I should like to see her." Something happy and easy, something above all unconscious, in the way he said this, brought home again to his companion the facility of his attitude and the enviability of his state.

"See her then by all means.
And consider too," Strether went on, "that you really give your sister a lift in letting her come to you.

You give her a couple of months of Paris, which she hasn't seen, if I'm not mistaken, since just after she was married, and which I'm sure she wants but the pretext to visit." Chad listened, but with all his own knowledge of the world.

"She has had it, the pretext, these several years, yet she has never taken it." "Do you mean YOU ?" Strether after an instant enquired.
"Certainly--the lone exile.

And whom do you mean ?" said Chad.
"Oh I mean ME.