within her, of the incalculable, her desire
for the information dropped and her attitude to the question converted
itself into a positive cultivation of ignorance. In ignorance she
could humour her fancy, and that proved a useful freedom. She could
treat the little nameless object as indeed unnameable--she could make
their abstention enormously definite. There might indeed have been for
Strether the portent of this in what she next said.

"Is it perhaps then because it's so bad--because your industry as you
call it, IS so vulgar--that Mr. Chad won't come back? Does he feel the
taint? Is he staying away not to be mixed up in it?"

"Oh," Strether laughed, "it wouldn't appear--would it?--that he feels
'taints'! He's glad enough of the money from it, and the money's his
whole basis. There's appreciation in that--I mean as to the allowance
his mother has hitherto made him. She has of course the resource of
cutting this allowance off; but even then he has unfortunately, and on
no small scale, his independent supply--money left him by his
grandfather, her own father."

"Wouldn't the fact you mention then," Miss Gostrey asked, "make it just
more easy for him to be particular? Isn't he conceivable as fastidious
about the source--the apparent and public source--of his income?"

Strether was able quite good-humouredly to entertain the proposition.
"The source of his grandfather's wealth--and thereby of his own share
in it--was not particularly noble."

"And what source was it?"

Strether cast about. "Well--practices."

"In business? Infamies? He was an old swindler?"

"Oh," he said with more emphasis than spirit, "I shan't describe HIM
nor narrate his exploits."

"Lord, what abysses! And the late Mr. Newsome then?"

"Well, what about him?"

"Was he like the grandfather?"

"No--he was on the other side of the house. And he was different."

Miss Gostrey kept it up. "Better?"

Her friend for a moment hung fire. "No."

Her comment on his hesitation was scarce the less marked for being
mute. "Thank you. NOW don't you see," she went on, "why the boy
doesn't come home? He's drowning his shame."

"His shame? What shame?"

"What shame? Comment donc? THE shame."

"But where and when," Strether asked, "is 'THE shame'--where is any
shame--to-day? The men I speak of--they did as every one does; and
(besides being ancient history) it was all a matter of appreciation."

She showed how she understood.