The actual oddity was that he was only more excited; and his excitement-to which indeed he would have found it difficult instantly to give a name--brought him once more downstairs and caused him for some minutes vaguely to wander.

He went once more to the garden; he looked into the public room, found Miss Gostrey writing letters and backed out; he roamed, fidgeted and wasted time; but he was to have his more intimate session with his friend before the evening closed.
It was late--not till Strether had spent an hour upstairs with him--that this subject consented to betake himself to doubtful rest.
Dinner and the subsequent stroll by moonlight--a dream, on Strether's part, of romantic effects rather prosaically merged in a mere missing of thicker coats--had measurably intervened, and this midnight conference was the result of Waymarsh's having (when they were free, as he put it, of their fashionable friend) found the smoking-room not quite what he wanted, and yet bed what he wanted less.

His most frequent form of words was that he knew himself, and they were applied on this occasion to his certainty of not sleeping.

He knew himself well enough to know that he should have a night of prowling unless he should succeed, as a preliminary, in getting prodigiously tired.

If the effort directed to this end involved till a late hour the presence of Strether--consisted, that is, in the detention of the latter for full discourse--there was yet an impression of minor discipline involved for our friend in the picture Waymarsh made as he sat in trousers and shirt on the edge of his couch.