Waymarsh
had accompanied him this time to the play, and the two men had
walked together, as a first stage, from the Gymnase to the Cafe
Riche, into the crowded "terrace" of which establishment--the
night, or rather the morning, for midnight had struck, being bland
and populous--they had wedged themselves for refreshment.
Waymarsh, as a result of some discussion with his friend, had made
a marked virtue of his having now let himself go; and there had
been elements of impression in their half-hour over their watered
beer-glasses that gave him his occasion for conveying that he held
this compromise with his stiffer self to have become extreme. He
conveyed it--for it was still, after all, his stiffer self who
gloomed out of the glare of the terrace--in solemn silence; and
there was indeed a great deal of critical silence, every way,
between the companions, even till they gained the Place de l'Opera,
as to the character of their nocturnal progress.
This morning there WERE letters--letters which had reached London,
apparently all together, the day of Strether's journey, and had
taken their time to follow him; so that, after a controlled
impulse to go into them in the reception-room of the bank, which,
reminding him of the post-office at Woollett, affected him as the
abutment of some transatlantic bridge, he slipped them into the
pocket of his loose grey overcoat with a sense of the felicity of
carrying them off.
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