s natural scruple, only to that extent; so
that Strether after an instant himself took a hand. "My absence of an
assured future. The little I have to show toward the power to take
care of myself. The way, the wonderful way, she would certainly take
care of me. Her fortune, her kindness, and the constant miracle of her
having been disposed to go even so far. Of course, of course"--he
summed it up. "There are those sharp facts."

Chad had meanwhile thought of another still. "And don't you really
care--?"

His friend slowly turned round to him. "Will you go?"

"I'll go if you'll say you now consider I should. You know," he went
on, "I was ready six weeks ago."

"Ah," said Strether, "that was when you didn't know I wasn't! You're
ready at present because you do know it."

"That may be," Chad returned; "but all the same I'm sincere. You talk
about taking the whole thing on your shoulders, but in what light do
you regard me that you think me capable of letting you pay?" Strether
patted his arm, as they stood together against the parapet,
reassuringly--seeming to wish to contend that he HAD the wherewithal;
but it was again round this question of purchase and price that the
young man's sense of fairness continued to hover. "What it literally
comes to for you, if you'll pardon my putting it so, is that you give
up money. Possibly a good deal of money."

"Oh," Strether laughed, "if it were only just enough you'd still be
justified in putting it so! But I've on my side to remind you too that
YOU give up money; and more than 'possibly'--quite certainly, as I
should suppose--a good deal."

"True enough; but I've got a certain quantity," Chad returned after a
moment. "Whereas you, my dear man, you--"

"I can't be at all said"--Strether took him up--"to have a 'quantity'
certain or uncertain? Very true. Still, I shan't starve."

"Oh you mustn't STARVE!" Chad pacifically emphasised; and so, in the
pleasant conditions, they continued to talk; though there was, for that
matter, a pause in which the younger companion might have been taken as
weighing again the delicacy of his then and there promising the elder
some provision against the possibility just mentioned. This, however,
he presumably thought best not to do, for at the end of another minute
they had moved in quite a different direction. Strether had broken in
by returning to the subject of Chad's passage with Sarah and enquiring
if they had arrived, in