She had asked him if he could do her the very
great kindness of coming to see her that evening at half-past nine,
and he answered, as if nothing were easier, that he would present
himself at the hour she named. She had added a line of postscript,
to the effect that she would come to him elsewhere and at his own hour
if he preferred; but he took no notice of this, feeling that if he
saw her at all half the value of it would be in seeing her where he
had already seen her best. He mightn't see her at all; that was
one of the reflexions he made after writing and before he dropped
his closed card into the box; he mightn't see any one at all
any more at all; he might make an end as well now as ever,
leaving things as they were, since he was doubtless not to leave
them better, and taking his way home so far as should appear that
a home remained to him. This alternative was for a few minutes
so sharp that if he at last did deposit his missive it was perhaps
because the pressure of the place had an effect.
There was none other, however, than the common and constant pressure,
familiar to our friend under the rubric of Postes et Telegraphes--
the something in the air of these establishments; the vibration of
the vast strange life of the town, the influence of the types,
the performers concocting their messages; the little prompt Paris women,
arranging, pretexting goodness knew what, driving the dreadful
needle-pointed public pen at the dreadful sand-strewn public table:
implements that symbolised for Strether's too interpretative innocence
something more acute in manners, more sinister in morals, more fierce
in the national life.
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