He grew conscious, as he was now apt to do, of a strange smile, and the next moment he found himself talking like Miss Barrace.
"She has struck me from the first as wonderful.

I've been thinking too moreover that, after all, she would probably have represented even for yourself something rather new and rather good." He was to have given Mrs.Pocock with this, however, but her best opportunity for a sound of derision.

"Rather new?
I hope so with all my heart!" "I mean," he explained, "that she might have affected you by her exquisite amiability--a real revelation, it has seemed to myself; her high rarity, her distinction of every sort." He had been, with these words, consciously a little "precious"; but he had had to be--he couldn't give her the truth of the case without them; and it seemed to him moreover now that he didn't care.

He had at all events not served his cause, for she sprang at its exposed side.

"A 'revelation'-- to ME: I've come to such a woman for a revelation?
You talk to me about 'distinction'-- YOU, you who've had your privilege ?--when the most distinguished woman we shall either of us have seen in this world sits there insulted, in her loneliness, by your incredible comparison!" Strether forbore, with an effort, from straying; but he looked all about him.