That, uttered there at the solemn hour, uttered in the place that was full of her influence, was the rest of his business; and when once he had heard himself say it he felt that his message had never before been spoken. It placed his present call immediately on solid ground, and the effect of it was to enable him quite to play with what we have called the key. Chad showed no shade of embarrassment, but had none the less been troubled for him after their meeting in the country; had had fears and doubts on the subject of his comfort. He was disturbed, as it were, only _for_ him, and had positively gone away to ease him off, to let him down—if it wasn’t indeed rather to screw him up—the more gently. Seeing him now fairly jaded he had come, with characteristic good humour, all the way to meet him, and what Strether thereupon supremely made out was that he would abound for him to the end in conscientious assurances. This was what was between them while the visitor remained; so far from having to go over old ground he found his entertainer keen to agree to everything. It couldn’t be put too strongly for him that he’d be a brute. “Oh rather!—if I should do anything of _that_ sort. I hope you believe I really feel it.” “I want it,” said Strether, “to be my last word of all to you. I can’t say more, you know; and I don’t see how I can do more, in every way, than I’ve done.” Chad took this, almost artlessly, as a direct allusion. “You’ve seen her?” “Oh yes—to say good-bye. And if I had doubted the truth of what I tell you—” “She’d have cleared up your doubt?” Chad understood—“rather”—again! It even kept him briefly silent. But he made that up. “She must have been wonderful.” “She _was_,” Strether candidly admitted—all of which practically told as a reference to the conditions created by the accident of the previous week. They appeared for a little to be looking back at it; and that came out still more in what Chad next said. “I don’t know what you’ve really thought, all along; I never did know—for anything, with you, seemed to be possible. But of course—of course—” Without confusion, quite with nothing but indulgence, he broke down, he pulled up. “After all, you understand. I spoke to you originally only as I _had_ to speak. There’s only one way—isn’t there?—about such things. However,” he smiled with a final philosophy, “I see it’s all right.” Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts. What was it that made him at present, late at night and after journeys, so renewedly, so substantially young? Strether saw in a moment what it was—it was that he was younger again than Madame de Vionnet. He himself said immediately none of the things that he was thinking; he said something quite different. “You _have_ really been to a distance?” “I’ve been to England.” Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, but gave no further account of it than to say: “One must sometimes get off.”