Chad offered him, as always, a welcome in which the cordial and the formal—so far as the formal was the respectful—handsomely met; and after he had expressed a hope that he would let him put him up for the night Strether was in full possession of the key, as it might have been called, to what had lately happened.
If he had just thought of himself as old Chad was at sight of him thinking of him as older: he wanted to put him up for the night just because he was ancient and weary.
It could never be said the tenant of these quarters wasn't nice to him; a tenant who, if he might indeed now keep him, was probably prepared to work it all still more thoroughly.
Our friend had in fact the impression that with the minimum of encouragement Chad would propose to keep him indefinitely; an impression in the lap of which one of his own possibilities seemed to sit. Madame de Vionnet had wished him to stay—so why didn't that happily fit?
He could enshrine himself for the rest of his days in his young host's chambre d'ami and draw out these days at his young host's expense: there could scarce be greater logical expression of the countenance he had been moved to give.
There was literally a minute—it was strange enough—during which he grasped the idea that as he WAS acting, as he could only act, he was inconsistent.
The sign that the inward forces he had obeyed really hung together would be that—in default always of another career—he should promote the good cause by mounting guard on it.
These things, during his first minutes, came and went; but they were after all practically disposed of as soon as he had mentioned his errand.
He had come to say good-bye—yet that was only a part; so that from the moment Chad accepted his farewell the question of a more ideal affirmation gave way to something else.
He proceeded with the rest of his business.
"You'll be a brute, you know—you'll be guilty of the last infamy—if you ever forsake her."
That, uttered there at the solemn hour, uttered in the place that was full of her influence, was the rest of his business; and when once he had heard himself say it he felt that his message had never before been spoken.
It placed his present call immediately on solid ground, and the effect of it was to enable him quite to play with what we have called the key.
Chad showed no shade of embarrassment, but had none the less been troubled for him after their meeting in the country; had had fears and doubts on the subject of his comfort.
He was disturbed, as it were, only FOR him, and had positively gone away to ease him off, to let him down—if it wasn't indeed rather to screw him up—the more gently.
Seeing him now fairly jaded he had come, with characteristic good humour, all the way to meet him, and what Strether thereupon supremely made out was that he would abound for him to the end in conscientious assurances.
This was what was between them while the visitor remained; so far from having to go over old ground he found his entertainer keen to agree to everything. It couldn't be put too strongly for him that he'd be a brute.
"Oh rather!—if I should do anything of THAT sort. I hope you believe I really feel it."
"I want it," said Strether, "to be my last word of all to you.
I can't say more, you know; and I don't see how I can do more, in every way, than I've done."
Chad took this, almost artlessly, as a direct allusion.
"You've seen her?"
"Oh yes—to say good-bye.
And if I had doubted the truth of what I tell you—"
"She'd have cleared up your doubt?"
Chad understood—"rather"—again!
It even kept him briefly silent. But he made that up.
"She must have been wonderful."
"She WAS," Strether candidly admitted—all of which practically told as a reference to the conditions created by the accident of the previous week.
They appeared for a little to be looking back at it; and that came out still more in what Chad next said.
"I don't know what you've really thought, all along; I never did know—for anything, with you, seemed to be possible.
But of course—of course—" Without confusion, quite with nothing but indulgence, he broke down, he pulled up.
"After all, you understand. I spoke to you originally only as I HAD to speak. There's only one way—isn't there?—about such things.
However," he smiled with a final philosophy, "I see it's all right."
Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts.
What was it that made him at present, late at night and after journeys, so renewedly, so substantially young?
Strether saw in a moment what it was—it was that he was younger again than Madame de Vionnet.
He himself said immediately none of the things that he was thinking; he said something quite different.
"You HAVE really been to a distance?"
"I've been to England." Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, but gave no further account of it than to say: "One must sometimes get off."
Strether wanted no more facts—he only wanted to justify, as it were, his question.
"Of course you do as you're free to do.
But I hope, this time, that you didn't go for ME."
"For very shame at bothering you really too much?
My dear man," Chad laughed, "what WOULDn't I do for you?"
Strether's easy answer for this was that it was a disposition he had exactly come to profit by.
"Even at the risk of being in your way I've waited on, you know, for a definite reason."
Chad took it in.
"Oh yes—for us to make if possible a still better impression."
And he stood there happily exhaling his full general consciousness.