He had felt of old--for it already seemed long ago--rather
humiliated at discovering he could learn in talk with a personage
so much his junior the lesson of a certain moral ease; but he had
now got used to that--whether or no the mixture of the fact with
other humiliations had made it indistinct, whether or no directly
from little Bilham's example, the example of his being contentedly
just the obscure and acute little Bilham he was. It worked so for
him, Strether seemed to see; and our friend had at private hours a
wan smile over the fact that he himself, after so many more years,
was still in search of something that would work. However, as we
have said, it worked just now for them equally to have found a
corner a little apart. What particularly kept it apart was the
circumstance that the music in the salon was admirable, with two or
three such singers as it was a privilege to hear in private. Their
presence gave a distinction to Chad's entertainment, and the
interest of calculating their effect on Sarah was actually so sharp
as to be almost painful. Unmistakeably, in her single person, the
motive of the composition and dressed in a splendour of crimson
which affected Strether as the sound of a fall through a skylight,
she would now be in the forefront of the listening circle and
committed by it up to her eyes.
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