pair of gloves could thus at any rate represent--always for such
sensitive ears as were in question--possibilities of something that
Strether could make a mark against only as the peril of apparent
wantonness. He had quite the consciousness of his new friend, for
their companion, that he might have had of a Jesuit in petticoats,
a representative of the recruiting interests of the Catholic
Church. The Catholic Church, for Waymarsh-that was to say the
enemy, the monster of bulging eyes and far-reaching quivering
groping tentacles--was exactly society, exactly the multiplication
of shibboleths, exactly the discrimination of types and tones,
exactly the wicked old Rows of Chester, rank with feudalism;
exactly in short Europe.

There was light for observation, however, in an incident that
occurred just before they turned back to luncheon. Waymarsh had
been for a quarter of an hour exceptionally mute and distant, and
something, or other--Strether was never to make out exactly what--
proved, as it were, too much for him after his comrades had stood
for three minutes taking in, while they leaned on an old balustrade
that guarded the edge of the Row, a particularly crooked and
huddled street-view. "He thinks us sophisticated, he thinks us
worldly, he thinks us wicked, he thinks us all sorts of queer
things," Strether reflected; for wondrous were the vague quantities
our friend had within a couple of short days acquired the habit of
conveniently and conclusively lumping together. There seemed
moreover a direct connexion between some such inference and a
sudden grim dash taken by Waymarsh to the opposite side. This
movement was startlingly sudden, and his companions at first
supposed him to have espied, to be pursuing, the glimpse of an
acquaintance. They next made out, however, that an open door had