 to make Sally afraid?«
    »You've been wonderful, wonderful, as we say - we poor people who watch the
play from the pit; and that's what has, admirably, made her. Made her all the
more effectually that she could see you didn't set about it on purpose - I mean
set about affecting her as with fear.«
    Chad cast a pleasant backward glance over his possibilities of motive. »I've
only wanted to be kind and friendly, to be decent and attentive - and I still
only want to be.«
    Strether smiled at his comfortable clearness. »Well, there can certainly be
no way for it better than by my taking the onus. It reduces your personal
friction and your personal offence to almost nothing.«
    Ah but Chad, with his completer conception of the friendly, wouldn't quite
have this! They had remained on the balcony, where, after their day of great and
premature heat, the midnight air was delicious; and they leaned back in turn
against the balustrade, all in harmony with the chairs and the flower-pots, the
cigarettes and the starlight. »The onus isn't really yours - after our agreeing
so to wait together and judge together. That was all my answer to Sally,« Chad
pursued - »that we have been, that we are, just judging together.«
    »I'm not afraid of the burden,« Strether explained; »I haven't come in the
least that you should take it off me. I've come very much, it seems to me, to
double up my fore legs in the manner of the camel when he gets down on his knees
to make his back convenient. But I've supposed you all this while to have been
doing a lot of special and private judging - about which I haven't troubled you;
and I've only wished to have your conclusion first from you. I don't ask more
than that; I'm quite ready to take it as it has come.«
    Chad turned up his face to the sky with a slow puff of his smoke. »Well,
I've seen.«
    Strether waited a little. »I've left you wholly alone; haven't, I think I
may say, since the first hour or two - when I merely preached patience - so much
as breathed on you.«
    »Oh you've been awfully good!«
    »We've both been good then - we've played the game
