He thought it over and his gravity returned. “Is it a refinement not to answer his mother’s letters?” She appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out. “Oh I should say the greatest of all.” “Well,” said Strether, “_I’m_ quite content to let it, as one of the signs, pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do what he likes with me.” This appeared to strike her. “How do you know it?” “Oh I’m sure of it. I feel it in my bones.” “Feel he _can_ do it?” “Feel that he believes he can. It may come to the same thing!” Strether laughed. She wouldn’t, however, have this. “Nothing for you will ever come to the same thing as anything else.” And she understood what she meant, it seemed, sufficiently to go straight on. “You say that if he does break he’ll come in for things at home?” “Quite positively. He’ll come in for a particular chance—a chance that any properly constituted young man would jump at. The business has so developed that an opening scarcely apparent three years ago, but which his father’s will took account of as in certain conditions possible and which, under that will, attaches to Chad’s availing himself of it a large contingent advantage—this opening, the conditions having come about, now simply awaits him. His mother has kept it for him, holding out against strong pressure, till the last possible moment. It requires, naturally, as it carries with it a handsome ‘part,’ a large share in profits, his being on the spot and making a big effort for a big result. That’s what I mean by his chance. If he misses it he comes in, as you say, for nothing. And to see that he doesn’t miss it is, in a word, what I’ve come out for.” She let it all sink in. “What you’ve come out for then is simply to render him an immense service.” Well, poor Strether was willing to take it so. “Ah if you like.” “He stands, as they say, if you succeed with him, to gain—” “Oh a lot of advantages.” Strether had them clearly at his fingers’ ends. “By which you mean of course a lot of money.” “Well, not only. I’m acting with a sense for him of other things too. Consideration and comfort and security—the general safety of being anchored by a strong chain. He wants, as I see him, to be protected. Protected I mean from life.” “Ah voilà!”—her thought fitted with a click. “From life. What you _really_ want to get him home for is to marry him.” “Well, that’s about the size of it.” “Of course,” she said, “it’s rudimentary. But to any one in particular?” He smiled at this, looking a little more conscious. “You get everything out.” For a moment again their eyes met. “You put everything in!” He acknowledged the tribute by telling her. “To Mamie Pocock.” She wondered; then gravely, even exquisitely, as if to make the oddity also fit: “His own niece?” “Oh you must yourself find a name for the relation. His brother-in-law’s sister. Mrs. Jim’s sister-in-law.”