edifying discrimination) of the American bars and banks
roundabout the Opera. Chad had thrown out, in the communications
following this one--for at that time he did once in a while
communicate--that several members of a band of earnest workers
under one of the great artists had taken him right in, making him
dine every night, almost for nothing, at their place, and even
pressing him not to neglect the hypothesis of there being as much
"in him" as in any of them. There had been literally a moment at
which it appeared there might be something in him; there had been
at any rate a moment at which he had written that he didn't know
but what a month or two more might see him enrolled in some
atelier. The season had been one at which Mrs. Newsome was moved
to gratitude for small mercies; it had broken on them all as a
blessing that their absentee HAD perhaps a conscience--that he was
sated in fine with idleness, was ambitious of variety. The
exhibition was doubtless as yet not brilliant, but Strether
himself, even by that time much enlisted and immersed, had
determined, on the part of the two ladies, a temperate approval
and in fact, as he now recollected, a certain austere enthusiasm.

But the very next thing that happened had been a dark drop of the
curtain. The son and brother had not browsed long on the Montagne
Sainte-Genevieve--his effective little use of the name of which,
like his allusion to the best French, appeared to have been but
one of the notes of his rough cunning. The light refreshment of
these vain appearances had not accordingly carried any of them
very far. On the other hand it had gained Chad time; it had given
him a chance, unchecked, to strike his roots, had paved the way
for initiations more direct and more deep. It was Strether's
belief that he had been comparatively innocent before this first