Woollett that the freshest of the buds should find herself in the same
basket with the most withered of the winter apples. The child had
given sharpness, above all, to his sense of the flight of time; it was
but the day before yesterday that he had tripped up on her hoop, yet
his experience of remarkable women--destined, it would seem, remarkably
to grow--felt itself ready this afternoon, quite braced itself, to
include her. She had in fine more to say to him than he had ever
dreamed the pretty girl of the moment COULD have; and the proof of the
circumstance was that, visibly, unmistakeably, she had been able to say
it to no one else. It was something she could mention neither to her
brother, to her sister-in-law nor to Chad; though he could just imagine
that had she still been at home she might have brought it out, as a
supreme tribute to age, authority and attitude, for Mrs. Newsome. It
was moreover something in which they all took an interest; the strength
of their interest was in truth just the reason of her prudence. All
this then, for five minutes, was vivid to Strether, and it put before
him that, poor child, she had now but her prudence to amuse her. That,
for a pretty girl in Paris, struck him, with a rush, as a sorry state;
so that under the impression he went out to her with a step as
hypocritically alert, he was well aware, as if he had just come into
the room. She turned with a start at his voice; preoccupied with him
though she might be, she was just a scrap disappointed. "Oh I thought
you were Mr. Bilham!"

The remark had been at first surprising and our friend's private
thought, under the influence of it, temporarily blighted; yet we are
able to add that he presently recovered his inward tone and that many a
fresh flower of fancy was to bloom in the same air. Little
Bilham--since little Bilham was, somewhat incongruously,
expected--appeared behindhand; a circumstance by which Strether was to
profit. They came back into the room together after a little, the
couple on the balcony, and amid its crimson-and-gold elegance, with the
others still absent, Strether passed forty minutes that he appraised
even at the time as far, in the whole queer connexion, from his idlest.
Yes indeed, since he had the other day so agreed with Maria about the
inspiration of the lurid, here was something for his problem that
surely didn't make it shrink and that was floated in upon him as part
of a sudden flood. He was do