But what am I to myself ?" Strether had risen with this, giving his attention now to an encounter that, in the middle of the garden, was in the act of taking place between their host and the lady at whose side Madame de Vionnet had quitted him.

This lady, who appeared within a few minutes to have left her friends, awaited Gloriani's eager approach with words on her lips that Strether couldn't catch, but of which her interesting witty face seemed to give him the echo.

He was sure she was prompt and fine, but also that she had met her match, and he liked--in the light of what he was quite sure was the Duchess's latent insolence--the good humour with which the great artist asserted equal resources.

Were they, this pair, of the "great world" ?--and was he himself, for the moment and thus related to them by his observation, IN it?
Then there was something in the great world covertly tigerish, which came to him across the lawn and in the charming air as a waft from the jungle.

Yet it made him admire most of the two, made him envy, the glossy male tiger, magnificently marked.
These absurdities of the stirred sense, fruits of suggestion ripening on the instant, were all reflected in his next words to little Bilham.
"I know--if we talk of that--whom I should enjoy being like!" Little Bilham followed his eyes; but then as with a shade of knowing surprise: "Gloriani ?" Our friend had in fact already hesitated, though not on the hint of his companion's doubt, in which there were depths of critical reserve.