Strether rambled alone during these few days, the effect of the
incident of the previous week having been to simplify in a marked
fashion his mixed relations with Waymarsh.  Nothing had passed between
them in reference to Mrs. Newsome's summons but that our friend had
mentioned to his own the departure of the deputation actually at
sea--giving him thus an opportunity to confess to the occult
intervention he imputed to him.  Waymarsh however in the event
confessed to nothing; and though this falsified in some degree
Strether's forecast the latter amusedly saw in it the same depth of
good conscience out of which the dear man's impertinence had originally
sprung.  He was patient with the dear man now and delighted to observe
how unmistakeably he had put on flesh; he felt his own holiday so
successfully large and free that he was full of allowances and
charities in respect to those cabined and confined' his instinct toward
a spirit so strapped down as Waymarsh's was to walk round it on tiptoe
for fear of waking it up to a sense of losses by this time
irretrievable.  It was all very funny he knew, and but the difference,
as he often said to himself, of tweedledum and tweedledee--an
emancipation so purely comparative that it was like the advance of the
door-mat on the scraper; yet the present crisis was happily to profit
by it and the pilgrim from Milrose to know himself more than ever in
the right.

Strether felt that when he heard of the approach of the Pococks the
impulse of pity quite sprang up in him beside the impulse of triumph.
That was exactly why Waymarsh had looked at him with eyes in which the
heat of justice was measured and shaded.  He had looked very hard, as
if affectionately sorry for the friend--the friend of fifty-five--whose
frivolity had had thus to be recorded; becoming, however, but obscurely
sententious and leaving his companion to formulate a charge.  It was in
this general attitude that he had of late altogether taken refuge; with
the drop of discussion they were solemnly sadly superficial; Strether
recognised in him the mere portentous rumination to which Miss Barrace
had so good-humouredly described herself as assigning a corner of her
salon.  It was quite as if he knew his surreptitious step had been
divined, and it was also as if he missed the chance to explain the
purity of his motive; but this privation of relief should be precisely
his small penance:  it was not amiss for Strether that he should find
himself to that degree uneasy.  If he had been challenged or accused,
rebuked for meddling or otherwise pulled up, he would probably have
shown, on his own system, all the height of his consistency, all the
depth of his good faith.  Explicit resentment of his course would have
made him take the floor, and the thump of his fist on the table would
have affirmed him as consciously incorruptible.  Had what now really
prevailed with Strether been but a dread of that thump--a dread of
wincing a little painfully at what it might invidiously demonstrate?
However this might be, at any rate, one of the marks of the crisis was
a visible, a studied lapse, in Waymarsh, of betrayed concern.  As if to
make up to his comrade for the stroke by which he had played providence
he now conspicuously ignored his movements, withdrew himself from the
pretension to share them, stiffened up his sensibility to neglect, and,
clasping his large empty hands and swinging his large restless foot,
clearly looked to another quarter for justice.

This made for independence on Strether's part, and he had in truth at
no moment of his stay been so free to go and come.  The early summer
brushed the picture over and blurred everything but the near; it made a
vast warm fragrant medium in which the elements floated together on the
best of terms, in which rewards were immediate and reckonings
postponed.  Chad was out of town again, for the first time since his
visitor's first view of him; he had explained this necessity--without
detail, yet also without embarrassment, the circumstance was one of
those which, in the young man's life, testified to the variety of his
ties.  Strether wasn't otherwise concerned with it than for its so
testifying--a pleasant multitudinous image in which he took comfort. He
took comfort, by the same stroke, in the swing of Chad's pendulum back
from that other swing, the sharp jerk towards Woollett, so stayed by
his own hand.  He had the entertainment of thinking that if he had for
that moment stopped the clock it was to promote the next minute this
still livelier motion.  He himself did what he hadn't done before; he
took two or three times whole days off--irrespective of others, of two
or three taken with Miss Gostrey, two or three taken with little
Bilham:  he went to Chartres and cultivated, before the front of the
cathedral, a general easy beatitude; he went to Fontainebleau and
imagined himself on the way to Italy; he went to Rouen with a little
handbag and inordinately spent the night.

One afternoon he did something quite different; finding himself in the
neighbourhood of a fine old house across the river, he passed under the
great arch of its doorway and asked at the porter's lodge for Madame de
Vionnet.  He had already hovered more than once about that possibility,
been aware of it, in the course of ostensible strolls, as lurking but
round the corner.  Only it had perversely happened, after his morning
at Notre Dame, that his consistency, as he considered and intended it,
had come back to him; whereby he had reflected that the encounter in
question had been none of his making; clinging again intensely to the
strength of his position, which was precisely that there was nothing in
it for himself.  From the moment he actively pursued the charming
associate of his adventure, from that moment his position weakened, for
he was then acting in an interested way.  It was only within a few days
that he had fixed himself a limit:  he promised himself his consistency
should end with Sarah's arrival.  It was arguing correctly to feel the
title to a free hand conferred on him by this event.  If he wasn't to
be let alone he should be merely a dupe to act with delicacy.  If he
wasn't to be trusted he could at least take his ease.  If he was to be
placed under control he gained leave to try what his position MIGHT
agreeably give him.  An ideal rigour would perhaps postpone the trial
till after the Pococks had shown their spirit; and it was to an ideal
rigour that he had quite promised himself to conform.

Suddenly, however, on this particular day, he felt a particular fear
under which everything collapsed.  He knew abruptly that he was afraid
of himself--and yet not in relation to the effect on his sensibilities
of another hour of Madame de Vionnet.  What he dreaded was the effect
of a single hour of Sarah Pocock, as to whom he was visited, in
troubled nights, with fantastic waking dreams.  She loomed at him
larger than life; she increased in volume as she drew nearer; she so
met his eyes that, his imagination taking, after the first step, all,
and more than all, the strides, he already felt her come down on him,
already burned, under her reprobation, with the blush of guilt, already
consented, by way of penance, to the instant forfeiture of everything.
He saw himself, under her direction, recommitted to Woollett as
juvenile offenders are committed to reformatories.  It wasn't of course
that Woollett was really a place of discipline; but he knew in advance
that Sarah's salon at the hotel would be.  His danger, at any rate, in
such moods of alarm, was some concession, on this ground, that would
involve a sharp rupture with the actual; therefore if he waited to take
leave of that actual he might wholly miss his chance.  It was
represented with supreme vividness by Madame de Vionnet, and that is
why, in a word, he waited no longer.  He had seen in a flash that he
must anticipate Mrs. Pocock.  He was accordingly much disappointed on
now learning from the portress that the lady of his quest was not in
Paris.  She had gone for some days to the country.  There was nothing
in this accident but what was natural; yet it produced for poor
Strether a drop of all confidence.  It was suddenly as if he should
never see her again, and as if moreover he had brought it on himself by
not having been quite kind to her.

It was the advantage of his having let his fancy lose itself for a
little in the gloom that, as by reaction, the prospect began really to
brighten from the moment the deputation from Woollett alighted on the
platform of the station.  They had come straight from Havre, having
sailed from New York to that port, and having also, thanks to a happy
voyage, made land with a promptitude that left Chad Newsome, who had
meant to meet them at the dock, belated.  He had received their
telegram, with the announcement of their immediate further advance,
just as he was taking the train for Havre, so that nothing had remained
for him but to await them in Paris.  He hastily picked up Strether, at
the hotel, for this purpose, and he even, with easy pleasantry,
suggested the attendance of Waymarsh as well--Waymarsh, at the moment
his cab rattled up, being engaged, under Strether's contemplative
range, in a grave perambulation of the familiar court.  Waymarsh had
learned from his companion, who had already had a note, delivered by
hand, from Chad, that the Pococks were due, and had ambiguously,
though, as always, impressively, glowered at him over the circumstance;
carrying himself in a manner in which Strether was now expert enough to
recognise his uncertainty, in the premises, as to the best tone.  The
only tone he aimed at with confidence was a full tone--which was
necessarily difficult in the absence of a full knowledge.  The Pococks
were a quantity as yet unmeasured, and, as he had practically brought
them over, so this witness had to that extent exposed himself.  He
wanted to feel right about it, but could only, at the best, for the
time, feel vague. "I shall look to you, you know, immensely," our
friend had said, "to help me with them," and he had been quite
conscious of the effect of the remark, and of others of the same sort,
on his comrade's sombre sensibility.  He had insisted on the fact that
Waymarsh would quite like Mrs. Pocock--one could be certain he would:
he would be with her about everything, and she would also be with HIM,
and Miss Barrace's nose, in short, would find itself out of joint.

