e fruit really of a fine
fancy in him for keeping things straight, for the happy forestalment of
error. No one could explain better when needful, nor put more
conscience into an account or a report; which burden of conscience is
perhaps exactly the reason why his heart always sank when the clouds of
explanation gathered. His highest ingenuity was in keeping the sky of
life clear of them. Whether or no he had a grand idea of the lucid, he
held that nothing ever was in fact--for any one else--explained. One
went through the vain motions, but it was mostly a waste of life. A
personal relation was a relation only so long as people either
perfectly understood or, better still, didn't care if they didn't. From
the moment they cared if they didn't it was living by the sweat of
one's brow; and the sweat of one's brow was just what one might buy
one's self off from by keeping the ground free of the wild weed of
delusion. It easily grew too fast, and the Atlantic cable now alone
could race with it. That agency would each day have testified for him
to something that was not what Woollett had argued. He was not at this
moment absolutely sure that the effect of the morrow's--or rather of
the night's--appreciation of the crisis wouldn't be to determine some
brief missive. "Have at last seen him, but oh dear!"--some temporary
relief of that sort seemed to hover before him. It hovered somehow as
preparing them all--yet preparing them for what? If he might do so
more luminously and cheaply he would tick out in four words: "Awfully
old--grey hair." To this particular item in Chad's appearance he
constantly, during their mute half-hour, reverted; as if so very much
more than he could have said had been involved in it. The most he
could have said would have been: "If he's going to make me feel
young--!" which indeed, however, carried with it quite enough. If
Strether was to feel young, that is, it would be because Chad was to
feel old; and an aged and hoary sinner had been no part of the scheme.

The question of Chadwick's true time of life was, doubtless, what came
up quickest after the adjournment of the two, when the play was over,
to a cafe in the Avenue de l'Opera. Miss Gostrey had in due course
been perfect for such a step; she had known exactly what they
wanted--to go straight somewhere and talk; and Strether had even felt
she had known what he wished to say and that he was arranging
immediately to begin. She hadn't