 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
