"I don't know what should make you think I'm tired of her."
Strether didn't quite know either, and such impressions, for the
imaginative mind, were always too fine, too floating, to produce on
the spot their warrant. There was none the less for him, in the
very manner of his host's allusion to satiety as a thinkable
motive, a slight breath of the ominous. "I feel how much more she
can do for you. She hasn't done it all yet. Stay with her at
least till she has."
"And leave her THEN?"
Chad had kept smiling, but its effect in Strether was a shade of
dryness. "Don't leave her BEFORE. When you've got all that can be
got--I don't say," he added a trifle grimly. "That will be the
proper time. But as, for you, from such a woman, there will always
be something to be got, my remark's not a wrong to her." Chad let
him go on, showing every decent deference, showing perhaps also a
candid curiosity for this sharper accent. "I remember you, you
know, as you were."
"An awful ass, wasn't I?"
The response was as prompt as if he had pressed a spring; it had a
ready abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment
to meet it. "You certainly then wouldn't have seemed worth all
you've let me in for.
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