Pocock was normally and
consentingly though not quite wittingly out of the question. It was
despite his being normal; it was despite his being cheerful; it was
despite his being a leading Woollett business-man; and the
determination of his fate left him thus perfectly usual--as
everything else about it was clearly, to his sense, not less so. He
seemed to say that there was a whole side of life on which the
perfectly usual WAS for leading Woollett business-men to be out of
the question. He made no more of it than that, and Strether, so far
as Jim was concerned, desired to make no more. Only Strether's
imagination, as always, worked, and he asked himself if this side
of life were not somehow connected, for those who figured on it
with the fact of marriage. Would HIS relation to it, had he married
ten years before, have become now the same as Pocock's? Might it
even become the same should he marry in a few months? Should he
ever know himself as much out of the question for Mrs. Newsome as
Jim knew himself--in a dim way--for Mrs. Jim?
To turn his eyes in that direction was to be personally reassured;
he was different from Pocock; he had affirmed himself differently
and was held after all in higher esteem.
Pages:
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441