him,
these things, what he was, and the business hadn't been easy; it had
taken time and trouble, it had cost, above all, a price. The result at
any rate was now to be offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that
was concerned, was glad to be there to witness. Would she in the least
make it out or take it in, the result, or would she in the least care
for it if she did? He scratched his chin as he asked himself by what
name, when challenged--as he was sure he should be--he could call it
for her. Oh those were determinations she must herself arrive at;
since she wanted so much to see, let her see then and welcome. She had
come out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in Strether's
inner sense that she practically wouldn't see.

That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a
word that next dropped from him. "They're children; they play at
life!"--and the exclamation was significant and reassuring. It implied
that he hadn't then, for his companion's sensibility, appeared to give
Mrs. Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend's presently asking him
if it were his idea that Mrs. Pocock and Madame de Vionnet should
become acquainted. Strether was still more sharply struck, hereupon,
with Chad's lucidity. "Why, isn't that exactly--to get a sight of the
company I keep--what she has come out for?"

"Yes--I'm afraid it is," Strether unguardedly replied.

Chad's quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation. "Why do you say
you're afraid?"

"Well, because I feel a certain responsibility. It's my testimony, I
imagine, that will have been at the bottom of Mrs. Pocock's curiosity.
My letters, as I've supposed you to understand from the beginning, have
spoken freely. I've certainly said my little say about Madame de
Vionnet."

All that, for Chad, was beautifully obvious. "Yes, but you've only
spoken handsomely."

"Never more handsomely of any woman. But it's just that tone--!"

"That tone," said Chad, "that has fetched her? I dare say; but I've no
quarrel with you about it. And no more has Madame de Vionnet. Don't
you know by this time how she likes you?"

"Oh!"--and Strether had, with his groan, a real pang of melancholy.
"For all I've done for her!"

"Ah you've done a great deal."

Chad's urbanity fairly shamed him, and he was at this moment absolutely
impatient to see the face Sarah Pocock would present to a sort of
thing, as he synthetically phrased it to himself, with