THE   AMBASSADORS
and familiar to respond to brought with it an instant renewal of his
loyalty. He had suddenly sounded the whole depth, had gasped at
what he might have lost.
Well, he could now, for the quarter of an hour of their detention,
hover about the travellers as soothingly as if their direct message
to him was that he had lost nothing. He wasn't going to have
Sarah write to her mother that night that he was in any way
altered or strange. There had been times enough for a month when
it had seemed to him that he was strange, that he was altered, in
every way; but that was a matter for himself; he knew at least
whose business it was not; it was not at all events such a circum-
stance as Sarah's own unaided lights would help her to. Even if
she had come out to flash those lights more than yet appeared, she
wouldn't make much headway against mere pleasantness. He
counted on being able to be merely pleasant to the end; and if only
from incapacity, moreover, to formulate anything different. He
couldn't even formulate to himself his being changed and queer;
it had taken place, the process, somewhere deep down; Maria Gos-
trey had caught glimpses of it; but how was he to fish it up, even
if he desired, for Mrs. Pocock ? This was the spirit then in which
he hovered, and with the easier throb in it much indebted, more-
over, to the impression of high and established adequacy as a pretty
girl promptly produced in him by Mamie. He had wondered vague-
ly—turning over many things in the fidget of his thoughts—if
Mamie were as pretty as Woollett published her; as to which issue
seeing her now again was to be so swept away by Woollett's opinion
that this consequence really let loose for the imagination an ava-
lanche of others. There were positively five minutes in which the
last word seemed of necessity to abide with a Woollett represented
by a Mamie. This was the sort of truth the place itself would feel;
it would send her forth in confidence; it would point to her with
triumph; it would take its stand on her with assurance; it would
be conscious of no requirement she didn't meet, of no question she
couldn't answer.
Well, it was right, Strether slipped smoothly enough into the
cheerfulness of saying; granted that a community might be best
represented by a young lady of twenty-two, Mamie perfectly played
the part, played it as if she were used to it, and looked and spoke
253

1 a!
M