to have worked it. I want"--and our friend spoke now with
a yearning that was really earnest--"at least to have done THAT."

"To have married me off--without a penny?"

"Well, I shan't live long; and I give you my word, now and here, that
I'll leave you every penny of my own. I haven't many, unfortunately,
but you shall have them all. And Miss Pocock, I think, has a few. I
want," Strether went on, "to have been at least to that extent
constructive even expiatory. I've been sacrificing so to strange gods
that I feel I want to put on record, somehow, my
fidelity--fundamentally unchanged after all--to our own. I feel as if
my hands were embrued with the blood of monstrous alien altars--of
another faith altogether. There it is--it's done." And then he further
explained. "It took hold of me because the idea of getting her quite
out of the way for Chad helps to clear my ground."

The young man, at this, bounced about, and it brought them face to face
in admitted amusement. "You want me to marry as a convenience to Chad?"

"No," Strether debated--"HE doesn't care whether you marry or not. It's
as a convenience simply to my own plan FOR him."

"'Simply'!"--and little Bilham's concurrence was in itself a lively
comment. "Thank you. But I thought," he continued, "you had exactly
NO plan 'for' him."

"Well then call it my plan for myself--which may be well, as you say,
to have none. His situation, don't you see? is reduced now to the bare
facts one has to recognise. Mamie doesn't want him, and he doesn't
want Mamie: so much as that these days have made clear. It's a thread
we can wind up and tuck in."

But little Bilham still questioned. "YOU can--since you seem so much
to want to. But why should I?"

Poor Strether thought it over, but was obliged of course to admit that
his demonstration did superficially fail. "Seriously, there is no
reason. It's my affair--I must do it alone. I've only my fantastic
need of making my dose stiff."

Little Bilham wondered. "What do you call your dose?"

"Why what I have to swallow. I want my conditions unmitigated."

He had spoken in the tone of talk for talk's sake, and yet with an
obscure truth lurking in the loose folds; a circumstance presently not
without its effect on his young friend. Little Bilham's eyes rested on
him a moment with some intensity; then suddenly, as if everything had
cleared up, he gave a happy laugh. It seemed to say that if
pretending,