 success - Mr. Chad stands to gain.
But you've not spoken to me of what you do.«
    »Oh I've nothing more to gain,« said Strether very simply.
    She took it as even quite too simple. »You mean you've got it all down?
You've been paid in advance?«
    »Ah don't talk about payment!« he groaned.
    Something in the tone of it pulled her up, but as their messenger still
delayed she had another chance and she put it in another way. »What - by failure
- do you stand to lose?«
    He still, however, wouldn't have it. »Nothing!« he exclaimed, and on the
messenger's at this instant reappearing he was able to sink the subject in their
responsive advance. When, a few steps up the street, under a lamp, he had put
her into her four-wheeler and she had asked him if the man had called for him no
second conveyance, he replied before the door was closed. »You won't take me
with you?«
    »Not for the world.«
    »Then I shall walk.«
    »In the rain?«
    »I like the rain,« said Strether. »Good-night!«
    She kept him a moment, while his hand was on the door, by not answering;
after which she answered by repeating her question. »What do you stand to lose?«
    Why the question now affected him as other he couldn't have said; he could
only this time meet it otherwise. »Everything.«
    »So I thought. Then you shall succeed. And to that end I'm yours -«
    »Ah, dear lady!« he kindly breathed.
    »Till death!« said Maria Gostrey. »Good-night.«

                                       II

 
Strether called, his second morning in Paris, on the bankers of the Rue Scribe
to whom his letter of credit was addressed, and he made this visit attended by
Waymarsh, in whose company he had crossed from London two days before. They had
hastened to the Rue Scribe on the morrow of their arrival, but Strether had not
then found the letters the hope of which prompted this errand. He had had as yet
none at all; hadn't expected them in London, but had counted on several in
Paris, and, disconcerted now, had presently strolled back to the Boulevard with
a sense of injury that he felt himself taking for as good a start as any other.
It would
