I'm not ready." "You feel," Chad asked in a tone of his own, "the charm of life over here ?" "Immensely." Strether faced it.

"You've helped me so to feel it that that surely needn't surprise you." "No, it doesn't surprise me, and I'm delighted.

But what, my dear man," Chad went on with conscious queerness, "does it all lead to for you ?" The change of position and of relation, for each, was so oddly betrayed in the question that Chad laughed out as soon as he had uttered it--which made Strether also laugh.

"Well, to my having a certitude that has been tested--that has passed through the fire.

But oh," he couldn't help breaking out, "if within my first month here you had been willing to move with me--!" "Well ?" said Chad, while he broke down as for weight of thought.
"Well, we should have been over there by now." "Ah but you wouldn't have had your fun!" "I should have had a month of it; and I'm having now, if you want to know," Strether continued, "enough to last me for the rest of my days." Chad looked amused and interested, yet still somewhat in the dark; partly perhaps because Strether's estimate of fun had required of him from the first a good deal of elucidation.