a matter of the
marked streaks of grey, extraordinary at his age, in his thick black hair; as
well as that this new feature was curiously becoming to him, did something for
him, as characterisation, also even - of all things in the world - as
refinement, that had been a good deal wanted. Strether felt, however, he would
have had to confess, that it wouldn't have been easy just now, on this and other
counts, in the presence of what had been supplied, to be quite clear as to what
had been missed. A reflexion a candid critic might have made of old, for
instance, was that it would have been happier for the son to look more like the
mother; but this was a reflexion that at present would never occur. The ground
had quite fallen away from it, yet no resemblance whatever to the mother had
supervened. It would have been hard for a young man's face and air to disconnect
themselves more completely than Chad's at this juncture from any discerned, from
any imaginable aspect of a New England female parent. That of course was no more
than had been on the cards; but it produced in Strether none the less one of
those frequent phenomena of mental reference with which all judgement in him was
actually beset.
    Again and again as the days passed he had had a sense of the pertinence of
communicating quickly with Woollett - communicating with a quickness with which
telegraphy alone would rhyme; the fruit really of a fine fancy in him for
keeping things straight, for the happy forestalment of error. No one could
explain better when needful, nor put more conscience into an account or a
report; which burden of conscience is perhaps exactly the reason why his heart
always sank when the clouds of explanation gathered. His highest ingenuity was
in keeping the sky of life clear of them. Whether or no he had a grand idea of
the lucid, he held that nothing ever was in fact - for any one else - explained.
One went through the vain motions, but it was mostly a waste of life. A personal
relation was a relation only so long as people either perfectly understood or,
better still, didn't care if they didn't. From the moment they cared if they
didn't it was living by the sweat of one's brow; and the sweat of one's brow was
just what one might buy one's self off from by keeping the ground free of the
wild weed of delusion. It easily grew too fast, and the Atlantic cable now alone
could