Strether had woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in the
court for Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself quiet
while, caged and leonine, his fellow traveller paced and turned before
him.  Chad Newsome was doubtless to be struck, when he arrived, with
the sharpness of their opposition at this particular hour; he was to
remember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came with him and with Strether
to the street and stood there with a face half-wistful and half-rueful.
They talked of him, the two others, as they drove, and Strether put
Chad in possession of much of his own strained sense of things.  He had
already, a few days before, named to him the wire he was convinced
their friend had pulled--a confidence that had made on the young man's
part quite hugely for curiosity and diversion.  The action of the
matter, moreover, Strether could see, was to penetrate; he saw that is,
how Chad judged a system of influence in which Waymarsh had served as a
determinant--an impression just now quickened again; with the whole
bearing of such a fact on the youth's view of his relatives.  As it
came up between them that they might now take their friend for a
feature of the control of these latter now sought to be exerted from
Woollett, Strether felt indeed how it would be stamped all over him,
half an hour later for Sarah Pocock's eyes, that he was as much on
Chad's "side" as Waymarsh had probably described him.  He was letting
himself at present, go; there was no denying it; it might be
desperation, it might be confidence; he should offer himself to the
arriving travellers bristling with all the lucidity he had cultivated.

He repeated to Chad what he had been saying in the court to Waymarsh;
how there was no doubt whatever that his sister would find the latter a
kindred spirit, no doubt of the alliance, based on an exchange of
views, that the pair would successfully strike up.  They would become
as thick as thieves--which moreover was but a development of what
Strether remembered to have said in one of his first discussions with
his mate, struck as he had then already been with the elements of
affinity between that personage and Mrs. Newsome herself.  "I told him,
one day, when he had questioned me on your mother, that she was a
person who, when he should know her, would rouse in him, I was sure, a
special enthusiasm; and that hangs together with the conviction we now
feel--this certitude that Mrs. Pocock will take him into her boat.  For
it's your mother's own boat that she's pulling."

"Ah," said Chad, "Mother's worth fifty of Sally!"

"A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same you'll be
meeting your mother's representative--just as I shall.  I feel like the
outgoing ambassador," said Strether, "doing honour to his appointed
successor."  A moment after speaking as he had just done he felt he had
inadvertently rather cheapened Mrs. Newsome to her son; an impression
audibly reflected, as at first seen, in Chad's prompt protest.  He had
recently rather failed of apprehension of the young man's attitude and
temper--remaining principally conscious of how little worry, at the
worst, he wasted, and he studied him at this critical hour with renewed
interest.  Chad had done exactly what he had promised him a fortnight
previous--had accepted without another question his plea for delay.  He
was waiting cheerfully and handsomely, but also inscrutably and with a
slight increase perhaps of the hardness originally involved in his
acquired high polish.  He was neither excited nor depressed; was easy
and acute and deliberate--unhurried unflurried unworried, only at most
a little less amused than usual.  Strether felt him more than ever a
justification of the extraordinary process of which his own absurd
spirit had been the arena; he knew as their cab rolled along, knew as
he hadn't even yet known, that nothing else than what Chad had done and
had been would have led to his present showing.  They had made him,
these things, what he was, and the business hadn't been easy; it had
taken time and trouble, it had cost, above all, a price.  The result at
any rate was now to be offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that
was concerned, was glad to be there to witness.  Would she in the least
make it out or take it in, the result, or would she in the least care
for it if she did?  He scratched his chin as he asked himself by what
name, when challenged--as he was sure he should be--he could call it
for her.  Oh those were determinations she must herself arrive at;
since she wanted so much to see, let her see then and welcome.  She had
come out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in Strether's
inner sense that she practically wouldn't see.

That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a
word that next dropped from him.  "They're children; they play at
life!"--and the exclamation was significant and reassuring.  It implied
that he hadn't then, for his companion's sensibility, appeared to give
Mrs. Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend's presently asking him
if it were his idea that Mrs. Pocock and Madame de Vionnet should
become acquainted.  Strether was still more sharply struck, hereupon,
with Chad's lucidity.  "Why, isn't that exactly--to get a sight of the
company I keep--what she has come out for?"

"Yes--I'm afraid it is," Strether unguardedly replied.

Chad's quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation.  "Why do you say
you're afraid?"

"Well, because I feel a certain responsibility.  It's my testimony, I
imagine, that will have been at the bottom of Mrs. Pocock's curiosity.
My letters, as I've supposed you to understand from the beginning, have
spoken freely.  I've certainly said my little say about Madame de
Vionnet."

All that, for Chad, was beautifully obvious.  "Yes, but you've only
spoken handsomely."

"Never more handsomely of any woman.  But it's just that tone--!"

"That tone," said Chad, "that has fetched her?  I dare say; but I've no
quarrel with you about it.  And no more has Madame de Vionnet. Don't
you know by this time how she likes you?"

"Oh!"--and Strether had, with his groan, a real pang of melancholy.
"For all I've done for her!"

"Ah you've done a great deal."

Chad's urbanity fairly shamed him, and he was at this moment absolutely
impatient to see the face Sarah Pocock would present to a sort of
thing, as he synthetically phrased it to himself, with no adequate
forecast of which, despite his admonitions, she would certainly arrive.
"I've done THIS!"

"Well, this is all right.  She likes," Chad comfortably remarked,
 "to be liked."

It gave his companion a moment's thought.  "And she's sure Mrs. Pocock
WILL--?"

"No, I say that for you.  She likes your liking her; it's so much, as
it were," Chad laughed, "to the good.  However, she doesn't despair of
Sarah either, and is prepared, on her own side, to go all lengths."

"In the way of appreciation?"

"Yes, and of everything else.  In the way of general amiability,
hospitality and welcome.  She's under arms," Chad laughed again; "she's
prepared."

Strether took it in; then as if an echo of Miss Barrace were in the
air:  "She's wonderful."

"You don't begin to know HOW wonderful!"

There was a depth in it, to Strether's ear, of confirmed luxury--almost
a kind of unconscious insolence of proprietorship; but the effect of
the glimpse was not at this moment to foster speculation: there was
something so conclusive in so much graceful and generous assurance.  It
was in fact a fresh evocation; and the evocation had before many
minutes another consequence.  "Well, I shall see her oftener now.  I
shall see her as much as I like--by your leave; which is what I
hitherto haven't done."

"It has been," said Chad, but without reproach, "only your own fault. I
tried to bring you together, and SHE, my dear fellow--I never saw her
more charming to any man.  But you've got your extraordinary ideas."

"Well, I DID have," Strether murmured, while he felt both how they had
possessed him and how they had now lost their authority.  He couldn't
have traced the sequence to the end, but it was all because of Mrs.
Pocock.  Mrs. Pocock might be because of Mrs. Newsome, but that was
still to be proved.  What came over him was the sense of having
stupidly failed to profit where profit would have been precious.  It
had been open to him to see so much more of her, and he had but let the
good days pass.  Fierce in him almost was the resolve to lose no more
of them, and he whimsically reflected, while at Chad's side he drew
nearer to his destination, that it was after all Sarah who would have
quickened his chance.  What her visit of inquisition might achieve in
other directions was as yet all obscure--only not obscure that it would
do supremely much to bring two earnest persons together.  He had but to
listen to Chad at this moment to feel it; for Chad was in the act of
remarking to him that they of course both counted on him--he himself
and the other earnest person--for cheer and support.  It was brave to
Strether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out
was to make things ravishing to the Pococks.  No, if Madame de Vionnet
compassed THAT, compassed the ravishment of the Pococks, Madame de
Vionnet would be prodigious.  It would be a beautiful plan if it
succeeded, and it all came to the question of Sarah's being really
bribeable.  The precedent of his own case helped Strether perhaps but
little to consider she might prove so; it being distinct that her
character would rather make for every possible difference.  This idea
of his own bribeability set him apart for himself; with the further
mark in fact that his case was absolutely proved.  He liked always,
where Lambert Strether was concerned, to know the worst, and what he
now seemed to know was not only that he was bribeable, but that he had
been effectually bribed.  The only difficulty was that he couldn't
quite have said with what.  It was as if he had sold himself, but
hadn't somehow got the cash.  That, however, was what,
characteristically, WOULD happen to him.  It would naturally be his
kind of traffic.  While he thought of these things he reminded Chad of
the truth they mustn't lose sight of--the truth that, with all
deference to her susceptibility to new interests, Sarah would have come
out with a high firm definite purpose.  "She hasn't come out, you know,
to be bamboozled. We may all be ravishing--nothing perhaps can be more
easy for us; but she hasn't come out to be ravished.  She has come out
just simply to take you home."

"Oh well, with HER I'll go," said Chad good-humouredly.  "I suppose
you'll allow THAT."  And then as for a minute Strether said nothing:
"Or is your idea that when I've seen her I shan't want to go?"  As this
question, however, again left his friend silent he presently went on:
"My own idea at any rate is that they shall have while they're here the
best sort of time."

It was at this that Strether spoke.  "Ah there you are! I think if you
really wanted to go--!"

"Well?" said Chad to bring it out.

"Well, you wouldn't trouble about our good time.  You wouldn't care
what sort of a time we have."

