't already started with you?« Chad, beginning his
coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to explain. »Nothing would have
induced me - nothing will still induce me - not to try to keep you here as long
as you can be made to stay. It's too visibly good for you.« Strether had himself
plenty to say about this, but it was amusing also to measure the march of Chad's
tone. He had never been more a man of the world, and it was always in his
company present to our friend that one was seeing how in successive connexions a
man of the world acquitted himself. Chad kept it up beautifully. »My idea -
voyons! - is simply that you should let Madame de Vionnet know you, simply that
you should consent to know her. I don't in the least mind telling you that,
clever and charming as she is, she's ever so much in my confidence. All I ask of
you is to let her talk to you. You've asked me about what you call my hitch, and
so far as it goes she'll explain it to you. She's herself my hitch, hang it - if
you must really have it all out. But in a sense,« he hastened in the most
wonderful manner to add, »that you'll quite make out for yourself. She's too
good a friend, confound her. Too good, I mean, for me to leave without - without
-« It was his first hesitation.
    »Without what?«
    »Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms of my
sacrifice.«
    »It will be a sacrifice then?«
    »It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered. I owe her so much.«
    It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was now
confessedly - oh quite flagrantly and publicly - interesting. The moment really
took on for Strether an intensity. Chad owed Madame de Vionnet so much? What did
that do then but clear up the whole mystery? He was indebted for alterations,
and she was thereby in a position to have sent in her bill for expenses incurred
in reconstruction. What was this at bottom but what had been to be arrived at?
Strether sat there arriving at it while he munched toast and stirred his second
cup. To do this with the aid of Chad's pleasant earnest face was also to do more
besides. No, never before had he been so ready to take him as he
