s day seen
her, but had planned presenting himself in due course to ask her to
dine with him somewhere out of doors, on one of the terraces, in one of
the gardens, of which the Paris of summer was profuse. It had then
come on to rain, so that, disconcerted, he changed his mind; dining
alone at home, a little stuffily and stupidly, and waiting on her
afterwards to make up his loss. He was sure within a minute that
something had happened; it was so in the air of the rich little room
that he had scarcely to name his thought. Softly lighted, the whole
colour of the place, with its vague values, was in cool fusion--an
effect that made the visitor stand for a little agaze. It was as if in
doing so now he had felt a recent presence--his recognition of the
passage of which his hostess in turn divined. She had scarcely to say
it--"Yes, she has been here, and this time I received her." It wasn't
till a minute later that she added: "There being, as I understand you,
no reason NOW--!"

"None for your refusing?"

"No--if you've done what you've had to do."

"I've certainly so far done it," Strether said, "as that you needn't
fear the effect, or the appearance of coming between us. There's
nothing between us now but what we ourselves have put there, and not an
inch of room for anything else whatever. Therefore you're only
beautifully WITH us as always--though doubtless now, if she has talked
to you, rather more with us than less. Of course if she came," he
added, "it was to talk to you."

"It was to talk to me," Maria returned; on which he was further sure
that she was practically in possession of what he himself hadn't yet
told her. He was even sure she was in possession of things he himself
couldn't have told; for the consciousness of them was now all in her
face and accompanied there with a shade of sadness that marked in her
the close of all uncertainties. It came out for him more than ever yet
that she had had from the first a knowledge she believed him not to
have had, a knowledge the sharp acquisition of which might be destined
to make a difference for him. The difference for him might not
inconceivably be an arrest of his independence and a change in his
attitude--in other words a revulsion in favour of the principles of
Woollett. She had really prefigured the possibility of a shock that
would send him swinging back to Mrs. Newsome. He hadn't, it was true,
week after week, shown signs of receiving it, but t