on 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