Chad could always take in the easiest way in the world any ingenious
suggestion.  "I see.  But can I help it?  I'm too decent."

"Yes, you're too decent!" Strether heavily sighed.  And he felt for the
moment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission.

It ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made no
rejoinder.  But he spoke again as they came in sight of the station.
"Do you mean to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?"

As to this Strether was ready.  "No."

"But haven't you told me they know about her?"

"I think I've told you your mother knows."

"And won't she have told Sally?"

"That's one of the things I want to see."

"And if you find she HAS--?"

"Will I then, you mean, bring them together?"

"Yes," said Chad with his pleasant promptness:  "to show her there's
nothing in it."

Strether hesitated.  "I don't know that I care very much what she may
think there's in it."

"Not if it represents what Mother thinks?"

"Ah what DOES your mother think?"  There was in this some sound of
bewilderment.

But they were just driving up, and help, of a sort, might after all be
quite at hand.  "Isn't that, my dear man, what we're both just going to
make out?"

Not desiring the company of Waymarsh, Strether "rambled alone" in and about Paris. He had given Waymarsh the opportunity to confess that he was somehow involved with "Mrs. Newsome's summons," but Waymarsh declined to say anything. Chad is out of town, and Strether, with time on his hands, visits Chartres, Fontainebleau, and Rouen. One afternoon, "finding himself in the neighborhood" and worried about the effect Sarah Pocock's coming would have on his life, he decides to call on Madame de Vionnet. She, however, is not in Paris, and this fact "produced for poor Strether a drop of all confidence." This gloomy posture does not stay with Strether; indeed, he begins to anticipate the coming of Sarah with lighter feelings. The day the Pococks are to arrive in Paris from Havre, Chad and Strether go to the railroad station to meet them. Strether has told Chad his suspicions that Waymarsh precipitated the coming of the Pococks and insists that Sarah and Waymarsh will get along well. He adds, "I feel like the outgoing ambassador . . . doing honour to his appointed successor." Later, Strether asks Chad if he plans to introduce Sarah to Madame de Vionnet, to which Chad replies, "Why, isn't that exactly -- to get a sight of the company I keep -- what she has come out for?" As they discuss the possible effect of Madame de Vionnet on Sarah, the two men decide it all comes to the question of Sarah's being "bribeable," but Strether feels she will come with resolved purpose. Chad wishes to know if Strether will introduce Miss Gostrey to Sarah, but he says he won't, explaining that though he has told Mrs. Newsome of Maria, he doesn't know if Sarah has been informed. Chad suggests that Mrs. Newsome will have told Sarah and asks if Strether doesn't want "to show her there's nothing in it." Strether says he doesn't care what Sarah thinks and appears to be bewildered by what Mrs. Newsome may think.

Although Strether is now aware that it is Madame de Vionnet with whom Chad is allied, he still believes their attachment to be a virtuous one and sees no special significance in the fact that Chad and the lady are both absent from Paris at the same time. Chartres and Rouen are famous for their Gothic cathedrals; Fontainebleau is noted for its celebrated Renaissance palace. All are within one hundred miles of Paris.


Strether quitted the station half an hour later in different company.
Chad had taken charge, for the journey to the hotel, of Sarah, Mamie,
the maid and the luggage, all spaciously installed and conveyed; and it
was only after the four had rolled away that his companion got into a
cab with Jim.  A strange new feeling had come over Strether, in
consequence of which his spirits had risen; it was as if what had
occurred on the alighting of his critics had been something other than
his fear, though his fear had vet not been of an instant scene of
violence.  His impression had been nothing but what was inevitable--he
said that to himself; yet relief and reassurance had softly dropped
upon him.  Nothing could be so odd as to be indebted for these things
to the look of faces and the sound of voices that had been with him to
satiety, as he might have said, for years; but he now knew, all the
same, how uneasy he had felt; that was brought home to him by his
present sense of a respite.  It had come moreover in the flash of an
eye, it had come in the smile with which Sarah, whom, at the window of
her compartment, they had effusively greeted from the platform, rustled
down to them a moment later, fresh and handsome from her cool June
progress through the charming land.  It was only a sign, but enough:
she was going to be gracious and unallusive, she was going to play the
larger game--which was still more apparent, after she had emerged from
Chad's arms, in her direct greeting to the valued friend of her family.

Strether WAS then as much as ever the valued friend of her family, it
was something he could at all events go on with; and the manner of his
response to it expressed even for himself how little he had enjoyed the
prospect of ceasing to figure in that likeness.  He had always seen
Sarah gracious--had in fact rarely seen her shy or dry, her marked
thin-lipped smile, intense without brightness and as prompt to act as
the scrape of a safety-match; the protrusion of her rather remarkably
long chin, which in her case represented invitation and urbanity, and
not, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance; the penetration of her
voice to a distance, the general encouragement and approval of her
manner, were all elements with which intercourse had made him familiar,
but which he noted today almost as if she had been a new acquaintance.
This first glimpse of her had given a brief but vivid accent to her
resemblance to her mother; he could have taken her for Mrs. Newsome
while she met his eyes as the train rolled into the station.  It was an
impression that quickly dropped; Mrs. Newsome was much handsomer, and
while Sarah inclined to the massive her mother had, at an age, still
the girdle of a maid; also the latter's chin was rather short, than
long, and her smile, by good fortune, much more, oh ever so much more,
mercifully vague.  Strether had seen Mrs. Newsome reserved; he had
literally heard her silent, though he had never known her unpleasant.
It was the case with Mrs. Pocock that he had known HER unpleasant, even
though he had never known her not affable.  She had forms of affability
that were in a high degree assertive; nothing for instance had ever
been more striking than that she was affable to Jim.

What had told in any case at the window of the train was her high clear
forehead, that forehead which her friends, for some reason, always
thought of as a "brow"; the long reach of her eyes--it came out at this
juncture in such a manner as to remind him, oddly enough, also of that
of Waymarsh's; and the unusual gloss of her dark hair, dressed and
hatted, after her mother's refined example, with such an avoidance of
extremes that it was always spoken of at Woollett as "their own."
Though this analogy dropped as soon as she was on the platform it had
lasted long enough to make him feel all the advantage, as it were, of
his relief.  The woman at home, the woman to whom he was attached, was
before him just long enough to give him again the measure of the
wretchedness, in fact really of the shame, of their having to recognise
the formation, between them, of a "split."  He had taken this measure
in solitude and meditation:  but the catastrophe, as Sarah steamed up,
looked for its seconds unprecedentedly dreadful--or proved, more
exactly, altogether unthinkable; so that his finding something free and
familiar to respond to brought with it an instant renewal of his
loyalty.  He had suddenly sounded the whole depth, had gasped at what
he might have lost.

Well, he could now, for the quarter of an hour of their detention hover
about the travellers as soothingly as if their direct message to him
was that he had lost nothing.  He wasn't going to have Sarah write to
her mother that night that he was in any way altered or strange.  There
had been times enough for a month when it had seemed to him that he was
strange, that he was altered, in every way; but that was a matter for
himself; he knew at least whose business it was not; it was not at all
events such a circumstance as Sarah's own unaided lights would help her
to.  Even if she had come out to flash those lights more than yet
appeared she wouldn't make much headway against mere pleasantness.  He
counted on being able to be merely pleasant to the end, and if only
from incapacity moreover to formulate anything different.  He couldn't
even formulate to himself his being changed and queer; it had taken
place, the process, somewhere deep down; Maria Gostrey had caught
glimpses of it; but how was he to fish it up, even if he desired, for
Mrs. Pocock?  This was then the spirit in which he hovered, and with
the easier throb in it much indebted furthermore to the impression of
high and established adequacy as a pretty girl promptly produced in him
by Mamie.  He had wondered vaguely--turning over many things in the
fidget of his thoughts--if Mamie WERE as pretty as Woollett published
her; as to which issue seeing her now again was to be so swept away by
Woollett's opinion that this consequence really let loose for the
imagination an avalanche of others.  There were positively five minutes
in which the last word seemed of necessity to abide with a Woollett
represented by a Mamie.  This was the sort of truth the place itself
would feel; it would send her forth in confidence; it would point to
her with triumph; it would take its stand on her with assurance; it
would be conscious of no requirements she didn't meet, of no question
she couldn't answer.

