Her difficulty has been simply her not finding the moment she fancied." "Her difficulty," Strether returned, "has been simply that she finds she's afraid of you.

She's not afraid of ME, Sarah, one little scrap; and it was just because she has seen how I can fidget when I give my mind to it that she has felt her best chance, rightly enough to be in making me as uneasy as possible.

I think she's at bottom as pleased to HAVE you put it on me as you yourself can possibly be to put it." "But what in the world, my dear man," Chad enquired in objection to this luminosity, "have I done to make Sally afraid ?" "You've been 'wonderful, wonderful,' as we say--we poor people who watch the play from the pit; and that's what has, admirably, made her.
Made her all the more effectually that she could see you didn't set about it on purpose--I mean set about affecting her as with fear." Chad cast a pleasant backward glance over his possibilities of motive.
"I've only wanted to be kind and friendly, to be decent and attentive--and I still only want to be." Strether smiled at his comfortable clearness.

"Well, there can certainly be no way for it better than by my taking the onus.

It reduces your personal friction and your personal offence to almost nothing." Ah but Chad, with his completer conception of the friendly, wouldn't quite have this! They had remained on the balcony, where, after their day of great and premature heat, the midnight air was delicious; and they leaned back in turn against the balustrade, all in harmony with the chairs and the flower-pots, the cigarettes and the starlight.