"Ah that's as you'll think best. You must judge."

She had finally given him her hand, which he held a moment. "How MUCH
I have to judge!"

"Everything," said Madame de Vionnet: a remark that was indeed--with
the refined disguised suppressed passion of her face--what he most
carried away.

II

So far as a direct approach was concerned Sarah had neglected him, for
the week now about to end, with a civil consistency of chill that,
giving him a higher idea of her social resource, threw him back on the
general reflexion that a woman could always be amazing. It indeed
helped a little to console him that he felt sure she had for the same
period also left Chad's curiosity hanging; though on the other hand,
for his personal relief, Chad could at least go through the various
motions--and he made them extraordinarily numerous--of seeing she had a
good time. There wasn't a motion on which, in her presence, poor
Strether could so much as venture, and all he could do when he was out
of it was to walk over for a talk with Maria. He walked over of course
much less than usual, but he found a special compensation in a certain
half-hour during which, toward the close of a crowded empty expensive
day, his several companions seemed to him so disposed of as to give his
forms and usages a rest. He had been with them in the morning and had
nevertheless called on the Pococks in the afternoon; but their whole
group, he then found, had dispersed after a fashion of which it would
amuse Miss Gostrey to hear. He was sorry again, gratefully sorry she
was so out of it--she who had really put him in; but she had
fortunately always her appetite for news. The pure flame of the
disinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine
vault. It was just now, as happened, that for so fine a sense as hers
a near view would have begun to pay. Within three days, precisely, the
situation on which he was to report had shown signs of an equilibrium;
the effect of his look in at the hotel was to confirm this appearance.
If the equilibrium might only prevail! Sarah was out with Waymarsh,
Mamie was out with Chad, and Jim was out alone. Later on indeed he
himself was booked to Jim, was to take him that evening to the
Varieties--which Strether was careful to pronounce as Jim pronounced
them.

Miss Gostrey drank it in. "What then to-night do the others do?"

"Well, it has been arranged. Waymarsh takes Sarah to dine at Bignons."