Well, it was right, Strether slipped smoothly enough into the
cheerfulness of saying:  granted that a community MIGHT be best
represented by a young lady of twenty-two, Mamie perfectly played the
part, played it as if she were used to it, and looked and spoke and
dressed the character.  He wondered if she mightn't, in the high light
of Paris, a cool full studio-light, becoming yet treacherous, show as
too conscious of these matters; but the next moment he felt satisfied
that her consciousness was after all empty for its size, rather too
simple than too mixed, and that the kind way with her would be not to
take many things out of it, but to put as many as possible in.  She was
robust and conveniently tall; just a trifle too bloodlessly fair
perhaps, but with a pleasant public familiar radiance that affirmed her
vitality.  She might have been "receiving" for Woollett, wherever she
found herself, and there was something in her manner, her tone, her
motion, her pretty blue eyes, her pretty perfect teeth and her very
small, too small, nose, that immediately placed her, to the fancy,
between the windows of a hot bright room in which voices were high--up
at that end to which people were brought to be "presented." They were
there to congratulate, these images, and Strether's renewed vision, on
this hint, completed the idea.  What Mamie was like was the happy
bride, the bride after the church and just before going away.  She
wasn't the mere maiden, and yet was only as much married as that
quantity came to.  She was in the brilliant acclaimed festal stage.
Well, might it last her long!

Strether rejoiced in these things for Chad, who was all genial
attention to the needs of his friends, besides having arranged that his
servant should reinforce him; the ladies were certainly pleasant to
see, and Mamie would be at any time and anywhere pleasant to exhibit.
She would look extraordinarily like his young wife--the wife of a
honeymoon, should he go about with her; but that was his own affair--or
perhaps it was hers; it was at any rate something she couldn't help.
Strether remembered how he had seen him come up with Jeanne de Vionnet
in Gloriani's garden, and the fancy he had had about that--the fancy
obscured now, thickly overlaid with others; the recollection was during
these minutes his only note of trouble.  He had often, in spite of
himself, wondered if Chad but too probably were not with Jeanne the
object of a still and shaded flame.  It was on the cards that the child
MIGHT be tremulously in love, and this conviction now flickered up not
a bit the less for his disliking to think of it, for its being, in a
complicated situation, a complication the more, and for something
indescribable in Mamie, something at all events straightway lent her by
his own mind, something that gave her value, gave her intensity and
purpose, as the symbol of an opposition.  Little Jeanne wasn't really
at all in question--how COULD she be?--yet from the moment Miss Pocock
had shaken her skirts on the platform, touched up the immense bows of
her hat and settled properly over her shoulder the strap of her
morocco-and-gilt travelling-satchel, from that moment little Jeanne was
opposed.

It was in the cab with Jim that impressions really crowded on Strether,
giving him the strangest sense of length of absence from people among
whom he had lived for years.  Having them thus come out to him was as
if he had returned to find them:  and the droll promptitude of Jim's
mental reaction threw his own initiation far back into the past.
Whoever might or mightn't be suited by what was going on among them,
Jim, for one, would certainly be:  his instant recognition--frank and
whimsical--of what the affair was for HIM gave Strether a glow of
pleasure.  "I say, you know, this IS about my shape, and if it hadn't
been for YOU--!" so he broke out as the charming streets met his
healthy appetite; and he wound up, after an expressive nudge, with a
clap of his companion's knee and an "Oh you, you--you ARE doing it!"
that was charged with rich meaning. Strether felt in it the intention
of homage, but, with a curiosity otherwise occupied, postponed taking
it up.  What he was asking himself for the time was how Sarah Pocock,
in the opportunity already given her, had judged her brother--from whom
he himself, as they finally, at the station, separated for their
different conveyances, had had a look into which he could read more
than one message.  However Sarah was judging her brother, Chad's
conclusion about his sister, and about her husband and her husband's
sister, was at the least on the way not to fail of confidence. Strether
felt the confidence, and that, as the look between them was an
exchange, what he himself gave back was relatively vague.  This
comparison of notes however could wait; everything struck him as
depending on the effect produced by Chad.  Neither Sarah nor Mamie had
in any way, at the station--where they had had after all ample
time--broken out about it; which, to make up for this, was what our
friend had expected of Jim as soon as they should find themselves
together.

It was queer to him that he had that noiseless brush with Chad; an
ironic intelligence with this youth on the subject of his relatives, an
intelligence carried on under their nose and, as might be said, at
their expense--such a matter marked again for him strongly the number
of stages he had come; albeit that if the number seemed great the time
taken for the final one was but the turn of a hand.  He had before this
had many moments of wondering if he himself weren't perhaps changed
even as Chad was changed.  Only what in Chad was conspicuous
improvement--well, he had no name ready for the working, in his own
organism, of his own more timid dose.  He should have to see first what
this action would amount to. And for his occult passage with the young
man, after all, the directness of it had no greater oddity than the
fact that the young man's way with the three travellers should have
been so happy a manifestation.  Strether liked him for it, on the spot,
as he hadn't yet liked him; it affected him while it lasted as he might
have been affected by some light pleasant perfect work of art:  to that
degree that he wondered if they were really worthy of it, took it in
and did it justice; to that degree that it would have been scarce a
miracle if, there in the luggage-room, while they waited for their
things, Sarah had pulled his sleeve and drawn him aside. "You're right;
we haven't quite known what you mean, Mother and I, but now we see.
Chad's magnificent; what can one want more?  If THIS is the kind of
thing--!"  On which they might, as it were, have embraced and begun to
work together.

Ah how much, as it was, for all her bridling brightness--which was
merely general and noticed nothing--WOULD they work together? Strether
knew he was unreasonable; he set it down to his being nervous:  people
couldn't notice everything and speak of everything in a quarter of an
hour.  Possibly, no doubt, also, he made too much of Chad's display.
Yet, none the less, when, at the end of five minutes, in the cab, Jim
Pocock had said nothing either--hadn't said, that is, what Strether
wanted, though he had said much else--it all suddenly bounced back to
their being either stupid or wilful.  It was more probably on the whole
the former; so that that would be the drawback of the bridling
brightness.  Yes, they would bridle and be bright; they would make the
best of what was before them, but their observation would fail; it
would be beyond them; they simply wouldn't understand.  Of what use
would it be then that they had come?--if they weren't to be intelligent
up to THAT point: unless indeed he himself were utterly deluded and
extravagant?  Was he, on this question of Chad's improvement, fantastic
and away from the truth?  Did he live in a false world, a world that
had grown simply to suit him, and was his present slight irritation--in
the face now of Jim's silence in particular--but the alarm of the vain
thing menaced by the touch of the real?  Was this contribution of the
real possibly the mission of the Pococks?--had they come to make the
work of observation, as HE had practised observation, crack and
crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms in which honest minds
could deal with him?  Had they come in short to be sane where Strether
was destined to feel that he himself had only been silly?

He glanced at such a contingency, but it failed to hold him long when
once he had reflected that he would have been silly, in this case, with
Maria Gostrey and little Bilham, with Madame de Vionnet and little
Jeanne, with Lambert Strether, in fine, and above all with Chad Newsome
himself.  Wouldn't it be found to have made more for reality to be
silly with these persons than sane with Sarah and Jim?  Jim in fact, he
presently made up his mind, was individually out of it; Jim didn't
care; Jim hadn't come out either for Chad or for him; Jim in short left
the moral side to Sally and indeed simply availed himself now, for the
sense of recreation, of the fact that he left almost everything to
Sally.  He was nothing compared to Sally, and not so much by reason of
Sally's temper and will as by that of her more developed type and
greater acquaintance with the world.  He quite frankly and serenely
confessed, as he sat there with Strether, that he felt his type hang
far in the rear of his wife's and still further, if possible, in the
rear of his sister's.  Their types, he well knew, were recognised and
acclaimed; whereas the most a leading Woollett business-man could hope
to achieve socially, and for that matter industrially, was a certain
freedom to play into this general glamour.

The impression he made on our friend was another of the things that
marked our friend's road.  It was a strange impression, especially as
so soon produced; Strether had received it, he judged, all in the
twenty minutes; it struck him at least as but in a minor degree the
work of the long Woollett years.  Pocock was normally and consentingly
though not quite wittingly out of the question.  It was despite his
being normal; it was despite his being cheerful; it was despite his
being a leading Woollett business-man; and the determination of his
fate left him thus perfectly usual--as everything else about it was
clearly, to his sense, not less so.  He seemed to say that there was a
whole side of life on which the perfectly usual WAS for leading
Woollett business-men to be out of the question.  He made no more of it
than that, and Strether, so far as Jim was concerned, desired to make
no more.  Only Strether's imagination, as always, worked, and he asked
himself if this side of life were not somehow connected, for those who
figured on it with the fact of marriage.  Would HIS relation to it, had
he married ten years before, have become now the same as Pocock's?
Might it even become the same should he marry in a few months?  Should
he ever know himself as much out of the question for Mrs. Newsome as
Jim knew himself--in a dim way--for Mrs. Jim?

