I always had my own way." With which he pursued: "And I have it at present." "Then what are you here for?
What has kept you," Strether asked, "if you HAVE been able to leave ?" It made Chad, after a stare, throw himself back.

"Do you think one's kept only by women ?" His surprise and his verbal emphasis rang out so clear in the still street that Strether winced till he remembered the safety of their English speech.

"Is that," the young man demanded, "what they think at Woollett ?" At the good faith in the question Strether had changed colour, feeling that, as he would have said, he had put his foot in it.

He had appeared stupidly to misrepresent what they thought at Woollett; but before he had time to rectify Chad again was upon him.

"I must say then you show a low mind!" It so fell in, unhappily for Strether, with that reflexion of his own prompted in him by the pleasant air of the Boulevard Malesherbes, that its disconcerting force was rather unfairly great.