occult relation with Mrs. Newsome - out,
out it all came in the very effort of his face. »Yes, you're feeling my hand« -
he as good as proclaimed it; »but only because this at least I shall have got
out of the damned Old World: that I shall have picked up the pieces into which
it has caused you to crumble.« It was as if in short, after an instant, Strether
had not only had it from him, but had recognised that so far as this went the
instant had cleared the air. Our friend understood and approved; he had the
sense that they wouldn't otherwise speak of it. This would be all, and it would
mark in himself a kind of intelligent generosity. It was with grim Sarah then -
Sarah grim for all her grace - that Waymarsh had begun at ten o'clock in the
morning to save him. Well - if he could, poor dear man, with his big bleak
kindness! The upshot of which crowded perception was that Strether, on his own
side, still showed no more than he absolutely had to. He showed the least
possible by saying to Mrs. Pocock after an interval much briefer than our glance
at the picture reflected in him: »Oh it's as true as they please! - There's no
Miss Gostrey for any one but me - not the least little peep. I keep her to
myself.«
    »Well, it's very good of you to notify me,« Sarah replied without looking at
him and thrown for a moment by this discrimination, as the direction of her eyes
showed, upon a dimly desperate little community with Madame de Vionnet. »But I
hope I shan't miss her too much.«
    Madame de Vionnet instantly rallied. »And you know - though it might occur
to one - it isn't in the least that he's ashamed of her. She's really - in a way
- extremely good-looking.«
    »Ah but extremely!« Strether laughed while he wondered at the odd part he
found thus imposed on him.
    It continued to be so by every touch from Madame de Vionnet. »Well, as I
say, you know, I wish you would keep me a little more to yourself. Couldn't you
name some day for me, some hour - and better soon than late? I'll be at home
whenever it best suits you. There - I can't say fairer.«
    Strether thought a moment while Waymarsh and Mrs. Pocock affected him as
standing attentive. »I did lately call on you. Last week - while Chad was out of
town.«
    »Yes - and I was away, as it happened, too. You choose your moments well.
But don't wait for my next absence, for I shan't make another,« Madame de
Vionnet declared, »while Mrs. Pocock's here.«
    »That vow needn't keep you long, fortunately,« Sarah observed with
reasserted suavity. »I shall be at present but a short time in Paris. I have my
plans for other countries. I meet a number of charming friends« - and her voice
seemed to caress that description of these persons.
    »Ah then,« her visitor cheerfully replied, »all the more reason! To-morrow,
for instance, or next day?« she continued to Strether. »Tuesday would do for me
beautifully.«
    »Tuesday then with pleasure.«
    »And at half-past five? - or at six?«
    It was ridiculous, but Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh struck him as fairly waiting
for his answer. It was indeed as if they were arranged, gathered for a
performance, the performance of »Europe« by his confederate and himself. Well,
the performance could only go on. »Say five forty-five.«
    »Five forty-five - good.« And now at last Madame de Vionnet must leave them,
though it carried, for herself, the performance a little further. »I did hope so
much also to see Miss Pocock. Mayn't I still?«
    Sarah hesitated, but she rose equal. »She'll return your visit with me.
She's at present out with Mr. Pocock and my brother.«
    »I see - of course Mr. Newsome has everything to show them. He has told me
so much about her. My great desire's to give my daughter the opportunity of
making her acquaintance. I'm always on the lookout for such chances for her. If
I didn't bring her to-day it was only to make sure first that you'd let me.«
After which the charming woman risked a more intense appeal. »It wouldn't suit
you also to mention some near time, so that we shall be sure not to lose you?«
Strether on his side waited, for Sarah likewise had, after all, to perform; and
it occupied him to have been thus reminded that she had stayed at home - and on
her first morning of Paris - while Chad led the others forth. Oh she was up to
her eyes; if she had stayed at home she had stayed by an understanding, arrived
at the evening before, that Waymarsh would come and find her alone. This was
beginning well - for a first day in Paris; and the thing might be amusing yet.
But Madame de Vionnet's earnestness was meanwhile beautiful. »You may think me
indiscreet, but I've such a desire my Jeanne shall know an American girl of the
really delightful kind. You see I throw myself for it on your charity.«
    The manner of this speech gave Strether such a sense of depths below it and
behind it as he hadn't yet had - ministered in a way that almost frightened him
to his dim divinations of reasons; but if Sarah still, in spite of it, faltered,
this was why he had time for a sign of sympathy with her petitioner. »Let me say
then, dear lady, to back your plea, that Miss Mamie is of the most delightful
kind of all - is charming among the charming.«
    Even Waymarsh, though with more to produce on the subject, could get into
motion in time. »Yes, Countess, the American girl's a thing that your country
must at least allow ours the privilege to say we can show you. But her full
beauty is only for those who know how to make use of her.«
    »Ah then,« smiled Madame de Vionnet, »that's exactly what I want to do. I'm
sure she has much to teach us.«
    It was wonderful, but what was scarce less so was that Strether found
himself, by the quick effect of it, moved another way. »Oh that may be! But
don't speak of your own exquisite daughter, you know, as if she weren't pure
perfection. I at least won't take that from you. Mademoiselle de Vionnet,« he
explained, in considerable form, to Mrs. Pocock, »is pure perfection.
Mademoiselle de Vionnet is exquisite.«
    It had been perhaps a little portentous, but »Ah?« Sarah simply glittered.
    Waymarsh himself, for that matter, apparently recognised, in respect to the
facts, the need of a larger justice, and he had with it an inclination to Sarah.
»Miss Jane's strikingly handsome - in the regular French style.«
    It somehow made both Strether and Madame de Vionnet laugh out, though at the
very moment he caught in Sarah's eyes, as glancing at the speaker, a vague but
unmistakeable »You too?« It made Waymarsh in fact look consciously over her
head. Madame de Vionnet meanwhile, however, made her point in her own way. »I
wish indeed I could offer you my poor child as a dazzling attraction: it would
make one's position simple enough! She's as good as she can be, but of course
she's different, and the question is now - in the light of the way things seem
to go - if she isn't after all too different: too different I mean from the
splendid type every one is so agreed that your wonderful country produces. On
the other hand of course Mr. Newsome, who knows it so well, has, as a good
friend, dear kind man that he is, done everything he can - to keep us from fatal
benightedness - for my small shy creature. Well,« she wound up after Mrs. Pocock
had signified, in a murmur still a little stiff, that she would speak to her own
young charge on the question - »well, we shall sit, my child and I, and wait and
wait and wait for you.« But her last fine turn was for Strether. »Do speak of us
in such a way -!«
    »As that something can't but come of it? Oh something shall come of it! I
take a great interest!« he further declared; and in proof of it, the next
moment, he had gone with her down to her carriage.
 

                                   Book Ninth

                                       I

»The difficulty is,« Strether said to Madame de Vionnet a couple of days later,
»that I can't surprise them into the smallest sign of his not being the same old
Chad they've been for the last three years glowering at across the sea. They
simply won't give any, and as a policy, you know - what you call a parti pris, a
deep game - that's positively remarkable.«
    It was so remarkable that our friend had pulled up before his hostess with
the vision of it; he had risen from his chair at the end of ten minutes and
begun, as a help not to worry, to move about before her quite as he moved before
Maria. He had kept his appointment with her to the minute and had been intensely
impatient, though divided in truth between the sense of having everything to
tell her and the sense of having nothing at all. The short interval had, in the
face of their complication, multiplied his impressions - it being meanwhile to
be noted, moreover, that he already frankly, already almost publicly, viewed the
complication as common to them. If Madame de Vionnet, under Sarah's eyes, had
pulled him into her boat, there was by this time no doubt whatever that he had
remained in it and that what he had really most been conscious of for many hours
together was the movement of the vessel itself. They were in it together this
moment as they hadn't yet been, and he hadn't at present uttered the least of
the words of alarm or remonstrance that had died on his lips at the hotel. He
had other things to say to her than that she had put him in a position; so
quickly had his position grown to affect him as quite excitingly, altogether
richly, inevitable. That the outlook, however - given the point of exposure -
hadn't cleared up half so much as he had reckoned was the first warning she
received from him on his arrival. She had replied with indulgence that he was in
too great a hurry, and had remarked soothingly that if she knew how to be
patient surely he might be. He felt her presence, on the spot, he felt her tone
and everything about her, as an aid to that effort; and it was perhaps one of
the proofs of her success with him that he seemed so much to take his ease while
they talked. By the time he had explained to her why his impressions, though
multiplied, still baffled him, it was as if he had been familiarly talking for
hours. They baffled him because Sarah - well, Sarah was deep, deeper than she
had ever yet had a chance to show herself. He didn't say that this was partly
the effect of her opening so straight down, as it were, into her mother, and
that, given Mrs. Newsome's profundity, the shaft thus sunk might well have a
reach; but he wasn't't without a resigned apprehension that, at such a rate of
confidence between the two women, he was likely soon to be moved to show how
already, at moments, it had been for him as if he were dealing directly with
Mrs. Newsome. Sarah, to a certainty, would have begun herself to feel it in him
- and this naturally put it in her power to torment him the more. From the
moment she knew he could be tormented -!
    »But why can you be?« - his companion was surprised at his use of the word.
    »Because I'm made so - I think of everything.«
    »Ah one must never do that,« she smiled. »One must think of as few things as
possible.«
    »Then,« he answered, »one must pick them out right. But all I mean is - for
I express myself with violence - that she's in a position to watch me. There's
an element of suspense for me, and she can see me wriggle. But my wriggling
doesn't't matter,« he pursued. »I can bear it. Besides, I shall wriggle out.«
    The picture at any rate stirred in her an appreciation that he felt to be
sincere. »I don't see how a man can be kinder to a woman than you are to me.«
    Well, kind was what he wanted to be; yet even while her charming eyes rested
on him with the truth of this he none the less had his humour of honesty. »When
I say suspense I mean, you know,« he laughed, »suspense about my own case too!«
    »Oh yes - about your own case too!« It diminished his magnanimity, but she
only looked at him the more tenderly.
    »Not, however,« he went on, »that I want to talk to you about that. It's my
own little affair, and I mentioned it simply as part of Mrs. Pocock's
advantage.« No, no; though there was a queer present temptation in it, and his
suspense was so real that to fidget was a relief, he wouldn't talk to her about
Mrs. Newsome, wouldn't work off on her the anxiety produced in him by Sarah's
calculated omissions of reference. The effect she produced of representing her
mother had been produced - and that was just the immense, the uncanny part of it
- without her having so much as mentioned that lady. She had brought no message,
had alluded to no question, had only answered his enquiries with hopeless
limited propriety. She had invented a way of meeting them - as if he had been a
polite perfunctory poor relation, of distant degree - that made them almost
ridiculous in him. He couldn't moreover on his own side ask much without
appearing to publish how he had lately lacked news; a circumstance of which it
was Sarah's profound policy not to betray a suspicion. These things, all the
same, he wouldn't breathe to Madame de Vionnet - much as they might make him
walk up and down. And what he didn't say - as well as what she didn't, for she
had also her high decencies - enhanced the effect of his being there with her at
the end of ten minutes more intimately on the basis of saving her than he had
yet had occasion to be. It ended in fact by being quite beautiful between them,
the number of things they had a manifest consciousness of not saying. He would
have liked to turn her, critically, to the subject of Mrs. Pocock, but he so
stuck to the line he felt to be the point of honour and of delicacy that he
scarce even asked her what her personal impression had been. He knew it, for
that matter, without putting her to trouble: that she wondered how, with such
elements, Sarah could still have no charm, was one of the principal things she
held her tongue about. Strether would have been interested in her estimate of
the elements - indubitably there, some of them, and to be appraised according to
taste - but he denied himself even the luxury of this diversion. The way Madame
de Vionnet affected him to-day was in itself a kind of demonstration of the
happy employment of gifts. How could a woman think Sarah had charm who struck
one as having arrived at it herself by such different roads? On the other hand
of course Sarah wasn't't obliged to have it. He felt as if somehow Madame de
Vionnet was. The great question meanwhile was what Chad thought of his sister;
which was naturally ushered in by that of Sarah's apprehension of Chad. That
they could talk of, and with a freedom purchased by their discretion in other
senses. The difficulty however was that they were reduced as yet to conjecture.
He had given them in the day or two as little of a lead as Sarah, and Madame de
Vionnet mentioned that she hadn't seen him since his sister's arrival.
    »And does that strike you as such an age?«
    She met it in all honesty. »Oh I won't pretend I don't miss him. Sometimes I
see him every day. Our friendship's like that. Make what you will of it!« she
whimsically smiled; a little flicker of the kind, occasional in her, that had
more than once moved him to wonder what he might best make of her. »But he's
perfectly right,« she hastened to add, »and I wouldn't have him fail in any way
at present for the world. I'd sooner not see him for three months. I begged him
to be beautiful to them, and he fully feels it for himself.«
    Strether turned away under his quick perception; she was so odd a mixture of
lucidity and mystery. She fell in at moments with the theory about her he most
cherished, and she seemed at others to blow it into air. She spoke now as if her
art were all an innocence, and then again as if her innocence were all an art.
»Oh he's giving himself up, and he'll do so to the end. How can he but want, now
that it's within reach, his full impression? - which is much more important, you
know, than either yours or mine. But he's just soaking,« Strether said as he
came back; »he's going in conscientiously for a saturation. I'm bound to say he
is very good.«
    »Ah,« she quietly replied, »to whom do you say it?« And then more quietly
still: »He's capable of anything.«
    Strether more than reaffirmed - »Oh he's excellent. I more and more like,«
he insisted, »to see him with them;« though the oddity of this tone between them
grew sharper for him even while they spoke. It placed the young man so before
them as the result of her interest and the product of her genius, acknowledged
so her part in the phenomenon and made the phenomenon so rare, that more than
ever yet he might have been on the very point of asking her for some more
detailed account of the whole business than he had yet received from her. The
occasion almost forced upon him some question as to how she had managed and as
to the appearance such miracles presented from her own singularly close place of
survey. The moment in fact however passed, giving way to more present history,
and he continued simply to mark his appreciation of the happy truth. »It's a
tremendous comfort to feel how one can trust him.« And then again while for a
little she said nothing - as if after all to her trust there might be a special
limit: »I mean for making a good show to them.«
    »Yes,« she thoughtfully returned - »but if they shut their eyes to it!«
    Strether for an instant had his own thought. »Well perhaps that won't
matter!«
    »You mean because he probably - do what they will - won't like them?«
    »Oh 'do what they will' -! They won't do much; especially if Sarah hasn't
more - well, more than one has yet made out - to give.«
    Madame de Vionnet weighed it. »Ah she has all her grace!« It was a statement
over which, for a little, they could look at each other sufficiently straight,
and though it produced no protest from Strether the effect was somehow as if he
had treated it as a joke. »She may be persuasive and caressing with him; she may
be eloquent beyond words. She may get hold of him,« she wound up - »well, as
neither you nor I have.«
    »Yes, she may« - and now Strether smiled. »But he has spent all his time
each day with Jim. He's still showing Jim round.«
    She visibly wondered. »Then how about Jim?«
    Strether took a turn before he answered. »Hasn't he given you Jim? Hasn't he
before this 'done' him for you?« He was a little at a loss. »Doesn't he tell you
things?«
    She hesitated. »No« - and their eyes once more gave and took. »Not as you
do. You somehow make me see them - or at least feel them. And I haven't asked
too much,« she added; »I've of late wanted so not to worry him.«
    »Ah for that, so have I,« he said with encouraging assent; so that - as if
she had answered everything - they were briefly sociable on it. It threw him
back on his other thought, with which he took another turn; stopping again,
however, presently with something of a glow. »You see Jim's really immense. I
think it will be Jim who'll do it.«
    She wondered. »Get hold of him?«
    »No - just the other thing. Counteract Sarah's spell.« And he showed now,
our friend, how far he had worked it out. »Jim's intensely cynical.«
    »Oh dear Jim!« Madame de Vionnet vaguely smiled.
    »Yes, literally - dear Jim! He's awful. What he wants, heaven forgive him,
is to help us.«
    »You mean« - she was eager - »help me?«
    »Well, Chad and me in the first place. But he throws you in too, though
without as yet seeing you much. Only, so far as he does see you - if you don't
mind - he sees you as awful.«
    »Awful?« - she wanted it all.
    »A regular bad one - though of course of a tremendously superior kind.
Dreadful, delightful, irresistible.«
    »Ah dear Jim! I should like to know him. I must.«
    »Yes, naturally. But will it do? You may, you know,« Strether suggested,
»disappoint him.«
    She was droll and humble about it. »I can but try. But my wickedness then,«
she went on, »is my recommendation for him?«
    »Your wickedness and the charms with which, in such a degree as yours, he
associates it. He understands, you see, that Chad and I have above all wanted to
have a good time, and his view is simple and sharp. Nothing will persuade him -
in the light, that is, of my behaviour - that I really didn't, quite as much as
Chad, come over to have one before it was too late. He wouldn't have expected it
of me; but men of my age, at Woollett - and especially the least likely ones -
have been noted as liable to strange outbreaks, belated uncanny clutches at the
unusual, the ideal. It's an effect that a lifetime of Woollett has quite been
observed as having; and I thus give it to you, in Jim's view, for what it's
worth. Now his wife and his mother-in-law,« Strether continued to explain,
»have, as in honour bound, no patience with such phenomena, late or early -
which puts Jim, as against his relatives, on the other side. Besides,« he added,
»I don't think he really wants Chad back. If Chad doesn't't come -«
    »He'll have« - Madame de Vionnet quite apprehended - »more of the free
hand?«
    »Well, Chad's the bigger man.«
    »So he'll work now, en dessous to keep him quiet?«
    »No - he won't 'work' at all, and he won't do anything en dessous. He's very
decent and won't be a traitor in the camp. But he'll be amused with his own
little view of our duplicity, he'll sniff up what he supposes to be Paris from
morning till night, and he'll be, as to the rest, for Chad - well, just what he
is.«
    She thought it over. »A warning?«
    He met it almost with glee. »You are as wonderful as everybody says!« And
then to explain all he meant: »I drove him about for his first hour, and do you
know what - all beautifully unconscious - he most put before me? Why that
something like that is at bottom, as an improvement to his present state, as in
fact the real redemption of it, what they think it may not be too late to make
of our friend.« With which, as, taking it in, she seemed, in her recurrent
alarm, bravely to gaze at the possibility, he completed his statement. »But it
is too late. Thanks to you!«
    It drew from her again one of her indefinite reflections. »Oh me - after
all!«
    He stood before her so exhilarated by his demonstration that he could fairly
be jocular. »Everything's comparative. You're better than that.«
    »You« - she could but answer him - »are better than anything.« But she had
another thought. »Will Mrs. Pocock come to me?«
    »Oh yes - she'll do that. As soon, that is, as my friend Waymarsh - her
friend now - leaves her leisure.«
    She showed an interest. »Is he so much her friend as that?«
    »Why, didn't you see it all at the hotel?«
    »Oh« - she was amused - »all is a good deal to say. I don't know - I forget.
I lost myself in her.«
    »You were splendid,« Strether returned - »but all isn't a good deal to say:
it's only a little. Yet it's charming so far as it goes. She wants a man to
herself.«
    »And hasn't she got you?«
    »Do you think she looked at me - or even at you - as if she had?« Strether
easily dismissed that irony. »Every one, you see, must strike her as having
somebody. You've got Chad - and Chad has got you.«
    »I see« - she made of it what she could. »And you've got Maria.«
    Well, he on his side accepted that. »I've got Maria. And Maria has got me.
So it goes.«
    »But Mr. Jim - whom has he got?«
    »Oh he has got - or it's as if he had - the whole place.«
    »But for Mr. Waymarsh« - she recalled - »isn't Miss Barrace before any one
else?«
    He shook his head. »Miss Barrace is a raffinée, and her amusement won't lose
by Mrs. Pocock. It will gain rather - especially if Sarah triumphs and she comes
in for a view of it.«
    »How well you know us!« Madame de Vionnet, at this, frankly sighed.
    »No - it seems to me it's we that I know. I know Sarah - it's perhaps on
that ground only that my feet are firm. Waymarsh will take her round while Chad
takes Jim - and I shall be, I assure you, delighted for both of them. Sarah will
have had what she requires - she will have paid her tribute to the ideal; and he
will have done about the same. In Paris it's in the air - so what can one do
less? If there's a point that, beyond any other, Sarah wants to make, it's that
she didn't come out to be narrow. We shall feel at least that.«
    »Oh,« she sighed, »the quantity we seem likely to feel! But what becomes, in
these conditions, of the girl?«
    »Of Mamie - if we're all provided? Ah for that,« said Strether, »you can
trust Chad.«
    »To be, you mean, all right to her?«
    »To pay her every attention as soon as he has polished off Jim. He wants
what Jim can give him - and what Jim really won't - though he has had it all,
and more than all, from me. He wants in short his own personal impression, and
he'll get it - strong. But as soon as he has got it Mamie won't suffer.«
    »Oh Mamie mustn't suffer!« Madame de Vionnet soothingly emphasised.
    But Strether could reassure her. »Don't fear. As soon as he has done with
Jim, Jim will fall to me. And then you'll see.«
    It was as if in a moment she saw already; yet she still waited. Then »Is she
really quite charming?« she asked.
    He had got up with his last words and gathered in his hat and gloves. »I
don't know; I'm watching. I'm studying the case, as it were - and I dare say I
shall be able to tell you.«
    She wondered. »Is it a case?«
    »Yes - I think so. At any rate I shall see.«
    »But haven't you known her before?«
    »Yes,« he smiled - »but somehow at home she wasn't't a case. She has become
one since.« It was as if he made it out for himself. »She has become one here.«
    »So very very soon?«
    He measured it, laughing. »Not sooner than I did.«
    »And you became one -?«
    »Very very soon. The day I arrived.«
    Her intelligent eyes showed her thought of it. »Ah but the day you arrived
you met Maria. Whom has Miss Pocock met?«
    He paused again, but he brought it out. »Hasn't she met Chad?«
    »Certainly - but not for the first time. He's an old friend.« At which
Strether had a slow amused significant headshake that made her go on: »You mean
that for her at least he's a new person - that she sees him as different?«
    »She sees him as different.«
    »And how does she see him?«
    Strether gave it up. »How can one tell how a deep little girl sees a deep
young man?«
    »Is every one so deep? Is she too?«
    »So it strikes me - deeper than I thought. But wait a little - between us
we'll make it out. You'll judge for that matter yourself.«
    Madame de Vionnet looked for the moment fairly bent on the chance. »Then she
will come with her? - I mean Mamie with Mrs. Pocock?«
    »Certainly. Her curiosity, if nothing else, will in any case work that. But
leave it all to Chad.«
    »Ah,« wailed Madame de Vionnet, turning away a little wearily, »the things I
leave to Chad!«
    The tone of it made him look at her with a kindness that showed his vision
of her suspense. But he fell back on his confidence. »Oh well - trust him. Trust
him all the way.« He had indeed no sooner so spoken than the queer displacement
of his point of view appeared again to come up for him in the very sound, which
drew from him a short laugh, immediately checked. He became still more advisory.
»When they do come give them plenty of Miss Jeanne. Let Mamie see her well.«
    She looked for a moment as if she placed them face to face. »For Mamie to
hate her?«
    He had another of his corrective headshakes. »Mamie won't Trust them.«
    She looked at him hard, and then as if it were what she must always come
back to: »It's you I trust. But I was sincere,« she said, »at the hotel. I did,
I do, want my child -«
    »Well?« - Strether waited with deference while she appeared to hesitate as
to how to put it.
    »Well, to do what she can for me.«
    Strether for a little met her eyes on it; after which something that might
have been unexpected to her came from him. »Poor little duck!«
    Not more expected for himself indeed might well have been her echo of it.
»Poor little duck! But she immensely wants herself,« she said, »to see our
friend's cousin.«
    »Is that what she thinks her?«
    »It's what we call the young lady.«
    He thought again; then with a laugh: »Well, your daughter will help you.«
    And now at last he took leave of her, as he had been intending for five
minutes. But she went part of the way with him, accompanying him out of the room
and into the next and the next. Her noble old apartment offered a succession of
three, the first two of which indeed, on entering, smaller than the last, but
each with its faded and formal air, enlarged the office of the antechamber and
enriched the sense of approach. Strether fancied them, liked them, and, passing
through them with her more slowly now, met a sharp renewal of his original
impression. He stopped, he looked back; the whole thing made a vista, which he
found high melancholy and sweet - full, once more, of dim historic shades, of
the faint faraway cannon-roar of the great Empire. It was doubtless half the
projection of his mind, but his mind was a thing that, among old waxed parquets,
pale shades of pink and green, pseudo-classic candelabra, he had always
needfully to reckon with. They could easily make him irrelevant. The oddity, the
originality, the poetry - he didn't know what to call it - of Chad's connexion
reaffirmed for him its romantic side. »They ought to see this, you know. They
must.«
    »The Pococks?« - she looked about in deprecation; she seemed to see gaps he
didn't.
    »Mamie and Sarah - Mamie in particular.«
    »My shabby old place? But their things -!«
    »Oh their things! You were talking of what will do something for you -«
    »So that it strikes you,« she broke in, »that my poor place may? Oh,« she
ruefully mused, »that would be desperate!«
    »Do you know what I wish?« he went on. »I wish Mrs. Newsome herself could
have a look.«
    She stared, missing a little his logic. »It would make a difference?«
    Her tone was so earnest that as he continued to look about he laughed. »It
might!«
    »But you've told her, you tell me -«
    »All about you? Yes, a wonderful story. But there's all the indescribable -
what one gets only on the spot.«
    »Thank you!« she charmingly and sadly smiled.
    »It's all about me here,« he freely continued. »Mrs. Newsome feels things.«
    But she seemed doomed always to come back to doubt. »No one feels so much as
you. No - not any one.«
    »So much the worse then for every one. It's very easy.«
    They were by this time in the antechamber, still alone together, as she
hadn't rung for a servant. The antechamber was high and square, grave and
suggestive too, a little cold and slippery even in summer, and with a few old
prints that were precious, Strether divined, on the walls. He stood in the
middle, slightly lingering, vaguely directing his glasses, while, leaning
against the door-post of the room, she gently pressed her cheek to the side of
the recess. »You would have been a friend.«
    »I?« - it startled him a little.
    »For the reason you say. You're not stupid.« And then abruptly, as if
bringing it out were somehow founded on that fact: »We're marrying Jeanne.«
    It affected him on the spot as a move in a game, and he was even then not
without the sense that that wasn't't the way Jeanne should be married. But he
quickly showed his interest, though - as quickly afterwards struck him - with an
absurd confusion of mind. »'You'? You and - a - not Chad?« Of ourse it was the
child's father who made the 'we,' but to the child's father it would have cost
him an effort to allude. Yet didn't it seem the next minute that Monsieur de
Vionnet was after all not in question? - since she had gone on to say that it
was indeed to Chad she referred and that he had been in the whole matter
kindness itself.
    »If I must tell you all, it is he himself who has put us in the way. I mean
in the way of an opportunity that, so far as I can yet see, is all I could
possibly have dreamed of. For all the trouble Monsieur de Vionnet will ever
take!« It was the first time she had spoken to him of her husband, and he
couldn't have expressed how much more intimate with her it suddenly made him
feel. It wasn't't much, in truth - there were other things in what she was saying
that were far more; but it was as if, while they stood there together so easily
in these cold chambers of the past, the single touch had shown the reach of her
confidence. »But our friend,« she asked, »hasn't then told you?«
    »He has told me nothing.«
    »Well, it has come with rather a rush - all in a very few days; and hasn't
moreover yet taken a form that permits an announcement. It's only for you -
absolutely you alone - that I speak; I so want you to know.« The sense he had so
often had, since the first hour of his disembarkment, of being further and
further in, treated him again at this moment to another twinge; but in this
wonderful way of her putting him in there continued to be something exquisitely
remorseless. »Monsieur de Vionnet will accept what he must accept. He has
proposed half a dozen things - each one more impossible than the other; and he
wouldn't have found this if he lives to a hundred. Chad found it,« she continued
with her lighted, faintly sflushed, her conscious confidential face, »in the
quietest way in the world. Or rather it found him - for everything finds him; I
mean finds him right. You'll think we do such things strangely - but at my age,«
she smiled, »one has to accept one's conditions. Our young man's people had seen
her; one of his sisters, a charming woman - we know all about them - had
observed her somewhere with me. She had spoken to her brother - turned him on;
and we were again observed, poor Jeanne and I, without our in the least knowing
it. It was at the beginning of the winter; it went on for some time; it
outlasted our absence; it began again on our return; and it luckily seems all
right. The young man had met Chad, and he got a friend to approach him - as
having a decent interest in us. Mr. Newsome looked well before he leaped; he
kept beautifully quiet and satisfied himself fully; then only he spoke. It's
what has for some time past occupied us. It seems as if it were what would do;
really, really all one could wish. There are only two or three points to be
settled - they depend on her father. But this time I think we're safe.«
    Strether, consciously gaping a little, had fairly hung upon her lips. »I
hope so with all my heart.« And then he permitted himself: »Does nothing depend
on her?«
    »Ah naturally; everything did. But she's pleased come tout. She has been
perfectly free; and he - our young friend - is really a combination. I quite
adore him.«
    Strether just made sure. »You mean your future son-in-law?«
    »Future if we all bring it off.«
    »Ah well,« said Strether decorously, »I heartily hope you may.« There seemed
little else for him to say, though her communication had the oddest effect on
him. Vaguely and confusedly he was troubled by it; feeling as if he had even
himself been concerned in something deep and dim. He had allowed for depths, but
these were greater: and it was as if, oppressively - indeed absurdly - he was
responsible for what they had now thrown up to the surface. It was - through
something ancient and cold in it - what he would have called the real thing. In
short his hostess's news, though he couldn't have explained why, was a sensible
shock, and his oppression a weight he felt he must somehow or other immediately
get rid of. There were too many connexions missing to make it tolerable he
should do anything else. He was prepared to suffer - before his own inner
tribunal - for Chad; he was prepared to suffer even for Madame de Vionnet. But
he wasn't't prepared to suffer for the little girl. So now having said the proper
thing, he wanted to get away. She held him an instant, however, with another
appeal.
    »Do I seem to you very awful?«
    »Awful? Why so?« But he called it to himself, even as he spoke, his biggest
insincerity yet.
    »Our arrangements are so different from yours.«
    »Mine?« Oh he could dismiss that too! »I haven't any arrangements.«
    »Then you must accept mine; all the more that they're excellent. They're
founded on a vieille sagesse. There will be much more, if all goes well, for you
to hear and to know, and everything, believe me, for you to like. Don't be
afraid; you'll be satisfied.« Thus she could talk to him of what, of her
innermost life - for that was what it came to - he must accept; thus she could
extraordinarily speak as if in such an affair his being satisfied had an
importance. It was all a wonder and made the whole case larger. He had struck
himself at the hotel, before Sarah and Waymarsh, as being in her boat; but where
on earth was he now? This question was in the air till her own lips quenched it
with another. »And do you suppose he - who loves her so - would do anything
reckless or cruel?«
    He wondered what he supposed. »Do you mean your young man -?«
    »I mean yours. I mean Mr. Newsome.« It flashed for Strether the next moment
a finer light, and the light deepened as she went on. »He takes, thank God, the
truest tenderest interest in her.«
    It deepened indeed. »Oh I'm sure of that!«
    »You were talking,« she said, »about one's trusting him. You see then how I
do.«
    He waited a moment - it all came. »I see - I see.« He felt he really did
see.
    »He wouldn't hurt her for the world, nor - assuming she marries at all -
risk anything that might make against her happiness. And - willingly, at least -
he would never hurt me.«
    Her face, with what he had by this time grasped, told him more than her
words; whether something had come into it, or whether he only read clearer, her
whole story - what at least he then took for such - reached out to him from it.
With the initiative she now attributed to Chad it all made a sense, and this
sense - a light, a lead, was what had abruptly risen before him. He wanted, once
more, to get off with these things; which was at last made easy, a servant
having, for his assistance, on hearing voices in the hall, just come forward.
All that Strether had made out was, while the man opened the door and
impersonally waited, summed up in his last word. »I don't think, you know, Chad
will tell me anything.«
    »No - perhaps not yet.«
    »And I won't as yet speak to him.«
    »Ah that's as you'll think best. You must judge.«
    She had finally given him her hand, which he held a moment. »How much I have
to judge!«
    »Everything,« said Madame de Vionnet: a remark that was indeed - with the
refined disguised suppressed passion of her face - what he most carried away.

