ove all. It's when one's old that it's
worst. I don't care what becomes of it--let what WILL; there it is.
It's a doom--I know it; you can't see it more than I do myself. Things
have to happen as they will." With which she came back again to what,
face to face with him, had so quite broken down. "Of course you
wouldn't, even if possible, and no matter what may happen to you, be
near us. But think of me, think of me--!" She exhaled it into air.

He took refuge in repeating something he had already said and that she
had made nothing of. "There's something I believe I can still do." And
he put his hand out for good-bye.

She again made nothing of it; she went on with her insistence. "That
won't help you. There's nothing to help you."

"Well, it may help YOU," he said.

She shook her head. "There's not a grain of certainty in my
future--for the only certainty is that I shall be the loser in the end."

She hadn't taken his hand, but she moved with him to the door. "That's
cheerful," he laughed, "for your benefactor!"

"What's cheerful for ME," she replied, "is that we might, you and I,
have been friends. That's it--that's it. You see how, as I say, I
want everything. I've wanted you too."

"Ah but you've HAD me!" he declared, at the door, with an emphasis that
made an end.

III

His purpose had been to see Chad the next day, and he had prefigured
seeing him by an early call; having in general never stood on ceremony
in respect to visits at the Boulevard Malesherbes. It had been more
often natural for him to go there than for Chad to come to the small
hotel, the attractions of which were scant; yet it nevertheless, just
now, at the eleventh hour, did suggest itself to Strether to begin by
giving the young man a chance. It struck him that, in the inevitable
course, Chad would be "round," as Waymarsh used to say--Waymarsh who
already, somehow, seemed long ago. He hadn't come the day before,
because it had been arranged between them that Madame de Vionnet should
see their friend first; but now that this passage had taken place he
would present himself, and their friend wouldn't have long to wait.
Strether assumed, he became aware, on this reasoning, that the
interesting parties to the arrangement would have met betimes, and that
the more interesting of the two--as she was after all--would have
communicated to the other the issue of her appeal. Chad would know
without delay that his mother's messen