But I've supposed you all this while to have been doing a lot of
special and private judging--about which I haven't troubled you;
and I've only wished to have your conclusion first from you.
I don't ask more than that; I'm quite ready to take it as it has come."
Chad turned up his face to the sky with a slow puff of his smoke.
"Well, I've seen."
Strether waited a little. "I've left you wholly alone; haven't, I
think I may say, since the first hour or two--when I merely
preached patience--so much as breathed on you."
"Oh you've been awfully good!"
"We've both been good then--we've played the game. We've given
them the most liberal conditions."
"Ah," said Chad, "splendid conditions! It was open to them, open
to them"--he seemed to make it out, as he smoked, with his eyes
still on the stars. He might in quiet sport have been reading
their horoscope. Strether wondered meanwhile what had been open to
them, and he finally let him have it. "It was open to them simply
to let me alone; to have made up their minds, on really seeing me
for themselves, that I could go on well enough as I was."
Strether assented to this proposition with full lucidity, his
companion's plural pronoun, which stood all for Mrs.
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