The solid stranger was simply the answer--as she now, turning to her friend, indicated.

She brought it straight out for him--it presented the intruder.

"Why, through this gentleman!" The gentleman indeed, at the same time, though sounding for Strether a very short name, did practically as much to explain.
Strether gasped the name back--then only had he seen Miss Gostrey had said more than she knew.

They were in presence of Chad himself.
Our friend was to go over it afterwards again and again--he was going over it much of the time that they were together, and they were together constantly for three or four days: the note had been so strongly struck during that first half-hour that everything happening since was comparatively a minor development.

The fact was that his perception of the young man's identity--so absolutely checked for a minute--had been quite one of the sensations that count in life; he certainly had never known one that had acted, as he might have said, with more of a crowded rush.