What I was thinking of," she explained, "is the possible particular effect on him of his milieu."
"Oh his milieu—!"
Strether really felt he could imagine it better now than three hours before.
"Do you mean it can only have been so lowering?"
"Why that's my very starting-point."
"Yes, but you start so far back.
What do his letters say?"
"Nothing.
He practically ignores us—or spares us.
He doesn't write."
"I see.
But there are all the same," she went on, "two quite distinct things that—given the wonderful place he's in—may have happened to him.
One is that he may have got brutalised.
The other is that he may have got refined."
Strether stared—this WAS a novelty.
"Refined?"
"Oh," she said quietly, "there ARE refinements."
The way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh. "YOU have them!"
"As one of the signs," she continued in the same tone, "they constitute perhaps the worst."
He thought it over and his gravity returned.
"Is it a refinement not to answer his mother's letters?"
She appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out.
"Oh I should say the greatest of all."
"Well," said Strether,
"I'M quite content to let it, as one of the signs, pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do what he likes with me."
This appeared to strike her.
"How do you know it?"
"Oh I'm sure of it.
I feel it in my bones."
"Feel he CAN do it?"
"Feel that he believes he can.
It may come to the same thing!" Strether laughed.
She wouldn't, however, have this.
"Nothing for you will ever come to the same thing as anything else."
And she understood what she meant, it seemed, sufficiently to go straight on.
"You say that if he does break he'll come in for things at home?"
"Quite positively.
He'll come in for a particular chance—a chance that any properly constituted young man would jump at.
The business has so developed that an opening scarcely apparent three years ago, but which his father's will took account of as in certain conditions possible and which, under that will, attaches to Chad's availing himself of it a large contingent advantage—this opening, the conditions having come about, now simply awaits him.
His mother has kept it for him, holding out against strong pressure, till the last possible moment.
It requires, naturally, as it carries with it a handsome 'part,' a large share in profits, his being on the spot and making a big effort for a big result.
That's what I mean by his chance.
If he misses it he comes in, as you say, for nothing.
And to see that he doesn't miss it is, in a word, what I've come out for."
She let it all sink in.
"What you've come out for then is simply to render him an immense service."
Well, poor Strether was willing to take it so.
"Ah if you like."
"He stands, as they say, if you succeed with him, to gain—"
"Oh a lot of advantages."