least of this lady's high merits for him was that he could
absolutely rest on her word. She was the only woman he had known, even
at Woollett, as to whom his conviction was positive that to lie was
beyond her art. Sarah Pocock, for instance, her own daughter, though
with social ideals, as they said, in some respects different--Sarah who
WAS, in her way, aesthetic, had never refused to human commerce that
mitigation of rigour; there were occasions when he had distinctly seen
her apply it. Since, accordingly, at all events, he had had it from
Mrs. Newsome that she had, at whatever cost to her more strenuous view,
conformed, in the matter of preparing Chad, wholly to his restrictions,
he now looked up at the fine continuous balcony with a safe sense that
if the case had been bungled the mistake was at least his property. Was
there perhaps just a suspicion of that in his present pause on the edge
of the Boulevard and well in the pleasant light?

Many things came over him here, and one of them was that he should
doubtless presently know whether he had been shallow or sharp. Another
was that the balcony in question didn't somehow show as a convenience
easy to surrender. Poor Strether had at this very moment to recognise
the truth that wherever one paused in Paris the imagination reacted
before one could stop it. This perpetual reaction put a price, if one
would, on pauses; but it piled up consequences till there was scarce
room to pick one's steps among them. What call had he, at such a
juncture, for example, to like Chad's very house? High broad clear--he
was expert enough to make out in a moment that it was admirably
built--it fairly embarrassed our friend by the quality that, as he
would have said, it "sprang" on him. He had struck off the fancy that
it might, as a preliminary, be of service to him to be seen, by a happy
accident, from the third-story windows, which took all the March sun,
but of what service was it to find himself making out after a moment
that the quality "sprung," the quality produced by measure and balance,
the fine relation of part to part and space to space, was
probably--aided by the presence of ornament as positive as it was
discreet, and by the complexion of the stone, a cold fair grey, warmed
and polished a little by life--neither more nor less than a case of
distinction, such a case as he could only feel unexpectedly as a sort
of delivered challenge? Meanwhile, however, the chance he had