                                       II

 
So far as a direct approach was concerned Sarah had neglected him, for the week
now about to end, with a civil consistency of chill that, giving him a higher
idea of her social resource, threw him back on the general reflection that a
woman could always be amazing. It indeed helped a little to console him that he
felt sure she had for the same period also left Chad's curiosity hanging; though
on the other hand, for his personal relief, Chad could at least go through the
various motions - and he made them extraordinarily numerous - of seeing she had
a good time. There wasn't't a motion on which, in her presence, poor Strether
could so much as venture, and all he could do when he was out of it was to walk
over for a talk with Maria. He walked over of course much less than usual, but
he found a special compensation in a certain half-hour during which, toward the
close of a crowded empty expensive day, his several companions seemed to him so
disposed of as to give his forms and usages a rest. He had been with them in the
morning and had nevertheless called on the Pococks in the afternoon; but their
whole group, he then found, had dispersed after a fashion of which it would
amuse Miss Gostrey to hear. He was sorry again, gratefully sorry she was so out
of it - she who had really put him in; but she had fortunately always her
appetite for news. The pure flame of the disinterested burned in her cave of
treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine vault. It was just now, as happened, that for
so fine a sense as hers a near view would have begun to pay. Within three days,
precisely, the situation on which he was to report had shown signs of an
equilibrium; the effect of his look in at the hotel was to confirm this
appearance. If the equilibrium might only prevail! Sarah was out with Waymarsh,
Mamie was out with Chad, and Jim was out alone. Later on indeed he himself was
booked to Jim, was to take him that evening to the Varieties - which Strether
was careful to pronounce as Jim pronounced them.
    Miss Gostrey drank it in. »What then to-night do the others do?«
    »Well, it has been arranged. Waymarsh takes Sarah to dine at Bignon's.«
    She wondered. »And what do they do after? They can't come straight home.«
    »No, they can't come straight home - at least Sarah can't. It's their
secret, but I think I've guessed it.« Then as she waited: »The circus.«
    It made her stare a moment longer, then laugh almost to extravagance.
»There's no one like you!«
    »Like me?« - he only wanted to understand.
    »Like all of you together - like all of us: Woollett, Milrose and their
products. We're abysmal - but may we never be less so! Mr. Newsome,« she
continued, »meanwhile takes Miss Pocock -?«
    »Precisely - to the Francais: to see what you took Waymarsh and me to, a
family-bill.«
    »Ah then may Mr. Chad enjoy it as I did!« But she saw so much in things. »Do
they spend their evenings, your young people, like that, alone together?«
    »Well, they're young people - but they're old friends.«
    »I see, I see. And do they dine - for a difference - at Brébant's?«
    »Oh where they dine is their secret too. But I've my idea that it will be,
very quietly, at Chad's own place.«
    »She'll come to him there alone?«
    They looked at each other a moment. »He has known her from a child.
Besides,« said Strether with emphasis, »Mamie's remarkable. She's splendid.«
    She wondered. »Do you mean she expects to bring it off?«
    »Getting hold of him? No - I think not.«
    »She doesn't't want him enough? - or doesn't't believe in her power?« On which
as he said nothing she continued: »She finds she doesn't't care for him?«
    »No - I think she finds she does. But that's what I mean by so describing
her. It's if she does that she's splendid. But we'll see,« he wound up, »where
she comes out.«
    »You seem to show me sufficiently,« Miss Gostrey laughed, »where she goes
in! But is her childhood's friend,« she asked, »permitting himself recklessly to
flirt with her?«
    »No - not that. Chad's also splendid. They're all splendid!« he declared
with a sudden strange sound of wistfulness and envy. »They're at least happy.«
    »Happy?« - it appeared, with their various difficulties, to surprise her.
    »Well - I seem to myself among them the only one who isn't.«
    She demurred. »With your constant tribute to the ideal?«
    He had a laugh at his tribute to the ideal, but he explained after a moment
his impression. »I mean they're living. They're rushing about. I've already had
my rushing. I'm waiting.«
    »But aren't you,« she asked by way of cheer, »waiting with me?«
    He looked at her in all kindness. »Yes - if it weren't for that!«
    »And you help me to wait,« she said. »However,« she went on, »I've really
something for you that will help you to wait and which you shall have in a
minute. Only there's something more I want from you first. I revel in Sarah.«
    »So do I. If it weren't,« he again amusedly sighed, »for that -!«
    »Well, you owe more to women than any man I ever saw. We do seem to keep you
going. Yet Sarah, as I see her, must be great«.
    »She is« - Strether fully assented: »great! Whatever happens, she won't,
with these unforgettable days, have lived in vain.«
    Miss Gostrey had a pause. »You mean she has fallen in love?«
    »I mean she wonders if she hasn't - and it serves all her purpose.«
    »It has indeed,« Maria laughed, »served women's purposes before!«
    »Yes - for giving in. But I doubt if the idea - as an idea - has ever up to
now answered so well for holding out. That's her tribute to the ideal - we each
have our own. It's her romance - and it seems to me better on the whole than
mine. To have it in Paris too,« he explained - »on this classic ground, in this
charged infectious air, with so sudden an intensity: well, it's more than she
expected. She has had in short to recognise the breaking out for her of a real
affinity - and with everything to enhance the drama.«
    Miss Gostrey followed. »Jim for instance?«
    »Jim. Jim hugely enhances. Jim was made to enhance. And then Mrs. Waymarsh.
It's the crowning touch - it supplies the colour. He's positively separated.«
    »And she herself unfortunately isn't - that supplies the colour too.« Miss
Gostrey was all there. But somehow -! »Is he in love?«
    Strether looked at her a long time; then looked all about the room; then
came a little nearer. »Will you never tell any one in the world as long as ever
you live?«
    »Never.« It was charming.
    »He thinks Sarah really is. But he has no fear,« Strether hastened to add.
    »Of her being affected by it?«
    »Of his being. He likes it, but he knows she can hold out. He's helping her,
he's floating her over, by kindness.«
    Maria rather funnily considered it. »Floating her over in champagne? The
kindness of dining her, nose to nose, at the hour when all Paris is crowding to
profane delights, and in the - well, in the great temple, as one hears of it, of
pleasure?«
    »That's just it, for both of them,« Strether insisted - »and all of a
supreme innocence. The Parisian place, the feverish hour, the putting before her
of a hundred francs' worth of food and drink, which they'll scarcely touch - all
that's the dear man's own romance; the expensive kind, expensive in francs and
centimes, in which he abounds. And the circus afterwards - which is cheaper, but
which he'll find some means of making as dear as possible - that's also his
tribute to the ideal. It does for him. He'll see her through. They won't talk of
anything worse than you and me.«
    »Well, we're bad enough perhaps, thank heaven,« she laughed »to upset them!
Mr. Waymarsh at any rate is a hideous old coquette.« And the next moment she had
dropped everything for a different pursuit. »What you don't appear to know is
that Jeanne de Vionnet has become engaged. She's to arry - it has been
definitely arranged - young Monsieur de Montbron.«
    He fairly blushed. »Then - if you know it - it's out?«
    »Don't I often know things that are not out? However,« she said, »this will
be out to-morrow. But I see I've counted too much on your possible ignorance.
You've been before me, and I don't make you jump as I hoped.«
    He gave a gasp at her insight. »You never fail! I've had my jump. I had it
when I first heard.«
    »Then if you knew why didn't you tell me as soon as you came in?«
    »Because I had it from her as a thing not yet to be spoken of.«
    Miss Gostrey wondered. »From Madame de Vionnet herself?«
    »As a probability - not quite a certainty: a good cause in which Chad has
been working. So I've waited.«
    »You need wait no longer,« she returned. »It reached me yesterday -
roundabout and accidental, but by a person who had had it from one of the young
man's own people - as a thing quite settled. I was only keeping it for you.«
    »You thought Chad wouldn't have told me?«
    She hesitated. »Well, if he hasn't -«
    »He hasn't. And yet the thing appears to have been practically his doing. So
there we are.«
    »There we are!« Maria candidly echoed.
    »That's why I jumped, I jumped,« he continued to explain, »because it means,
this disposition of the daughter, that there's now nothing else: nothing else
but him and the mother.«
    »Still - it simplifies.«
    »It simplifies« - he fully concurred. »But that's precisely where we are. It
marks a stage in his relation. The act is his answer to Mrs. Newsome's
demonstration.«
    »It tells,« Maria asked, »the worst?«
    »The worst.«
    »But is the worst what he wants Sarah to know?«
    »He doesn't't care for Sarah.«
    At which Miss Gostrey's eyebrows went up. »You mean she has already dished
herself?«
    Strether took a turn about; he had thought it out again and again before
this, to the end; but the vista seemed each time longer. »He wants his good
friend to know the best. I mean the measure of his attachment. She asked for a
sign, and he thought of that one. There it is.«
    »A concession to her jealousy?«
    Strether pulled up. »Yes - call it that. Make it lurid - for that makes my
problem richer.«
    »Certainly, let us have it lurid - for I quite agree with you that we want
none of our problems poor. But let us also have it clear. Can he, in the midst
of such a preoccupation, or on the heels of it, have seriously cared for Jeanne?
- cared, I mean, as a young man at liberty would have cared?«
    Well, Strether had mastered it. »I think he can have thought it would be
charming if he could care. It would be nicer.«
    »Nicer than being tied up to Marie?«
    »Yes - than the discomfort of an attachment to a person he can never hope,
short of a catastrophe, to marry. And he was quite right,« said Strether. »It
would certainly have been nicer. Even when a thing's already nice there mostly
is some other thing that would have been nicer - or as to which we wonder if it
wouldn't. But his question was all the same a dream. He couldn't care in that
way. He is tied up to Marie. The relation is too special and has gone too far.
It's the very basis, and his recent lively contribution toward establishing
Jeanne in life has been his definite and final acknowledgement to Madame de
Vionnet that he has ceased squirming. I doubt meanwhile,« he went on, »if Sarah
has at all directly attacked him.«
    His companion brooded. »But won't he wish for his own satisfaction to make
his ground good to her?«
    »No - he'll leave it to me, he'll leave everything to me. I 'sort of' feel«
- he worked it out - »that the whole thing will come upon me. Yes, I shall have
every inch and every ounce of it. I shall be used for it -!« And Strether lost
himself in the prospect. Then he fancifully expressed the issue. »To the last
drop of my blood.«
    Maria, however, roundly protested. »Ah you'll please keep a drop for me. I
shall have a use for it!« - which she didn't however follow up. She had come
back the next moment to another matter. »Mrs. Pocock, with her brother, is
trusting only to her general charm?«
    »So it would seem.«
    »And the charm's not working?«
    Well, Strether put it otherwise, »She's sounding the note of home - which is
the very best thing she can do.«
    »The best for Madame de Vionnet?«
    »The best for home itself. The natural one; the right one.«
    »Right,« Maria asked, »when it fails?«
    Strether had a pause. »The difficulty's Jim. Jim's the note of home.«
    She debated. »Ah surely not the note of Mrs. Newsome.«
    But he had it all. »The note of the home for which Mrs. Nesome wants him -
the home of the business. Jim stands, with his little legs apart, at the door of
that tent; and Jim is, frankly speaking, extremely awful.«
    Maria stared. »And you in, you poor thing, for your evening with him?«
    »Oh he's all right for me!« Strether laughed. »Any one's good enough for me.
But Sarah shouldn't, all the same, have brought him. She doesn't't appreciate
him.«
    His friend was amused with this statement of it. »Doesn't know, you mean,
how bad he is?«
    Strether shook his head with decision. »Not really.«
    She wondered. »Then doesn't't Mrs. Newsome?«
    It made him frankly do the same. »Well, no - since you ask me.«
    Maria rubbed it in. »Not really either?«
    »Not at all. She rates him rather high.« With which indeed, immediately, he
took himself up. »Well, he is good too, in his way. It depends on what you want
him for.«
    Miss Gostrey, however, wouldn't let it depend on anything - wouldn't have
it, and wouldn't want him, at any price. »It suits my book,« she said, »that he
should be impossible; and it suits it still better,« she more imaginately added,
»that Mrs. Newsome doesn't't know he is.«
    Strether, in consequence, had to take it from her, but he fell back on
something else. »I'll tell you who does really know.«
    »Mr. Waymarsh? Never!«
    »Never indeed. I'm not always thinking of Mr. Waymarsh; in fact I find now I
never am.« Then he mentioned the person as if there were a good deal in it.
»Mamie.«
    »His own sister?« Oddly enough it but let her down. »What good will that
do?«
    »None perhaps. But there - as usual - we are!«

                                      III

 
There they were yet again, accordingly, for two days more; when Strether, on
being, at Mrs. Pocock's hotel, ushered into that lady's salon, found himself at
first assuming a mistake on the part of the servant who had introduced him and
retired. The occupants hadn't come in, for the room looked empty as only a room
can look in Paris, of a fine afternoon, when the faint murmur of the huge
collective life, carried on out of doors, strays among scattered objects even as
a summer air idles in a lonely garden. Our friend looked about and hesitated;
observed, on the evidence of a table charged with purchases and other matters,
that Sarah had become possessed - by no aid from him - of the last number of the
salmon-coloured Revue; noted further that Mamie appeared to have received a
present of Fromentin's »Maîtres d'Autrefois« from Chad, who had written her name
on the cover; and pulled up at the sight of a heavy letter addressed in a hand
he knew. This letter, forwarded by a banker and arriving in Mrs. Pocock's
absence, had been placed in evidence, and it drew from the fact of its being
unopened a sudden queer power to intensify the reach of its author. It brought
home to him the scale on which Mrs. Newsome - for she had been copious indeed
this time - was writing to her daughter while she kept him in durance; and it
had altogether such an effect upon him as made him for a few minutes stand still
and breathe low. In his own room, at his own hotel, he had dozens of well-filled
envelopes superscribed in that character; and there was actually something in
the renewal of his interrupted vision of the character that played straight into
the so frequent question of whether he weren't already disinherited beyond
appeal. It was such an assurance as the sharp downstrokes of her pen hadn't yet
had occasion to give him; but they somehow at the present crisis stood for a
probable absoluteness in any decree of the writer. He looked at Sarah's name and
address, in short, as if he had been looking hard into her mother's face, and
then turned from it as if the face had declined to relax. But since it was in a
manner as if Mrs. Newsome were thereby all the more, instead of the less, in the
room, and were conscious, sharply and sorely conscious, of himself, so he felt
both held and hushed, summoned to stay at least and take his punishment. By
staying, accordingly, he took it - creeping softly and vaguely about and waiting
for Sarah to come in. She would come in if he stayed long enough, and he had now
more than ever the sense of her success in leaving him a prey to anxiety. It
wasn't't to be denied that she had had a happy instinct, from the point of view of
Woollett, in placing him thus at the mercy of her own initiative. It was very
well to try to say he didn't care - that she might break ground when she would,
might never break it at all if she wouldn't, and that he had no confession
whatever to wait upon her with: he breathed from day to day an air that damnably
required clearing, and there were moments when he quite ached to precipitate
that process. He couldn't doubt that, should she only oblige him by surprising
him just as he then was, a clarifying scene of some sort would result from the
concussion.
    He humbly circulated in this spirit till he suddenly had a fresh arrest.
Both the windows of the room stood open to the balcony, but it was only now
that, in the glass of the leaf of one of them, folded back, he caught a
reflection quickly recognised as the colour of a lady's dress. Somebody had been
then all the while on the balcony, and the person, whoever it might be, was so
placed between the windows as to be hidden from him; while on the other hand the
many sounds of the street had covered his own entrance and movements. If the
person were Sarah he might on the spot therefore be served to his taste. He
might lead her by a move or two up to the remedy for his vain tension; as to
which, should he get nothing else from it, he would at least have the relief of
pulling down the roof on their heads. There was fortunately no one at hand to
observe - in respect to his valour - that even on this completed reasoning he
still hung fire. He had been waiting for Mrs. Pocock and the sound of the
oracle; but he had to gird himself afresh - which he did in the embrasure of the
window, neither advancing nor retreating - before provoking the revelation. It
was apparently for Sarah to come more into view; he was in that case there at
her service. She did however, as meanwhile happened, come more into view; only
she luckily came at the last minute as a contradiction of Sarah. The occupant of
the balcony was after all quite another person, a person presented, on a second
look, by a charming back and a slight shift of her position, as beautiful
brilliant unconscious Mamie - Mamie alone at home, Mamie passing her time in her
own innocent way, Mamie in short rather shabbily used, but Mamie absorbed
interested and interesting. With her arms on the balustrade and her attention
dropped to the street she allowed Strether to watch her, to consider several
things, without her turning round.
    But the oddity was that when he had so watched and considered he simply
stepped back into the room without following up his advantage. He revolved there
again for several minutes, quite as with something new to think of and as if the
bearings of the possibility of Sarah had been superseded. For frankly, yes, it
had bearings thus to find the girl in solitary possession. There was something
in it that touched him to a point not to have been reckoned beforehand,
something that softly but quite pressingly spoke to him, and that spoke the more
each time he paused again at the edge of the balcony and saw her still unaware.
Her companions were plainly scattered; Sarah would be off somewhere with
Waymarsh and Chad off somewhere with Jim. Strether didn't at all mentally impute
to Chad that he was with his good friend; he gave him the benefit of supposing
him involved in appearances that, had he had to describe them - for instance to
Maria - he would have conveniently qualified as more subtle. It came to him
indeed the next thing that there was perhaps almost an excess of refinement in
having left Mamie in such weather up there alone; however she might in fact have
extemporised, under the charm of the Rue de Rivoli, a little makeshift Paris of
wonder and fancy. Our friend in any case now recognised - and it was as if at
the recognition Mrs. Newsome's fixed intensity had suddenly, with a deep audible
gasp, grown thin and vague - that day after day he had been conscious in respect
to his young lady of something odd and ambiguous, yet something into which he
could at last read a meaning. It had been at the most, this mystery, an
obsession - oh an obsession agreeable; and it had just now fallen into its place
as at the touch of a spring. It had represented the possibility between them of
some communication baffled by accident and delay - the possibility even of some
relation as yet unacknowledged.
    There was always their old relation, the fruit of the Woollett years; but
that - and it was what was strangest - had nothing whatever in common with what
was now in the air. As a child, as a bud, and then again as a flower of
expansion, Mamie had bloomed for him, freely, in the almost incessantly open
doorways of home; where he remembered her as first very forward, as then very
backward - for he had carried on at one period, in Mrs. Newsome's parlours (oh
Mrs. Newsome's phases and his own!) a course of English Literature re-enforced
by exams and teas - and once more, finally, as very much in advance. But he had
kept no great sense of points of contact; it not being in the nature of things
at Woollett that the freshest of the buds should find herself in the same basket
with the most withered of the winter apples. The child had given sharpness,
above all, to his sense of the flight of time; it was but the day before
yesterday that he had tripped up on her hoop, yet his experience of remarkable
women - destined, it would seem, remarkably to grow - felt itself ready this
afternoon, quite braced itself, to include her. She had in fine more to say to
him than he had ever dreamed the pretty girl of the moment could have; and the
proof of the circumstance was that, visibly, unmistakeably, she had been able to
say it to no one else. It was something she could mention neither to her
brother, to her sister-in-law nor to Chad; though he could just imagine that had
she still been at home she might have brought it out, as a supreme tribute to
age, authority and attitude, for Mrs. Newsome. It was moreover something in
which they all took an interest; the strength of their interest was in truth
just the reason of her prudence. All this then, for five minutes, was vivid to
Strether, and it put before him that, poor child, she had now but her prudence
to amuse her. That, for a pretty girl in Paris, struck him, with a rush, as a
sorry state; so that under the impression he went out to her with a step as
hypocritically alert, he was well aware, as if he had just come into the room.
She turned with a start at his voice; preoccupied with him though she might be,
she was just a scrap disappointed. »Oh I thought you were Mr. Bilham!«
    The remark had been at first surprising and our friend's private thought,
under the influence of it, temporarily blighted; yet we are able to add that he
presently recovered his inward tone and that many a fresh flower of fancy was to
bloom in the same air. Little Bilham - since little Bilham was, somewhat
incongruously, expected - appeared behindhand; a circumstance by which Strether
was to profit. They came back into the room together after a little, the couple
on the balcony, and amid its crimson-and-gold elegance, with the others still
absent, Strether passed forty minutes that he appraised even at the time as far,
in the whole queer connexion, from his idlest. Yes indeed, since he had the
other day so agreed with Maria about the inspiration of the lurid, here was
something for his problem that surely didn't make it shrink and that was floated
in upon him as part of a sudden flood. He was doubtless not to know till
afterwards, on turning them over in thought, of how many elements his impression
was composed; but he none the less felt, as he sat with the charming girl, the
signal growth of a confidence. For she was charming, when all was said - and
none the less so for the visible habit and practice of freedom and fluency. She
was charming, he was aware, in spite of the fact that if he hadn't found her so
he would have found her something he should have been in peril of expressing as
funny. Yes, she was funny, wonderful Mamie, and without dreaming it; she was
bland, she was bridal - with never, that he could make out as yet, a bridegroom
to support it; she was handsome and portly and easy and chatty, soft and sweet
and almost disconcertingly reassuring. She was dressed, if we might so far
discriminate, less as a young lady than as an old one - had an old one been
supposable to Strether as so committed to vanity; the complexities of her hair
missed moreover also the looseness of youth; and she had a mature manner of
bending a little, as to encourage and reward, while she held neatly together in
front of her a pair of strikingly polished hands: the combination of all of
which kept up about her the glamour of her receiving, placed her again
perpetually between the windows and within sound of the ice-cream plates,
suggested the enumeration of all the names, all the Mr. Brookses and Mr.
Snookses, gregarious specimens of a single type, she was happy to meet.
    But if all this was where she was funny, and if what was funnier than the
rest was the contrast between her beautiful benevolent patronage - such a hint
of the polysyllabic as might make her something of a bore toward middle age -
and her rather flat little voice, the voice, naturally, unaffectedly yet, of a
girl of fifteen; so Strether, none the less, at the end of ten minutes, felt in
her a quiet dignity that pulled things bravely together. If quiet dignity,
almost more than matronly, with voluminous, too voluminous clothes, was the
effect she proposed to produce, that was an ideal one could like in her when
once one had got into relation. The great thing now for her visitor was that
this was exactly what he had done; it made so extraordinary a mixture of the
brief and crowded hour. It was the mark of a relation that he had begun so
quickly to find himself sure she was, of all people, as might have been said, on
the side and of the party of Mrs. Newsome's original ambassador. She was in his
interest and not in Sarah's; and some sign of that was precisely what he had
been feeling in her, these last days, as imminent. Finally placed, in Paris, in
immediate presence of the situation and of the hero of it - by whom Strether was
incapable of meaning any one but Chad - she had accomplished, and really in a
manner all unexpected to herself, a change of base; deep still things had come
to pass within her, and by the time she had grown sure of them Strether had
become aware of the little drama. When she knew where she was, in short, he had
made it out; and he made it out at present still better; though with never a
direct word passing between them all the while on the subject of his own
predicament. There had been at first, as he sat there with her, a moment during
which he wondered if she meant to break ground in respect to his prime
undertaking. That door stood so strangely ajar that he was half-prepared to be
conscious, at any juncture, of her having, of any one's having, quite bounced
in. But, friendly, familiar, light of touch and happy of tact, she exquisitely
stayed out; so that it was for all the world as if to show she could deal with
him without being reduced to - well, scarcely anything.
    It fully came up for them then, by means of their talking of everything but
Chad, that Mamie, unlike Sarah, unlike Jim, knew perfectly what had become of
him. It fully came up that she had taken to the last fraction of an inch the
measure of the change in him, and that she wanted Strether to know what a secret
she proposed to make of it. They talked most conveniently - as if they had had
no chance yet - about Woollett; and that had virtually the effect of their
keeping the secret more close. The hour took on for Strether, little by little,
a queer sad sweetness of quality; he had such a revulsion in Mamie's favour and
on behalf of her social value as might have come from remorse at some early
injustice. She made him, as under the breath of some vague western whiff,
homesick and freshly restless; he could really for the time have fancied himself
stranded with her on a far shore, during an ominous calm, in a quaint community
of shipwreck. Their little interview was like a picnic on a coral strand; they
passed each other, with melancholy smiles and looks sufficiently allusive, such
cupfuls of water as they had saved. Especially sharp in Strether meanwhile was
the conviction that his companion really knew, as we have hinted, where she had
come out. It was at a very particular place - only that she would never tell
him; it would be above all what he should have to puzzle for himself. This was
what he hoped for, because his interest in the girl wouldn't be complete without
it. No more would the appreciation to which she was entitled - so assured was he
that the more he saw of her process the more he should see of her pride. She
saw, herself, everything; but she knew what she didn't want, and that it was
that had helped her. What didn't she want? - there was a pleasure lost for her
old friend in not yet knowing, as there would doubtless be a thrill in getting a
glimpse. Gently and sociably she kept that dark to him, and it was as if she
soothed and beguiled him in other ways to make up for it. She came out with her
impression of Madame de Vionnet - of whom she had heard so much; she came out
with her impression of Jeanne, whom she had been dying to see: she brought it
out with a blandness by which her auditor was really stirred that she had been
with Sarah early that very afternoon, and after dreadful delays caused by all
sorts of things, mainly, eternally, by the purchase of clothes - clothes that
unfortunately wouldn't be themselves eternal - to call in the Rue de
Bellechasse.
    At the sound of these names Strether almost blushed to feel that he couldn't
have sounded them first - and yet couldn't either have justified his
squeamishness. Mamie made them easy as he couldn't have begun to do, and yet it
could only have cost her more than he should ever have had to spend. It was as
friends of Chad's, friends special, distinguished, desirable, enviable, that she
spoke of them, and she beautifully carried it off that much as she had heard of
them - though she didn't say how or where, which was a touch of her own - she
had found them beyond her supposition. She abounded in praise of them, and after
the manner of Woollett - which made the manner of Woollett a loveable thing
again to Strether. He had never so felt the true inwardness of it as when his
blooming companion pronounced the elder of the ladies of the Rue de Bellechasse
too fascinating for words and declared of the younger that she was perfectly
ideal, a real little monster of charm. »Nothing,« she said of Jeanne, »ought
ever to happen to her - she's so awfully right as she is. Another touch will
spoil her - so she oughtn't to be touched.«
    »Ah but things, here in Paris,« Strether observed, »do happen to little
girls.« And then for the joke's and the occasion's sake: »Haven't you found that
yourself?«
    »That things happen -? Oh I'm not a little girl. I'm a big battered blowsy
one. I don't care,« Mamie laughed, »what happens.«
    Strether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn't happen that he should
give her the pleasure of learning that he found her nicer than he had really
dreamed - a pause that ended when he had said to himself that, so far as it at
all mattered for her, she had in fact perhaps already made this out. He risked
accordingly a different question - though conscious, as soon as he had spoken,
that he seemed to place it in relation to her last speech. »But that
Mademoiselle de Vionnet is to be married - I suppose you've heard of that.«
    For all, he then found, he need fear! »Dear, yes; the gentleman was there:
Monsieur de Montbron, whom Madame de Vionnet presented to us.«
    »And was he nice?«
    Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner. »Any man's nice
when he's in love.«
    It made Strether laugh. »But is Monsieur de Montbron in love - already -
with you?«
    »Oh that's not necessary - it's so much better he should be so with her:
which, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for myself. He's perfectly
gone - and I couldn't have borne it for her if he hadn't been. She's just too
sweet.«
    Strether hesitated. »And through being in love too?«
    On which with a smile that struck him as wonderful Mamie had a wonderful
answer. »She doesn't't know if she is or not.«
    It made him again laugh out. »Oh but you do!«
    She was willing to take it that way. »Oh yes, I know everything.« And as she
sat there rubbing her polished hands and making the best of it - only holding
her elbows perhaps a little too much out - the momentary effect for Strether was
that every one else, in all their affair, seemed stupid.
    »Know that poor little Jeanne doesn't't know what's the matter with her?«
    It was as near as they came to saying that she was probably in love with
Chad; but it was quite near enough for what Strether wanted; which was to be
confirmed in his certitude that, whether in love or not, she appealed to
something large and easy in the girl before him. Mamie would be fat, too fat, at
thirty; but she would always be the person who, at the present sharp hour, had
been disinterestedly tender. »If I see a little more of her, as I hope I shall,
I think she'll like me enough - for she seemed to like me to-day - to want me to
tell her.«
    »And shall you?«
    »Perfectly. I shall tell her the matter with her is that she wants only too
much to do right. To do right for her, naturally,« said Mamie, »is to please.«
    »Her mother, do you mean?«
    »Her mother first.«
    Strether waited. »And then?«
    »Well, then - Mr. Newsome.«
    There was something really grand for him in the serenity of this reference.
»And last only Monsieur de Montbron?«
    »Last only« - she good-humouredly kept it up.
    Strether considered. »So that every one after all then will be suited?«
    She had one of her few hesitations, but it was a question only of a moment;
and it was her nearest approach to being explicit with him about what was
between them. »I think I can speak for myself. I shall be.«
    It said indeed so much, told such a story of her being ready to help him, so
committed to him that truth, in short, for such use as he might make of it
toward those ends of his own with which, patiently and trustfully, she had
nothing to do - it so fully achieved all this that he appeared to himself simply
to meet it in its own spirit by the last frankness of admiration. Admiration was
of itself almost accusatory, but nothing less would serve to show her how nearly
he understood. He put out his hand for good-bye with a »Splendid, splendid,
splendid!« And he left her, in her splendour, still waiting for little Bilham.
 

