" Chad met it with all his air of straight
intelligence, while Strether remembered again that fancy of the
first impression of him, the happy young Pagan, handsome and hard
but oddly indulgent, whose mysterious measure he had under the
street-lamp tried mentally to take. The young Pagan, while a long
look passed between them, sufficiently understood. Strether scarce
needed at last to say the rest--"I want to know where I am." But he
said it, adding before any answer something more. "Are you engaged
to be married--is that your secret?--to the young lady?"
Chad shook his head with the slow amenity that was one of his ways
of conveying that there was time for everything. "I have no secret--
though I may have secrets! I haven't at any rate that one. We're
not engaged. No."
"Then where's the hitch?"
"Do you mean why I haven't already started with you?" Chad,
beginning his coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to
explain. "Nothing would have induced me--nothing will still induce
me--not to try to keep you here as long as you can be made to stay.
It's too visibly good for you." Strether had himself plenty to say
about this, but it was amusing also to measure the march of Chad's
tone. He had never been more a man of the world, and it was always
in his company present to our friend that one was seeing how in
successive connexions a man of the world acquitted himself.
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