ger had been with her, and,
though it was perhaps not quite easy to see how she could qualify what
had occurred, he would at least have been sufficiently advised to feel
he could go on. The day, however, brought, early or late, no word from
him, and Strether felt, as a result of this, that a change had
practically come over their intercourse. It was perhaps a premature
judgement; or it only meant perhaps--how could he tell?--that the
wonderful pair he protected had taken up again together the excursion
he had accidentally checked. They might have gone back to the country,
and gone back but with a long breath drawn; that indeed would best mark
Chad's sense that reprobation hadn't rewarded Madame de Vionnet's
request for an interview. At the end of the twenty-four hours, at the
end of the forty-eight, there was still no overture; so that Strether
filled up the time, as he had so often filled it before, by going to
see Miss Gostrey.

He proposed amusements to her; he felt expert now in proposing
amusements; and he had thus, for several days, an odd sense of leading
her about Paris, of driving her in the Bois, of showing her the penny
steamboats--those from which the breeze of the Seine was to be best
enjoyed--that might have belonged to a kindly uncle doing the honours
of the capital to an Intelligent niece from the country. He found
means even to take her to shops she didn't know, or that she pretended
she didn't; while she, on her side, was, like the country maiden, all
passive modest and grateful--going in fact so far as to emulate
rusticity in occasional fatigues and bewilderments. Strether described
these vague proceedings to himself, described them even to her, as a
happy interlude; the sign of which was that the companions said for the
time no further word about the matter they had talked of to satiety. He
proclaimed satiety at the outset, and she quickly took the hint; as
docile both in this and in everything else as the intelligent obedient
niece. He told her as yet nothing of his late adventure--for as an
adventure it now ranked with him; he pushed the whole business
temporarily aside and found his interest in the fact of her beautiful
assent. She left questions unasked--she who for so long had been all
questions; she gave herself up to him with an understanding of which
mere mute gentleness might have seemed the sufficient expression. She
knew his sense of his situation had taken still another step--of