Pocock's similar intention, the jump was but
short to supreme lucidity. Light became indeed after that so
intense that Strether would doubtless have but half made out, in
the prodigious glare, by which of the two the issue had been in
fact precipitated. It was, in their contracted quarters, as much
there between them as if it had been something suddenly spilled
with a crash and a splash on the floor. The form of his submission
was to be an engagement to acquit himself within the twenty-four
hours. "He'll go in a moment if you give him the word--he assures
me on his honour he'll do that": this came in its order, out of
its order, in respect to Chad, after the crash had occurred. It
came repeatedly during the time taken by Strether to feel that he
was even more fixed in his rigour than he had supposed--the time he
was not above adding to a little by telling her that such a way of
putting it on her brother's part left him sufficiently surprised.
She wasn't at all funny at last--she was really fine; and he felt
easily where she was strong--strong for herself. It hadn't yet so
come home to him that she was nobly and appointedly officious.
She was acting in interests grander and clearer than that of her
poor little personal, poor little Parisian equilibrium, and all his
consciousness of her mother's moral pressure profited by this proof
of its sustaining force.
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