 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 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
