"'She'--?"
"Yes--Mother. We called it Sarah, but it comes to the same thing."
"Ah," Strether objected, "not to the same thing as her hating YOU."
On which--though as if for an instant it had hung fire--Chad
remarkably replied: "Well, if they hate my good friend, THAT comes
to the same thing." It had a note of inevitable truth that made
Strether take it as enough, feel he wanted nothing more. The young
man spoke in it for his "good friend" more than he had ever yet
directly spoken, confessed to such deep identities between them as
he might play with the idea of working free from, but which at a
given moment could still draw him down like a whirlpool. And
meanwhile he had gone on. "Their hating you too moreover--that
also comes to a good deal."
"Ah," said Strether, "your mother doesn't."
Chad, however, loyally stuck to it--loyally, that is, to Strether.
"She will if you don't look out."
"Well, I do look out. I am, after all, looking out. That's just
why," our friend explained, "I want to see her again."
It drew from Chad again the same question. "To see Mother?"
"To see--for the present--Sarah."
"Ah then there you are! And what I don't for the life of me make
out," Chad pursued with resigned perplexity, "is what you GAIN by it.
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