Henry James

“ The girl at the Genevese school, an isolated, interesting, attaching creature, both sensitive, then, and violent, audacious but always forgiven, was the daughter of a French father and an English mother, who, early left a widow, had married again, had another try with a foreigner; in her career with whom she had apparently given her child no example of comfort. All these people—the people of the English mother's side—had been of condition more or less eminent; yet with oddities and disparities that had often since made Maria, thinking them over, wonder what they really quite rhymed to. ”

“ There had been reasons, at the last, for his going off with ces dames; and he had asked her, with much instance, to come out and take charge of their friend. She did so, Strether felt as she took her place beside him, in a manner that left nothing to desire. He had dropped back on his bench, alone again for a time, and the more conscious, for little Bilham's defection, of his unexpressed thought, in respect to which, however, this next interlocutor was a still more capacious vessel. "It's the child!" ”

“ Strether took this in as they slowly moved to the house on their way out. "She counts on me then to put the thing through?"
"Yes; she counts on you. Oh, and first of all, of course," Miss Gostrey added, "on her—well, convincing you."
"Ah," her friend returned, "she caught Chad young!"
"Yes, but there are women who are for all ages. They're the most wonderful sort."
She had laughed the words out, but they brought her companion, the next thing, to a stand. "Is what you mean that she'll try to make a fool of me?" ”

“ You must take things as they come. Besides," Miss Gostrey added, "I'm not afraid for myself."
"For yourself———?"
"Of your seeing her. I trust her. There's nothing she'll say about me. In fact there's nothing she can."
Strether wondered—little as he had thought of this. Then he broke out. "Oh, you women!"
There was something in it at which she flushed. "Yes—there we are. We're abysses." At last she smiled. "But I risk her!"
He gave himself a shake. "Well then, so do I!" But he added as they passed into the house that he would see Chad the first thing in the morning. ”

“ He had a moment of wondering, while his friend went on, what sins might be especially Roumelian. She went on, at all events, to the mention of her having met the young thing—again by some Swiss lake—in her first married state, which had appeared for the few intermediate years not at least violently disturbed. She had been lovely at that moment, delightful to her, full of responsive emotion, of amused recognitions and amusing reminders ”

“ Strether felt his character receive, for the instant, a smutch from all the wrong things he had suspected or believed. The person to whom Chad owed it that he could positively turn out such a comfort to other persons—such a person was sufficiently raised above any "breath" by the nature of her work and the young man's steady light. All of which was vivid enough to come and go quickly; though indeed in the midst of it Strether could utter a question. "Have I your word of honour that if I surrender myself to Mme. ”

“ It was nothing new to him, however, as we know, that a man might have—at all events such a man as he was—an amount of experience out of any proportion to his adventures; so that, though it was doubtless no great adventure to sit on there with Miss Gostrey and hear about Mme. ”