 - he has renewed acquaintance with me, and he has,
I guess, learnt something about me, though I don't know how much he has liked
it. It's for Strether himself to say whether he has felt it justifies his
course.«
    »Oh but you,« said the Countess gaily, »are not in the least what he came
out for - is he really, Strether? and I hadn't you at all in my mind. I was
thinking of Mr. Newsome, of whom we think so much and with whom, precisely, Mrs.
Pocock has given herself the opportunity to take up threads. What a pleasure for
you both!« Madame de Vionnet, with her eyes on Sarah, bravely continued.
    Mrs. Pocock met her handsomely, but Strether quickly saw she meant to accept
no version of her movements or plans from any other lips. She required no
patronage and no support, which were but other names for a false position; she
would show in her own way what she chose to show, and this she expressed with a
dry glitter that recalled to him a fine Woollett winter morning. »I've never
wanted for opportunities to see my brother. We've many things to think of at
home, and great responsibilities and occupations, and our home's not an
impossible place. We've plenty of reasons,« Sarah continued a little piercingly,
»for everything we do« - and in short she wouldn't give herself the least little
scrap away. But she added as one who was always bland and who could afford a
concession: »I've come because - well, because we do come.«
    »Ah then fortunately!« - Madame de Vionnet breathed it to the air. Five
minutes later they were on their feet for her to take leave, standing together
in an affability that had succeeded in surviving a further exchange of remarks;
only with the emphasised appearance on Waymarsh's part of a tendency to revert,
in a ruminating manner and as with an instinctive or a precautionary lightening
of his tread, to an open window and his point of vantage. The glazed and gilded
room, all red damask, ormolu, mirrors, clocks, looked south, and the shutters
were bowed upon the summer morning; but the Tuileries garden and what was beyond
it, over which the whole place hung, were things visible through gaps; so that
the far-spreading presence of Paris came up in coolness, dimness and invitation,
in the twinkle of gilt-tipped palings, the crunch of
