Henry James

“ He shook his head. "Miss Barrace is a raffinée, and her amusement won't lose by Mrs. Pocock. It will gain rather—especially if Sarah triumphs and she comes in for a view of it."
"How well you know us!" Mme. de Vionnet, at this, frankly sighed.
"No it seems to me it's we that I know. I know Sarah—it's perhaps on that ground only that my feet are firm. Waymarsh will take her round, while Chad takes Jim—and I shall be, I assure you, delighted for both of them. Sarah will have had what she requires—she will have paid her own tribute to the ideal; and he will have done about the same. ”

“ I think it will be Jim who'll do it."
She wondered. "Get hold of him?"
"No; just the other thing. Counteract Sarah's spell." And he showed now—our friend—how far he had worked it out. "Jim's intensely cynical."
"Oh dear Jim!" Mme. de Vionnet vaguely smiled.
"Yes, literally, dear Jim! He's awful. What he wants,—heaven forgive him—is to help us."
"You mean"—she was eager—"help me?"
"Well, Chad and me in the first place. But he throws you in too, though without, as yet, seeing you much. Only, so far as he does see you—if you don't mind—he sees you as very advanced." ”

“ They won't do much, especially if Sarah hasn't more—well, more than one has yet made out—to give."
Mme. de Vionnet weighed it. "Ah, she has all her grace!" It was a statement over which, for a little, they could look at each other sufficiently straight, and though it produced no protest from Strether, the effect was somehow as if he had treated it as a joke. "She may be persuasive and caressing with him; she may be eloquent beyond words. She may get hold of him," she wound up—"well, as neither you nor I have."
"Yes, she may," and now Strether smiled. ”

“ The way Mme. de Vionnet affected him to-day was in itself a kind of demonstration of the happy employment of gifts. How could a woman think Sarah had charm who struck one as having arrived at it herself by such different roads? On the other hand, of course, Sarah wasn't obliged to have it. He felt as if somehow Mme. de Vionnet was. The great question meanwhile was what Chad thought of his sister, which was naturally ushered in by that of Sarah's apprehension of Chad. ”

“ There's an element of suspense for me, and she can see me wriggle. But my wriggling doesn't matter," he pursued. "I can bear it. Besides, I shall wriggle out."
The picture, at any rate, stirred in her an appreciation that he felt to be sincere. "I don't see how a man can be kinder to a woman than you are to me."
Well, kind was what he wanted to be; yet, even while her charming eyes rested on him with the truth of this, he none the less had his humour of honesty. "When I say suspense I mean, you know," he laughed, "suspense about my own case too!" ”

“ Her noble old apartment offered a succession of three, the first two of which indeed, on entering, smaller than the last, but each with its faded and formal air, enlarged the office of the antechamber and enriched the sense of approach. Strether fancied them, liked them, and, passing through them with her more slowly now, met a sharp renewal of his original impression. ”

“ The young man had met Chad, and he got a friend to approach him—as having a decent interest in us. Mr. Newsome looked well before he leaped; he kept beautifully quiet and satisfied himself fully; then only he spoke. It's what has for some time past occupied us. It seems as if it were what would do; really, really all one could wish. There are only two or three points to be settled—they depend on her father. But this time I think we're safe."
Strether, consciously gaping a little, had fairly hung upon her lips. ”

“ Strether gave it up. "How can one tell how a deep little girl sees a deep young man?"
"Is everyone so deep? Is she so too?"
"So it strikes me—deeper than I thought. But wait a little, and, between us, we'll make it out. You'll judge, for that matter, for yourself."
Mme. de Vionnet looked for the moment fairly bent on the chance. "Then she will come with her? I mean Mamie with Mrs. Pocock?"
"Certainly. Her curiosity, if nothing else, will in any case work that. But leave it all to Chad."
"Ah," wailed Mme. de Vionnet, turning away a little wearily, "the things I leave to Chad!" ”

“ The difficulty is," Strether said to Mme. de Vionnet a couple of days later, "that I can't surprise them into the smallest sign of his not being the same old Chad they've been for the last three years glowering at across the sea. They simply won't give any, and as a policy, you know—what you call a parti pris, a deep game—that's positively remarkable."
It was so remarkable that our friend had pulled up before his hostess with the vision of it; he had risen from his chair at the end of ten minutes and begun, as a help not to worry, to move about before her quite as he moved before Maria. ”

“ It's an effect that a lifetime of Woollett has quite been observed as having; and I thus give it to you, in Jim's view, for what it's worth. Now his wife and his mother-in-law," Strether continued to explain, "have, as in honour bound, no patience with such performances, late or early; which puts Jim, as against his relatives, on the other side. Besides," he added, "I don't think he really wants Chad back. If Chad doesn't come———"
"He'll have," Mme. de Vionnet quite apprehended, "more of the free hand?"
"Well, Chad's the bigger man." ”

“ He paused again, but he brought it out. "Hasn't she met Chad?"
"Certainly—but not for the first time. He's an old friend." At which Strether had a slow, amused, significant headshake that made her go on: "You mean that for her at least he's a new person—that she sees him as different?" ”

“ It placed the young man so before them as the result of her interest and the product of her genius, acknowledged so her part in the phenomenon and made the phenomenon so rare, that, more than ever yet, he might have been on the very point of asking her for some more detailed account of the whole business than he had yet received from her. ”