.

Strether here, with a rising hope, just thought, "We must take one of
them at a time." But his coherence lapsed. "IS there some woman? Of
whom he's really afraid of course I mean--or who does with him what she
likes."

"It's awfully charming of you," Bilham presently remarked, "not to have
asked me that before."

"Oh I'm not fit for my job!"

The exclamation had escaped our friend, but it made little Bilham more
deliberate. "Chad's a rare case!" he luminously observed. "He's
awfully changed," he added.

"Then you see it too?"

"The way he has improved? Oh yes--I think every one must see it. But
I'm not sure," said little Bilham, "that I didn't like him about as
well in his other state."

"Then this IS really a new state altogether?"

"Well," the young man after a moment returned, "I'm not sure he was
really meant by nature to be quite so good. It's like the new edition
of an old book that one has been fond of--revised and amended, brought
up to date, but not quite the thing one knew and loved. However that
may be at all events," he pursued, "I don't think, you know, that he's
really playing, as you call it, any game. I believe he really wants to
go back and take up a career. He's capable of one, you know, that will
improve and enlarge him still more. He won't then," little Bilham
continued to remark, "be my pleasant well-rubbed old-fashioned volume
at all. But of course I'm beastly immoral. I'm afraid it would be a
funny world altogether--a world with things the way I like them. I
ought, I dare say, to go home and go into business myself. Only I'd
simply rather die--simply. And I've not the least difficulty in making
up my mind not to, and in knowing exactly why, and in defending my
ground against all comers. All the same," he wound up, "I assure you I
don't say a word against it--for himself, I mean--to Chad. I seem to
see it as much the best thing for him. You see he's not happy."

"DO I?"--Strether stared. "I've been supposing I see just the
opposite--an extraordinary case of the equilibrium arrived at and
assured."

"Oh there's a lot behind it."

"Ah there you are!" Strether exclaimed. "That's just what I want to
get at. You speak of your familiar volume altered out of recognition.
Well, who's the editor?"

Little Bilham looked before him a minute in silence. "He ought to get
married. THAT would do it. And he wants to."

"Wants to marry her?"

Again little Bilham waited,