I'm sure you 'know'-- but we know perhaps different things." She too, visibly, wished to make no mistake; but it was a fear of a different order and more kept out of sight.

She smiled in welcome at Strether; she greeted him more familiarly than Mrs.
Pocock; she put out her hand to him without moving from her place; and it came to him in the course of a minute and in the oddest way that--yes, positively--she was giving him over to ruin.

She was all kindness and ease, but she couldn't help so giving him; she was exquisite, and her being just as she was poured for Sarah a sudden rush of meaning into his own equivocations.

How could she know how she was hurting him?
She wanted to show as simple and humble--in the degree compatible with operative charm; but it was just this that seemed to put him on her side.

She struck him as dressed, as arranged, as prepared infinitely to conciliate--with the very poetry of good taste in her view of the conditions of her early call.