To turn his eyes in that direction was to be personally reassured; he
was different from Pocock; he had affirmed himself differently and was
held after all in higher esteem.  What none the less came home to him,
however, at this hour, was that the society over there, that of which
Sarah and Mamie--and, in a more eminent way, Mrs. Newsome herself--were
specimens, was essentially a society of women, and that poor Jim wasn't
in it.  He himself Lambert Strether, WAS as yet in some degree--which
was an odd situation for a man; but it kept coming back to him in a
whimsical way that he should perhaps find his marriage had cost him his
place.  This occasion indeed, whatever that fancy represented, was not
a time of sensible exclusion for Jim, who was in a state of manifest
response to the charm of his adventure.  Small and fat and constantly
facetious, straw-coloured and destitute of marks, he would have been
practically indistinguishable hadn't his constant preference for
light-grey clothes, for white hats, for very big cigars and very little
stories, done what it could for his identity.  There were signs in him,
though none of them plaintive, of always paying for others; and the
principal one perhaps was just this failure of type.  It was with this
that he paid, rather than with fatigue or waste; and also doubtless a
little with the effort of humour--never irrelevant to the conditions,
to the relations, with which he was acquainted.

He gurgled his joy as they rolled through the happy streets; he
declared that his trip was a regular windfall, and that he wasn't
there, he was eager to remark, to hang back from anything:  he didn't
know quite what Sally had come for, but HE had come for a good time.
Strether indulged him even while wondering if what Sally wanted her
brother to go back for was to become like her husband. He trusted that
a good time was to be, out and out, the programme for all of them; and
he assented liberally to Jim's proposal that, disencumbered and
irresponsible--his things were in the omnibus with those of the
others--they should take a further turn round before going to the
hotel.  It wasn't for HIM to tackle Chad--it was Sally's job; and as it
would be like her, he felt, to open fire on the spot, it wouldn't be
amiss of them to hold off and give her time.  Strether, on his side,
only asked to give her time; so he jogged with his companion along
boulevards and avenues, trying to extract from meagre material some
forecast of his catastrophe.  He was quick enough to see that Jim
Pocock declined judgement, had hovered quite round the outer edge of
discussion and anxiety, leaving all analysis of their question to the
ladies alone and now only feeling his way toward some small droll
cynicism.  It broke out afresh, the cynicism--it had already shown a
flicker--in a but slightly deferred:  "Well, hanged if I would if I
were he!"

"You mean you wouldn't in Chad's place--?"

"Give up this to go back and boss the advertising!"  Poor Jim, with his
arms folded and his little legs out in the open fiacre, drank in the
sparkling Paris noon and carried his eyes from one side of their vista
to the other.  "Why I want to come right out and live here myself.  And
I want to live while I AM here too.  I feel with YOU--oh you've been
grand, old man, and I've twigged--that it ain't right to worry Chad.  I
don't mean to persecute him; I couldn't in conscience.  It's thanks to
you at any rate that I'm here, and I'm sure I'm much obliged.  You're a
lovely pair."

There were things in this speech that Strether let pass for the time.
"Don't you then think it important the advertising should be thoroughly
taken in hand?  Chad WILL be, so far as capacity is concerned," he went
on, "the man to do it."

"Where did he get his capacity," Jim asked, "over here?"

"He didn't get it over here, and the wonderful thing is that over here
he hasn't inevitably lost it.  He has a natural turn for business, an
extraordinary head.  He comes by that," Strether explained, "honestly
enough.  He's in that respect his father's son, and also--for she's
wonderful in her way too--his mother's.  He has other tastes and other
tendencies; but Mrs. Newsome and your wife are quite right about his
having that.  He's very remarkable."

"Well, I guess he is!"  Jim Pocock comfortably sighed.  "But if you've
believed so in his making us hum, why have you so prolonged the
discussion?  Don't you know we've been quite anxious about you?"

These questions were not informed with earnestness, but Strether saw he
must none the less make a choice and take a line.  "Because, you see,
I've greatly liked it.  I've liked my Paris, I dare say I've liked it
too much."

"Oh you old wretch!" Jim gaily exclaimed.

"But nothing's concluded," Strether went on.  "The case is more complex
than it looks from Woollett."

"Oh well, it looks bad enough from Woollett!" Jim declared.

"Even after all I've written?"

Jim bethought himself.  "Isn't it what you've written that has made
Mrs. Newsome pack us off?  That at least and Chad's not turning up?"

Strether made a reflexion of his own.  "I see.  That she should do
something was, no doubt, inevitable, and your wife has therefore of
course come out to act."

"Oh yes," Jim concurred--"to act.  But Sally comes out to act, you
know," he lucidly added, "every time she leaves the house.  She never
comes out but she DOES act.  She's acting moreover now for her mother,
and that fixes the scale." Then he wound up, opening all his senses to
it, with a renewed embrace of pleasant Paris.  "We haven't all the same
at Woollett got anything like this."

Strether continued to consider.  "I'm bound to say for you all that you
strike me as having arrived in a very mild and reasonable frame of
mind.  You don't show your claws.  I felt just now in Mrs. Pocock no
symptom of that.  She isn't fierce," he went on.  "I'm such a nervous
idiot that I thought she might be."

"Oh don't you know her well enough," Pocock asked, "to have noticed
that she never gives herself away, any more than her mother ever does?
They ain't fierce, either of 'em; they let you come quite close.  They
wear their fur the smooth side out--the warm side in. Do you know what
they are?" Jim pursued as he looked about him, giving the question, as
Strether felt, but half his care--"do you know what they are?  They're
about as intense as they can live."

"Yes"--and Strether's concurrence had a positive precipitation;
"they're about as intense as they can live."

"They don't lash about and shake the cage," said Jim, who seemed
pleased with his analogy; "and it's at feeding-time that they're
quietest.  But they always get there."

"They do indeed--they always get there!" Strether replied with a laugh
that justified his confession of nervousness.  He disliked to be
talking sincerely of Mrs.  Newsome with Pocock; he could have talked
insincerely.  But there was something he wanted to know, a need created
in him by her recent intermission, by his having given from the first
so much, as now more than ever appeared to him, and got so little.  It
was as if a queer truth in his companion's metaphor had rolled over him
with a rush.  She HAD been quiet at feeding-time; she had fed, and
Sarah had fed with her, out of the big bowl of all his recent free
communication, his vividness and pleasantness, his ingenuity and even
his eloquence, while the current of her response had steadily run thin.
Jim meanwhile however, it was true, slipped characteristically into
shallowness from the moment he ceased to speak out of the experience of
a husband.

"But of course Chad has now the advantage of being there before her. If
he doesn't work that for all it's worth--!"  He sighed with contingent
pity at his brother-in-law's possible want of resource. "He has worked
it on YOU, pretty well, eh?" and he asked the next moment if there were
anything new at the Varieties, which he pronounced in the American
manner.  They talked about the Varieties--Strether confessing to a
knowledge which produced again on Pocock's part a play of innuendo as
vague as a nursery-rhyme, yet as aggressive as an elbow in his side;
and they finished their drive under the protection of easy themes.
Strether waited to the end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim
had seen Chad as different;  and he could scarce have explained the
discouragement he drew from the absence of this testimony.  It was what
he had taken his own stand on,  so far as he had taken a stand; and if
they were all only going to see nothing he had only wasted his time. He
gave his friend till the very last moment, till they had come into
sight of the hotel; and when poor Pocock only continued cheerful and
envious and funny he fairly grew to dislike him, to feel him
extravagantly common.  If they were ALL going to see
nothing!--Strether knew,  as this came back to him, that he was also
letting Pocock represent for him what Mrs. Newsome wouldn't see.  He
went on disliking, in the light of Jim's commonness, to talk to him
about that lady; yet just before the cab pulled up he knew the extent
of his desire for the real word from Woollett.

"Has Mrs. Newsome at all given way--?"

"'Given way'?"--Jim echoed it with the practical derision of his sense
of a long past.

"Under the strain, I mean, of hope deferred, of disappointment repeated
and thereby intensified."

"Oh is she prostrate, you mean?"--he had his categories in hand. "Why
yes, she's prostrate--just as Sally is.  But they're never so lively,
you know, as when they're prostrate."

"Ah Sarah's prostrate?" Strether vaguely murmured.

"It's when they're prostrate that they most sit up."

"And Mrs. Newsome's sitting up?"

"All night, my boy--for YOU!"  And Jim fetched him,  with a vulgar
little guffaw, a thrust that gave relief to the picture.  But he had
got what he wanted.  He felt on the spot that this WAS the real word
from Woollett.  "So don't you go home!" Jim added while he alighted and
while his friend, letting him profusely pay the cabman,  sat on in a
momentary muse.  Strether wondered if that were the real word too.

