Doubt
ceased to be possible from the moment he had taken in that she had
arrived with no proposal whatever; that her concern was simply to
show what she had come to receive. She had come to receive his
submission, and Waymarsh was to have made it plain to him that she
would expect nothing less. He saw fifty things, her host, at this
convenient stage; but one of those he most saw was that their
anxious friend hadn't quite had the hand required of him.
Waymarsh HAD, however, uttered the request that she might find him
mild, and while hanging about the court before her arrival he had
turned over with zeal the different ways in which he could be so.
The difficulty was that if he was mild he wasn't, for her purpose,
conscious. If she wished him conscious--as everything about her
cried aloud that she did--she must accordingly be at costs to make
him so. Conscious he was, for himself--but only of too many
things; so she must choose the one she required.
Practically, however, it at last got itself named, and when once
that had happened they were quite at the centre of their situation.
One thing had really done as well as another; when Strether had
spoken of Waymarsh's leaving him, and that had necessarily brought
on a reference to Mrs.
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