"You've
seen her?"
"Oh yes--to say good-bye. And if I had doubted the truth of what I
tell you--"
"She'd have cleared up your doubt?" Chad understood--"rather"--
again! It even kept him briefly silent. But he made that up.
"She must have been wonderful."
"She WAS," Strether candidly admitted--all of which practically
told as a reference to the conditions created by the accident of
the previous week.
They appeared for a little to be looking back at it; and that came
out still more in what Chad next said. "I don't know what you've
really thought, all along; I never did know--for anything, with
you, seemed to be possible. But of course--of course--" Without
confusion, quite with nothing but indulgence, he broke down, he
pulled up. "After all, you understand. I spoke to you originally
only as I HAD to speak. There's only one way--isn't there?--about
such things. However," he smiled with a final philosophy, "I see
it's all right."
Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts. What
was it that made him at present, late at night and after journeys,
so renewedly, so substantially young? Strether saw in a moment
what it was--it was that he was younger again than Madame de Vionnet.
Pages:
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689