hin; it was in the long watch, from the
balcony, in the summer night, of the wide late life of Paris, the
unceasing soft quick rumble, below, of the little lighted carriages
that, in the press, always suggested the gamblers he had seen of old at
Monte Carlo pushing up to the tables. This image was before him when
he at last became aware that Chad was behind.

"She tells me you put it all on ME"--he had arrived after this promptly
enough at that information; which expressed the case however quite as
the young man appeared willing for the moment to leave it. Other
things, with this advantage of their virtually having the night before
them, came up for them, and had, as well, the odd effect of making the
occasion, instead of hurried and feverish, one of the largest, loosest
and easiest to which Strether's whole adventure was to have treated
him. He had been pursuing Chad from an early hour and had overtaken
him only now; but now the delay was repaired by their being so
exceptionally confronted. They had foregathered enough of course in
all the various times; they had again and again, since that first night
at the theatre, been face to face over their question; but they had
never been so alone together as they were actually alone--their talk
hadn't yet been so supremely for themselves. And if many things
moreover passed before them, none passed more distinctly for Strether
than that striking truth about Chad of which he had been so often moved
to take note: the truth that everything came happily back with him to
his knowing how to live. It had been seated in his pleased smile--a
smile that pleased exactly in the right degree--as his visitor turned
round, on the balcony, to greet his advent; his visitor in fact felt on
the spot that there was nothing their meeting would so much do as bear
witness to that facility. He surrendered himself accordingly to so
approved a gift; for what was the meaning of the facility but that
others DID surrender themselves? He didn't want, luckily, to prevent
Chad from living; but he was quite aware that even if he had he would
himself have thoroughly gone to pieces. It was in truth essentially by
bringing down his personal life to a function all subsidiary to the
young man's own that he held together. And the great point, above all,
the sign of how completely Chad possessed the knowledge in question,
was that one thus became, not only with a proper cheerfulness, but with
wild native i