His impression had been nothing but what was inevitable--he said that to himself; yet relief and reassurance had softly dropped upon him.

Nothing could be so odd as to be indebted for these things to the look of faces and the sound of voices that had been with him to satiety, as he might have said, for years; but he now knew, all the same, how uneasy he had felt; that was brought home to him by his present sense of a respite.

It had come moreover in the flash of an eye, it had come in the smile with which Sarah, whom, at the window of her compartment, they had effusively greeted from the platform, rustled down to them a moment later, fresh and handsome from her cool June progress through the charming land.

It was only a sign, but enough: she was going to be gracious and unallusive, she was going to play the larger game--which was still more apparent, after she had emerged from Chad's arms, in her direct greeting to the valued friend of her family.
Strether WAS then as much as ever the valued friend of her family, it was something he could at all events go on with; and the manner of his response to it expressed even for himself how little he had enjoyed the prospect of ceasing to figure in that likeness.

He had always seen Sarah gracious--had in fact rarely seen her shy or dry, her marked thin-lipped smile, intense without brightness and as prompt to act as the scrape of a safety-match; the protrusion of her rather remarkably long chin, which in her case represented invitation and urbanity, and not, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance; the penetration of her voice to a distance, the general encouragement and approval of her manner, were all elements with which intercourse had made him familiar, but which he noted today almost as if she had been a new acquaintance.
This first glimpse of her had given a brief but vivid accent to her resemblance to her mother; he could have taken her for Mrs.Newsome while she met his eyes as the train rolled into the station.