ow for its length, and the occupant of the
bed thrust so far a pair of slippered feet that the visitor had almost
to step over them in his recurrent rebounds from his chair to fidget
back and forth. There were marks the friends made on things to talk
about, and on things not to, and one of the latter in particular fell
like the tap of chalk on the blackboard. Married at thirty, Waymarsh
had not lived with his wife for fifteen years, and it came up vividly
between them in the glare of the gas that Strether wasn't to ask about
her. He knew they were still separate and that she lived at hotels,
travelled in Europe, painted her face and wrote her husband abusive
letters, of not one of which, to a certainty, that sufferer spared
himself the perusal; but he respected without difficulty the cold
twilight that had settled on this side of his companion's life. It was
a province in which mystery reigned and as to which Waymarsh had never
spoken the informing word. Strether, who wanted to do him the highest
justice wherever he COULD do it, singularly admired him for the dignity
of this reserve, and even counted it as one of the grounds--grounds all
handled and numbered--for ranking him, in the range of their
acquaintance, as a success. He WAS a success, Waymarsh, in spite of
overwork, or prostration, of sensible shrinkage, of his wife's letters
and of his not liking Europe. Strether would have reckoned his own
career less futile had he been able to put into it anything so handsome
as so much fine silence. One might one's self easily have left Mrs.
Waymarsh; and one would assuredly have paid one's tribute to the ideal
in covering with that attitude the derision of having been left by her.
Her husband had held his tongue and had made a large income; and these
were in especial the achievements as to which Strether envied him. Our
friend had had indeed on his side too a subject for silence, which he
fully appreciated; but it was a matter of a different sort, and the
figure of the income he had arrived at had never been high enough to
look any one in the face.

"I don't know as I quite see what you require it for. You don't appear
sick to speak of." It was of Europe Waymarsh thus finally spoke.

"Well," said Strether, who fell as much as possible into step, "I guess
I don't FEEL sick now that I've started. But I had pretty well run
down before I did start."

Waymarsh raised his melancholy look. "Ain't you about up to your