Strether could not at this point indeed have completed his thought by the image of what she might have to thank herself FOR: the image, at best, of his own likeness-poor Lambert Strether washed up on the sunny strand by the waves of a single day, poor Lambert Strether thankful for breathing-time and stiffening himself while he gasped.

There he was, and with nothing in his aspect or his posture to scandalise: it was only true that if he had seen Mrs.
Newsome coming he would instinctively have jumped up to walk away a little.

He would have come round and back to her bravely, but he would have had first to pull himself together.

She abounded in news of the situation at home, proved to him how perfectly she was arranging for his absence, told him who would take up this and who take up that exactly where he had left it, gave him in fact chapter and verse for the moral that nothing would suffer.

It filled for him, this tone of hers, all the air; yet it struck him at the same time as the hum of vain things.