And if many things moreover passed before them, none passed more distinctly for Strether than that striking truth about Chad of which he had been so often moved to take note: the truth that everything came happily back with him to his knowing how to live.

It had been seated in his pleased smile--a smile that pleased exactly in the right degree--as his visitor turned round, on the balcony, to greet his advent; his visitor in fact felt on the spot that there was nothing their meeting would so much do as bear witness to that facility.

He surrendered himself accordingly to so approved a gift; for what was the meaning of the facility but that others DID surrender themselves?
He didn't want, luckily, to prevent Chad from living; but he was quite aware that even if he had he would himself have thoroughly gone to pieces.

It was in truth essentially by bringing down his personal life to a function all subsidiary to the young man's own that he held together.

And the great point, above all, the sign of how completely Chad possessed the knowledge in question, was that one thus became, not only with a proper cheerfulness, but with wild native impulses, the feeder of his stream.