Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/180

174 one was seeing how, in successive connections, a man of the world acquitted himself. Chad kept it up beautifully.

"My idea—voyons!—is simply that you should let Mme. de Vionnet know you, simply that you should consent to know her. I don't in the least mind telling you that, clever and charming as she is, she's ever so much in my confidence. All I ask of you is to let her talk to you. You've asked me about what you call my hitch, and, so far as it goes, she'll explain it to you. She's herself my hitch, hang it—if you must really have it all out. But in a sense," he hastened in the most wonderful manner to add, "that you'll quite make out for yourself. She's too good a friend, confound her. Too good, I mean, for me to leave without—without" It was his first hesitation.

"Without what?"

"Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms of my sacrifice."

"It will be a sacrifice then?"

"It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered. I owe her so much."

It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was now confessedly—oh, quite flagrantly and publicly—interesting. The moment really, for Strether, took on an intensity. Chad owed Mme. de Vionnet so much? What did that do then but clear up the whole mystery? He was indebted for alterations, and she was thereby in a position to have sent in her bill for expenses incurred in reconstruction. What was this, at bottom, but what had been to be arrived at? Strether sat there arriving at it while he munched toast and stirred his second cup. To do this, with the aid of Chad's pleasant, earnest face, was also to do more besides. No, never before had he been so ready to take him as he was. What was it that had suddenly so cleared up? It was just everybody's character—that is, everybody's but, in a measure, his own. Strether felt his character receive, for the instant, a smutch from all the wrong things he had suspected or believed. The person to whom Chad owed it that he could positively turn out such a comfort to other persons—such a person was sufficiently raised above any "breath" by the nature of her work and the young man's steady light. All of which was