One doesn't know quite what you mean by being in women's 'hands.'
It's all so vague.
One is when one isn't.
One isn't when one is.
And then one can't quite give people away."
He seemed kindly to explain.
"I've NEVER got stuck—so very hard; and, as against anything at any time really better, I don't think I've ever been afraid."
There was something in it that held Strether to wonder, and this gave him time to go on.
He broke out as with a more helpful thought. "Don't you know how I like Paris itself?"
The upshot was indeed to make our friend marvel.
"Oh if THAT'S all that's the matter with you—!" It was HE who almost showed resentment.
Chad's smile of a truth more than met it.
"But isn't that enough?"
Strether hesitated, but it came out.
"Not enough for your mother!"
Spoken, however, it sounded a trifle odd—the effect of which was that Chad broke into a laugh. Strether, at this, succumbed as well, though with extreme brevity.
"Permit us to have still our theory.
But if you ARE so free and so strong you're inexcusable.
I'll write in the morning," he added with decision.
"I'll say I've got you."
This appeared to open for Chad a new interest.
"How often do you write?"
"Oh perpetually."
"And at great length?"
Strether had become a little impatient.
"I hope it's not found too great."
"Oh I'm sure not.
And you hear as often?"
Again Strether paused.
"As often as I deserve."
"Mother writes," said Chad, "a lovely letter."
Strether, before the closed porte-cochere, fixed him a moment. "It's more, my boy, than YOU do!
But our suppositions don't matter," he added, "if you're actually not entangled."
Chad's pride seemed none the less a little touched.
"I never WAS that—let me insist.
I always had my own way."
With which he pursued: "And I have it at present."
"Then what are you here for?
What has kept you," Strether asked, "if you HAVE been able to leave?"
It made Chad, after a stare, throw himself back.
"Do you think one's kept only by women?"
His surprise and his verbal emphasis rang out so clear in the still street that Strether winced till he remembered the safety of their English speech.
"Is that," the young man demanded, "what they think at Woollett?"
At the good faith in the question Strether had changed colour, feeling that, as he would have said, he had put his foot in it.
He had appeared stupidly to misrepresent what they thought at Woollett; but before he had time to rectify Chad again was upon him.
"I must say then you show a low mind!"
It so fell in, unhappily for Strether, with that reflexion of his own prompted in him by the pleasant air of the Boulevard Malesherbes, that its disconcerting force was rather unfairly great.
It was a dig that, administered by himself—and administered even to poor Mrs. Newsome—was no more than salutary; but administered by Chad—and quite logically—it came nearer drawing blood.
They HADn't a low mind—nor any approach to one; yet incontestably they had worked, and with a certain smugness, on a basis that might be turned against them.
Chad had at any rate pulled his visitor up; he had even pulled up his admirable mother; he had absolutely, by a turn of the wrist and a jerk of the far-flung noose, pulled up, in a bunch, Woollett browsing in its pride.