"Oh we shall get on!" The tone was, as who should say, everything Strether could have desired; and quite as good the expression of face with which the speaker had looked up at him and kindly held him.

All these things lacked was their not showing quite so much as the fruit of experience.
Yes, experience was what Chad did play on him, if he didn't play any grossness of defiance.

Of course experience was in a manner defiance; but it wasn't, at any rate--rather indeed quite the contrary!--grossness; which was so much gained.

He fairly grew older, Strether thought, while he himself so reasoned.

Then with his mature pat of his visitor's arm he also got up; and there had been enough of it all by this time to make the visitor feel that something WAS settled.