第57章

Strether here, with a rising hope, just thought, "We must take one of them at a time." But his coherence lapsed."IS there some woman? Of whom he's really afraid of course I mean--or who does with him what she likes.""It's awfully charming of you," Bilham presently remarked, "not to have asked me that before.""Oh I'm not fit for my job!"

The exclamation had escaped our friend, but it made little Bilham more deliberate."Chad's a rare case!" he luminously observed.

"He's awfully changed," he added.

"Then you see it too?"

"The way he has improved? Oh yes--I think every one must see it.

But I'm not sure," said little Bilham, "that I didn't like him about as well in his other state.""Then this IS really a new state altogether?""Well," the young man after a moment returned, "I'm not sure he was really meant by nature to be quite so good.It's like the new edition of an old book that one has been fond of--revised and amended, brought up to date, but not quite the thing one knew and loved.However that may be at all events," he pursued, "I don't think, you know, that he's really playing, as you call it, any game.I believe he really wants to go back and take up a career.

He's capable of one, you know, that will improve and enlarge him still more.He won't then," little Bilham continued to remark, "be my pleasant well-rubbed old-fashioned volume at all.But of course I'm beastly immoral.I'm afraid it would be a funny world altogether--a world with things the way I like them.I ought, Idare say, to go home and go into business myself.Only I'd simply rather die--simply.And I've not the least difficulty in making up my mind not to, and in knowing exactly why, and in defending my ground against all comers.All the same," he wound up, "I assure you I don't say a word against it--for himself, I mean--to Chad.Iseem to see it as much the best thing for him.You see he's not happy.""DO I?"--Strether stared."I've been supposing I see just the opposite--an extraordinary case of the equilibrium arrived at and assured.""Oh there's a lot behind it."

"Ah there you are!" Strether exclaimed."That's just what I want to get at.You speak of your familiar volume altered out of recognition.Well, who's the editor?"Little Bilham looked before him a minute in silence."He ought to get married.THAT would do it.And he wants to.""Wants to marry her?"

Again little Bilham waited, and, with a sense that he had information, Strether scarce knew what was coming."He wants to be free.He isn't used, you see," the young man explained in his lucid way, "to being so good."Strether hesitated."Then I may take it from you that he IS good?"His companion matched his pause, but making it up with a quiet fulness."DO take it from me.""Well then why isn't he free? He swears to me he is, but meanwhile does nothing--except of course that he's so kind to me--to prove it; and couldn't really act much otherwise if he weren't.My question to you just now was exactly on this queer impression of his diplomacy: as if instead of really giving ground his line were to keep me on here and set me a bad example."As the half-hour meanwhile had ebbed Strether paid his score, and the waiter was presently in the act of counting out change.Our friend pushed back to him a fraction of it, with which, after an emphatic recognition, the personage in question retreated."You give too much," little Bilham permitted himself benevolently to observe.

"Oh I always give too much!" Strether helplessly sighed."But you don't," he went on as if to get quickly away from the contemplation of that doom, "answer my question.Why isn't he free?"Little Bilham had got up as if the transaction with the waiter had been a signal, and had already edged out between the table and the divan.The effect of this was that a minute later they had quitted the place, the gratified waiter alert again at the open door.

Strether had found himself deferring to his companion's abruptness as to a hint that he should be answered as soon as they were more isolated.This happened when after a few steps in the outer air they had turned the next comer.There our friend had kept it up.

"Why isn't he free if he's good?"