
the stone, a cold fair grey, warmed and polished a little by life - neither more
nor less than a case of distinction, such a case as he could only feel
unexpectedly as a sort of delivered challenge? Meanwhile, however, the chance he
had allowed for - the chance of being seen in time from the balcony - had become
a fact. Two or three of the windows stood open to the violet air; and, before
Strether had cut the knot by crossing, a young man had come out and looked about
him, had lighted a cigarette and tossed the match over, and then, resting on the
rail, had given himself up to watching the life below while he smoked. His
arrival contributed, in its order, to keeping Strether in position; the result
of which in turn was that Strether soon felt himself noticed. The young man
began to look at him as in acknowledgement of his being himself in observation.
    This was interesting so far as it went, but the interest was affected by the
young man's not being Chad. Strether wondered at first if he were perhaps Chad
altered, and then saw that this was asking too much of alteration. The young man
was light bright and alert - with an air too pleasant to have been arrived at by
patching. Strether had conceived Chad as patched, but not beyond recognition. He
was in presence, he felt, of amendments enough as they stood; it was a
sufficient amendment that the gentleman up there should be Chad's friend. He was
young too then, the gentleman up there - he was very young; young enough
apparently to be amused at an elderly watcher, to be curious even to see what
the elderly watcher would do on finding himself watched. There was youth in
that, there was youth in the surrender to the balcony, there was youth for
Strether at this moment in everything but his own business; and Chad's thus
pronounced association with youth had given the next instant an extraordinary
quick lift to the issue. The balcony, the distinguished front, testified
suddenly, for Strether's fancy, to something that was up and up; they placed the
whole case materially, and as by an admirable image, on a level that he found
himself at the end of another moment rejoicing to think he might reach. The
young man looked at him still, he looked at the young man; and the issue, by a
rapid process, was that this knowledge of a perched privacy appeared to him the
last of luxuries. To him too the perched privacy was open, and he
