, put it within reach, within touch, made it, to a degree
it had never been, an affair of the senses. That was what it became for him at
this singular time, the youth he had long ago missed - a queer concrete
presence, full of mystery, yet full of reality, which he could handle, taste,
smell, the deep breathing of which he could positively hear. It was in the
outside air as well as within; it was in the long watch, from the balcony, in
the summer night, of the wide late life of Paris, the unceasing soft quick
rumble, below, of the little lighted carriages that, in the press, always
suggested the gamblers he had seen of old at Monte Carlo pushing up to the
tables. This image was before him when he at last became aware that Chad was
behind.
    »She tells me you put it all on me« - he had arrived after this promptly
enough at that information; which expressed the case however quite as the young
man appeared willing for the moment to leave it. Other things, with this
advantage of their virtually having the night before them, came up for them, and
had, as well, the odd effect of making the occasion, instead of hurried and
feverish, one of the largest, loosest and easiest to which Strether's whole
adventure was to have treated him. He had been pursuing Chad from an early hour
and had overtaken him only now; but now the delay was repaired by their being so
exceptionally confronted. They had foregathered enough of course in all the
various times; they had again and again, since that first night at the theatre,
been face to face over their question; but they had never been so alone together
as they were actually alone - their talk hadn't yet been so supremely for
themselves. And if many things moreover passed before them, none passed more
distinctly for Strether than that striking truth about Chad of which he had been
so often moved to take note: the truth that everything came happily back with
him to his knowing how to live. It had been seated in his pleased smile - a
smile that pleased exactly in the right degree - as his visitor turned round, on
the balcony, to greet his advent; his visitor in fact felt on the spot that
there was nothing their meeting would so much do as bear witness to that
facility. He surrendered himself accordingly to so approved a gift; for what was
the meaning of the facility but that others did surrender themselves? He didn't
want, luckily,