Strether assented to this proposition with full lucidity, his companion's plural pronoun, which stood all for Mrs. Newsome and her daughter, having no ambiguity for him.
There was nothing, apparently, to stand for Mamie and Jim; and this added to our friend's sense of Chad's knowing what he thought.
"But they've made up their minds to the opposite—that you CAN'T go on as you are."
"No," Chad continued in the same way; "they won't have it for a minute."
Strether on his side also reflectively smoked.
It was as if their high place really represented some moral elevation from which they could look down on their recent past.
"There never was the smallest chance, do you know, that they WOULD have it for a moment."
"Of course not—no real chance.
But if they were willing to think there was—!"
"They weren't willing."
Strether had worked it all out.
"It wasn't for you they came out, but for me.
It wasn't to see for themselves what you're doing, but what I'm doing.
The first branch of their curiosity was inevitably destined, under my culpable delay, to give way to the second; and it's on the second that, if I may use the expression and you don't mind my marking the invidious fact, they've been of late exclusively perched.
When Sarah sailed it was me, in other words, they were after."
Chad took it in both with intelligence and with indulgence.
"It IS rather a business then—what I've let you in for!"
Strether had again a brief pause; which ended in a reply that seemed to dispose once for all of this element of compunction.
Chad was to treat it, at any rate, so far as they were again together, as having done so.
"I was 'in' when you found me."
"Ah but it was you," the young man laughed, "who found ME."
"I only found you out. It was you who found me in. It was all in the day's work for them, at all events, that they should come.
And they've greatly enjoyed it," Strether declared.
"Well, I've tried to make them," said Chad.
His companion did himself presently the same justice.
"So have I.
I tried even this very morning—while Mrs. Pocock was with me.
She enjoys for instance, almost as much as anything else, not being, as I've said, afraid of me; and I think I gave her help in that."
Chad took a deeper interest.
"Was she very very nasty?"
Strether debated. "Well, she was the most important thing—she was definite. She was—at last—crystalline.
And I felt no remorse.
I saw that they must have come."
"Oh I wanted to see them for myself; so that if it were only for THAT—!"
Chad's own remorse was as small.
This appeared almost all Strether wanted.
"Isn't your having seen them for yourself then THE thing, beyond all others, that has come of their visit?"
Chad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it so.
"Don't you count it as anything that you're dished—if you ARE dished?
Are you, my dear man, dished?"
It sounded as if he were asking if he had caught cold or hurt his foot, and Strether for a minute but smoked and smoked.
"I want to see her again.
I must see her."
"Of course you must."
Then Chad hesitated. "Do you mean—a—Mother herself?"
"Oh your mother—that will depend."
It was as if Mrs. Newsome had somehow been placed by the words very far off.
Chad however endeavoured in spite of this to reach the place.
"What do you mean it will depend on?"
Strether, for all answer, gave him a longish look.