respect to his own
presence from rising to his lips. Disclaimers of intention would have
been as tactless as his presence was practically gross; and the
narrowest escape they either of them had was his lucky escape, in the
event, from making any. Nothing of the sort, so far as surface and
sound were involved, was even in question; surface and sound all made
for their common ridiculous good fortune, for the general
invraisemblance of the occasion, for the charming chance that they had,
the others, in passing, ordered some food to be ready, the charming
chance that he had himself not eaten, the charming chance, even more,
that their little plans, their hours, their train, in short, from
la-bas, would all match for their return together to Paris. The chance
that was most charming of all, the chance that drew from Madame de
Vionnet her clearest, gayest "Comme cela se trouve!" was the
announcement made to Strether after they were seated at table, the word
given him by their hostess in respect to his carriage for the station,
on which he might now count. It settled the matter for his friends as
well; the conveyance--it WAS all too lucky!--would serve for them; and
nothing was more delightful than his being in a position to make the
train so definite. It might have been, for themselves--to hear Madame
de Vionnet--almost unnaturally vague, a detail left to be fixed; though
Strether indeed was afterwards to remember that Chad had promptly
enough intervened to forestall this appearance, laughing at his
companion's flightiness and making the point that he had after all, in
spite of the bedazzlement of a day out with her, known what he was
about.

Strether was to remember afterwards further that this had had for him
the effect of forming Chad's almost sole intervention; and indeed he
was to remember further still, in subsequent meditation, many things
that, as it were, fitted together. Another of them was for instance
that the wonderful woman's overflow of surprise and amusement was
wholly into French, which she struck him as speaking with an
unprecedented command of idiomatic turns, but in which she got, as he
might have said, somewhat away from him, taking all at once little
brilliant jumps that he could but lamely match. The question of his
own French had never come up for them; it was the one thing she
wouldn't have permitted--it belonged, for a person who had been through
much, to mere boredom; but the present result wa