een that fiction and fable WERE, inevitably,
in the air, and not as a simple term of comparison, but as a result of
things said; also that they were blinking it, all round, and that they
yet needn't, so much as that, have blinked it--though indeed if they
hadn't Strether didn't quite see what else they could have done.
Strether didn't quite see THAT even at an hour or two past midnight,
even when he had, at his hotel, for a long time, without a light and
without undressing, sat back on his bedroom sofa and stared straight
before him. He was, at that point of vantage, in full possession, to
make of it all what he could. He kept making of it that there had been
simply a LIE in the charming affair--a lie on which one could now,
detached and deliberate, perfectly put one's finger. It was with the
lie that they had eaten and drunk and talked and laughed, that they had
waited for their carriole rather impatiently, and had then got into the
vehicle and, sensibly subsiding, driven their three or four miles
through the darkening summer night. The eating and drinking, which had
been a resource, had had the effect of having served its turn; the talk
and laughter had done as much; and it was during their somewhat tedious
progress to the station, during the waits there, the further delays,
their submission to fatigue, their silences in the dim compartment of
the much-stopping train, that he prepared himself for reflexions to
come. It had been a performance, Madame de Vionnet's manner, and though
it had to that degree faltered toward the end, as through her ceasing
to believe in it, as if she had asked herself, or Chad had found a
moment surreptitiously to ask her, what after all was the use, a
performance it had none the less quite handsomely remained, with the
final fact about it that it was on the whole easier to keep up than to
abandon.

From the point of view of presence of mind it had been very wonderful
indeed, wonderful for readiness, for beautiful assurance, for the way
her decision was taken on the spot, without time to confer with Chad,
without time for anything. Their only conference could have been the
brief instants in the boat before they confessed to recognising the
spectator on the bank, for they hadn't been alone together a moment
since and must have communicated all in silence. It was a part of the
deep impression for Strether, and not the least of the deep interest,
that they COULD so communicate--that Chad i