hem that she would, for her satisfaction, assure herself of this
quantity, and Chad had, as usual, let her have her way. Chad was
always letting people have their way when he felt that it would somehow
turn his wheel for him; it somehow always did turn his wheel. Strether
felt, oddly enough, before these facts, freshly and consentingly
passive; they again so rubbed it into him that the couple thus fixing
his attention were intimate, that his intervention had absolutely aided
and intensified their intimacy, and that in fine he must accept the
consequence of that. He had absolutely become, himself, with his
perceptions and his mistakes, his concessions and his reserves, the
droll mixture, as it must seem to them, of his braveries and his fears,
the general spectacle of his art and his innocence, almost an added
link and certainly a common priceless ground for them to meet upon. It
was as if he had been hearing their very tone when she brought out a
reference that was comparatively straight. "The last twice that you've
been here, you know, I never asked you," she said with an abrupt
transition--they had been pretending before this to talk simply of the
charm of yesterday and of the interest of the country they had seen.
The effort was confessedly vain; not for such talk had she invited him;
and her impatient reminder was of their having done for it all the
needful on his coming to her after Sarah's flight. What she hadn't
asked him then was to state to her where and how he stood for her; she
had been resting on Chad's report of their midnight hour together in
the Boulevard Malesherbes. The thing therefore she at present desired
was ushered in by this recall of the two occasions on which,
disinterested and merciful, she hadn't worried him. To-night truly she
WOULD worry him, and this was her appeal to him to let her risk it. He
wasn't to mind if she bored him a little: she had behaved, after
all--hadn't she?--so awfully, awfully well.

II

"Oh, you're all right, you're all right," he almost impatiently
declared; his impatience being moreover not for her pressure, but for
her scruple. More and more distinct to him was the tune to which she
would have had the matter out with Chad: more and more vivid for him
the idea that she had been nervous as to what he might be able to
"stand." Yes, it had been a question if he had "stood" what the scene
on the river had given him, and, though the young man had doubtless