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.