Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts. What was it that made him at present, late at night and after journeys, so renewedly, so substantially young? Strether saw in a moment what it was—it was that he was younger again than Madame de Vionnet. He himself said immediately none of the things that he was thinking; he said something quite different. “You have really been to a distance?”
“I’ve been to England.” Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, but gave no further account of it than to say: “One must sometimes get off.”
Strether wanted no more facts—he only wanted to justify, as it were, his question. “Of course you do as you’re free to do. But I hope, this time, that you didn’t go for me.”
“For very shame at bothering you really too much? My dear man,” Chad laughed, “what wouldn’t I do for you?”
Strether’s easy answer for this was that it was a disposition he had exactly come to profit by. “Even at the risk of being in your way I’ve waited on, you know, for a definite reason.”
Chad took it in. “Oh yes—for us to make if possible a still better impression.” And he stood there happily exhaling his full general consciousness. “I’m delighted to gather that you feel we’ve made it.”
There was a pleasant irony in the words, which his guest, preoccupied and keeping to the point, didn’t take up. “If I had my sense of wanting the rest of the time—the time of their being still on this side,” he continued to explain—“I know now why I wanted it.”
He was as grave, as distinct, as a demonstrator before a blackboard, and Chad continued to face him like an intelligent pupil. “You wanted to have been put through the whole thing.”
Strether again, for a moment, said nothing; he turned his eyes away, and they lost themselves, through the open window, in the dusky outer air. “I shall learn from the Bank here where they’re now having their letters, and my last word, which I shall write in the morning and which they’re expecting as my ultimatum, will so immediately reach them.” The light of his plural pronoun was sufficiently reflected in his companion’s face as he again met it; and he completed his demonstration. He pursued indeed as if for himself. “Of course I’ve first to justify what I shall do.”
“You’re justifying it beautifully!” Chad declared.