“But of course Chad has now the advantage of being there before her. If he doesn’t work that for all it’s worth—!” He sighed with contingent pity at his brother-in-law’s possible want of resource. “He has worked it on _you_, pretty well, eh?” and he asked the next moment if there were anything new at the Varieties, which he pronounced in the American manner. They talked about the Varieties—Strether confessing to a knowledge which produced again on Pocock’s part a play of innuendo as vague as a nursery-rhyme, yet as aggressive as an elbow in his side; and they finished their drive under the protection of easy themes. Strether waited to the end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim had seen Chad as different; and he could scarce have explained the discouragement he drew from the absence of this testimony. It was what he had taken his own stand on, so far as he had taken a stand; and if they were all only going to see nothing he had only wasted his time. He gave his friend till the very last moment, till they had come into sight of the hotel; and when poor Pocock only continued cheerful and envious and funny he fairly grew to dislike him, to feel him extravagantly common. If they were _all_ going to see nothing!—Strether knew, as this came back to him, that he was also letting Pocock represent for him what Mrs. Newsome wouldn’t see. He went on disliking, in the light of Jim’s commonness, to talk to him about that lady; yet just before the cab pulled up he knew the extent of his desire for the real word from Woollett. “Has Mrs. Newsome at all given way—?” “‘Given way’?”—Jim echoed it with the practical derision of his sense of a long past. “Under the strain, I mean, of hope deferred, of disappointment repeated and thereby intensified.” “Oh is she prostrate, you mean?”—he had his categories in hand. “Why yes, she’s prostrate—just as Sally is. But they’re never so lively, you know, as when they’re prostrate.” “Ah Sarah’s prostrate?” Strether vaguely murmured. “It’s when they’re prostrate that they most sit up.” “And Mrs. Newsome’s sitting up?” “All night, my boy—for _you!_” And Jim fetched him, with a vulgar little guffaw, a thrust that gave relief to the picture. But he had got what he wanted. He felt on the spot that this _was_ the real word from Woollett. “So don’t you go home!” Jim added while he alighted and while his friend, letting him profusely pay the cabman, sat on in a momentary muse. Strether wondered if that were the real word too. III