Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/176

170 at least of every "part," whether memorised or improvised, in the curtained, costumed, school repertory, and, in especial, of all mysteries of race and vagueness of reference, all swagger about "home," among their variegated mates. It would doubtless be difficult to-day, as between French and English, to label her and place her; she would certainly show, on knowledge, Miss Gostrey felt, as one of those convenient types who didn't keep you explaining—minds with doors as numerous as the many-tongued cluster of confessionals at St. Peter's. You might confess to her with confidence in Roumelian, and even Roumelian sins. Therefore! But Strether's narrator covered her implication with a laugh; a laugh by which his betrayal of a sense of the lurid in the picture was also perhaps sufficiently protected. He had a moment of wondering, while his friend went on, what sins might be especially Roumelian. She went on, at all events, to the mention of her having met the young thing—again by some Swiss lake—in her first married state, which had appeared for the few intermediate years not at least violently disturbed. She had been lovely at that moment, delightful to her, full of responsive emotion, of amused recognitions and amusing reminders; and then once more, much later, after a long interval, equally but differently charming—touching and rather mystifying for the five minutes of an encounter at a railway station en province, during which it had come out that her life was all changed. Miss Gostrey had understood enough to see, essentially, what had happened, and yet had beautifully dreamed that she was herself faultless. There were doubtless depths in her, but she was all right; Strether would see if she wasn't. She was another person, however—that had been promptly marked from the small child of nature at the Geneva school; a little person quite made over—as foreign women were, compared with American—by marriage. Her situation moreover, evidently, had cleared itself up; there would have been—all that was possible—a judicial separation. She had settled in Paris, brought up her daughter, steered her boat. It was no very pleasant boat, especially there, to be in; but Marie de Vionnet would have headed straight. She would have friends, certainly, and very good ones. There she was, at