And yet it's always as charming as this; it's as if, by something in the air, our squalor didn't show.

It puts us all back--into the last century." "I'm afraid," Strether said, amused, "that it puts me rather forward: oh ever so far!" "Into the next?
But isn't that only," little Bilham asked, "because you're really of the century before ?" "The century before the last?
Thank you!" Strether laughed.

"If I ask you about some of the ladies it can't be then that I may hope, as such a specimen of the rococo, to please them." "On the contrary they adore--we all adore here--the rococo, and where is there a better setting for it than the whole thing, the pavilion and the garden, together?
There are lots of people with collections," little Bilham smiled as he glanced round.

"You'll be secured!" It made Strether for a moment give himself again to contemplation.
There were faces he scarce knew what to make of.

Were they charming or were they only strange?
He mightn't talk politics, yet he suspected a Pole or two.