It was the quantity of make-believe involved and so vividly exemplified that most disagreed with his spiritual stomach.

He moved, however, from the consideration of that quantity--to say nothing of the consciousness of that organ--back to the other feature of the show, the deep, deep truth of the intimacy revealed.

That was what, in his vain vigil, he oftenest reverted to: intimacy, at such a point, was LIKE that--and what in the world else would one have wished it to be like?
It was all very well for him to feel the pity of its being so much like lying; he almost blushed, in the dark, for the way he had dressed the possibility in vagueness, as a little girl might have dressed her doll.

He had made them--and by no fault of their own--momentarily pull it for him, the possibility, out of this vagueness; and must he not therefore take it now as they had had simply, with whatever thin attenuations, to give it to him?
The very question, it may be added, made him feel lonely and cold.

There was the element of the awkward all round, but Chad and Madame de Vionnet had at least the comfort that they could talk it over together.