acrifice then?"

"It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered. I owe her so much."

It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was now
confessedly--oh quite flagrantly and publicly--interesting. The moment
really took on for Strether an intensity. Chad owed Madame de Vionnet
so much? What DID that do then but clear up the whole mystery? He was
indebted for alterations, and she was thereby in a position to have
sent in her bill for expenses incurred in reconstruction. What was
this at bottom but what had been to be arrived at? Strether sat there
arriving at it while he munched toast and stirred his second cup. To
do this with the aid of Chad's pleasant earnest face was also to do
more besides. No, never before had he been so ready to take him as he
was. What was it that had suddenly so cleared up? It was just
everybody's character; that is everybody's but--in a measure--his own.
Strether felt HIS character receive for the instant a smutch from all
the wrong things he had suspected or believed. The person to whom Chad
owed it that he could positively turn out such a comfort to other
persons--such a person was sufficiently raised above any "breath" by
the nature of her work and the young man's steady light. All of which
was vivid enough to come and go quickly; though indeed in the midst of
it Strether could utter a question. "Have I your word of honour that
if I surrender myself to Madame de Vionnet you'll surrender yourself to
me?"

Chad laid his hand firmly on his friend's. "My dear man, you have it."

There was finally something in his felicity almost embarrassing and
oppressive--Strether had begun to fidget under it for the open air and
the erect posture. He had signed to the waiter that he wished to pay,
and this transaction took some moments, during which he thoroughly
felt, while he put down money and pretended--it was quite hollow--to
estimate change, that Chad's higher spirit, his youth, his practice,
his paganism, his felicity, his assurance, his impudence, whatever it
might be, had consciously scored a success. Well, that was all right so
far as it went; his sense of the thing in question covered our friend
for a minute like a veil through which--as if he had been muffled--he
heard his interlocutor ask him if he mightn't take him over about five.
"Over" was over the river, and over the river was where Madame de
Vionnet lived, and five was that very afternoon. They got at