His conclusion favoured the fact. "YOU have never needed any one
to make you better. There has never been any one good enough.
They couldn't," the young man declared.
His friend hesitated. "I beg your pardon. They HAVE."
Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt. "Who then?"
Strether--though a little dimly--smiled at him. "Women--too."
"'Two'?"--Chad stared and laughed. "Oh I don't believe, for such
work, in any more than one! So you're proving too much. And what
IS beastly, at all events," he added, "is losing you."
Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he
paused. "Are you afraid?"
"Afraid--?"
"Of doing wrong. I mean away from my eye." Before Chad could
speak, however, he had taken himself up. "I AM, certainly," he
laughed, "prodigious."
"Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid--!" This might have been, on
Chad's part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely
extravagant; but it was full, plainly enough, of the intention of
comfort, it carried with it a protest against doubt and a promise,
positively, of performance. Picking up a hat in the vestibule he
came out with his friend, came downstairs, took his arm,
affectionately, as to help and guide him, treating him if not
exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a noble eccentric who appealed
to tenderness, and keeping on with him, while they walked, to the
next corner and the next.
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