Newsome and
her daughter, having no ambiguity for him. There was nothing,
apparently, to stand for Mamie and Jim; and this added to our
friend's sense of Chad's knowing what he thought. "But they've made
up their minds to the opposite--that you CAN'T go on as you are."
"No," Chad continued in the same way; "they won't have it for a minute."
Strether on his side also reflectively smoked. It was as if their
high place really represented some moral elevation from which they
could look down on their recent past. "There never was the
smallest chance, do you know, that they WOULD have it for a moment."
"Of course not--no real chance. But if they were willing to think
there was--!"
"They weren't willing." Strether had worked it all out. "It wasn't
for you they came out, but for me. It wasn't to see for themselves
what you're doing, but what I'm doing. The first branch of their
curiosity was inevitably destined, under my culpable delay, to give way
to the second; and it's on the second that, if I may use the expression
and you don't mind my marking the invidious fact, they've been of late
exclusively perched. When Sarah sailed it was me, in other words,
they were after."
Chad took it in both with intelligence and with indulgence.
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