way; "they won't have it for a minute."

Strether on his side also reflectively smoked. It was as if their high
place really represented some moral elevation from which they could
look down on their recent past. "There never was the smallest chance,
do you know, that they WOULD have it for a moment."

"Of course not--no real chance. But if they were willing to think
there was--!"

"They weren't willing." Strether had worked it all out. "It wasn't for
you they came out, but for me. It wasn't to see for themselves what
you're doing, but what I'm doing. The first branch of their curiosity
was inevitably destined, under my culpable delay, to give way to the
second; and it's on the second that, if I may use the expression and
you don't mind my marking the invidious fact, they've been of late
exclusively perched. When Sarah sailed it was me, in other words, they
were after."

Chad took it in both with intelligence and with indulgence. "It IS
rather a business then--what I've let you in for!"

Strether had again a brief pause; which ended in a reply that seemed to
dispose once for all of this element of compunction. Chad was to treat
it, at any rate, so far as they were again together, as having done so.
"I was 'in' when you found me."

"Ah but it was you," the young man laughed, "who found ME."

"I only found you out. It was you who found me in. It was all in the
day's work for them, at all events, that they should come. And they've
greatly enjoyed it," Strether declared.

"Well, I've tried to make them," said Chad.

His companion did himself presently the same justice. "So have I. I
tried even this very morning--while Mrs. Pocock was with me. She
enjoys for instance, almost as much as anything else, not being, as
I've said, afraid of me; and I think I gave her help in that."

Chad took a deeper interest. "Was she very very nasty?"

Strether debated. "Well, she was the most important thing--she was
definite. She was--at last--crystalline. And I felt no remorse. I saw
that they must have come."

"Oh I wanted to see them for myself; so that if it were only for
THAT--!" Chad's own remorse was as small.

This appeared almost all Strether wanted. "Isn't your having seen them
for yourself then THE thing, beyond all others, that has come of their
visit?"

Chad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it so.
"Don't you count it as anything that you're dished--if you ARE dished?
Ar