"
Her departure had been for some minutes marked as imminent, and she
was already at the door that stood open to the court, from the
threshold of which she delivered herself of this judgement. It
rang out so loud as to produce for the time the hush of everything
else. Strether quite, as an effect of it, breathed less bravely;
he could acknowledge it, but simply enough. "Oh if you think THAT--!"
"Then all's at an end? So much the better. I do think that!" She
passed out as she spoke and took her way straight across the court,
beyond which, separated from them by the deep arch of the
porte-cochere the low victoria that had conveyed her from her own hotel
was drawn up. She made for it with decision, and the manner of her
break, the sharp shaft of her rejoinder, had an intensity by which
Strether was at first kept in arrest. She had let fly at him as
from a stretched cord, and it took him a minute to recover from the
sense of being pierced. It was not the penetration of surprise;
it was that, much more, of certainty; his case being put for him as
he had as yet only put it to himself. She was away at any rate;
she had distanced him--with rather a grand spring, an effect of pride
and ease, after all; she had got into her carriage before he could
overtake her, and the vehicle was already in motion.
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