The antechamber was high and square, grave and suggestive too, a little cold and slippery even in summer, and with a few old prints that were precious, Strether divined, on the walls.

He stood in the middle, slightly lingering, vaguely directing his glasses, while, leaning against the door-post of the room, she gently pressed her cheek to the side of the recess.

"YOU would have been a friend." "I ?"--it startled him a little.
"For the reason you say.

You're not stupid." And then abruptly, as if bringing it out were somehow founded on that fact: "We're marrying Jeanne." It affected him on the spot as a move in a game, and he was even then not without the sense that that wasn't the way Jeanne should be married.

But he quickly showed his interest, though--as quickly afterwards struck him--with an absurd confusion of mind.