But there is more in the book, as I suggested just now, than
Strether's vision and the play of his mind. In the _scenic_ episodes,
the colloquies that Strether holds, for example, with his sympathetic
friend Maria Gostrey, another turn appears in the author's procedure.
Throughout these clear-cut dialogues Strether's point of view still
reigns; the only eyes in the matter are still his, there is no sight
of the man himself as his companion sees him. Miss Gostrey is clearly
visible, and Madame de Vionnet and little Bilham, or whoever it may
be; the face of Strether himself is never turned to the reader. On the
evening of the first encounter between the elderly ambassador and the
young man, they sat together in a cafe of the boulevards and walked
away at midnight through quiet streets; and all through their
interview the fact of the young man's appearance is strongly dominant,
for it is this that first reveals to Strether how the young man has
been transformed by his commerce with the free world; and so his
figure is sharply before the reader as they talk. How Strether seemed
to Chad--this, too, is represented, but only by implication, through
Chad's speech and manner. It is essential, of course, that it should
be so, the one-sided vision is strictly enjoined by the method of the
whole book. But though the seeing eye is still with Strether, there is
a noticeable change in the author's way with him.
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