Wouldn't it be found to have made more
for reality to be silly with these persons than sane with Sarah and
Jim? Jim in fact, he presently made up his mind, was individually
out of it; Jim didn't care; Jim hadn't come out either for Chad or
for him; Jim in short left the moral side to Sally and indeed
simply availed himself now, for the sense of recreation, of the
fact that he left almost everything to Sally. He was nothing
compared to Sally, and not so much by reason of Sally's temper and
will as by that of her more developed type and greater acquaintance
with the world. He quite frankly and serenely confessed, as he sat
there with Strether, that he felt his type hang far in the rear of
his wife's and still further, if possible, in the rear of his
sister's. Their types, he well knew, were recognised and acclaimed;
whereas the most a leading Woollett business-man could hope to
achieve socially, and for that matter industrially, was a certain
freedom to play into this general glamour.
The impression he made on our friend was another of the things that
marked our friend's road. It was a strange impression, especially
as so soon produced; Strether had received it, he judged, all in
the twenty minutes; it struck him at least as but in a minor degree
the work of the long Woollett years.
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