Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/10

4 of personal freedom as he had not known for years; such a deep taste of change and of having, above all, for the moment, nobody and nothing to consider, as promised already, if headlong hope were not too foolish, to colour his adventure with cool success. There were people on the ship with whom he had easily—so far as ease could, up to now, be imputed to him—consorted, and who for the most part plunged straight into the current that set, from the landing-stage, to London; there were others who had invited him to a tryst at the inn, and had even invoked his aid for a "look round" at the beauties of Liverpool; but he had stolen away from everyone alike; had kept no appointment and renewed no acquaintance; had been indifferently aware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves fortunate in being, unlike himself, "met"; and had even, independently, unsociably, alone, without encounter or relapse and by mere quiet evasion, given his afternoon and evening to the immediate and the sensible. They formed a qualified draught of Europe, an afternoon and an evening on the banks of the Mersey, but such as it was he took his potion at least undiluted. He winced a little, truly, at the thought that Waymarsh might be already at Chester; he reflected that, should he have to describe himself at Chester as having "got in" so early, it would be difficult to make the interval look particularly eager; but he was like a man who, finding in his pocket, with joy, more money than usual, handles it a while and idly, pleasantly chinks it before addressing himself to the business of spending. That he was prepared to be vague to Waymarsh about the hour of the ship's touching, and that he both wanted extremely to see him and enjoyed extremely the duration of delay—these things, it is to be conceived, were early signs in him that his relation to his actual errand might prove none of the simplest. He was burdened, poor Strether—it had better be confessed at the outset—with the oddity of a double consciousness. There was detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference.

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 pronounced, he turned away to