m the absence of this testimony. It was what
he had taken his own stand on, so far as he had taken a stand; and if
they were all only going to see nothing he had only wasted his time. He
gave his friend till the very last moment, till they had come into
sight of the hotel; and when poor Pocock only continued cheerful and
envious and funny he fairly grew to dislike him, to feel him
extravagantly common. If they were ALL going to see
nothing!--Strether knew, as this came back to him, that he was also
letting Pocock represent for him what Mrs. Newsome wouldn't see. He
went on disliking, in the light of Jim's commonness, to talk to him
about that lady; yet just before the cab pulled up he knew the extent
of his desire for the real word from Woollett.

"Has Mrs. Newsome at all given way--?"

"'Given way'?"--Jim echoed it with the practical derision of his sense
of a long past.

"Under the strain, I mean, of hope deferred, of disappointment repeated
and thereby intensified."

"Oh is she prostrate, you mean?"--he had his categories in hand. "Why
yes, she's prostrate--just as Sally is. But they're never so lively,
you know, as when they're prostrate."

"Ah Sarah's prostrate?" Strether vaguely murmured.

"It's when they're prostrate that they most sit up."

"And Mrs. Newsome's sitting up?"

"All night, my boy--for YOU!" And Jim fetched him, with a vulgar
little guffaw, a thrust that gave relief to the picture. But he had
got what he wanted. He felt on the spot that this WAS the real word
from Woollett. "So don't you go home!" Jim added while he alighted and
while his friend, letting him profusely pay the cabman, sat on in a
momentary muse. Strether wondered if that were the real word too.

III

As the door of Mrs. Pocock's salon was pushed open for him, the next
day, well before noon, he was reached by a voice with a charming sound
that made him just falter before crossing the threshold. Madame de
Vionnet was already on the field, and this gave the drama a quicker
pace than he felt it as yet--though his suspense had increased--in the
power of any act of his own to do. He had spent the previous evening
with all his old friends together yet he would still have described
himself as quite in the dark in respect to a forecast of their
influence on his situation. It was strange now, none the less, that in
the light of this unexpected note of her presence he felt Madame de
Vionnet a part of that situati