“Well, good relations!”
“With herself?”
“With herself.”
“And what is it that makes them so good?”
“What? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll make out if you’ll only go, as I’m supplicating you, to see her.”
Strether stared at him with a little of the wanness, no doubt, that the vision of more to “make out” could scarce help producing. “I mean how good are they?”
“Oh awfully good.”
Again Strether had faltered, but it was brief. It was all very well, but there was nothing now he wouldn’t risk. “Excuse me, but I must really—as I began by telling you—know where I am. Is she bad?”
“‘Bad’?”—Chad echoed it, but without a shock. “Is that what’s implied—?”
“When relations are good?” Strether felt a little silly, and was even conscious of a foolish laugh, at having it imposed on him to have appeared to speak so. What indeed was he talking about? His stare had relaxed; he looked now all round him. But something in him brought him back, though he still didn’t know quite how to turn it. The two or three ways he thought of, and one of them in particular, were, even with scruples dismissed, too ugly. He none the less at last found something. “Is her life without reproach?”