Oh it was THERE, if that was all one wanted of a thing! It was so "there" that, as had befallen him in Italy, in Spain, confronted at last, in dusky side-chapel or rich museum, with great things dreamed of or with greater ones unexpectedly presented, he had held his breath for fear of breaking the spell; had almost, from the quick impulse to respect, to prolong, lowered his voice and moved on tiptoe.

Supreme beauty suddenly revealed is apt to strike us as a possible illusion playing with our desire--instant freedom with it to strike us as a possible rashness.
This fortunately, however--and the more so as his freedom for the time quite left him--didn't prevent his hostess, the evening of his advent and while the vision was new, from being exactly as queer and rare and IMPAYABLE, as improbable, as impossible, as delightful at the eight o'clock dinner--she appeared to keep these immense hours--as she had overwhelmingly been at the five o'clock tea.

She was in the most natural way in the world one of the oddest apparitions, but that the particular means to such an end COULD be natural was an inference difficult to make.

He failed in fact to make it for a couple of days; but then--though then only--he made it with confidence.

By this time indeed he was sure of everything, luckily including himself.