s as over, and well over, and see you depart in a peace that
matches my own? No doubt, no doubt, no doubt," she nervously
repeated--"all the more that I don't really pretend I believe you
couldn't, for yourself, NOT have done what you have. I don't pretend
you feel yourself victimised, for this evidently is the way you live,
and it's what--we're agreed--is the best way. Yes, as you say," she
continued after a moment, "I ought to be easy and rest on my work. Well
then here am I doing so. I AM easy. You'll have it for your last
impression. When is it you say you go?" she asked with a quick change.

He took some time to reply--his last impression was more and more so
mixed a one. It produced in him a vague disappointment, a drop that
was deeper even than the fall of his elation the previous night. The
good of what he had done, if he had done so much, wasn't there to
enliven him quite to the point that would have been ideal for a grand
gay finale. Women were thus endlessly absorbent, and to deal with them
was to walk on water. What was at bottom the matter with her,
embroider as she might and disclaim as she might--what was at bottom
the matter with her was simply Chad himself. It was of Chad she was
after all renewedly afraid; the strange strength of her passion was the
very strength of her fear; she clung to HIM, Lambert Strether, as to a
source of safety she had tested, and, generous graceful truthful as she
might try to be, exquisite as she was, she dreaded the term of his
being within reach. With this sharpest perception yet, it was like a
chill in the air to him, it was almost appalling, that a creature so
fine could be, by mysterious forces, a creature so exploited. For at
the end of all things they WERE mysterious: she had but made Chad what
he was--so why could she think she had made him infinite? She had made
him better, she had made him best, she had made him anything one would;
but it came to our friend with supreme queerness that he was none the
less only Chad. Strether had the sense that HE, a little, had made him
too; his high appreciation had as it were, consecrated her work The
work, however admirable, was nevertheless of the strict human order,
and in short it was marvellous that the companion of mere earthly joys,
of comforts, aberrations (however one classed them) within the common
experience should be so transcendently prized. It might have made
Strether hot or shy, as such secrets of other