Chapter 26

Summary

WHEN, one morning, within the week, he perceived the whole thing to be really at last upon him, Strether's immediate feeling was all relief. He had known, this morning, that something was about to happen—known it, in a moment, by Waymarsh's manner when Waymarsh appeared before him during his brief consumption of coffee and a roll in the small, slippery salle à manger so associated now with rich rumination. Strether had taken there of late various lonely and absent-minded meals; he communed there, even at the end of June, with a suspected chill, the air of old shivers mixed with old savours, the air in which somany of his impressions had perversely matured; the place meanwhile renewing its message to himby the very circumstance of his single state. He now sat there, for the most part, to sigh softly, while he vaguely tilted his carafe, over the vision of how much better Waymarsh was occupied. That was really his success, by the common measure—to have led his companion so on and on. He remembered how, at first, there had been scarce a squatting-place he could beguile him into passing; the actual sequel to which, at last, was that there was scarce one that could arrest him in his rush. His rush—as Strether vividly and amusedly figured it—continued to be all with Sarah, and contained perhaps moreover the word of the whole enigma, whipped up in its fine, full-flavoured froth the very principle, for good or for ill, of his own, of Strether’s, outlook. It might, after all, to the end, only be that they had united to save him, and indeed, so far as Waymarsh was concerned, that had to be the spring of action. Strether was glad, at all events, in connection with the case, that the saving he required was not more scant; so defined a luxury was it, in certain lights, just to lurk there out of the full glare. He had moments of quite seriously wondering whether Waymarsh wouldn’t, in fact, thanks to old friendship and a conceivable indulgence,make about as good terms for him as hemight make for himself. They wouldn't be the same terms, of course; but they might have the advantage that he himself probably should be able to make none at all.