h it. I consciously fail to shrink in fact from that
extravagance--I risk it rather, for the sake of the moral involved;
which is not that the particular production before us exhausts the
interesting questions it raises, but that the Novel remains still,
under the right persuasion, the most independent, most elastic, most
prodigious of literary forms.

HENRY JAMES.

Book First

I

Strether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his
friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive
till evening he was not wholly disconcerted. A telegram from him
bespeaking a room "only if not noisy," reply paid, was produced for the
enquirer at the office, so that the understanding they should meet at
Chester rather than at Liverpool remained to that extent sound. The
same secret principle, however, that had prompted Strether not
absolutely to desire Waymarsh's presence at the dock, that had led him
thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of it, now operated to
make him feel he could still wait without disappointment. They would
dine together at the worst, and, with all respect to dear old
Waymarsh--if not even, for that matter, to himself--there was little
fear that in the sequel they shouldn't see enough of each other. The
principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most
newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive--the fruit of a
sharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking,
after so much separation, into his comrade's face, his business would
be a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to
present itself to the nearing steamer as the first "note," of Europe.
Mixed with everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether's
part, that it would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in
quite a sufficient degree.

That note had been meanwhile--since the previous afternoon, thanks to
this happier device--such a consciousness of personal freedom as he
hadn't known for years; such a deep taste of change and of having above
all for the moment nobody and nothing to consider, as promised already,
if headlong hope were not too foolish, to colour his adventure with
cool success. There were people on the ship with whom he had easily
consorted--so far as ease could up to now be imputed to him--and who
for the most part plunged straight into the current that set from the
landing-stage to London; th