Americans -- France -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction; Psychological fiction; Young men -- Fiction
After the young woman in the glass cage had held up to him across her
counter the pale-pink leaflet bearing his friend’s name, which she
neatly pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall, facing
a lady who met his eyes as with an intention suddenly determined, and
whose features—not freshly young, not markedly fine, but on happy terms
with each other—came back to him as from a recent vision. For a moment
they stood confronted; then the moment placed her: he had noticed her
the day before, noticed her at his previous inn, where—again in the
hall—she had been briefly engaged with some people of his own ship’s
company. Nothing had actually passed between them, and he would as
little have been able to say what had been the sign of her face for him
on the first occasion as to name the ground of his present recognition.
Recognition at any rate appeared to prevail on her own side as
well—which would only have added to the mystery. All she now began by
saying to him nevertheless was that, having chanced to catch his
enquiry, she was moved to ask, by his leave, if it were possibly a
question of Mr. Waymarsh of Milrose Connecticut—Mr. Waymarsh the
American lawyer.
“Oh yes,” he replied, “my very well-known friend. He’s to meet me here,
coming up from Malvern, and I supposed he’d already have arrived. But
he doesn’t come till later, and I’m relieved not to have kept him. Do
you know him?” Strether wound up.
It wasn’t till after he had spoken that he became aware of how much
there had been in him of response; when the tone of her own rejoinder,
as well as the play of something more in her face—something more, that
is, than its apparently usual restless light—seemed to notify him.
“I’ve met him at Milrose—where I used sometimes, a good while ago, to
stay; I had friends there who were friends of his, and I’ve been at his
house. I won’t answer for it that he would know me,” Strether’s new
acquaintance pursued; “but I should be delighted to see him. Perhaps,”
she added, “I shall—for I’m staying over.” She paused while our friend
took in these things, and it was as if a good deal of talk had already
passed. They even vaguely smiled at it, and Strether presently observed
that Mr. Waymarsh would, no doubt, be easily to be seen. This, however,
appeared to affect the lady as if she might have advanced too far. She
appeared to have no reserves about anything. “Oh,” she said, “he won’t
care!”—and she immediately thereupon remarked that she believed
Strether knew the Munsters; the Munsters being the people he had seen
her with at Liverpool.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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