As Chad leaves the station with Sarah, Mamie Pocock, and the maid, Strether and Jim Pocock depart together in a cab. Strether, buoyed by a smile from Sarah which he interprets as a sign that he "was then as much as ever the valued friend of her family," assesses each of the new arrivals. Even with her apparent good will, Sarah is a threatening figure. He is struck by her resemblance to her mother, but though he had never known Mrs. Newsome to be unpleasant, he had known Sarah to be so. Even when pleasant, she "had forms of affability that were in a high degree assertive." Mamie, Jim's pretty sister of twenty-two years, makes Strether think again of the possibility that Jeanne de Vionnet might be in love with Chad, and Mamie becomes "the symbol of opposition." Jim Pocock is a typical Woollett businessman who "would have been practically indistinguishable hadn't his constant preference for light-grey clothes, for white hats, for very big cigars and very little stories, done what it could for his identity." Jim has come for a good time and intends to leave the business of their trip to his wife, Sarah. He even goes so far as to say, in relation to Chad's returning to Woollett to take over the advertising for the family firm, "Well, hanged if I would if I were he!" Strether hopes for some indication from the Pococks that they notice the change in Chad, but none of them, not even Jim, gives it. Strether is discouraged: "It was what he had taken his own stand on, so far as he had taken a stand; and if they were all going to see nothing he had only wasted his time." Determined to find out what Mrs. Newsome's attitude is, Strether asks Jim if she has at all "given way" and is taken aback somewhat when Jim tells him not to go back to Woollett because Mrs. Newsome is "sitting up" for him "all night."

So far we have seen Mrs. Newsome and Sarah mainly through Strether's thoughts and conversation. Jim Pocock's jocular comments are revealing. When Strether, obviously relieved, remarks that Sarah "isn't fierce," Jim replies, "Oh, don't you know her well enough . . . to have noticed she never gives herself away, any more than her mother ever does? . . . They're about as intense as they can live." So it is that Strether is quite mistaken when he takes Sarah's smile to mean that his position in the family's favor is still relatively secure. Strether's question to Jim Pocock, "And Mrs. Newsome's sitting up?" asks if she is still intent on following through her original plans in relation to Chad and, of course, to Strether as well. Jim, however, misses the subtlety of the query and replies crudely, "All night, my boy -- for you!"


As the door of Mrs. Pocock's salon was pushed open for him, the next
day, well before noon, he was reached by a voice with a charming sound
that made him just falter before crossing the threshold.  Madame de
Vionnet was already on the field, and this gave the drama a quicker
pace than he felt it as yet--though his suspense had increased--in the
power of any act of his own to do. He had spent the previous evening
with all his old friends together yet he would still have described
himself as quite in the dark in respect to a forecast of their
influence on his situation. It was strange now, none the less, that in
the light of this unexpected note of her presence he felt Madame de
Vionnet a part of that situation as she hadn't even yet been.  She was
alone, he found himself assuming, with Sarah, and there was a bearing
in that--somehow beyond his control--on his personal fate.  Yet she was
only saying something quite easy and independent--the thing she had
come, as a good friend of Chad's, on purpose to say. "There isn't
anything at all--?  I should be so delighted."

It was clear enough, when they were there before him, how she had been
received.  He saw this, as Sarah got up to greet him, from something
fairly hectic in Sarah's face.  He saw furthermore that they weren't,
as had first come to him, alone together; he was at no loss as to the
identity of the broad high back presented to him in the embrasure of
the window furthest from the door. Waymarsh, whom he had to-day not yet
seen,  whom he only knew to have left the hotel before him,  and who
had taken part, the night previous, on Mrs.  Pocock's kind invitation,
conveyed by Chad, in the entertainment, informal but cordial, promptly
offered by that lady--Waymarsh had anticipated him even as Madame de
Vionnet had done, and, with his hands in his pockets and his attitude
unaffected by Strether's entrance, was looking out, in marked
detachment, at the Rue de Rivoli.  The latter felt it in the air--it
was immense how Waymarsh could mark things---that he had remained
deeply dissociated from the overture to their hostess that we have
recorded on Madame de Vionnet's side.  He had, conspicuously, tact,
besides a stiff general view; and this was why he had left Mrs. Pocock
to struggle alone.  He would outstay the visitor; he would
unmistakeably wait; to what had he been doomed for months past but
waiting?  Therefore she was to feel that she had him in reserve. What
support she drew from this was still to be seen, for, although Sarah
was vividly bright, she had given herself up for the moment to an
ambiguous flushed formalism.  She had had to reckon more quickly than
she expected; but it concerned her first of all to signify that she was
not to be taken unawares.  Strether arrived precisely in time for her
showing it.  "Oh you're too good; but I don't think I feel quite
helpless.  I have my brother--and these American friends.  And then you
know I've been to Paris.  I KNOW Paris," said Sally Pocock in a tone
that breathed a certain chill on Strether's heart.

"Ah but a woman, in this tiresome place where everything's always
changing, a woman of good will," Madame de Vionnet threw off, "can
always help a woman.  I'm sure you 'know'--but we know perhaps
different things." She too, visibly, wished to make no mistake; but it
was a fear of a different order and more kept out of sight.  She smiled
in welcome at Strether; she greeted him more familiarly than Mrs.
Pocock; she put out her hand to him without moving from her place; and
it came to him in the course of a minute and in the oddest way
that--yes, positively--she was giving him over to ruin. She was all
kindness and ease, but she couldn't help so giving him; she was
exquisite, and her being just as she was poured for Sarah a sudden rush
of meaning into his own equivocations.  How could she know how she was
hurting him?  She wanted to show as simple and humble--in the degree
compatible with operative charm; but it was just this that seemed to
put him on her side.  She struck him as dressed, as arranged, as
prepared infinitely to conciliate--with the very poetry of good taste
in her view of the conditions of her early call.  She was ready to
advise about dressmakers and shops; she held herself wholly at the
disposition of Chad's family. Strether noticed her card on the
table--her coronet and her "Comtesse"--and the imagination was sharp in
him of certain private adjustments in Sarah's mind.  She had never, he
was sure, sat with a "Comtesse" before, and such was the specimen of
that class he had been keeping to play on her.  She had crossed the sea
very particularly for a look at her; but he read in Madame de Vionnet's
own eyes that this curiosity hadn't been so successfully met as that
she herself wouldn't now have more than ever need of him.  She looked
much as she had looked to him that morning at Notre Dame; he noted in
fact the suggestive sameness of her discreet and delicate dress.  It
seemed to speak--perhaps a little prematurely or too finely--of the
sense in which she would help Mrs. Pocock with the shops.  The way that
lady took her in, moreover, added depth to his impression of what Miss
Gostrey, by their common wisdom, had escaped.  He winced as he saw
himself but for that timely prudence ushering in Maria as a guide and
an example.  There was however a touch of relief for him in his
glimpse, so far as he had got it, of Sarah's line.  She "knew Paris."
Madame de Vionnet had, for that matter, lightly taken this up.  "Ah
then you've a turn for that, an affinity that belongs to your family.
Your brother, though his long experience makes a difference, I admit,
has become one of us in a marvellous way." And she appealed to Strether
in the manner of a woman who could always glide off with smoothness
into another subject.  Wasn't HE struck with the way Mr. Newsome had
made the place his own, and hadn't he been in a position to profit by
his friend's wondrous expertness?

Strether felt the bravery, at the least, of her presenting herself so
promptly to sound that note, and yet asked himself what other note,
after all, she COULD strike from the moment she presented herself at
all.  She could meet Mrs. Pocock only on the ground of the obvious, and
what feature of Chad's situation was more eminent than the fact that he
had created for himself a new set of circumstances?  Unless she hid
herself altogether she could show but as one of these, an illustration
of his domiciled and indeed of his confirmed condition.  And the
consciousness of all this in her charming eyes was so clear and fine
that as she thus publicly drew him into her boat she produced in him
such a silent agitation as he was not to fail afterwards to denounce as
pusillanimous.  "Ah don't be so charming to me!--for it makes us
intimate, and after all what IS between us when I've been so
tremendously on my guard and have seen you but half a dozen times?"  He
recognised once more the perverse law that so inveterately governed his
poor personal aspects:  it would be exactly LIKE the way things always
turned out for him that he should affect Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh as
launched in a relation in which he had really never been launched at
all. They were at this very moment--they could only be--attributing to
him the full licence of it, and all by the operation of her own tone
with him; whereas his sole licence had been to cling with intensity to
the brink, not to dip so much as a toe into the flood. But the flicker
of his fear on this occasion was not, as may be added, to repeat
itself; it sprang up, for its moment, only to die down and then go out
for ever.  To meet his fellow visitor's invocation and, with Sarah's
brilliant eyes on him, answer, WAS quite sufficiently to step into her
boat.  During the rest of the time her visit lasted he felt himself
proceed to each of the proper offices, successively, for helping to
keep the adventurous skiff afloat.  It rocked beneath him, but he
settled himself in his place. He took up an oar and, since he was to
have the credit of pulling, pulled.

"That will make it all the pleasanter if it so happens that we DO
meet," Madame de Vionnet had further observed in reference to Mrs.
Pocock's mention of her initiated state; and she had immediately added
that, after all, her hostess couldn't be in need with the good offices
of Mr. Strether so close at hand.  "It's he, I gather, who has learnt
to know his Paris, and to love it, better than any one ever before in
so short a time; so that between him and your brother, when it comes to
the point, how can you possibly want for good guidance?  The great
thing, Mr. Strether will show you," she smiled, "is just to let one's
self go."

