 be said, in flowers. He really for the time regretted it
- poor dear old sombre glow! Something straight and simple, something heavy and
empty, had been eclipsed in its company; something by which he had best known
his friend. Waymarsh wouldn't be his friend, somehow, without the occasional
ornament of the sacred rage, and the right to the sacred rage - inestimably
precious for Strether's charity - he also seemed in a manner, and at Mrs.
Pocock's elbow, to have forfeited. Strether remembered the occasion early in
their stay when on that very spot he had come out with his earnest, his ominous
»Quit it!« - and, so remembering, felt it hang by a hair that he didn't himself
now utter the same note. Waymarsh was having a good time - this was the truth
that was embarrassing for him, and he was having it then and there, he was
having it in Europe, he was having it under the very protection of circumstances
of which he didn't in the least approve; all of which placed him in a false
position, with no issue possible - none at least by the grand manner. It was
practically in the manner of any one - it was all but in poor Strether's own -
that instead of taking anything up he merely made the most of having to be
himself explanatory. »I'm not leaving for the United States direct. Mr. and Mrs.
Pocock and Miss Mamie are thinking of a little trip before their own return, and
we've been talking for some days past of our joining forces. We've settled it
that we do join and that we sail together the end of next month. But we start
to-morrow for Switzerland. Mrs. Pocock wants some scenery. She hasn't had much
yet.«
    He was brave in his way too, keeping nothing back, confessing all there was,
and only leaving Strether to make certain connexions. »Is what Mrs. Newsome had
cabled her daughter an injunction to break off short?«
    The grand manner indeed at this just raised its head a little. »I know
nothing about Mrs. Newsome's cables.«
    Their eyes met on it with some intensity - during the few seconds of which
something happened quite out of proportion to the time. It happened that
Strether, looking thus at his friend, didn't take his answer for truth - and
that something more again occurred in consequence of that. Yes - Waymarsh just
did know about Mrs. Newsome's
