er break it at all if she wouldn't, and that
he had no confession whatever to wait upon her with: he breathed from
day to day an air that damnably required clearing, and there were
moments when he quite ached to precipitate that process. He couldn't
doubt that, should she only oblige him by surprising him just as he
then was, a clarifying scene of some sort would result from the
concussion.

He humbly circulated in this spirit till he suddenly had a fresh
arrest. Both the windows of the room stood open to the balcony, but it
was only now that, in the glass of the leaf of one of them, folded
back, he caught a reflexion quickly recognised as the colour of a
lady's dress. Somebody had been then all the while on the balcony, and
the person, whoever it might be, was so placed between the windows as
to be hidden from him; while on the other hand the many sounds of the
street had covered his own entrance and movements. If the person were
Sarah he might on the spot therefore be served to his taste. He might
lead her by a move or two up to the remedy for his vain tension; as to
which, should he get nothing else from it, he would at least have the
relief of pulling down the roof on their heads. There was fortunately
no one at hand to observe--in respect to his valour--that even on this
completed reasoning he still hung fire. He had been waiting for Mrs.
Pocock and the sound of the oracle; but he had to gird himself
afresh--which he did in the embrasure of the window, neither advancing
nor retreating--before provoking the revelation. It was apparently for
Sarah to come more into view; he was in that case there at her service.
She did however, as meanwhile happened, come more into view; only she
luckily came at the last minute as a contradiction of Sarah. The
occupant of the balcony was after all quite another person, a person
presented, on a second look, by a charming back and a slight shift of
her position, as beautiful brilliant unconscious Mamie--Mamie alone at
home, Mamie passing her time in her own innocent way, Mamie in short
rather shabbily used, but Mamie absorbed interested and interesting.
With her arms on the balustrade and her attention dropped to the street
she allowed Strether to watch her, to consider several things, without
her turning round.

But the oddity was that when he HAD so watched and considered he simply
stepped back into the room without following up his advantage. He
revolved there again fo