This effect was enhanced by a small black fichu
or scarf, of crape or gauze, disposed quaintly round her bosom and
now completing as by a mystic touch the pathetic, the noble analogy.
Poor Strether in fact scarce knew what analogy was evoked for him
as the charming woman, receiving him and making him, as she could do
such things, at once familiarly and gravely welcome, moved over her
great room with her image almost repeated in its polished floor,
which had been fully bared for summer. The associations of the place,
all felt again; the gleam here and there, in the subdued light,
of glass and gilt and parquet, with the quietness of her own note
as the centre--these things were at first as delicate as if they
had been ghostly, and he was sure in a moment that, whatever he should
find he had come for, it wouldn't be for an impression that had
previously failed him. That conviction held him from the outset,
and, seeming singularly to simplify, certified to him that the objects
about would help him, would really help them both. No, he might
never see them again--this was only too probably the last time;
and he should certainly see nothing in the least degree like them.
He should soon be going to where such things were not, and it would be
a small mercy for memory, for fancy, to have, in that stress,
a loaf on the shelf.
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