 taken place he would present himself, and their
friend wouldn't have long to wait. Strether assumed, he became aware, on this
reasoning, that the interesting parties to the arrangement would have met
betimes, and that the more interesting of the two - as she was after all - would
have communicated to the other the issue of her appeal. Chad would know without
delay that his mother's messenger had been with her, and, though it was perhaps
not quite easy to see how she could qualify what had occurred, he would at least
have been sufficiently advised to feel he could go on. The day, however,
brought, early or late, no word from him, and Strether felt, as a result of
this, that a change had practically come over their intercourse. It was perhaps
a premature judgement; or it only meant perhaps - how could he tell? - that the
wonderful pair he protected had taken up again together the excursion he had
accidentally checked. They might have gone back to the country, and gone back
but with a long breath drawn; that indeed would best mark Chad's sense that
reprobation hadn't rewarded Madame de Vionnet's request for an interview. At the
end of the twenty-four hours, at the end of the forty-eight, there was still no
overture; so that Strether filled up the time, as he had so often filled it
before, by going to see Miss Gostrey.
    He proposed amusements to her; he felt expert now in proposing amusements;
and he had thus, for several days, an odd sense of leading her about Paris, of
driving her in the Bois, of showing her the penny steamboats - those from which
the breeze of the Seine was to be best enjoyed - that might have belonged to a
kindly uncle doing the honours of the capital to an intelligent niece from the
country. He found means even to take her to shops she didn't know, or that she
pretended she didn't; while she, on her side, was, like the country maiden, all
passive modest and grateful - going in fact so far as to emulate rusticity in
occasional fatigues and bewilderments. Strether described these vague
proceedings to himself, described them even to her, as a happy interlude; the
sign of which was that the companions said for the time no further word about
the matter they had talked of to satiety. He proclaimed satiety at the outset,
and she quickly took the hint; as docile both in this and in everything else as
the intelligent obedient niece. He told
