Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/122

116 Chad raised his face to the lamp, and it was one of the moments at which he had, in his extraordinary way, most his air of designedly showing himself. It was as if at these instants he just presented himself, his identity so rounded off, his palpable presence and his massive young manhood, as such a link in the chain as might practically amount to a kind of demonstration. It was as if—and how but anomalously?—he couldn't, after all, help thinking sufficiently well of these things to let them go for what they were worth. What could there be in this for Strether but the hint of some self-respect, some sense of power oddly perverted, something latent and beyond access, ominous and perhaps enviable? The intimation had, the next thing, in a flash, taken on a name—a name on which our friend seized as he asked himself if he were not, perhaps, really dealing with an irreducible young pagan. This description—he quite jumped at it—had a sound that gratified his mental ear, so that, of a sudden, he had already adopted it. Pagan—yes, that was, wasn't it? what Chad would logically be. It was what he must be. It was what he was. The idea was a clue and, instead of darkening the prospect, projected a certain clearness. Strether made out in this quick ray that a pagan was perhaps, at the pass they had come to, the thing most wanted at Woollett. They would be able to do with one, a good one; he would find an opening—yes; and Strether's imagination even now prefigured and accompanied the first appearance there of the rousing personage. He had only the slight discomfort of feeling, as the young man turned away from the lamp, that his thought had, in the momentary silence, possibly been guessed.

"Well, I've no doubt," said Chad, "you've come near enough. The details, as you say, don't matter. It has been generally the case that I've let myself go. But I'm coming round—I'm not so bad now." With which they walked on again to Strether's hotel.

"Do you mean," the latter asked as they approached the door, "that there isn't any woman with you now?"

"But, pray, what has that to do with it?"

"Why, you know, it's the whole question."

"Of my going home?" Chad was clearly surprised.