ere were others who had invited him to a
tryst at the inn and had even invoked his aid for a "look round" at the
beauties of Liverpool; but he had stolen away from every one alike, had
kept no appointment and renewed no acquaintance, had been indifferently
aware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves fortunate in
being, unlike himself, "met," and had even independently, unsociably,
alone, without encounter or relapse and by mere quiet evasion, given
his afternoon and evening to the immediate and the sensible. They
formed a qualified draught of Europe, an afternoon and an evening on
the banks of the Mersey, but such as it was he took his potion at least
undiluted. He winced a little, truly, at the thought that Waymarsh
might be already at Chester; he reflected that, should he have to
describe himself there as having "got in" so early, it would be
difficult to make the interval look particularly eager; but he was like
a man who, elatedly finding in his pocket more money than usual,
handles it a while and idly and pleasantly chinks it before addressing
himself to the business of spending. That he was prepared to be vague
to Waymarsh about the hour of the ship's touching, and that he both
wanted extremely to see him and enjoyed extremely the duration of
delay--these things, it is to be conceived, were early signs in him
that his relation to his actual errand might prove none of the
simplest. He was burdened, poor Strether--it had better be confessed
at the outset--with the oddity of a double consciousness. There was
detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference.

After the young woman in the glass cage had held up to him across her
counter the pale-pink leaflet bearing his friend's name, which she
neatly pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall, facing
a lady who met his eyes as with an intention suddenly determined, and
whose features--not freshly young, not markedly fine, but on happy
terms with each other--came back to him as from a recent vision. For a
moment they stood confronted; then the moment placed her: he had
noticed her the day before, noticed her at his previous inn,
where--again in the hall--she had been briefly engaged with some people
of his own ship's company. Nothing had actually passed between them,
and he would as little have been able to say what had been the sign of
her face for him on the first occasion as to name the ground of his
present recognition. Recog