The conclusion of James's outline for The Ambassadors raises a difficult question for readers of James's fiction. The outline calls for a final conversation between Maria Gostrey and Lambert Strether in which Strether is given “a clear vision of his opportunity” with Maria (“Project,” 390). In the final text James remains faithful to this last attempt at connection between the pair. The interesting question comes in James's reason for Strether's refusal of Maria's offer of marriage. James explains how Strether “can't accept,” how he “won't,” or “doesn't,” that it is “too late” for such an intimate partnership at this stage of his life. These are reasons we can understand given our insight into Strether at the conclusion of all that has happened. But James goes on to explain how Strether “has come so far through his total experience that he has come out on the other side – on the other side, even, of a union with Miss Gostrey” (390). The question here is what does it mean to pass so through an experience that you come out on the other side, that you emerge into a world completely altered? Into what world, that is, does Strether emerge?