 to the subject of Chad's passage
with Sarah and enquiring if they had arrived, in the event, at anything in the
nature of a scene. To this Chad replied that they had on the contrary kept
tremendously polite; adding moreover that Sally was after all not the woman to
have made the mistake of not being. »Her hands are a good deal tied, you see. I
got so, from the first,« he sagaciously observed, »the start of her.«
    »You mean she has taken so much from you?«
    »Well, I couldn't of course in common decency give less: only she hadn't
expected, I think, that I'd give her nearly so much. And she began to take it
before she knew it.«
    »And she began to like it,« said Strether, »as soon as she began to take
it!«
    »Yes, she has liked it - also more than she expected.« After which Chad
observed: »But she doesn't like me. In fact she hates me.«
    Strether's interest grew. »Then why does she want you at home?«
    »Because when you hate you want to triumph, and if she should get me neatly
stuck there she would triumph.«
    Strether followed afresh, but looking as he went. »Certainly - in a manner.
But it would scarce be a triumph worth having if, once entangled, feeling her
dislike and possibly conscious in time of a certain quantity of your own, you
should on the spot make yourself unpleasant to her.«
    »Ah,« said Chad, »she can bear me - could bear me at least at home. It's my
being there that would be her triumph. She hates me in Paris.«
    »She hates in other words -«
    »Yes, that's it!« - Chad had quickly understood this understanding; which
formed on the part of each as near an approach as they had yet made to naming
Madame de Vionnet. The limitations of their distinctness didn't, however,
prevent its fairly lingering in the air that it was this lady Mrs. Pocock hated.
It added one more touch moreover to their established recognition of the rare
intimacy of Chad's association with her. He had never yet more twitched away the
last light veil from this phenomenon than in presenting himself as confounded
and submerged in the feeling she had created at Woollett. »And I'll tell you who
hates me too,« he immediately went on.
    Strether