"Oh I've not let myself go very far," Strether answered, feeling quite
as if he had been called upon to hint to Mrs. Pocock how Parisians
could talk.  "I'm only afraid of showing I haven't let myself go far
enough.  I've taken a good deal of time, but I must quite have had the
air of not budging from one spot." He looked at Sarah in a manner that
he thought she might take as engaging, and he made, under Madame de
Vionnet's protection, as it were, his first personal point.  "What has
really happened has been that, all the while, I've done what I came out
for."

Yet it only at first gave Madame de Vionnet a chance immediately to
take him up.  "You've renewed acquaintance with your friend--you've
learnt to know him again." She spoke with such cheerful helpfulness
that they might, in a common cause, have been calling together and
pledged to mutual aid.

Waymarsh, at this, as if he had been in question, straightway turned
from the window.  "Oh yes, Countess--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 gravel, the click of hoofs, the crack of whips, things that
suggested some parade of the circus.  "I think it probable," said Mrs.
Pocock, "that I shall have the opportunity of going to my brother's
I've no doubt it's very pleasant indeed." She spoke as to Strether, but
her face was turned with an intensity of brightness to Madame de
Vionnet, and there was a moment during which, while she thus fronted
her, our friend expected to hear her add:  "I'm much obliged to you,
I'm sure, for inviting me there." He guessed that for five seconds
these words were on the point of coming; he heard them as clearly as if
they had been spoken; but he presently knew they had just failed--knew
it by a glance, quick and fine, from Madame de Vionnet, which told him
that she too had felt them in the air, but that the point had luckily
not been made in any manner requiring notice.  This left her free to
reply only to what had been said.

"That the Boulevard Malesherbes may be common ground for us offers me
the best prospect I see for the pleasure of meeting you again."

"Oh I shall come to see you, since you've been so good":  and Mrs.
Pocock looked her invader well in the eyes.  The flush in Sarah's
cheeks had by this time settled to a small definite crimson spot that
was not without its own bravery; she held her head a good deal up, and
it came to Strether that of the two, at this moment, she was the one
who most carried out the idea of a Countess.  He quite took in,
however, that she would really return her visitor's civility:  she
wouldn't report again at Woollett without at least so much producible
history as that in her pocket.

"I want extremely to be able to show you my little daughter." Madame de
Vionnet went on; "and I should have brought her with me if I hadn't
wished first to ask your leave.  I was in hopes I should perhaps find
Miss Pocock, of whose being with you I've heard from Mr. Newsome and
whose acquaintance I should so much like my child to make.  If I have
the pleasure of seeing her and you do permit it I shall venture to ask
her to be kind to Jeanne.  Mr. Strether will tell you"--she beautifully
kept it up--"that my poor girl is gentle and good and rather lonely.
They've made friends, he and she, ever so happily, and he doesn't, I
believe, think ill of her.  As for Jeanne herself he has had the same
success with her that I know he has had here wherever he has turned."
She seemed to ask him for permission to say these things, or seemed
rather to take it, softly and happily, with the ease of intimacy, for
granted, and he had quite the consciousness now that not to meet her at
any point more than halfway would be odiously, basely to abandon her.
Yes, he was WITH her, and, opposed even in this covert, this semi-safe
fashion to those who were not, he felt, strangely and confusedly, but
excitedly, inspiringly, how much and how far.  It was as if he had
positively waited in suspense for something from her that would let him
in deeper, so that he might show her how he could take it.  And what
did in fact come as she drew out a little her farewell served
sufficiently the purpose.  "As his success is a matter that I'm sure
he'll never mention for himself, I feel, you see, the less scruple;
which it's very good of me to say, you know, by the way," she added as
she addressed herself to him; "considering how little direct advantage
I've gained from your triumphs with ME.  When does one ever see you?  I
wait at home and I languish.  You'll have rendered me the service, Mrs.
Pocock, at least," she wound up, "of giving me one of my much-too-rare
glimpses of this gentleman."

"I certainly should be sorry to deprive you of anything that seems so
much, as you describe it, your natural due.  Mr. Strether and I are
very old friends," Sarah allowed, "but the privilege of his society
isn't a thing I shall quarrel about with any one."

"And yet, dear Sarah," he freely broke in, "I feel, when I hear you say
that, that you don't quite do justice to the important truth of the
extent to which--as you're also mine--I'm your natural due.  I should
like much better," he laughed, "to see you fight for me."

She met him, Mrs. Pocock, on this, with an arrest of speech--with a
certain breathlessness, as he immediately fancied, on the score of a
freedom for which she wasn't quite prepared.  It had flared up--for all
the harm he had intended by it--because, confoundedly, he didn't want
any more to be afraid about her than he wanted to be afraid about
Madame de Vionnet.  He had never, naturally, called her anything but
Sarah at home, and though he had perhaps never quite so markedly
invoked her as his "dear," that was somehow partly because no occasion
had hitherto laid so effective a trap for it. But something admonished
him now that it was too late--unless indeed it were possibly too early;
and that he at any rate shouldn't have pleased Mrs. Pocock the more by
it.  "Well, Mr. Strether--!" she murmured with vagueness, yet with
sharpness, while her crimson spot burned a trifle brighter and he was
aware that this must be for the present the limit of her response.
Madame de Vionnet had already, however, come to his aid, and Waymarsh,
as if for further participation, moved again back to them.  It was true
that the aid rendered by Madame de Vionnet was questionable; it was a
sign that, for all one might confess to with her, and for all she might
complain of not enjoying, she could still insidiously show how much of
the material of conversation had accumulated between them.

"The real truth is, you know, that you sacrifice one without mercy to
dear old Maria.  She leaves no room in your life for anybody else.  Do
you know," she enquired of Mrs. Pocock, "about dear old Maria?  The
worst is that Miss Gostrey is really a wonderful woman."

"Oh yes indeed," Strether answered for her, "Mrs. Pocock knows about
Miss Gostrey.  Your mother, Sarah, must have told you about her; your
mother knows everything," he sturdily pursued.  "And I cordially
admit," he added with his conscious gaiety of courage, "that she's as
wonderful a woman as you like."

"Ah it isn't I who 'like,' dear Mr. Strether, anything to do with the
matter!" Sarah Pocock promptly protested; "and I'm by no means sure I
have--from my mother or from any one else--a notion of whom you're
talking about."

"Well, he won't let you see her, you know," Madame de Vionnet
sympathetically threw in.  "He never lets me--old friends as we are: I
mean as I am with Maria.  He reserves her for his best hours; keeps her
consummately to himself; only gives us others the crumbs of the feast."

"Well, Countess, I'VE had some of the crumbs," Waymarsh observed with
weight and covering her with his large look; which led her to break in
before he could go on.

"Comment donc, he shares her with YOU?" she exclaimed in droll
stupefaction.  "Take care you don't have, before you go much further,
rather more of all ces dames than you may know what to do with!"

But he only continued in his massive way.  "I can post you about the
lady, Mrs. Pocock, so far as you may care to hear.  I've seen her quite
a number of times, and I was practically present when they made
acquaintance.  I've kept my eye on her right along, but I don't know as
there's any real harm in her."

"'Harm'?" Madame de Vionnet quickly echoed.  "Why she's the dearest and
cleverest of all the clever and dear."

"Well, you run her pretty close, Countess," Waymarsh returned with
spirit; "though there's no doubt she's pretty well up in things. She
knows her way round Europe.  Above all there's no doubt she does love
Strether."

"Ah but we all do that--we all love Strether:  it isn't a merit!" their
fellow visitor laughed, keeping to her idea with a good conscience at
which our friend was aware that he marvelled, though he trusted also
for it, as he met her exquisitely expressive eyes, to some later light.

