He would have liked to turn her, critically, to the subject of Mrs.Pocock, but he so stuck to the line he felt to be the point of honour and of delicacy that he scarce even asked her what her personal impression had been.

He knew it, for that matter, without putting her to trouble: that she wondered how, with such elements, Sarah could still have no charm, was one of the principal things she held her tongue about.

Strether would have been interested in her estimate of the elements--indubitably there, some of them, and to be appraised according to taste--but he denied himself even the luxury of this diversion.

The way Madame de Vionnet affected him to-day was in itself a kind of demonstration of the happy employment of gifts.

How could a woman think Sarah had charm who struck one as having arrived at it herself by such different roads?
On the other hand of course Sarah wasn't obliged to have it.