"Oh yes, my dear, it's all right, it's ME; and who are YOU, with your interesting wrinkles and your most effective (is it the handsomest, is it the ugliest ?) of noses ?"--some such loose handful of bright flowers she seemed, fragrantly enough, to fling at him.

Strether almost wondered--at such a pace was he going--if some divination of the influence of either party were what determined Madame de Vionnet's abstention.

One of the gentlemen, in any case, succeeded in placing himself in close relation with our friend's companion; a gentleman rather stout and importantly short, in a hat with a wonderful wide curl to its brim and a frock coat buttoned with an effect of superlative decision.

His French had quickly turned to equal English, and it occurred to Strether that he might well be one of the ambassadors.

His design was evidently to assert a claim to Madame de Vionnet's undivided countenance, and he made it good in the course of a minute--led her away with a trick of three words; a trick played with a social art of which Strether, looking after them as the four, whose backs were now all turned, moved off, felt himself no master.
He sank again upon his bench and, while his eyes followed the party, reflected, as he had done before, on Chad's strange communities.