Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/102

96 or arrived, she had accepted with the best grace her second course of little Bilham and had said to Strether the previous afternoon, on his leaving them, that, since her impression was to be renewed, she would reserve judgment till after the new evidence.

The new evidence was to come, as it proved, in a day or two. He soon had from Maria a message to the effect that an excellent box at the "Français" had been lent her for the following night; it seeming on such occasions not the least of her merits that she was subject to such approaches. The sense of how she was, in advance, always paying for something was equalled, on Strether's part, only by the sense of how she was always being paid; all of which made for his consciousness, in the larger air, of a lively, bustling traffic, the exchange of such values as were not for him to handle. She hated, he knew, at the French play, anything but a box, just as she hated at the English anything but a stall, and a box was what he was already in this phase girding himself to press upon her. But she had, for that matter, her resemblance to little Bilham; she too, always, on the great issues, showed as having known in time. It made her constantly beforehand with him and gave him mainly the chance to ask himself how on the day of their settlement their account would stand. He endeavoured even now to keep it a little straight by arranging that if he accepted her invitation she should dine with him first; but the upshot of this scruple was that at eight o'clock on the morrow he awaited her with Waymarsh under the pillared portico. She had not dined with him, and it was characteristic of their relation that she had made him embrace her refusal without in the least understanding it. She ever caused her rearrangements to affect him as her tenderest touches. It was on that principle, for instance, that, giving him the opportunity to be amiable again to little Bilham, she had suggested his offering the young man a seat in their box. Strether had despatched, to this end, a small blue missive to the Boulevard Malesherbes, but up to the moment of their passing into the theatre he had received no response to this communication. He held, however, even after they had been for some time conveniently seated, that their