                                   Book Tenth

                                       I

Strether occupied beside little Bilham, three evenings after his interview with
Mamie Pocock, the same deep divan they had enjoyed together on the first
occasion of our friend's meeting Madame de Vionnet and her daughter in the
apartment of the Boulevard Malesherbes, where his position affirmed itself again
as ministering to an easy exchange of impressions. The present evening had a
different stamp; if the company was much more numerous, so, inevitably, were the
ideas set in motion. It was on the other hand, however, now strongly marked that
the talkers moved, in respect to such matters, round an inner, a protected
circle. They knew at any rate what really concerned them to-night, and Strether
had begun by keeping his companion close to it. Only a few of Chad's guests had
dined - that is fifteen or twenty, a few compared with the large concourse
offered to sight by eleven o'clock; but number and mass, quantity and quality,
light, fragrance, sound, the overflow of hospitality meeting the high tide of
response, had all from the first pressed upon Strether's consciousness, and he
felt himself somehow part and parcel of the most festive scene, as the term was,
in which he had ever in his life been engaged. He had perhaps seen, on Fourths
of July and on dear old domestic Commencements, more people assembled, but he
had never seen so many in proportion to the space, or had at all events never
known so great a promiscuity to show so markedly as picked. Numerous as was the
company, it had still been made so by selection, and what was above all rare for
Strether was that, by no fault of his own, he was in the secret of the principle
that had worked. He hadn't enquired, he had averted his head, but Chad had put
him a pair of questions that themselves smoothed the ground. He hadn't answered
the questions, he had replied that they were the young man's own affair; and he
had then seen perfectly that the latter's direction was already settled.
    Chad had applied for counsel only by way of intimating that he knew what to
do; and he had clearly never known it better than in now presenting to his
sister the whole circle of his society. This was all in the sense and the spirit
of the note struck by him on that lady's arrival; he had taken at the station
itself a line that led him without a break, and that enabled him to lead the
Pococks - though dazed a little, no doubt, breathless, no doubt, and bewildered
- to the uttermost end of the passage accepted by them perforce as pleasant. He
had made it for them violently pleasant and mercilessly full; the upshot of
which was, to Strether's vision, that they had come all the way without
discovering it to be really no passage at all. It was a brave blind alley, where
to pass was impossible and where, unless they stuck fast, they would have -
which was always awkward - publicly to back out. They were touching bottom
assuredly tonight; the whole scene represented the terminus of the cul-de-sac.
So could things go when there was a hand to keep them consistent - a hand that
pulled the wire with a skill at which the elder man more and more marvelled. The
elder man felt responsible, but he also felt successful, since what had taken
place was simply the issue of his own contention, six weeks before, that they
properly should wait to see what their friends would have really to say. He had
determined Chad to wait, he had determined him to see; he was therefore not to
quarrel with the time given up to the business. As much as ever, accordingly,
now that a fortnight had elapsed, the situation created for Sarah, and against
which she had raised no protest, was that of her having accommodated herself to
her adventure as to a pleasure-party surrendered perhaps even somewhat in excess
to bustle and to pace. If her brother had been at any point the least bit open
to criticism it might have been on the ground of his spicing the draught too
highly and pouring the cup too full. Frankly treating the whole occasion of the
presence of his relatives as an opportunity for amusement, he left it, no doubt,
but scant margin as an opportunity for anything else. He suggested, invented,
abounded - yet all the while with the loosest easiest rein. Strether, during his
own weeks, had gained a sense of knowing Paris; but he saw it afresh, and with
fresh emotion, in the form of the knowledge offered to his colleague.
    A thousand unuttered thoughts hummed for him in the air of these
observations; not the least frequent of which was that Sarah might well of a
truth not quite know whither she was drifting. She was in no position not to
appear to expect that Chad should treat her handsomely; yet she struck our
friend as privately stiffening a little each time she missed the chance of
marking the great nuance. The great nuance was in brief that of course her
brother must treat her handsomely - she should like to see him not; but that
treating her handsomely, none the less, wasn't't all in all - treating her
handsomely buttered no parsnips; and that in fine there were moments when she
felt the fixed eyes of their admirable absent mother fairly screw into the flat
of her back. Strether, watching, after his habit, and overscoring with thought,
positively had moments of his own in which he found himself sorry for her -
occasions on which she affected him as a person seated in a runaway vehicle and
turning over the question of a possible jump. Would she jump, could she, would
that be a safe place? - this question, at such instants, sat for him in her
lapse into pallor, her tight lips, her conscious eyes. It came back to the main
point at issue: would she be, after all, to be squared? He believed on the whole
she would jump; yet his alternations on this subject were the more especial
stuff of his suspense. One thing remained well before him - a conviction that
was in fact to gain sharpness from the impressions of this evening: that if she
should gather in her skirts, close her eyes and quit the carriage while in
motion, he would promptly enough become aware. She would alight from her
headlong course more or less directly upon him; it would be appointed to him,
unquestionably, to receive her entire weight. Signs and portents of the
experience thus in reserve for him had, as it happened, multiplied even through
the dazzle of Chad's party. It was partly under the nervous consciousness of
such a prospect that, leaving almost every one in the two other rooms, leaving
those or the guests already known to him as well as a mass of brilliant
strangers of both sexes and of several varieties of speech, he had desired five
quiet minutes with little Bilham, whom he always found soothing and even a
little inspiring, and to whom he had actually moreover something distinct and
important to say.
    He had felt of old - for it already seemed long ago - rather humiliated at
discovering he could learn in talk with a personage so much his junior the
lesson of a certain moral ease; but he had now got used to that - whether or no
the mixture of the fact with other humiliations had made it indistinct, whether
or no directly from little Bilham's example, the example of his being
contentedly just the obscure and acute little Bilham he was. It worked so for
him, Strether seemed to see; and our friend had at private hours a wan smile
over the fact that he himself, after so many more years, was still in search of
something that would work. However, as we have said, it worked just now for them
equally to have found a corner a little apart. What particularly kept it apart
was the circumstance that the music in the salon was admirable, with two or
three such singers as it was a privilege to hear in private. Their presence gave
a distinction to Chad's entertainment, and the interest of calculating their
effect on Sarah was actually so sharp as to be almost painful. Unmistakeably, in
her single person, the motive of the composition and dressed in a splendour of
crimson which affected Strether as the sound of a fall through a skylight, she
would now be in the forefront of the listening circle and committed by it up to
her eyes. Those eyes during the wonderful dinner itself he hadn't once met;
having confessedly - perhaps a little pusillanimously - arranged with Chad that
he should be on the same side of the table. But there was no use in having
arrived now with little Bilham at an unprecedented point of intimacy unless he
could pitch everything into the pot. »You who sat where you could see her, what
does she make of it all? By which I mean on what terms does she take it?«
    »Oh she takes it, I judge, as proving that the claim of his family is more
than ever justified.«
    »She isn't then pleased with what he has to show?«
    »On the contrary; she's pleased with it as with his capacity to do this kind
of thing - more than she has been pleased with anything for a long time. But she
wants him to show it there. He has no right to waste it on the likes of us.«
    Strether wondered. »She wants him to move the whole thing over?«
    »The whole thing - with an important exception. Everything he has picked up
- and the way he knows how. She sees no difficulty in that. She'd run the show
herself, and she'll make the handsome concession that Woollett would be on the
whole in some ways the better for it. Not that it wouldn't be also in some ways
the better for Woollett. The people there are just as good.«
    »Just as good as you and these others? Ah that may be. But such an occasion
as this, whether or no,« Strether said, »isn't the people. It's what has made
the people possible.«
    »Well then,« his friend replied, »there you are; I give you my impression
for what it's worth. Mrs. Pocock has seen, and that's to-night how she sits
there. If you were to have a glimpse of her face you'd understand me. She has
made up her mind - to the sound of expensive music.«
    Strether took it freely in. »Ah then I shall have news of her.«
    »I don't want to frighten you, but I think that likely. However,« little
Bilham continued, »if I'm of the least use to you to hold on by -!«
    »You're not of the least!« - and Strether laid an appreciative hand on him
to say it. »No one's of the least.« With which, to mark how gaily he could take
it, he patted his companion's knee. »I must meet my fate alone, and I shall - oh
you'll see! And yet,« he pursued the next moment, »you can help me too. You once
said to me« - he followed this further - »that you held Chad should marry. I
didn't see then so well as I know now that you meant he should marry Miss
Pocock. Do you still consider that he should? Because if you do« - he kept it up
- »I want you immediately to change your mind. You can help me that way.«
    »Help you by thinking he should not marry?«
    »Not marry at all events Mamie.«
    »And who then?«
    »Ah,« Strether returned, »that I'm not obliged to say. But Madame de Vionnet
- I suggest - when he can.«
    »Oh!« said little Bilham with some sharpness.
    »Oh precisely! But he needn't marry at all - I'm at any rate not obliged to
provide for it. Whereas in your case I rather feel that I am.«
    Little Bilham was amused. »Obliged to provide for my marrying?«
    »Yes - after all I've done to you!«
    The young man weighed it. »Have you done as much as that?«
    »Well,« said Strether, thus challenged, »of course I must remember what
you've also done to me. We may perhaps call it square. But all the same,« he
went on, »I wish awfully you'd marry Mamie Pocock yourself.«
    Little Bilham laughed out. »Why it was only the other night, in this very
place, that you were proposing to me a different union altogether.«
    »Mademoiselle de Vionnet?« Well, Strether easily confessed it. »That, I
admit, was a vain image. This is practical politics. I want to do something good
for both of you - I wish you each so well; and you can see in a moment the
trouble it will save me to polish you off by the same stroke. She likes you, you
know. You console her. And she's splendid.«
    Little Bilham stared as a delicate appetite stares at an over-heaped plate.
»What do I console her for?«
    It just made his friend impatient. »Oh come, you know!«
    »And what proves for you that she likes me?«
    »Why the fact that I found her three days ago stopping at home alone all the
golden afternoon on the mere chance that you'd come to her, and hanging over her
balcony on that of seeing your cab drive up. I don't know what you want more.«
    Little Bilham after a moment found it. »Only just to know what proves to you
that I like her.«
    »Oh if what I've just mentioned isn't enough to make you do it, you're a
stony-hearted little fiend. Besides« - Strether encouraged his fancy's flight -
»you showed your inclination in the way you kept her waiting, kept her on
purpose to see if she cared enough for you.«
    His companion paid his ingenuity the deference of a pause. »I didn't keep
her waiting. I came at the hour. I wouldn't have kept her waiting for the
world,« the young man honourably declared.
    »Better still - then there you are!« And Strether, charmed, held him the
faster. »Even if you didn't do her justice, moreover,« he continued, »I should
insist on your immediately coming round to it. I want awfully to have worked it.
I want« - and our friend spoke now with a yearning that was really earnest - »at
least to have done that.«
    »To have married me off - without a penny?«
    »Well, I shan't live long; and I give you my word, now and here, that I'll
leave you every penny of my own. I haven't many, unfortunately, but you shall
have them all. And Miss Pocock, I think, has a few. I want,« Strether went on,
»to have been at least to that extent constructive - even expiatory. I've been
sacrificing so to strange gods that I feel I want to put on record, somehow, my
fidelity - fundamentally unchanged after all - to our own. I feel as if my hands
were embrued with the blood of monstrous alien altars - of another faith
altogether. There it is - it's done.« And then he further explained. »It took
hold of me because the idea of getting her quite out of the way for Chad helps
to clear my ground.«
    The young man, at this, bounced about, and it brought them face to face in
admitted amusement. »You want me to marry as a convenience to Chad?«
    »No,« Strether debated - »he doesn't't care whether you marry or not. It's as
a convenience simply to my own plan for him.«
    »Simply!« - and little Bilham's concurrence was in itself a lively comment.
»Thank you. But I thought,« he continued, »you had exactly no plan for him.«
    »Well then call it my plan for myself - which may be well, as you say, to
have none. His situation, don't you see? is reduced now to the bare facts one
has to recognise. Mamie doesn't't want him, and he doesn't't want Mamie: so much as
that these days have made clear. It's a thread we can wind up and tuck in.«
    But little Bilham still questioned. »You can - since you seem so much to
want to. But why should I?«
    Poor Strether thought it over, but was obliged of course to admit that his
demonstration did superficially fail. »Seriously, there is no reason. It's my
affair - I must do it alone. I've only my fantastic need of making my dose
stiff.«
    Little Bilham wondered. »What do you call your dose?«
    »Why what I have to swallow. I want my conditions unmitigated.«
    He had spoken in the tone of talk for talk's sake, and yet with an obscure
truth lurking in the loose folds; a circumstance presently not without its
effect on his young friend. Little Bilham's eyes rested on him a moment with
some intensity; then suddenly, as if everything had cleared up, he gave a happy
laugh. It seemed to say that if pretending, or even trying, or still even
hoping, to be able to care for Mamie would be of use, he was all there for the
job. »I'll do anything in the world for you!«
    »Well,« Strether smiled, »anything in the world is all I want. I don't know
anything that pleased me in her more,« he went on, »than the way that, on my
finding her up there all alone, coming on her unawares and feeling greatly for
her being so out of it, she knocked down my tall house of cards with her instant
and cheerful allusion to the next young man. It was somehow so the note I needed
- her staying at home to receive him.«
    »It was Chad of course,« said little Bilham, »who asked the next young man -
I like your name for me! - to call.«
    »So I supposed - all of which, thank God, is in our innocent and natural
manners. But do you know,« Strether asked, »if Chad knows -?« And then as this
interlocutor seemed at a loss: »Why where she has come out.«
    Little Bilham, at this, met his face with a conscious look; it was as if,
more than anything yet, the allusion had penetrated. »Do you know yourself?«
    Strether lightly shook his head. »There I stop. Oh, odd as it may appear to
you, there are things I don't know. I only got the sense from her of something
very sharp, and yet very deep down, that she was keeping all to herself. That is
I had begun with the belief that she had kept it to herself; but face to face
with her there I soon made out that there was a person with whom she would have
shared it. I had thought she possibly might with me - but I saw then that I was
only half in her confidence. When, turning to me to greet me - for she was on
the balcony and I had come in without her knowing it - she showed me she had
been expecting you and was proportionately disappointed, I got hold of the tail
of my conviction. Half an hour later I was in possession of all the rest of it.
You know what has happened.« He looked at his young friend hard - then he felt
sure. »For all you say, you're up to your eyes. So there you are.«
    Little Bilham after an instant pulled half round. »I assure you she hasn't
told me anything.«
    »Of course she hasn't. For what do you suggest that I suppose her to take
you? But you've been with her every day, you've seen her freely, you've liked
her greatly - I stick to that - and you've made your profit of it. You know what
she has been through as well as you know that she has dined here to-night -
which must have put her, by the way, through a good deal more.«
    The young man faced this blast; after which he pulled round the rest of the
way. »I haven't in the least said she hasn't been nice to me. But she's proud.«
    »And quite properly. But not too proud for that.«
    »It's just her pride that has made her, Chad,« little Bilham loyally went
on, »has really been as kind to her as possible. It's awkward for a man when a
girl's in love with him.«
    »Ah but she isn't - now.«
    Little Bilham sat staring before him; then he sprang up as if his friend's
penetration, recurrent and insistent, made him really after all too nervous. »No
- she isn't now. It isn't in the least,« he went on, »Chad's fault. He's really
all right. I mean he would have been willing. But she came over with ideas.
Those she had got at home. They had been her motive and support in joining her
brother and his wife. She was to save our friend.«
    »Ah like me, poor thing?« Strether also got to his feet.
    »Exactly - she had a bad moment. It was very soon distinct to her, to pull
her up, to let her down, that, alas, he was, he is, saved. There's nothing left
for her to do.«
    »Not even to love him?«
    »She would have loved him better as she originally believed him.«
    Strether wondered. »Of course one asks one's self what notion a little girl
forms, where a young man's in question, of such a history and such a state.«
    »Well, this little girl saw them, no doubt, as obscure, but she saw them
practically as wrong. The wrong for her was the obscure. Chad turns out at any
rate right and good and disconcerting, while what she was all prepared for,
primed and girded and wound up for, was to deal with him as the general
opposite.«
    »Yet wasn't't her whole point« - Strether weighed it - »that he was to be,
that he could be, made better, redeemed?«
    Little Bilham fixed it all a moment, and then with a small head-shake that
diffused a tenderness: »She's too late. Too late for the miracle.«
    »Yes« - his companion saw enough. »Still, if the worst fault of his
condition is that it may be all there for her to profit by -?«
    »Oh she doesn't't want to profit, in that flat way. She doesn't't want to profit
by another woman's work - she wants the miracle to have been her own miracle.
That's what she's too late for.«
    Strether quite felt how it all fitted, yet there seemed one loose piece.
»I'm bound to say, you know, that she strikes one, on these lines, as fastidious
- what you call here difficile.«
    Little Bilham tossed up his chin. »Of course she's difficile - on any lines!
What else in the world are our Mamies - the real, the right ones?«
    »I see, I see,« our friend repeated, charmed by the responsive wisdom he had
ended by so richly extracting. »Mamie is one or the real and the right.«
    »The very thing itself.«
    »And what it comes to then,« Strether went on, »is that poor awful Chad is
simply too good for her.«
    »Ah too good was what he was after all to be; but it was she herself, and
she herself only, who was to have made him so.«
    It hung beautifully together, but with still a loose end. »Wouldn't he do
for her even if he should after all break -«
    »With his actual influence?« Oh little Bilham had for this enquiry the
sharpest of all his controls. »How can he do - on any terms whatever - when he's
flagrantly spoiled?«
    Strether could only meet the question with his passive, his receptive
pleasure. »Well, thank goodness, you're not! You remain for her to save, and I
come back, on so beautiful and full a demonstration, to my contention of just
now - that of your showing distinct signs of her having already begun.«
    The most he could further say to himself - as his young friend turned away -
was that the charge encountered for the moment no renewed denial. Little Bilham,
taking his course back to the music, only shook his good-natured ears an
instant, in the manner of a terrier who has got wet; while Strether relapsed
into the sense - which had for him in these days most of comfort - that he was
free to believe in anything that from hour to hour kept him going. He had
positively motions and flutters of this conscious hour-to-hour kind, temporary
surrenders to irony, to fancy, frequent instinctive snatches at the growing rose
of observation, constantly stronger for him, as he felt, in scent and colour,
and in which he could bury his nose even to wantonness. This last resource was
offered him, for that matter, in the very form of his next clear perception -
the vision of a prompt meeting, in the doorway of the room, between little
Bilham and brilliant Miss Barrace, who was entering as Bilham withdrew. She had
apparently put him a question, to which he had replied by turning to indicate
his late interlocutor; toward whom, after an interrogation further aided by a
resort to that optical machinery which seemed, like her other ornaments, curious
and archaic, the genial lady, suggesting more than ever for her fellow guest the
old French print, the historic portrait, directed herself with an intention that
Strether instantly met. He knew in advance the first note she would sound, and
took in as she approached all her need of sounding it. Nothing yet had been so
wonderful between them as the present occasion; and it was her special sense of
this quality in occasions that she was there, as she was in most places, to
feed. That sense had already been so well fed by the situation about them that
she had quitted the other room, forsaken the music, dropped out of the play,
abandoned, in a word, the stage itself, that she might stand a minute behind the
scenes with Strether and so perhaps figure as one of the famous augurs replying,
behind the oracle, to the wink of the other. Seated near him presently where
little Bilham had sat, she replied in truth to many things; beginning as soon as
he had said to her - what he hoped he said without fatuity - »All you ladies are
extraordinarily kind to me.«
    She played her long handle, which shifted her observation; she saw in an
instant all the absences that left them free. »How can we be anything else? But
isn't that exactly your plight? We ladies - oh we're nice, and you must be
having enough of us! As one of us, you know, I don't pretend I'm crazy about us.
But Miss Gostrey at least to-night has left you alone, hasn't she?« With which
she again looked about as if Maria might still lurk.
    »Oh yes,« said Strether; »she's only sitting up for me at home.« And then as
this elicited from his companion her gay »Oh, oh, oh!« he explained that he
meant sitting up in suspense and prayer. »We thought it on the whole better she
shouldn't be present; and either way of course it's a terrible worry for her.«
He abounded in the sense of his appeal to the ladies, and they might take their
choice of his doing so from humility or from pride. »Yet she inclines to believe
I shall come out.«
    »Oh I incline to believe too you'll come out!« - Miss Barrace, with her
laugh, was not to be behind. »Only the question's about where, isn't it?
However,« she happily continued, »if it's anywhere at all it must be very far
on, mustn't it? To do us justice, I think, you know,« she laughed, »we do, among
us all, want you rather far on. Yes, yes,« she repeated in her quick droll way;
»we want you very, very far on!« After which she wished to know why he had
thought it better Maria shouldn't be present.
    »Oh,« he replied, »it was really her own idea. I should have wished it. But
she dreads responsibility.«
    »And isn't that a new thing for her?«
    »To dread it? No doubt - no doubt. But her nerve has given way.«
    Miss Barrace looked at him a moment. »She has too much at stake.« Then less
gravely: »Mine, luckily for me, holds out.«
    »Luckily for me too« - Strether came back to that. »My own isn't so firm, my
appetite for responsibility isn't so sharp, as that I haven't felt the very
principle of this occasion to be the more the merrier. If we are so merry it's
because Chad has understood so well.«
    »He has understood amazingly,« said Miss Barrace.
    »It's wonderful!« - Strether anticipated for her.
    »It's wonderful!« she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face to face over
it, they largely and recklessly laughed. But she presently added: »Oh I see the
principle. If one didn't one would be lost. But when once one has got hold of it
-«
    »It's as simple as twice two! From the moment he had to do something -«
    »A crowd« - she took him straight up - »was the only thing? Rather, rather:
a rumpus of sound,« she laughed, »or nothing. Mrs. Pocock's built in, or built
out - whichever you call it; she's packed so tight she can't move. She's in
splendid isolation« - Miss Barrace embroidered the theme.
    Strether followed, but scrupulous of justice. »Yet with every one in the
place successively introduced to her.«
    »Wonderfully - but just so that it does build her out. She's bricked up,
she's buried alive!«
    Strether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him to a sigh.
»Oh but she's not dead! It will take more than this to kill her.«
    His companion had a pause that might have been for pity. »No, I can't
pretend I think she's finished - or that it's for more than to-night.« She
remained pensive as if with the same compunction. »It's only up to her chin.«
Then again for the fun of it: »She can breathe.«
    »She can breathe!« - he echoed it in the same spirit. »And do you know,« he
went on, »what's really all this time happening to me? - through the beauty of
music, the gaiety of voices, the uproar in short of our revel and the felicity
of your wit? The sound of Mrs. Pocock's respiration drowns for me, I assure you,
every other. It's literally all I hear.«
    She focussed him with her clink of chains. »Well -!« she breathed ever so
kindly.
    »Well, what?«
    »She is free from her chin up,« she mused; »and that will be enough for
her.«
    »It will be enough for me!« Strether ruefully laughed. »Waymarsh has
really,« he then asked, »brought her to see you?«
    »Yes - but that's the worst of it. I could do you no good. And yet I tried
hard.«
    Strether wondered. »And how did you try?«
    »Why I didn't speak of you.«
    »I see. That was better.«
    »Then what would have been worse? For speaking or silent,« she lightly
wailed, »I somehow compromise. And it has never been any one but you.«
    »That shows« - he was magnanimous - »that it's something not in you, but in
one's self. It's my fault.«
    She was silent a little. »No, it's Mr. Waymarsh's. It's the fault of his
having brought her.«
    »Ah then,« said Strether good-naturedly, »why did he bring her?«
    »He couldn't afford not to.«
    »Oh you were a trophy - one of the spoils of conquest? But why in that case,
since you do compromise -«
    »Don't I compromise him as well? I do compromise him as well,« Miss Barrace
smiled. »I compromise him as hard as I can. But for Mr. Waymarsh it isn't fatal.
It's - so far as his wonderful relation with Mrs. Pocock is concerned -
favourable.« And then, as he still seemed slightly at sea: »The man who had
succeeded with me, don't you see? For her to get him from me was such an added
incentive.«
    Strether saw, but as if his path was still strewn with surprises. »It's from
you then that she has got him?«
    She was amused at his momentary muddle. »You can fancy my fight! She
believes in her triumph. I think it has been part of her joy.«
    »Oh her joy!« Strether sceptically murmured.
    » Well, she thinks she has had her own way. And what's to-night for her but
a kind of apotheosis? Her frock's really good.«
    »Good enough to go to heaven in? For after a real apotheosis,« Strether went
on, »there's nothing but heaven. For Sarah there's only to-morrow.«
    »And you mean that she won't find to-morrow heavenly?«
    »Well, I mean that I somehow feel to-night - on her behalf - too good to be
true. She has had her cake; that is she's in the act now of having it, of
swallowing the largest and sweetest piece. There won't be another left for her.
Certainly I haven't one. It can only, at the best, be Chad.« He continued to
make it out as for their common entertainment. »He may have one, as it were, up
his sleeve; yet it's borne in upon me that if he had -«
    »He wouldn't« - she quite understood - »have taken all this trouble? I dare
say not, and, if I may be quite free and dreadful, I very much hope he won't
take any more. Of course I won't pretend now,« she added, »not to know what it's
a question of.«
    »Oh every one must know now,« poor Strether thoughtfully admitted; »and it's
strange enough and funny enough that one should feel everybody here at this very
moment to be knowing and watching and waiting.«
    »Yes - isn't it indeed funny?« Miss Barrace quite rose to it. »That's the
way we are in Paris.« She was always pleased with a new contribution to that
queerness. »It's wonderful! But, you know,« she declared, »it all depends on
you. I don't want to turn the knife in your vitals, but that's naturally what
you just now meant by our all being on top of you. We know you as the hero of
the drama, and we're gathered to see what you'll do.«
    Strether looked at her a moment with a light perhaps slightly obscured. »I
think that must be why the hero has taken refuge in this corner. He's scared at
his heroism - he shrinks from his part.«
    »Ah but we nevertheless believe he'll play it. That's why,« Miss Barrace
kindly went on, »we take such an interest in you. We feel you'll come up to the
scratch.« And then as he seemed perhaps not quite to take fire: »Don't let him
do it.«
    »Don't let Chad go?«
    »Yes, keep hold of him. With all this« - and she indicated the general
tribute - »he has done enough. We love him here - he's charming.«
    »It's beautiful,« said Strether, »the way you all can simplify when you
will.«
    But she gave it to him back. »It's nothing to the way you will when you
must.«
    He winced at it as at the very voice of prophecy, and it kept him a moment
quiet. He detained her, however, on her appearing about to leave him alone in
the rather cold clearance their talk had made. »There positively isn't a sign of
a hero to-night; the hero's dodging and shirking, the hero's ashamed. Therefore,
you know, I think, what you must all really be occupied with is the heroine.«
    Miss Barrace took a minute. »The heroine?«
    »The heroine. I've treated her,« said Strether, »not a bit like a hero. Oh,«
he sighed, »I don't do it well!«
    She eased him off. »You do it as you can.« And then after another
hesitation: »I think she's satisfied.«
    But he remained compunctious. »I haven't been near her. I haven't looked at
her.«
    »Ah then you've lost a good deal!«
    He showed he knew it. »She's more wonderful than ever?«
    »Than ever. With Mr. Pocock.«
    Strether wondered. »Madame de Vionnet - with Jim?«
    »Madame de Vionnet - with Jim. « Miss Barrace was historic.
    »And what's she doing with him?«
    »Ah you must ask him!«
    Strether's face lighted again at the prospect. »It will be amusing to do
so.« Yet he continued to wonder. »But she must have some idea.«
    »Of course she has - she has twenty ideas. She has in the first place,« said
Miss Barrace, swinging a little her tortoise-shell, »that of doing her part. Her
part is to help you.«
    It came out as nothing had come yet; links were missing and connexions
unnamed, but it was suddenly as if they were at the heart of their subject.
»Yes; how much more she does it,« Strether gravely reflected, »than I help her!«
It all came over him as with the near presence of the beauty, the grace, the
intense, dissimulated spirit with which he had, as he said, been putting off
contact. »She has courage.«
    »Ah she has courage!« Miss Barrace quite agreed; and it was as if for a
moment they saw the quantity in each other's face.
    But indeed the whole thing was present. »How much she must care!«
    »Ah there it is. She does care. But it isn't, is it,« Miss Barrace
considerately added, »as if you had ever had any doubt of that?«
    Strether seemed suddenly to like to feel that he really never had. »Why of
course it's the whole point.«
    »Voilà!« Miss Barrace smiled.
    »It's why one came out,« Strether went on. »And it's why one has stayed so
long. And it's also« - he abounded - »why one's going home. It's why, it's why
-«
    »It's why everything!« she concurred. »It's why she might be to-night - for
all she looks and shows, and for all your friend Jim does - about twenty years
old. That's another of her ideas; to be for him, and to be quite easily and
charmingly, as young as a little girl.«
    Strether assisted at his distance. »For him? For Chad -?«
    »For Chad, in a manner, naturally, always. But in particular to-night for
Mr. Pocock.« And then as her friend still stared: »Yes, it is of a bravery! But
that's what she has: her high sense of duty.« It was more than sufficiently
before them. »When Mr. Newsome has his hands so embarrassed with his sister -«
    »It's quite the least« - Strether filled it out - »that she should take his
sister's husband? Certainly - quite the least. So she has taken him.«
    »She has taken him.« It was all Miss Barrace had meant.
    Still it remained enough. »It must be funny.«
    »Oh it is funny.« That of course essentially went with it.
    But it brought them back. »How indeed then she must care!« In answer to
which Strether's entertainer dropped a comprehensive »Ah!« expressive perhaps of
some impatience for the time he took to get used to it. She herself had got used
to it long before.

