Our friend asked once for
him at the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli, but the only contribution
offered there was the fact that every one was out. It was with
the idea that he would have to come home to sleep that Strether
went up to his rooms, from which however he was still absent, though,
from the balcony, a few moments later, his visitor heard eleven
o'clock strike. Chad's servant had by this time answered for his
reappearance; he HAD, the visitor learned, come quickly in to dress
for dinner and vanish again. Strether spent an hour in waiting
for him--an hour full of strange suggestions, persuasions, recognitions;
one of those that he was to recall, at the end of his adventure, as
the particular handful that most had counted. The mellowest lamplight
and the easiest chair had been placed at his disposal by Baptiste,
subtlest of servants; the novel half-uncut, the novel lemon-coloured
and tender, with the ivory knife athwart it like the dagger in a
contadina's hair, had been pushed within the soft circle--a circle
which, for some reason, affected Strether as softer still after
the same Baptiste had remarked that in the absence of a further need
of anything by Monsieur he would betake himself to bed. The night
was hot and heavy and the single lamp sufficient; the great flare
of the lighted city, rising high, spending itself afar, played up
from the Boulevard and, through the vague vista of the successive
rooms, brought objects into view and added to their dignity.
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