It was a relief, Miss Gostrey hinted,
to feel herself no longer groping; she was unaccustomed to grope
and as a general thing, he might well have seen, made straight
enough for her clue. With the one she had now picked up in her
hands there need be at least no waste of wonder. "She's coming to
see me--that's for YOU," Strether's counsellor continued; "but I
don't require it to know where I am."
The waste of wonder might be proscribed; but Strether,
characteristically, was even by this time in the immensity of
space. "By which you mean that you know where SHE is?"
She just hesitated. "I mean that if she comes to see me I shall--
now that I've pulled myself round a bit after the shock--not be at
home."
Strether hung poised. "You call it--your recognition--a shock?"
She gave one of her rare flickers of impatience. "It was a
surprise, an emotion. Don't be so literal. I wash my hands of her."
Poor Strether's face lengthened. "She's impossible--?"
"She's even more charming than I remembered her."
"Then what's the matter?"
She had to think how to put it. "Well, I'M impossible. It's
impossible. Everything's impossible."
He looked at her an instant. "I see where you're coming out.
Everything's possible.
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