Book Ninth
I
"The difficulty is," Strether said to Madame de Vionnet a couple of
days later, "that I can't surprise them into the smallest sign of
his not being the same old Chad they've been for the last three
years glowering at across the sea. They simply won't give any, and
as a policy, you know--what you call a parti pris, a deep game--
that's positively remarkable."
It was so remarkable that our friend had pulled up before his
hostess with the vision of it; he had risen from his chair at the
end of ten minutes and begun, as a help not to worry, to move about
before her quite as he moved before Maria. He had kept his
appointment with her to the minute and had been intensely impatient,
though divided in truth between the sense of having everything
to tell her and the sense of having nothing at all. The short
interval had, in the face of their complication, multiplied his
impressions--it being meanwhile to be noted, moreover, that he
already frankly, already almost publicly, viewed the complication
as common to them. If Madame de Vionnet, under Sarah's eyes, had
pulled him into her boat, there was by this time no doubt whatever
that he had remained in it and that what he had really most been
conscious of for many hours together was the movement of the vessel
itself.
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