                                       II

 
When one morning with in the week he perceived the whole thing to be really at
last upon him Strether's immediate feeling was all relief. He had known this
morning that something was about to happen - known it, in a moment, by
Waymarsh's manner when Waymarsh appeared before him during his brief consumption
of coffee and a roll in the small slippery salle-à-manger so associated with
rich rumination. Strether had taken there of late various lonely and
absent-minded meals; he communed there, even at the end of June, with a
suspected chill, the air of old shivers mixed with old savours, the air in which
so many of his impressions had perversely matured; the place meanwhile renewing
its message to him by the very circumstance of his single state. He now sat
there, for the most part, to sigh softly, while he vaguely tilted his carafe,
over the vision of how much better Waymarsh was occupied. That was really his
success by the common measure - to have led this companion so on and on. He
remembered how at first there had been scarce a squatting-place he could beguile
him into passing; the actual outcome of which at last was that there was scarce
one that could arrest him in his rush. His rush - as Strether vividly and
amusedly figured it - continued to be all with Sarah, and contained perhaps
moreover the word of the whole enigma, whipping up in its fine full-flavoured
froth the very principle, for good or for ill, of his own, of Strether's
destiny. It might after all, to the end, only be that they had united to save
him, and indeed, so far as Waymarsh was concerned, that had to be the spring of
action. Strether was glad at all events, in connexion with the case, that the
saving he required was not more scant; so constituted a luxury was it in certain
lights just to lurk there out of the full glare. He had moments of quite
seriously wondering whether Waymarsh wouldn't in fact, thanks to old friendship
and a conceivable indulgence, make about as good terms for him as he might make
for himself. They wouldn't be the same terms of course; but they might have the
advantage that he himself probably should be able to make none at all.
    He was never in the morning very late, but Waymarsh had already been out,
and, after a peep into the dim refectory, he presented himself with much less
than usual of his large looseness. He had made sure, through the expanse of
glass exposed to the court, that they would be alone; and there was now in fact
that about him that pretty well took up the room. He was dressed in the garments
of summer; and save that his white waistcoat was redundant and bulging these
things favoured, they determined, his expression. He wore a straw hat such as
his friend hadn't yet seen in Paris, and he showed a buttonhole freshly adorned
with a magnificent rose. Strether read on the instant his story - how, astir for
the previous hour, the sprinkled newness of the day, so pleasant at that season
in Paris, he was fairly panting with the pulse of adventure and had been with
Mrs. Pocock, unmistakeably, to the Marché aux Fleurs. Strether really knew in
this vision of him a joy that was akin to envy; so reversed as he stood there
did their old positions seem; so comparatively doleful now showed, by the sharp
turn of the wheel, the posture of the pilgrim from Woollett. He wondered, this
pilgrim, if he had originally looked to Waymarsh so brave and well, so
remarkably launched, as it was at present the latter's privilege to appear. He
recalled that his friend had remarked to him even at Chester that his aspect
belied his plea of prostration; but there certainly couldn't have been, for an
issue, an aspect less concerned than Waymarsh's with the menace of decay.
Strether had at any rate never resembled a Southern planter of the great days -
which was the image picturesquely suggested by the happy relation between the
fuliginous face and the wide panama of his visitor. This type, it further amused
him to guess, had been, on Waymarsh's part, the object of Sarah's care; he was
convinced that her taste had not been a stranger to the conception and purchase
of the hat, any more than her fine fingers had been guiltless of the bestowal of
the rose. It came to him in the current of thought, as things so oddly did come,
that he had never risen with the lark to attend a brilliant woman to the Marché
aux Fleurs; this could be fastened on him in connexion neither with Miss Gostrey
nor with Madame de Vionnet; the practice of getting up early for adventures
could indeed in no manner be fastened on him. It came to him in fact that just
here was his usual case: he was for ever missing things through his general
genius for missing them, while others were for ever picking them up through a
contrary bent. And it was others who looked abstemious and he who looked greedy;
it was he somehow who finally paid, and it was others who mainly partook. Yes,
he should go to the scaffold yet for he wouldn't know quite whom. He almost, for
that matter, felt on the scaffold now and really quite enjoying it. It worked
out as because he was anxious there - it worked out as for this reason that
Waymarsh was so blooming. It was his trip for health, for a change, that proved
the success - which was just what Strether, planning and exerting himself, had
desired it should be. That truth already sat full-blown on his companion's lips;
benevolence breathed from them as with the warmth of active exercise, and also a
little as with the bustle of haste.
    »Mrs. Pocock, whom I left a quarter of an hour ago at her hotel, has asked
me to mention to you that she would like to find you at home here in about
another hour. She wants to see you; she has something to say - or considers, I
believe, that you may have: so that I asked her myself why she shouldn't come
right round. She hasn't been round yet - to see our place; and I took upon
myself to say that I was sure you'd be glad to have her. The thing's therefore,
you see, to keep right here till she comes.«
    The announcement was sociably, even though, after Waymarsh's wont, somewhat
solemnly made; but Strether quickly felt other things in it than these light
features. It was the first approach, from that quarter, to admitted
consciousness; it quickened his pulse; it simply meant at last that he should
have but himself to thank if he didn't know where he was. He had finished his
breakfast; he pushed it away and was on his feet. There were plenty of elements
of surprise, but only one of doubt. »The thing's for you to keep here too?«
Waymarsh had been slightly ambiguous.
    He wasn't't ambiguous, however, after this enquiry; and Strether's
understanding had probably never before opened so wide and effective a mouth as
it was to open during the next five minutes. It was no part of his friend's
wish, as appeared, to help to receive Mrs. Pocock; he quite understood the
spirit in which she was to present herself, but his connexion with her visit was
limited to his having - well, as he might say - perhaps a little promoted it. He
had thought, and had let her know it, that Strether possibly would think she
might have been round before. At any rate, as turned out, she had been wanting
herself, quite a while, to come. »I told her,« said Waymarsh, »that it would
have been a bright idea if she had only carried it out before.«
    Strether pronounced it so bright as to be almost dazzling. »But why hasn't
she carried it out before? She has seen me every day - she had only to name her
hour. I've been waiting and waiting.«
    »Well, I told her you had. And she has been waiting too.« It was, in the
oddest way in the world, on the showing of this tone, a genial new pressing
coaxing Waymarsh; a Waymarsh conscious with a different consciousness from any
he had yet betrayed, and actually rendered by it almost insinuating. He lacked
only time for full persuasion, and Strether was to see in a moment why.
Meantime, however, our friend perceived, he was announcing a step of some
magnanimity on Mrs. Pocock's part, so that he could deprecate a sharp question.
It was his own high purpose in fact to have smoothed sharp questions to rest. He
looked his old comrade very straight in the eyes, and he had never conveyed to
him in so mute a manner so much kind confidence and so much good advice.
Everything that was between them was again in his face, but matured and shelved
and finally disposed of. »At any rate,« he added, »she's coming now.«
    Considering how many pieces had to fit themselves, it all fell, in
Strether's brain, into a close rapid order. He saw on the spot what had
happened, and what probably would yet; and it was all funny enough. It was
perhaps just this freedom of appreciation that wound him up to his flare of high
spirits. »What is she coming for? - to kill me?«
    »She's coming to be very very kind to you, and you must let me say that I
greatly hope you'll not be less so to herself.«
    This was spoken by Waymarsh with much gravity of admonition, and as Strether
stood there he knew he had but to make a movement to take the attitude of a man
gracefully receiving a present. The present was that of the opportunity dear old
Waymarsh had flattered himself he had divined in him the slight soreness of not
having yet thoroughly enjoyed; so he had brought it to him thus, as on a little
silver breakfast-tray, familiarly though delicately - without oppressive pomp;
and he was to bend and smile and acknowledge, was to take and use and be
grateful. He was not - that was the beauty of it - to be asked to deflect too
much from his dignity. No wonder the old boy bloomed in this bland air of his
own distillation. Strether felt for a moment as if Sarah were actually walking
up and down outside. Wasn't she hanging about the porte-cochère while her friend
thus summarily opened a way? Strether would meet her but to take it, and
everything would be for the best in the best of possible worlds. He had never so
much known what any one meant as, in the light of this demonstration, he knew
what Mrs. Newsome did. It had reached Waymarsh from Sarah, but it had reached
Sarah from her mother, and there was no break in the chain by which it reached
him. »Has anything particular happened,« he asked after a minute - »so suddenly
to determine her? Has she heard anything unexpected from home?«
    Waymarsh, on this, it seemed to him, looked at him harder than ever.
»Unexpected?« He had a brief hesitation; then, however, he was firm. »We're
leaving Paris.«
    »Leaving? That is sudden.«
    Waymarsh showed a different opinion, »Less so than it may seem. The purpose
of Mrs. Pocock's visit is to explain to you in fact that it's not.«
    Strether didn't at all know if he had really an advantage - anything that
would practically count as one; but he enjoyed for the moment - as for the first
time in his life - the sense of so carrying it off. He wondered - it was amusing
- if he felt as the impudent feel. »I shall take great pleasure, I assure you,
in any explanation. I shall be delighted to receive Sarah.«
    The sombre glow just darkened in his comrade's eyes; but he was struck with
the way it died out again. It was too mixed with another consciousness - it was
too smothered, as might be said, in flowers. He really for the time regretted it
- poor dear old sombre glow! Something straight and simple, something heavy and
empty, had been eclipsed in its company; something by which he had best known
his friend. Waymarsh wouldn't be his friend, somehow, without the occasional
ornament of the sacred rage, and the right to the sacred rage - inestimably
precious for Strether's charity - he also seemed in a manner, and at Mrs.
Pocock's elbow, to have forfeited. Strether remembered the occasion early in
their stay when on that very spot he had come out with his earnest, his ominous
»Quit it!« - and, so remembering, felt it hang by a hair that he didn't himself
now utter the same note. Waymarsh was having a good time - this was the truth
that was embarrassing for him, and he was having it then and there, he was
having it in Europe, he was having it under the very protection of circumstances
of which he didn't in the least approve; all of which placed him in a false
position, with no issue possible - none at least by the grand manner. It was
practically in the manner of any one - it was all but in poor Strether's own -
that instead of taking anything up he merely made the most of having to be
himself explanatory. »I'm not leaving for the United States direct. Mr. and Mrs.
Pocock and Miss Mamie are thinking of a little trip before their own return, and
we've been talking for some days past of our joining forces. We've settled it
that we do join and that we sail together the end of next month. But we start
to-morrow for Switzerland. Mrs. Pocock wants some scenery. She hasn't had much
yet.«
    He was brave in his way too, keeping nothing back, confessing all there was,
and only leaving Strether to make certain connexions. »Is what Mrs. Newsome had
cabled her daughter an injunction to break off short?«
    The grand manner indeed at this just raised its head a little. »I know
nothing about Mrs. Newsome's cables.«
    Their eyes met on it with some intensity - during the few seconds of which
something happened quite out of proportion to the time. It happened that
Strether, looking thus at his friend, didn't take his answer for truth - and
that something more again occurred in consequence of that. Yes - Waymarsh just
did know about Mrs. Newsome's cables: to what other end than that had they dined
together at Bignon's? Strether almost felt for the instant that it was to Mrs.
Newsome herself the dinner had been given; and, for that matter, quite felt how
she must have known about it and, as he might think, protected and consecrated
it. He had a quick blurred view of daily cables, questions, answers, signals:
clear enough was his vision of the expense that, when so wound up, the lady at
home was prepared to incur. Vivid not less was his memory of what, during his
long observation of her, some of her attainments of that high pitch had cost
her. Distinctly she was at the highest now, and Waymarsh, who imagined himself
an independent performer, was really, forcing his fine old natural voice, an
overstrained accompanist. The whole reference of his errand seemed to mark her
for Strether as by this time consentingly familiar to him, and nothing yet had
so despoiled her of a special shade of consideration. »You don't know,« he
asked, »whether Sarah has been directed from home to try me on the matter of my
also going to Switzerland?«
    »I know,« said Waymarsh as manfully as possible, »nothing whatever about her
private affairs; though I believe her to be acting in conformity with things
that have my highest respect.« It was as manful as possible, but it was still
the false note - as it had to be to convey so sorry a statement. He knew
everything, Strether more and more felt, that he thus disclaimed, and his little
punishment was just in this doom to a second fib. What falser position - given
the man - could the most vindictive mind impose? He ended by squeezing through a
passage in which three months before he would certainly have stuck fast. »Mrs
Pocock will probably be ready herself to answer any enquiry you may put to her.
But,« he continued, »but -!« He faltered on it.
    »But what? Don't put her too many?«
    Waymarsh looked large, but the harm was done; he couldn't, do what he would,
help looking rosy. »Don't do anything you'll be sorry for.«
    It was an attenuation, Strether guessed, of something else that had been on
his lips; it was a sudden drop to directness, and was thereby the voice of
sincerity. He had fallen to the supplicating note, and that immediately, for our
friend, made a difference and reinstated him. They were in communication as they
had been, that first morning, in Sarah's salon and in her presence and Madame de
Vionnet's; and the same recognition of a great good will was again, after all,
possible. Only the amount of response Waymarsh had then taken for granted was
doubled, decupled now. This came out when he presently said: »Of course I
needn't assure you I hope you'll come with us.« Then it was that his
implications and expectations loomed up for Strether as almost pathetically
gross.
    The latter patted his shoulder while he thanked him, giving the go-by to the
question of joining the Pococks; he expressed the joy he felt at seeing him go
forth again so brave and free, and he in fact almost took leave of him on the
spot. »I shall see you again of course before you go; but I'm meanwhile much
obliged to you for arranging so conveniently for what you've told me. I shall
walk up and down in the court there - dear little old court which we've each
bepaced so, this last couple of months, to the tune of our flights and our
drops, our hesitations and our plunges: I shall hang about there, all impatience
and excitement, please let Sarah know, till she graciously presents herself.
Leave me with her without fear,« he laughed; »I assure you I shan't hurt her. I
don't think either she'll hurt me: I'm in a situation in which damage was some
time ago discounted. Besides, that isn't what worries you - but don't, don't
explain! We're all right as we are: which was the degree of success our
adventure was pledged to for each of us. We weren't, it seemed, all right as we
were before; and we've got over the ground, all things considered, quickly. I
hope you'll have a lovely time in the Alps.«
    Waymarsh fairly looked up at him as from the foot of them. »I don't know as
I ought really to go.«
    It was the conscience of Milrose in the very voice of Milrose, but, oh it
was feeble and flat! Strether suddenly felt quite ashamed for him; he breathed a
greater boldness. »Let yourself, on the contrary, go - in all agreeable
directions. These are precious hours - at our age they mayn't recur. Don't have
it to say to yourself at Milrose, next winter, that you hadn't courage for
them.« And then as his comrade queerly stared: »Live up to Mrs. Pocock.«
    »Live up to her?«
    »You're a great help to her.«
    Waymarsh looked at it as at one of the uncomfortable things that were
certainly true and that it was yet ironical to say. »It's more then than you
are.«
    »That's exactly your own chance and advantage. Besides,« said Strether, »I
do in my way contribute. I know what I'm about.«
    Waymarsh had kept on his great panama, and, as he now stood nearer the door,
his last look beneath the shade of it had turned again to darkness and warning.
»So do I! See here, Strether.«
    »I know what you're going to say. Quit this?«
    »Quit this!« But it lacked its old intensity; nothing of it remained; it
went out of the room with him.

                                      III

 
Almost the first thing, strangely enough, that, about an hour later, Strether
found himself doing in Sarah's presence was to remark articulately on this
failure, in their friend, of what had been superficially his great distinction.
It was as if - he alluded of course to the grand manner - the dear man had
sacrificed it to some other advantage; which would be of course only for himself
to measure. It might be simply that he was physically so much more sound than on
his first coming out; this was all prosaic, comparatively cheerful and vulgar.
And fortunately, if one came to that, his improvement in health was really
itself grander than any manner it could be conceived as having cost him. »You
yourself alone, dear Sarah« - Strether took the plunge - »have done him, it
strikes me, in these three weeks, as much good as all the rest of his time
together.«
    It was a plunge because somehow the range of reference was, in the
conditions, funny, and made funnier still by Sarah's attitude, by the turn the
occasion had, with her appearance, so sensibly taken. Her appearance was really
indeed funnier than anything else - the spirit in which he felt her to be there
as soon as she was there, the shade of obscurity that cleared up for him as soon
as he was seated with her in the small salon de lecture that had, for the most
part, in all the weeks, witnessed the wane of his early vivacity of discussion
with Waymarsh. It was an immense thing, quite a tremendous thing, for her to
have come: this truth opened out to him in spite of his having already arrived
for himself at a fairly vivid view of it. He had done exactly what he had given
Waymarsh his word for - had walked and re-walked the court while he awaited her
advent; acquiring in this exercise an amount of light that affected him at the
time as flooding the scene. She had decided upon the step in order to give him
the benefit of a doubt, in order to be able to say to her mother that she had,
even to abjectness, smoothed the way for him. The doubt had been as to whether
he mightn't take her as not having smoothed it - and the admonition had possibly
come from Waymarsh's more detached spirit. Waymarsh had at any rate, certainly,
thrown his weight into the scale - he had pointed to the importance of depriving
their friend of a grievance. She had done justice to the plea, and it was to set
herself right with a high ideal that she actually sat there in her state. Her
calculation was sharp in the immobility with which she held her tall
parasol-stick upright and at arm's length, quite as if she had struck the place
to plant her flag; in the separate precautions she took not to show as nervous;
in the aggressive repose in which she did quite nothing but wait for him. Doubt
ceased to be possible from the moment he had taken in that she had arrived with
no proposal whatever; that her concern was simply to show what she had come to
receive. She had come to receive his submission, and Waymarsh was to have made
it plain to him that she would expect nothing less. He saw fifty things, her
host, at this convenient stage; but one of those he most saw was that their
anxious friend hadn't quite had the hand required of him. Waymarsh had, however,
uttered the request that she might find him mild, and while hanging about the
court before her arrival he had turned over with zeal the different ways in
which he could be so. The difficulty was that if he was mild he wasn't't, for her
purpose, conscious. If she wished him conscious - as everything about her cried
aloud that she did - she must accordingly be at costs to make him so. Conscious
he was, for himself - but only of too many things; so she must choose the one
she required.
    Practically, however, it at last got itself named, and when once that had
happened they were quite at the centre of their situation. One thing had really
done as well as another; when Strether had spoken of Waymarsh's leaving him, and
that had necessarily brought on a reference to Mrs. Pocock's similar intention,
the jump was but short to supreme lucidity. Light became indeed after that so
intense that Strether would doubtless have but half made out, in the prodigious
glare, by which of the two the issue had been in fact precipitated. It was, in
their contracted quarters, as much there between them as if it had been
something suddenly spilled with a crash and a splash on the floor. The form of
his submission was to be an engagement to acquit himself within the twenty-four
hours. »He'll go in a moment if you give him the word - he assures me on his
honour he'll do that«: this came in its order, out of its order, in respect to
Chad, after the crash had occurred. It came repeatedly during the time taken by
Strether to feel that he was even more fixed in his rigour than he had supposed
- the time he was not above adding to a little by telling her that such a way of
putting it on her brother's part left him sufficiently surprised. She wasn't't at
all funny at last - she was really fine; and he felt easily where she was strong
- strong for herself. It hadn't yet so come home to him that she was nobly and
appointedly officious. She was acting in interests grander and clearer than that
of her poor little personal, poor little Parisian equilibrium, and all his
consciousness of her mother's moral pressure profited by this proof of its
sustaining force. She would be held up; she would be strengthened; he needn't in
the least be anxious for her. What would once more have been distinct to him had
he tried to make it so was that, as Mrs. Newsome was essentially all moral
pressure, the presence of this element was almost identical with her own
presence. It wasn't't perhaps that he felt he was dealing with her straight, but
it was certainly as if she had been dealing straight with him. She was reaching
him somehow by the lengthened arm of the spirit, and he was having to that
extent to take her into account; but he wasn't't reaching her in turn, not making
her take him; he was only reaching Sarah, who appeared to take so little of him.
»Something has clearly passed between you and Chad,« he presently said, »that I
think I ought to know something more about. Does he put it all,« he smiled, »on
me?«
    »Did you come out,« she asked, »to put it all on him?«
    But he replied to this no further than, after an instant, by saying: »Oh
it's all right. Chad I mean's all right in having said to you - well anything he
may have said. I'll take it all - what he does put on me. Only I must see him
before I see you again.«
    She hesitated, but she brought it out. »Is it absolutely necessary you
should see me again?«
    »Certainly, if I'm to give you any definite word about anything.«
    »Is it your idea then,« she returned, »that I shall keep on meeting you only
to be exposed to fresh humiliation?«
    He fixed her a longer time. »Are your instructions from Mrs. Newsome that
you shall, even at the worst, absolutely and irretrievably break with me?«
    »My instructions from Mrs. Newsome are, if you please, my affair. You know
perfectly what your own were, and you can judge for yourself of what it can do
for you to have made what you have of them. You can perfectly see, at any rate,
I'll go so far as to say, that if I wish not to expose myself I must wish still
less to expose her.« She had already said more than she had quite expected; but,
though she had also pulled up, the colour in her face showed him he should from
one moment to the other have it all. He now indeed felt the high importance of
his having it. »What is your conduct,« she broke out as if to explain - »what is
your conduct but an outrage to women like us? I mean your acting as if there can
be a doubt - as between us and such another - of his duty?«
    He thought a moment. It was rather much to deal with at once; not only the
question itself, but the sore abysses it revealed. »Of course they're totally
different kinds of duty.«
    »And do you pretend that he has any at all - to such another?«
    »Do you mean to Madame de Vionnet?« He uttered the name not to affront her,
but yet again to gain time - time that he needed for taking in something still
other and larger than her demand of a moment before. It wasn't't at once that he
could see all that was in her actual challenge; but when he did he found himself
just checking a low vague sound, a sound which was perhaps the nearest approach
his vocal chords had ever known to a growl. Everything Mrs. Pocock had failed to
give a sign of recognising in Chad as a particular part of a transformation -
everything that had lent intention to this particular failure - affected him as
gathered into a large loose bundle and thrown, in her words, into his face. The
missile made him to that extent catch his breath; which however he presently
recovered. »Why when a woman's at once so charming and so beneficent -«
    »You can sacrifice mothers and sisters to her without a blush, and can make
them cross the ocean on purpose to feel the more, and take from you the
straighter, how you do it?«
    Yes, she had taken him up as short and as sharply as that; but he tried not
to flounder in her grasp. »I don't think there's anything I've done in any such
calculated way as you describe. Everything has come as a sort of
indistinguishable part of everything else. Your coming out belonged closely to
my having come before you, and my having come was a result of our general state
of mind. Our general state of mind had proceeded, on its side, from our queer
ignorance, our queer misconceptions and confusions - from which, since then, an
inexorable tide of light seems to have floated us into our perhaps still queerer
knowledge. Don't you like your brother as he is,« he went on, »and haven't you
given your mother an intelligible account of all that that comes to?«
    It put to her also, doubtless, his own tone, too many things; this at least
would have been the case hadn't his final challenge directly helped her.
Everything, at the stage they had reached, directly helped her, because
everything betrayed in him such a basis of intention. He saw - the odd way
things came out! - that he would have been held less monstrous had he only been
a little wilder. What exposed him was just his poor old trick of quiet
inwardness, what exposed him was his thinking such offence. He hadn't in the
least however the desire to irritate that Sarah imputed to him, and he could
only at last temporise, for the moment, with her indignant view. She was
altogether more inflamed than he had expected, and he would probably understand
this better when he should learn what had occurred for her with Chad. Till then
her view of his particular blackness, her clear surprise at his not clutching
the pole she held out, must pass as extravagant. »I leave you to flatter
yourself,« she returned, »that what you speak of is what you've beautifully
done. When a thing has been already described in such a lovely way -!« But she
caught herself up, and her comment on his description rang out sufficiently
loud. »Do you consider her even an apology for a decent woman?«
    Ah there it was at last! She put the matter more crudely than, for his own
mixed purposes, he had yet had to do; but essentially it was all one matter. It
was so much - so much; and she treated it, poor lady, as so little. He grew
conscious, as he was now apt to do, of a strange smile, and the next moment he
found himself talking like Miss Barrace. »She has struck me from the first as
wonderful. I've been thinking too moreover that, after all, she would probably
have represented even for yourself something rather new and rather good.«
    He was to have given Mrs. Pocock with this, however, but her best
opportunity for a sound of derision. »Rather new? I hope so with all my heart!«
    »I mean,« he explained, »that she might have affected you by her exquisite
amiability - a real revelation, it has seemed to myself; her high rarity, her
distinction of every sort.«
    He had been, with these words, consciously a little precious; but he had had
to be - he couldn't give her the truth of the case without them; and it seemed
to him moreover now that he didn't care. He had at all events not served his
cause, for she sprang at its exposed side. »A revelation - to me: I've come to
such a woman for a revelation? You talk to me about distinction - you, you
who've had your privilege? - when the most distinguished woman we shall either
of us have seen in this world sits there insulted, in her loneliness, by your
incredible comparison!«
    Strether forbore, with an effort, from straying; but he looked all about
him. »Does your mother herself make the point that she sits insulted?«
    Sarah's answer came so straight, so pat, as might have been said, that he
felt on the instant its origin. »She has confided to my judgement and my
tenderness the expression of her personal sense of everything, and the assertion
of her personal dignity.«
    They were the very words of the lady of Woollett - he would have known them
in a thousand; her parting charge to her child. Mrs. Pocock accordingly spoke to
this extent by book, and the fact immensely moved him. »If she does really feel
as you say it's of course very very dreadful. I've given sufficient proof, one
would have thought,« he added, »of my deep admiration for Mrs. Newsome.«
    »And pray what proof would one have thought you'd call sufficient? That of
thinking this person here so far superior to her?«
    He wondered again; he waited. »Ah dear Sarah, you must leave me this person
here!«
    In his desire to avoid all vulgar retorts, to show how, even perversely, he
clung to his rag of reason, he had softly almost wailed this plea. Yet he knew
it to be perhaps the most positive declaration he had ever made in his life, and
his visitor's reception of it virtually gave it that importance. »That's exactly
what I'm delighted to do. God knows we don't want her! You take good care not to
meet,« she observed in a still higher key, »my question about their life. If you
do consider it a thing one can even speak of, I congratulate you on your taste!«
    The life she alluded to was of course Chad's and Madame de Vionnet's, which
she thus bracketed together in a way that made him wince a little; there being
nothing for him but to take home her full intention. It was none the less his
inconsequence that while he had himself been enjoying for weeks the view of the
brilliant woman's specific action, he just suffered from any characterisation of
it by other lips. »I think tremendously well of her, at the same time that I
seem to feel her life to be really none of my business. It's my business, that
is, only so far as Chad's own life is affected by it; and what has happened,
don't you see? is that Chad's has been affected so beautifully. The proof of the
pudding's in the eating« - he tried, with no great success, to help it out with
a touch of pleasantry, while she let him go on as if to sink and sink. He went
on however well enough, as well as he could do without fresh counsel; he indeed
shouldn't stand quite firm, he felt, till he should have re-established his
communications with Chad. Still, he could always speak for the woman he had so
definitely promised to save. This wasn't't quite for her the air of salvation; but
as that chill fairly deepened what did it become but a reminder that one might
at the worst perish with her? And it was simple enough - it was rudimentary:
not, not to give her away. »I find in her more merits than you would probably
have patience with my counting over. And do you know,« he enquired, »the effect
you produce on me by alluding to her in such terms? It's as if you had some
motive in not recognising all she has done for your brother, and so shut your
eyes to each side of the matter, in order, whichever side comes up, to get rid
of the other. I don't, you must allow me to say, see how you can with any
pretence to candour get rid of the side nearest you.«
    »Near me - that sort of thing?« And Sarah gave a jerk back of her head that
well might have nullified any active proximity.
    It kept her friend himself at his distance, and he respected for a moment
the interval. Then with a last persuasive effort he bridged it. »You don't, on
your honour, appreciate Chad's fortunate development?«
    »Fortunate?« she echoed again. And indeed she was prepared. »I call it
hideous.«
    Her departure had been for some minutes marked as imminent, and she was
already at the door that stood open to the court, from the threshold of which
she delivered herself of this judgement. It rang out so loud as to produce for
the time the hush of everything else. Strether quite, as an effect of it,
breathed less bravely; he could acknowledge it, but simply enough. »Oh if you
think that -!«
    »Then all's at an end? So much the better. I do think that!« She passed out
as she spoke and took her way straight across the court, beyond which, separated
from them by the deep arch of the porte-cochère the low victoria that had
conveyed her from her own hotel was drawn up. She made for it with decision, and
the manner of her break, the sharp shaft of her rejoinder, had an intensity by
which Strether was at first kept in arrest. She had let fly at him as from a
stretched cord, and it took him a minute to recover from the sense of being
pierced. It was not the penetration of surprise; it was that, much more, of
certainty; his case being put for him as he had as yet only put it to himself.
She was away at any rate; she had distanced him - with rather a grand spring, an
effect of pride and ease, after all; she had got into her carriage before he
could overtake her, and the vehicle was already in motion. He stopped halfway;
he stood there in the court only seeing her go and noting that she gave him no
other look. The way he had put it to himself was that all quite might be at an
end. Each of her movements, in this resolute rupture, reaffirmed, re-enforced
that idea. Sarah passed out of sight in the sunny street while, planted there in
the centre of the comparatively grey court, he continued merely to look before
him. It probably was all at an end.
 