The prime effect of her tone, however--and it was a truth which his own
eyes gave back to her in sad ironic play--could only be to make him
feel that, to say such things to a man in public, a woman must
practically think of him as ninety years old.  He had turned awkwardly,
responsively red, he knew, at her mention of Maria Gostrey; Sarah
Pocock's presence--the particular quality of it--had made this
inevitable; and then he had grown still redder in proportion as he
hated to have shown anything at all.  He felt indeed that he was
showing much, as, uncomfortably and almost in pain, he offered up his
redness to Waymarsh, who, strangely enough, seemed now to be looking at
him with a certain explanatory yearning.  Something deep--something
built on their old old relation--passed, in this complexity, between
them; he got the side-wind of a loyalty that stood behind all actual
queer questions.  Waymarsh's dry bare humour--as it gave itself to be
taken--gloomed out to demand justice.  "Well, if you talk of Miss
Barrace I've MY chance too," it appeared stiffly to nod, and it granted
that it was giving him away, but struggled to add that it did so only
to save him.  The sombre glow stared it at him till it fairly sounded
out--"to save you, poor old man, to save you; to save you in spite of
yourself." Yet it was somehow just this communication that showed him
to himself as more than ever lost. Still another result of it was to
put before him as never yet that between his comrade and the interest
represented by Sarah there was already a basis.  Beyond all question
now, yes:  Waymarsh had been in occult relation with Mrs. Newsome--out,
out it all came in the very effort of his face.  "Yes, you're feeling
my hand"--he as good as proclaimed it; "but only because this at least
I SHALL have got out of the damned Old World:  that I shall have picked
up the pieces into which it has caused you to crumble." It was as if in
short, after an instant, Strether had not only had it from him, but had
recognised that so far as this went the instant had cleared the air.
Our friend understood and approved; he had the sense that they wouldn't
otherwise speak of it.  This would be all, and it would mark in himself
a kind of intelligent generosity.  It was with grim Sarah then--Sarah
grim for all her grace--that Waymarsh had begun at ten o'clock in the
morning to save him.  Well--if he COULD, poor dear man, with his big
bleak kindness!  The upshot of which crowded perception was that
Strether, on his own side, still showed no more than he absolutely had
to.  He showed the least possible by saying to Mrs. Pocock after an
interval much briefer than our glance at the picture reflected in him:
"Oh it's as true as they please!--There's no Miss Gostrey for any one
but me--not the least little peep.  I keep her to myself."

"Well, it's very good of you to notify me," Sarah replied without
looking at him and thrown for a moment by this discrimination, as the
direction of her eyes showed, upon a dimly desperate little community
with Madame de Vionnet.  "But I hope I shan't miss her too much."

Madame de Vionnet instantly rallied.  "And you know--though it might
occur to one--it isn't in the least that he's ashamed of her. She's
really--in a way--extremely good-looking."

"Ah but extremely!" Strether laughed while he wondered at the odd part
he found thus imposed on him.

It continued to be so by every touch from Madame de Vionnet.  "Well, as
I say, you know, I wish you would keep ME a little more to yourself.
Couldn't you name some day for me, some hour--and better soon than
late?  I'll be at home whenever it best suits you. There--I can't say
fairer."

Strether thought a moment while Waymarsh and Mrs. Pocock affected him
as standing attentive.  "I did lately call on you.  Last week--while
Chad was out of town."

"Yes--and I was away, as it happened, too.  You choose your moments
well.  But don't wait for my next absence, for I shan't make another,"
Madame de Vionnet declared, "while Mrs. Pocock's here."

"That vow needn't keep you long, fortunately," Sarah observed with
reasserted suavity.  "I shall be at present but a short time in Paris.
I have my plans for other countries.  I meet a number of charming
friends"--and her voice seemed to caress that description of these
persons.

"Ah then," her visitor cheerfully replied, "all the more reason!
To-morrow, for instance, or next day?" she continued to Strether.
"Tuesday would do for me beautifully."

"Tuesday then with pleasure."

"And at half-past five?--or at six?"

It was ridiculous, but Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh struck him as fairly
waiting for his answer.  It was indeed as if they were arranged,
gathered for a performance, the performance of "Europe" by his
confederate and himself.  Well, the performance could only go on.  "Say
five forty-five."

"Five forty-five--good." And now at last Madame de Vionnet must leave
them, though it carried, for herself, the performance a little further.
"I DID hope so much also to see Miss Pocock. Mayn't I still?"

Sarah hesitated, but she rose equal.  "She'll return your visit with
me.  She's at present out with Mr. Pocock and my brother."

"I see--of course Mr. Newsome has everything to show them.  He has told
me so much about her.  My great desire's to give my daughter the
opportunity of making her acquaintance.  I'm always on the lookout for
such chances for her.  If I didn't bring her to-day it was only to make
sure first that you'd let me." After which the charming woman risked a
more intense appeal.  "It wouldn't suit you also to mention some near
time, so that we shall be sure not to lose you?"  Strether on his side
waited, for Sarah likewise had, after all, to perform; and it occupied
him to have been thus reminded that she had stayed at home--and on her
first morning of Paris--while Chad led the others forth.  Oh she was up
to her eyes; if she had stayed at home she had stayed by an
understanding, arrived at the evening before, that Waymarsh would come
and find her alone.  This was beginning well--for a first day in Paris;
and the thing might be amusing yet.  But Madame de Vionnet's
earnestness was meanwhile beautiful.  "You may think me indiscreet, but
I've SUCH a desire my Jeanne shall know an American girl of the really
delightful kind.  You see I throw myself for it on your charity."

The manner of this speech gave Strether such a sense of depths below it
and behind it as he hadn't yet had--ministered in a way that almost
frightened him to his dim divinations of reasons; but if Sarah still,
in spite of it, faltered, this was why he had time for a sign of
sympathy with her petitioner.  "Let me say then, dear lady, to back
your plea, that Miss Mamie is of the most delightful kind of all--is
charming among the charming."

Even Waymarsh, though with more to produce on the subject, could get
into motion in time.  "Yes, Countess, the American girl's a thing that
your country must at least allow ours the privilege to say we CAN show
you.  But her full beauty is only for those who know how to make use of
her."

"Ah then," smiled Madame de Vionnet, "that's exactly what I want to do.
I'm sure she has much to teach us."

It was wonderful, but what was scarce less so was that Strether found
himself, by the quick effect of it, moved another way.  "Oh that may
be!  But don't speak of your own exquisite daughter, you know, as if
she weren't pure perfection.  I at least won't take that from you.
Mademoiselle de Vionnet," he explained, in considerable form, to Mrs.
Pocock, "IS pure perfection.  Mademoiselle de Vionnet IS exquisite."

It had been perhaps a little portentous, but "Ah?" Sarah simply
glittered.

Waymarsh himself, for that matter, apparently recognised, in respect to
the facts, the need of a larger justice, and he had with it an
inclination to Sarah.  "Miss Jane's strikingly handsome--in the regular
French style."

It somehow made both Strether and Madame de Vionnet laugh out, though
at the very moment he caught in Sarah's eyes, as glancing at the
speaker, a vague but unmistakeable "You too?"  It made Waymarsh in fact
look consciously over her head.  Madame de Vionnet meanwhile, however,
made her point in her own way.  "I wish indeed I could offer you my
poor child as a dazzling attraction:  it would make one's position
simple enough!  She's as good as she can be, but of course she's
different, and the question is now--in the light of the way things seem
to go--if she isn't after all TOO different: too different I mean from
the splendid type every one is so agreed that your wonderful country
produces.  On the other hand of course Mr. Newsome, who knows it so
well, has, as a good friend, dear kind man that he is, done everything
he can--to keep us from fatal benightedness--for my small shy creature.
Well," she wound up after Mrs. Pocock had signified, in a murmur still
a little stiff, that she would speak to her own young charge on the
question--"well, we shall sit, my child and I, and wait and wait and
wait for you." But her last fine turn was for Strether.  "Do speak of
us in such a way--!"

"As that something can't but come of it?  Oh something SHALL come of
it!  I take a great interest!" he further declared; and in proof of it,
the next moment, he had gone with her down to her carriage.

Book Ninth

The day after the Pococks' arrival, Strether visits Sarah at her apartment. To his surprise, the first thing he hears as he nears the door is the voice of Madame de Vionnet. Upon entering the room, Strether's surprise is increased when he finds Waymarsh with the two women. Sarah is not caught unaware by Madame de Vionnet's visit, and in response to Madame de Vionnet's invitation to show her Paris, she says, "Oh you're too good; but I don't think I feel quite helpless. I have my brother -- and these American friends. And then you know I've been to Paris. I know Paris." Madame de Vionnet greets Strether with more familiarity than did Mrs. Pocock, and in doing this, she is, Strether muses, "giving him over to ruin." Still, even though Sarah may think him involved in a way he is not, he decides he is "with" Madame de Vionnet and cannot abandon her now. The atmosphere is rather tense and becomes increasingly so when Madame de Vionnet mentions Strether's attachment to Maria Gostrey. In answer to her question to Sarah, "Do you know about dear old Maria?" Strether intercepts: "Mrs. Pocock knows about Miss Gostrey. Your mother, Sarah, must have told you about her." Sarah replies that she has no notion of whom they are talking. When Waymarsh comes to his defense, Strether realizes that his friend is trying to save him with Sarah. The encounter ends with promises of visits to the home of Madame de Vionnet -- one from Strether and one from Sarah, who has been urged to bring Mamie to meet Jeanne de Vionnet.

Strether notices Madame de Vionnet's card on the table at Sarah's apartment -- "her coronet and her 'Cometesse'"  -- and Strether thinks that there will be "certain private adjustments in Sarah's mind. She had never, he was sure, sat with a 'Cometesse' before." This attitude of Strether's has certain implications in terms of the basic European-American, Old World-New World juxtaposition that James is always conscious of and which is one of the underpinnings of this and others of James' novels. Notice that Sarah is not impressed with "titles."