On which—though as if for an instant it had hung fire—Chad remarkably replied: “Well, if they hate my good friend, _that_ comes to the same thing.” It had a note of inevitable truth that made Strether take it as enough, feel he wanted nothing more. The young man spoke in it for his “good friend” more than he had ever yet directly spoken, confessed to such deep identities between them as he might play with the idea of working free from, but which at a given moment could still draw him down like a whirlpool. And meanwhile he had gone on. “Their hating you too moreover—that also comes to a good deal.” “Ah,” said Strether, “your mother doesn’t.” Chad, however, loyally stuck to it—loyally, that is, to Strether. “She will if you don’t look out.” “Well, I do look out. I am, after all, looking out. That’s just why,” our friend explained, “I want to see her again.” It drew from Chad again the same question. “To see Mother?” “To see—for the present—Sarah.” “Ah then there you are! And what I don’t for the life of me make out,” Chad pursued with resigned perplexity, “is what you _gain_ by it.” Oh it would have taken his companion too long to say! “That’s because you have, I verily believe, no imagination. You’ve other qualities. But no imagination, don’t you see? at all.” “I dare say. I do see.” It was an idea in which Chad showed interest. “But haven’t you yourself rather too much?” “Oh _rather_—!” So that after an instant, under this reproach and as if it were at last a fact really to escape from, Strether made his move for departure. II One of the features of the restless afternoon passed by him after Mrs. Pocock’s visit was an hour spent, shortly before dinner, with Maria Gostrey, whom of late, in spite of so sustained a call on his attention from other quarters, he had by no means neglected. And that he was still not neglecting her will appear from the fact that he was with her again at the same hour on the very morrow—with no less fine a consciousness moreover of being able to hold her ear. It continued inveterately to occur, for that matter, that whenever he had taken one of his greater turns he came back to where she so faithfully awaited him. None of these excursions had on the whole been livelier than the pair of incidents—the fruit of the short interval since his previous visit—on which he had now to report to her. He had seen Chad Newsome late the night before, and he had had that morning, as a sequel to this conversation, a second interview with Sarah. “But they’re all off,” he said, “at last.” It puzzled her a moment. “All?—Mr. Newsome with them?” “Ah not yet! Sarah and Jim and Mamie. But Waymarsh with them—for Sarah. It’s too beautiful,” Strether continued; “I find I don’t get over that—it’s always a fresh joy. But it’s a fresh joy too,” he added, “that—well, what do you think? Little Bilham also goes. But he of course goes for Mamie.” Miss Gostrey wondered. “‘For’ her? Do you mean they’re already engaged?”