When he had reported on Sarah’s visit, which he did very fully, Chad answered his question with perfect candour. “I positively referred her to you—told her she must absolutely see you. This was last night, and it all took place in ten minutes. It was our first free talk—really the first time she had tackled me. She knew I also knew what her line had been with yourself; knew moreover how little you had been doing to make anything difficult for her. So I spoke for you frankly—assured her you were all at her service. I assured her _I_ was too,” the young man continued; “and I pointed out how she could perfectly, at any time, have got at me. Her difficulty has been simply her not finding the moment she fancied.” “Her difficulty,” Strether returned, “has been simply that she finds she’s afraid of you. She’s not afraid of _me_, Sarah, one little scrap; and it was just because she has seen how I can fidget when I give my mind to it that she has felt her best chance, rightly enough to be in making me as uneasy as possible. I think she’s at bottom as pleased to _have_ you put it on me as you yourself can possibly be to put it.” “But what in the world, my dear man,” Chad enquired in objection to this luminosity, “have I done to make Sally afraid?” “You’ve been ‘wonderful, wonderful,’ as we say—we poor people who watch the play from the pit; and that’s what has, admirably, made her. Made her all the more effectually that she could see you didn’t set about it on purpose—I mean set about affecting her as with fear.” Chad cast a pleasant backward glance over his possibilities of motive. “I’ve only wanted to be kind and friendly, to be decent and attentive—and I still only want to be.” Strether smiled at his comfortable clearness. “Well, there can certainly be no way for it better than by my taking the onus. It reduces your personal friction and your personal offence to almost nothing.” Ah but Chad, with his completer conception of the friendly, wouldn’t quite have this! They had remained on the balcony, where, after their day of great and premature heat, the midnight air was delicious; and they leaned back in turn against the balustrade, all in harmony with the chairs and the flower-pots, the cigarettes and the starlight. “The onus isn’t _really_ yours—after our agreeing so to wait together and judge together. That was all my answer to Sally,” Chad pursued—“that we have been, that we are, just judging together.” “I’m not afraid of the burden,” Strether explained; “I haven’t come in the least that you should take it off me. I’ve come very much, it seems to me, to double up my fore legs in the manner of the camel when he gets down on his knees to make his back convenient. But I’ve supposed you all this while to have been doing a lot of special and private judging—about which I haven’t troubled you; and I’ve only wished to have your conclusion first from you. I don’t ask more than that; I’m quite ready to take it as it has come.”