Strether remembered how he had seen
him come up with Jeanne de Vionnet in Gloriani's garden, and the
fancy he had had about that--the fancy obscured now, thickly
overlaid with others; the recollection was during these minutes his
only note of trouble. He had often, in spite of himself, wondered
if Chad but too probably were not with Jeanne the object of a still
and shaded flame. It was on the cards that the child MIGHT be
tremulously in love, and this conviction now flickered up not a bit
the less for his disliking to think of it, for its being, in a
complicated situation, a complication the more, and for something
indescribable in Mamie, something at all events straightway lent
her by his own mind, something that gave her value, gave her
intensity and purpose, as the symbol of an opposition. Little
Jeanne wasn't really at all in question--how COULD she be?--yet
from the moment Miss Pocock had shaken her skirts on the platform,
touched up the immense bows of her hat and settled properly over
her shoulder the strap of her morocco-and-gilt travelling-satchel,
from that moment little Jeanne was opposed.
It was in the cab with Jim that impressions really crowded on
Strether, giving him the strangest sense of length of absence from
people among whom he had lived for years.
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