Barrace's great sense, wonderful. It was one of the connexions--though
really why it should be, after all, was none so apparent--in which the
whole change in him came out as most striking. Strether recalled as
they approached the house that he had impressed him that first night as
knowing how to enter a box. Well, he impressed him scarce less now as
knowing how to make a presentation. It did something for Strether's
own quality--marked it as estimated; so that our poor friend, conscious
and passive, really seemed to feel himself quite handed over and
delivered; absolutely, as he would have said, made a present of, given
away. As they reached the house a young woman, about to come forth,
appeared, unaccompanied, on the steps; at the exchange with whom of a
word on Chad's part Strether immediately perceived that, obligingly,
kindly, she was there to meet them. Chad had left her in the house, but
she had afterwards come halfway and then the next moment had joined
them in the garden. Her air of youth, for Strether, was at first almost
disconcerting, while his second impression was, not less sharply, a
degree of relief at there not having just been, with the others, any
freedom used about her. It was upon him at a touch that she was no
subject for that, and meanwhile, on Chad's introducing him, she had
spoken to him, very simply and gently, in an English clearly of the
easiest to her, yet unlike any other he had ever heard. It wasn't as
if she tried; nothing, he could see after they had been a few minutes
together, was as if she tried; but her speech, charming correct and
odd, was like a precaution against her passing for a Pole. There were
precautions, he seemed indeed to see, only when there were really
dangers.

Later on he was to feel many more of them, but by that time he was to
feel other things besides. She was dressed in black, but in black that
struck him as light and transparent; she was exceedingly fair, and,
though she was as markedly slim, her face had a roundness, with eyes
far apart and a little strange. Her smile was natural and dim; her hat
not extravagant; he had only perhaps a sense of the clink, beneath her
fine black sleeves, of more gold bracelets and bangles than he had ever
seen a lady wear. Chad was excellently free and light about their
encounter; it was one of the occasions on which Strether most wished he
himself might have arrived at such ease and such humour: "Here you are
then, face