Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/262

256 the variety of his ties. Strether was not otherwise concerned with it than as to its so testifying—a pleasant multitudinous image in which he took comfort. He took comfort, by the same stroke, in the swing of Chad's pendulum back from that other swing, the sharp jerk towards Woollett so stayed by his own hand. He had the entertainment of thinking that if he had for that moment stopped the clock, it was to promote, the next minute, this still livelier action. He himself did what he had not done before; he took two or three times whole days off—irrespective of others, two or three that he took with Miss Gostrey, two or three that he took with little Bilham. He went to Chartres and cultivated before the front of the cathedral a general easy beatitude; he went to Fontainebleau and imagined himself on the way to Italy; he went to Rouen with a little handbag and inordinately spent the night.

One afternoon he did something quite different; finding himself in the neighbourhood of a fine old house across the river, he passed under the great arch of its doorway and asked at the porter's lodge for Mme. de Vionnet. He had already hovered more than once round that possibility, been aware of it, in the course of ostensible strolls, as lurking but round the corner; only it had perversely happened, after his morning at Notre Dame, that his consistency, as he considered and intended it, had come back to him; whereby he had reflected that the encounter in question had been none of his making, clinging again intensely to the strength of his position, which was precisely that there was nothing in it for himself. From the moment he eagerly pursued the charming associate of his adventure, from that moment his position weakened, for he was then acting in an interested way. It was only within a few days that he had fixed himself a limit; he promised himself his consistency should end with Sarah's arrival. It was arguing correctly to feel the title to a free hand that this event would give him. If he was not to be let alone he should be merely a dupe to act with delicacy. If he was not to be trusted he could at least take his ease. If he was to be placed under control, he became free to try what his position might agreeably give