                                 Book Eleventh

                                       I

He went late that evening to the Boulevard Malesherbes, having his impression
that it would be vain to go early, and having also, more than once in the course
of the day, made enquiries of the concierge. Chad hadn't come in and had left no
intimation; he had affairs, apparently, at this juncture - as it occurred to
Strether he so well might have - that kept him long abroad. Our friend asked
once for him at the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli, but the only contribution
offered there was the fact that every one was out. It was with the idea that he
would have to come home to sleep that Strether went up to his rooms, from which
however he was still absent, though, from the balcony, a few moments later, his
visitor heard eleven o'clock strike. Chad's servant had by this time answered
for his reappearance; he had, the visitor learned, come quickly in to dress for
dinner and vanish again. Strether spent an hour in waiting for him - an hour
full of strange suggestions, persuasions, recognitions; one of those that he was
to recall, at the end of his adventure, as the particular handful that most had
counted. The mellowest lamplight and the easiest chair had been placed at his
disposal by Baptiste, subtlest of servants; the novel half-uncut, the novel
lemon-coloured and tender, with the ivory knife athwart it like the dagger in a
contadina's hair, had been pushed within the soft circle - a circle which, for
some reason, affected Strether as softer still after the same Baptiste had
remarked that in the absence of a further need of anything by Monsieur he would
betake himself to bed. The night was hot and heavy and the single lamp
sufficient; the great flare of the lighted city, rising high, spending itself
afar, played up from the Boulevard and, through the vague vista of the
successive rooms, brought objects into view and added to their dignity. Strether
found himself in possession as he never yet had been; he had been there alone,
had turned over books and prints, had invoked, in Chad's absence, the spirit of
the place, but never at the witching hour and never with a relish quite so like
a pang.
    He spent a long time on the balcony; he hung over it as he had seen little
Bilham hang the day of his first approach, as he had seen Mamie hang over her
own the day little Bilham himself might have seen her from below; he passed back
into the rooms, the three that occupied the front and that communicated by wide
doors; and, while he circulated and rested, tried to recover the impression that
they had made on him three months before, to catch again the voice in which they
had seemed then to speak to him. That voice, he had to note, failed audibly to
sound; which he took as the proof of all the change in himself. He had heard, of
old, only what he could then hear; what he could do now was to think of three
months ago as a point in the far past. All voices had grown thicker and meant
more things; they crowded on him as he moved about - it was the way they sounded
together that wouldn't let him be still. He felt, strangely, as sad as if he had
come for some wrong, and yet as excited as if he had come for some freedom. But
the freedom was what was most in the place and the hour; it was the freedom that
most brought him round again to the youth of his own that he had long ago
missed. He could have explained little enough to-day either why he had missed it
or why, after years and years, he should care that he had; the main truth of the
actual appeal of everything was none the less that everything represented the
substance of his loss, put it within reach, within touch, made it, to a degree
it had never been, an affair of the senses. That was what it became for him at
this singular time, the youth he had long ago missed - a queer concrete
presence, full of mystery, yet full of reality, which he could handle, taste,
smell, the deep breathing of which he could positively hear. It was in the
outside air as well as within; it was in the long watch, from the balcony, in
the summer night, of the wide late life of Paris, the unceasing soft quick
rumble, below, of the little lighted carriages that, in the press, always
suggested the gamblers he had seen of old at Monte Carlo pushing up to the
tables. This image was before him when he at last became aware that Chad was
behind.
    »She tells me you put it all on me« - he had arrived after this promptly
enough at that information; which expressed the case however quite as the young
man appeared willing for the moment to leave it. Other things, with this
advantage of their virtually having the night before them, came up for them, and
had, as well, the odd effect of making the occasion, instead of hurried and
feverish, one of the largest, loosest and easiest to which Strether's whole
adventure was to have treated him. He had been pursuing Chad from an early hour
and had overtaken him only now; but now the delay was repaired by their being so
exceptionally confronted. They had foregathered enough of course in all the
various times; they had again and again, since that first night at the theatre,
been face to face over their question; but they had never been so alone together
as they were actually alone - their talk hadn't yet been so supremely for
themselves. And if many things moreover passed before them, none passed more
distinctly for Strether than that striking truth about Chad of which he had been
so often moved to take note: the truth that everything came happily back with
him to his knowing how to live. It had been seated in his pleased smile - a
smile that pleased exactly in the right degree - as his visitor turned round, on
the balcony, to greet his advent; his visitor in fact felt on the spot that
there was nothing their meeting would so much do as bear witness to that
facility. He surrendered himself accordingly to so approved a gift; for what was
the meaning of the facility but that others did surrender themselves? He didn't
want, luckily, to prevent Chad from living; but he was quite aware that even if
he had he would himself have thoroughly gone to pieces. It was in truth
essentially by bringing down his personal life to a function all subsidiary to
the young man's own that he held together. And the great point, above all, the
sign of how completely Chad possessed the knowledge in question, was that one
thus became, not only with a proper cheerfulness, but with wild native impulses,
the feeder of his stream. Their talk had accordingly not lasted three minutes
without Strether's feeling basis enough for the excitement in which he had
waited. This overflow fairly deepened, wastefully abounded, as he observed the
smallness of anything corresponding to it on the part of his friend. That was
exactly this friend's happy case; he put out his excitement, or whatever other
emotion the matter involved, as he put out his washing; than which no
arrangement could make more for domestic order. It was quite for Strether
himself in short to feel a personal analogy with the laundress bringing home the
triumphs of the mangle.
    When he had reported on Sarah's visit, which he did very fully, Chad
answered his question with perfect candour. »I positively referred her to you -
told her she must absolutely see you. This was last night, and it all took place
in ten minutes. It was our first free talk - really the first time she had
tackled me. She knew I also knew what her line had been with yourself; knew
moreover how little you had been doing to make anything difficult for her. So I
spoke for you frankly - assured her you were all at her service. I assured her I
was too,« the young man continued; »and I pointed out how she could perfectly,
at any time, have got at me. Her difficulty has been simply her not finding the
moment she fancied.«
    »Her difficulty,« Strether returned, »has been simply that she finds she's
afraid of you. She's not afraid of me, Sarah, one little scrap; and it was just
because she has seen how I can fidget when I give my mind to it that she has
felt her best chance, rightly enough, to be in making me as uneasy as possible.
I think she's at bottom as pleased to have you put it on me as you yourself can
possibly be to put it.«
    »But what in the world, my dear man,« Chad enquired in objection to this
luminosity, »have I done to make Sally afraid?«
    »You've been wonderful, wonderful, as we say - we poor people who watch the
play from the pit; and that's what has, admirably, made her. Made her all the
more effectually that she could see you didn't set about it on purpose - I mean
set about affecting her as with fear.«
    Chad cast a pleasant backward glance over his possibilities of motive. »I've
only wanted to be kind and friendly, to be decent and attentive - and I still
only want to be.«
    Strether smiled at his comfortable clearness. »Well, there can certainly be
no way for it better than by my taking the onus. It reduces your personal
friction and your personal offence to almost nothing.«
    Ah but Chad, with his completer conception of the friendly, wouldn't quite
have this! They had remained on the balcony, where, after their day of great and
premature heat, the midnight air was delicious; and they leaned back in turn
against the balustrade, all in harmony with the chairs and the flower-pots, the
cigarettes and the starlight. »The onus isn't really yours - after our agreeing
so to wait together and judge together. That was all my answer to Sally,« Chad
pursued - »that we have been, that we are, just judging together.«
    »I'm not afraid of the burden,« Strether explained; »I haven't come in the
least that you should take it off me. I've come very much, it seems to me, to
double up my fore legs in the manner of the camel when he gets down on his knees
to make his back convenient. But I've supposed you all this while to have been
doing a lot of special and private judging - about which I haven't troubled you;
and I've only wished to have your conclusion first from you. I don't ask more
than that; I'm quite ready to take it as it has come.«
    Chad turned up his face to the sky with a slow puff of his smoke. »Well,
I've seen.«
    Strether waited a little. »I've left you wholly alone; haven't, I think I
may say, since the first hour or two - when I merely preached patience - so much
as breathed on you.«
    »Oh you've been awfully good!«
    »We've both been good then - we've played the game. We've given them the
most liberal conditions.«
    »Ah,« said Chad, »splendid conditions! It was open to them, open to them« -
he seemed to make it out, as he smoked, with his eyes still on the stars. He
might in quiet sport have been reading their horoscope. Strether wondered
meanwhile what had been open to them, and he finally let him have it. »It was
open to them simply to let me alone; to have made up their minds, on really
seeing me for themselves, that I could go on well enough as I was.«
    Strether assented to this proposition with full lucidity, his companion's
plural pronoun, which stood all for Mrs. Newsome and her daughter, having no
ambiguity for him. There was nothing, apparently, to stand for Mamie and Jim;
and this added to our friend's sense of Chad's knowing what he thought. »But
they've made up their minds to the opposite - that you can't go on as you are.«
    »No,« Chad continued in the same way; »they won't have it for a minute.«
    Strether on his side also reflectively smoked. It was as if their high place
really represented some moral elevation from which they could look down on their
recent past. »There never was the smallest chance, do you know, that they would
have it for a moment.«
    »Of course not - no real chance. But if they were willing to think there was
-!«
    »They weren't willing.« Strether had worked it all out. »It wasn't't for you
they came out, but for me. It wasn't't to see for themselves what you're doing,
but what I'm doing. The first branch of their curiosity was inevitably destined,
under my culpable delay, to give way to the second; and it's on the second that,
if I may use the expression and you don't mind my marking the invidious fact,
they've been of late exclusively perched. When Sarah sailed it was me, in other
words, they were after.«
    Chad took it in both with intelligence and with indulgence. »It is rather a
business then - what I've let you in for!«
    Strether had again a brief pause; which ended in a reply that seemed to
dispose once for all of this element of compunction. Chad was to treat it, at
any rate, so far as they were again together, as having done so. »I was in when
you found me.«
    »Ah but it was you,« the young man laughed, »who found me.«
    »I only found you out. It was you who found me in. It was all in the day's
work for them, at all events, that they should come. And they've greatly enjoyed
it,« Strether declared.
    »Well, I've tried to make them,« said Chad.
    His companion did himself presently the same justice. »So have I. I tried
even this very morning - while Mrs. Pocock was with me. She enjoys for instance,
almost as much as anything else, not being, as I've said, afraid of me; and I
think I gave her help in that.«
    Chad took a deeper interest. »Was she very very nasty?«
    Strether debated. »Well, she was the most important thing - she was
definite. She was - at last - crystalline. And I felt no remorse. I saw that
they must have come.«
    »Oh I wanted to see them for myself; so that if it were only for that -!«
Chad's own remorse was as small.
    This appeared almost all Strether wanted. »Isn't your having seen them for
yourself then the thing, beyond all others, that has come of their visit?«
    Chad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it so. »Don't
you count it as anything that you're dished - if you are dished? Are you, my
dear man, dished?«
    It sounded as if he were asking if he had caught cold or hurt his foot, and
Strether for a minute but smoked and smoked. »I want to see her again. I must
see her.«
    »Of course you must.« Then Chad hesitated. »Do you mean - a - Mother
herself?«
    »Oh your mother - that will depend.«
    It was as if Mrs. Newsome had somehow been placed by the words very far off.
Chad however endeavoured in spite of this to reach the place. »What do you mean
it will depend on?«
    Strether, for all answer, gave him a longish look. »I was speaking of Sarah.
I must positively - though she quite cast me off - see her again. I can't part
with her that way.«
    »Then she was awfully unpleasant?«
    Again Strether exhaled. »She was what she had to be. I mean that from the
moment they're not delighted they can only be - well what I admit she was. We
gave them,« he went on, »their chance to be delighted, and they've walked up to
it, and looked all round it, and not taken it.«
    »You can bring a horse to water -!« Chad suggested.
    »Precisely. And the tune to which this morning Sarah wasn't't delighted - the
tune to which, to adopt your metaphor, she refused to drink - leaves us on that
side nothing more to hope.«
    Chad had a pause, and then as if consolingly: »It was never of course really
the least on the cards that they would be delighted.«
    »Well, I don't know, after all,« Strether mused. »I've had to come as far
round. However« - he shook it off - »it's doubtless my performance that's
absurd.«
    »There are certainly moments,« said Chad, »when you seem to me too good to
be true. Yet if you are true,« he added, »that seems to be all that need concern
me.«
    »I'm true, but I'm incredible. I'm fantastic and ridiculous - I don't
explain myself even to myself. How can they then,« Strether asked, »understand
me? So I don't quarrel with them.«
    »I see. They quarrel,« said Chad rather comfortably, »with us.« Strether
noted once more the comfort, but his young friend had already gone on. »I should
feel greatly ashamed, all the same, if I didn't put it before you again that you
ought to think, after all, tremendously well. I mean before giving up beyond
recall -« With which insistence, as from a certain delicacy, dropped.
    Ah but Strether wanted it. »Say it all, say it all.«
    »Well, at your age, and with what - when all's said and done - Mother might
do for you and be for you.«
    Chad had said it all, from his natural scruple, only to that extent; so that
Strether after an instant himself took a hand. »My absence of an assured future.
The little I have to show toward the power to take care of myself. The way, the
wonderful way, she would certainly take care of me. Her fortune, her kindness,
and the constant miracle of her having been disposed to go even so far. Of
course, of course« - he summed it up. »There are those sharp facts.«
    Chad had meanwhile thought of another still. »And don't you really care -?«
    His friend slowly turned round to him. »Will you go?«
    »I'll go if you'll say you now consider I should. You know,« he went on, »I
was ready six weeks ago.«
    »Ah,« said Strether, »that was when you didn't know I wasn't't! You're ready
at present because you do know it.«
    »That may be,« Chad returned; »but all the same I'm sincere. You talk about
taking the whole thing on your shoulders, but in what light do you regard me
that you think me capable of letting you pay?« Strether patted his arm, as they
stood together against the parapet, reassuringly - seeming to wish to contend
that he had the wherewithal; but it was again round this question of purchase
and price that the young man's sense of fairness continued to hover. »What it
literally comes to for you, if you'll pardon my putting it so, is that you give
up money. Possibly a good deal of money.«
    »Oh,« Strether laughed, »if it were only just enough you'd still be
justified in putting it so! But I've on my side to remind you too that you give
up money; and more than possibly - quite certainly, as I should suppose - a good
deal.«
    »True enough; but I've got a certain quantity,« Chad returned after a
moment. »Whereas you, my dear man, you -«
    »I can't be at all said« - Strether took him up - »to have a quantity
certain or uncertain? Very true. Still, I shan't starve.«
    »Oh you mustn't starve!« Chad pacifically emphasised; and so, in the
pleasant conditions, they continued to talk; though there was, for that matter,
a pause in which the younger companion might have been taken as weighing again
the delicacy of his then and there promising the elder some provision against
the possibility just mentioned. This, however, he presumably thought best not to
do, for at the end of another minute they had moved in quite a different
direction. Strether had broken in by returning to the subject of Chad's passage
with Sarah and enquiring if they had arrived, in the event, at anything in the
nature of a scene. To this Chad replied that they had on the contrary kept
tremendously polite; adding moreover that Sally was after all not the woman to
have made the mistake of not being. »Her hands are a good deal tied, you see. I
got so, from the first,« he sagaciously observed, »the start of her.«
    »You mean she has taken so much from you?«
    »Well, I couldn't of course in common decency give less: only she hadn't
expected, I think, that I'd give her nearly so much. And she began to take it
before she knew it.«
    »And she began to like it,« said Strether, »as soon as she began to take
it!«
    »Yes, she has liked it - also more than she expected.« After which Chad
observed: »But she doesn't't like me. In fact she hates me.«
    Strether's interest grew. »Then why does she want you at home?«
    »Because when you hate you want to triumph, and if she should get me neatly
stuck there she would triumph.«
    Strether followed afresh, but looking as he went. »Certainly - in a manner.
But it would scarce be a triumph worth having if, once entangled, feeling her
dislike and possibly conscious in time of a certain quantity of your own, you
should on the spot make yourself unpleasant to her.«
    »Ah,« said Chad, »she can bear me - could bear me at least at home. It's my
being there that would be her triumph. She hates me in Paris.«
    »She hates in other words -«
    »Yes, that's it!« - Chad had quickly understood this understanding; which
formed on the part of each as near an approach as they had yet made to naming
Madame de Vionnet. The limitations of their distinctness didn't, however,
prevent its fairly lingering in the air that it was this lady Mrs. Pocock hated.
It added one more touch moreover to their established recognition of the rare
intimacy of Chad's association with her. He had never yet more twitched away the
last light veil from this phenomenon than in presenting himself as confounded
and submerged in the feeling she had created at Woollett. »And I'll tell you who
hates me too,« he immediately went on.
    Strether knew as immediately whom he meant, but with as prompt a protest.
»Ah no! Mamie doesn't't hate - well,« he caught himself in time - »anybody at all.
Mamie's beautiful.«
    Chad shook his head. »That's just why I mind it. She certainly doesn't't like
me.«
    »How much do you mind it? What would you do for her?«
    »Well, I'd like her if she'd like me. Really, really,« Chad declared.
    It gave his companion a moment's pause. »You asked me just now if I don't,
as you said, care about a certain person. You rather tempt me therefore to put
the question in my turn. Don't you care about a certain other person?«
    Chad looked at him hard in the lamplight of the window. »The difference is
that I don't want to.«
    Strether wondered. »Don't want to?«
    »I try not to - that is I have tried. I've done my best. You can't be
surprised,« the young man easily went on, »when you yourself set me on it. I was
indeed,« he added, »already on it a little; but you set me harder. It was six
weeks ago that I thought I had come out.«
    Strether took it well in. »But you haven't come out!«
    »I don't know - it's what I want to know,« said Chad. »And if I could have
sufficiently wanted - by myself - to go back, I think I might have found out.«
    »Possibly« - Strether considered. »But all you were able to achieve was to
want to want to! And even then,« he pursued, »only till our friends there came.
Do you want to want to still?« As with a sound half-dolorous, half-droll and all
vague and equivocal, Chad buried his face for a little in his hands, rubbing it
in a whimsical way that amounted to an evasion, he brought it out more sharply:
»Do you?«
    Chad kept for a time his attitude, but at last he looked up, and then
abruptly, »Jim is a damned dose!« he declared.
    »Oh I don't ask you to abuse or describe or in any way pronounce on your
relatives; I simply put it to you once more whether you're now ready. You say
you've seen. Is what you've seen that you can't resist?«
    Chad gave him a strange smile - the nearest approach he had ever shown to a
troubled one. »Can't you make me not resist?«
    »What it comes to,« Strether went on very gravely now and as if he hadn't
heard him, »what it comes to is that more has been done for you, I think, than
I've ever seen done - attempted perhaps, but never so successfully done - by one
human being for another.«
    »Oh an immense deal certainly« - Chad did it full justice. »And you yourself
are adding to it.«
    It was without heeding this either that his visitor continued. »And our
friends there won't have it.«
    »No, they simply won't.«
    »They demand you on the basis, as it were, of repudiation and ingratitude;
and what has been the matter with me,« Strether went on, »is that I haven't seen
my way to working with you for repudiation.«
    Chad appreciated this. »Then as you haven't seen yours you naturally haven't
seen mine. There it is.« After which he proceeded, with a certain abruptness, to
a sharp interrogation. »Now do you say she doesn't't hate me?«
    Strether hesitated. »She -?«
    »Yes - Mother. We called it Sarah, but it comes to the same thing.«
    »Ah,« Strether objected, »not to the same thing as her hating you.«
    On which - though as if for an instant it had hung fire - Chad remarkably
replied: »Well, if they hate my good friend, that comes to the same thing.« It
had a note of inevitable truth that made Strether take it as enough, feel he
wanted nothing more. The young man spoke in it for his good friend more than he
had ever yet directly spoken, confessed to such deep identities between them as
he might play with the idea of working free from, but which at a given moment
could still draw him down like a whirlpool. And meanwhile he had gone on. »Their
hating you too moreover - that also comes to a good deal.«
    »Ah,« said Strether, »your mother doesn't't.«
    Chad, however, loyally stuck to it - loyally, that is, to Strether. »She
will if you don't look out.«
    »Well, I do look out. I am, after all, looking out. That's just why,« our
friend explained, »I want to see her again.«
    It drew from Chad again the same question. »To see Mother?«
    »To see - for the present - Sarah.«
    »Ah then there you are! And what I don't for the life of me make out,« Chad
pursued with resigned perplexity, »is what you gain by it.«
    Oh it would have taken his companion too long to say! »That's because you
have, I verily believe, no imagination. You've other qualities. But no
imagination, don't you see? at all.«
    »I dare say. I do see.« It was an idea in which Chad showed interest. »But
haven't you yourself rather too much?«
    »Oh rather -!« So that after an instant, under this reproach and as if it
were at last a fact really to escape from, Strether made his move for departure.

                                       II

 
One of the features of the restless afternoon passed by him after Mrs. Pocock's
visit was an hour spent, shortly before dinner, with Maria Gostrey, whom of
late, in spite of so sustained a call on his attention from other quarters, he
had by no means neglected. And that he was still not neglecting her will appear
from the fact that he was with her again at the same hour on the very morrow-
with no less fine a consciousness moreover of being able to hold her ear. It
continued inveterately to occur, for that matter, that whenever he had taken one
of his greater turns he came back to where she so faithfully awaited him. None
of these excursions had on the whole been livelier than the pair of incidents -
the fruit of the short interval since his previous visit - on which he had now
to report to her. He had seen Chad Newsome late the night before, and he had had
that morning, as a sequel to this conversation, a second interview with Sarah.
»But they're all off,« he said, »at last.«
    It puzzled her a moment. »All? - Mr. Newsome with them?«
    »Ah not yet! Sarah and Jim and Mamie. But Waymarsh with them - for Sarah.
It's too beautiful,« Strether continued; »I find I don't get over that - it's
always a fresh joy. But it's a fresh joy too,« he added, »that - well, what do
you think? Little Bilham also goes. But he of course goes for Mamie.«
    Miss Gostrey wondered. »For her? Do you mean they're already engaged?«
    »Well,« said Strether, »say then for me. He'll do anything for me; just as I
will, for that matter - anything I can - for him. Or for Mamie either. She'll do
anything for me.«
    Miss Gostrey gave a comprehensive sigh. »The way you reduce people to
subjection!«
    »It's certainly, on one side, wonderful. But it's quite equalled, on
another, by the way I don't. I haven't reduced Sarah, since yesterday; though
I've succeeded in seeing her again, as I'll presently tell you. The others
however are really all right. Mamie, by that blessed law of ours, absolutely
must have a young man.«
    »But what must poor Mr. Bilham have? Do you mean they'll marry for you?«
    »I mean that, by the same blessed law, it won't matter a grain if they don't
- I shan't have in the least to worry.«
    She saw as usual what he meant. »And Mr. Jim? - who goes for him?«
    »Oh,« Strether had to admit, »I couldn't manage that. He's thrown, as usual,
on the world; the world which, after all, by his account - for he has prodigious
adventures - seems very good to him. He fortunately - over here, as he says -
finds the world everywhere; and his most prodigious adventure of all,« he went
on, »has been of course of the last few days.«
    Miss Gostrey, already knowing, instantly made the connexion. »He has seen
Marie de Vionnet again?«
    »He went, all by himself, the day after Chad's party - didn't I tell you? -
to tea with her. By her invitation - all alone.«
    »Quite like yourself!« Maria smiled.
    »Oh but he's more wonderful about her than I am!« And then as his friend
showed how she could believe it, filling it out, fitting it on to old memories
of the wonderful woman: »What I should have liked to manage would have been her
going.«
    »To Switzerland with the party?«
    »For Jim - and for symmetry. If it had been workable moreover for a
fortnight she'd have gone. She's ready« - he followed up his renewed vision of
her - »for anything.«
    Miss Gostrey went with him a minute. »She's too perfect!«
    »She will, I think,« he pursued, »go to-night to the station.«
    »To see him off?«
    »With Chad - marvellously - as part of their general attention. And she does
it« - it kept before him - »with a light, light grace, a free, free gaiety, that
may well softly bewilder Mr. Pocock.«
    It kept her so before him that his companion had after an instant a friendly
comment. »As in short it has softly bewildered a saner man. Are you really in
love with her?« Maria threw off.
    »It's of no importance I should know,« he replied. »It matters so little -
has nothing to do, practically, with either of us.«
    »All the same« - Maria continued to smile - »they go, the five, as I
understand you, and you and Madame de Vionnet stay.«
    »Oh and Chad.« To which Strether added: »And you.«
    »Ah me!« - she gave a small impatient wail again, in which something of the
unreconciled seemed suddenly to break out. »I don't stay, it somehow seems to
me, much to my advantage. In the presence of all you cause to pass before me
I've a tremendous sense of privation.«
    Strether hesitated. »But your privation, your keeping out of everything, has
been - hasn't it? - by your own choice.«
    »Oh yes; it has been necessary - that is it has been better for you. What I
mean is only that I seem to have ceased to serve you.«
    »How can you tell that?« he asked. »You don't know how you serve me. When
you cease -«
    »Well?« she said as he dropped.
    »Well, I'll let you know. Be quiet till then.«
    She thought a moment. »Then you positively like me to stay?«
    »Don't I treat you as if I did?«
    »You're certainly very kind to me. But that,« said Maria, »is for myself.
It's getting late, as you see, and Paris turning rather hot and dusty. People
are scattering, and some of them, in other places, want me. But if you want me
here -!«
    She had spoken as resigned to his word, but he had of a sudden a still
sharper sense than he would have expected of desiring not to lose her. »I want
you here.«
    She took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they brought her,
gave her something that was the compensation of her case. »Thank you,« she
simply answered. And then as he looked at her a little harder, »Thank you very
much,« she repeated.
    It had broken as with a slight arrest into the current of their talk, and it
held him a moment longer. »Why, two months, or whatever the time was, ago, did
you so suddenly dash off? The reason you afterwards gave me for having kept away
three weeks wasn't't the real one.«
    She recalled. »I never supposed you believed it was. Yet,« she continued,
»if you didn't guess it that was just what helped you.«
    He looked away from her on this; he indulged, so far as space permitted, in
one of his slow absences. »I've often thought of it, but never to feel that I
could guess it. And you see the consideration with which I've treated you in
never asking till now.«
    »Now then why do you ask?«
    »To show you how I miss you when you're not here, and what it does for me.«
    »It doesn't't seem to have done,« she laughed, »all it might! However,« she
added, »if you've really never guessed the truth I'll tell it you.«
    »I've never guessed it,« Strether declared.
    »Never?«
    »Never.«
    »Well then I dashed off, as you say, so as not to have the confusion of
being there if Marie de Vionnet should tell you anything to my detriment.«
    He looked as if he considerably doubted. »You even then would have had to
face it on your return.«
    »Oh if I had found reason to believe it something very bad I'd have left you
altogether.«
    »So then,« he continued, »it was only on guessing she had been on the whole
merciful that you ventured back?«
    Maria kept it together. »I owe her thanks. Whatever her temptation she
didn't separate us. That's one of my reasons,« she went on, »for admiring her
so.«
    »Let it pass then,« said Strether, »for one of mine as well. But what would
have been her temptation?«
    »What are ever the temptations of women?«
    He thought - but hadn't, naturally, to think too long. »Men?«
    »She would have had you, with it, more for herself. But she saw she could
have you without it.«
    »Oh have me!« Strether a trifle ambiguously sighed. »You,« he handsomely
declared, »would have had me at any rate with it.«
    »Oh have you!« - she echoed it as he had done. »I do have you, however,« she
less ironically said, »from the moment you express a wish.«
    He stopped before her, full of the disposition. »I'll express fifty.«
    Which indeed begot in her, with a certain inconsequence, a return of her
small wail. »Ah there you are!«
    There, if it were so, he continued for the rest of the time to be, and it
was as if to show her how she could still serve him that, coming back to the
departure of the Pococks, he gave her the view, vivid with a hundred more
touches than we can reproduce, of what had happened for him that morning. He had
had ten minutes with Sarah at her hotel, ten minutes reconquered, by
irresistible pressure, from the time over which he had already described her to
Miss Gostrey as having, at the end of their interview on his own premises,
passed the great sponge of the future. He had caught her by not announcing
himself, had found her in her sitting-room with a dressmaker and a lingère whose
accounts she appeared to have been more or less ingenuously settling and who
soon withdrew. Then he had explained to her how he had succeeded, late the night
before, in keeping his promise of seeing Chad. »I told her I'd take it all.«
    »You'd take it?«
    »Why if he doesn't't go.«
    Maria waited. »And who takes it if he does?« she enquired with a certain
grimness of gaiety.
    »Well,« said Strether, »I think I take, in any event, everything.«
    »By which I suppose you mean,« his companion brought out after a moment,
»that you definitely understand you now lose everything.«
    He stood before her again. »It does come perhaps to the same thing. But
Chad, now that he has seen, doesn't't really want it.«
    She could believe that, but she made, as always, for clearness. »Still,
what, after all, has he seen?«
    »What they want of him. And it's enough.«
    »It contrasts so unfavourably with what Madame de Vionnet wants?«
    »It contrasts - just so; all round, and tremendously.«
    »Therefore, perhaps, most of all with what you want?«
    »Oh,« said Strether, »what I want is a thing I've ceased to measure or even
to understand.«
    But his friend none the less went on. »Do you want Mrs. Newsome - after such
a way of treating you?«
    It was a straighter mode of dealing with this lady than they had as yet -
such was their high form - permitted themselves; but it seemed not wholly for
this that he delayed a moment. »I dare say it has been, after all, the only way
she could have imagined.«
    »And does that make you want her any more?«
    »I've tremendously disappointed her,« Strether thought it worth while to
mention.
    »Of course you have. That's rudimentary; that was plain to us long ago. But
isn't it almost as plain,« Maria went on, »that you've even yet your straight
remedy? Really drag him away, as I believe you still can, and you'd cease to
have to count with her disappointment.«
    »Ah then,« he laughed, »I should have to count with yours!«
    But this barely struck her now. »What, in that case, should you call
counting? You haven't come out where you are, I think, to please me.«
    »Oh,« he insisted, »that too, you know, has been part of it. I can't
separate - it's all one; and that's perhaps why, as I say, I don't understand.«
But he was ready to declare again that this didn't in the least matter; all the
more that, as he affirmed, he hadn't really as yet come out. »She gives me after
all, on its coming to the pinch, a last mercy, another chance. They don't sail,
you see, for five or six weeks more, and they haven't - she admits that -
expected Chad would take part in their tour. It's still open to him to join
them, at the last, at Liverpool.«
    Miss Gostrey considered. »How in the world is it open unless you open it?
How can he join them at Liverpool if he but sinks deeper into his situation
here?«
    »He has given her - as I explained to you that she let me know yesterday -
his word of honour to do as I say.«
    Maria stared. »But if you say nothing!«
    Well, he as usual walked about on it. »I did say something this morning. I
gave her my answer - the word I had promised her after hearing from himself what
he had promised. What she demanded of me yesterday, you'll remember, was the
engagement then and there to make him take up this vow.«
    »Well then,« Miss Gostrey enquired, »was the purpose of your visit to her
only to decline?«
    »No; it was to ask, odd as that may seem to you, for another delay.«
    »Ah that's weak!«
    »Precisely!« She had spoken with impatience, but, so far as that at least,
he knew where he was. »If I am weak I want to find it out. If I don't find it
out I shall have the comfort, the little glory, of thinking I'm strong.«
    »It's all the comfort, I judge,« she returned, »that you will have!«
    »At any rate,« he said, »it will have been a month more. Paris may grow,
from day to day, hot and dusty, as you say; but there are other things that are
hotter and dustier. I'm not afraid to stay on; the summer here must be amusing
in a wild - if it isn't a tame - way of its own; the place at no time more
picturesque. I think I shall like it. And then,« he benevolently smiled for her,
»there will be always you.«
    »Oh,« she objected, »it won't be as a part of the picturesqueness that I
shall stay, for I shall be the plainest thing about you. You may, you see, at
any rate,« she pursued, »have nobody else. Madame de Vionnet may very well be
going off, mayn't she? - and Mr. Newsome by the same stroke: unless indeed
you've had an assurance from them to the contrary. So that if your idea's to
stay for them« - it was her duty to suggest it - »you may be left in the lurch.
Of course if they do stay« - she kept it up - »they would be part of the
picturesqueness. Or else indeed you might join them somewhere.«
    Strether seemed to face it as if it were a happy thought; but the next
moment he spoke more critically. »Do you mean that they'll probably go off
together?«
    She just considered. »I think it will be treating you quite without ceremony
if they do; though after all,« she added, »it would be difficult to see now
quite what degree of ceremony properly meets your case.«
    »Of course,« Strether conceded, »my attitude toward them is extraordinary.«
    »Just so; so that one may ask one's self what style of proceeding on their
own part can altogether match it. The attitude of their own that won't pale in
its light they've doubtless still to work out. The really handsome thing
perhaps,« she presently threw off, »would be for them to withdraw into more
secluded conditions, offering at the same time to share them with you.« He
looked at her, on this, as if some generous irritation - all in his interest -
had suddenly again flickered in her; and what she next said indeed half -
explained it. »Don't really be afraid to tell me if what now holds you is the
pleasant prospect of the empty town, with plenty of seats in the shade, cool
drinks, deserted museums, drives to the Bois in the evening, and our wonderful
woman all to yourself.« And she kept it up still more. »The handsomest thing of
all, when one makes it out, would, I dare say, be that Mr. Chad should for a
while go off by himself. It's a pity, from that point of view,« she wound up,
»that he doesn't't pay his mother a visit. It would at least occupy your
interval.« The thought in fact held her a moment. »Why doesn't't he pay his mother
a visit? Even a week, at this good moment, would do.«
    »My dear lady,« Strether replied - and he had it even to himself
surprisingly ready - »my dear lady, his mother has paid him a visit. Mrs.
Newsome has been with him, this month, with an intensity that I'm sure he has
thoroughly felt; he has lavishly entertained her, and she has let him have her
thanks. Do you suggest he shall go back for more of them?«
    Well, she succeeded after a little in shaking it off. »I see. It's what you
don't suggest - what you haven't suggested. And you know.«
    »So would you, my dear,« he kindly said, »if you had so much as seen her.«
    »As seen Mrs. Newsome?«
    »No, Sarah - which, both for Chad and for myself, has served all the
purpose.«
    »And served it in a manner,« she responsively mused, »so extraordinary!«
    »Well, you see,« he partly explained, »what it comes to is that she's all
cold thought - which Sarah could serve to us cold without its really losing
anything. So it is that we know what she thinks of us.«
    Maria had followed, but she had an arrest. »What I've never made out, if you
come to that, is what you think - I mean you personally - of her. Don't you so
much, when all's said, as care a little?«
    »That,« he answered with no loss of promptness, »is what even Chad himself
asked me last night. He asked me if I don't mind the loss - well, the loss of an
opulent future. Which moreover,« he hastened to add, »was a perfectly natural
question.«
    »I call your attention, all the same,« said Miss Gostrey, »to the fact that
I don't ask it. What I venture to ask is whether it's to Mrs. Newsome herself
that you're indifferent.«
    »I haven't been so« - he spoke with all assurance. »I've been the very
opposite. I've been, from the first moment, preoccupied with the impression
everything might be making on her - quite oppressed, haunted, tormented by it.
I've been interested only in her seeing what I've seen. And I've been as
disappointed in her refusal to see it as she has been in what has appeared to
her the perversity of my insistence.«
    »Do you mean that she has shocked you as you've shocked her?«
    Strether weighed it. »I'm probably not so shockable. But on the other hand
I've gone much further to meet her. She, on her side, hasn't budged an inch.«
    »So that you're now at last« - Maria pointed the moral - »in the sad stage
of recriminations.«
    »No - it's only to you I speak. I've been like a lamb to Sarah. I've only
put my back to the wall. It's to that one naturally staggers when one has been
violently pushed there.«
    She watched him a moment. »Thrown over?«
    »Well, as I feel I've landed somewhere I think I must have been thrown.«
    She turned it over, but as hoping to clarify much rather than to harmonise.
»The thing is that I suppose you've been disappointing -«
    »Quite from the very first of my arrival? I dare say. I admit I was
surprising even to myself.«
    »And then of course,« Maria went on, »I had much to do with it.«
    »With my being surprising -?«
    »That will do,« she laughed, »if you're too delicate to call it my being!
Naturally,« she added, »you came over more or less for surprises.«
    »Naturally!« - he valued the reminder.
    »But they were to have been all for you« - she continued to piece it out -
»and none of them for her.«
    Once more he stopped before her as if she had touched the point. »That's
just her difficulty - that she doesn't't admit surprises. It's a fact that, I
think, describes and represents her; and it falls in with what I tell you - that
she's all, as I've called it, fine cold thought. She had, to her own mind,
worked the whole thing out in advance, and worked it out for me as well as for
herself. Whenever she has done that, you see, there's no room left; no margin,
as it were, for any alteration. She's filled as full, packed as tight, as she'll
hold, and if you wish to get anything more or different either out or in -«
    »You've got to make over altogether the woman herself?«
    »What it comes to,« said Strether, »is that you've got morally and
intellectually to get rid of her.«
    »Which would appear,« Maria returned, »to be practically what you've done.«
    But her friend threw back his head. »I haven't touched her. She won't be
touched. I see it now as I've never done; and she hangs together with a
perfection of her own,« he went on, »that does suggest a kind of wrong in any
change of her composition. It was at any rate,« he wound up, »the woman herself,
as you call her, the whole moral and intellectual being or block, that Sarah
brought me over to take or to leave.«
    It turned Miss Gostrey to deeper thought. »Fancy having to take at the point
of the bayonet a whole moral and intellectual being or block!«
    »It was in fact,« said Strether, »what, at home, I had done. But somehow
over there I didn't quite know it.«
    »One never does, I suppose,« Miss Gostrey concurred, »realise in advance, in
such a case, the size, as you may say, of the block. Little by little it looms
up. It has been looming for you more and more till at last you see it all.«
    »I see it all,« he absently echoed, while his eyes might have been fixing
some particularly large iceberg in a cool blue northern sea. »It's magnificent!«
he then rather oddly exclaimed.
    But his friend, who was used to this kind of inconsequence in him, kept the
thread. »There's nothing so magnificent - for making others feel you - as to
have no imagination.«
    It brought him straight round. »Ah there you are! It's what I said last
night to Chad. That he himself, I mean, has none.«
    »Then it would appear,« Maria suggested, »that he has, after all, something
in common with his mother.«
    »He has in common that he makes one, as you say, feel him. And yet,« he
added, as if the question were interesting, »one feels others too, even when
they have plenty.«
    Miss Gostrey continued suggestive. »Madame de Vionnet?«
    »She has plenty.«
    »Certainly - she had quantities of old. But there are different ways of
making one's self felt.«
    »Yes, it comes, no doubt, to that. You now -«
    He was benevolently going on, but she wouldn't have it. »Oh I don't make
myself felt; so my quantity needn't be settled. Yours, you know,« she said, »is
monstrous. No one has ever had so much.«
    It struck him for a moment. »That's what Chad also thinks.«
    »There you are then - though it isn't for him to complain of it!«
    »Oh he doesn't't complain of it,« said Strether.
    »That's all that would be wanting! But apropos of what,« Maria went on, »did
the question come up?«
    »Well, of his asking me what it is I gain.«
    She had a pause. »Then as I've asked you too it settles my case. Oh you
have,« she repeated, »treasures of imagination.«
    But he had been for an instant thinking away from this, and he came up in
another place. »And yet Mrs. Newsome - it's a thing to remember - has imagined,
did, that is, imagine, and apparently still does, horrors about what I should
have found. I was booked, by her vision - extraordinarily intense, after all -
to find them; and that I didn't, that I couldn't, that, as she evidently felt, I
wouldn't - this evidently didn't at all, as they say, suit her book. It was more
than she could bear. That was her disappointment.«
    »You mean you were to have found Chad himself horrible?«
    »I was to have found the woman.«
    »Horrible?«
    »Found her as she imagined her.« And Strether paused as if for his own
expression of it he could add no touch to that picture.
    His companion had meanwhile thought. »She imagined stupidly - so it comes to
the same thing.«
    »Stupidly? Oh!« said Strether.
    But she insisted. »She imagined meanly.«
    He had it, however, better. »It couldn't but be ignorantly.«
    »Well, intensity with ignorance - what do you want worse?«
    This question might have held him, but he let it pass. »Sarah isn't ignorant
- now; she keeps up the theory of the horrible.«
    »Ah but she's intense - and that by itself will do sometimes as well. If it
doesn't't do, in this case, at any rate, to deny that Marie's charming, it will do
at least to deny that she's good.«
    »What I claim is that she's good for Chad.«
    »You don't claim« - she seemed to like it clear - »that she's good for you.«
    But he continued without heeding. »That's what I wanted them to come out for
- to see for themselves if she's bad for him.«
    »And now that they've done so they won't admit that she's good even for
anything?«
    »They do think,« Strether presently admitted, »that she's on the whole about
as bad for me. But they're consistent of course, inasmuch as they've their clear
view of what's good for both of us.«
    »For you, to begin with« - Maria, all responsive, confined the question for
the moment - »to eliminate from your existence and if possible even from your
memory the dreadful creature that I must gruesomely shadow forth for them, even
more than to eliminate the distincter evil - thereby a little less portentous -
of the person whose confederate you've suffered yourself to become. However,
that's comparatively simple. You can easily, at the worst, after all, give me
up.«
    »I can easily at the worst, after all, give you up.« The irony was so
obvious that it needed no care. »I can easily at the worst, after all, even
forget you.«
    »Call that then workable. But Mr. Newsome has much more to forget. How can
he do it?«
    »Ah there again we are! That's just what I was to have made him do; just
where I was to have worked with him and helped.«
    She took it in silence and without attenuation - as if perhaps from very
familiarity with the facts; and her thought made a connexion without showing the
links. »Do you remember how we used to talk at Chester and in London about my
seeing you through?« She spoke as of far-off things and as if they had spent
weeks at the places she named.
    »It's just what you are doing.«
    »Ah but the worst - since you've left such a margin - may be still to come.
You may yet break down.«
    »Yes, I may yet break down. But will you take me -?«
    He had hesitated, and she waited. »Take you?«
    »For as long as I can bear it.«
    She also debated. »Mr. Newsome and Madame de Vionnet may, as we were saying,
leave town. How long do you think you can bear it without them?«
    Strether's reply to this was at first another question. »Do you mean in
order to get away from me?«
    Her answer had an abruptness. »Don't find me rude if I say I should think
they'd want to!«
    He looked at her hard again - seemed even for an instant to have an
intensity of thought under which his colour changed. But he smiled. »You mean
after what they've done to me?«
    »After what she has.«
    At this, however, with a laugh, he was all right again. »Ah but she hasn't
done it yet!«

