Miss Gostrey was such a woman of
fashion as could make without a symptom of vulgar blinking an
appointment for the Burlington Arcade. Mere discriminations about a
pair of gloves could thus at any rate represent--always for such
sensitive ears as were in question--possibilities of something that
Strether could make a mark against only as the peril of apparent
wantonness. He had quite the consciousness of his new friend, for
their companion, that he might have had of a Jesuit in petticoats,
a representative of the recruiting interests of the Catholic
Church. The Catholic Church, for Waymarsh-that was to say the
enemy, the monster of bulging eyes and far-reaching quivering
groping tentacles--was exactly society, exactly the multiplication
of shibboleths, exactly the discrimination of types and tones,
exactly the wicked old Rows of Chester, rank with feudalism;
exactly in short Europe.
There was light for observation, however, in an incident that
occurred just before they turned back to luncheon. Waymarsh had
been for a quarter of an hour exceptionally mute and distant, and
something, or other--Strether was never to make out exactly what--
proved, as it were, too much for him after his comrades had stood
for three minutes taking in, while they leaned on an old balustrade
that guarded the edge of the Row, a particularly crooked and
huddled street-view.
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