The sense of how she was always paying for something in advance was equalled on Strether's part only by the sense of how she was always being paid; all of which made for his consciousness, in the larger air, of a lively bustling traffic, the exchange of such values as were not for him to handle.

She hated, he knew, at the French play, anything but a box--just as she hated at the English anything but a stall; and a box was what he was already in this phase girding himself to press upon her.

But she had for that matter her community with little Bilham: she too always, on the great issues, showed as having known in time.

It made her constantly beforehand with him and gave him mainly the chance to ask himself how on the day of their settlement their account would stand.

He endeavoured even now to keep it a little straight by arranging that if he accepted her invitation she should dine with him first; but the upshot of this scruple was that at eight o'clock on the morrow he awaited her with Waymarsh under the pillared portico.