                                      III

 
He had taken the train a few days after this from a station - as well as to a
station - selected almost at random; such days, whatever should happen, were
numbered, and he had gone forth under the impulse - artless enough, no doubt -
to give the whole of one of them to that French ruralism, with its cool special
green, into which he had hitherto looked only through the little oblong window
of the picture-frame. It had been as yet for the most part but a land of fancy
for him - the background of fiction, the medium of art, the nursery of letters;
practically as distant as Greece, but practically also well-nigh as consecrated.
Romance could weave itself, for Strether's sense, out of elements mild enough;
and even after what he had, as he felt, lately been through, he could thrill a
little at the chance of seeing something somewhere that would remind him of a
certain small Lambinet that had charmed him, long years before, at a Boston
dealer's and that he had quite absurdly never forgotten. It had been offered, he
remembered, at a price he had been instructed to believe the lowest ever named
for a Lambinet, a price he had never felt so poor as on having to recognise, all
the same, as beyond a dream of possibility. He had dreamed - had turned and
twisted possibilities for an hour: it had been the only adventure of his life in
connexion with the purchase of a work of art. The adventure, it will be
perceived, was modest; but the memory, beyond all reason and by some accident of
association, was sweet. The little Lambinet abode with him as the picture he
would have bought - the particular production that had made him for the moment
overstep the modesty of nature. He was quite aware that if he were to see it
again he should perhaps have a drop or a shock, and he never found himself
wishing that the wheel of time would turn it up again, just as he had seen it in
the maroon-coloured, sky-lighted inner shrine of Tremont Street. It would be a
different thing, however, to see the remembered mixture resolved back into its
elements - to assist at the restoration to nature of the whole far-away hour:
the dusty day in Boston, the background of the Fitchburg Depot, of the
maroon-coloured sanctum, the special-green vision, the ridiculous price, the
poplars, the willows, the rushes, the river, the sunny silvery sky, the shady
woody horizon.
    He observed in respect to his train almost no condition save that it should
stop a few times after getting out of the banlieue; he threw himself on the
general amiability of the day for the hint of where to alight. His theory of his
excursion was that he could alight anywhere - not nearer Paris than an hour's
run - on catching a suggestion of the particular note required. It made its
sign, the suggestion - weather, air, light, colour and his mood all favouring -
at the end of some eighty minutes; the train pulled up just at the right spot,
and he found himself getting out as securely as if to keep an appointment. It
will be felt of him that he could amuse himself, at his age, with very small
things if it be again noted that his appointment was only with a superseded
Boston fashion. He hadn't gone far without the quick confidence that it would be
quite sufficiently kept. The oblong gilt frame disposed its enclosing lines; the
poplars and willows, the reeds and river - a river of which he didn't know, and
didn't want to know, the name - fell into a composition, full of felicity,
within them; the sky was silver and turquoise and varnish; the village on the
left was white and the church on the right was grey; it was all there, in short
- it was what he wanted: it was Tremont Street, it was France, it was Lambinet.
Moreover he was freely walking about in it. He did this last, for an hour, to
his heart's content, making for the shady woody horizon and boring so deep into
his impression and his idleness that he might fairly have got through them again
and reached the maroon-coloured wall. It was a wonder, no doubt, that the taste
of idleness for him shouldn't need more time to sweeten; but it had in fact
taken the few previous days; it had been sweetening in truth ever since the
retreat of the Pococks. He walked and walked as if to show himself how little he
had now to do; he had nothing to do but turn off to some hillside where he might
stretch himself and hear the poplars rustle, and whence - in the course of an
afternoon so spent, an afternoon richly suffused too with the sense of a book in
his pocket - he should sufficiently command the scene to be able to pick out
just the right little rustic inn for an experiment in respect to dinner. There
was a train back to Paris at 9.20, and he saw himself partaking, at the close of
the day, with the enhancements of a coarse white cloth and a sanded floor, of
something fried and felicitous, washed down with authentic wine; after which he
might, as he liked, either stroll back to his station in the gloaming or propose
for the local carriole and converse with his driver, a driver who naturally
wouldn't fail of a stiff clean blouse, of a knitted nightcap and of the genius
of response - who, in fine, would sit on the shafts, tell him what the French
people were thinking, and remind him, as indeed the whole episode would
incidentally do, of Maupassant. Strether heard his lips, for the first time in
French air, as this vision assumed consistency, emit sounds of expressive
intention without fear of his company. He had been afraid of Chad and of Maria
and of Madame de Vionnet; he had been most of all afraid of Waymarsh, in whose
presence, so far as they had mixed together in the light of the town, he had
never without somehow paying for it aired either his vocabulary or his accent.
He usually paid for it by meeting immediately afterwards Waymarsh's eye.
    Such were the liberties with which his fancy played after he had turned off
to the hillside that did really and truly, as well as most amiably, await him
beneath the poplars, the hillside that made him feel, for a murmurous couple of
hours, how happy had been his thought. He had the sense of success, of a finer
harmony in things; nothing but what had turned out as yet according to his plan.
It most of all came home to him, as he lay on his back on the grass, that Sarah
had really gone, that his tension was really relaxed; the peace diffused in
these ideas might be delusive, but it hung about him none the less for the time.
It fairly, for half an hour, sent him to sleep; he pulled his straw hat over his
eyes - he had bought it the day before with a reminiscence of Waymarsh's - and
lost himself anew in Lambinet. It was as if he had found out he was tired -
tired not from his walk, but from that inward exercise which had known, on the
whole, for three months, so little intermission. That was it - when once they
were off he had dropped; this moreover was what he had dropped to, and now he
was touching bottom. He was kept luxuriously quiet, soothed and amused by the
consciousness of what he had found at the end of his descent. It was very much
what he had told Maria Gostrey he should like to stay on for, the
hugely-distributed Paris of summer, alternately dazzling and dusky, with a
weight lifted for him off its columns and cornices and with shade and air in the
flutter of awnings as wide as avenues. It was present to him without attenuation
that, reaching out, the day after making the remark, for some proof of his
freedom, he had gone that very afternoon to see Madame de Vionnet. He had gone
again the next day but one, and the effect of the two visits, the after-sense of
the couple of hours spent with her, was almost that of fullness and frequency.
The brave intention of frequency, so great with him from the moment of his
finding himself unjustly suspected at Woollett, had remained rather theoretic,
and one of the things he could muse about under his poplars was the source of
the special shyness that had still made him careful. He had surely got rid of it
now, this special shyness; what had become of it if it hadn't precisely, within
the week, rubbed off?
    It struck him now in fact as sufficiently plain that if he had still been
careful he had been so for a reason. He had really feared, in his behaviour, a
lapse from good faith; if there was a danger of one's liking such a woman too
much one's best safety was in waiting at least till one had the right to do so.
In the light of the last few days the danger was fairly vivid; so that it was
proportionately fortunate that the right was likewise established. It seemed to
our friend that he had on each occasion profited to the utmost by the latter:
how could he have done so more, he at all events asked himself, than in having
immediately let her know that, if it was all the same to her, he preferred not
to talk about anything tiresome? He had never in his life so sacrificed an
armful of high interests as in that remark; he had never so prepared the way for
the comparatively frivolous as in addressing it to Madame de Vionnet's
intelligence. It hadn't been till later that he quite recalled how in conjuring
away everything but the pleasant he had conjured away almost all they had
hitherto talked about; it was not till later even that he remembered how, with
their new tone, they hadn't so much as mentioned the name of Chad himself. One
of the things that most lingered with him on his hillside was this delightful
facility, with such a woman, of arriving at a new tone; he thought, as he lay on
his back, of all the tones she might make possible if one were to try her, and
at any rate of the probability that one could trust her to fit them to
occasions. He had wanted her to feel that, as he was disinterested now, so she
herself should be, and she had showed she felt it, and he had showed he was
grateful, and it had been for all the world as if he were calling for the first
time. They had had other, but irrelevant, meetings; it was quite as if, had they
sooner known how much they really had in common, there were quantities of
comparatively dull matters they might have skipped. Well, they were skipping
them now, even to graceful gratitude, even to handsome »Don't mention it!« - and
it was amazing what could still come up without reference to what had been going
on between them. It might have been, on analysis, nothing more than Shakespeare
and the musical glasses; but it had served all the purpose of his appearing to
have said to her: »Don't like me, if it's a question of liking me, for anything
obvious and clumsy that I've, as they call it, done for you: like me - well,
like me, hang it, for anything else you choose. So, by the same propriety, don't
be for me simply the person I've come to know through my awkward connexion with
Chad - was ever anything, by the way, more awkward? Be for me, please, with all
your admirable tact and trust, just whatever I may show you it's a present
pleasure to me to think you.« It had been a large indication to meet; but if she
hadn't met it what had she done, and how had their time together slipped along
so smoothly, mild but not slow, and melting, liquefying, into his happy illusion
of idleness? He could recognise on the other hand that he had probably not been
without reason, in his prior, his restricted state, for keeping an eye on his
liability to lapse from good faith.
    He really continued in the picture - that being for himself his situation -
all the rest of this rambling day; so that the charm was still, was indeed more
than ever upon him when, toward six o'clock, he found himself amicably engaged
with a stout white-capped deep-voiced woman at the door of the auberge of the
biggest village, a village that affected him as a thing of whiteness, blueness
and crookedness, set in coppery green, and that had the river flowing behind or
before it - one couldn't say which; at the bottom, in particular, of the
inn-garden. He had had other adventures before this; had kept along the height,
after shaking off slumber; had admired, had almost coveted, another small old
church, all steep roof and dim slate-colour without and all whitewash and paper
flowers within; had lost his way and had found it again; had conversed with
rustics who struck him perhaps a little more as men of the world than he had
expected; had acquired at a bound a fearless facility in French; had had, as the
afternoon waned, a watery bock, all pale and Parisian, in the café of the
furthest village, which was not the biggest; and had meanwhile not once
overstepped the oblong gilt frame. The frame had drawn itself out for him, as
much as you please; but that was just his luck. He had finally come down again
to the valley, to keep within touch of stations and trains, turning his face to
the quarter from which he had started; and thus it was that he had at last
pulled up before the hostess of the Cheval Blanc, who met him, with a rough
readiness that was like the clatter of sabots over stones, on their common
ground of a côtelette de veau à l'oseille and a subsequent lift. He had walked
many miles and didn't know he was tired; but he still knew he was amused, and
even that, though he had been alone all day, he had never yet so struck himself
as engaged with others and in midstream of his drama. It might have passed for
finished, his drama, with its catastrophe all but reached: it had, however, none
the less been vivid again for him as he thus gave it its fuller chance. He had
only had to be at last well out of it to feel it, oddly enough, still going on.
    For this had been all day at bottom the spell of the picture - that it was
essentially more than anything else a scene and a stage, that the very air of
the play was in the rustle of the willows and the tone of the sky. The play and
the characters had, without his knowing it till now, peopled all his space for
him, and it seemed somehow quite happy that they should offer themselves, in the
conditions so supplied, with a kind of inevitability. It was as if the
conditions made them not only inevitable, but so much more nearly natural and
right as that they were at least easier, pleasanter, to put up with. The
conditions had nowhere so asserted their difference from those of Woollett as
they appeared to him to assert it in the little court of the Cheval Blanc while
he arranged with his hostess for a comfortable climax. They were few and simple,
scant and humble, but they were the thing, as he would have called it, even to a
greater degree than Madame de Vionnet's old high salon where the ghost of the
Empire walked. The thing was the thing that implied the greatest number of other
things of the sort he had had to tackle; and it was queer of course, but so it
was - the implication here was complete. Not a single one of his observations
but somehow fell into a place in it; not a breath of the cooler evening that
wasn't't somehow a syllable of the text. The text was simply, when condensed, that
in these places such things were, and that if it was in them one elected to move
about one had to make one's account with what one lighted on. Meanwhile at all
events it was enough that they did affect one - so far as the village aspect was
concerned - as whiteness, crookedness and blueness set in coppery green; there
being positively, for that matter, an outer wall of the White Horse that was
painted the most improbable shade. That was part of the amusement - as if to
show that the fun was harmless; just as it was enough, further, that the picture
and the play seemed supremely to melt together in the good woman's broad sketch
of what she could do for her visitor's appetite. He felt in short a confidence,
and it was general, and it was all he wanted to feel. It suffered no shock even
on her mentioning that she had in fact just laid the cloth for two persons who,
unlike Monsieur, had arrived by the river - in a boat of their own; who had
asked her, half an hour before, what she could do for them, and had then paddled
away to look at something a little further up - from which promenade they would
presently return. Monsieur might meanwhile, if he liked, pass into the garden,
such as it was, where she would serve him, should he wish it - for there were
tables and benches in plenty - a bitter before his repast. Here she would also
report to him on the possibility of a conveyance to his station, and here at any
rate he would have the agrément of the river.
    It may be mentioned without delay that Monsieur had the agrément of
everything, and in particular, for the next twenty minutes, of a small and
primitive pavilion that, at the garden's edge, almost overhung the water,
testifying, in its somewhat battered state, to much fond frequentation. It
consisted of little more than a platform, slightly raised, with a couple of
benches and a table, a protecting rail and a projecting roof; but it raked the
full grey-blue stream, which, taking a turn a short distance above, passed out
of sight to reappear much higher up; and it was clearly in esteemed requisition
for Sundays and other feasts. Strether sat there and, though hungry, felt at
peace; the confidence that had so gathered for him deepened with the lap of the
water, the ripple of the surface, the rustle of the reeds on the opposite bank,
the faint diffused coolness and the slight rock of a couple of small boats
attached to a rough landing-place hard by. The valley on the further side was
all copper-green level and glazed pearly sky, a sky hatched across with screens
of trimmed trees, which looked flat, like espaliers; and though the rest of the
village straggled away in the near quarter the view had an emptiness that made
one of the boats suggestive. Such a river set one afloat almost before one could
take up the oars - the idle play of which would be moreover the aid to the full
impression. This perception went so far as to bring him to his feet; but that
movement, in turn, made him feel afresh that he was tired, and while he leaned
against a post and continued to look out he saw something that gave him a
sharper arrest.

                                       IV

 
What he saw was exactly the right thing - a boat advancing round the bend and
containing a man who held the paddles and a lady, at the stern, with a pink
parasol. It was suddenly as if these figures, or something like them, had been
wanted in the picture, had been wanted more or less all day, and had now drifted
into sight, with the slow current, on purpose to fill up the measure. They came
slowly, floating down, evidently directed to the landing-place near their
spectator and presenting themselves to him not less clearly as the two persons
for whom his hostess was already preparing a meal. For two very happy persons he
found himself straightway taking them - a young man in shirt-sleeves, a young
woman easy and fair, who had pulled pleasantly up from some other place and,
being acquainted with the neighbourhood, had known what this particular retreat
could offer them. The air quite thickened, at their approach, with further
intimations; the intimation that they were expert, familiar, frequent - that
this wouldn't at all events be the first time. They knew how to do it, he
vaguely felt - and it made them but the more idyllic, though at the very moment
of the impression, as happened, their boat seemed to have begun to drift wide,
the oarsman letting it go. It had by this time none the less come much nearer -
near enough for Strether to dream the lady in the stern had for some reason
taken account of his being there to watch them. She had remarked on it sharply,
yet her companion hadn't turned round; it was in fact almost as if our friend
had felt her bid him keep still. She had taken in something as a result of which
their course had wavered, and it continued to waver while they just stood off.
This little effect was sudden and rapid, so rapid that Strether's sense of it
was separate only for an instant from a sharp start of his own. He too had
within the minute taken in something, taken in that he knew the lady whose
parasol, shifting as if to hide her face, made so fine a pink point in the
shining scene. It was too prodigious, a chance in a million, but, if he knew the
lady, the gentleman, who still presented his back and kept off, the gentleman,
the coatless hero of the idyll, who had responded to her start, was, to match
the marvel, none other than Chad.
    Chad and Madame de Vionnet were then like himself taking a day in the
country - though it was as queer as fiction, as farce, that their country could
happen to be exactly his; and she had been the first at recognition, the first
to feel, across the water, the shock - for it appeared to come to that - of
their wonderful accident. Strether became aware, with this, of what was taking
place - that her recognition had been even stranger for the pair in the boat,
that her immediate impulse had been to control it, and that she was quickly and
intensely debating with Chad the risk of betrayal. He saw they would show
nothing if they could feel sure he hadn't made them out; so that he had before
him for a few seconds his own hesitation. It was a sharp fantastic crisis that
had popped up as if in a dream, and it had had only to last the few seconds to
make him feel it as quite horrible. They were thus, on either side, trying the
other side, and all for some reason that broke the stillness like some
unprovoked harsh note. It seemed to him again, within the limit, that he had but
one thing to do - to settle their common question by some sign of surprise and
joy. He hereupon gave large play to these things, agitating his hat and his
stick and loudly calling out - a demonstration that brought him relief as soon
as he had seen it answered. The boat, in mid-stream, still went a little wild -
which seemed natural, however, while Chad turned round, half springing up; and
his good friend, after blankness and wonder, began gaily to wave her parasol.
Chad dropped afresh to his paddles and the boat headed round, amazement and
pleasantry filling the air meanwhile, and relief, as Strether continued to
fancy, superseding mere violence. Our friend went down to the water under this
odd impression as of violence averted - the violence of their having cut him,
out there in the eye of nature, on the assumption that he wouldn't know it. He
awaited them with a face from which he was conscious of not being able quite to
banish this idea that they would have gone on, not seeing and not knowing,
missing their dinner and disappointing their hostess, had he himself taken a
line to match. That at least was what darkened his vision for the moment.
Afterwards, after they had bumped at the landing-place and he had assisted their
getting ashore, everything found itself sponged over by the mere miracle of the
encounter.
    They could so much better at last, on either side, treat it as a wild
extravagance of hazard, that the situation was made elastic by the amount of
explanation called into play. Why indeed - apart from oddity - the situation
should have been really stiff was a question naturally not practical at the
moment, and in fact, so far as we are concerned, a question tackled, later on
and in private, only by Strether himself. He was to reflect later on and in
private that it was mainly he who had explained - as he had had moreover
comparatively little difficulty in doing. He was to have at all events meanwhile
the worrying thought of their perhaps secretly suspecting him of having plotted
this coincidence, taking such pains as might be to give it the semblance of an
accident. That possibility - as their imputation - didn't of course bear looking
into for an instant; yet the whole incident was so manifestly, arrange it as
they would, an awkward one, that he could scarce keep disclaimers in respect to
his own presence from rising to his lips. Disclaimers of intention would have
been as tactless as his presence was practically gross; and the narrowest escape
they either of them had was his lucky escape, in the event, from making any.
Nothing of the sort, so far as surface and sound were involved, was even in
question; surface and sound all made for their common ridiculous good fortune,
for the general invraisemblance of the occasion, for the charming chance that
they had, the others, in passing, ordered some food to be ready, the charming
chance that he had himself not eaten, the charming chance, even more, that their
little plans, their hours, their train, in short, from là-bas, would all match
for their return together to Paris. The chance that was most charming of all,
the chance that drew from Madame de Vionnet her clearest, gayest »Comme cela se
trouve!« was the announcement made to Strether after they were seated at table,
the word given him by their hostess in respect to his carriage for the station,
on which he might now count. It settled the matter for his friends as well; the
conVeyance - it was all too lucky! - would serve for them; and nothing was more
delightful than his being in a position to make the train so definite. It might
have been, for themselves - to hear Madame de Vionnet - almost unnaturally
vague, a detail left to be fixed; though Strether indeed was afterwards to
remember that Chad had promptly enough intervened to forestall this appearance,
laughing at his companion's flightiness and making the point that he had, after
all, in spite of the bedazzlement of a day out with her, known what he was
about.
    Strether was to remember afterwards further that this had had for him the
effect of forming Chad's almost sole intervention; and indeed he was to remember
further still, in subsequent meditation, many things that, as it were, fitted
together. Another of them was for instance that the wonderful woman's overflow
of surprise and amusement was wholly into French, which she struck him as
speaking with an unprecedented command of idiomatic turns, but in which she got,
as he might have said, somewhat away from him, taking all at once little
brilliant jumps that he could but lamely match. The question of his own French
had never come up for them; it was the one thing she wouldn't have permitted -
it belonged, for a person who had been through much, to mere boredom; but the
present result was odd, fairly veiling her identity, shifting her back into a
mere voluble class or race to the intense audibility of which he was by this
time inured. When she spoke the charming slightly strange English he best knew
her by he seemed to feel her as a creature, among all the millions, with a
language quite to herself, the real monopoly of a special shade of speech,
beautifully easy for her, yet of a colour and a cadence that were both
inimitable and matters of accident. She came back to these things after they had
shaken down in the inn-parlour and knew, as it were, what was to become of them;
it was inevitable that loud ejaculation over the prodigy of their convergence
should at last wear itself out. Then it was that his impression took fuller form
- the impression, destined only to deepen, to complete itself, that they had
something to put a face upon, to carry off and make the best of, and that it was
she who, admirably on the whole, was doing this. It was familiar to him of
course that they had something to put a face upon; their friendship, their
connexion, took any amount of explaining - that would have been made familiar by
his twenty minutes with Mrs. Pocock if it hadn't already been so. Yet his
theory, as we know, had bountifully been that the facts were specifically none
of his business, and were, over and above, so far as one had to do with them,
intrinsically beautiful; and this might have prepared him for anything, as well
as rendered him proof against mystification. When he reached home that night,
however, he knew he had been, at bottom, neither prepared nor proof; and since
we have spoken of what he was, after his return, to recall and interpret, it may
as well immediately be said that his real experience of these few hours put on,
in that belated vision - for he scarce went to bed till morning - the aspect
that is most to our purpose.
    He then knew more or less how he had been affected - he but half knew at the
time. There had been plenty to affect him even after, as has been said, they had
shaken down; for his consciousness, though muffled, had its sharpest moments
during this passage, a marked drop into innocent friendly Bohemia. They then had
put their elbows on the table, deploring the premature end of their two or three
dishes; which they had tried to make up with another bottle while Chad joked a
little spasmodically, perhaps even a little irrelevantly, with the hostess. What
it all came to had been that fiction and fable were, inevitably, in the air, and
not as a simple term of comparison, but as a result of things said; also that
they were blinking it, all round, and that they yet needn't, so much as that,
have blinked it - though indeed if they hadn't Strether didn't quite see what
else they could have done. Strether didn't quite see that even at an hour or two
past midnight, even when he had, at his hotel, for a long time, without a light
and without undressing, sat back on his bedroom sofa and stared straight before
him. He was, at that point of vantage, in full possession, to make of it all
what he could. He kept making of it that there had been simply a lie in the
charming affair - a lie on which one could now, detached and deliberate,
perfectly put one's finger. It was with the lie that they had eaten and drunk
and talked and laughed, that they had waited for their carriole rather
impatiently, and had then got into the vehicle and, sensibly subsiding, driven
their three or four miles through the darkening summer night. The eating and
drinking, which had been a resource, had had the effect of having served its
turn; the talk and laughter had done as much; and it was during their somewhat
tedious progress to the station, during the waits there, the further delays,
their submission to fatigue, their silences in the dim compartment of the
much-stopping train, that he prepared himself for reflections to come. It had
been a performance, Madame de Vionnet's manner, and though it had to that degree
faltered toward the end, as through her ceasing to believe in it, as if she had
asked herself, or Chad had found a moment surreptitiously to ask her, what after
all was the use, a performance it had none the less quite handsomely remained,
with the final fact about it that it was on the whole easier to keep up than to
abandon.
    From the point of view of presence of mind it had been very wonderful
indeed, wonderful for readiness, for beautiful assurance, for the way her
decision was taken on the spot, without time to confer with Chad, without time
for anything. Their only conference could have been the brief instants in the
boat before they confessed to recognising the spectator on the bank, for they
hadn't been alone together a moment since and must have communicated all in
silence. It was a part of the deep impression for Strether, and not the least of
the deep interest, that they could so communicate - that Chad in particular
could let her know he left it to her. He habitually left things to others, as
Strether was so well aware, and it in fact came over our friend in these
meditations that there had been as yet no such vivid illustration of his famous
knowing how to live. It was as if he had humoured her to the extent of letting
her lie without correction - almost as if, really, he would be coming round in
the morning to set the matter, as between Strether and himself, right. Of course
he couldn't quite come; it was a case in which a man was obliged to accept the
woman's version, even when fantastic; if she had, with more flurry than she
cared to show, elected, as the phrase was, to represent that they had left Paris
that morning, and with no design but of getting back within the day - if she had
so sized-up, in the Woollett phrase, their necessity, she knew best her own
measure. There were things, all the same, it was impossible to blink and which
made this measure an odd one - the too evident fact for instance that she hadn't
started out for the day dressed and hatted and shod, and even, for that matter,
pink parasol'd, as she had been in the boat. From what did the drop in her
assurance proceed as the tension increased - from what did this slightly baffled
ingenuity spring but from her consciousness of not presenting, as night closed
in, with not so much as a shawl to wrap her round, an appearance that matched
her story? She admitted that she was cold, but only to blame her imprudence,
which Chad suffered her to give such account of as she might. Her shawl and
Chad's overcoat and her other garments, and his, those they had each worn the
day before, were at the place, best known to themselves - a quiet retreat
enough, no doubt - at which they had been spending the twenty-four hours, to
which they had fully meant to return that evening, from which they had so
remarkably swum into Strether's ken, and the tacit repudiation of which had been
thus the essence of her comedy. Strether saw how she had perceived in a flash
that they couldn't quite look to going back there under his nose; though,
honestly, as he gouged deeper into the matter, he was somewhat surprised, as
Chad likewise had perhaps been, at the uprising of this scruple. He seemed even
to divine that she had entertained it rather for Chad than for herself, and
that, as the young man had lacked the chance to enlighten her, she had had to go
on with it, he meanwhile mistaking her motive.
    He was rather glad, none the less, that they had in point of fact not parted
at the Cheval Blanc, that he hadn't been reduced to giving them his blessing for
an idyllic retreat down the river. He had had in the actual case to make-believe
more than he liked, but this was nothing, it struck him, to what the other event
would have required. Could he, literally, quite have faced the other event?
Would he have been capable of making the best of it with them? This was what he
was trying to do now; but with the advantage of his being able to give more time
to it a good deal counteracted by his sense of what, over and above the central
fact itself, he had to swallow. It was the quantity of make-believe involved and
so vividly exemplified that most disagreed with his spiritual stomach. He moved,
however, from the consideration of that quantity - to say nothing of the
consciousness of that organ - back to the other feature of the show, the deep,
deep truth of the intimacy revealed. That was what, in his vain vigil, he
oftenest reverted to: intimacy, at such a point, was like that - and what in the
world else would one have wished it to be like? It was all very well for him to
feel the pity of its being so much like lying; he almost blushed, in the dark,
for the way he had dressed the possibility in vagueness, as a little girl might
have dressed her doll. He had made them - and by no fault of their own -
momentarily pull it for him, the possibility, out of this vagueness; and must he
not therefore take it now as they had had simply, with whatever thin
attenuations, to give it to him? The very question, it may be added, made him
feel lonely and cold. There was the element of the awkward all round, but Chad
and Madame de Vionnet had at least the comfort that they could talk it over
together. With whom could he talk of such things? - unless indeed always, at
almost any stage, with Maria? He foresaw that Miss Gostrey would come again into
requisition on the morrow; though it wasn't't to be denied that he was already a
little afraid of her »What on earth - that's what I want to know now - had you
then supposed?« He recognised at last that he had really been trying all along
to suppose nothing. Verily, verily, his labour had been lost. He found himself
supposing innumerable and wonderful things.
 

