on as she hadn't even yet been. She was
alone, he found himself assuming, with Sarah, and there was a bearing
in that--somehow beyond his control--on his personal fate. Yet she was
only saying something quite easy and independent--the thing she had
come, as a good friend of Chad's, on purpose to say. "There isn't
anything at all--? I should be so delighted."

It was clear enough, when they were there before him, how she had been
received. He saw this, as Sarah got up to greet him, from something
fairly hectic in Sarah's face. He saw furthermore that they weren't,
as had first come to him, alone together; he was at no loss as to the
identity of the broad high back presented to him in the embrasure of
the window furthest from the door. Waymarsh, whom he had to-day not yet
seen, whom he only knew to have left the hotel before him, and who
had taken part, the night previous, on Mrs. Pocock's kind invitation,
conveyed by Chad, in the entertainment, informal but cordial, promptly
offered by that lady--Waymarsh had anticipated him even as Madame de
Vionnet had done, and, with his hands in his pockets and his attitude
unaffected by Strether's entrance, was looking out, in marked
detachment, at the Rue de Rivoli. The latter felt it in the air--it
was immense how Waymarsh could mark things---that he had remained
deeply dissociated from the overture to their hostess that we have
recorded on Madame de Vionnet's side. He had, conspicuously, tact,
besides a stiff general view; and this was why he had left Mrs. Pocock
to struggle alone. He would outstay the visitor; he would
unmistakeably wait; to what had he been doomed for months past but
waiting? Therefore she was to feel that she had him in reserve. What
support she drew from this was still to be seen, for, although Sarah
was vividly bright, she had given herself up for the moment to an
ambiguous flushed formalism. She had had to reckon more quickly than
she expected; but it concerned her first of all to signify that she was
not to be taken unawares. Strether arrived precisely in time for her
showing it. "Oh you're too good; but I don't think I feel quite
helpless. I have my brother--and these American friends. And then you
know I've been to Paris. I KNOW Paris," said Sally Pocock in a tone
that breathed a certain chill on Strether's heart.

"Ah but a woman, in this tiresome place where everything's always
changing, a woman of good will," Madame de Vionnet threw