 be at all events,« he
pursued, »I don't think, you know, that he's really playing, as you call it, any
game. I believe he really wants to go back and take up a career. He's capable of
one, you know, that will improve and enlarge him still more. He won't then,«
little Bilham continued to remark, »be my pleasant well-rubbed old-fashioned
volume at all. But of course I'm beastly immoral. I'm afraid it would be a funny
world altogether - a world with things the way I like them. I ought, I dare say,
to go home and go into business myself. Only I'd simply rather die - simply. And
I've not the least difficulty in making up my mind not to, and in knowing
exactly why, and in defending my ground against all comers. All the same,« he
wound up, »I assure you I don't say a word against it - for himself, I mean - to
Chad. I seem to see it as much the best thing for him. You see he's not happy.«
    »Do I?« - Strether stared. »I've been supposing I see just the opposite - an
extraordinary case of the equilibrium arrived at and assured.«
    »Oh there's a lot behind it.«
    »Ah there you are!« Strether exclaimed. »That's just what I want to get at.
You speak of your familiar volume altered out of recognition. Well, who's the
editor?«
    Little Bilham looked before him a minute in silence. »He ought to get
married. That would do it. And he wants to.«
    »Wants to marry her?«
    Again little Bilham waited, and, with a sense that he had information,
Strether scarce knew what was coming. »He wants to be free. He isn't used, you
see,« the young man explained in his lucid way, »to being so good.«
    Strether hesitated. »Then I may take it from you that he is good?«
    His companion matched his pause, but making it up with a quiet fulness.
    »Well then why isn't he free? He swears to me he is, but meanwhile does
nothing - except of course that he's so kind to me - to prove it; and couldn't
really act much otherwise if he weren't. My question to you
