ounter with the
wonderful lady; he was scrupulously definite about the absurd
conditions in which they had made acquaintance--their having picked
each other up almost in the street; and he had (finest inspiration of
all!) a conception of carrying the war into the enemy's country by
showing surprise at the enemy's ignorance.

He had always had a notion that this last was the grand style of
fighting; the greater therefore the reason for it, as he couldn't
remember that he had ever before fought in the grand style. Every one,
according to this, knew Miss Gostrey: how came it Chad didn't know
her? The difficulty, the impossibility, was really to escape it;
Strether put on him, by what he took for granted, the burden of proof
of the contrary. This tone was so far successful as that Chad quite
appeared to recognise her as a person whose fame had reached him, but
against his acquaintance with whom much mischance had worked. He made
the point at the same time that his social relations, such as they
could be called, were perhaps not to the extent Strether supposed with
the rising flood of their compatriots. He hinted at his having more
and more given way to a different principle of selection; the moral of
which seemed to be that he went about little in the "colony." For the
moment certainly he had quite another interest. It was deep, what he
understood, and Strether, for himself, could only so observe it. He
couldn't see as yet how deep. Might he not all too soon! For there was
really too much of their question that Chad had already committed
himself to liking. He liked, to begin with, his prospective
stepfather; which was distinctly what had not been on the cards. His
hating him was the untowardness for which Strether had been best
prepared; he hadn't expected the boy's actual form to give him more to
do than his imputed. It gave him more through suggesting that he must
somehow make up to himself for not being sure he was sufficiently
disagreeable. That had really been present to him as his only way to
be sure he was sufficiently thorough. The point was that if Chad's
tolerance of his thoroughness were insincere, were but the best of
devices for gaining time, it none the less did treat everything as
tacitly concluded.

That seemed at the end of ten days the upshot of the abundant, the
recurrent talk through which Strether poured into him all it concerned
him to know, put him in full possession of facts and figur