Strether found himself in possession as he never yet had been;
he had been there alone, had turned over books and prints,
had invoked, in Chad's absence, the spirit of the place,
but never at the witching hour and never with a relish quite
so like a pang.
He spent a long time on the balcony; he hung over it as he had seen
little Bilham hang the day of his first approach, as he had seen
Mamie hang over her own the day little Bilham himself might have
seen her from below; he passed back into the rooms, the three that
occupied the front and that communicated by wide doors; and, while
he circulated and rested, tried to recover the impression that they
had made on him three months before, to catch again the voice in
which they had seemed then to speak to him. That voice, he had to
note, failed audibly to sound; which he took as the proof of all
the change in himself. He had heard, of old, only what he COULD
then hear; what he could do now was to think of three months ago as
a point in the far past. All voices had grown thicker and meant
more things; they crowded on him as he moved about--it was the way
they sounded together that wouldn't let him be still. He felt,
strangely, as sad as if he had come for some wrong, and yet as
excited as if he had come for some freedom.
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