 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
