 Boulevard Malesherbes at which Madame de Vionnet had been present with
her daughter, he was called upon to play his part in an encounter that deeply
stirred his imagination. He had the habit, in these contemplations, of watching
a fellow visitant, here and there, from a respectable distance, remarking some
note of behaviour, of penitence, of prostration, of the absolved, relieved
state; this was the manner in which his vague tenderness took its course, the
degree of demonstration to which it naturally had to confine itself. It hadn't
indeed so felt its responsibility as when on this occasion he suddenly measured
the suggestive effect of a lady whose supreme stillness, in the shade of one of
the chapels, he had two or three times noticed as he made, and made once more,
his slow circuit. She wasn't prostrate - not in any degree bowed, but she was
strangely fixed, and her prolonged immobility showed her, while he passed and
paused, as wholly given up to the need, whatever it was, that had brought her
there. She only sat and gazed before her, as he himself often sat; but she had
placed herself, as he never did, within the focus of the shrine, and she had
lost herself, he could easily see, as he would only have liked to do. She was
not a wandering alien, keeping back more than she gave, but one of the familiar,
the intimate, the fortunate, for whom these dealings had a method and a meaning.
She reminded our friend - since it was the way of nine tenths of his current
impressions to act as recalls of things imagined - of some fine firm
concentrated heroine of an old story, something he had heard, read, something
that, had he had a hand for drama, he might himself have written, renewing her
courage, renewing her clearness, in splendidly-protected meditation. Her back,
as she sat, was turned to him, but his impression absolutely required that she
should be young and interesting, and she carried her head moreover, even in the
sacred shade, with a discernible faith in herself, a kind of implied conviction
of consistency, security, impunity. But what had such a woman come for if she
hadn't come to pray? Strether's reading of such matters was, it must be owned,
confused; but he wondered if her attitude were some congruous fruit of
absolution, of »indulgence.« He knew but dimly what indulgence, in such a place,
might mean; yet he had, as with a soft sweep
