However," he smiled with a final philosophy, "I see it's all right." Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts.

What was it that made him at present, late at night and after journeys, so renewedly, so substantially young?
Strether saw in a moment what it was--it was that he was younger again than Madame de Vionnet.

He himself said immediately none of the things that he was thinking; he said something quite different.

"You HAVE really been to a distance ?" "I've been to England." Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, but gave no further account of it than to say: "One must sometimes get off." Strether wanted no more facts--he only wanted to justify, as it were, his question.

"Of course you do as you're free to do.