make out, with dark blue brocade? He himself had never been whirled away—never at least in a coupé and behind a footman; he had driven with Miss Gostrey in cabs, with Mrs. Pocock, a few times, in an open buggy, with Mrs. Newsome in a four-seated cart and, occasionally up at the mountains, on a buckboard; but his friend’s actual adventure transcended his personal experience. He now showed his companion soon enough indeed how inadequate, as a general monitor, this last queer quantity could once more feel itself. “What game under the sun is he playing?” He signified the next moment that his allusion was not to the fat gentleman immersed in dominoes on whom his eyes had begun by resting, but to their host of the previous hour, as to whom, there on the velvet bench, with a final collapse of all consistency, he treated himself to the comfort of indiscretion. “Where do you see him come out?” Little Bilham, in meditation, looked at him with a kindness almost paternal. “Don’t you like it over here?” Strether laughed out—for the tone was indeed droll; he let himself go. “What has that to do with it? The only thing I’ve any business to like is to feel that I’m moving him. That’s why I ask you whether you believe I _am?_ Is the creature”—and he did his best to show that he simply wished to ascertain—“honest?” His companion looked responsible, but looked it through a small dim smile. “What creature do you mean?” It was on this that they did have for a little a mute interchange. “Is it untrue that he’s free? How then,” Strether asked wondering “does he arrange his life?” “Is the creature you mean Chad himself?” little Bilham said. 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?”