tached to Strether's now, for he was one of the men
who fully face you when they talk of themselves. This enabled his
friend to look at him hard and immediately to appear to the highest
advantage in his eyes by doing so. "That's a genial thing to say to a
fellow who has come out on purpose to meet you!"

Nothing could have been finer, on this, than Waymarsh's sombre glow.
"HAVE you come out on purpose?"

"Well--very largely."

"I thought from the way you wrote there was something back of it."

Strether hesitated. "Back of my desire to be with you?"

"Back of your prostration."

Strether, with a smile made more dim by a certain consciousness, shook
his head. "There are all the causes of it!"

"And no particular cause that seemed most to drive you?"

Our friend could at last conscientiously answer. "Yes. One. There IS
a matter that has had much to do with my coming out."

Waymarsh waited a little. "Too private to mention?"

"No, not too private--for YOU. Only rather complicated."

"Well," said Waymarsh, who had waited again, "I MAY lose my mind over
here, but I don't know as I've done so yet."

"Oh you shall have the whole thing. But not tonight."

Waymarsh seemed to sit stiffer and to hold his elbows tighter. "Why
not--if I can't sleep?"

"Because, my dear man, I CAN!"

"Then where's your prostration?"

"Just in that--that I can put in eight hours." And Strether brought it
out that if Waymarsh didn't "gain" it was because he didn't go to bed:
the result of which was, in its order, that, to do the latter justice,
he permitted his friend to insist on his really getting settled.
Strether, with a kind coercive hand for it, assisted him to this
consummation, and again found his own part in their relation
auspiciously enlarged by the smaller touches of lowering the lamp and
seeing to a sufficiency of blanket. It somehow ministered for him to
indulgence to feel Waymarsh, who looked unnaturally big and black in
bed, as much tucked in as a patient in a hospital and, with his
covering up to his chin, as much simplified by it He hovered in vague
pity, to be brief, while his companion challenged him out of the
bedclothes. "Is she really after you? Is that what's behind?"

Strether felt an uneasiness at the direction taken by his companion's
insight, but he played a little at uncertainty. "Behind my coming out?"

"Behind your prostration or whatever. It's generally felt, you know,
that she follo