 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
