He had just worked round--and with a sharper turn of the screw than any yet--to the conception of an American intense as little Bilham was intense.

The young man was his first specimen; the specimen had profoundly perplexed him; at present however there was light.

It was by little Bilham's amazing serenity that he had at first been affected, but he had inevitably, in his circumspection, felt it as the trail of the serpent, the corruption, as he might conveniently have said, of Europe; whereas the promptness with which it came up for Miss Gostrey but as a special little form of the oldest thing they knew justified it at once to his own vision as well.
He wanted to be able to like his specimen with a clear good conscience, and this fully permitted it.

What had muddled him was precisely the small artist-man's way--it was so complete--of being more American than anybody.

But it now for the time put Strether vastly at his ease to have this view of a new way.
The amiable youth then looked out, as it had first struck Strether, at a world in respect to which he hadn't a prejudice.