ked with Miss Barrace, who had reproached him with not having come
to see her, and he had above all hit on a happy thought for causing
Waymarsh's tension to relax. Something might possibly be extracted for
the latter from the idea of his success with that lady, whose quick
apprehension of what might amuse her had given Strether a free hand.
What had she meant if not to ask whether she couldn't help him with his
splendid encumbrance, and mightn't the sacred rage at any rate be kept
a little in abeyance by thus creating for his comrade's mind even in a
world of irrelevance the possibility of a relation? What was it but a
relation to be regarded as so decorative and, in especial, on the
strength of it, to be whirled away, amid flounces and feathers, in a
coupe lined, by what Strether could make out, with dark blue brocade?
He himself had never been whirled away--never at least in a coupe and
behind a footman; he had driven with Miss Gostrey in cabs, with Mrs.
Pocock, a few times, in an open buggy, with Mrs. Newsome in a
four-seated cart and, occasionally up at the mountains, on a buckboard;
but his friend's actual adventure transcended his personal experience.
He now showed his companion soon enough indeed how inadequate, as a
general monitor, this last queer quantity could once more feel itself.

"What game under the sun is he playing?" He signified the next moment
that his allusion was not to the fat gentleman immersed in dominoes on
whom his eyes had begun by resting, but to their host of the previous
hour, as to whom, there on the velvet bench, with a final collapse of
all consistency, he treated himself to the comfort of indiscretion.
"Where do you see him come out?"

Little Bilham, in meditation, looked at him with a kindness almost
paternal. "Don't you like it over here?"

Strether laughed out--for the tone was indeed droll; he let himself go.
"What has that to do with it? The only thing I've any business to like
is to feel that I'm moving him. That's why I ask you whether you
believe I AM? Is the creature"--and he did his best to show that he
simply wished to ascertain--"honest?"

His companion looked responsible, but looked it through a small dim
smile. "What creature do you mean?"

It was on this that they did have for a little a mute interchange. "Is
it untrue that he's free? How then," Strether asked wondering "does he
arrange his life?"

"Is the creature you mean Chad himself?" little Bilham said