back was relatively vague. This
comparison of notes however could wait; everything struck him as
depending on the effect produced by Chad. Neither Sarah nor Mamie had
in any way, at the station--where they had had after all ample
time--broken out about it; which, to make up for this, was what our
friend had expected of Jim as soon as they should find themselves
together.

It was queer to him that he had that noiseless brush with Chad; an
ironic intelligence with this youth on the subject of his relatives, an
intelligence carried on under their nose and, as might be said, at
their expense--such a matter marked again for him strongly the number
of stages he had come; albeit that if the number seemed great the time
taken for the final one was but the turn of a hand. He had before this
had many moments of wondering if he himself weren't perhaps changed
even as Chad was changed. Only what in Chad was conspicuous
improvement--well, he had no name ready for the working, in his own
organism, of his own more timid dose. He should have to see first what
this action would amount to. And for his occult passage with the young
man, after all, the directness of it had no greater oddity than the
fact that the young man's way with the three travellers should have
been so happy a manifestation. Strether liked him for it, on the spot,
as he hadn't yet liked him; it affected him while it lasted as he might
have been affected by some light pleasant perfect work of art: to that
degree that he wondered if they were really worthy of it, took it in
and did it justice; to that degree that it would have been scarce a
miracle if, there in the luggage-room, while they waited for their
things, Sarah had pulled his sleeve and drawn him aside. "You're right;
we haven't quite known what you mean, Mother and I, but now we see.
Chad's magnificent; what can one want more? If THIS is the kind of
thing--!" On which they might, as it were, have embraced and begun to
work together.

Ah how much, as it was, for all her bridling brightness--which was
merely general and noticed nothing--WOULD they work together? Strether
knew he was unreasonable; he set it down to his being nervous: people
couldn't notice everything and speak of everything in a quarter of an
hour. Possibly, no doubt, also, he made too much of Chad's display.
Yet, none the less, when, at the end of five minutes, in the cab, Jim
Pocock had said nothing either--hadn't said, that is, w