He had finished his breakfast; he pushed it away and was on his feet.
There were plenty of elements of surprise, but only one of doubt.
"The thing's for YOU to keep here too?"
Waymarsh had been slightly ambiguous.
He wasn't ambiguous, however, after this enquiry; and Strether's understanding had probably never before opened so wide and effective a mouth as it was to open during the next five minutes.
It was no part of his friend's wish, as appeared, to help to receive Mrs. Pocock; he quite understood the spirit in which she was to present herself, but his connexion with her visit was limited to his having—well, as he might say—perhaps a little promoted it.
He had thought, and had let her know it, that Strether possibly would think she might have been round before.
At any rate, as turned out, she had been wanting herself, quite a while, to come.
"I told her," said Waymarsh, "that it would have been a bright idea if she had only carried it out before."
Strether pronounced it so bright as to be almost dazzling.
"But why HASn't she carried it out before?
She has seen me every day—she had only to name her hour.
I've been waiting and waiting."
"Well, I told her you had.
And she has been waiting too."
It was, in the oddest way in the world, on the showing of this tone, a genial new pressing coaxing Waymarsh; a Waymarsh conscious with a different consciousness from any he had yet betrayed, and actually rendered by it almost insinuating.
He lacked only time for full persuasion, and Strether was to see in a moment why.
Meantime, however, our friend perceived, he was announcing a step of some magnanimity on Mrs. Pocock's part, so that he could deprecate a sharp question.
It was his own high purpose in fact to have smoothed sharp questions to rest.
He looked his old comrade very straight in the eyes, and he had never conveyed to him in so mute a manner so much kind confidence and so much good advice.
Everything that was between them was again in his face, but matured and shelved and finally disposed of.
"At any rate," he added, "she's coming now."
Considering how many pieces had to fit themselves, it all fell, in Strether's brain, into a close rapid order.
He saw on the spot what had happened, and what probably would yet; and it was all funny enough.
It was perhaps just this freedom of appreciation that wound him up to his flare of high spirits.
"What is she coming FOR?—to kill me?"
"She's coming to be very VERY kind to you, and you must let me say that I greatly hope you'll not be less so to herself."
This was spoken by Waymarsh with much gravity of admonition, and as Strether stood there he knew he had but to make a movement to take the attitude of a man gracefully receiving a present.
The present was that of the opportunity dear old Waymarsh had flattered himself he had divined in him the slight soreness of not having yet thoroughly enjoyed; so he had brought it to him thus, as on a little silver breakfast-tray, familiarly though delicately—without oppressive pomp; and he was to bend and smile and acknowledge, was to take and use and be grateful.
He was not—that was the beauty of it—to be asked to deflect too much from his dignity.
No wonder the old boy bloomed in this bland air of his own distillation.
Strether felt for a moment as if Sarah were actually walking up and down outside.
Wasn't she hanging about the porte-cochere while her friend thus summarily opened a way?
Strether would meet her but to take it, and everything would be for the best in the best of possible worlds.
He had never so much known what any one meant as, in the light of this demonstration, he knew what Mrs. Newsome did.
It had reached Waymarsh from Sarah, but it had reached Sarah from her mother, and there was no break in the chain by which it reached HIM.
"Has anything particular happened," he asked after a minute—"so suddenly to determine her?
Has she heard anything unexpected from home?"
Waymarsh, on this, it seemed to him, looked at him harder than ever. "'Unexpected'?"
He had a brief hesitation; then, however, he was firm. "We're leaving Paris."
"Leaving?
That IS sudden."
Waymarsh showed a different opinion.
"Less so than it may seem.
The purpose of Mrs. Pocock's visit is to explain to you in fact that it's NOT."
Strether didn't at all know if he had really an advantage—anything that would practically count as one; but he enjoyed for the moment—as for the first time in his life—the sense of so carrying it off.
He wondered—it was amusing—if he felt as the impudent feel.
"I shall take great pleasure, I assure you, in any explanation.
I shall be delighted to receive Sarah."
The sombre glow just darkened in his comrade's eyes; but he was struck with the way it died out again.