Strether felt for a moment as if Sarah were actually walking up and
down outside. Wasn't she hanging about the porte-cochere while
her friend thus summarily opened a way? Strether would meet her
but to take it, and everything would be for the best in the best of
possible worlds. He had never so much known what any one meant as,
in the light of this demonstration, he knew what Mrs. Newsome did.
It had reached Waymarsh from Sarah, but it had reached Sarah from
her mother, and there was no break in the chain by which it reached
HIM. "Has anything particular happened," he asked after a minute--
"so suddenly to determine her? Has she heard anything unexpected
from home?"
Waymarsh, on this, it seemed to him, looked at him harder than
ever. "'Unexpected'?" He had a brief hesitation; then, however,
he was firm. "We're leaving Paris."
"Leaving? That IS sudden."
Waymarsh showed a different opinion. "Less so than it may seem.
The purpose of Mrs. Pocock's visit is to explain to you in fact
that it's NOT."
Strether didn't at all know if he had really an advantage--
anything that would practically count as one; but he enjoyed for
the moment--as for the first time in his life--the sense of so
carrying it off.
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