“Do you mean why I haven’t already started with you?” Chad, beginning his coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to explain. “Nothing would have induced me—nothing will still induce me—not to try to keep you here as long as you can be made to stay. It’s too visibly good for you.” Strether had himself plenty to say about this, but it was amusing also to measure the march of Chad’s tone. He had never been more a man of the world, and it was always in his company present to our friend that one was seeing how in successive connexions a man of the world acquitted himself. Chad kept it up beautifully. “My idea—_voyons!_—is simply that you should let Madame de Vionnet know you, simply that you should consent to know _her_. I don’t in the least mind telling you that, clever and charming as she is, she’s ever so much in my confidence. All I ask of you is to let her talk to you. You’ve asked me about what you call my hitch, and so far as it goes she’ll explain it to you. She’s herself my hitch, hang it—if you must really have it all out. But in a sense,” he hastened in the most wonderful manner to add, “that you’ll quite make out for yourself. She’s too good a friend, confound her. Too good, I mean, for me to leave without—without—” It was his first hesitation. “Without what?” “Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms of my sacrifice.” “It _will_ be a sacrifice then?” “It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered. I owe her so much.” It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was now confessedly—oh quite flagrantly and publicly—interesting. The moment really took on for Strether an intensity. Chad owed Madame de Vionnet so much? What _did_ that do then but clear up the whole mystery? He was indebted for alterations, and she was thereby in a position to have sent in her bill for expenses incurred in reconstruction. What was this at bottom but what had been to be arrived at? Strether sat there arriving at it while he munched toast and stirred his second cup. To do this with the aid of Chad’s pleasant earnest face was also to do more besides. No, never before had he been so ready to take him as he was. What was it that had suddenly so cleared up? It was just everybody’s character; that is everybody’s but—in a measure—his own. Strether felt _his_ character receive for the instant a smutch from all the wrong things he had suspected or believed. The person to whom Chad owed it that he could positively turn out such a comfort to other persons—such a person was sufficiently raised above any “breath” by the nature of her work and the young man’s steady light. All of which was vivid enough to come and go quickly; though indeed in the midst of it Strether could utter a question. “Have I your word of honour that if I surrender myself to Madame de Vionnet you’ll surrender yourself to _me?_” Chad laid his hand firmly on his friend’s. “My dear man, you have it.”