Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/153

Rh that—yes, distinctly—he had not in the least swaggered about it. Our friend hadn't come there only for this figure of Abel Newsome's son, but it threatened to affect the observant mind as positively central. Gloriani, indeed, remembering something and, excusing himself, pursued Chad to speak to him, and Strether was left musing on many things. One of them was the question of whether, since he had been tested, he had passed. Did the artist drop him from having made out that he wouldn't do? He really felt, just to-day, that he might do better than usual. Hadn't he done well enough, for that matter, in being just so dazzled, and in not having, too, as he almost believed, wholly hidden from his host that he knew of the latter's inquiry? Suddenly, across the garden, he saw little Bilham approach, and it was a part of the fit that was on him that as their eyes met he guessed also his knowledge. If he had said to him on the instant what was uppermost he would have said: "Have I passed?—for, of course, I know one has to pass here." Little Bilham would have reassured him, have told him that he exaggerated, and have adduced happily enough the argument of little Bilham's own very presence, which, in truth, he could see, was as easy a one as Gloriani's own, or as Chad's. He himself would perhaps then after a while cease to be frightened, would get the point of view for some of the faces—types tremendously alien, alien to Woollett—that he had already begun to take in. Who were they all, the dispersed groups and couples, the ladies, even more unlike those of Woollett than the gentlemen?—this was the inquiry that, when his young friend had greeted him, he did find himself making.

"Oh, they're everyone—all sorts and sizes; of course I mean within limits, though limits down perhaps rather more than limits up. There are always artists—he's beautiful, inimitable to the cher confrère; and then gros bonnets of many kinds—ambassadors, cabinet ministers, bankers, generals; what do I know? even Jews. Above all, always, some awfully nice women—and not too many; sometimes an actress, an artist, a great performer—but only when they're not monsters; and, in particular, the right femmes du monde. You can fancy his history on