There he was in all the pleasant morning freshness of it--strong and sleek and gay, easy and fragrant and fathomless, with happy health in his colour, and pleasant silver in his thick young hair, and the right word for everything on the lips that his clear brownness caused to show as red.

He had never struck Strether as personally such a success; it was as if now, for his definite surrender, he had gathered himself vividly together.

This, sharply and rather strangely, was the form in which he was to be presented to Woollett.

Our friend took him in again--he was always taking him in and yet finding that parts of him still remained out; though even thus his image showed through a mist of other things.

"I've had a cable," Strether said, "from your mother." "I dare say, my dear man.