whether Waymarsh wouldn't, in fact, thanks to old friendship and a conceivable indulgence, make about as good terms for him as he might make for himself. They wouldn't be the same terms, of course; but they might have the advantage that he himself probably should be able to make none at all.
He was never, in the morning, very late, but Waymarsh had already been out, and, after a peep into the dim refectory, he presented himself there with much less than usual of his large looseness. He had made sure, through the expanse of glass exposed to the court, that they would be alone; and there was now in fact that about him that pretty well took up the room. He was dressed in the garments of summer; and, save that his white waistcoat was redundant and bulging, these things favoured, they determined his expression. He wore a straw hat such as his friend had not yet seen in Paris, and he showed a buttonhole freshly adorned with a magnificent rose. Strether read, on the instant, his story—how, astir for the previous hour, the sprinkled newness of the day, so pleasant, at that season, in Paris, he was fairly panting with the pulse of adventure and had been with Mrs. Pocock, unmistakably, to the Marché aux Fleurs. Strether really knew in this vision of him a joy that was akin to envy; so reversed, as he stood there, did their old positions seem; so comparatively doleful now showed, by the sharp turn of the wheel, the posture of the pilgrim from Woollett. He wondered, this pilgrim, if he had originally looked to Waymarsh so brave and well, so remarkably launched, as it was at present the latter's privilege to appear. He recalled that his friend had remarked to him even at Chester that his aspect belied his plea of prostration; but there certainly could not have been, for an issue, an aspect less concerned than Waymarsh's with the menace of decay. Strether had at any rate never looked like a southern planter of the great days—which was the image picturesquely suggested by the happy relation between the fuliginous face and the wide panama of his visitor. This type, it further amused him to guess, had been, on Waymarsh's part, the object of Sarah's care; he was convinced that her taste had not been a stranger to the
