at his companion really knew, as we have hinted, where
she had come out. It was at a very particular place--only THAT she
would never tell him; it would be above all what he should have to
puzzle for himself. This was what he hoped for, because his interest
in the girl wouldn't be complete without it. No more would the
appreciation to which she was entitled--so assured was he that the more
he saw of her process the more he should see of her pride. She saw,
herself, everything; but she knew what she didn't want, and that it was
that had helped her. What didn't she want?--there was a pleasure lost
for her old friend in not yet knowing, as there would doubtless be a
thrill in getting a glimpse. Gently and sociably she kept that dark to
him, and it was as if she soothed and beguiled him in other ways to
make up for it. She came out with her impression of Madame de
Vionnet--of whom she had "heard so much"; she came out with her
impression of Jeanne, whom she had been "dying to see": she brought it
out with a blandness by which her auditor was really stirred that she
had been with Sarah early that very afternoon, and after dreadful
delays caused by all sorts of things, mainly, eternally, by the
purchase of clothes--clothes that unfortunately wouldn't be themselves
eternal--to call in the Rue de Bellechasse.

At the sound of these names Strether almost blushed to feel that he
couldn't have sounded them first--and yet couldn't either have
justified his squeamishness. Mamie made them easy as he couldn't have
begun to do, and yet it could only have cost her more than he should
ever have had to spend. It was as friends of Chad's, friends special,
distinguished, desirable, enviable, that she spoke of them, and she
beautifully carried it off that much as she had heard of them--though
she didn't say how or where, which was a touch of her own--she had
found them beyond her supposition. She abounded in praise of them, and
after the manner of Woollett--which made the manner of Woollett a
loveable thing again to Strether. He had never so felt the true
inwardness of it as when his blooming companion pronounced the elder of
the ladies of the Rue de Bellechasse too fascinating for words and
declared of the younger that she was perfectly ideal, a real little
monster of charm. "Nothing," she said of Jeanne, "ought ever to happen
to her--she's so awfully right as she is. Another touch will spoil
her--so she oughtn't to BE touched.