"What it literally comes to for you, if you'll pardon my putting it so, is that you give up money.

Possibly a good deal of money." "Oh," Strether laughed, "if it were only just enough you'd still be justified in putting it so! But I've on my side to remind you too that YOU give up money; and more than 'possibly'-- quite certainly, as I should suppose--a good deal." "True enough; but I've got a certain quantity," Chad returned after a moment.

"Whereas you, my dear man, you--" "I can't be at all said"-- Strether took him up--"to have a 'quantity' certain or uncertain?
Very true.

Still, I shan't starve." "Oh you mustn't STARVE!" Chad pacifically emphasised; and so, in the pleasant conditions, they continued to talk; though there was, for that matter, a pause in which the younger companion might have been taken as weighing again the delicacy of his then and there promising the elder some provision against the possibility just mentioned.

This, however, he presumably thought best not to do, for at the end of another minute they had moved in quite a different direction.