ady more directly felt--the effect of
appearing to place all knowledge, for the time, on this original
woman's side. It interested him indeed to mark the limits of any such
relation for her with his friend as there could possibly be a question
of, and it particularly struck him that they were to be marked
altogether in Waymarsh's quarter. This added to his own sense of
having gone far with her-gave him an early illustration of a much
shorter course. There was a certitude he immediately grasped--a
conviction that Waymarsh would quite fail, as it were, and on whatever
degree of acquaintances to profit by her.

There had been after the first interchange among the three a talk of
some five minutes in the hall, and then the two men had adjourned to
the garden, Miss Gostrey for the time disappearing. Strether in due
course accompanied his friend to the room he had bespoken and had,
before going out, scrupulously visited; where at the end of another
half-hour he had no less discreetly left him. On leaving him he
repaired straight to his own room, but with the prompt effect of
feeling the compass of that chamber resented by his condition. There
he enjoyed at once the first consequence of their reunion. A place was
too small for him after it that had seemed large enough before. He had
awaited it with something he would have been sorry, have been almost
ashamed not to recognise as emotion, yet with a tacit assumption at the
same time that emotion would in the event find itself relieved. The
actual oddity was that he was only more excited; and his excitement-to
which indeed he would have found it difficult instantly to give a
name--brought him once more downstairs and caused him for some minutes
vaguely to wander. He went once more to the garden; he looked into the
public room, found Miss Gostrey writing letters and backed out; he
roamed, fidgeted and wasted time; but he was to have his more intimate
session with his friend before the evening closed.

It was late--not till Strether had spent an hour upstairs with
him--that this subject consented to betake himself to doubtful rest.
Dinner and the subsequent stroll by moonlight--a dream, on Strether's
part, of romantic effects rather prosaically merged in a mere missing
of thicker coats--had measurably intervened, and this midnight
conference was the result of Waymarsh's having (when they were free, as
he put it, of their fashionable friend) found the smoking-room not
quit