it would point to
her with triumph; it would take its stand on her with assurance; it
would be conscious of no requirements she didn't meet, of no question
she couldn't answer.

Well, it was right, Strether slipped smoothly enough into the
cheerfulness of saying: granted that a community MIGHT be best
represented by a young lady of twenty-two, Mamie perfectly played the
part, played it as if she were used to it, and looked and spoke and
dressed the character. He wondered if she mightn't, in the high light
of Paris, a cool full studio-light, becoming yet treacherous, show as
too conscious of these matters; but the next moment he felt satisfied
that her consciousness was after all empty for its size, rather too
simple than too mixed, and that the kind way with her would be not to
take many things out of it, but to put as many as possible in. She was
robust and conveniently tall; just a trifle too bloodlessly fair
perhaps, but with a pleasant public familiar radiance that affirmed her
vitality. She might have been "receiving" for Woollett, wherever she
found herself, and there was something in her manner, her tone, her
motion, her pretty blue eyes, her pretty perfect teeth and her very
small, too small, nose, that immediately placed her, to the fancy,
between the windows of a hot bright room in which voices were high--up
at that end to which people were brought to be "presented." They were
there to congratulate, these images, and Strether's renewed vision, on
this hint, completed the idea. What Mamie was like was the happy
bride, the bride after the church and just before going away. She
wasn't the mere maiden, and yet was only as much married as that
quantity came to. She was in the brilliant acclaimed festal stage.
Well, might it last her long!

Strether rejoiced in these things for Chad, who was all genial
attention to the needs of his friends, besides having arranged that his
servant should reinforce him; the ladies were certainly pleasant to
see, and Mamie would be at any time and anywhere pleasant to exhibit.
She would look extraordinarily like his young wife--the wife of a
honeymoon, should he go about with her; but that was his own affair--or
perhaps it was hers; it was at any rate something she couldn't help.
Strether remembered how he had seen him come up with Jeanne de Vionnet
in Gloriani's garden, and the fancy he had had about that--the fancy
obscured now, thickly overlaid with others; the recollecti