e of a fact that
occupied his whole mind, that occupied for the half-hour his senses
themselves all together; but he couldn't without inconvenience show
anything--which moreover might count really as luck. What he might
have shown, had he shown at all, was exactly the kind of emotion--the
emotion of bewilderment--that he had proposed to himself from the
first, whatever should occur, to show least. The phenomenon that had
suddenly sat down there with him was a phenomenon of change so complete
that his imagination, which had worked so beforehand, felt itself, in
the connexion, without margin or allowance. It had faced every
contingency but that Chad should not BE Chad, and this was what it now
had to face with a mere strained smile and an uncomfortable flush.

He asked himself if, by any chance, before he should have in some way
to commit himself, he might feel his mind settled to the new vision,
might habituate it, so to speak, to the remarkable truth. But oh it was
too remarkable, the truth; for what could be more remarkable than this
sharp rupture of an identity? You could deal with a man as
himself--you couldn't deal with him as somebody else. It was a small
source of peace moreover to be reduced to wondering how little he might
know in such an event what a sum he was setting you. He couldn't
absolutely not know, for you couldn't absolutely not let him. It was a
CASE then simply, a strong case, as people nowadays called such
things,' a case of transformation unsurpassed, and the hope was but in
the general law that strong cases were liable to control from without.
Perhaps he, Strether himself, was the only person after all aware of
it. Even Miss Gostrey, with all her science, wouldn't be, would
she?--and he had never seen any one less aware of anything than
Waymarsh as he glowered at Chad. The social sightlessness of his old
friend's survey marked for him afresh, and almost in an humiliating
way, the inevitable limits of direct aid from this source. He was not
certain, however, of not drawing a shade of compensation from the
privilege, as yet untasted, of knowing more about something in
particular than Miss Gostrey did. His situation too was a case, for
that matter, and he was now so interested, quite so privately agog,
about it, that he had already an eye to the fun it would be to open up
to her afterwards. He derived during his half-hour no assistance from
her, and just this fact of her not meeting his ey