Henry James

“ An ideal rigour would perhaps postpone the trial till after the Pococks had shown their spirit, and it was to an ideal rigour that he had quite promised himself to conform.
Suddenly, however, on this particular day, he felt a particular fear under which everything collapsed. He knew abruptly that he was afraid of himself, and yet not in relation to the effect on his sensibilities of another hour of Mme. de Vionnet. What he dreaded was the effect of a single hour of Sarah Pocock, as to whom he was visited, in troubled nights, with fantastic waking dreams. She loomed at him larger than life ”

“ I've certainly said my little say about Mme. de Vionnet."
All this for Chad was beautifully obvious. "Yes, but you've only spoken handsomely."
"Never more handsomely of any woman. But it's just that tone———"
"That tone," said Chad, "that has fetched her? I dare say, but I've no quarrel with you about it; and no more has Mme. de Vionnet. Don't you know by this time that she likes you?"
"Oh!" and Strether had with his groan a real pang of melancholy. "For all I've done for her!" ”

“ It was the advantage of his having let his fancy lose itself for a little in the gloom that the prospect, by reaction, began really to brighten from the moment the deputation from Woollett alighted on the platform of the station. They had come straight from Havre, having sailed from New York to that port, and having also, thanks to a happy voyage, made land with a promptitude that left Chad Newsome, who had meant to meet them at the dock, belated. ”

“ The Pococks were a quantity as yet unmeasured, and as he had practically brought them over, he had to that extent exposed himself. He wanted to feel right about it, but he could only, at the best, for the time, feel vague. "I shall look to you, you know, immensely," our friend had said, "to help me with them"; and he had been quite conscious of the effect of the remark, and of others of the same sort, on Waymarsh's sombre sensibility. He had insisted on the fact that he would quite like Mrs. Pocock—one could be certain he would ”

“ That this was, moreover, what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a word that next dropped from him. "They're children; they play at life!" And the exclamation was significant and reassuring. It implied that he hadn't then, for his companion's sensibility, appeared to give Mrs. Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend's presently asking him if it were his idea that Mrs. Pocock and Mme. de Vionnet should become acquainted. Strether was still more sharply struck hereupon with Chad's lucidity. ”

“ The early summer brushed the picture over and blurred everything but the near. It made a vast, warm, fragrant medium, in which the elements floated together on the best of terms, in which rewards were immediate and reckonings postponed. ”

“ What her visit of inquisition might achieve in other directions was as yet all obscure; but it was not obscure that it would do supremely much to bring two earnest persons together. He had only to listen to Chad at this moment to feel it, for Chad was in the act of remarking to him that they, of course, both counted on him—he himself and the other earnest person—for cheer and support. It was brave to Strether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out was to make things ravishing to the Pococks. No; if Mme. ”