The Ambassadors by Henry James Page B

as other he couldn't have
said; he could only this time meet it otherwise. "Everything."
    "So I thought. Then you shall succeed. And to that end I'm
yours—"
    "Ah, dear lady!" he kindly breathed.
    "Till death!" said Maria Gostrey. "Good-night."

II
    Strether called, his second morning in Paris, on the bankers of
the Rue Scribe to whom his letter of credit was addressed, and he
made this visit attended by Waymarsh, in whose company he had
crossed from London two days before. They had hastened to the Rue
Scribe on the morrow of their arrival, but Strether had not then
found the letters the hope of which prompted this errand. He had
had as yet none at all; hadn't expected them in London, but had
counted on several in Paris, and, disconcerted now, had presently
strolled back to the Boulevard with a sense of injury that he felt
himself taking for as good a start as any other. It would serve,
this spur to his spirit, he reflected, as, pausing at the top of
the street, he looked up and down the great foreign avenue, it
would serve to begin business with. His idea was to begin business
immediately, and it did much for him the rest of his day that the
beginning of business awaited him. He did little else till night
but ask himself what he should do if he hadn't fortunately had so
much to do; but he put himself the question in many different
situations and connexions. What carried him hither and yon was an
admirable theory that nothing he could do wouldn't be in some
manner related to what he fundamentally had on hand, or WOULD
be—should he happen to have a scruple—wasted for it. He did happen
to have a scruple—a scruple about taking no definite step till he
should get letters; but this reasoning carried it off. A single day
to feel his feet—he had felt them as yet only at Chester and in
London—was he could consider, none too much; and having, as he had
often privately expressed it, Paris to reckon with, he threw these
hours of freshness consciously into the reckoning. They made it
continually greater, but that was what it had best be if it was to
be anything at all, and he gave himself up till far into the
evening, at the theatre and on the return, after the theatre, along
the bright congested Boulevard, to feeling it grow. Waymarsh had
accompanied him this time to the play, and the two men had walked
together, as a first stage, from the Gymnase to the Cafe Riche,
into the crowded "terrace" of which establishment—the night, or
rather the morning, for midnight had struck, being bland and
populous—they had wedged themselves for refreshment. Waymarsh, as a
result of some discussion with his friend, had made a marked virtue
of his having now let himself go; and there had been elements of
impression in their half-hour over their watered beer-glasses that
gave him his occasion for conveying that he held this compromise
with his stiffer self to have become extreme. He conveyed it—for it
was still, after all, his stiffer self who gloomed out of the glare
of the terrace—in solemn silence; and there was indeed a great deal
of critical silence, every way, between the companions, even till
they gained the Place de l'Opera, as to the character of their
nocturnal progress.
    This morning there WERE letters—letters which had reached
London, apparently all together, the day of Strether's journey, and
had taken their time to follow him; so that, after a controlled
impulse to go into them in the reception-room of the bank, which,
reminding him of the post-office at Woollett, affected him as the
abutment of some transatlantic bridge, he slipped them into the
pocket of his loose grey overcoat with a sense of the felicity of
carrying them off. Waymarsh, who had had letters yesterday, had had
them again to-day, and Waymarsh suggested in this particular no
controlled impulses. The last one he was at all events likely to be
observed to struggle with was clearly that of bringing to a
premature close any visit to the Rue Scribe. Strether had