 next and the next. Her noble old apartment offered a succession of
three, the first two of which indeed, on entering, smaller than the last, but
each with its faded and formal air, enlarged the office of the antechamber and
enriched the sense of approach. Strether fancied them, liked them, and, passing
through them with her more slowly now, met a sharp renewal of his original
impression. He stopped, he looked back; the whole thing made a vista, which he
found high melancholy and sweet - full, once more, of dim historic shades, of
the faint faraway cannon-roar of the great Empire. It was doubtless half the
projection of his mind, but his mind was a thing that, among old waxed parquets,
pale shades of pink and green, pseudo-classic candelabra, he had always
needfully to reckon with. They could easily make him irrelevant. The oddity, the
originality, the poetry - he didn't know what to call it - of Chad's connexion
reaffirmed for him its romantic side. »They ought to see this, you know. They
must.«
    »The Pococks?« - she looked about in deprecation; she seemed to see gaps he
didn't.
    »Mamie and Sarah - Mamie in particular.«
    »My shabby old place? But their things -!«
    »Oh their things! You were talking of what will do something for you -«
    »So that it strikes you,« she broke in, »that my poor place may? Oh,« she
ruefully mused, »that would be desperate!«
    »Do you know what I wish?« he went on. »I wish Mrs. Newsome herself could
have a look.«
    She stared, missing a little his logic. »It would make a difference?«
    Her tone was so earnest that as he continued to look about he laughed. »It
might!«
    »But you've told her, you tell me -«
    »All about you? Yes, a wonderful story. But there's all the indescribable -
what one gets only on the spot.«
    »Thank you!« she charmingly and sadly smiled.
    »It's all about me here,« he freely continued. »Mrs. Newsome feels things.«
    But she seemed doomed always to come back to doubt. »No one feels so much as
you. No - not any one.«
    »So much the worse then for every one. It's very easy.«
    They were by this time in the
