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Updated: June 7, 2025
I went to see her," Strether explained "it was the day after I called on you but she was already on her way, and her concierge told me that in case of my coming I was to be informed she had written to me. I found her note when I got home." Madame de Vionnet listened with interest and with her eyes on Strether's face; then her delicately decorated head had a small melancholy motion.
Her face fairly brightened for the joy of the appeal, but, as if it were a question of immediate action, she visibly considered. "Out of waiting for him? of seeing him at all?" "Oh no not that," said poor Strether, looking grave. "I've got to wait for him and I want very much to see him. But out of the terror. You did put your finger on it a few minutes ago.
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."
"Have I your word of honour that if I surrender myself to Madame de Vionnet you'll surrender yourself to me?" Chad laid his hand firmly on his friend's. "My dear man, you have it." There was finally something in his felicity almost embarrassing and oppressive Strether had begun to fidget under it for the open air and the erect posture.
There was youth in that, there was youth in the surrender to the balcony, there was youth for Strether at this moment in everything but his own business; and Chad's thus pronounced association with youth had given the next instant an extraordinary quick lift to the issue.
In the book as it is, Strether personally has nothing to do with the impression that is made by the mazy career of his imagination, he has no hand in the effect it produces. It speaks for itself, it spreads over the scene and colours the world just as it did for Strether. It is immediately in the foreground, and the "seeing eye" to which it is presented is not his, but the reader's own.
I see that thing and I guess. Well," he added, "it comes as pat as in a play, for I've precisely turned up this morning as I would have done yesterday, but it was impossible to take you." "To take me?" Strether had turned again to his glass. "Back, at last, as I promised. I'm ready I've really been ready this month. I've only been waiting for you as was perfectly right.
But isn't that exactly your plight? 'We ladies' oh we're nice, and you must be having enough of us! As one of us, you know, I don't pretend I'm crazy about us. But Miss Gostrey at least to-night has left you alone, hasn't she?" With which she again looked about as if Maria might still lurk. "Oh yes," said Strether; "she's only sitting up for me at home."
And I've been as disappointed in her refusal to see it as she has been in what has appeared to her the perversity of my insistence." "Do you mean that she has shocked you as you've shocked her?" Strether weighed it. "I'm probably not so shockable. But on the other hand I've gone much further to meet her. She, on her side, hasn't budged an inch."
They disappeared among the others and apparently into the house; whereupon our friend turned round to give out to little Bilham the conviction of which he was full. But there was no little Bilham any more; little Bilham had within the few moments, for reasons of his own, proceeded further: a circumstance by which, in its order, Strether was also sensibly affected.
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