His eyes were all attached to Strether’s now, for he was one of the men who fully face you when they talk of themselves. This enabled his friend to look at him hard and immediately to appear to the highest advantage in his eyes by doing so. “That’s a genial thing to say to a fellow who has come out on purpose to meet you!” Nothing could have been finer, on this, than Waymarsh’s sombre glow. “_Have_ you come out on purpose?” “Well—very largely.” “I thought from the way you wrote there was something back of it.” Strether hesitated. “Back of my desire to be with you?” “Back of your prostration.” Strether, with a smile made more dim by a certain consciousness, shook his head. “There are all the causes of it!” “And no particular cause that seemed most to drive you?” Our friend could at last conscientiously answer. “Yes. One. There _is_ a matter that has had much to do with my coming out.” Waymarsh waited a little. “Too private to mention?” “No, not too private—for _you_. Only rather complicated.” “Well,” said Waymarsh, who had waited again, “I _may_ lose my mind over here, but I don’t know as I’ve done so yet.” “Oh you shall have the whole thing. But not tonight.” Waymarsh seemed to sit stiffer and to hold his elbows tighter. “Why not—if I can’t sleep?” “Because, my dear man, I _can!_” “Then where’s your prostration?” “Just in that—that I can put in eight hours.” And Strether brought it out that if Waymarsh didn’t “gain” it was because he didn’t go to bed: the result of which was, in its order, that, to do the latter justice, he permitted his friend to insist on his really getting settled. Strether, with a kind coercive hand for it, assisted him to this consummation, and again found his own part in their relation auspiciously enlarged by the smaller touches of lowering the lamp and seeing to a sufficiency of blanket. It somehow ministered for him to indulgence to feel Waymarsh, who looked unnaturally big and black in bed, as much tucked in as a patient in a hospital and, with his covering up to his chin, as much simplified by it. He hovered in vague pity, to be brief, while his companion challenged him out of the bedclothes. “Is she really after you? Is that what’s behind?” Strether felt an uneasiness at the direction taken by his companion’s insight, but he played a little at uncertainty. “Behind my coming out?” “Behind your prostration or whatever. It’s generally felt, you know, that she follows you up pretty close.” Strether’s candour was never very far off. “Oh it has occurred to you that I’m literally running away from Mrs. Newsome?” “Well, I haven’t _known_ but what you are. You’re a very attractive man, Strether. You’ve seen for yourself,” said Waymarsh “what that lady downstairs makes of it. Unless indeed,” he rambled on with an effect between the ironic and the anxious, “it’s you who are after _her_. Is Mrs. Newsome _over_ here?” He spoke as with a droll dread of her.