; it is ever, obviously,
overwhelmingly, the prime and precious thing (as other than this I have
never been able to see it); as to which what makes for it, with
whatever headlong energy, may be said to pale before the energy with
which it simply makes for itself. It rejoices, none the less, at its
best, to seem to offer itself in a light, to seem to know, and with the
very last knowledge, what it's about--liable as it yet is at moments to
be caught by us with its tongue in its cheek and absolutely no warrant
but its splendid impudence. Let us grant then that the impudence is
always there--there, so to speak, for grace and effect and ALLURE;
there, above all, because the Story is just the spoiled child of art,
and because, as we are always disappointed when the pampered don't
"play up," we like it, to that extent, to look all its character. It
probably does so, in truth, even when we most flatter ourselves that we
negotiate with it by treaty.

All of which, again, is but to say that the STEPS, for my fable, placed
themselves with a prompt and, as it were, functional assurance--an air
quite as of readiness to have dispensed with logic had I been in fact
too stupid for my clue. Never, positively, none the less, as the links
multiplied, had I felt less stupid than for the determination of poor
Strether's errand and for the apprehension of his issue. These things
continued to fall together, as by the neat action of their own weight
and form, even while their commentator scratched his head about them;
he easily sees now that they were always well in advance of him. As
the case completed itself he had in fact, from a good way behind, to
catch up with them, breathless and a little flurried, as he best could.
THE false position, for our belated man of the world--belated because
he had endeavoured so long to escape being one, and now at last had
really to face his doom--the false position for him, I say, was
obviously to have presented himself at the gate of that boundless
menagerie primed with a moral scheme of the most approved pattern which
was yet framed to break down on any approach to vivid facts; that is to
any at all liberal appreciation of them. There would have been of
course the case of the Strether prepared, wherever presenting himself,
only to judge and to feel meanly; but HE would have moved for me, I
confess, enveloped in no legend whatever. The actual man's note, from
the first of our seeing it struck, is