He walked up and down in front of this production, sociably took Strether's arm at the points at which he stopped, surveyed it repeatedly from the right and from the left, inclined a critical head to either quarter, and, while he puffed a still more critical cigarette, animadverted to his companion on this passage and that.

Strether sought relief--there were hours when he required it--in repeating himself; it was in truth not to be blinked that Chad had a way.

The main question as yet was of what it was a way TO.

It made vulgar questions no more easy; but that was unimportant when all questions save those of his own asking had dropped.

That he was free was answer enough, and it wasn't quite ridiculous that this freedom should end by presenting itself as what was difficult to move.
His changed state, his lovely home, his beautiful things, his easy talk, his very appetite for Strether, insatiable and, when all was said, flattering--what were such marked matters all but the notes of his freedom?
He had the effect of making a sacrifice of it just in these handsome forms to his visitor; which was mainly the reason the visitor was privately, for the time, a little out of countenance.
Strether was at this period again and again thrown back on a felt need to remodel somehow his plan.