in the air, with the smile of Chad's easiest
urbanity; and this expression of his face caused our friend's doubts to
gather on the spot into a challenge of the lips. "See here"--that was
all; he only for the moment said again "See here." Chad met it with all
his air of straight intelligence, while Strether remembered again that
fancy of the first impression of him, the happy young Pagan, handsome
and hard but oddly indulgent, whose mysterious measure he had under the
street-lamp tried mentally to take. The young Pagan, while a long look
passed between them, sufficiently understood. Strether scarce needed
at last to say the rest--"I want to know where I am." But he said it,
adding before any answer something more. "Are you engaged to be
married--is that your secret?--to the young lady?"

Chad shook his head with the slow amenity that was one of his ways of
conveying that there was time for everything. "I have no
secret--though I may have secrets! I haven't at any rate that one.
We're not engaged. No."

"Then where's the hitch?"

"Do you mean why I haven't already started with you?" Chad, beginning
his coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to explain. "Nothing
would have induced me--nothing will still induce me--not to try to keep
you here as long as you can be made to stay. It's too visibly good for
you." Strether had himself plenty to say about this, but it was amusing
also to measure the march of Chad's tone. He had never been more a man
of the world, and it was always in his company present to our friend
that one was seeing how in successive connexions a man of the world
acquitted himself. Chad kept it up beautifully. "My idea--voyons!--is
simply that you should let Madame de Vionnet know you, simply that you
should consent to know HER. I don't in the least mind telling you
that, clever and charming as she is, she's ever so much in my
confidence. All I ask of you is to let her talk to you. You've asked me
about what you call my hitch, and so far as it goes she'll explain it
to you. She's herself my hitch, hang it--if you must really have it
all out. But in a sense," he hastened in the most wonderful manner to
add, "that you'll quite make out for yourself. She's too good a friend,
confound her. Too good, I mean, for me to leave without--without--" It
was his first hesitation.

"Without what?"

"Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms of my
sacrifice."

"It WILL be a s