 - with us - will ever
take yours. It wouldn't be possible.«
    »Ah of course,« sighed Strether, »I knew it. I believe you're right. No one
in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously solemn. There I am,« he added
with another sigh, as if weary enough, on occasion, of this truth. »I was made
so.«
    Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might for
this purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured the fact.
»You have never needed any one to make you better. There has never been any one
good enough. They couldn't,« the young man declared.
    His friend hesitated. »I beg your pardon. They have.«
    Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt. »Who then?«
    Strether - though a little dimly - smiled at him. »Women - too.«
    »Two?« - Chad stared and laughed. »Oh I don't believe, for such work, in any
more than one! So you're proving too much. And what is beastly, at all events,«
he added, »is losing you.«
    Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he paused.
»Are you afraid?«
    »Afraid -?«
    »Of doing wrong. I mean away from my eye.« Before Chad could speak, however,
he had taken himself up. »I am, certainly,« he laughed, »prodigious.«
    »Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid -!« This might have been, on Chad's
part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely extravagant; but it was full,
plainly enough, of the intention of comfort, it carried with it a protest
against doubt and a promise, positively, of performance. Picking up a hat in the
vestibule he came out with his friend, came downstairs, took his arm,
affectionately, as to help and guide him, treating him if not exactly as aged
and infirm, yet as a noble eccentric who appealed to tenderness, and keeping on
with him, while they walked, to the next corner and the next. »You needn't tell
me, you needn't tell me!« - this again as they proceeded, he wished to make
Strether feel. What he needn't tell him was now at last, in the geniality of
separation, anything at all it concerned him
