It was
perhaps a premature judgement; or it only meant perhaps--how could
he tell?--that the wonderful pair he protected had taken up again
together the excursion he had accidentally checked. They might
have gone back to the country, and gone back but with a long breath drawn;
that indeed would best mark Chad's sense that reprobation hadn't
rewarded Madame de Vionnet's request for an interview. At the end of
the twenty-four hours, at the end of the forty-eight, there was still
no overture; so that Strether filled up the time, as he had so often
filled it before, by going to see Miss Gostrey.
He proposed amusements to her; he felt expert now in proposing
amusements; and he had thus, for several days, an odd sense of
leading her about Paris, of driving her in the Bois, of showing her
the penny steamboats--those from which the breeze of the Seine was
to be best enjoyed--that might have belonged to a kindly uncle
doing the honours of the capital to an Intelligent niece from the
country. He found means even to take her to shops she didn't
know, or that she pretended she didn't; while she, on her side,
was, like the country maiden, all passive modest and grateful--
going in fact so far as to emulate rusticity in occasional fatigues
and bewilderments.
Pages:
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668