ent!" Strether heavily sighed. And he felt for the
moment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission.

It ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made no
rejoinder. But he spoke again as they came in sight of the station.
"Do you mean to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?"

As to this Strether was ready. "No."

"But haven't you told me they know about her?"

"I think I've told you your mother knows."

"And won't she have told Sally?"

"That's one of the things I want to see."

"And if you find she HAS--?"

"Will I then, you mean, bring them together?"

"Yes," said Chad with his pleasant promptness: "to show her there's
nothing in it."

Strether hesitated. "I don't know that I care very much what she may
think there's in it."

"Not if it represents what Mother thinks?"

"Ah what DOES your mother think?" There was in this some sound of
bewilderment.

But they were just driving up, and help, of a sort, might after all be
quite at hand. "Isn't that, my dear man, what we're both just going to
make out?"

II

Strether quitted the station half an hour later in different company.
Chad had taken charge, for the journey to the hotel, of Sarah, Mamie,
the maid and the luggage, all spaciously installed and conveyed; and it
was only after the four had rolled away that his companion got into a
cab with Jim. A strange new feeling had come over Strether, in
consequence of which his spirits had risen; it was as if what had
occurred on the alighting of his critics had been something other than
his fear, though his fear had vet not been of an instant scene of
violence. His impression had been nothing but what was inevitable--he
said that to himself; yet relief and reassurance had softly dropped
upon him. Nothing could be so odd as to be indebted for these things
to the look of faces and the sound of voices that had been with him to
satiety, as he might have said, for years; but he now knew, all the
same, how uneasy he had felt; that was brought home to him by his
present sense of a respite. It had come moreover in the flash of an
eye, it had come in the smile with which Sarah, whom, at the window of
her compartment, they had effusively greeted from the platform, rustled
down to them a moment later, fresh and handsome from her cool June
progress through the charming land. It was only a sign, but enough:
she was going to be gracious and unallusive, she was going to play the
larger