He wondered--it was amusing--if he felt as the
impudent feel. "I shall take great pleasure, I assure you, in any
explanation. I shall be delighted to receive Sarah."
The sombre glow just darkened in his comrade's eyes; but he was
struck with the way it died out again. It was too mixed with
another consciousness--it was too smothered, as might be said, in
flowers. He really for the time regretted it--poor dear old sombre
glow! Something straight and simple, something heavy and empty, had
been eclipsed in its company; something by which he had best known
his friend. Waymarsh wouldn't BE his friend, somehow, without the
occasional ornament of the sacred rage, and the right to the sacred
rage--inestimably precious for Strether's charity--he also seemed
in a manner, and at Mrs. Pocock's elbow, to have forfeited.
Strether remembered the occasion early in their stay when on that
very spot he had come out with his earnest, his ominous "Quit it!"--
and, so remembering, felt it hang by a hair that he didn't
himself now utter the same note. Waymarsh was having a good time--
this was the truth that was embarrassing for him, and he was having
it then and there, he was having it in Europe, he was having it
under the very protection of circumstances of which he didn't in
the least approve; all of which placed him in a false position,
with no issue possible--none at least by the grand manner.
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