                                  Book Twelfth

                                       I

Strether couldn't have said he had during the previous hours definitely expected
it; yet when, later on, that morning - though no later indeed than for his
coming forth at ten o'clock - he saw the concierge produce, on his approach, a
petit bleu delivered since his letters had been sent up, he recognised the
appearance as the first symptom of a sequel. He then knew he had been thinking
of some early sign from Chad as more likely, after all, than not; and this would
be precisely the early sign. He took it so for granted that he opened the petit
bleu just where he had stopped, in the pleasant cool draught of the
porte-cochère - only curious to see where the young man would, at such a
juncture, break out. His curiosity, however, was more than gratified; the small
missive, whose gummed edge he had detached without attention to the address, not
being from the young man at all, but from the person whom the case gave him on
the spot as still more worth while. Worth while or not, he went round to the
nearest telegraph-office, the big one on the Boulevard, with a directness that
almost confessed to a fear of the danger of delay. He might have been thinking
that if he didn't go before he could think he wouldn't perhaps go at all. He at
any rate kept, in the lower side-pocket of his morning coat, a very deliberate
hand on his blue missive, crumpling it up rather tenderly than harshly. He wrote
a reply, on the Boulevard, also in the form of a petit bleu - which was quickly
done, under pressure of the place, inasmuch as, like Madame de Vionnet's own
communication, it consisted of the fewest words. She had asked him if he could
do her the very great kindness of coming to see her that evening at half-past
nine, and he answered, as if nothing were easier, that he would present himself
at the hour she named. She had added a line of postscript, to the effect that
she would come to him elsewhere and at his own hour if he preferred; but he took
no notice of this, feeling that if he saw her at all half the value of it would
be in seeing her where he had already seen her best. He mightn't see her at all;
that was one of the reflections he made after writing and before he dropped his
closed card into the box; he mightn't see any one at all any more at all; he
might make an end as well now as ever, leaving things as they were, since he was
doubtless not to leave them better, and taking his way home so far as should
appear that a home remained to him. This alternative was for a few minutes so
sharp that if he at last did deposit his missive it was perhaps because the
pressure of the place had an effect.
    There was none other, however, than the common and constant pressure,
familiar to our friend under the rubric of Postes et Télégraphes - the something
in the air of these establishments; the vibration of the vast strange life of
the town, the influence of the types, the performers concocting their messages;
the little prompt Paris women, arranging, pretexting goodness knew what, driving
the dreadful needle - pointed public pen at the dreadful sand-strewn public
table: implements that symbolised for Strether's too interpretative innocence
something more acute in manners, more sinister in morals, more fierce in the
national life. After he had put in his paper he had ranged himself, he was
really amused to think, on the side of the fierce, the sinister, the acute. He
was carrying on a correspondence, across the great city, quite in the key of the
Postes et Télégraphes in general; and it was fairly as if the acceptance of that
fact had come from something in his state that sorted with the occupation of his
neighbours. He was mixed up with the typical tale of Paris, and so were they,
poor things - how could they all together help being? They were no worse than
he, in short, and he no worse than they - if, queerly enough, no better; and at
all events he had settled his hash, so that he went out to begin, from that
moment, his day of waiting. The great settlement was, as he felt, in his
preference for seeing his correspondent in her own best conditions. That was
part of the typical tale, the part most significant in respect to himself. He
liked the place she lived in, the picture that each time squared itself, large
and high and clear, around her: every occasion of seeing it was a pleasure of a
different shade. Yet what precisely was he doing with shades of pleasure now,
and why hadn't he properly and logically compelled her to commit herself to
whatever of disadvantage and penalty the situation might throw up? He might have
proposed, as for Sarah Pocock, the cold hospitality of his own salon de lecture,
in which the chill of Sarah's visit seemed still to abide and shades of pleasure
were dim; he might have suggested a stone bench in the dusty Tuileries or a
penny chair at the back part of the Champs Elysées. These things would have been
a trifle stern, and sternness alone now wouldn't be sinister. An instinct in him
cast about for some form of discipline in which they might meet - some
awkwardness they would suffer from, some danger, or at least some grave
inconvenience, they would incur. This would give a sense - which the spirit
required, rather ached and sighed in the absence of - that somebody was paying
something somewhere and somehow, that they were at least not all floating
together on the silver stream of impunity. Just instead of that to go and see
her late in the evening, as if, for all the world - well, as if he were as much
in the swim as anybody else: this had as little as possible in common with the
penal form.
    Even when he had felt that objection melt away, however, the practical
difference was small; the long stretch of his interval took the colour it would,
and if he lived on thus with the sinister from hour to hour it proved an easier
thing than one might have supposed in advance. He reverted in thought to his old
tradition, the one he had been brought up on and which even so many years of
life had but little worn away; the notion that the state of the wrongdoer, or at
least this person's happiness, presented some special difficulty. What struck
him now rather was the ease of it - for nothing in truth appeared easier. It was
an ease he himself fairly tasted of for the rest of the day; giving himself
quite up; not so much as trying to dress it out, in any particular whatever, as
a difficulty; not after all going to see Maria - which would have been in a
manner a result of such dressing; only idling, lounging, smoking, sitting in the
shade, drinking lemonade and consuming ices. The day had turned to heat and
eventual thunder, and he now and again went back to his hotel to find that Chad
hadn't been there. He hadn't yet struck himself, since leaving Woollett, so much
as a loafer, though there had been times when he believed himself touching
bottom. This was a deeper depth than any, and with no foresight, scarcely with a
care, as to what he should bring up. He almost wondered if he didn't look
demoralised and disreputable; he had the fanciful vision, as he sat and smoked,
of some accidental, some motived, return of the Pococks, who would be passing
along the Boulevard and would catch this view of him. They would have
distinctly, on his appearance, every ground for scandal. But fate failed to
administer even that sternness; the Pococks never passed and Chad made no sign.
Strether meanwhile continued to hold off from Miss Gostrey, keeping her till
to-morrow; so that by evening his irresponsibility, his impunity, his luxury,
had become - there was no other word for them - immense.
    Between nine and ten, at last, in the high clear picture - he was moving in
these days, as in a gallery, from clever canvas to clever canvas - he drew a
long breath: it was so presented to him from the first that the spell of his
luxury wouldn't be broken. He wouldn't have, that is, to become responsible -
this was admirably in the air: she had sent for him precisely to let him feel
it, so that he might go on with the comfort (comfort already established, hadn't
it been?) of regarding his ordeal, the ordeal of the weeks of Sarah's stay and
of their climax, as safely traversed and left behind him. Didn't she just wish
to assure him that she now took it all and so kept it; that he was absolutely
not to worry any more, was only to rest on his laurels and continue generously
to help her? The light in her beautiful formal room was dim, though it would do,
as everything would always do; the hot night had kept out lamps, but there was a
pair of clusters of candles that glimmered over the chimney-piece like the tall
tapers of an altar. The windows were all open, their redundant hangings swaying
a little, and he heard once more, from the empty court, the small plash of the
fountain. From beyond this, and as from a great distance - beyond the court,
beyond the corps de logis forming the front - came, as if excited and exciting,
the vague voice of Paris. Strether had all along been subject to sudden gusts of
fancy in connexion with such matters as these - odd starts of the historic
sense, suppositions and divinations with no warrant but their intensity. Thus
and so, on the eve of the great recorded dates, the days and nights of
revolution, the sounds had come in, the omens, the beginnings broken out. They
were the smell of revolution, the smell of the public temper - or perhaps simply
the smell of blood.
    It was at present queer beyond words, subtle, he would have risked saying,
that such suggestions should keep crossing the scene; but it was doubtless the
effect of the thunder in the air, which had hung about all day without release.
His hostess was dressed as for thunderous times, and it fell in with the kind of
imagination we have just attributed to him that she should be in simplest
coolest white, of a character so old-fashioned, if he were not mistaken, that
Madame Roland must on the scaffold have worn something like it. This effect was
enhanced by a small black fichu or scarf, of crape or gauze, disposed quaintly
round her bosom and now completing as by a mystic touch the pathetic, the noble
analogy. Poor Strether in fact scarce knew what analogy was evoked for him as
the charming woman, receiving him and making him, as she could do such things,
at once familiarly and gravely welcome, moved over her great room with her image
almost repeated in its polished floor, which had been fully bared for summer.
The associations of the place, all felt again; the gleam here and there, in the
subdued light, of glass and gilt and parquet, with the quietness of her own note
as the centre - these things were at first as delicate as if they had been
ghostly, and he was sure in a moment that, whatever he should find he had come
for, it wouldn't be for an impression that had previously failed him. That
conviction held him from the outset, and, seeming singularly to simplify,
certified to him that the objects about would help him, would really help them
both. No, he might never see them again - this was only too probably the last
time; and he should certainly see nothing in the least degree like them. He
should soon be going to where such things were not, and it would be a small
mercy for memory, for fancy, to have, in that stress, a loaf on the shelf. He
knew in advance he should look back on the perception actually sharpest with him
as on the view of something old, old, old, the oldest thing he had ever
personally touched; and he also knew, even while he took his companion in as the
feature among features, that memory and fancy couldn't help being enlisted for
her. She might intend what she would, but this was beyond anything she could
intend, with things from far back - tyrannies of history, facts of type, values,
as the painters said, of expression - all working for her and giving her the
supreme chance, the chance of the happy, the really luxurious few, the chance,
on a great occasion, to be natural and simple. She had never, with him, been
more so; or if it was the perfection of art it would never - and that came to
the same thing - be proved against her.
    What was truly wonderful was her way of differing so from time to time
without detriment to her simplicity. Caprices, he was sure she felt, were before
anything else bad manners, and that judgement in her was by itself a thing
making more for safety of intercourse than anything that in his various own past
intercourses he had had to reckon on. If therefore her presence was now quite
other than the one she had shown him the night before, there was nothing of
violence in the change - it was all harmony and reason. It gave him a mild deep
person, whereas he had had on the occasion to which their interview was a direct
reference a person committed to movement and surface and abounding in them; but
she was in either character more remarkable for nothing than for her bridging of
intervals, and this now fell in with what he understood he was to leave to her.
The only thing was that, if he was to leave it all to her, why exactly had she
sent for him? He had had, vaguely, in advance, his explanation, his view of the
probability of her wishing to set something right, to deal in some way with the
fraud so lately practised on his presumed credulity. Would she attempt to carry
it further or would she blot it out? Would she throw over it some more or less
happy colour; or would she do nothing about it at all? He perceived soon enough
at least that, however reasonable she might be, she wasn't't vulgarly confused,
and it herewith pressed upon him that their eminent lie, Chad's and hers, was
simply after all such an inevitable tribute to good taste as he couldn't have
wished them not to render. Away from them, during his vigil, he had seemed to
wince at the amount of comedy involved; whereas in his present posture he could
only ask himself how he should enjoy any attempt from her to take the comedy
back. He shouldn't enjoy it at all; but, once more and yet once more, he could
trust her. That is he could trust her to make deception right. As she presented
things the ugliness - goodness knew why - went out of them; none the less too
that she could present them, with an art of her own, by not so much as touching
them. She let the matter, at all events, lie where it was - where the previous
twenty-four hours had placed it; appearing merely to circle about it
respectfully, tenderly, almost piously, while she took up another question.
    She knew she hadn't really thrown dust in his eyes; this, the previous
night, before they separated, had practically passed between them; and, as she
had sent for him to see what the difference thus made for him might amount to,
so he was conscious at the end of five minutes that he had been tried and
tested. She had settled with Chad after he left them that she would, for her
satisfaction, assure herself of this quantity, and Chad had, as usual, let her
have her way. Chad was always letting people have their way when he felt that it
would somehow turn his wheel for him; it somehow always did turn his wheel.
Strether felt, oddly enough, before these facts, freshly and consentingly
passive; they again so rubbed it into him that the couple thus fixing his
attention were intimate, that his intervention had absolutely aided and
intensified their intimacy, and that in fine he must accept the consequence of
that. He had absolutely become, himself, with his perceptions and his mistakes,
his concessions and his reserves, the droll mixture, as it must seem to them, of
his braveries and his fears, the general spectacle of his art and his innocence,
almost an added link and certainly a common priceless ground for them to meet
upon. It was as if he had been hearing their very tone when she brought out a
reference that was comparatively straight. »The last twice that you've been
here, you know, I never asked you,« she said with an abrupt transition - they
had been pretending before this to talk simply of the charm of yesterday and of
the interest of the country they had seen. The effort was confessedly vain; not
for such talk had she invited him; and her impatient reminder was of their
having done for it all the needful on his coming to her after Sarah's flight.
What she hadn't asked him then was to state to her where and how he stood for
her; she had been resting on Chad's report of their midnight hour together in
the Boulevard Malesherbes. The thing therefore she at present desired was
ushered in by this recall of the two occasions on which, disinterested and
merciful, she hadn't worried him. To-night truly she would worry him, and this
was her appeal to him to let her risk it. He wasn't't to mind if she bored him a
little: she had behaved, after all - hadn't she? - so awfully, awfully well.

                                       II

 
»Oh, you're all right, you're all right,« he almost impatiently declared; his
impatience being moreover not for her pressure, but for her scruple. More and
more distinct to him was the tune to which she would have had the matter out
with Chad; more and more vivid for him the idea that she had been nervous as to
what he might be able to stand. Yes, it had been a question if he had stood what
the scene on the river had given him, and, though the young man had doubtless
opined in favour of his recuperation, her own last word must have been that she
should feel easier in seeing for herself. That was it, unmistakeably; she was
seeing for herself. What he could stand was thus, in these moments, in the
balance for Strether, who reflected, as he became fully aware of it, that he
must properly brace himself. He wanted fully to appear to stand all he might;
and there was a certain command of the situation for him in this very wish not
to look too much at sea. She was ready with everything, but so, sufficiently,
was he; that is he was at one point the more prepared of the two, inasmuch as,
for all her cleverness, she couldn't produce on the spot - and it was surprising
- an account of the motive of her note. He had the advantage that his
pronouncing her all right gave him for an enquiry. »May I ask, delighted as I've
been to come, if you've wished to say something special?« He spoke as if she
might have seen he had been waiting for it - not indeed with discomfort, but
with natural interest. Then he saw that she was a little taken aback, was even
surprised herself at the detail she had neglected - the only one ever yet;
having somehow assumed he would know, would recognise, would leave some things
not to be said. She looked at him, however, an instant as if to convey that if
he wanted them all -!
    »Selfish and vulgar - that's what I must seem to you. You've done everything
for me, and here I am as if I were asking for more. But it isn't,« she went on,
»because I'm afraid - though I am of course afraid, as a woman in my position
always is. I mean it isn't because one lives in terror - it isn't because of
that one is selfish, for I'm ready to give you my word to-night that I don't
care; don't care what still may happen and what I may lose. I don't ask you to
raise your little finger for me again, nor do I wish so much as to mention to
you what we've talked of before, either my danger or my safety, or his mother,
or his sister, or the girl he may marry, or the fortune he may make or miss, or
the right or the wrong, of any kind, he may do. If after the help one has had
from you one can't either take care of one's self or simply hold one's tongue,
one must renounce all claim to be an object of interest. It's in the name of
what I do care about that I've tried still to keep hold of you. How can I be
indifferent,« she asked, »to how I appear to you?« And as he found himself
unable immediately to say: »Why, if you're going, need you, after all? Is it
impossible you should stay on - so that one mayn't lose you?«
    »Impossible I should live with you here instead of going home?«
    »Not with us, if you object to that, but near enough to us, somewhere, for
us to see you - well,« she beautifully brought out, »when we feel we must. How
shall we not sometimes feel it? I've wanted to see you often when I couldn't,«
she pursued, »all these last weeks. How shan't I then miss you now, with the
sense of your being gone forever?« Then as if the straightness of this appeal,
taking him unprepared, had visibly left him wondering: »Where is your home
moreover now - what has become of it? I've made a change in your life, I know I
have; I've upset everything in your mind as well; in your sense of - what shall
I call it? - all the decencies and possibilities. It gives me a kind of
detestation -« She pulled up short.
    Oh but he wanted to hear. »Detestation of what?«
    »Of everything - of life.«
    »Ah that's too much,« he laughed - »or too little!«
    »Too little, precisely« - she was eager. »What I hate is myself - when I
think that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the lives of others, and
that one isn't happy even then. One does it to cheat one's self and to stop
one's mouth - but that's only at the best for a little. The wretched self is
always there, always making one somehow a fresh anxiety. What it comes to is
that it's not, that it's never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to take. The
only safe thing is to give. It's what plays you least false.« Interesting,
touching, strikingly sincere as she let these things come from her, she yet
puzzled and troubled him - so fine was the quaver of her quietness. He felt what
he had felt before with her, that there was always more behind what she showed,
and more and more again behind that. »You know so, at least,« she added, »where
you are!«
    »You ought to know it indeed then; for isn't what you've been giving exactly
what has brought us together this way? You've been making, as I've so fully let
you know I've felt,« Strether said, »the most precious present I've ever seen
made, and if you can't sit down peacefully on that performance you are, no
doubt, born to torment yourself. But you ought,« he wound up, »to be easy.«
    »And not trouble you any more, no doubt - not thrust on you even the wonder
and the beauty of what I've done; only let you regard our business as over, and
well over, and see you depart in a peace that matches my own? No doubt, no
doubt, no doubt,« she nervously repeated - »all the more that I don't really
pretend I believe you couldn't, for yourself, not have done what you have. I
don't pretend you feel yourself victimised, for this evidently is the way you
live, and it's what - we're agreed - is the best way. Yes, as you say,« she
continued after a moment, »I ought to be easy and rest on my work. Well then
here am I doing so. I am easy. You'll have it for your last impression. When is
it you say you go?« she asked with a quick change.
    He took some time to reply - his last impression was more and more so mixed
a one. It produced in him a vague disappointment, a drop that was deeper even
than the fall of his elation the previous night. The good of what he had done,
if he had done so much, wasn't't there to enliven him quite to the point that
would have been ideal for a grand gay finale. Women were thus endlessly
absorbent, and to deal with them was to walk on water. What was at bottom the
matter with her, embroider as she might and disclaim as she might - what was at
bottom the matter with her was simply Chad himself. It was of Chad she was after
all renewedly afraid; the strange strength of her passion was the very strength
of her fear; she clung to him, Lambert Strether, as to a source of safety she
had tested, and, generous graceful truthful as she might try to be, exquisite as
she was, she dreaded the term of his being within reach. With this sharpest
perception yet, it was like a chill in the air to him, it was almost appalling,
that a creature so fine could be, by mysterious forces, a creature so exploited.
For at the end of all things they were mysterious: she had but made Chad what he
was - so why could she think she had made him infinite? She had made him better,
she had made him best, she had made him anything one would; but it came to our
friend with supreme queerness that he was none the less only Chad. Strether had
the sense that he, a little, had made him too; his high appreciation had, at it
were, consecrated her work. The work, however admirable, was nevertheless of the
strict human order, and in short it was marvellous that the companion of mere
earthly joys, of comforts, aberrations (however one classed them) within the
common experience, should be so transcendently prized. It might have made
Strether hot or shy, as such secrets of others brought home sometimes do make
us; but he was held there by something so hard that it was fairly grim. This was
not the discomposure of last night; that had quite passed - such discomposures
were a detail; the real coercion was to see a man ineffably adored. There it was
again - it took women, it took women; if to deal with them was to walk on water
what wonder that the water rose? And it had never surely risen higher than round
this woman. He presently found himself taking a long look from her, and the next
thing he knew he had uttered all his thought. »You're afraid for your life!«
    It drew out her long look, and he soon enough saw why. A spasm came into her
face, the tears she had already been unable to hide overflowed at first in
silence, and then, as the sound suddenly comes from a child, quickened to gasps,
to sobs. She sat and covered her face with her hands, giving up all attempt at a
manner. »It's how you see me, it's how you see me« - she caught her breath with
it - »and it's as I am, and as I must take myself, and of course it's no
matter.« Her emotion was at first so incoherent that he could only stand there
at a loss, stand with his sense of having upset her, though of having done it by
the truth. He had to listen to her in a silence that he made no immediate effort
to attenuate, feeling her doubly woeful amid all her dim diffused elegance;
consenting to it as he had consented to the rest, and even conscious of some
vague inward irony in the presence of such a fine free range of bliss and bale.
He couldn't say it was not no matter; for he was serving her to the end, he now
knew, anyway - quite as if what he thought of her had nothing to do with it. It
was actually moreover as if he didn't think of her at all, as if he could think
of nothing but the passion, mature, abysmal, pitiful, she represented, and the
possibilities she betrayed. She was older for him to-night, visibly less exempt
from the touch of time; but she was as much as ever the finest and subtlest
creature, the happiest apparition, it had been given him, in all his years, to
meet; and yet he could see her there as vulgarly troubled, in very truth, as a
maidservant crying for her young man. The only thing was that she judged herself
as the maidservant wouldn't; the weakness of which wisdom too, the dishonour of
which judgement, seemed but to sink her lower. Her collapse, however, no doubt,
was briefer and she had in a manner recovered herself before he intervened. »Of
course I'm afraid for my life. But that's nothing. It isn't that.«
    He was silent a little longer, as if thinking what it might be. »There's
something I have in mind that I can still do.«
    But she threw off at last, with a sharp sad headshake, drying her eyes, what
he could still do. »I don't care for that. Of course, as I've said, you're
acting, in your wonderful way, for yourself; and what's for yourself is no more
my business - though I may reach out unholy hands so clumsily to touch it - than
if it were something in Timbuctoo. It's only that you don't snub me, as you've
had fifty chances to do - it's only your beautiful patience that makes one
forget one's manners. In spite of your patience, all the same,« she went on,
»you'd do anything rather than be with us here, even if that were possible.
You'd do everything for us but be mixed up with us - which is a statement you
can easily answer to the advantage of your own manners. You can say What's the
use of talking of things that at the best are impossible? What is of course the
use? It's only my little madness. You'd talk if you were tormented. And I don't
mean now about him. Oh for him -!« Positively, strangely, bitterly, as it seemed
to Strether, she gave him, for the moment, away. »You don't care what I think of
you; but I happen to care what you think of me. And what you might,« she added.
»What you perhaps even did.«
    He gained time. »What I did -?«
    »Did think before. Before this. Didn't you think -?«
    But he had already stopped her. »I didn't think anything. I never think a
step further than I'm obliged to.«
    »That's perfectly false, I believe,« she returned - »except that you may, no
doubt, often pull up when things become too ugly; or even, I'll say, to save you
a protest, too beautiful. At any rate, even so far as it's true, we've thrust on
you appearances that you've had to take in and that have therefore made your
obligation. Ugly or beautiful - it doesn't't matter what we call them - you were
getting on without them, and that's where we're detestable. We bore you - that's
where we are. And we may well - for what we've cost you. All you can do now is
not to think at all. And I who should have liked to seem to you - well,
sublime!«
    He could only after a moment re-echo Miss Barrace. »You're wonderful!«
    »I'm old and abject and hideous« - she went on as without hearing him.
»Abject above all. Or old above all. It's when one's old that it's worst. I
don't care what becomes of it - let what will; there it is. It's a doom - I know
it; you can't see it more than I do myself. Things have to happen as they will.«
With which she came back again to what, face to face with him, had so quite
broken down. »Of course you wouldn't, even if possible, and no matter what may
happen to you, be near us. But think of me, think of me -!« She exhaled it into
air.
    He took refuge in repeating something he had already said and that she had
made nothing of. »There's something I believe I can still do.« And he put his
hand out for good-bye.
    She again made nothing of it; she went on with her insistence. »That won't
help you. There's nothing to help you.«
    »Well, it may help you,« he said.
    She shook her head. »There's not a grain of certainty in my future - for the
only certainty is that I shall be the loser in the end.«
    She hadn't taken his hand, but she moved with him to the door. »That's
cheerful,« he laughed, »for your benefactor!«
    »What's cheerful for me,« she replied, »is that we might, you and I, have
been friends. That's it - that's it. You see how, as I say, I want everything.
I've wanted you too.«
    »Ah but you've had me!« he declared, at the door, with an emphasis that made
an end.

                                      III

 
His purpose had been to see Chad the next day, and he had prefigured seeing him
by an early call; having in general never stood on ceremony in respect to visits
at the Boulevard Malesherbes. It had been more often natural for him to go there
than for Chad to come to the small hotel, the attractions of which were scant;
yet it nevertheless, just now, at the eleventh hour, did suggest itself to
Strether to begin by giving the young man a chance. It struck him that, in the
inevitable course, Chad would be round, as Waymarsh used to say - Waymarsh who
already, somehow, seemed long ago. He hadn't come the day before, because it had
been arranged between them that Madame de Vionnet should see their friend first;
but now that this passage had taken place he would present himself, and their
friend wouldn't have long to wait. Strether assumed, he became aware, on this
reasoning, that the interesting parties to the arrangement would have met
betimes, and that the more interesting of the two - as she was after all - would
have communicated to the other the issue of her appeal. Chad would know without
delay that his mother's messenger had been with her, and, though it was perhaps
not quite easy to see how she could qualify what had occurred, he would at least
have been sufficiently advised to feel he could go on. The day, however,
brought, early or late, no word from him, and Strether felt, as a result of
this, that a change had practically come over their intercourse. It was perhaps
a premature judgement; or it only meant perhaps - how could he tell? - that the
wonderful pair he protected had taken up again together the excursion he had
accidentally checked. They might have gone back to the country, and gone back
but with a long breath drawn; that indeed would best mark Chad's sense that
reprobation hadn't rewarded Madame de Vionnet's request for an interview. At the
end of the twenty-four hours, at the end of the forty-eight, there was still no
overture; so that Strether filled up the time, as he had so often filled it
before, by going to see Miss Gostrey.
    He proposed amusements to her; he felt expert now in proposing amusements;
and he had thus, for several days, an odd sense of leading her about Paris, of
driving her in the Bois, of showing her the penny steamboats - those from which
the breeze of the Seine was to be best enjoyed - that might have belonged to a
kindly uncle doing the honours of the capital to an intelligent niece from the
country. He found means even to take her to shops she didn't know, or that she
pretended she didn't; while she, on her side, was, like the country maiden, all
passive modest and grateful - going in fact so far as to emulate rusticity in
occasional fatigues and bewilderments. Strether described these vague
proceedings to himself, described them even to her, as a happy interlude; the
sign of which was that the companions said for the time no further word about
the matter they had talked of to satiety. He proclaimed satiety at the outset,
and she quickly took the hint; as docile both in this and in everything else as
the intelligent obedient niece. He told her as yet nothing of his late adventure
- for as an adventure it now ranked with him; he pushed the whole business
temporarily aside and found his interest in the fact of her beautiful assent.
She left questions unasked - she who for so long had been all questions; she
gave herself up to him with an understanding of which mere mute gentleness might
have seemed the sufficient expression. She knew his sense of his situation had
taken still another step - of that he was quite aware; but she conveyed that,
whatever had thus happened for him, it was thrown into the shade by what was
happening for herself. This - though it mightn't to a detached spirit have
seemed much - was the major interest, and she met it with a new directness of
response, measuring it from hour to hour with her grave hush of acceptance.
Touched as he had so often been by her before, he was, for his part too, touched
afresh; all the more that though he could be duly aware of the principle of his
own mood he couldn't be equally so of the principle of hers. He knew, that is,
in a manner - knew roughly and resignedly - what he himself was hatching;
whereas he had to take the chance of what he called to himself Maria's
calculations. It was all he needed that she liked him enough for what they were
doing, and even should they do a good deal more would still like him enough for
that; the essential freshness of a relation so simple was a cool bath to the
soreness produced by other relations. These others appeared to him now horribly
complex; they bristled with fine points, points all unimaginable beforehand,
points that pricked and drew blood; a fact that gave to an hour with his present
friend on a bateau-mouche, or in the afternoon shade of the Champs Elysées,
something of the innocent pleasure of handling rounded ivory. His relation with
Chad personally - from the moment he had got his point of view - had been of the
simplest; yet this also struck him as bristling, after a third and a fourth
blank day had passed. It was as if at last however his care for such indications
had dropped; there came a fifth blank day and he ceased to enquire or to heed.
    They now took on to his fancy, Miss Gostrey and he, the image of the Babes
in the Wood; they could trust the merciful elements to let them continue at
peace. He had been great already, as he knew, at postponements; but he had only
to get afresh into the rhythm of one to feel its fine attraction. It amused him
to say to himself that he might for all the world have been going to die - die
resignedly; the scene was filled for him with so deep a death-bed hush, so
melancholy a charm. That meant the postponement of everything else - which made
so for the quiet lapse of life; and the postponement in especial of the
reckoning to come - unless indeed the reckoning to come were to be one and the
same thing with extinction. It faced him, the reckoning, over the shoulder of
much interposing experience - which also faced him; and one would float to it
doubtless duly through these caverns of Kubla Khan. It was really behind
everything; it hadn't merged in what he had done; his final appreciation of what
he had done - his appreciation on the spot - would provide it with its main
sharpness. The spot so focussed was of course Woollett, and he was to see, at
the best, what Woollett would be with everything there changed for him. Wouldn't
that revelation practically amount to the wind-up of his career? Well, the
summer's end would show; his suspense had meanwhile exactly the sweetness of
vain delay; and he had with it, we should mention, other pastimes than Maria's
company - plenty of separate musings in which his luxury failed him but at one
point. He was well in port, the outer sea behind him, and it was only a matter
of getting ashore. There was a question that came and went for him, however, as
he rested against the side of his ship, and it was a little to get rid of the
obsession that he prolonged his hours with Miss Gostrey. It was a question about
himself, but it could only be settled by seeing Chad again; it was indeed his
principal reason for wanting to see Chad. After that it wouldn't signify - it
was a ghost that certain words would easily lay to rest. Only the young man must
be there to take the words. Once they were taken he wouldn't have a question
left; none, that is, in connexion with this particular affair. It wouldn't then
matter even to himself that he might now have been guilty of speaking because of
what he had forfeited. That was the refinement of his supreme scruple - he
wished so to leave what he had forfeited out of account. He wished not to do
anything because he had missed something else, because he was sore or sorry or
impoverished, because he was maltreated or desperate; he wished to do everything
because he was lucid and quiet, just the same for himself on all essential
points as he had ever been. Thus it was that while he virtually hung about for
Chad he kept mutely putting it: »You've been chucked, old boy; but what has that
to do with it?« It would have sickened him to feel vindictive.
    These tints of feeling indeed were doubtless but the irridescence of his
idleness, and they were presently lost in a new light from Maria. She had a
fresh fact for him before the week was out, and she practically met him with it
on his appearing one night. He hadn't on this day seen her, but had planned
presenting himself in due course to ask her to dine with him somewhere out of
doors, on one of the terraces, in one of the gardens, of which the Paris of
summer was profuse. It had then come on to rain, so that, disconcerted, he
changed his mind; dining alone at home, a little stuffily and stupidly, and
waiting on her afterwards to make up his loss. He was sure within a minute that
something had happened; it was so in the air of the rich little room that he had
scarcely to name his thought. Softly lighted, the whole colour of the place,
with its vague values, was in cool fusion - an effect that made the visitor
stand for a little agaze. It was as if in doing so now he had felt a recent
presence - his recognition of the passage of which his hostess in turn divined.
She had scarcely to say it - »Yes, she has been here, and this time I received
her.« It wasn't't till a minute later that she added: »There being, as I
understand you, no reason now -!«
    »None for your refusing?«
    »No - if you've done what you've had to do.«
    »I've certainly so far done it,« Strether said, »as that you needn't fear
the effect, or the appearance of coming between us. There's nothing between us
now but what we ourselves have put there, and not an inch of room for anything
else whatever. Therefore you're only beautifully with us as always - though
doubtless now, if she has talked to you, rather more with us than less. Of
course if she came,« he added, »it was to talk to you.«
    »It was to talk to me,« Maria returned; on which he was further sure that
she was practically in possession of what he himself hadn't yet told her. He was
even sure she was in possession of things he himself couldn't have told; for the
consciousness of them was now all in her face and accompanied there with a shade
of sadness that marked in her the close of all uncertainties. It came out for
him more than ever yet that she had had from the first a knowledge she believed
him not to have had, a knowledge the sharp acquisition of which might be
destined to make a difference for him. The difference for him might not
inconceivably be an arrest of his independence and a change in his attitude - in
other words a revulsion in favour of the principles of Woollett. She had really
prefigured the possibility of a shock that would send him swinging back to Mrs.
Newsome. He hadn't, it was true, week after week, shown signs of receiving it,
but the possibility had been none the less in the air. What Maria accordingly
had had now to take in was that the shock had descended and that he hadn't, all
the same, swung back. He had grown clear, in a flash, on a point long since
settled for herself; but no reapproximation to Mrs. Newsome had occurred in
consequence. Madame de Vionnet had by her visit held up the torch to these
truths, and what now lingered in poor Maria's face was the somewhat smoky light
of the scene between them. If the light however wasn't't, as we have hinted, the
glow of joy, the reasons for this also were perhaps discernible to Strether even
through the blur cast over them by his natural modesty. She had held herself for
months with a firm hand; she hadn't interfered on any chance - and chances were
specious enough - that she might interfere to her profit. She had turned her
back on the dream that Mrs. Newsome's rupture, their friend's forfeiture - the
engagement, the relation itself, broken beyond all mending - might furnish forth
her advantage; and, to stay her hand from promoting these things, she had, on
private, difficult, but rigid, lines, played strictly fair. She couldn't
therefore but feel that, though, as the end of all, the facts in question had
been stoutly confirmed, her ground for personal, for what might have been called
interested, elation remained rather vague. Strether might easily have made out
that she had been asking herself, in the hours she had just sat through, if
there were still for her, or were only not, a fair shade of uncertainty. Let us
hasten to add, however, that what he at first made out on this occasion he also
at first kept to himself. He only asked what in particular Madame de Vionnet had
come for; and as to this his companion was ready.
    »She wants tidings of Mr. Newsome, whom she appears not to have seen for
some days.«
    »Then she hasn't been away with him again?«
    »She seemed to think,« Maria answered, »that he might have gone away with
you.«
    »And did you tell her I know nothing of him?«
    She had her indulgent headshake. »I've known nothing of what you know. I
could only tell her I'd ask you.«
    »Then I've not seen him for a week - and of course I've wondered.« His
wonderment showed at this moment as sharper, but he presently went on. »Still, I
dare say I can put my hand on him. Did she strike you,« he asked, »as anxious?«
    »She's always anxious.«
    »After all I've done for her?« And he had one of the last flickers of his
occasional mild mirth. »To think that was just what I came out to prevent!«
    She took it up but to reply. »You don't regard him then as safe?«
    »I was just going to ask you how in that respect you regard Madame de
Vionnet.«
    She looked at him a little. »What woman was ever safe? She told me,« she
added - and it was as if at the touch of the connexion - »of your extraordinary
meeting in the country. After that à quoi se fier?«
    »It was, as an accident, in all the possible or impossible chapter,«
Strether conceded, »amazing enough. But still, but still -!«
    »But still she didn't mind?«
    »She doesn't't mind anything.«
    »Well, then, as you don't either, we may all sink to rest!«
    He appeared to agree with her, but he had his reservation. »I do mind Chad's
disappearance.«
    »Oh you'll get him back. But now you know,« she said, »why I went to
Mentone.« He had sufficiently let her see that he had by this time gathered
things together, but there was nature in her wish to make them clearer still. »I
didn't want you to put it to me.«
    »To put it to you -?«
    »The question of what you were at last - a week ago - to see for yourself. I
didn't want to have to lie for her. I felt that to be too much for me. A man of
course is always expected to do it - to do it, I mean, for a woman; but not a
woman for another woman; unless perhaps on the tit-for-tat principle, as an
indirect way of protecting herself. I don't need protection, so that I was free
to funk you - simply to dodge your test. The responsibility was too much for me.
I gained time, and when I came back the need of a test had blown over.«
    Strether thought of it serenely. »Yes; when you came back little Bilham had
shown me what's expected of a gentleman. Little Bilham had lied like one.«
    »And like what you believed him?«
    »Well,« said Strether, »it was but a technical lie - he classed the
attachment as virtuous. That was a view for which there was much to be said -
and the virtue came out for me hugely. There was of course a great deal of it. I
got it full in the face, and I haven't, you see, done with it yet.«
    »What I see, what I saw,« Maria returned, »is that you dressed up even the
virtue. You were wonderful - you were beautiful, as I've had the honour of
telling you before; but, if you wish really to know,« she sadly confessed, »I
never quite knew where you were. There were moments,« she explained, »when you
struck me as grandly cynical; there were others when you struck me as grandly
vague.«
    Her friend considered. »I had phases. I had flights.«
    »Yes, but things must have a basis.«
    »A basis seemed to me just what her beauty supplied.«
    »Her beauty of person?«
    »Well, her beauty of everything. The impression she makes. She has such
variety and yet such harmony.«
    She considered him with one of her deep returns of indulgence - returns out
of all proportion to the irritations they flooded over. »You're complete.«
    »You're always too personal,« he good-humouredly said; »but that's precisely
how I wondered and wandered.«
    »If you mean,« she went on, »that she was from the first for you the most
charming woman in the world, nothing's more simple. Only that was an odd
foundation.«
    »For what I reared on it?«
    »For what you didn't!«
    »Well, it was all not a fixed quantity. And it had for me - it has still -
such elements of strangeness. Her greater age than his, her different world,
traditions, association; her other opportunities, liabilities, standards.«
    His friend listened with respect to his enumeration of these disparities;
then she disposed of them at a stroke. »Those things are nothing when a woman's
hit. It's very awful. She was hit.«
    Strether, on his side, did justice to that plea. »Oh of course I saw she was
hit. That she was hit was what we were busy with; that she was hit was our great
affair. But somehow I couldn't think of her as down in the dust. And as put
there by our little Chad!«
    »Yet wasn't't your little Chad just your miracle?«
    Strether admitted it. »Of course I moved among miracles. It was all
phantasmagoric. But the great fact was that so much of it was none of my
business - as I saw my business. It isn't even now.«
    His companion turned away on this, and it might well have been yet again
with the sharpness of a fear of how little his philosophy could bring her
personally. »I wish she could hear you!«
    »Mrs. Newsome?«
    »No - not Mrs. Newsome; since I understand you that it doesn't't matter now
what Mrs. Newsome hears. Hasn't she heard everything?«
    »Practically - yes.« He had thought a moment, but he went on. »You wish
Madame de Vionnet could hear me?«
    »Madame de Vionnet.« She had come back to him. »She thinks just the contrary
of what you say. That you distinctly judge her.«
    He turned over the scene as the two women thus placed together for him
seemed to give it. »She might have known -!«
    »Might have known you don't?« Miss Gostrey asked as he let it drop. »She was
sure of it at first,« she pursued as he said nothing; »she took it for granted,
at least, as any woman in her position would. But after that she changed her
mind; she believed you believed -«
    »Well?« - he was curious.
    »Why in her sublimity. And that belief had remained with her, I make out,
till the accident of the other day opened your eyes. For that it did,« said
Maria, »open them -«
    »She can't help« - he had taken it up - »being aware? No,« he mused; »I
suppose she thinks of that even yet.«
    »Then they were closed? There you are! However, if you see her as the most
charming woman in the world it comes to the same thing. And if you'd like me to
tell her that you do still so see her -!« Miss Gostrey, in short, offered
herself for service to the end.
    It was an offer he could temporarily entertain; but he decided. »She knows
perfectly how I see her.«
    »Not favourably enough, she mentioned to me, to wish ever to see her again.
She told me you had taken a final leave of her. She says you've done with her.«
    »So I have.«
    Maria had a pause; then she spoke as if for conscience. »She wouldn't have
done with you. She feels she has lost you - yet that she might have been better
for you.«
    »Oh she has been quite good enough!« Strether laughed.
    »She thinks you and she might at any rate have been friends.«
    »We might certainly. That's just« - he continued to laugh - »why I'm going.«
    It was as if Maria could feel with this then at last that she had done her
best for each. But she had still an idea. »Shall I tell her that?«
    »No. Tell her nothing.«
    »Very well then.« To which in the next breath Miss Gostrey added: »Poor dear
thing!«
    Her friend wondered; then with raised eyebrows: »Me?«
    »Oh no. Marie de Vionnet.«
    He accepted the correction, but he wondered still. »Are you so sorry for her
as that?«
    It made her think a moment - made her even speak with a smile. But she
didn't really retract. »I'm sorry for us all!«

