me's original ambassador. She was in HIS interest and not in
Sarah's, and some sign of that was precisely what he had been feeling
in her, these last days, as imminent. Finally placed, in Paris, in
immediate presence of the situation and of the hero of it--by whom
Strether was incapable of meaning any one but Chad--she had
accomplished, and really in a manner all unexpected to herself, a
change of base; deep still things had come to pass within her, and by
the time she had grown sure of them Strether had become aware of the
little drama. When she knew where she was, in short, he had made it
out; and he made it out at present still better; though with never a
direct word passing between them all the while on the subject of his
own predicament. There had been at first, as he sat there with her, a
moment during which he wondered if she meant to break ground in respect
to his prime undertaking. That door stood so strangely ajar that he
was half-prepared to be conscious, at any juncture, of her having, of
any one's having, quite bounced in. But, friendly, familiar, light of
touch and happy of tact, she exquisitely stayed out; so that it was for
all the world as if to show she could deal with him without being
reduced to--well, scarcely anything.

It fully came up for them then, by means of their talking of everything
BUT Chad, that Mamie, unlike Sarah, unlike Jim, knew perfectly what had
become of him. It fully came up that she had taken to the last
fraction of an inch the measure of the change in him, and that she
wanted Strether to know what a secret she proposed to make of it. They
talked most conveniently--as if they had had no chance yet--about
Woollett; and that had virtually the effect of their keeping the secret
more close. The hour took on for Strether, little by little, a queer
sad sweetness of quality, he had such a revulsion in Mamie's favour and
on behalf of her social value as might have come from remorse at some
early injustice. She made him, as under the breath of some vague
western whiff, homesick and freshly restless; he could really for the
time have fancied himself stranded with her on a far shore, during an
ominous calm, in a quaint community of shipwreck. Their little
interview was like a picnic on a coral strand; they passed each other,
with melancholy smiles and looks sufficiently allusive, such cupfuls of
water as they had saved. Especially sharp in Strether meanwhile was
the conviction th