h?--since it's you yourself who have done the presenting."

"Much of it--yes--and to the best of my ability. But not all--from the
moment your sister took my place."

"She didn't," Chad returned. "Sally took a place, certainly; but it
was never, I saw from the first moment, to be yours. No one--with
us--will ever take yours. It wouldn't be possible."

"Ah of course," sighed Strether, "I knew it. I believe you're right.
No one in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously solemn. There
I am," he added with another sigh, as if weary enough, on occasion, of
this truth. "I was made so."

Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might
for this purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured
the fact. "YOU have never needed any one to make you better. There
has never been any one good enough. They couldn't," the young man
declared.

His friend hesitated. "I beg your pardon. They HAVE."

Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt. "Who then?"

Strether--though a little dimly--smiled at him. "Women--too."

"'Two'?"--Chad stared and laughed. "Oh I don't believe, for such work,
in any more than one! So you're proving too much. And what IS
beastly, at all events," he added, "is losing you."

Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he
paused. "Are you afraid?"

"Afraid--?"

"Of doing wrong. I mean away from my eye." Before Chad could speak,
however, he had taken himself up. "I AM, certainly," he laughed,
"prodigious."

"Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid--!" This might have been, on
Chad's part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely extravagant;
but it was full, plainly enough, of the intention of comfort, it
carried with it a protest against doubt and a promise, positively, of
performance. Picking up a hat in the vestibule he came out with his
friend, came downstairs, took his arm, affectionately, as to help and
guide him, treating him if not exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a
noble eccentric who appealed to tenderness, and keeping on with him,
while they walked, to the next corner and the next. "You needn't tell
me, you needn't tell me!"--this again as they proceeded, he wished to
make Strether feel. What he needn't tell him was now at last, in the
geniality of separation, anything at all it concerned him to know. He
knew, up to the hilt--that really came over Chad; he understood, felt,
recorded his vow; and they ling