He saw it far away and over his companion's head.
"It's very particularly me."
"Well then all the more reason.
Marchons, marchons!" said the young man gaily.
His host, however, at this, but continued to stand agaze; and he had the next thing repeated his question of a moment before. "Has Miss Gostrey come back?"
"Yes, two days ago."
"Then you've seen her?"
"No—I'm to see her to-day."
But Strether wouldn't linger now on Miss Gostrey.
"Your mother sends me an ultimatum.
If I can't bring you I'm to leave you; I'm to come at any rate myself."
"Ah but you CAN bring me now," Chad, from his sofa, reassuringly replied.
Strether had a pause. "I don't think I understand you.
Why was it that, more than a month ago, you put it to me so urgently to let Madame de Vionnet speak for you?"
"'Why'?" Chad considered, but he had it at his fingers' ends.
"Why but because I knew how well she'd do it?
It was the way to keep you quiet and, to that extent, do you good.
Besides," he happily and comfortably explained, "I wanted you really to know her and to get the impression of her—and you see the good that HAS done you."
"Well," said Strether, "the way she has spoken for you, all the same—so far as I've given her a chance—has only made me feel how much she wishes to keep you.
If you make nothing of that I don't see why you wanted me to listen to her."
"Why my dear man," Chad exclaimed,
"I make everything of it!
How can you doubt—?"
"I doubt only because you come to me this morning with your signal to start."
Chad stared, then gave a laugh.
"And isn't my signal to start just what you've been waiting for?"
Strether debated; he took another turn.
"This last month I've been awaiting, I think, more than anything else, the message I have here."
"You mean you've been afraid of it?"
"Well, I was doing my business in my own way.
And I suppose your present announcement," Strether went on, "isn't merely the result of your sense of what I've expected.
Otherwise you wouldn't have put me in relation—" But he paused, pulling up.
At this Chad rose. "Ah HER wanting me not to go has nothing to do with it!
It's only because she's afraid—afraid of the way that, over there, I may get caught.
But her fear's groundless."
He had met again his companion's sufficiently searching look.
"Are you tired of her?"
Chad gave him in reply to this, with a movement of the head, the strangest slow smile he had ever had from him.
"Never."
It had immediately, on Strether's imagination, so deep and soft an effect that our friend could only for the moment keep it before him.
"Never?"
"Never," Chad obligingly and serenely repeated.
It made his companion take several more steps.
"Then YOU'RE not afraid."
"Afraid to go?"
Strether pulled up again.
"Afraid to stay."
The young man looked brightly amazed.
"You want me now to 'stay'?"
"If I don't immediately sail the Pococks will immediately come out.