He had himself as yet had nothing--they would sit down somewhere together; and when after a few steps and a turn into the Boulevard they had, for their greater privacy, sat down among twenty others, our friend saw in his companion's move a fear of the advent of Waymarsh.

It was the first time Chad had to that extent given this personage "away"; and Strether found himself wondering of what it was symptomatic.

He made out in a moment that the youth was in earnest as he hadn't yet seen him; which in its turn threw a ray perhaps a trifle startling on what they had each up to that time been treating as earnestness.

It was sufficiently flattering however that the real thing--if this WAS at last the real thing--should have been determined, as appeared, precisely by an accretion of Strether's importance.

For this was what it quickly enough came to--that Chad, rising with the lark, had rushed down to let him know while his morning consciousness was yet young that he had literally made the afternoon before a tremendous impression.