What would Mrs.
Newsome say to the circumstance that Chad's interested "influence"
kept her paper-knife in the _Revue_? The interested influence at any
rate had, as we say, gone straight to the point--had in fact soon
left it quite behind.
She was seated, near the fire, on a small stuffed and fringed chair
one of the few modern articles in the room, and she leaned back in
it with her hands clasped in her lap and no movement, in all her
person, but the fine prompt play of her deep young face. The fire,
under the low white marble, undraped and academic, had burnt down
to the silver ashes of light wood, one of the windows, at a
distance, stood open to the mildness and stillness, out of which,
in the short pauses, came the faint sound, pleasant and homely,
almost rustic, of a plash and a clatter of sabots from some
coach-house on the other side of the court. Madame de Vionnet,
while Strether sat there, wasn't to shift her posture by an inch.
"I don't think you seriously believe in what you're doing," she
said; "but all the same, you know, I'm going to treat you quite as
if I did."
"By which you mean," Strether directly replied, "quite as if you
didn't! I assure you it won't make the least difference with me how
you treat me.
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