 less there to be veracious.
»Yes, I dare say we have imagined horrors. But where's the harm if we haven't
been wrong?«
    Chad raised his face to the lamp, and it was one of the moments at which he
had, in his extraordinary way, most his air of designedly showing himself. It
was as if at these instants he just presented himself, his identity so rounded
off, his palpable presence and his massive young manhood, as such a link in the
chain as might practically amount to a kind of demonstration. It was as if - and
how but anomalously? - he couldn't after all help thinking sufficiently well of
these things to let them go for what they were worth. What could there be in
this for Strether but the hint of some self-respect, some sense of power, oddly
perverted; something latent and beyond access, ominous and perhaps enviable? The
intimation had the next thing, in a flash, taken on a name - a name on which our
friend seized as he asked himself if he weren't perhaps really dealing with an
irreducible young Pagan. This description - he quite jumped at it - had a sound
that gratified his mental ear, so that of a sudden he had already adopted it.
Pagan - yes, that was, wasn't it? what Chad would logically be. It was what he
must be. It was what he was. The idea was a clue and, instead of darkening the
prospect, projected a certain clearness. Strether made out in this quick ray
that a Pagan was perhaps, at the pass they had come to, the thing most wanted at
Woollett. They'd be able to do with one - a good one; he'd find an opening -
yes; and Strether's imagination even now prefigured and accompanied the first
appearance there of the rousing personage. He had only the slight discomfort of
feeling, as the young man turned away from the lamp, that his thought had in the
momentary silence possibly been guessed. »Well, I've no doubt,« said Chad,
»you've come near enough. The details, as you say, don't matter. It has been
generally the case that I've let myself go. But I'm coming round - I'm not so
bad now.« With which they walked on again to Strether's hotel.
    »Do you mean,« the latter asked as they approached the door, »that there
isn't any woman with you now