                                       IV

 
He was to delay no longer to re-establish communication with Chad, and we have
just seen that he had spoken to Miss Gostrey of this intention on hearing from
her of the young man's absence. It was not moreover only the assurance so given
that prompted him; it was the need of causing his conduct to square with another
profession still - the motive he had described to her as his sharpest for now
getting away. If he was to get away because of some of the relations involved in
staying, the cold attitude toward them might look pedantic in the light of
lingering on. He must do both things; he must see Chad, but he must go. The more
he thought of the former of these duties the more he felt himself make a subject
of insistence of the latter. They were alike intensely present to him as he sat
in front of a quiet little café into which he had dropped on quitting Maria's
entresol. The rain that had spoiled his evening with her was over; for it was
still to him as if his evening had been spoiled - though it mightn't have been
wholly the rain. It was late when he left the café, yet not too late; he
couldn't in any case go straight to bed, and he would walk round by the
Boulevard Malesherbes - rather far round - on his way home. Present enough
always was the small circumstance that had originally pressed for him the spring
of so big a difference - the accident of little Bilham's appearance on the
balcony of the mystic troisième at the moment of his first visit, and the effect
of it on his sense of what was then before him. He recalled his watch, his wait,
and the recognition that had proceeded from the young stranger, that had played
frankly into the air and had presently brought him up - things smoothing the way
for his first straight step. He had since had occasion, a few times, to pass the
house without going in; but he had never passed it without again feeling how it
had then spoken to him. He stopped short to-night on coming to sight of it: it
was as if his last day were oddly copying his first. The windows of Chad's
apartment were open to the balcony - a pair of them lighted; and a figure that
had come out and taken up little Bilham's attitude, a figure whose
cigarette-spark he could see leaned on the rail and looked down at him. It
denoted however no reappearance of his younger friend; it quickly defined itself
in the tempered darkness as Chad's more solid shape; so that Chad's was the
attention that, after he had stepped forward into the street and signalled, he
easily engaged; Chad's was the voice that, sounding into the night with
promptness and seemingly with joy, greeted him and called him up.
    That the young man had been visible there just in this position expressed
somehow for Strether that, as Maria Gostrey had reported, he had been absent and
silent; and our friend drew breath on each landing - the lift, at that hour,
having ceased to work - before the implications of the fact. He had been for a
week intensely away, away to a distance and alone; but he was more back than
ever, and the attitude in which Strether had surprised him was something more
than a return - it was clearly a conscious surrender. He had arrived but an hour
before, from London, from Lucerne, from Homburg, from no matter where - though
the visitor's fancy, on the staircase, liked to fill it out; and after a bath, a
talk with Baptiste and a supper of light cold clever French things, which one
could see the remains of there in the circle of the lamp, pretty and
ultra-Parisian, he had come into the air again for a smoke, was occupied at the
moment of Strether's approach in what might have been called taking up his life
afresh. His life, his life! - Strether paused anew, on the last flight, at this
final rather breathless sense of what Chad's life was doing with Chad's mother's
emissary. It was dragging him, at strange hours, up the staircases of the rich;
it was keeping him out of bed at the end of long hot days; it was transforming
beyond recognition the simple, subtle, conveniently uniform thing that had
anciently passed with him for a life of his own. Why should it concern him that
Chad was to be fortified in the pleasant practice of smoking on balconies, of
supping on salads, of feeling his special conditions agreeably reaffirm
themselves, of finding reassurance in comparisons and contrasts? There was no
answer to such a question but that he was still practically committed - he had
perhaps never yet so much known it. It made him feel old, and he would buy his
railway-ticket - feeling, no doubt, older - the next day; but he had meanwhile
come up four flights, counting the entresol, at midnight and without a lift, for
Chad's life. The young man, hearing him by this time, and with Baptiste sent to
rest, was already at the door; so that Strether had before him in full
visibility the cause in which he was labouring and even, with the troisième
fairly gained, panting a little.
    Chad offered him, as always, a welcome in which the cordial and the formal -
so far as the formal was the respectful - handsomely met; and after he had
expressed a hope that he would let him put him up for the night Strether was in
full possession of the key, as it might have been called, to what had lately
happened. If he had just thought of himself as old Chad was at sight of him
thinking of him as older: he wanted to put him up for the night just because he
was ancient and weary. It could never be said the tenant of these quarters
wasn't't nice to him; a tenant who, if he might indeed now keep him, was probably
prepared to work it all still more thoroughly. Our friend had in fact the
impression that with the minimum of encouragement Chad would propose to keep him
indefinitely; an impression in the lap of which one of his own possibilities
seemed to sit. Madame de Vionnet had wished him to stay - so why didn't that
happily fit? He could enshrine himself for the rest of his days in his young
host's chamber d'ami and draw out these days at his young host's expense: there
could scarce be greater logical expression of the countenance he had been moved
to give. There was literally a minute - it was strange enough - during which he
grasped the idea that as he was acting, as he could only act, he was
inconsistent. The sign that the inward forces he had obeyed really hung together
would be that - in default always of another career - he should promote the good
cause by mounting guard on it. These things, during his first minutes, came and
went; but they were after all practically disposed of as soon as he had
mentioned his errand. He had come to say good-bye - yet that was only a part; so
that from the moment Chad accepted his farewell the question of a more ideal
affirmation gave way to something else. He proceeded with the rest of his
business. »You'll be a brute, you know - you'll be guilty of the last infamy -
if you ever forsake her.«
    That, uttered there at the solemn hour, uttered in the place that was full
of her influence, was the rest of his business; and when once he had heard
himself say it he felt that his message had never before been spoken. It placed
his present call immediately on solid ground, and the effect of it was to enable
him quite to play with what we have called the key. Chad showed no shade of
embarrassment, but had none the less been troubled for him after their meeting
in the country; had had fears and doubts on the subject of his comfort. He was
disturbed, as it were, only for him, and had positively gone away to ease him
off, to let him down - if it wasn't't indeed rather to screw him up - the more
gently. Seeing him now fairly jaded he had come, with characteristic good
humour, all the way to meet him, and what Strether thereupon supremely made out
was that he would abound for him to the end in conscientious assurances. This
was what was between them while the visitor remained; so far from having to go
over old ground he found his entertainer keen to agree to everything. It
couldn't be put too strongly for him that he'd be a brute. »Oh rather! - if I
should do anything of that sort. I hope you believe I really feel it.«
    »I want it,« said Strether, »to be my last word of all to you. I can't say
more, you know; and I don't see how I can do more, in every way, than I've
done.«
    Chad took this, almost artlessly, as a direct allusion. »You've seen her?«
    »Oh yes - to say good-bye. And if I had doubted the truth of what I tell you
-«
    »She'd have cleared up your doubt?« Chad understood - rather - again! It
even kept him briefly silent. But he made that up. »She must have been
wonderful.«
    »She was,« Strether candidly admitted - all of which practically told as a
reference to the conditions created by the accident of the previous week.
    They appeared for a little to be looking back at it; and that came out still
more in what Chad next said. »I don't know what you've really thought, all
along; I never did know - for anything, with you, seemed to be possible. But of
course - of course -« Without confusion, quite with nothing but indulgence, he
broke down, he pulled up. »After all, you understand. I spoke to you originally
only as I had to speak. There's only one way - isn't there? - about such things.
However,« he smiled with a final philosophy, »I see it's all right.«
    Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts. What was it that
made him at present, late at night and after journeys, so renewedly, so
substantially young? Strether saw in a moment what it was - it was that he was
younger again than Madame de Vionnet. He himself said immediately none of the
things that he was thinking; he said something quite different. »You have really
been to a distance?«
    »I've been to England.« Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, but gave no
further account of it than to say: »One must sometimes get off.«
    Strether wanted no more facts - he only wanted to justify, as it were, his
question. »Of course you do as you're free to do. But I hope, this time, that
you didn't go for me.«
    »For very shame at bothering you really too much? My dear man,« Chad
laughed, »what wouldn't I do for you?«
    Strether's easy answer for this was that it was a disposition he had exactly
come to profit by. »Even at the risk of being in your way I've waited on, you
know, for a definite reason.«
    Chad took it in. »Oh yes - for us to make if possible a still better
impression.« And he stood there happily exhaling his full general consciousness.
»I'm delighted to gather that you feel we've made it.«
    There was a pleasant irony in the words, which his guest, preoccupied and
keeping to the point, didn't take up. »If I had my sense of wanting the rest of
the time - the time of their being still on this side,« he continued to explain
- »I know now why I wanted it.«
    He was as grave, as distinct, as a demonstrator before a blackboard, and
Chad continued to face him like an intelligent pupil. »You wanted to have been
put through the whole thing.«
    Strether again, for a moment, said nothing; he turned his eyes away, and
they lost themselves, through the open window, in the dusky outer air. »I shall
learn from the Bank here where they're now having their letters, and my last
word, which I shall write in the morning and which they're expecting as my
ultimatum, will so immediately reach them.« The light of his plural pronoun was
sufficiently reflected in his companion's face as he again met it; and he
completed his demonstration. He pursued indeed as if for himself. »Of course
I've first to justify what I shall do.«
    »You're justifying it beautifully!« Chad declared.
    »It's not a question of advising you not to go,« Strether said, »but of
absolutely preventing you, if possible, from so much as thinking of it. Let me
accordingly appeal to you by all you hold sacred.«
    Chad showed a surprise. »What makes you think me capable -?«
    »You'd not only be, as I say, a brute; you'd be,« his companion went on in
the same way, »a criminal of the deepest dye.«
    Chad gave a sharper look, as if to gauge a possible suspicion. »I don't know
what should make you think I'm tired of her.«
    Strether didn't quite know either, and such impressions, for the imaginative
mind, were always too fine, too floating, to produce on the spot their warrant.
There was none the less for him, in the very manner of his host's allusion to
satiety as a thinkable motive, a slight breath of the ominous. »I feel how much
more she can do for you. She hasn't done it all yet. Stay with her at least till
she has.«
    »And leave her then?«
    Chad had kept smiling, but its effect in Strether was a shade of dryness.
»Don't leave her before. When you've got all that can be got - I don't say,« he
added a trifle grimly. »That will be the proper time. But as, for you, from such
a woman, there will always be something to be got, my remark's not a wrong to
her.« Chad let him go on, showing every decent deference, showing perhaps also a
candid curiosity for this sharper accent. »I remember you, you know, as you
were.«
    »An awful ass, wasn't't I?«
    The response was as prompt as if he had pressed a spring; it had a ready
abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment to meet it. »You
certainly then wouldn't have seemed worth all you've let me in for. You've
defined yourself better. Your value has quintupled.«
    »Well then, wouldn't that be enough -?«
    Chad had risked it jocosely, but Strether remained blank. »Enough?«
    »If one should wish to live on one's accumulations?« After which, however,
as his friend appeared cold to the joke, the young man as easily dropped it. »Of
course I really never forget, night or day, what I owe her. I owe her
everything. I give you my word of honour,« he frankly rang out, »that I'm not a
bit tired of her.« Strether at this only gave him a stare: the way youth could
express itself was again and again a wonder. He meant no harm, though he might
after all be capable of much; yet he spoke of being tired of her almost as he
might have spoken of being tired of roast mutton for dinner. »She has never for
a moment yet bored me - never been wanting, as the cleverest women sometimes
are, in tact. She has never talked about her tact - as even they too sometimes
talk; but she has always had it. She has never had it more« - he handsomely made
the point - »than just lately.« And he scrupulously went further. »She has never
been anything I could call a burden.«
    Strether for a moment said nothing; then he spoke gravely, with his shade of
dryness deepened. »Oh if you didn't do her justice -!«
    »I should be a beast, eh?«
    Strether devoted no time to saying what he would be; that, visibly, would
take them far. If there was nothing for it but to repeat, however, repetition
was no mistake. »You owe her everything - very much more than she can ever owe
you. You've in other words duties to her, of the most positive sort; and I don't
see what other duties - as the others are presented to you - can be held to go
before them.«
    Chad looked at him with a smile. »And you know of course about the others,
eh? - since it's you yourself who have done the presenting.«
    »Much of it - yes - and to the best of my ability. But not all - from the
moment your sister took my place.«
    »She didn't,« Chad returned. »Sally took a place, certainly; but it was
never, I saw from the first moment, to be yours. No one - with us - will ever
take yours. It wouldn't be possible.«
    »Ah of course,« sighed Strether, »I knew it. I believe you're right. No one
in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously solemn. There I am,« he added
with another sigh, as if weary enough, on occasion, of this truth. »I was made
so.«
    Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might for
this purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured the fact.
»You have never needed any one to make you better. There has never been any one
good enough. They couldn't,« the young man declared.
    His friend hesitated. »I beg your pardon. They have.«
    Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt. »Who then?«
    Strether - though a little dimly - smiled at him. »Women - too.«
    »Two?« - Chad stared and laughed. »Oh I don't believe, for such work, in any
more than one! So you're proving too much. And what is beastly, at all events,«
he added, »is losing you.«
    Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he paused.
»Are you afraid?«
    »Afraid -?«
    »Of doing wrong. I mean away from my eye.« Before Chad could speak, however,
he had taken himself up. »I am, certainly,« he laughed, »prodigious.«
    »Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid -!« This might have been, on Chad's
part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely extravagant; but it was full,
plainly enough, of the intention of comfort, it carried with it a protest
against doubt and a promise, positively, of performance. Picking up a hat in the
vestibule he came out with his friend, came downstairs, took his arm,
affectionately, as to help and guide him, treating him if not exactly as aged
and infirm, yet as a noble eccentric who appealed to tenderness, and keeping on
with him, while they walked, to the next corner and the next. »You needn't tell
me, you needn't tell me!« - this again as they proceeded, he wished to make
Strether feel. What he needn't tell him was now at last, in the geniality of
separation, anything at all it concerned him to know. He knew, up to the hilt -
that really came over Chad; he understood, felt, recorded his vow; and they
lingered on it as they had lingered in their walk to Strether's hotel the night
of their first meeting. The latter took, at this hour, all he could get; he had
given all he had had to give; he was as depleted as if he had spent his last
sou. But there was just one thing for which, before they broke off, Chad seemed
disposed slightly to bargain. His companion needn't, as he said, tell him, but
he might himself mention that he had been getting some news of the art of
advertisement. He came out quite suddenly with this announcement, while Strether
wondered if his revived interest were what had taken him, with strange
inconsequence, over to London. He appeared at all events to have been looking
into the question and had encountered a revelation. Advertising scientifically
worked presented itself thus as the great new force. »It really does the thing,
you know.«
    They were face to face under the street-lamp as they had been the first
night, and Strether, no doubt, looked blank. »Affects, you mean, the sale of the
object advertised?«
    »Yes - but affects it extraordinarily; really beyond what one had supposed.
I mean of course when it's done as one makes out that, in our roaring age, it
can be done. I've been finding out a little; though it doubtless doesn't't amount
to much more than what you originally, so awfully vividly - and all, very
nearly, that first night - put before me. It's an art like another, and infinite
like all the arts.« He went on as if for the joke of it - almost as if his
friend's face amused him. »In the hands, naturally, of a master. The right man
must take hold. With the right man to work it c'est un monde.«
    Strether had watched him quite as if, there on the pavement, without a
pretext, he had begun to dance a fancy step. »Is what you're thinking of that
you yourself, in the case you have in mind, would be the right man?«
    Chad had thrown back his light coat and thrust each of his thumbs into an
armhole of his waistcoat; in which position his fingers played up and down.
»Why, what is he but what you yourself, as I say, took me for when you first
came out?«
    Strether felt a little faint, but he coerced his attention. »Oh yes, and
there's no doubt that, with your natural parts, you'd have much in common with
him. Advertising is clearly at this time of day the secret of trade. It's quite
possible it will be open to you - giving the whole of your mind to it - to make
the whole place hum with you. Your mother's appeal is to the whole of your mind,
and that's exactly the strength of her case.«
    Chad's fingers continued to twiddle, but he had something of a drop. »Ah
we've been through my mother's case!«
    »So I thought. Why then do you speak of the matter?«
    »Only because it was part of our original discussion. To wind up where we
began, my interest's purely platonic. There at any rate the fact is - the fact
of the possible. I mean the money in it.«
    »Oh damn the money in it!« said Strether. And then as the young man's fixed
smile seemed to shine out more strange: »Shall you give your friend up for the
money in it?«
    Chad preserved his handsome grimace as well as the rest of his attitude.
»You're not altogether - in your so great solemnity- kind. Haven't I been
drinking you in - showing you all I feel you're worth to me? What have I done,
what am I doing, but cleave to her to the death? The only thing is,« he
good-humouredly explained, »that one can't but have it before one, in the
cleaving - the point where the death comes in. Don't be afraid for that. It's
pleasant to a fellow's feelings,« he developed, »to size-up the bribe he applies
his foot to.«
    »Oh then if all you want's a kickable surface the bribe's enormous.«
    »Good. Then there it goes!« Chad administered his kick with fantastic force
and sent an imaginary object flying. It was accordingly as if they were once
more rid of the question and could come back to what really concerned him. »Of
course I shall see you tomorrow.«
    But Strether scarce heeded the plan proposed for this; he had still the
impression - not the slighter for the simulated kick - of an irrelevant hornpipe
or jig. »You're restless.«
    »Ah,« returned Chad as they parted, »you're exciting.«

                                       V

 
He had, however, within two days, another separation to face. He had sent Maria
Gostrey a word early, by hand, to ask if he might come to breakfast; in
consequence of which, at noon, she awaited him in the cool shade of her little
Dutch-looking dining-room. This retreat was at the back of the house, with a
view of a scrap of old garden that had been saved from modern ravage; and though
he had on more than one other occasion had his legs under its small and
peculiarly polished table of hospitality, the place had never before struck him
as so sacred to pleasant knowledge, to intimate charm, to antique order, to a
neatness that was almost august. To sit there was, as he had told his hostess
before, to see life reflected for the time in ideally kept pewter; which was
somehow becoming, improving to life, so that one's eyes were held and comforted.
Strether's were comforted at all events now - and the more that it was the last
time - with the charming effect, on the board bare of a cloth and proud of its
perfect surface, of the small old crockery and old silver, matched by the more
substantial pieces happily disposed about the room. The specimens of vivid Delf,
in particular, had the dignity of family portraits; and it was in the midst of
them that our friend resignedly expressed himself. He spoke even with a certain
philosophic humour. »There's nothing more to wait for; I seem to have done a
good day's work. I've let them have it all round. I've seen Chad, who has been
to London and come back. He tells me I'm exciting, and I seem indeed pretty well
to have upset every one. I've at any rate excited him. He's distinctly
restless.«
    »You've excited me,« Miss Gostrey smiled. »I'm distinctly restless.«
    »Oh you were that when I found you. It seems to me I've rather got you out
of it. What's this,« he asked as he looked about him, »but a haunt of ancient
peace?«
    »I wish with all my heart,« she presently replied, »I could make you treat
it as a haven of rest.« On which they fronted each other, across the table, as
if things unuttered were in the air.
    Strether seemed, in his way, when he next spoke, to take some of them up.
»It wouldn't give me - that would be the trouble - what it will, no doubt, still
give you. I'm not,« he explained, leaning back in his chair, but with his eyes
on a small ripe round melon - »in real harmony with what surrounds me. You are.
I take it too hard. You don't. It makes - that's what it comes to in the end - a
fool of me.« Then at a tangent, »What has he been doing in London?« he demanded.
    »Ah one may go to London,« Maria laughed. »You know I did.«
    Yes - he took the reminder. »And you brought me back.« He brooded there
opposite to her, but without gloom. »Whom has Chad brought? He's full of ideas.
And I wrote to Sarah,« he added, »the first thing this morning. So I'm square.
I'm ready for them.«
    She neglected certain parts of this speech in the interest of others. »Marie
said to me the other day that she felt him to have the makings of an immense man
of business.«
    »There it is. He's the son of his father!«
    »But such a father!«
    »Ah just the right one from that point of view! But it isn't his father in
him,« Strether added, »that troubles me.«
    »What is it then?« He came back to his breakfast; he partook presently of
the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was only after this
that he met her question. Then moreover it was but to remark that he'd answer
her presently. She waited, she watched, she served him and amused him, and it
was perhaps with this last idea that she soon reminded him of his having never
even yet named to her the article produced at Woollett. »Do you remember our
talking of it in London - that night at the play?« Before he could say yes,
however, she had put it to him for other matters. Did he remember, did he
remember - this and that of their first days? He remembered everything, bringing
up with humour even things of which she professed no recollection, things she
vehemently denied; and falling back above all on the great interest of their
early time, the curiosity felt by both of them as to where he would come out.
They had so assumed it was to be in some wonderful place - they had thought of
it as so very much out. Well, that was doubtless what it had been - since he had
come out just there. He was out, in truth, as far as it was possible to be, and
must now rather bethink himself of getting in again. He found on the spot the
image of his recent history; he was like one of the figures of the old clock at
Berne. They came out, on one side, at their hour, jigged along their little
course in the public eye, and went in on the other side. He too had jigged his
little course - him too a modest retreat awaited. He offered now, should she
really like to know, to name the great product of Woollett. It would be a great
commentary on everything. At this she stopped him off; she not only had no wish
to know, but she wouldn't know for the world. She had done with the products of
Woollett - for all the good she had got from them. She desired no further news
of them, and she mentioned that Madame de Vionnet herself had, to her knowledge,
lived exempt from the information he was ready to supply. She had never
consented to receive it, though she would have taken it, under stress, from Mrs.
Pocock. But it was a matter about which Mrs. Pocock appeared to have had little
to say - never sounding the word - and it didn't signify now. There was nothing
clearly for Maria Gostrey that signified now - save one sharp point, that is, to
which she came in time. »I don't know whether it's before you as a possibility
that, left to himself, Mr. Chad may after all go back. I judge that it is more
or less so before you, from what you just now said of him.«
    Her guest had his eyes on her, kindly but attentively, as if foreseeing what
was to follow this. »I don't think it will be for the money.« And then as she
seemed uncertain: »I mean I don't believe it will be for that he'll give her
up.«
    »Then he will give her up?«
    Strether waited a moment, rather slow and deliberate now, drawing out a
little this last soft stage, pleading with her in various suggestive and
unspoken ways for patience and understanding. »What were you just about to ask
me?«
    »Is there anything he can do that would make you patch it up?«
    »With Mrs. Newsome?«
    Her assent, as if she had had a delicacy about sounding the name, was only
in her face; but she added with it: »Or is there anything he can do that would
make her try it?«
    »To patch it up with me?« His answer came at last in a conclusive headshake.
»There's nothing any one can do. It's over. Over for both of us.«
    Maria wondered, seemed a little to doubt. »Are you so sure for her?«
    »Oh yes - sure now. Too much has happened. I'm different for her.«
    She took it in then, drawing a deeper breath. »I see. So that as she's
different for you -«
    »Ah but,« he interrupted, »she's not.« And as Miss Gostrey wondered again:
»She's the same. She's more than ever the same. But I do what I didn't before -
I see her.«
    He spoke gravely and as if responsibly - since he had to pronounce; and the
effect of it was slightly solemn, so that she simply exclaimed »Oh!« Satisfied
and grateful, however, she showed in her own next words an acceptance of his
statement. »What then do you go home to?«
    He had pushed his plate a little away, occupied with another side of the
matter; taking refuge verily in that side and feeling so moved that he soon
found himself on his feet. He was affected in advance by what he believed might
come from her, and he would have liked to forestall it and deal with it
tenderly; yet in the presence of it he wished still more to be - though as
smoothly as possible - deterrent and conclusive. He put her question by for the
moment; he told her more about Chad. »It would have been impossible to meet me
more than he did last night on the question of the infamy of not sticking to
her.«
    »Is that what you called it for him - infamy?«
    »Oh rather! I described to him in detail the base creature he'd be, and he
quite agrees with me about it.«
    »So that it's really as if you had nailed him?«
    »Quite really as if -! I told him I should curse him.«
    »Oh,« she smiled, »you have done it.« And then having thought again: »You
can't after that propose -!« Yet she scanned his face.
    »Propose again to Mrs. Newsome?«
    She hesitated afresh, but she brought it out. »I've never believed, you
know, that you did propose. I always believed it was really she - and, so far as
that goes, I can understand it. What I mean is,« she explained, »that with such
a spirit - the spirit of curses! - your breach is past mending. She has only to
know what you've done to him never again to raise a finger.«
    »I've done,« said Strether, »what I could - one can't do more. He protests
his devotion and his horror. But I'm not sure I've saved him. He protests too
much. He asks how one can dream of his being tired. But he has all life before
him.«
    Maria saw what he meant. »He's formed to please.«
    »And it's our friend who has formed him.« Strether felt in it the strange
irony.
    »So it's scarcely his fault!«
    »It's at any rate his danger. I mean,« said Strether, »it's hers. But she
knows it.«
    »Yes, she knows it. And is your idea,« Miss Gostrey asked, »that there was
some other woman in London?«
    »Yes. No. That is I have no ideas. I'm afraid of them. I've done with them.«
And he put out his hand to her. »Good-bye.«
    It brought her back to her unanswered question. »To what do you go home?«
    »I don't know. There will always be something.«
    »To a great difference,« she said as she kept his hand.
    »A great difference - no doubt. Yet I shall see what I can make of it.«
    »Shall you make anything so good -?« But, as if remembering what Mrs.
Newsome had done, it was as far as she went.
    He had sufficiently understood. »So good as this place at this moment? So
good as what you make of everything you touch?« He took a moment to say, for,
really and truly, what stood about him there in her offer - which was as the
offer of exquisite service, of lightened care, for the rest of his days - might
well have tempted. It built him softly round, it roofed him warmly over, it
rested, all so firm, on selection. And what ruled selection was beauty and
knowledge. It was awkward, it was almost stupid, not to seem to prize such
things; yet, none the less, so far as they made his opportunity they made it
only for a moment. She'd moreover understand - she always understood.
    That indeed might be, but meanwhile she was going on. »There's nothing, you
know, I wouldn't do for you.«
    »Oh yes - I know.«
    »There's nothing,« she repeated, »in all the world.«
    »I know. I know. But all the same I must go.« He had got it at last. »To be
right.«
    »To be right?«
    She had echoed it in vague deprecation, but he felt it already clear for
her. »That, you see, is my only logic. Not, out of the whole affair, to have got
anything for myself.«
    She thought. »But with your wonderful impressions you'll have got a great
deal.«
    »A great deal« - he agreed. »But nothing like you. It's you who would make
me wrong!«
    Honest and fine, she couldn't greatly pretend she didn't see it. Still she
could pretend just a little. »But why should you be so dreadfully right?«
    »That's the way that - if I must go - you yourself would be the first to
want me. And I can't do anything else.«
    So then she had to take it, though still with her defeated protest. »It
isn't so much your being right - it's your horrible sharp eye for what makes you
so.«
    »Oh but you're just as bad yourself. You can't resist me when I point that
out.«
    She sighed it at last all comically, all tragically, away. »I can't indeed
resist you.«
    »Then there we are!« said Strether.
