He himself said immediately none of the things that he was thinking;
he said something quite different. "You HAVE really been to a distance?"
"I've been to England." Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, but gave
no further account of it than to say: "One must sometimes get off."
Strether wanted no more facts--he only wanted to justify, as it
were, his question. "Of course you do as you're free to do. But I
hope, this time, that you didn't go for ME."
"For very shame at bothering you really too much? My dear man,"
Chad laughed, "what WOULDn't I do for you?"
Strether's easy answer for this was that it was a disposition he
had exactly come to profit by. "Even at the risk of being in your
way I've waited on, you know, for a definite reason."
Chad took it in. "Oh yes--for us to make if possible a still
better impression." And he stood there happily exhaling his full
general consciousness. "I'm delighted to gather that you feel
we've made it."
There was a pleasant irony in the words, which his guest,
preoccupied and keeping to the point, didn't take up. "If I had
my sense of wanting the rest of the time--the time of their being
still on this side," he continued to explain--"I know now why I
wanted it.
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